Posted in Spring

Here are a few more signs of spring from around our house! It has been beautiful this week!

Our neighbor's beautiful flowers!

Our dogwood tree

We have had several juncos (I believe) in the last 2 weeks! I love this picture because you can really get a good look at this little guy's legs!

The lawn mower -- a picture of my newfound hobby! hee hee! If my brothers and/or dad happen to be reading this they are probably laughing about now. You see, with 2 brothers I never had to mow the grass! I did not actually mow the grass EVER until I was an adult. So, imagine my surprise (and that of everyone who knows me) when in the last month I have really ENJOYED mowing our yard! Thankfully our yard isn't too big, I can get it done in under 2 hours, but it has been something I enjoy and with it being so pretty outside, the kids just play out in the yard while I mow. (and I can't hear them fighting with each other, HA! maybe that is why I enjoy it!)

AND...just in case you are wondering...I did take these pictures on my new camera! Hip Hip Hooray!! I ended up with a Canon Powershot SX100 IS. Thanks to my friend, Michelle, who let me look at hers and play with it, I decided on this one. It has more of a zoom than any other camera in this medium price range. The zoom is 10x. And zoom is probably one of my top priorities. I played around with a few slr cameras and decided I just wasn't really wanting that...they are too heavy for me to use multiple times a day, and for my nature shots and kid shots, this is really very sufficient! And I think it takes great pictures! (and it's on sale right now at Circuit City, actually $30 cheaper than Best Buy if anyone is in the market for this camera!)

Posted in Spring

Here are the lovely daffodils we made on Friday!

Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

By William Wordsworth

Posted in Spring

Today has been a beautiful day! The past few days have really looked a lot like SPRING! Here are a few of the signs of spring we have seen at our house...

Bradford pear tree blossomin...

Girls in sundresses...

~~~~~

Big boys on "big boy" swings and not baby swings anymore...

Time for planting...we planted our sunflower house today!

~~~~~~

~~~~~

Stage 1 of the sunflower house...

The kitty even had fun outside today! Do you see her playing up in the bush?

Picking flowers...

A handful of flowers for mommy...

Playing in the water table!

Posted in Spring

~Emily~

~Caleb~

Posted in Spring

Happy Spring!

Posted in Spring

I wanted us to draw our Easter Lily in our nature journals, but this year I tried a little something different. We used oil pastels on black paper, so we could emphasize the white flower! I think they turned out beautifully!

Emily's lily

Hannah's lily

Mommy's lily

Posted in Spring

I'm so excited for the first day of spring to be here!

Next week will be the first full week of spring!  So we are going to have a unit just on SPRING stuff!

I must say, I have found the most wonderful books on Spring at the library! (yay for the library!) I hope you will be able to find some of these! I'm so excited about these books! I checked out quite a few spring titles...but these are my favorite ones from the bunch.

Here are some ideas I am using!

*List-making - make a list together of things that make you think of Spring

*Poetry - write an acrostic using the word SPRING

*We will be starting our Tabletop Garden this week!

*Go on a spring nature walk and notice the first signs of spring! Use this freebie download from Hearts and Trees, spring nature walk worksheet.

*Hannah is loving word searches these days, here is a simple one with spring words.

*Writing prompt called Spring Is...

*An online spring game - Catch the Raindrops

*Look at this cute flower craft using fingerprints!

*Is this flower pot not adorable? This would make a cute mother's day gift! I might have to save this project for the week we do plants...or maybe we could go ahead and make the cups and plant something now! (and if you wanted to make it more permanent I guess you could always glue the buttons onto a regular flower pot.)

Posted in Spring

Oh the fun!  Today we did math with jellybeans!

First we estimated how many were in the bowl!

Hannah guessed 100.

Emily guessed 1000.

Mommy guessed 157.

We counted...

Grand total jelly beans in 1 bag: 161.

As we counted, I layed them out in rows of 10's. So after we counted them, we counted the jellybeans by 10's.

Then, we sorted them. Caleb even had fun with this portion of the lesson!

We found which color had the most in our bag: orange.

We found which color had the least amount: white and purple tied for least.

Then, of course, we taste tested a few for good measure!

Posted in Spring

This week we have had some really beautiful days! One day, Nana and I took the kids and a picnic lunch to the park! They kids had so much fun being outside and playing! I'm so glad spring is just about here!!

Posted in Spring

Here are 2 things we have been working on at our house the past week!

The first is a stain-glass cross on our play/school room door. I got this idea from Dawn last year and somehow managed to remember it for this year! I think it looks so pretty! We just cut up pastel colored tissue paper squares and stuck them on contact paper. Then, I cut the contact paper into squares to fit our windows.

The second craft is painting our letters to spell Alleluia. We painted the letters purple one day last week, all 3 of the kids helped with this project! And of course they all enjoyed the painting! Then, a few days after the letters dried, I mixed white glue with water and we painted that onto the front of the letters. Then we sprinkled on glitter! I also got this beautiful idea from Dawn! I think they turned out beautiful! And every Easter, we can pull out this decoration and remember our fun craft from this year!