because you can't stop the mail

got another phone book today.

Holiday Goodness

Check out the cute package that arrived from my sistah last week!
yep. Everything inside was wrapped! It was Christmas up in the Willy house!
just LOOK at the excitement on that face! Yes. that is purple hair attached to a headband. Totally obnoxious dress up clothes...Auntie knows what they want all right.

hilarious.

Baby guy was not left out of the fun, either! He "opened" a rack a stack and some freaking cute clothes that he'll be sporting in photos to be posted on the bloggy shortly.


So these videos make my kids look pretty much like the greediest children you've evah seen. They tore through those presents SO FAST, then spent the evening (and all week playing with them).


That's right, holiday extravaganza included Easter dresses with matchie matchie dresses for their dolls. Awesome. I'm sure they'll accessorize with the Hannah Montana and Disney Princess purses (that will be stuffed to the max with horses, lacing shapes, finger puppets, hair curlers, books, flash cards, and all of the other goodies they opened this weekend! Thanks Auntie!

She sent some lovely gifts for Aaron and I to enjoy as well...so thoughtful, one made me cry. Pictures later. Love it. Love her.

Busy Bees

It’s in the Mail
Literature:
Yoko’s Paper Cranes by Rosmary Wells
This is a great story about a little girl and her grandmother. They like to watch the cranes, but when winter comes, the cranes fly away and Yoko misses them. Her grandmother points out that the cranes always come back and they can look forward to their next visit. Then Yoko moves to the USA (aka "far far away from Grandma) and they send each other letters every week. One day, Yoko makes cranes from paper and sends them in a package to her grandmother. The book follows the letter to the post office, on an airplane, and to Grandmas house. Cute story, simple concept.
I had also planned on reading A Letter for Amy by Ezra Jack Keats (who also wrote The Snowy Day), but it was checked out from the library, but it worked out just fine, because I found

We Need Mail Carriers by Lola M. Schaefer...which was even more age appropriate because of it's simple text and excellent photos.
To preview the book online with your own busy bee, click here.

Share: Bring the address of someone you love, so we can mail them a post card
Art: Decorating Postcards!
WE put stamps on them, and sent them in the mail. Hopefully, the recipient will call my little Busy Bees to let them know they got their post cards. The kids were very excited about this.

Dramatic Play: Let's Play Post Office (no, not that kind of Post Office)
Check out the lil' mail boxes I made. Instant hit with the group.

Sensory: Feely Bag-things that are sticky (tape, stickers, glue stick, gum, stamps, honey, jam, and as one bee pointed out "green boogies"...which were NOT in the Feely-bag.)

Fine Motor: Sticky stamps
Thanks to the Post Office and Kasey for donating a bunch of supplies for our dramatic play area today, we had dozens of little flag stickers that looked like stamps! Stickers are always a hit, but it was especially fun when they would decorate an envelope, "stamp" it with flag sticker and say, "Special delivery!" Cuteness.

Practical Life: How do you mail a letter? What does a Postal Worker do?
Art: Mail Carrier color page

Math: Number Sort
During snack, I quickly went through and numbered all of the packages and letters with 1, 2 or 3. When they were finished eating, the children took turns doing a one on one activity sorting them and placing them in or on top of the corresponding numbered mailboxes. We talked about how everyone's house has a different number address on it.

We also sorted them by size into canvas bins for Big, Medium, and Small ...or "teeny" as one Bee insisted ;)

Language/Phonics: The letter “V”
We've been adding to this list of "V-words" on the white board all month and review it at circle time each week. (we do this every month with the new letter)

Music and Movement:
We just got a letter (blue’s clues)
Three Valentines

Cooking: Chocolate Mousse
Totally unrelated to the curriculum, but the kids loved it and had fun mixing the ingredients. I used an instant chocolate pudding mix and replaced the milk with whipping cream. We ate it with circus animal crackers. Yum!

Table Progress

"I am going to make a decision. I have made my decision. Decision made."
-Amy Poehler as Angie Ostrowiski

Looky Looky what I bought today!
That's Black Walnut.
Lots of it.

Anyone have a hand-planer I can borrow?
How about 30 more degrees?
Can I borrow that, too?

Smart @$$

So I thought I was pretty awesome making the cake pops for the girls to hand out as valentines at their class parties.

Then Reese comes home with these: (yes. all of them)
Who cares about homemade treats when some kid is handing out 3 pose-able Shrek dolls to each kid? She's never even SEEN Shrek, but she absolutely loves these toys, and is particularly fond of Donkey. Later that afternoon, the following conversation took place.

Reese: Mom, this donkey STINKS.
Me: what do you mean, 'it stinks'?
Reese: well...right here, under his tail... it sort of smells like after I poop a really smelly poop, the way the bathroom is still stinky even after I flush...Donkey smells like that. Like a butt. {giggles}

What I'm thinking: So....Donkey smells like an ass. How appropriate.

[enter Mommy censor now]

What I say: (I know, for once, it's not the same thing): Hmm. That's interesting. It's brand new, (we took it out of the plastic) It's probably a smell from the factory because it is a new toy. New cars sometimes smell funny too.

[wow. that went well. If only my censor operated more often]

Reese: But then how come only the DONKEY smells like that? It's like a dirty toilet.

[SERIOUSLY universe. Throw me a bone here!]

Me: I don't know Reese. Stop sniffing under his tail...that's kind of gross. Why don't you go clean the donkey or something?

Reese: Oh, Yeah! I can put some bows on him so he looks like a girl instead of a stinky boy!

Me: Yeah, good idea. Go play beauty shop with Quincy in the bathroom.

Reese: No way. I went poop after school and it smells like Donkey in there.

Boost

World Lit is turning out to be a little more difficult than I had expected.
The difficulty is not the actual material, just finding the time to read the assigned material, and write papers about it.

It's been awhile since I have done any formal writing. I'm not gonna lie...I had to go through my final draft and remove a "..." here and there to make sure that I was not handing in something that made me look like an idiot. If you read this blog regularly, you are well aware of my love for run-on sentences, getting sidetracked with stories totally unrelated to the post topic, and that I have an overall disrespect for proper sentence structure.

and I begin sentences with "and".

Before we got our graded papers back, she warned us that several students failed the assignments [gulp], but not to worry, because the points can be made up by doing extra assignments at the end of the semester.

Imagine the boost of confidence I felt when my professor (that sounds so masculine...can't it be "professette" for a chick teacher?) selected the paper I'd submitted with shaky hands last week, to read out loud to the class tonight as "an example of excellence".

Mine and only mine was read.

People clapped.
(clapped! at something I had written!)
and they laughed.

(because it was funny, not because they were embarrassed for me).

I will survive.

Exam I next week.

{I'm Yours}