ShakeShake ShakeShakeaShake It

We're under tornado watch tonight.
I just felt a 4.7 earthquake.

Luckily, the majority of this weather drama is happening south of us. Exciting day!

Half Full

Today was a rough one.

In an attempt to feel better about it, I've made a list of some of the good things that happened today

1) Like every Sunday, I slept in until 8:30
2) Like every Sunday, Aaron made chocolate chip waffles
3) We went to church
4) We took naps
5) Dinner was excellent
6) It is 6:30pm and all of the children are asleep in their beds
7) My hair looked cute
8) Reese was spotlight in Primary
9) I expected to wake up with sore muscles, but did not.
10) Quincy gave a talk...sort of
11) All of my children have dedicated teachers that nurture them, prepare lessons, and teach them with love
12) Rocky Road ice cream
13) everyone is healthy
14) apple tarts and a visit with friends

I feel better already.

Friendly Frogs: It's in the Mail

Literature:

Book: Yoko’s Paper Cranes by Rosmary Wells
Book: A Letter for Amy by Ezra Jack Keats
Book: We Need Mail Carriers by Scholastic Books
Share: Bring the address of someone you love, so we can mail them a letter! (Sammy, I need your's still, so I can send these off! I keep forgetting to take it out of your backpack)

My favorite photo of the day:

Check out that concentration! I picked up 2 sets of these unit blocks at HobLob last week for $11 each! The best thing about unit blocks? Endless opportunity for imagination and creativity! The worst part? The risk of owies when someone's tower comes crashing down.

These blocks are not wood, they're made of reeeeally heavy duty fun foam! No more owies, and no crash, bang, boom if they are thrown by Corbin :)

Dramatic Play: Post Office provide packages, envelopes, mailboxes (doors cut from cardboard boxes) mail bags, scale, cash register, and bins for l

Sensory: Feely Bag-things that are sticky (tape, stickers, jelly, glue stick, gum)

Handwriting/Fine Motor: Tracing Heart stencils

Learning to use a stencil is a difficult task for a 4 year old to grasp. I'm proud of how patient they were with the process.

Fine Motor: Flag Stamps

I set up a letter writing center where the children could decorate packages and stuff envelopes with "letters", and provided sheets of flag stickers, so they could put stamps on their letters.

Art: Decorating Postcards

Math: Big, Medium, Small , 1, 2, 3
Sort packages by size, shape, color, etc in canvas bins

Language/Phonics: add to our list of “V” words (vulture, vase, violin, Velcro, vacuum, volcano, vacation)

Reading Comprehension:

"A Letter to Amy" by Ezra Jack Keats is a great little story about a boy who only invites one girl to his birthday party. He makes a special invitation for her, but a storm rolls in when he tries to mail it.

After reading the story to the children, I asked the following questions:

1) Why did Peter send a special letter just for Amy?

2) What did the letter say?

3) What was the weather like when Peter mailed the letter?

4) Did Amy get the letter?

Practical Life: How do we mail a letter?

We read "We Need Mail Carriers" and talked about how a letter gets from one place to another"

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

Friendly Frogs: Love One Another/Valentine's Day Party

9th Love one Another/Valentine’s Day Party
Book: Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney
Book: Anything For You by Harry Horse
Book: Hugs All Around by Scholastic Books
Book: I Love You More by Judy Cooley
Today is our class Valentine’s Day Party!
Share: Bring a valentine for each student in the class

Dramatic Play: Visit the Veterinarian
Provide stuffed animals and doctor supply toys for the children to play “pet hospital” with. Point out that “V” is for Vet.

Fine Motor: Rice transfer into heart shaped ice cube trays.

Sensory: Play dough! The children also had an assortment of heart shaped cookie cutters to experiment with
Gross Motor: Heart Hunt
Place assorted cutout hearts on the table, and send the children on a scavenger hunt to find their mates around the room

Cooking: Valentine treats! Decorate red velvet cupcakes with pink and red sprinkles.

Language/Phonics: Felt Valentine Letter Match.

I made an oversized valentine with felt. The children worked in pairs to match the letter hearts with the card to say,

They loved it!

Math: Valentine Math Use construction paper hearts to demonstrate simple math equations.

I chose to do this as a group lesson at the table, and the children collaborated to come up with guesses and answers to the equations.

Example: “I have 3 valentines. I give one away. How many are left?"

Record guesses.

Demonstrate with paper hearts.

"Two!”

Question: Who do you love? Why do you love them? Record answers

Practical Life: saying “thank you” when given a gift. Encourage the children to practice when they pass out their valentines to each other.

