Cupcake for my cupcake?

 I went to a baby shower this afternoon (such fun!!)

and brought home some delish cupcakes for the girls...

Did she eat it?

NOPE!!

{SIGH}

Wondering when my 3 year old will start eating like a 3 year old!

(And sleeping like one).  

 But oh, they were soooo amazingly good!

 And the rest of the food was so awesome!

All to celebrate this awesome girl!

So happy for you, Mags!

Can't wait to meet... (Madison?)... soon!

VERTICAL file folders!!!

Ok I have to admit, Martha Stewart's products are genius!

As soon as I saw these on Pinterest I had

to run out in the rain and get some from Staples.

Vertical file folders that fit into magazine holders!

Where have these been all my life?!

I have been struggling to find a system that works

for all their weekly papers and this.is.exactly.what.i.needed!

I don't have much room on my shelves

and I didn't like using horizontal file folders and file boxes

that I had to open and close, etc.

So the easy-access, open sides have made 

weekly planning SO much better around here!

I can just turn the files around when I want to hide them

and flip them forward when I want access.

I finally feel organized. 

Thank you Martha!

Under the {girly} sea unit

I saw this super cute printable unit from here that I couldn't pass up...

Carisa makes such great unit studies suitable for ages 3-5!

 The pics don't do justice to how cute these printable are!

 Simple addition

 And tracing for newbies...

Eliz's fine motor control is improving nicely!

 We got out the geoboards from our math curriculum

and had fun making shapes and pictures with rubberbands...

 While Elizabeth ran off, and pushed

a chair up to flick on and off, on and off

some light switches {her favorite activity at the moment}.

 We read a lot of poems.... 

Emilie loves poetry, I discovered.

She doesn't understand most of it,

but she will sit and listen to me read

pages and pages of poems.

I really like that she appreciates
beauty in writing.

 Daffodils, by Wordsworth - such a beautiful poem,

and a favorite of Grandma's.

 She arranged all the boomwackers in descending order.

:)

 And the highlight of the day, for sure:

we built a fort in her loft!!

It was a rainy morning with grey skies...

So it was perfect!

They had such a blast.  :)

Art Appreciation: Grandma Moses, color mixing, painting

It's been awhile since we did any art appreciation.

I think I'm enjoying this more than the girls-

learning about famous artists and their lives!

 Grandma Moses' Beautiful World from here.

The pic did not turn out, but it's such a lovely painting!

 At some point last week we did color mixing

with water, food coloring, and pipettes.

 Then they finger painted...

 And painted their clay creations from last week...

this is Eliz's snake...

 And Emilie painted some roses I made...

:)

 

Today she added curly hair to her little girl.  ;-)

Love!

Madeline

The girls have been SO taken with the book Madeline 

and also love the DVD series.  

They probably watch it daily.  

So of course, it made sense to do a little Madeline unit.  

 Coloring madelines

 Lining up the girls in "two straight lines"

(Math: 6x2=12)

 Finding out where the appendix is using our body game,

as Madeline has her appendix removed

in the story.

This is a removable sticker game 

they love playing.  We talk about

the function of each organ as we put it on.

 

Finding France on a Europe puzzle map,

learning "Bonjour" and "Au Revoir".

We also did rhyming words from the book--

Miss Clavel, bell, tell, sell, well;

Sad, mad, boo, zoo, moo.

 

Eliz singing the continent song.

 

Word caterpillars - another idea I saw from Pinterest.

We added -ig words: pig, dig, big, twig, wig.

Emilie is doing great reading these word families!

So proud of how the kids are doing.

Love homeschooling!

Thursday

We go to CBS Thursday mornings, and the girls made wooden boats with waterproof sails to float in water -- accompanying the story when Jesus calmed the storm from the boat.  No pics, but they had a blast, as usual.  I enjoyed catching up with some other homeschooling moms (there are many up north) and shared curriculum ideas, etc...

So our afternoon was more relaxed and fun...
We practiced our Continent Song and matched labels
to the 7 continents. 

(Sung to the tune of Frere Jacques)
"North America, South America
Europe, Asia, Africa
Europe, Asia, Africa
Australia, Antarctica
There are 7 continents
There are 7 continents"

 And I was so excited to find this

Intro to Montessori Math App

by Montessorium!!

I had been wanting to purchase red/blue rods

for Elizabeth, but it never panned out.

So for $4.99 I can have virtual 

long red rods and red/blue rods.

So exciting.

Emilie loved it!

And I am sure Eliz will as well.

Pics from the week

We started out the day making word caterpillars, 

an idea I saw from Pinterest here.  

These are some -at family words -

the ones Em is most comfortable reading

right now.

 It would've looked prettier had I written the words,

but I want to give her as much

writing practice as possible.

 Eliz is still learning how to spell her 

very, very long name.  ;-)

 Blend ladder phonics practice

from our MFW curriculum.

 

 Fun animal patterning practice for Eliz.

 Swinging from the gymnastics bar today

at a make-up class, since we missed class yesterday.

 Gotta love the dollar spot at Target!

 Em is really such a gifted artist.

Sounds like I am giving my

4 year old airs, I know, but

I really do marvel at her keen

sense of proportion, line, and color.

 So while Em was at ballet class,

Eliz and stroll next door to Giant

for some one-on-one time.

I found some Air-Dry-Clay there!

So we made clay things all afternoon.

They LOVED it!

No pics of them doing it, sorry, b/c

my hands were covered in clay as well.  ;-)

It brought back a lot of memories of high school

when I took several ceramics classes.

Ahhh, those were the days!

Once these are dry, we're gonna paint them.

 And I'll end with these bubble blowing pics.

It was SUCH a beautiful day today!

 You really can smell spring in the air

on a day like today.

It was lovely out.

 

Happy Ash Wednesday!