The perfect day....

...for a 'hike'.
After the rain of yesterday - the day dawned dry and bright. A trip to the library was in order as I had some books to return. T2 hasn't been on a long walk since she broke her leg last summer. By the time her leg had completely healed and regained it's strength, winter was upon us and it was too cold. I wasn't sure how well she would do. It was awesome. She managed the whole walk, never complained, chattered the whole time.
We walked some of the way on regular residential sidewalks but deviated now and then to the trail paths which were full of Spring life with bird song and plants and rushing water in the streams from the rain.
I decided to take advantage of the forks in the trails by offering her choices of which way we should go next. I emphasized left and right when explaining our options "if we go LEFT, we will go to back home again, if we go RIGHT, we'll head to the library or if we go straight we will go to the High school" She really enjoyed taking charge and deciding which way we needed to go and used the correct left/right after hearing me first. Hopefully a few more 'hikes' and she'll fully grasp the concept.
The weather was perfect but the company was 'perfecter'.

You don't have to be a kid to....

...enjoy puddle jumping! I love the noise as rain boots hit a good puddle with a resounding SPLOSH - the bigger the puddle, the better! It has been raining non stop here today - initially it was raining too hard to go out and enjoy it but once it eased off WAHOOO. T2, K and I were out there donned in rain gear jumping and giggling - fun fun fun. Now back to packing those boxes - groan

HAPPY EARTH DAY!

Our day will be much the same as any other day as I feel that we are pretty kind to the Earth every day. We will take a walk and collect garbage - I'm sure the local High School kids will have left us plenty from their take out lunches grrrr

computer woes

My card reader seems not to be reading cards right now so my pictures will have to remain on my camera.

Yesterday between packing boxes for our house move - T2, K and I enjoyed painting wearing rain boots - dipping our booted feet in trays of paint and walking, jumping and stomping on paper covering the kitchen the floor. The boots made some cool prints!

After a long Winter

This is what it's all about....

T1's project

I finally remembered to take a picture of T1's Pioneer one room school he made for a visual aid to his recent presentation



I think he did a great job : )

Giant chick

Warning - these images may be disturbing to some readers : )



Before we move I need to clean our windows inside and out (why? I have no idea - the new home owners will probably want to do it themselves anyway!). To make this job more worthwhile we decorated one of them with a giant chick for Spring. All you need is washable kid craft paint, a squirt of dish liquid (makes clean up easier) and some willing hands.....







A rare sighting of T1!!









(Tuesday - Window is now clean and shiny and chick free once more)

Wibbly, wobbly egg friends

I'm sure we could have made these more elaborately but we had limited time.

I cut beaks and wings out of craft foam. We used plastic eggs which we weighted with a ball of Play-doh pressed into the base of inside of each one (make sure it is pressed firm). Using regular white craft glue we stuck on the features and tested them out. Sure enough they wobble about and don't fall over!

Letter matching eggs

I drew around an oval cookie cutter to make 26 egg shapes and wrote an upper case letter on the top half and it's matching lower case letter on the bottom, then I cut each egg slightly differently so only the correct letters would match.

After quiet time T2 and K had fun matching the letters. They are very familiar with upper case letters but still confuse some lower case letters so this is great practice for them.

Oops

I got a bit caught up in mindless TV tonight and am now desperate to crawl into bed with a book so looks like my planned activity will have to wait - got to make it first!

T1

I don't talk about T1 much. At 9 years of age he is very uninterested in crafts and stuff like that. After a long day challenging his mind at French Immersion school, he wearily arrives home at 4:15 and wants to relax in his preferred way. This usually involves catching up on his favourite shows on Discovery/Discovery kids (how it's made/Myth busters/anything involving transportation/science/technology) or some times on the computer either www.lego.com, flight simulator,John Deer drive green, 18 wheels of steel, assorted Tycoon games or building lego or reading.

This week he needed to do a presentation at school. He doesn't like to present to the class at all. His teachers know of his social/attention difficulties and they do cut him some slack. With this particular presentation, we decided to try a different approach. Instead of having the focus on him talking, we thought something visual would take the pressure off him and give him something to prompt him with the verbal part. The subject was Pioneer one room schools so last weekend, with our help, T1 built a model of a one room school. He did his presentation yesterday and apparently all the kids in his class were eager to check it out up close when he was done which game him a huge confidence boost. It was so nice to see him so involved in a creative project when I know that typically wouldn't hold his interest or attention.

I'll try to add a picture later of his finished school.

A fun day

While T1 was at school, T2 and I worked our way through the stack of games and puzzles in the playroom cupboard. I am ashamed to admit that many of them had not been played with in months and some T2 had never played with as they had been forgotten by me. So, we matched, we joined, we figured out and we had fun. Tonight I plan on working on a little matching game of my own to try with her after school tomorrow.....

No such luck

Peanut/tree nut allergy still present. Oh well, could be living with worse