Summer Themes: Bug Week

This was a fun week, but mostly because we didn't do anything involving real bugs.  I hate bugs and don't have much of a desire to learn/teach about them.  But the activities we did were entertaining and I didn't have to touch/look at real bugs.  Win win.

We made coffee filter sun catcher snails.

We had worms in the dirt for dessert.

We made firefly jars with glitter and glow sticks.  Not as cool as the pinterest tutorial, but the kids didn't know the difference.  And that night they each went to bed with a glowing jar on their shelf.

I made fruit caterpillars for a snack.  Garrett admired his as though he appreciated my efforts.  Addie promptly decapitated hers and devoured it.

We read some Eric Carle books about bugs.

We went on a bug hunt outside.  I bought plastic bugs for this because I wasn't up for hunting real bugs.  It was like Easter.  The kids loved it.  I bought the bugs and hunting gear at the dollar store.

Pre-hunt excitement.

 Addie was not interested in getting this one off the tree.  I guess I made it look too realistic.

 Garrett loved picking them up with the tweezers, then putting them in the net, then dumping them in the cage.  The cage has breathing holes and a built-in magnifying glass, and the tweezers and net came with it.  All for a buck.

 Checking out all their finds.

I think Ocean week is up next.

Summer Themes: Farm Week

This week was all about farms and farm animals.

I bought two wooden barns at Joann's for a couple bucks and let the kids paint them.  We also had a little wooden fence that Paul's mom made for something and then gave to the kids.  Painting is always messy, but the kids love it, so we do it...once in a while.  After painting we played with farm animals.

I found these farm stickers for 50 cents in a Micheal's clearance bin.  I drew a couple barns on white pieces of paper and the kids went to town and created these tornado-like farm scenes.  They LOVE stickers.  This was one of the faves of the week.

We had a picnic at a park by our house that has a free little farm/zoo area.  We saw ducks, bunnies, roosters, turtles, goats, horses...  Turtles and roosters were the fave.

The kids 'slept' on the bench until the roosters woke them up.

Garrett got this Little People farm for Christmas, but we put it away for a while to not have too many new things at once.  We pulled it out this week to play with it.  It's really cute and it makes farm animal noises. Addie's at the perfect age for adorable animal noises.

More painting and gluing.  Horse hand prints, and water color animals.  Garrett loved the hand prints.

 They both loved the animals I came up with using our paint splotches.  This one was my fave.

We read Otis books.  I love the illustrations in these books.  The kids enjoy them too.

Garrett and I baked blueberry muffins one morning.  Not very farm-y, but we used barn cupcake liners, so we called it a farm activity.

We also went to a farmers market, but no pictures.

Summer Themes: Weather Week.

We learned about weather this week.  This was the week with the least amount of stuff to do.  I couldn't think of much weather related!  But we still had fun.  And mother nature brought us sun, wind, and rain this week so at least we had real weather to see.

Garrett loved every bit of it.  I love how excited he gets about little things.  It totally motivates me to keep being creative with our days.  Addie doesn't get quite as excited, and when she does, she gets over it pretty quick, but that's ok, she goes along with it.

We made cotton ball clouds, and whenever I'd ask if they wanted more lightening bolts glued to their clouds, Addie would yell, "Ka Chow!"

We ate cloud jello.  I prepped blue jello, and when it was mostly set up I stirred it up.  Then, scooped a bit of jell-o in the cup, then a bit of cool whip around the sides, more jell-o, more whip, etc.  Easy, and both kids thought it was so cool.

We made rain clouds out of shaving cream.  Water in a jar, shaving cream on top, then start dripping food coloring mixed with water onto the shaving cream until it comes though the "cloud" like rain.  This was Garrett's fave.  He thought it was so awesome.

We also made rainbows with finger paint.  We used marshmallows as our paint brushes and Addie mostly just ate the mallows.

And we read a new book called "Leaves."  It's a boring book.  I thought it was about wind blowing leaves, but it's mostly about seasons changing.  And did I mention it's boring?

We're taking a break this week while Garrett's out of town, but we'll be back at it the next week.