What We've Been Lacking

During our circle time we do wall work. While we sing the calendar song we put up the numbers and talk about birthdays. While the days of the week song is on we talk about that. Et cetera. I usually pause the alphabet song so we can do our alphabet chart. They love it. We pick three letters every day to highlight, talk about the sounds they make and whose name might start with that letter, and then go over all the pictures that belong in the row.

It's a chart kind of like this- that might make more sense.... We also have the soup can sorters.

So today they picked L, R, and P to do. We know a couple L people, and we chatted about them and then started going through the pictures. Hercules was really paying attention and participating today. YOG! Dat is a YOG! Yes, it's a log! And look, a... what is dat? That's a letter. OH! A YETTER! And then I pull out the picture of the lamp. What's this one?

OH! DAT A COWBELL!!!

I had to stop and sit down on the floor I was laughing so hard. I had no idea we were missing cowbell in our daily routine, but clearly? We need more cowbell.

Friday Focus: Hercules

Hercules is getting big! He's the second oldest kid here that doesn't belong to me or Kanga. He goes back and forth between being sure he rules the roost and bossing everyone around, and still wanting to be a baby and fall on the floor and cry when somebody looks at him. :) Fairly typical for this age. He's completely capable of lots of communication- when he comes to me crying and pointing, I say "use your words" and then I get, "Please stop! Lady! No jump on Hercules! Get out of here! NO like dat!"

His vocabulary is making me laugh these days. He's picked up a bunch of phrases that sound funny coming out of a small person. "Lemme see dat!" is one we hear a lot. And the other day when I handed him his bowl of breakfast I told him it was still hot and he should be careful, so he walked it to the table telling himself, "It's super hot, baby! super hot!" I can totally hear myself and also his mom in that.

He and Tigger are definitely still partners in crime. One of their favorite things to do right now is march (or run) back and forth between the kitchen and the playroom with buckets on their heads. The hard part is trying to keep them from sharing with their friends. If they think we aren't looking, suddenly Perdita or Copper has a bucket on their head too.

They also like to play puppy dog. And oh my goodness I love this picture.


He goes and goes until he runs out of steam, and then he is DONE. He's not really one that fights us about going to bed. Usually he just finds a corner of the rug or lays out on the couch and goes to sleep on his own for a little cat nap. One time he even went to sleep standing up with his head leaning over on the couch. I can't find that picture for some reason, but it was pretty hilarious.

More Seuss

Tuesday was Green Eggs and Ham day. Of course we made skillet for breakfast with green food coloring. Potato, pepper, onion, ham, and scrambled eggs. Most of the kids really enjoyed it.

Tarzan did eat two bowls. I just caught him chewing or something. :)

Pretty sure I shouldn't be eating this, but it's tasty so here I go!

I do so like green eggs and ham, Thank you thank you Sam I am!


And of course, since I recently said Mater loves breakfast and eats a ton, he had to prove me wrong today. He was highly disturbed that the eggs were green. He would not eat them off his tray, instead he cried and said no way. He does not like green eggs and ham, he does not like them Sam I am!!

During the week we also read Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, and Cat in the Hat. Tod and Copper's big brother was the Cat in the Hat for Halloween last year so they brought me the hat and bowtie and gloves. I also have a fish in the pot puppet. That day was lots of fun. It was also Dr. Seuss's actual birthday, and celebration days for O'Malley and Alice as well, turning five and one. My plan was to make these cool Thing One and Thing Two cupcakes I saw on pinterest, where you use blue cotton candy for the topping. But I couldn't find any, and let's face it, as long as there's cake, the kids don't care what it looks like.

So there we go, silly silly Seuss week in the bag. My kids went and saw the Lorax that weekend too. Pretty environmental topic for a book written in 1971. I'd never actually read it so wasn't expecting that. And his 91 year old widow was a producer. Kind of crazy. I assumed it was maybe a granddaughter till I googled her. Good for her to still be doing well!

Ten Apples Up On Top!

Dr. Seuss's birthday is this week, and so we are celebrating every day this week with a different book. He wrote 46 of them and it's easy to find five I love to focus on. He'd be 108 this year... what a cool legacy to leave behind, right? I think it would be hard to find a kid who gets read to regularly, who hasn't read at least one Seuss book.

Today we did Ten Apples Up on Top. This is one of my personal favorites, and we've done units on it before- see here. O'Malley and Roo are the only ones still here this time around though and they don't remember doing that, although they loved seeing the pictures of themselves.

This time we had a lot more trouble getting apples to stay on their heads. I'm not sure if I just needed an apple with a different shape, or if they were too wiggly to make them stay. Maybe both. But they had fun.

This was really leaning against the back of the couch and not so much actually on his head. Trifles....

