Going to the Zoo part 1

Monday we spent the day taking down our massive collection of ocean/beach stuff. I have a basket of scraps for crafts. It has scraps of everything fabric, paper, ribbon. It sits on a chair by the kitchen table. The kids can use anything in there. Moe has yet to make use of it. Cole on the other hand is always digging in there. She has made a very large collection of jellyfish from scraps and hung them everywhere. I still found some yesterday that I had missed.

Anyway we are moving onto- going to the zoo. I spent most of Monday searching for anything to do with zoo animals. This is very hard to do because all our stuff is packed away while we are working on the house. So I had to search the boxes in the basement and the attic. It took all day to find the one book I was really looking for, Dr Seuss -Put me in the zoo. I knew I had it and I was not going to buy. They didn't have it at our library. In fact they hardly ever have a book I am looking for. To go with the book Put me in the zoo, I want the kids to make up their own animal to put in the zoo. I am very curious to see what they create. I also spent most of the day on Monday rotating their toys.

OK this is what you will find on our table right now;

A few library booksA couple trays with crafts. I leave these trays out with some foam piece that I just free cut. They can put them together when ever they want. These are a couple of stick puppets.I pulled out another set of animal puzzle cards. If the kids want they can pull out the magnets again to spell the animal names. We also have a tray of lacing cards.In their sensory pin I changed the sand and shells to beans and put their plastic animals in there. Moe with his ever present train is delivering food to the zoo animals. I printed out a few pages and left them on the table. I don't make them do them. I just leave them there and if they want to they can do them. As soon as Cole saw them she said "Cool, printouts!"



I usually don't print any work sheets out. I was very lucky to be given a huge collection of workbooks. Between books my mother sent me and my sister in laws neighbor I'm set.

I have a bunch of plastic top loading sheet that I put the workbook pages into. So they can use them over and over again. These were left over from my working days when I had to build my own product catalogs. I just had to buy some dry erase markers. I don't make the kids do any of them I just leave them out and I let them use them at anytime they want. I find these easier for Moe. I don't know if it's because he is left handed or not but he has a hard time using crayons. He just looks uncomfortable holding them but when he uses the dry erase markers it smoother and slides better for him. I want to help him yet I don't want to scare him away so I have yet to correct the way he holds is pen. Every once in a while he will hold it correctly so I sure he just needs time.

Rain Rain go away

Everything here was flooded the back yard, the driveway. I started the pump we have in the back and pumped some of the water to the front of the house. Now the front is flooded. I went out to get the mail and the water in the driveway was up over my ankle.

It made it a perfect day to just stay inside and forget about what was going on out there. I'm glad we hit the library the other day. We read alot, played with playdoh and baked bread. I made a an awesome loaf of onion rye. Yum, I had to stop myself from eating it all!

I'm already dreaming about lunch.

Taking it easy

Yesterday we had an busy day just doing thing like laundry, dishes and playing. We took a break and walked to the farmers market and stocked up on some food. I always seem to forget that I have to carry everything we buy back home. Why does the walk always tire me out but never the kids?

Today we are off to the library.

Even more of our Ocean/ Beach theme

This is just a quick list of some of the things we did today.
We played memory while mommy made breakfast.
After reading What's in a shell, we counted shells and sorted them by sizes. We even remembered a few of their names. Then we moved onto a simple boat. Of course we had to see if it really floats and tested out in the fish tank. Poor fish!The kids each got a basket and had to pick out ten things to see if they would sink and float. I wrote them all down and they took turns checking them off on our chart. In the end I had them count again how many sank and how many didn't. It was a tie.

Then they got to play in the water for awhile. Once Cole climbed in I knew it was time to call it quits. After they got cleaned up they moved on to some more crafts. This one was making jellyfish.

Then we made some magnets from our trip to the beach for Aunt Nancy.We also made some jello jigglers and the kids cut out some with fish cookie cutters. The only thing left on my list is a coloring book I have to print out for them - whats in the sea with some practice writing. I tried to get them to practice writing in sand. That didn't go over very well. I'll give it a try again later in the week.

Next week I would like to move onto a Zoo theme because we have a trip planned to the Zoo next week.

More of our Ocean/ Beach theme

I started putting trays out with activities for them to work on. First thing in the morning Cole comes out to color. Then she plows through all the work sheet pages I leave on the table. She will not do any if they are in a book -all pages must be ripped out. Moe will follow at a very leisurely pace. The only thing he likes is mazes ,puzzles oh and glue. After they had enough of the puzzles I dumped their magnets on the table and they matched the letters on their puzzles.

I pulled out our fishing puzzle that I had hidden. This will have to keep us satisfied until we find our fishing poles. I am hoping Ed will be home early one night to go fishing and crabbing with us.

We made octopus puppets.

Our refrigerator is our bulletin board it is covered with pictures of all kinds of sea creatures. Seems I forgot a sea turtle. Thanks Cole for adding this little family of turtles to our frig.

We finished our crabs.

poor thing looks like he's crying
These are some of the books that I have in our book box on the table. We've read them several times but I leave them out for them to look through.

Having fun in the sun

We hit the beach on Sunday with some of the other Koch kids. I really thought the water was going to be to cold for the kids. I should have known better. It was perfectly mild so I didn't have to be on top of them at all times and I could back up a few feet and snap some picture. I have no idea what she was doing yoga?? Just look at the joy on this kids face. He had a such ball running through the water.
We did some kite flying too