2013_11_22 Friday

From Elise's school:

We had a great Friday! Today we talked about Thanksgiving and what we are thankful for. We started by coloring our thanksgiving turkeys.  X made a pretty pink turkey and X made a rainbow turkey.  Then, we decorated thankful trees. X decorated his tree with foam leaves and X used crayons to decorate his thankful tree.  Lastly, we talked about what we are thankful for. Elise said that she is thankful for mommy and daddy and frogs and X said that he is thankful for superman and family. During music, X danced along to the letter k song and X tapped her rhythm sticks to the beat when we sang the song, go slowly/quickly. Have a great weekend! Have a great Thanksgiving break and see you on December 2nd! 

2013_11_19 Tuesday

From Elise's school:

We had a great day today! Today we talked about nature and things we find outside in nature.  X said that we can find sticks outside and X said that we can find leaves outside.   We also practiced writing our J's.  Elise practiced writing her J's and X wrote several J's all by herself.  During kinesthetics, we played our favorite game, Musical Chairs. X won our second game and X came in second place. During Spanish, X danced to the music.  X chose a book to read to the class during circle time.  Have a Great day! Thank you to all of the parents that came to have lunch with us today!

2013_11_18 Monday

From Elise's school:

We had a great day today! Today we talked all about cold weather. In Art, we made marshmallow igloos and ate a few marshmallows too. X put all of her marshmallows in neat little rows and X glued all of hers very carefully.  We also played an ice toss game. We used an ice pack to toss to our friends.  X and X had a lot of fun with this game. Our letters of the week are J and K.  Elise told us that Jonathan starts with the letter J. X colored in her letter J very neatly.   In music class, X danced to the song everybody get up and listened intently during Mandarin.

2013_11_15 Friday

I got my hair cut today!! It's "short" again -- chin length!

From Elise's school:

We had a great day today! We finally had some outside playtime today.  Today we talked about how we are all the same and how we all have differences.  X explained that some people are taller than others and noticed that X is taller than her. In Art, we colored people in order to see than many shapes and sizes that people can come in. X did a very good job coloring in his people. We also practiced cutting today.  X and X practiced their cutting and cut out hearts with Ms. X . In Kinesthetics, we played bean bag toss and X  tossed her beanbag to friends very nicely. During puzzle time, X put the number puzzle together all by himself. X had fun in German identifying the different modes of transportation.  Elise danced to the letter K song and traced the letter k in the air.

2013_11_12 Tuesday

Happy 11/12/13 day!! Elise must have known that the day was special; she was up at 7am, for no good reason!!

From Elise's school:
Today we talked about our favorite things. We made a 4KA favorite foods book.  X told us his favorite food is Popsicles and he drew a very colorful picture of Popsicles.  X has several favorite foods. She drew blueberry waffles, cherry yogurt, and a sushi boat! We shared our book with the class during circle time. We also talked about charts; more specifically, pie charts. We used the pie chart to count how many of our friends liked the same things.  Elise said that three of our friends liked grapes and X said that two of our friends liked chocolate.  We also talked about the letter K today. X traced his letter K's very well. X also traced his K's and made the /k/ sound along with our Kangaroo Koala song. We also worked on our pinching technique today. X and X successfully used the clothespin to pick the pom poms out of the bowl.

I had a parent/teacher conference for her today. It was great. She's doing very, very well.

I got a call from the nurse just before dismissal time. Jonathan apparently stabbed himself accidentally (falling) with a pencil during recess. Then, she and I walked down to the bus stop to get Jonathan, and I got a text from his teacher that he missed the bus because he thought it was tennis day. Alas, we rushed home, got the car, and headed off to school. Teacher said he was near tears, but they talked about big problems and little problems. This was definitely a little problem, better yet just an accident. Poor kid.

Then, I opened up his backpack to find 20-something thank you notes (picture and text) from the class for me coming in to talk about St Martin yesterday. How flippin' sweet are they!!?

2013_11_11 Monday

I spent the morning at Jonathan's school talking about St Martin's Tag. I told them a story (with props), we made our own Laterne, we listened to two German songs -- Laterne, Laterne and Ich Geh Mit Meiner Laterne, we had our own class parade, and we shared a giant Bretzel and some smaller, store bought ones. I had a great time. The kids seemed to dig it too, and Jonathan was quite a helper.

I also talked very briefly about how cool tomorrow will be: 11/12/13.

From Elise's school:

We had a very busy day today. We talked about what it would be like to be a dinosaur!  In Art, we made sock puppet dinosaurs and danced and roared with them.  X said that dinosaurs are scary and made his dinosaur scary.  X made her dinosaur puppet a pretty puppet.  In music, we danced to we are the dinosaurs and X helped her dinosaur roar and stomp; we also pounded the nails in Pound Pound.  We also talked about strange pets today.  X said that en elephant was a silly pet to have. X said that we could have a small lion as a pet. Our letters of the week are J and K.  We talked about K words. Xsaid that Kid starts with K and Elise said that Kite starts with K.

2013_11_10 Sunday

Jonathan pulled out his third tooth today!! It had been dangling for a few days, but he would only allow me one pull each day, and those are slippery, little suckers. So, while having breakfast at home, he did it himself...that's probably a better way anyway. Tooth is already in the tooth pillow and waiting for the ToothFairy to arrive!

