Not-Back-to-School Celebration

Tuesday of this week marked the first day of public schools in our area.  As is our tradition, we take the day off and enjoy some fun with friends at one of the many museums that we have been avoiding for the last few months due to summer crowds. 

We planned to go out and enjoy lunch and visit the Chrysler Museum of Art .  The day did go exactly as planned but we managed to have fun.

Lunch turned out to be a “leisurely lunch.”  We wound up sitting at the restaurant for almost two hours.  Sadly, it was because of incredibly slow service but we enjoyed the food.  Once it arrived that is. LOL

  Clearly some of us handled  the waiting better than others. LOL

Then it was off to the museum.

You might be asking yourself, “What kind of art museum has a tank full of sea lions in front of their building?”  None that I know of.    We drove all the way out there only to find out that it was closed.  Who closes a museum on a Tuesday?  It’s so random!

So we drove all the way back to “the beach” and hit the Virginia Marine Science Center instead. 

This was a bitter pill for us adults to swallow. It’s not our favorite place.  They’ve done a lot of things over the years that I don’t like.  Most recently, the $25,000,000 redo. 

I like the idea of the redo but I didn’t like going in there only to find that half of the stuff was broken and that there is now a “traffic flow” problem because you have to follow the route dictated by the museum. 

I won’t even go into the number of trees they kill a day for their ridiculous ticket policy or the fact that the otters, my favorite, are never on display when I show up.  Sniff, my otters were missing again.  They must have the cleanest tank in the world.

But we had passes, which are officially the last dime this place will make off of me, so we went.

I do have to say, it’s so much nicer there without the crowds.  The little tunnels they jam you through are much easier to deal with when there isn’t anyone else in there.  :o)

So here are the highlights.  I’m not sure how much the children learned during this trip because I kept making them pose for pictures.  It’s what I do.  lol

Kayleigh did enjoy her own personal water-table the stingray touch pool.  Although never touched a sting ray,  she did manage to soak herself before I dragged her away. 

 

Tot School

Kayleigh is 30 months

 

There was not a lot of tot schooling happening here this week.  The tot was not the least bit interested in anything except avoiding naps and walking around in dress up shoes.

Our letter this week was D.  D was supposed to be for dinosaur, Dora, or dragon but in really it was for disappointing. LOL  Needless to say, since we barely touched anything, we’ll be continuing with D next week too.

Here’s what we did do.  We read about David and Goliath and Daniel in the lion’s den in our various tot friendly Bibles.

We were going to use these Dinosaur clip cards with our mini-clothespins except the mini-clothespins were too difficult.  She really has terrible time squeezing anything with her fingers.  Whether it’s tongs, clothespins of varying sizes, she struggles. 

So I took away cards and clipped the pins to a container and tried to show her how to pinch them to open them.  She did not want to hear it.  This child does not take direction well at all.  She just pulled them off and wouldn’t even attempt to pinch them.

She was willing to work with her pom pom magnets on our D is for Dinosaur magnet page. 

She was also willing to work on Dinosaur Patterns, once. 

The biggest hit of the week was just playing with toy dinosaurs.  She hadn’t seen these before and she used them everyday.  Mackenzie enjoyed them too.  I also gave them some played so they could make dinosaur tracks.

I also gave her some free time with play dough in the hopes of building up those little fingers.  However, as I expected, her interest in that didn’t last more than 5 minutes.  She’s never been big on play dough.  Well unless dinosaurs are involved.  Then she loves it. LOL

She kept trying to steal Mackenzie’s Mad Libs so I pulled out this Wacky Animals Mad Art book that I had picked up a while back.  While she didn’t do it as intended, she did enjoy writing in it.  At least until she started writing on the floor and her clothes because she insisted on laying down with it.  Then I took it away.

Our non-pictured activities included a trip to Water Country USA, watching Dinosaur Train, and getting in lots of trouble for climbing out of her bed at nap time and playing with toys. 

Oh and she has a new favorite book, Touch the Art: Make Van Gogh's Bed.   It’s a board book featuring art from all the greats with a touch and feel element for the tots.  She just loves it!

In fact, she liked it so much that we went and got Touch the Art: Brush Mona Lisa's Hairtoo!  It’s only a matter of time before we own them all.  LOL 

We didn’t get to our D is for Dragon page for our book or work on her Creation book.  She just didn’t want to.

Be sure to head over to 1+1+1=1 to see what the less moody tots did this week.  =o)

Tot School

Kayleigh is 30 months old

Click the button above to see what the other tots have been up too.

It was another interesting week. We lost a couple of days to errands involving Big Sis' extra curriculars but we still managed to do quite a bit. When she was in the right frame of mind. More often then not, she was just in a mood. Shocking, I know. LOL


But what I can't wait to show you is what she did at the end of our week. I'm going to wait though. Til the end. It's worth the wait though.


One of the first things that we did was finish our "B is for Bumblebee" page for our ABC book we're making. I forgot to take a picture of the completed project, but you get the idea. She was very excited to use "real" glue. I was very excited that she couldn't squeeze very well so there wasn't a big mess.

We, finally, used our foam blocks from the Target dollar spot. We sorted them by color. Mostly she just wanted to dump a bunch into any bag and then dump them all over the floor.


The lunch bags aren't very sturdy to use with an ornery tot so I bought some brown paper gift bags to use instead. I've just got to get around to switching the tags.





We also practiced shape/color matching with our Giant Nuts and Bolts. She's still not great at screwing them together but she does match them up.





She also went bowling for the first time. She loved it.





I gave her a tray with colored crafts sticks, matching pom poms, and tongs. She was supposed to match the pom poms to the sticks but she was not even going to attempt that. She did work with the tongs a bit but had a hard time because she insisted on laying on her stomach. That's her new thing and it makes it hard for her to do most activities.


Somebody's getting a little table on payday. Hopefully that will end that battle. She gets frusterated that she can't do something she's done before but she refuses to sit up. LOL




Kayleigh chose to practice her shapes with her Hide'N Squeak Eggs. For the first time she actually decided to put them together correctly and in their correct spots. LOL Good thing because we're playing with them again when we get to the letter E.


I finally got around to making a button snake for her. I found that over at The Activity Mom's blog.






She likes to wear it. LOL

Mackenzie had a nature scavenger hunt as part of her science lesson this week so Kayleigh played Neighborhood Bingo courtesy of 2 Teaching Mommas.

Our letter this week was C. At our house C was for caterpillar and creation.

We did some caterpillar sorting and counting with our games from COAH.

She picked a random number. I asked her what is was. She said, "2" because that is the only important number in her world. Then I'd correct her and I'd count out the proper number of caterpillars with her. Then she'd place them on the mat. Or throw them. Whatever.

She's gotten really good at this. She played it all week long.

We read about the story of Creation in our many tot Bibles. Then we started making a Creation book. I was hoping to get more than one page done but that didn't happen. So we'll just keep going until we finish.

I forgot to post her C page for her book. C is for caterpillar and she just put dot stickers on the C and added eyes and anntena.

Not pictured but she also watched Baby Miracle - The Story of Creation and played with her The Days of Creation Nesting Globes.

And now here is the highlight of my post. It's Kayleigh at the closing celebration of our VBS this week. Clearly she's going to need some direction on appropriate church behavior. LOL