Eliana has learned to climb up on the table — Becca had to join her for the picture!

“mommy I want more fruit!!!” (Well, her words were “aahhh! aaaahhhh!” )

And the joy of empty boxes – Eliana couldn’t be left out of Becca’s fun! (Becca is focusing on the drawing she is creating inside the box, Eliana is looking at the drawing that Becca finished in her box)

The rain comes down, out of the clouds, and the rainbow comes out from under the clouds after the rain.

She understood the concept, I think:

"Mommy put me in the picture too!"

After practicing the rest of the letters, we wrote them all:

We used our dandelions to make a fairy crown: cut a slit in the stem with your fingernail to slide the next flower through until you have enough, then tie the first and last stem together and there you go!

Hopefully the one lesson that will stick is the Plantain:

The leaves can be rolled between fingers to release the oils and pressed upon a bee sting, spider bite, insect bite, scratch, etc. They’re about as prolific as Dandelions, so they’re always around when you need them.

Both were asking for more when the bowl was empty!

They’re offering a link to the replay of the webinar until Saturday (5/5/12) at midnight so if you want to see it yourself, (it’s about 90 minutes) you have a chance! This is an awesome resource to learn some basic ways to use nature to help heal yourself and your kids – many things are easily obtainable and some may even be prolific in your own yard!

Highly recommended!

http://www.onlinemeetingnow.com/seminar/?id=a3c4fdaabf

Basically I put 10 quick activities into a jar and whenever I feel the need to wake up I call brain break and Becca gets to pick one paper from the jar. First one she picked was “20 jumping jacks”

Here are the 10 things I put in our jar:

20 jumping jacks

Pat head and rub tummy

Ants go Marching (sing song)

Ball/bean bag toss (or juggling)

Jump, Skip, Spin, repeat

head rolls

Toilet paper streamers

Who can yawn bigger?

Dance party (using the preset songs on the piano)

Make silly faces (happy, sad, confused, hide faces and if you match, you win)

When we got it (thanks Great-Granny!) my hope was that the pattern pictures would be jumping off point – a way to show how shapes can be used together to make various pictures. I had bought this puzzle probably a year ago:

and while we liked it (it’s great for teaching beginning puzzle skills), it didn’t promote the type of out of the box thinking I was hoping for, probably because the puzzle boards were structured. Without the structure on the pictures themselves (there are no “walls” for the pieces to fit into), I finally am starting to see some spontaneous out of the box play:

 She told me she was building a drive way.

Oh, and then there was this:

Meet “Mr. Snowman”

Crayons in, crayons out… sorry Daddy, you’ll have to get a clean cup to have a drink out of because yours might have a little extra color in it now!

It was quite a popular event, although most of the Mall was torn up for lawn restoration (You would think that would involve green grass, but no, it was mostly involving large mounds of dusty dirt).

 

The Capitol Building

After this fun, we rode the metro over to the Zoo and had a bit of birthday fun – Eliana loved it!

She would get so excited when looking at the animals that she would stamp her feet like she was running and clap her hands. She also started yelling at the gorilla’s and wanted to climb into the Prairie Dog’s home.

All the excitement did take their toll, though…

It’s so hard being one! Happy (one day early) Birthday Eliana!