Happy Thanksgiving

I have had a great weekend cerebration with family and friends.  I have truly been blessed beyond imagination.  Not only did we enjoy great good and great people but we are having AMAZING weather.  Here are some pictures of our Thanksgiving Weekend.

Thanksgiving Dinner:

Andrew looking pretty relaxed.

Gamma and Ben

Hannah enjoying some of the munchies.

The joy of Slinkies.  Ethan and Uncle Chris playing.

Dad carving.

The table looked beautiful.

The family.

Ethan enjoying some pie.

We delivered mini pumpkins to the neighbors:

Ethan wakes up from nap time slowly.

Dinner with some wonderful friends:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Basket Pictures for a 3.5 year old.

My Sweet Hannah's basket pictures.  Ohh how she has grown. 

1 Day

4.5 months

1 year

18 months

2 Years Old

2.5 Years Old

3 Years Old

3 Years Old

3.5 year old pictures

Of course Ethan wanted in the fun.

Our Thanksgiving Tree

2012 Thanksgiving Tree

This week, the kids and I made our Thanksgiving tree (see last years) as Thanksgiving approaches this weekend.  Last year, the tree that we made wasn't something that the kids could touch or play with so I thought we could change it a bit so that it becomes more interactive.

First, we painted the sky and added out tree trunk.  I searched for a tree trunk template that I liked and then traced it on the butcher paper.

Then I added little pieces of magnet to the back of the leaves and all over the tree.  I used a sheet of dollar store magnet stuff.  It works but if it was just the tiniest bit stronger it would have been better.

Then the kids and I came up with things that we are thankful for and wrote them on the leaves.

Hannah and Ethan playing with the leaves, Hannah is showing Ethan the "right" way to do it.

:D My sweet girl.

Wordless Wednesday

Week 4: Letter D

Math: We had lots of fun with D week, and so for Math I thought I would pull out our "diamonds" to play with and count.  This pack of gems comes with light  blue, dark blue, and clear diamonds (I got it from the dollar store) and Hannah thought they were beautiful. We played a simple counting game where the first person counts their dish of diamonds by taking one diamond out of their dish a putting it into the next dish.  Then the next person takes their turn.  I know it's not much of a game but they enjoyed it and it good practice at counting each object ONLY one time.

 Art:  We made dot pictures with dot stickers.
I made little colored x's on the paper and they matched them up with the corresponding colored dots.

Nature Study:  This week was pretty low key nature-wise.  My cousin gave me the fun idea of filling up an egg carton with rocks (thanks Heather).  We gave it a shot and it was a definite success. Hannah already has a thing for rocks (as does her mother and grandmother) so I knew she would enjoy the addition of the egg carton.

Reading and Language Arts: Our book for this week was "Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?" by Nancy White Carlstrom.  This book was one I really enjoyed.  It tells the story of a young bear and his day.  It has a sing-song rhythm and it captivated both Ethan and Hannah.  One of the things we did to go along with the book was our 3 Bears puzzle.

We also worked on the letter D activity page.  I asked them how they wanted to decorate their page; Ethan wanted to use the dot markers and Hannah chose to paint.

Faith Foundation:  This week we finished up the lesson that we started during Letter C week.  If  your reading this section and wondering to yourself:  "What is it we do for faith formation?"  Rest assured I understand your confusion because I have been having a truly hard time writing about it in such a way that it is clear.  Each lesson is set up with various songs, games, activities and such and most of the time I am too involved to take any pictures. This week I took some pictures of the kids re-telling the story I told them using our picture cards.  They each took turns and while one person played with the story pictures the other played in the rice bin (I added dinosaurs and D's for fun).