Adventures of Evie

  We've reached the final day of Fairytale week! Today we played a poison apple game! So basically the rules are simple; you pick up the apples and try to match them but if you get the poison apple you're out! Evie had a lot of fun with this game After we finished our game we used the props we've been making all week to act out some stories. Earlier this week I printed out some fill in the blanks fairytales so we could add some details and have easy story starters. We used her doll castles as well. Finally we took a trip to the store. For this one, since she HATES the grocery we played a game where she had to fill her cart with items for the Evil Queen so that she could bring them back home and give them to the queen in exchange for the trapped princess. She really got into the game and was a huge help at the store for once! Fairytale week was a fun one! Can't wait for next week. :)

  Today we had a sensory day. I set up this mining sensory bin for Evie to do as part of fairytale week. I filled it with black beans, plastic glass, and then I tucked in some colored gem beads. I gave Evie a sheet and asked her to find the colored precious gems in all the glass. She did pretty well with it although the diamond was tricky for both of us!  I have cut down on sensory bins over the last year or so since I always think of them as being for younger kids but Evie really still loves them so I see more in our future! Once we finished the game it was lunchtime so we went outside to work on finishing up Evie's new swingset. We got rid of her plastic kiddie one last year and she has been really itching for another one since. This one has taken a few days to get set up due to time constraints but we finally finished it today and she was SO excited to get out there and play on it. We even took the picnic basket outside today and had a picnic underneath of the play house pa...

  Today we made a beanstalk. Evie doesn't know it yet but all these things she's making are going to be used later in the week. We used this beanstalk to do some math first and then I let her fill it in however she wanted. I asked her to put certain amounts in, take away a few and see how many were left...etc. She had fun poking them in there and making it look the way she wanted it to. Then since it was so nice outside I set up her sandbox for her to play in.  When she was about 2 I got her one of those Step2 sandboxes with a lid and an umbrella and a picnic table. It cost something like $300 and then of course the cost of 200lb of sand to fill it up. It was great for awhile but the lid didn't keep out rain and over the course of the following several years despite trying loads of things to keep it clean it just...never was. So we got rid of it. She was sad about it because she LOVES playing in sand but it was always green, slimy, filled with worms, and just...gross. So we...

Today we are working on more art that will become props at the end of the week. First we played a little game of word soup though! Evie actually did impressively well with this. She is still learning to read and mostly they are doing sight words at school although they are weaving in some sounds as well. Some of these words were familiar for her and others were not at all. But she did well at reading my sentences and also creating her own! We also played with swapping around the words in the sentences to see how many ways we could make the same meaning with the words.  After that I gave her a wooden shape and a bunch of felt, tissue paper, foam, yarn and other supplies to make a princess with. She did great with this too. I had to draw on parts of the face for her but she had  A LOT of ideas about how she wanted the princess to look. She is very much into fashion and making clothing. She really wants to learn to make and design her own. We've been working on some fun things wi...

  This week is fairytale week! We are going to spend the first half of the week making some things that we will use in the later part. Today I gave Evie a bunch of pencils, pipe cleaners, and gem beads and let her make some wands, rings, necklaces, and crowns. When she finished she ran to put her princess dress on so she could see the full look. This was a really easy and fun craft and we spent the rest of the morning playing princess with the things we made. :)