2013_11_08 Friday

From Elise's school:

We had a great day today! In Art, we tried to draw our favorite superhero. We also were given time to draw whatever we wanted to.  X drew a robot superman and X drew a pink superman.  We also practiced our J's today.  X practiced tracing his J's and even drew a few of his own!  Elise said that jungle johnny likes to juggle jelly.  During music, X had fun dancing along with the music.  During kinesthetics, we played with the parachute. X and X had a lot of fun playing with it. They helped us to keep Clifford, Cleo and T-Bone in the parachute and we tried to kick the ghost out of the parachute!

Elise has taken it pretty easy today. She actually napped, which was the first time in forever. She's been sipping on OJ for the afternoon and lounging on the sofa. She's still got a runny nose, but she doesn't feel quite as hot as the past two days.

On a very different note, I just have to reflect on how cool the Internet is in helping people stay connected. I've been able to have an email conversation today with two friends (a German and J2's K-G teacher) that drove home that distance is totally irrelevant these days. warm fuzzies.

Jonathan had a playdate here with a neighbor friend right after school. It's also neat that the boys are old enough that they don't need constant monitoring...although an occasional eyeball does help keep a room from becoming a disaster zone.

Oh, and I'm going to teach on Monday -- St Martin's Tag -- at J's school. We are going to learn about St Martin, make small Laterne, have a class-wide parade, and then share a pretzel. How cool!?! And, I've already dropped hints about St Nicholas as well.

2013_11_07 Thursday

Today is 1st grade Superhero Day, so Jonathan wore the felt cape I made for him to school. Yeah, at least it got a second wearing after ~3 years! ;o)

Elise, however, woke up between 12-2am today sniffing, gagging, and with a fever. Oh joy. This morning, she's felt less hot but still hasn't been herself and isn't particularly interested in napping/resting either. ugh. I really don't have any down time in the next 2 weeks for anyone to be anything but 100% healthy. Gesh, did I just jinx myself!? I made a fruit smoothie for her, but we froze it up into popcycles, so both kids can have a treat after school today.

2013_11_06 Wednesday

Elise and I went to explore a new park today:

We had fun, but even that didn't tire her out enough for anything resembling a nap. ugh!

I've been checking off our excursions from the book from Oma and doing reasonably well. Today, I took the kids to THE Krispy Kreme doughnut factory for an after-school, after-tennis snack. Boy, did that backfire!! Jonathan stubbornly picked a strawberry jelly-filled doughnut and then broke down into tears when he discovered -- after I repeatedly told him -- it had jelly inside. Elise licked off all the fall sprinkles from her's and offered the doughnut to J as a consolation (which I thought was really sweet), and he fell further into his funk. Golly, try to do something different/fun, and see what happens?! gesh. I talked to him at home about needing to try new things and maybe liking them... and about listening to me (since I knew he didn't like jelly doughnuts)...and about how ridiculous this whole thing really was.

Finally, a class mom/pro-photog shared this shot of the kids from her son's b'day back in September:

2013_11_04 Monday

From Elise's school:
Today we talked about patterns and made patterned key chains in class. This helps us string large and small beads, a fine motor skill. X made a pink and purple pattern and X made a green and yellow pattern.  We also talked about our letter of the week, J. X told us that juice starts with the letter J.  Elise colored her Letter J words and X traced an uppercase and lowercase J.  During music class, we listened to the song, We are the dinosaurs and X had fun stomping like a Dinosaur. This helps recognize and understand the rhythm of the song. X had fun in Japanese class repeated every fruit the Japanese teacher pulled from her special bag. We also learned about the Indian festival of Lights, Diwali. We watched a video on the many colors associated with Diwali and talked about how India is full of lights during the festival.

2013_11_03 Sunday

We had a bunch of friends over last night for an impromptu party and house warming gathering. It was really fun.

Dave planned an excursion today! We went to the aquarium. It was terrific; it's the largest in the world. I think we were there for almost 6 hours. He bought a membership, so we got to see a dolphin show -- in the wet second row! The kids loved it. There were a few touch tanks that they tried out. We also saw a 4-D movie. The exhibits there are really amazing, especially the four whale shark one, which has a moving sidewalk that goes under/through the enormous tank. I could have sat at any one of them for hours. We missed the feedings, but we can go back anytime now.

2013_11_01 Friday

Wow, is it really November already!?!

I was able to submit the school's Box Top collection. I'm anticipating about $850 for the school!! I guess that makes all the counting, cutting, and packaging worth it. Jonathan's class came in a very close second in the school-wide contest!

I also delivered a large moving box to E's school today to collect candy for the troops. I drew a nice monster's face, cutting out a mouth hole, with a sign that says "Feed Me Candy!" Man, am I amazing or what!? By pick-up time, it was already about 1/2 full!!

From Elise's school:

All of our friends were very excited to tell us how much fun they had during trick or treating! Today we talked about codes. In art, we used colored coded shapes to tell us how to color a picture. X and X colored all of their shapes according to the color code.   We also listened to our letter songs for the day.  X traced a G in the air along with the song.  We also practiced tracing our names today!  X and X traced their names very well.   While we were in centers,  Elise made a King Cobra out of play doh.  We also had fun during music time, where we used sandpaper blocks to tap to the beat of the music.  We also made a code for different actions during exercise time and practiced. running walking and crawling in place.  We finished by dancing one last time to the monster mash before we say goodbye to the Halloween season.

Jonathan and Elise had a joint playdate with our neighbors and another friend after school. They dug around in the backyard and got sooo dirty, but it was awesome fun. So great to be outside on a day like today!!!