Adventures of Evie

  Today we continued our woodland creature week by talking about some animals that live in the trees. We talked about owls, and about squirrels, and about racoons and how they each prepare and handle winter. Evie has seen a lot of geese migrating recently and it's been fun this week talking about how different animals deal with the colder weather. We made some yummy owl "toasts" for our snack time using chocolate rice cakes, peanut butter and various fruits. We also continued working on Evie's letters and her name (even though she is an absolute pro at writing and spelling it!) by making a little tree with her name on it. She had fun putting the letters in order and gluing them onto the tree trunks. It turned out pretty cute! We had family night tonight, so we headed to Nana's house after our snack time and enjoyed dinner and talking with family. :)

  This week is woodland creature week! December is going to be a shorter month for us with preschool since I have a week of paid leave at the end and we have a short week almost every single week as well so I decided to weave a few fun themes in with some letter review. This week we are reviewing D, E, and F while we learn about animals that live in the woods. Her sensory bin this week was free which is always a plus! It's just leaves I cleaned up from the yard and some pinecones, foam pumpkins and Wizard Tom and Barb from her Sago boxes for some color.  It's getting harder to take nice photos since it's so dreary outside so you'll have to bear with me on some of these "action" shots but for our fun activity today we made play-doh hedgehogs. Evie had a lot of fun sticking in the toothpicks and eyes and we talked about what hedgehogs are and how they use their quills to protect themselves from predators. When she was done making her hedgehog we got Barb from he...

  We made it to our last day of work before Thanksgiving break! This is a really short week for us but I'm excited for some time off and to be able to see family. Today we made this cute little handprint turkey. These aren't super interactive for Evie but they're a nice keepsake for me to have and compare how she's growing over the years. After that we worked on this thankful pumpkin. We wrote down all the things she was thankful for (most of them included hugs and kisses!) and then connected the strips into a pumpkin. This was a really fun one for me because it's always interesting to see what she will say when you ask her what she's thankful for. Amazingly there are no physical things on her list. Almost every strip is a person, or a warm hug or kiss. We'll see how those change over the years too! Tomorrow we'll be with family all day and Friday will hopefully be a snuggle day but we hope everyone enjoys the holiday and finds time to relax and enjoy th...

  Today we repeated a project we did last year at the library! We made these fun paper plate pumpkin pies. It's a super easy project because all you need is a plate, some construction paper, glue and cotton balls. Evie had a lot of fun gluing it together and pretending to eat it. With the other half of the plate I made her a turkey and let her color in the feathers. She decided to draw in her own feathers rather than color the entire background and of course he's blue, purple and pink again! I love how creative she is with things like this. She's always thinking outside the box and it's fun to watch. :)

  It's Thanksgiving week! So this week we are naturally going to be doing a lot of turkey themed projects.  I worked shorter shifts this week so we went back to our regular routine of movement time in the morning and then an art project each day. Today we made these cute coffee filter turkeys. Evie of course made him her favorite colors so he looks a bit more like a peacock! 😂 Then we did a letter turkey with the letters in her name. She had to put them in order and glue them onto the turkey. At the start of our at home time I got three fat glue sticks and this turkey ate the last of them! So apparently, we're going through about one per month. That's a lot of glue! Tomorrow we have some more fun projects planned so stay tuned. ;)

  Today I had the day off so instead of using our time for learning we decided to have a fun day together. We've used most of this week for fun and just to have some bonding time and even though we didn't do a ton in the way of new learning it's been a really nice break. Today was supposed to be our STEM day but instead of picking a science project for family week we chose to do a different kind of STEM; BAKING! We used my grandmothers bread recipe to make some rainbow cinnamon rolls... which were super fun to make AND to eat. Of course we also made some bread while we were at it!  Evie had a lot of fun adding flour for me and rolling out the dough for the cinnamon rolls. While we were waiting for the bread/rolls to rise we also made some mini cherry pies... After we finished up our baking day we went to a Christmas fair a few cities away. Evie got to see Santa for the first time and even though she made sure to let me know that she KNOWS Santa is just a character and not a...

  Family Week has turned out to be more of a hands on type week for us so far and today was no exception. We've done a lot of discussion on what family means and who is a part of our family but in terms of projects we haven't done a ton. We made family tree and some paper plate family members but it's been more of an opportunity to spend lots of time with one another and the people we love than a crafty type week. I had a bit of extra time on my hands today so Evie and I practiced writing her letters again and then we made a fun lunch. I haven't done this for her in awhile and honestly, that's been somewhat purposeful since I don't want her to become reliant on fun foods and today she wasn't super into it. She did ultimately eat her entire lunch though even after complaining that it wasn't in a pink bowl. Points for trying I guess. After lunch we took a trip up to visit one of our most favorite people and together we all made a little campfire out of tis...

