Water, Sand, and Fun

One of the major perks of staying at the lake house in Benton Harbor was it's private beach. My kiddos and their cousins all love water and sand; everyday we spent hours hanging out on the beach. It was nice not having to worry about crowds or the kids wandering off - the adults could actually relax too!

This swan floaty was such a fun surprise. The boys spent hours hopping on and off it. On our last day there, we actually had some bigger waves. Mini Man and Big Buddy had so much fun pulling the swan out as far as it could go and then letting the waves crash them back into the beach. They were laughing so hard that Jeremy and I couldn't resist joining in on the excitement.

I've never been a huge fan of sand, so it amazes me they way these kiddos can spend hours digging, and even being buried, in the stuff.

This above picture of Little Lady taking a reading break cracks me up...she is such a fashionista!

Even the babies embraced the beach vibe. Maca had the brilliant idea of bringing an infant pool with built in shade so the babies could enjoy the beach without us having to worry too much about sun, waves, and sand snacking. They also, of course, loved getting lots of love from their aunts, uncles, and Maca.

Just looking at these pictures makes me feel relaxed - it was such a fun restful week!

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A Little Red Cardboard Barn

We've finished our farm unit and are moving on to a new theme tomorrow - but before we do I wanted share the barn we made. The wooden farm animals came with a beautiful handmade ark that we gave Big Buddy for Christmas a couple years ago. I would someday love to have a wood barn but it's currently not in the budget. So in the mean time we decided to improvise and make our own. I stumbled upon this perfectly sized milk box (4 gallons per box) while subbing and thought it would be sturdy enough to handle play. Hubandie and the boys used an x-acto knife and wood glue to build a barn shape. to get the doors to fold out hubandie used an x-acto knife and scored the inside of the cardboard We then painted with a basic primer and outlined a window and a door with painters tape. cardboard is very porous so priming is a must if you want decent coverage Big Buddy however insisted that we add more windows so it looked like the barn in our book The Big

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Preschool Syllabus: Dr. Seuss

Normally I'd do a Dr. Seuss unit in March around his birthday. We had to do one now though because on Saturday Big Buddy and I going on a date to a Dr. Seuss exhibit . The exhibit is only at the museum until January and I'm afraid if we don't go now we might not get the chance. We are of course reading lots of Dr. Seuss's books. A great advatage to studying Dr. Seuss in November rather than March is that all his books were available at the library. I also found a great children's biography which is perfect for preschoolers. Pebble First Biographies: Dr. Seuss We've read it a couple times and Big Buddy loves reciting all the facts he's learned WRITING CENTER ADDITIONS big buddy's name in sand paper letters, coloring pages & mazes from seussville.com skills practiced: fine motor, letter recognition, creativity, reading comprehension LEARNING "TRAYS" - I rotate these, setting out about four a day from which the boy&#

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Jack-O-Lanterns on the Fridge

Last fall I saw the idea for refrigerator pumpkins with face pieces in FamilyFun Magazine and have been anxious to recreate them ever since. It was pretty quick and easy and since the only thing we didn't have on hand was magnetic sheets ($1.50 with coupon at Joann's) it was also very cheap. my supplies: magnetic sheets, orange & black construction paper, white pen, tacky glue *i know they have self adhesive sheets but my Joann's didn't carry them glued (very messily) and ready to cut Both the boys were quite enthused when they discovered them after rest time :) Hopefully it will keep them entertained until we carve real pumpkins.

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Joyfully Weary

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