First Goal

 Soccer season is in full swing again even though it is so cold outside.  Red Fish has had two games so far and frozen through both of them.  Last season, Red Fish never really knew what the rules of soccer were or what she was supposed to do.  I kind of thought she didn't like soccer and I didn't think we would be signing up again.  Red Fish kept insisting it was her very favorite thing to do and that she HAD to play soccer. In February and March she did a little soccer camp (with 25 little boys) and was really excited about playing with a team of her little neighborhood friends. 

 She is running with the kids and really playing this year.  It's fun to watch.  She seems to genuinely be enjoying herself.

Kicking her first goal

She scored her first goal tonight.  (At least the first deliberate goal.)  Seeing her face afterwards was priceless.  Seriously, I highly recommend motherhood.  There is nothing better than the feeling of watching your kids progress.

Just after kicking her first goal

Daddy got in trouble for this picture- it distracted her from blocking a goal.

Indoor Camping & Biking

 On a cold day we can still play camping indoors.  Between the picnic table and the grill, the kids thought they were pretty authentic.

 When the rain stops the kids race outside in spite of the cold to ride their bikes.  New Fish learned to pedal her bike.  Red Fish asked Two Fish to take off her training wheels so she can try and learn to ride without them.  She was pretty thrilled that she made it about 10 seconds with nobody holding on.

Dear Sun- please don't ever leave me again.

Today it snowed.  I am not happy.  I have been thinking about Friday when it was sunny. Oh sun!  Marvelous sun!  We have missed you.  I am tempted to lay in the middle of the yard and soak in the sun whenever it comes out.  We played at the park on Friday for three hours.  Then we went to soccer practice and played at the park again.  My kids have their bikes out. The sidewalk chalk is out.  I feel like a person again.  This winter wasn't as draining as years past (maybe because we skiied so much as a family this year? Perhaps because my kids are easier to take places?)  but I still missed the vitamin D.

Dancing in the park with sass.

Little Princess

 One of the young women in my ward made these amazing dresses for my girls. Red Fish and New Fish were beyond thrilled.

Today in church, Red Fish said the 5th article of faith in primary.

"We believe that a man must be ^acalled of God, by ^bprophecy, and by the laying on of ^chands by those who are in ^dauthority, to ^epreach the Gospel and administer in the ^fordinances thereof."

It has a lot of  big words with a lot of syllables.  It took some practice for Red Fish to pronounce them all clearly and she did an awesome job.  It made me happy to hear her do it in front of a crowd.  She had her mouth against the microphone so not everyone could hear her but I was standing next to her and could hear her articulation.  She has definitely gotten a lot of confidence over the past year in her speech.  She introduces herself to kids on the playground.  She will talk in primary now.  She speaks to adults and expects them to understand her.  It's exciting.  She is doing so well! She has worked so hard.

While we were in primary waiting for her turn to speak, the leaders did a child spotlight where they give clues and everyone has to guess who they are talking about.  It turned out to be Red Fish and it was hilarious to hear how she had filled out the questionaire.

Favorite food- spaghetti with white sauce
Favorite color- rainbow
Favorite place to visit- Rainbowland (no that isn't a real place.)
Favorite thing to do- ride my unicorn
Favorite scripture- all of the scriptures about Jesus
Nickname- "Sweetie" and "Honey"
Something my parents like about me- Everything because they like everything about me (it's true.)
Special talent- playing the piano.

NAB 2013

 A few pictures from my NAB trip this year.

Good Friends

i is for insect

Today we talked about the letter "i" and insects.  We spent a good half hour singing through all of the nursery rhymes we have learned so far this year.  The kids love music time and it has been on the back burner the last few weeks. New Fish no longer feels the need to get dressed for school and she comes in her pjs most of the time.  I will be curious to see if she tries to wear her jammies to school next year.

We practiced counting to 20 and identifying all of the numbers.  They have no problems with this but I like to do the same group of numbers for a really long time.  Theses two kids are only three years old after all.  There is no rush.  They have learned so much this year, they are ready for Kindergarten but New Fish still have two more years of preschool before she will be going.

