4 years, 2 months/2 years.

More kites with the cutest kite runners in Brooklyn!

Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled "Worm week":

Hi Everyone,

Worm week began with everyone wiggling on the carpet. A few people
looked through our books to locate worms. We found one being eaten by
a baby chick in Good Morning, Chick. We read Bugs For Lunch and
realized that mostly bugs eat bugs. We read about earthworms and which
planet they live on and what they like to eat. Someone exclaimed, "If
they lived on Mars they would be called marsworms!" We used clay to
sculpt worms, balls, snakes, a mountain, and two roly polies.

Deirdre came and talked to us about philosophy and ethics. How do you
know about love? The answers were: in my brain, in my thinking, and
one person said I just know. She told us a story about Niall's daddy
and a magical ring that made him invisible. Since no one could see
him, would it be okay for him to be naughty? We all made magical rings
and talked about what we might do if no one could see us. People
seemed to agree they would not do anything to hurt friends however
stealing a cookie, drawing on the wall and running away from daddy
would be okay. One person said she would clean the scribbles off the
wall with a sponge.

We made worm pasta. We made a mountain with the flour, added eggs, and
mixed. We sang the Strega Nona song as we mixed. Everyone worked
rolling and patting out the dough until we had many worms- big ones,
fat ones, long ones, skinny ones, then we ate some worms.

The gelato trip was short and sweet. Not too short though. Everyone
got to scratch a strawberry and a lemon. Is that why they call it from
scratch?  We saw a mixing machine called a robot and another big
machine where our ingredients were poured. Shortly after pouring in,
out came our sorbet.

Friday we listened to our heartbeats with a real stethoscope and
tapped the sounds on our legs. We read about how many hearts worms
have and why they need so many. We used red Mexican clay from planet
Earth and sculpted hearts, a baby, more worms, a pancake, and balls.

Thank you for having such cute kids,
Therese

4 years, 2 months/2 years.

Let's go fly a kite....

Thank you Grammy, Aunt Sarah, Uncle Tim, and Sawyer for our 2 new kites!  They had a very successful maiden voyage at Prospect Park this afternoon.  Graham can get the kite up all by himself and was gleeful about giving it more string and helping it stay afloat.  Connor is very interested in watching the whole process and will hold the string for a few minutes...but we had a couple close calls with runaway kites when he got distracted and let go.

4 years, 2 months/2 years.

Connor has figured out how to blow out through his mouth to blow bubbles (or candles!) and breathe in through his nose to smell flowers.  Graham is still working on the latter of these skills.

4 years, 2 months/2 years.

In the morning Connor practiced sharing the slides with his friends Will and Oliver and then...Auntie Mac came to visit!  Thanks for coming to see us Mac!  Next time bring the boys!

4 years, 2 months/2 years.

Connor took a break from non-stop (birthday) partying to check out a clubhouse near Penelope's house.  His first, I think?

4 years, 2 months/2 years.

Graham, Juni, and Lily were not happy when they learned it was time to leave the playground.  They were still immersed in a very complicated pretend kitty/Elsa/octonauts game.

4 years, 2 months/2 years.

Thank you for the dinosaur puzzles, Granddad and Linda!  Connor is working his way up to putting all of them together by all by himself.  He loves the pink baby dinosaur in the 8 piece puzzle, reminiscent of his obsession with the baby dinosaur in another puzzle we have.  Why do babies love other babies so much?

Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled "Little Miss Muffet":

Dear Parents,

The children have continued to add words galore to our Alphabet Train. It is still traveling around and around our room. While some added words to the train, others worked as very busy spiders spinning a tangled web above our classroom. We read Eric Carle's The Very Busy Spider. We reread Golly Gump Swallowed A Fly, because Golly Gump also swallowed a spider.

Did I mention it's arachnid week? How many legs does an arachnid have? How many body parts? How is it different from an insect? Quick pop quiz.

Of course we made spiders to hang out in our web. The most colorful spiders ever. Each student chose how many eyes their spider had. The better to see you with.

