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

Happy Easter!  The Easter bunny came, heavily supplemented by Grammy and Nana.  Thank you!  We also began the tradition of a color-coded Easter egg hunt.  The Easter bunny hid blue eggs for Graham (good choice, EB!) and orange for Connor.

We all learned a valuable lesson this year: if your almost-2-year-old starts off the day with 4 seemingly small and innocuous pieces of candy before eating any breakfast, your entire family will regret it for the next 12 hours.  

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

It's egg hunt season!  This year, Graham was somewhat interested in getting a lot of eggs, but was still mostly interested in checking out what was in his eggs.  Connor stuck with his find-one-open-one-eat-one-find-another strategy, which is not great for finding a lot of eggs (which is probably a good thing at his tender age).

In the afternoon, we dyed eggs (and one dress, whoops!) with Lily and Jacob.

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

After giving Marlon a few pats, we set out in search of bigger cats: we drove to the Bronx Zoo!  We heard the lion roaring and tiger pacing but everyone's favorite was the playful black bears.

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

Connor discovered an abandoned wiffle ball in the church garden and spent the next hour kicking it around.  Is 1 old enough to be on a soccer team?

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

Hi All,

We are completing our machines unit by building sculptures of wood. Similar to our boats but bigger. The children chose a base and went right to work considering how to place each piece. They built first without glue to plan, then added glue. Everyone was focussed and patiently squeezing glue. One person said theirs was a rocket ship, another said a dinosaur.

We worked on our sculptures for a couple of days. Everyone chose a silver, copper or gold paint. Pastor Meeter came by while we were painting and seemed sincerely impressed with everyone's work.

Our last capoeira class involved bending and stretching to the tune of the pandeiro. After the class, children demonstrated a stretch that meant touching their toes to their nose.

We are continuing our constant saturation of pre-reading skills by examining letters in book titles and each other's names, sounding out letters, tracing letters, and adding words to our alphabet train.

We had two nurses visit our classroom this week. One was Kiera's mom. The children shared stories of doctor visits, earaches, broken legs, and sick siblings. The other nurse showed us pictures of silly germs and talked about hand washing. He gave us foam hand sanitizer and super cute band aids. He also wrapped someone's leg in a bandage who said, "You're just pretending, right?"

We have been spending more time outside, thank goodness, and will continue to, as the weather changes.  We saw our first three bees and sat quietly for a bit watching them lunch on our flowers. Many people are also working diligently using gross motor skills to move their bodies on the swings. Some sitting up and others on their bellies.

We are reminding people: to use words, not hands, when communicating with friends, to speak up for themselves if they want a turn, to wait patiently for turns, choosing other things while waiting, to look with their eyes, listen with their ears, use walking feet in the classroom, and that they can't have any pudding if they don't eat their meat.

When we return from break we begin our insect study.

Have a fun filled break,
Therese

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

Connor thought Daddy, who isn't feeling well and worked from home, could use a hand with some of his e-mails.

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

Teamwork abounded today, between the Millers' handholding on the slides and the Blue Devils' play to get into the final four!  Graham and Connor practiced the "Let's Go Duke" cheer after dinner; it seems to have done the trick.

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

Before, during, and after of Connor's first haircut!  He was somewhat aware that something was buzzing around messing with his head, but Lulu's 3-ring-circus of distractions (movie, special toys, lollipop) kept him from getting too worried about it.  He took his big boy cut to Hometown BBQ afterwards for some caveman-style dining.