Hercules was the most successful, I think, managing both a smile and the apple staying up there.

Tarzan apparently thought that "be still" was code for "look super serious and scared like I'm gonna throw the apple at your face..."
Tigger kept laughing and ducking it off so Tarzan helped.

Now it works. With a little help from the couch again.

Hey wait, where did that apple go?

Here, take this please. It doesn't work!

Mr. Ham and Cheese, needing me to take his picture one more time!

Next we took their old pictures off their cubby box and glued it on a piece of paper, and used thumbprints to put apples on top of their heads. They turned out pretty well.

We got a lot more than ten apples on top, I think!

Hard at work!

For snack we're having apples and little pieces of tootsie roll that are put on the back for spots and a head, and hopefully it will look like a ladybug. It's not officially in the book, but it's an apple snack. :) A fun day!

Friday Focus: Mater

Mater has become quite the big boy lately. He runs all around, flirts with the ladies, sings and dances during circle time, and otherwise proves that nobody better mistake him for a baby.

I really love the fancy threads. Grandma got him the whole outfit for Christmas and he wore it here one day to show off, even it's a bit more formal than he usually wears. SO cute.

Lady was quite enamored with him too- they played peek a boo a lot that day and it was super cute to watch. They took turns peeking around the corner and laughing hysterically.

Eating breakfast is one of his very favorite things to do here. Lunch is kind of hit or miss, depending on what we're having, but he pretty much always eats more breakfast than anyone else. Some days that includes me and Kanga. This picture is blurry because he was signing "more" so ferociously. See the worried look on his face? He was afraid I might cut him off at only three bowls of oatmeal. Seriously. Sometimes it's all he eats for the day, but the kid packs in the breakfast! He doesn't often remind me of the Disney Mater, but in this case it's like the part in Cars 2 where Mater is fussing at the guy who only wants to give him a tiny bit of wasabi. Oh come now, don't be stingy! :)


I enjoy just looking down the row of buckle chairs. So many cutie pies in one place...

Today he did big kid art with us. It was the first time I let him paint and so he needed a bit of supervision, but he did some cute thumbprint apples for our Dr. Seuss week crafts. He was extremely pleased with himself.

Meet Remy

I love new friends! Our new little guy started today and he is doing well. He fits right in age-wise: he's between Alice and Perdita and holds his own. :) Here he is enjoying some rice.

Friday Focus: Tarzan

Wow, I went back and looked at the last focus I did on Tarzan, and he looks so much older in just a couple months! He's saying I instead of me now, and counting in the right order, and working on workbooks and patterning and all kinds of big kid stuff.

Since O'Malley is getting ready for kindergarten, I'm doing more work on writing with him. I really think Tarzan is not to the stage where it's necessary- in six months it would be a lot easier and more natural for him. But he WANTS to right now, to be the same as O'Malley, and so we're going with it. I had gotten him a workbook for ages 3-5 and he blew through the first 30 pages or so pretty easily. Now we're getting to parts that have concepts he really doesn't understand so well yet, so we're doing concrete patterning and sorting and talking through the ideas before we go back to the book. He's chomping at the bit to get back to it- he doesn't think that the "playing" we do is as good as the "important work" in the books. I would disagree. :) In fact I think it's more important. But hey, we work with their interests, so there you go.

I put up the big play yard we have and let the older ones do their patterning in there so the babies couldn't eat the pieces. They felt super cool and had lots of fun.

I've started a ticket system with O'Malley, Tarzan, and Roo for their work. When they listen to books or complete a task or get some writing done, they get to put a ticket in the jar. On Thursday afternoons we count all the tickets, and for every five they have, they get to pull an activity out of another jar we made. Then we do all that stuff on Friday. Yellow slips are snacks and orange ones are activities. They are loving it.


Example of one Friday's treats: Make popsicles, play dress up, watercolors, and sidewalk chalk. They earned 23 tickets that week so 3 went back in the jar toward next week. I try to hand them out pretty liberally so they feel productive. :)

One week we drew the activity of making masks from paper plates. They had a really great time with that one. I am so terrible at artsy stuff like that, but I managed to make a Batman for Tarzan and something or other for O'Malley. It was fun.


He's very into Toy Story right now- lots of Buzz and Woody. My kids loved it last year and asked for a lot of the figures for Christmas, so we have a ton. It's really fun to pretend you're Andy and do creative things with all the toys. We've been doing some of that too- lots of Potato Head and silliness. I'll have to get some pictures to put up. And also buy the last of the ones we NEED with some of the supply fee. They're wanting a Bullseye.

And in other lists of things he wants, a sister is at the top right now. He has mentioned several times that he thinks he'll be getting one soon. :) No news on the home front, but hey, a guy can dream!