 We sang there was an old lady who swallowed a fly today for the first time.  We read from The Usbourne Children's Encyclopedia and Caterpillars and Butterflies.  We looked at pictures of the life cycle of a butterfly and discussed them and learned about the different parts of an insect.  We read The Hungry Hungry Caterpillar and The Very Angry Ladybug by Eric Carle and did some Eric Carle threading cards.  We did prewriting worksheets and practiced drawing and coloring their own patterns.  We did a new stack of file folder games (they love file folder games) and worked on learning rhyming words and opposites.  New Fish has gotten really good at rhyming.  We also played the honey bee tree game at the very end.  We play a lot of games and I think they are really great for teaching them to follow directions and take turns.

 We spent a good chunk of time observing our insects that we have been watching for the past two weeks.  Three of our six catepillars have formed a cysalis and hopefully the others will start in the next couple of days.  It was good timing for the kids to see what is happening to them.  The ants are tunneling around like crazy and the girls want to check on them first thing in the morning to see what they have been up to.  The girls want to get a tadpole next.  I'm tempted to do it because we have had so much fun watching the bugs.  Too bad we don't have a pond nearby to catch them.  I used to grow them in buckets of hundreds when I was little.

Daddy Date To The Zoo

Visiting the beloved giraffes.

g is for garden and grow

Examining bugs and plants.  Excuse the bedhead.

 We are continuing with our living things block in preschool.  We started with an examination of our bugs (the ant farm and our caterpillars.)  The catepillars have become 10x the size they were.  It's fun to see the kids run down to see what the bugs have been up to overnight.  Each new ant tunnel or "plumped up" caterpillar is celebrated.

Next we examined the plants we have been growing and looked at their leaves, stems and roots.  We also looked at any discarded seed pods with magnifying glasses.  We read Usbourne's How Flowers Grow and a section out of our Berenstein Bears Science Book.  We looked at some pictures of plant life cycles.

 We did some prewriting worksheets and Red Fish did some handwriting pages.

 We talked about the letter "g" and finger painted some cutouts.  Our nursery rhyme of the week was Mary Mary Quite Contrary.

 Next we made bud vases with old bottles, tissue paper and modge podge.  The kids love modge podge.  We had to open some windows to avoid the fumes.

 We spent some time digging in the dirt and planting seeds in mason jars so we can watch the roots grow.  My grass seeds were a little old so hopefully they will be okay.  I wanted to do wheat grass but My wheat wouldn't sprout. 

 We did some counting games and puzzles that require putting the numbers 1-20 in order.  The kids did great.  New Fish and Buddy B recognize and understand the numbers 1-20 really well now.  It's so fun to see how much they have learned this year.  Their little minds amaze me.

e is for Easter and egg

New Fish learned about the letter "e" over spring break.  We did plenty of Easter themed activities so it was a fairly easy going week.  I missed blogging about Y and Z because I was sick and my friend did preschool that week by herself.  It was zoo week and the kids learned more about animals.  We spent some time at home reading about reptiles, amphibians and mammals. 

 We did a batch of new file folder games on opposites and rhyming.  I had them stashed away and had forgotten I made them years ago.  The girls are very interested in making things rhyme right now and they had a blast with these six new games.  We also practiced counting the syllables in words. 

 We cracked the shells off our colored eggs and used them to decorate our letter.  The cracking was rather messy and we ended up with a lot of egg glued on the papers so we threw them away immediately as I didn't fancy rotting eggs hanging on display.  The girls didn't really care because they loved the process.

Books We Have Been Reading

We have been reading a lot lately.  Here are a few of the books we have enjoyed and a few that we didn't like-

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes is a  I liked this book and it really made my children think about the things they say to other people.  It was an emotional read for my girls and I had to stop several times to help them talk through Maddie's guilt and talk about why the kids were mean to Wanda in the first place.  It is a fairly quick read and the girls liked the illustrations.  Three stars.

