Winter Tot School 21 Months

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January 2, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Alex went outside when it was 18 degrees to help his dad and the neighbors fix the fence. Brr!

He LOVES his new BLUE Crayola dry erase board!

Livin’ it up at Christmas dinner (sparkling grape juice)!

Our new cube system with some Montessori trays. Alex’s is on the left. My K girls’ is on the right, but they often share. Alex sure is different from the girls at 21 months! He is so active; he doesn’t want to sit still for long and has no interest in paper activities.

A favorite activity is in the bottom far left cube: pouring black beans into a bowl. He also liked picking up pony beads and “feeding” the duck in the middle bottom cube.

He pretty ignored all his other activities.

Here is Alex using one of the girls’ activities. I didn’t think he would be able to do it, but he sure surprised me! I named all the colors and shapes for him.

He loves the pattern blocks!

So I found our other tangram set for him to play with…

Alex was sure thrilled to pick out all the O’s (circles) from these tangrams. (Why, yes, that is a princess table…)

He asked me for a bowl to sort them into. He found all the baby O’s.

Then he started stacking O’s and squares by color!

He enjoyed stamping with our snowy stamp set.

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Christmas Cookies

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December 25, 2011 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

We made several kinds of Christmas cookies this week.

Here is an amazing Peanut Butter cookie.

It was on the package of my new Nordic Ware baking pans!

I had a little elf helping…

Who knew he’d like cream cheese icing?

Look at that proud face with his first big boy mocha!

He was so pleased to help in the kitchen.

Some of our favorites:

The girls really loved these “snowball cookies” or Danish wedding cookies.

Snowball Cookies

Course Dessert

Cuisine Holiday

Ingredients

1 c unsalted butter softened
1/2 c confectioner’s sugar
1 t vanilla
2 1/4 c AP flour
1 c chopped nuts (pecans or walnuts) chopped
confectioner’s sugar for rolling baked cookies in

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350°F.
Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and slowly add flour and mix until just combined. Fold in chopped pecans, beating at low speed, scraping bowl as necessary, until well mixed.
Roll dough into little balls. Place on prepared cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. Chilling the dough for 30 minutes in the fridge helps the cookies stay round but we are never that patient!
Bake cookies for 14 – 15 minutes until bottoms are just slightly brown.
Remove from oven and cool on cooling rack until you can handle them comfortably with your hands.
While cookies are still warm, roll them in icing sugar. Place cookies on cooling rack, once they have cooled completely, roll them in icing sugar again. Store cookies in an airtight container for up to 3 days or freeze for up to one month.

Happy Holidays!

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Christmas Tea Party

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December 23, 2011 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

We had a family Christmas tea this afternoon.

The kids love having tea. They picked a holiday blend from B&N.

I decorated the table with candles and festive little plates and our Lenox serving pieces that I am slowly collecting. They thought it was real fancy.

We had cheese and crackers, apple slices, baby carrots, Pepperidge Farm Gingerbread people (cuz we haven’t baked any holiday cookies yet and they are adorable), homemade toffee, almond clusters, and peppermints.

We listened to symphonic Christmas carols.

I read from Holly Hobbie’s Christmas book.

This book was mine when I was just a wee lass. I love her. I have a couple dolls still too.

As my kids get older, we still love tea time with poetry and music. It’s fun to have themes and even dress up. Decorating the table scape is fun for my kids. We all have favorite teas and we have different cups and teapots and pretty little dishes.

Merry Christmas!

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Homemade Play Dough

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December 16, 2011 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

We’ve been having lots of fun with Christmas activities this week…

Tori’s gingerbread play dough reindeer…

Santa paper plate packing popcorn craft. I used googly eyes, a pink pom pom for the nose, and a shaped pipe cleaner for the mouth

Tori and Katie pretend to eat their gingerbread babies…

They pasted their eaten gingerbread babies in their booklets.

We made homemade play dough!

I made gingerbread play dough (with spices smells great!) and snow play dough (plain with sparkly glitter).

We broke out the cookie cutters and played with play dough for quite a long time this morning.

Preschool girls loved playing with the yummy smelling playdough.

Katie did not like to be interrupted for a picture.

Toddler Alex thought all this was just awesome.

Even the Big Girl Elizabeth had to play with the play dough!

She showed off her “cookies.”