We sang happy birthday to the earth on Wednesday during snack after Melissa read us the Lorax.  We talked about how we could help the environment and protect our earth by turning off the water while brushing our teeth and turning off the lights when we leave the room. We talked about the different body parts of a spider and then used chalk on black paper to draw spiders.  In the yard, we caught a jumping spider in our bug catcher to observe it closer. Someone found another bug in the sandbox and added it to the bug observation party.  We took turns looking at the bugs closely and one person said "the other bug had six legs, so it must be an insect."

Thursday while half the class explored different musical sounds with Alex in the big room, the other half of the class read "Be nice to spiders" and then drew spiders using black pencils on white paper.  A few people drew mama spiders with baby spiders--spiderlings--on their backs.  Someone remembered drawing spiders the day before and said they were going to draw something different.  One person drew a big bad wolf, big bad shark, and a big bad spider.  Another person drew the eyes of the spider first (eight) and then added hairs, "these hairs are for the spiderlings to hold onto so they don't fall off."

Elizabeth brought in two creatures preserved in resin: a scorpion and a tarantula.  One person said, "hey that's the name of my soccer team."  Another person counted 10 legs on the tarantula and we realized that tarantula's have two feelers on top of their head.  Using a miniature globe someone brought into class, we looked at where scorpions and tarantulas live; they like dry deserts in North America. We used toothpicks and puffy paint on wax paper to create spiders and other creatures.

We wrapped up our arachnid week and are getting ready to wriggle into worm week starting Monday.

Have a sunny weekend every-buggy,

Therese and Kiera

4 years, 2 months/2 years.

Thank you for the Picasso tiles, Grammy!  The birthday boy has kindly been sharing them with Graham, who is building non-stop towers and little boxes, which he fills with all sorts of tiny treasures from his room, and then hides around our apartment.

4 years, 2 months/2 years (!).

Happy birthday, Connor!!!  At 2 years, Connor is the cutest thing alive, with a giant toothy smile and amazing strawberry blonde hair.  He loves playing outside--kicking and throwing balls, swinging, sliding, observing ants, using low fences as balance beams, pushing trucks--and inside--assembling puzzles, driving cars, playing with Graham (hide & seek, reading books, pretending to be ghosts, gruffalos, or chewbaccas, building towers).  When he wakes up in the morning, the first thing he does is check on the mourning dove nesting outside his window.  He laughs easily and thinks Graham, Daddy, cats, and dancing are all hilarious.  He loves going to playgroup and seeing his friends.  He says a couple hundred (frequently incomprehensible) words, and the newest type of word he's added is names--he knows all of Graham's and his friends' names and likes to identify everyone/everybody around him.  He's a good sleeper (generally sleeps about 11-12 hours at night and takes a 2ish hour nap in the afternoon) and a decent eater (likes lots of veggies, especially asparagus, but would happily dispose of all other foods if he could exclusively eat treats).

We love you big boy Connor!

4 years, 2 months/1 year, 11 months.

Party time!  Everyone was up bright and early on party day to decorate cupcakes.  Our favorite almost-2-year old had his friends over in the morning to paint flower pots, plant flowers, and eat cake.    After naps, Daddy took the boys to the park to run off a little white sugar before having an ice cream treat for dessert.

Thank you all for the beautiful cards and presents, and thank you Nana, Aunt Emily, Uncle Bob, Molly, and Claire for driving up for Connor's party!

4 years, 2 months/1 year, 11 months.

Holy Massive Tree Trunk, Batman!

Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled "Ants in your pants":

Hi everyone,

Spring is in the air. In order to celebrate this we began our week with a bug hunt in the yard.

The children found and observed many small living creatures. They practiced science knowledge by exploring and observing. We used math skills by counting, naming shapes and comparing lengths. We used verbal skills by describing the insects and what they were doing. Social skills were utilized by listening to each other, taking turns talking, and sharing space to make sure everyone was able to see the bug. Some fine motor skills were used to gently pick up tiny critters. Our gross motor skills came in handy afterwards to run, climb, swing, and dig in the sandbox.

