On a plane trip

Today was a pretty calm day, I only had 7 children. At this point when they started building the airplane there were only 5. Olivia was in charge. She set it up, directed everyone where to sit, and was in charge of getting them there safely. When I asked "Where are you going?" She bolted out "ALABAMA! We are going to see Daddy Hall. I am going to show everyone pictures in a minute so they know who we are seeing. Everybody sit down, here we go!" Notice she filled all the empty seats with animals and babies.

Armaan is making sure the squirrel is okay and Loralei is holding on tight to baby. There was alot of play and imagination that went on here. Not to mention the amazing negotiation skills that Olivia has. Some of the kids would get tired of sitting there, but Olivia made sure she inticed them with something new and exciting. When Dylan and Lexi got there, they were very excited to go flying and they uped the anti a bit by getting dressed up. So then everyone was getting dressed and undressed and dressed again for the plane ride to Atlanta. Then the play took a dramatic turn..........
They crashed. The crashed hard and everyone was dead...and alive, and dead, and alive, and dead. I love how Dylan placed the chair on top of himself. They played crash for a while and eventually moved to something different. They were in this airplane mode for a few hours. It was great. I loved listening to the stories they made up and acted out. I didn't really involve myself too much unless someone was going to get hurt, I just let them be. All this role playing is great for them to try things out in 'pretend' that they might not be able to try out in real life. It gives them different senareos to try out...see what works, see what doesn't work. It is also very important for them to act out death, pretend someone is hurt...or dead...so that when real sitiations come up they might have better skills to deal with it.

I loved our morning! So did the kids. :)

Eggs!

It is that time of year again where we crack eggs. 2 rules...keep it in the bowl, and DO NOT put your hands in your mouth. We watch them closely and for the most part they follow the rules. Of course....keeping it in the bowl is hard, and I know that, so I don't care when they get it on their clothes, the floor, their hair...etc. I just keep giving them gentle reminders to keep it in the bowl. I do this every year and the children love it. This is about an hour project. They work in 2s and between them they crack about 3 dozen. When they are done cracking they start mooshing and dripping, and exploring their bowl full of eggs. It is quite the experience to watch. Olivia, who has been with me for over 3 years now....looks forward to it!! Even Lainey who is now 8 came to join in!

At first they cracked all the eggs into the bowl and put the shells into the crate. When they were done cracking they added the shells!

I am pretty sure Alondra would have gotten in if we let her :) Of course...Quinn is the last one. I think he was the last one last year too. I will have to go back and check. Here he is pretending his hand is a claw of some sort of bulldozer.....and here he is picking it up with his 'claw'. I washed all the clothes for you parents! :) I didn't think you would like dried on eggy clothes.

Easter...around the room

We did many open ended crafts this week for Easter. Here we are painting on Bunny ears. We will wear them tomorrow for our party.

Painting eggs at the easle....

Stamping with a variety of Easter stamps...we just used paper towels and liquid watercolor for our stamp pads. You can also get 'make your own' stamp pads at www.discountschoolsupply.com. I have some, but am not sure where I 'organized' them to. :)

Boys glueing. At this time they are not doing anything specific...just gluing. I make sure to have plenty of glue on hand!!

Painting with Peeps!!
Armaan wasn't too sure about this one.....These girls Loved it! and loved how their fingers tasted!

Outside....

Oh...Quinn is so strong!

We are lucky to have a yard full of pinecones! Such a great free open ended activity!! These guys were collecting the pinecones into the bucket, dumping them out, counting them, putting them back in, and carrying them around the yard.

These guys made up a game. They put all their shoes into a pile, Dylan counted to 3, and then they hurried to put together as many matches as they could. I love it!!

Counting pinecones into the bucket.

We have chicks!

We went to the grange for bunny food. We came home with chicks. We got 5 different colored ones, two of which will hatch blue and yellow eggs! The others will give us brown eggs. The kids love them!! They are pretty easy to care for so far. We will be building a coop outside along with the bunnies. My youngest son is so excited to get fresh eggs. He was bummed it takes about 6 months. They are growing fast and Korina built on to the box to make it bigger and better. They now like to perch and see what is going on. We just added a stick across the inside for them to perch on as well. They are very curious little gals.