1. Two little cilantro sprouts! I'm trying to grow herbs. My green thumb isn't quite so sure about this endeavor. A couple of weeks ago, I bought oregano, mint, and basil as little starter plants and transplanted them into cute, colorful pots. The basil has already died. The mint looks like it's holding on as best it can, and the oregano is pretty good...I think. Cilantro is my favorite herb to cook with, but I couldn't get a starter plant so I bought some seeds and started from scratch. I noticed today that two little sprouts just poked up out of the dirt. Wish them luck!
2. Dinosaurs. Sydney wanted to do a "preschool lesson" this morning. The kitchen sink was piled high with dirty dishes, but I suppressed the urge to go into Crazy-Cleaning-Mama-Mode and instead threw together some activities for the kids. Liam requested dinosaurs. We recited poems with hand motions about dinosaurs; pretended to stomp, fly, and run like dinosaurs; learned about herbivores and carnivores; compared Liam's dinosaur toys by color, size, how many legs they walked on, etc; and we looked at pictures of dinosaurs. The best thing the kids got to do was play with little plastic dinosaurs in play-dough. I buried them in balls of play dough so they could excavate them like paleontologists. Then they made fossil footprints in the play dough and Liam pretended that his dinosaurs got stuck in sticky mud and hot lava. They entertained themselves for almost an hour; it was amazing!
We also read a book called "Chalk" by Bill Thomson...actually, the book has no words so we make up the story every time. The illustrations are amazing and the kids really like it when I name the three characters in the book after them. It's basically about three kids who go for a walk in the rain and find a mysterious bag of sidewalk chalk at the park. The chalk proves to turn a boring rainy afternoon into quite an adventure! We've gotten this book from the library so many times that I've considered buying it.
Since dinosaur starts with the letter D, I couldn't resist incorporating some Teacher's Creatures in our mini preschool lesson. I introduced Donald the Dog to the kids. Liam now knows what sound the letter D makes, even though he can't always identify what the letter looks like. :) At least it's a start....
To go along with our dog and letter D, we read a book about Donald the Dog's friend Marley. "Bad Dog Marley" is one of Lillian's favorite books. Her Aunt Sharon gave it to her when she was about 2, along with a stuffed Marley dog from the book/movie "Marley & Me." Marley is her most beloved stuffed animal. It is her first choice of snuggle item when she is tired, not feeling well, gets hurt, or needs comfort. If she can only bring one stuffed animal on a trip, Marley is always the one that gets to come along. I think her other stuffed animals all have Marley Envy. Anyways, Marley happens to be a good friend of Donald the Dog, so we read his story today too. It's a fun story about a family dog who causes lots of trouble but in the end proves that he's right where he belongs.
It was fun, and rewarding, to see the kids learning...and the dishes eventually got cleaned in the afternoon. :)
3. Bobby getting home before we were done eating dinner. It's such a change from the first three months of the year when he was gone all week long. I like being able to ask him when he thinks he'll be home and if he'll make it in time for dinner. He isn't always able to join us at the dinner table, but at least there's a chance he will.
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