Super easy play dough recipe:

Play Dough

Ingredients

2 cups AP flour
2 cups warm water
1 cup salt
2 T vegetable oil
1 T cream of tartar

Instructions

Mix ingredients gently, folding all the flour in, over low/medium heat in a nonstick pan until formed into a ball.
Knead carefully (it’s hot!) until desired elasticity.

Add stuff:

Spices. Sprinkle in some cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger for gingerbread play dough – or apple pie spice or pumpkin pie spice – or whatever you love.

Essential Oil. We love using Citrus, Peppermint, or Lavender.

Glitter or Food Coloring. Sparkle and color just add to the fun!

My kids like to play with the play dough while it’s still warm.

How to Use:

We use all sorts of fun tools like real cookie cutters (love these alphabet and numbers cookie cutters!), rolling pins, dough tools that extrude, squish, and cut it.

We have two Activity Centers that provide stencils and working surfaces to keep my floor clean.

Store in an airtight container or zipper bag. We keep ours in the fridge to stay fresh longer.

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Sledding

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December 16, 2011 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Finally, we have snow!

We went to a neighborhood park while Elizabeth was at her music lessons. Tori was proud of her snowball. She wanted to bring it home and put it in the freezer. That reminds me of an Arthur episode where DW does that…

Alex and Katie pelted me with snow!

Alex does not like sledding downhill, but he loved being pulled around on level ground.

Katie is the daredevil who loved sliding downhill. She wants to find a really BIG hill…

Tori was crazy too. Surprised she stayed on her knees and didn’t fall over!

We had lots of fun in just an hour, waiting for big sister!

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Christmas Sensory Bin

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December 12, 2011 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

My husband created a sensory table for us!

I put a Christmas sensory bin in there and Alex LOVES it! (So does Tori!)

I have glittery pom poms, red and white beans, green glass rocks, glitter tree stickers, 12 Days of Christmas and Nativity printables (scaled down and laminated), a tree ice cube tray, two Santa candy holders, jingle bells…

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First Snow

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November 28, 2011 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

We’ve added calendar notebooks to our morning time.

I’ve just been waiting for my little girlies to be ready for this!

We’ve pulled ideas from Mama Jenn and 1+1+1=1.

Our first snow…This is the Snow Bunny with Tori.

Katie was getting a snowball ready and I hurried on outta there.

We’ve been busy with You Can Read and RRSK.

We were sick all last week, which made for a not so fun Thanksgiving. We had dinner on Saturday because that was the final day we could cook that bird before it ruined. We are ready for the Advent season!

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New Light Table

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November 28, 2011 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

Here is Katie playing Toca Boca Tea Party app with Alex. He is rather possessive of his Tea Party.

We’ve been continuing with out letter of the week with Tot School printables, but Alex isn’t really into all that too much yet. He is learning his letters and colors though.

He loves to cook and play kitchen.

Daddy made us a new light box!

(All it is a plastic bin with rope lights. Daddy cut a hole in the side for the cord.)

Sorting Christmas tree branches by their colored tips. I love Alex’s expression here. I don’t know why he looked so mad, but he’s so cute!

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Kindergarten Fall Update

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November 4, 2011 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

A Kindergarten update before the holidays.

Tori and Katie so graciously allow Bubba to “write” in their clay like ancient Hittites with a “stylus” (chopstick).

All the kids really enjoyed this activity from Tapestry of Grace.

The end of the soccer season. Awards ceremony tonight.

Tori loved scooping out her jack o’lantern.

Katie did not.

Tori as a lovely Chinese princess for a Halloween party with Daddy. (I found THREE Chinese dresses at a thrift store for the girls! Amazing!)

Katie and Alex sharing a sucker moment.

We’re loving the You Can Read program and the Raising Rock Stars Kindergarten printables from 1+1+1=1. My only issue is that the girls complete their pages super fast!

We’ve also enjoyed some activity packs about fall and firefighters and monsters and pumpkins (oh my!) from Homeschool Creations and 1+1+1=1. The girls’ favorite activity is the graphing with printable dice.

We completed some experiments from our Apologia Swimming Creatures book. The girls have this class at our homeschool co-op, but they’ve been doing other activities.

We’re reviewing the Imagination Station book series. Stay tuned for a giveaway!

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