We are also looking for signs of spring in our tree. Some noticed buds beginning to open. We had a lunch picnic a few warm days. We watched our tree bloom and collected bud shells from the ground below to observe in the classroom later. One day as we ate lunch we saw two magnificent blue jays. It was exciting but even more so when minutes later we saw two cardinals too! A male and a female. In the same tree. And our regular red breasted robins dropped by also.

Tuesday after reading Henry's Awful Mistake and Golly Gump Swallowed A Fly, we looked for matching patterns in the books. The children found one and we attempted to repeat it using red paint and potato stamps. Red paint and potato stamps.

The children noticed a pattern on the floor of our classroom, many on our clothes, in the music, and someone said another is: good, bad, good, bad, good, bad. We took turns creating one on the floor using orange squares. We clapped one with our hands.

We looked at pictures of insects before using modeling clay to sculpt our own. Then we (okay, I) accidentally baked them into crisps. Boo-hoo, though the children didn't seem as upset as I was when I saw them.

Our first music class with Alex went splendidly. Drums could be heard from the classroom while people waited their turn. We played Bingo and worked on listening clues, visual hunting, and language skills to speak up and describe the picture that matched.

We ended the week with an ant hill obstacle course in the big room. They crawled, tunneled, and balanced, while searching for and collecting plastic food to put in a picnic basket.

Next week stay tuned for not an insect, but a critter with eight legs. Starts with the letter A.

It was a good week,
Therese

4 months, 2 years/1 year, 11 months.

The beautiful weather today meant that Connor's playgroup was relocated to the park, where he and Wade pushed around trucks and made vrroooooom noises all morning.

4 years, 2 months/1 year, 11 months.

A long turn on the tire swing ended in tragedy today when Connor barfed up his vibrant snack of yogurt and blueberries.  On the upside, Connor is much better at holding on this spring than last, and Graham is a pretty competent, if not always enthusiastic, swing pusher.  

4 years, 2 months/1 year, 11 months.

Graham had a great time at his first t-ball game!  Coach Mitch and Assistant Coach Jamie start with a 30 minute practice and then the fearsome Crickets play an unscored 2-3 inning game against another team in their league.  Graham hit the ball on his first try each time he was at bat and only ran to the pitching mound instead of first base once.  Go Crickets!

4 years, 2 months/1 year, 11 months.

Bookmark this page for Lily and Graham's rehearsal dinner slideshow in 2040.  Connor kicked off the day with one of his favorite occupations, racing his cars down the horsey ramp.  Then we were off to the Opening Day Little League parade, followed by Lily's road race birthday party.

4 years, 1 month/1 year, 11 months.

I wonder how much longer the kids will believe frozen fruit + milk + a blender = ice cream.  So far, so good!

4 years, 1 month/1 year, 11 months.

We headed to the Natural History Museum on the last day of Will's spring break stay-cation to check on our dinosaur friends.  This time around, Connor was scared of the Allosaurus and Graham was fascinated by the idea that you can still see claw marks on his bones.  We also spent a long time in the Hall of Human Origins, debating whether the skeletons looked more like people or apes.

4 years, 1 month/1 year, 11 months.

Connor's first movie in the movie theater!  We went to an 11 am showing of "Home."  The movie kept my & Will's attention for zero minutes, Connor's for about 30 minutes (though he happily ate snacks and alternated sitting on laps the rest of the time), and Graham's for the whole thing.  We all have permanent hearing loss.

4 years, 1 month/1 year, 11 months.

Connor really likes working on puzzles right now.  He needs help to put a big puzzle like this together, but once it's together, he takes out a few pieces at a time and practices putting them back in the right spots.  He has a couple dinosaur puzzles that each have a baby dinosaur and his favorite thing is to assemble the baby dinosaur parts over and over again.  

Meanwhile, Graham has made the move to the big kid side of JJ Byrne playground.