 The Family Under The Bridge by Natalie Savage Carlson was depressing.  It kind of bummed my kids out a little.  It's good for them to realize how blessed they are to have a home to live in but they are probably still a bit young for this story.  It was recommended by the Sonlight kindergarten program and I can't say I am too impressed with their selections this year, which is unfortunate as I really liked their preschool list. Three stars.

I also read the whole Giver Series by Lois Lowery.  It was much more disturbing to read as an adult.  I definitely did not understand all of the symbolism and diseased culture when I read the first two years ago.  I kind of wish Lowery had skipped the last/4th book (The Son) as it was completely superfluous in my opinion.   I still don't understand why the evil had to be conquered again after The Messenger.  Three stars for the first three books and two stars for The Son.

 This was my first time reading any of the Little House On The Prairy Books but Two Fish grew up listening to them as a child.  My mother in law gave us the first two stories.  The chapters are a little bit long for young kids so we had to do only half a chapter some nights but my girls really got into the story.  They liked the idea of living in the middle of the big woods and like hearing about horse carts and old time farm practices.  We will definitely be reading the rest of the series a little bit at a time.  I can only handle reading one book from a series at a time to my kids.  I can't read a whole series at once.  Maybe that will change when we start moving a little quicker on books. Four Stars.

 My mother in law bought Mary Engebreit's Fairy Tales for New Fish for Christmas and it has become her constant companion.  New Fish is obsessed with princesses and this book is much more fun to read to her than those darn Disney princess books.  It has very bright, fun illustrations and the stories are retold in a really child friendly way.  It is New Fish's favorite book and she just refers to it as "the princess book."  She can tell all of the "real" fairy tale stories by heart now. Five Stars.

I also recently read The Snow Child by Eowen Ivey.  I liked the Russian fairytale aspect of this story as I am a huge fan of all fairy tales. It was haunting and sad. Three Stars.

 James Herriot's Treasury For Children was a fun book to read to the girls.  Red Fish especially loves books about animals and New Fish liked the pictures.  They are sweet little animal adventures told from the perspective of a country vet. Three Stars.

I also re-read Les Miserables- sigh- and it's so lovely.  Unfortunately I missed the book club where we discussed it because it is definitely one of my favorite books.  I've loved Les Miserables everything since I was a little kid and used to watch the animated movie.  (On a side note- Les Miserables as an animated movie is sort of a disturbing idea.  I need to find a copy someplace and re-watch it to investigate how much of the story is in it.  Animated prostitutes?) Five Stars.

I sobbed through the last few chapters of Charlotte's Web by E.B. White.  I think it might be my favorite chapter book I have read with my kids.  It's beautiful.  The story is well crafted and I love the language.  The moral is uplifting and the friendship between wilbur the pig and Charlotte the spider is touching.  My kids both loved it.

The Complete Adventures of Curious George is now Red Fish's very favorite book.  I didn't realize that the copy I bought her for Christmas came with the entire works on two CDs.  She has listened to them over and over.  She falls asleep holding it at night.  George is a topic of dinner conversation on a regular basis. Five stars.

The Princess Academy by Shannon Hale was another book club read.  I enjoy juvenille literature every once in while but I think I read too much of it in March.  The story was fine.  It was definitely different than I expected just from the title and review.  Three Stars.



Mrs. Piggle Wiggle (my childhood favorite) is up next on the docket.  I'm excited.

The Beginning Of The Bugs

We have started talking about plants, bugs, living things and life cycles.  Spring is giving us a lot of opportunities to observe these things.  We have been reading books, planting things and now we have invited a bunch of creepy crawlies into our home.  We have six caterpillars that we are hoping to grow into butterflies.  It should take another week for them to plump up enough to start the metamorphosis process.  The girls love see how much bigger they are in the morning.  I'm excited for them to form their crystalis.  Hopefully it will align with our preschool insect week.

 We also started an ant farm on Saturday with harvester ants in it.  The ants are already creating tunnels and have been pretty mesmerizing to watch.  Nobody can walk past them without stopping to look.  We are keeping our magnifying glasses handy.  I wish we had a queen ant so we could watch the whole life cycle from start to finish.