April 2013 Activities

April 2013 was a busy month. We started off with a preschool field trip to a local bakery where the kids get to see the kitchen, freezer, giant stone oven... eat a fresh cookie and then make their own custom bread!

Here are the cuties!

These two were excited to attend also, though they were older than the others. Food inspires them.

We are frequent visitors of the library, here are three of them reading. I just love that Little Guy has learned how to "read" and act at the library and we're past the shelf clearing stage.

We did still life drawings for art this month, trying to focus on learning to draw objects behind other objects as well as details.                                Here is Dinoguy's drawing.

Here is Trainboy's drawing.

Here is Princess' drawing. She loves art!

                                      And here is Little Guy showing off his drawing.

Princess was given a butterfly kit for her birthday in December. We ordered the larvae and they were delivered at the end of March. She really enjoyed watching them grow from tiny larvae to large caterpillars in their jar and then they made chrysalis and we transferred them to the mesh observation cage. After watching them hatch and feeding them for several days, the weather was warm and it was time to let them go free.

She really liked watching them, it was fascinating to see their tongues unroll and roll up.

However, she would NOT hold them! Here is Trainboy holding one to give her, she says NO!

Here is Trainboy observing them. He really liked holding them!

Now Mom holds one close to her, but she still does not want to hold it herself.

General Conference came at the beginning of April and we had fun watching it and coloring pictures/taking notes.

Chocolate waffles with whipped cream and strawberries! Happy Conference breakfast!

We discovered these eggs inside a pocket of the jogging stroller I hadn't zipped up. I carefully transferred the nest to a gardening pot and we watched and waited. We never saw a mama bird and the eggs never hatched. I think they were laid too early in the spring and a cold spell had doomed them.

Princess lost her bathing suit last fall at the pool so we needed a new one. She chose this one out of the catalog and was very excited when it arrived. (Mom was happy because it was very discounted and affordable!)

We celebrated Mom & Dad's birthdays, here I am with the presents the kids chose for me.

And here is Fixitman with his cake.

                                         Here is Little Guy helping blow out the candles.

My sister came to visit after her semester ended. The kids LOVED playing with their aunt! They showered her with affection.Here she is experiencing three hugs at once with a fight.

We visited the local museum that had an interactive DNA exhibit that was quite fun. The kids didn't want to leave!

We took Auntie to the beach of course!

I found this fly swatter gun at the dollar store and it reminded me of one from my childhood. Little Guy thought it was the best toy ever.

Playing at the park with Auntie before she flew home.

Sisters

Well there is a whirlwind tour of highlights from April 2013 here! Hope you had a fabulous April also.

January 2013 Art creations

We made several fun art projects this year. The following ones are actually all from January when I actually took pictures of all the projects.

 While I am not an amazing artist, I do like art and want my kids to develop appreciation for it in addition to learning the basic skills. Art is FUN!

Also, Princess' REALLY likes art projects. She loves participating in them and does them much longer than anyone else. I need to have lots of fun art just for her interests.

This art project was about lighting, seeing the way the shadows change the snowman's coloring. I got the idea here. (And I LOVE pinterest for kids art ideas. It has helped me discover some awesome art teacher blogs full of ideas!) Plus drawing snowmen is fun when you have no snow!

My example snowman

Dinoguy's snowman

Trainboy's snowman

Princess' first snowman

Princess' second snowman

Princess drawing yet another snowman. (She liked this project!)

 This next one was a drawing exercise from the book "Drawing with Children" by Mona Brookes. We drew the lion from step by step instructions, embellished and then we colored before outlining in marker.

This is Dinoguy's Lion.

This is Trainboy's lion

This is Princess' lion

Here is my example lion.

 This was also a drawing exercise from the same book as above. The goal was to work on drawing objects in front of other objects (overlapping wings/birds).

Dinoguy's birds

Trainboy's drawing

Princess' birds

Little Guy's drawing

My example birds

 This next one was kings and queens portraits done with tempera paint. It went along well with our history study of the middle ages and was fun! Idea came from this blog.

Dinoguy's King

Trainboy's knight

My queen

 Princess and Little Guy were happily painting the whole time too. But they are still in the exploration stage of painting when you mix colors and fill in the whole page until it is muddy. So no pictures of that. I just tried to contain the mess.

Dinoguy's abstract art/stained glass

Trainboy's abstract art/stained glass