  Family week is moving along! We're still working on her writing and it's getting a lot better! Today instead of working on individual letters we worked on writing "family". I'm starting to weave more Spanish words into her day so even though I didn't have her write it we talked about how to say family in Spanish today as well.  This afternoon we made a paper plate family. I drew some faces onto the plates and let Evie fill in the details like hair and eye color and lips. This is her finished version of herself. She wanted to make her hair strawberry but since we didn't have a marker that looked like what she wanted she just opted for pink and blue. 😂 We played outside for the last half of the afternoon today since there was a break in the cold weather. Then we spent our evening listening to music and dancing because it's one of Evie's favorite things to do and...why not? ;) Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy so we may take a field trip to get out ...

  Today was family day and that means we spend our evenings at Nana's house. Next week is a holiday week so we have a lot of stuff to get done this week and not a ton of time to do it in so we had another fun girls day today. In the morning Evie made a little family tree and we talked about who's in her family and what roles those people play. Then we made some to go "coffee's" and headed out to run errands. After we made her little tree and while I was working Evie decided to make me some jewelry. This is an example of the things we do while I'm still at work that keep her busy and help her work on her motor skills but also allow me to still focus and get my work done. She set this up on the corner of my work desk and I helped her choose colors to make them with and finished up the twists so she and I could wear them. She ended up making a lot of rings! She kept going with this until she had no beads left in her little box.  We had our cooking day today too a...

  This week we're starting family week in preparation for Thanksgiving next week. It's so crazy to think it's only one week away! I had a few arts and crafts projects prepared for today but Evie got up late and we decided to throw our plans away and have a Mama/Evie day. So when I got off work we went to the library. We used to go every Friday but things got hectic the last couple weeks and we haven't been in about a month now.  Since it's getting colder we really took our time and sat and read a few before we made our final picks. We read a TON of books and we've run through most of the popular ones already so it's always fun to see what things we can find. After the library we usually head down to the local Whit's Custard but they're only open a few days a week now and will soon close up for the season. So today we went and got lunch and milkshakes from Sonic. It's been a long time since we've been and Evie has never gotten to sit in the ca...

  Today we had a bit of a lazy day. Evie was feeling under the weather, my second job changed their requirements so I had to do some adjustments and it was chilly outside so we just weren't feeling it. One thing that's nice about us being home together is we don't have the pressure of having to always have the energy to push through scheduled days of daycare and long work hours. We played some Candyland while I worked and then we snuggled up, played some Animal Crossing and took a nap. When we were feeling a bit more like ourselves we broke out this DIY game of mini golf and played a few rounds in the kitchen. Evie was actually really good at this and we had a ton of fun setting up all the little traps and pieces in various ways to make new courses. I'm really excited about this one for winter. It's going to be a really nice indoor activity for when we get bored of being cooped up in the house! :)

  Today was another nice day and since winter weather is well on it's way we decided to make the most of it and play outside for awhile again. We spent most of our morning reviewing letters and working on counting to 15. She's still making great progress on that! We also moved her unicorn rollercoaster inside so she can use it in the loft and she had a ton of fun riding it all morning. After lunch we headed outside with her nature book and she rode her scooter around making observations and writing them down. She really loved filling in this little book. It has some prompts and some blank pages. I think once we've finished it I'll probably make her another little one to use. This box has been a HUGE win for us. Kiwi boxes , while fun, often end up being a one day (or a few days!) activity that we never touch again. But this one has gotten SO much use. And if you don't have a sub to the box its super easy to grab a notebook and a crayon, print out a little nature sca...

  It's day two of nature week and today we broke out the KiwiCo nature box again. I love this little activity box. It has a few different activities and some are a little hard for her at her age which is great because it will continue to grow with her. She loves playing with the nature hunt and the magnifying glass and measuring tape are also big wins. Today we did a little nature hunt and we looked for some things that matched the cards in her box. Once we finished the card for items we moved onto shapes...   ...and then we tried colors. We did a few leaf rubbings as well and we talked about the items she found and what role they have in nature. We also spent some time looking at her finds under a magnifying glass to see if they changed at all. Some of them were more exciting blown up than others!  This evening her Sago Mini box showed up and since it was music and I had no plans to work it into a theme this month we set about getting it going. Music is one of mine and...

  Today is the beginning of our nature theme week. This week we are doing some review on our letters and numbers and we are also exploring nature and learning about the season changes. It's a perfect time to do it because the weather is changing and getting cooler and the leaves are starting to really turn and fall off the trees now.  Today we did a little nature walk to see what kind of cool leaves we could find and we talked about the season change and why it happens. Evie found lots of different pretty leaves and we gathered some of them up for a project for later this week. Next we went inside and made some fun tree art. This project was SUPER easy and it was fun to watch how Evie decided to decorate her tree. We made a hand print with her arm and hand for the trunk and then she used washable paints to make thumbprint leaves. It turned out really cute! She wanted to make some of them falling off the tree and it definitely looks that way. It got a lot cooler in the evening ...