Music and Movement: Three Valentines (sing to Mary had a little lamb)
Three valentines I have for you
Have for you, have for you,
Three valentines I have for you
Pink and red and blue
I'll put them in the mail for you
Mail for you, mail for you,
I'll put them in the mail for you
Pink and red and blue

Farewell Jacob! One thing that I really love about Jacob is that he is always singing. He'll burst out in song at any given moment, and it's usually a pretty good song. I never remember to get them on video, but knowing it was his last day, I had my camera ready to catch him in the act.
Here are a couple clips of Jacob serenading the ladies at the play dough center with Black Eyed Peas. So cute.

Keep singing, Jacob! We'll miss you!

Oh, and for the record...we don't actually listen to Black Eyed Peas during preschool. Only when Jacob and Jace sing their songs for us. And Sam does a great "Hey Soul Sister", so it's like a regular radio station around here during sensory time :)

Five Alarm

There's nothing quite like a good middle-of-the-night kid vomit to make me really relish my position in the trenches of motherhood. Gross.

Don't be jealous.
It's good to be me, today.

At least I tried.

Sometimes, when my kids look extra cute, I try to take their picture.
They almost always turn out like this one.

What's black and white and red all over?

Of all weekends, it had to happen on Valentine's Day weekend.

Last Sunday:

I'm running out the door for church and am preeeety certain my team teacher had the primary lesson covered, but just in case, I grab the manual, and then look in the game closet to grab something quick that I could make a learning game from and entertain the kids in my class if I end up needing to burn time at the end, or something.

Aha! Jenga. Perfect.

Maybe the little guys could answer a question, or help repeat a scripture on their turn, or maybe we could just build something with the blocks.

I have had that Jenga game for like 10 years. We have played it a few times recently, but I didn't really pay attention.

Anyway...fast forward to Sacrament Meeting when Corbin takes the bag of Jenga blocks and DUMPS it on the floor. It makes a crazy loud crashing noise as all the blocks tumble from the bag and clunk onto the pile one at a time. I'm embarassed, but then all the blocks have been dumped and it's quiet again, and Corbin is playing happily (and more important, quietly) with the blocks, so we just let it go, since it isn't really distracting any more.

What IS disctacting is when he reaches up and hands a block to Aaron, who gasps and sort of shout-whispers to me "what IS this?!"

"What? Jenga. It's a game. I'm going to play it with my primary kids today" I hiss back.

He hands me the block.
It is red and says,

Ah!

What?!

Truth or Dare Jenga!

My sister, HolleeAnn gave it to me for a graduation present when I was 18! It was a joke, obviously, since I was headed off to school in Utah. We had laughed about how useful it would be at all those wild and crazy Mormon frat parties I'd be going to.

Aaron's like, "you can't play this with the primary kids! You'll get arrested!"

and Corbin hands me this one

Aaron laughs.
I die.

And then suddenly, I am very aware that we are in sitting in the middle of church and that SACRAMENT is being passed all around us and our naughty little game.

That our kids are playing with.

It's all hilariously irreverent....

wait.
What if someone sees this?
It is Valentine's Day.
We'd be known as that couple.
You know,

The ones with the sex game.
The ones with the sex game at CHURCH!
and that's when corbin starts THROWING the blocks and saying "choooooo!" He throws everything! I should have known.

I panic.
"Quick! clean them up! Only the red and black ones have writing on them! Put them back in the bag! Hurry!"

Corbin is having none of that. He couldn't have cared less what was written on those blocks. They were his, and we were not going to take them away. He starts screaming and pushing them everywhere in a little fit.

He sends one under the pew in front of us.

It's black. Crap.

The mom reaches for it, and all I can do is close my eyes and pray "please don't read that please don't read that please don't read that!"

Luckily, the 4 yr old beats the mom to it, and slides the block back under the pew to us, before she could notice it had anything written on it. Or at least I hope she didn't notice.

I pick it up and it says,

I'm dying.

This is it.

This is what it feels like to die.

By now, the girls have discovered the blocks-of-inappropriate-behavior and they are building grand estates for their squinkies with them. Little red and black Jenga blocks are speading like an oil spill across our pew and into the spaces around and under us! I can't keep track of them all! What if one gets left behind, or the people next to us see the block that says,

or how about

Are you kidding me?!

I can't stop sweating.

We have to get this cleaned up and out of here, like yesterday.

Aaron can't believe we even OWN this game and denies ever playing it when we were in college.

I'm pretty sure we played it once with Dave, Leisha, Kurt, Tessa, Keith, Arianne, Jen, Emily, Marissa, and Lance. In our defense: as a group of innocent/naive Single Mormon BYU coeds...it must not have gotten very interesting.

Because I am sure that if any of us had drawn

and done anything other than just gallop around the room like they were riding a horse

then we probably would have remembered the details of this game a little better.