Phones

There are a few rotary phones in our room. The 'old school' kind. The kind we used when our phone numbers started with letters....mine was AD2-6812. They like these, and use these, because they love to talk on the phone....and because they make a cool uh..uh..uh...uh..sound when you dial the numbers.
But...when I found two cell phones that no longer worked and placed them in the room....watch out! Oh my goodness. Everyone wants one. Just like mom and dad...and brother or sister. And they know excactly what they are doing. They are texting and talking and flipping up to answer, and putting them away in their front pocket. If you don't think your kids are watching you closely...give them a play phone and sit back and watch...and listen. One is texting and the other talking (very sweetly to his mom) and then seconds later they switched roles.
I love it. Your children make me smile from one ear to the other! They are great.
I asked Brian (who works at T-mobil) to bring in some broken phones....because 2 is just not enough!

tunnel,meshy,box things....

These are definitly open ended play things. My favorite. Dacia brought these over for us to play with (thank you Dacia) and the kids love them. They are used like hamster balls to walk around in. Or how many kids can we pile in....and can we still walk around with this many?? Or quiet places to talk or read. Or to put onto the tricycles and ride around...notice they used the boxes also.
She brought us 6 or 7...they made a hotel today. Everyone had their own room. These are pretty neat...Thank you for adding to our outside fun!

face painting

The girls were pretending 'party'. They dressed each other up in fancy scarves and shoes and hats, and painted faces. I have some watercolor crayons that I got at the childrens museum in Factoria. These are great for painting faces! Very easy to use and very washable.

Our garden

Our snap peas are big and yummy! When we go out, this is the first place they run to, to find some peas to eat and check out how all the other things are growing. We have squash growing...we picked one and we are going to make zuchini bread. We have lettuce, carrots (not doing so good), and tomatos! They are still green but getting bigger every day. We had broccoli....but I thought we could wait for the weekend and eat it on Monday....but look what happend (last picture)....it is called 'bolting'. It looks pretty on our table.

Our Bolting Broccoli.....

1-2-3-Parachute!

I loved doing this as a kid. In PE each year we would get to use the parachute for a day or two. Recently, the Head Start program near us was 'thinning out' their inventory....and we got to help them. Among the many wonderful things was this HUGE parachute. I wasn't sure it would even fit in our back yard, but it does. My kids love it too, so they help with the parachute dance. Sometimes we put balls on top to shake around, but the funnest is to pull it over our heads and run around underneath.