Our Little Village

I'm not really a very crafty or artistic person. I'm horrible about doing art projects with the kids. I know I mentioned this before, in fact, I think it was about a year ago when I did another project with the kids which consisted of melting broken crayons together. This time around I decided to work with the kids on creating a village using boxes from our recycling bin.

After collecting the right sized boxes and containers, I bought a piece of poster board to use as a base. On a snowy Saturday morning, I gathered the necessary supplies and the girls. It took me a few minutes to convince the girls (i.e. snapping at them) to not touch anything until we figured out how we wanted our village to look. Once we got the general pattern sorted out, Allison and Mia had a wonderful time cutting, gluing, drawing, and putting stickers on our buildings.  It was a good practice lesson for me to keep my patience and a good lesson for the girls to work together as a team to accomplish a single goal.

Allison's Caught the Reading Bug

A few months ago, Allison brought home "Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?" from the library. We brought it to bed and I made her read it to me. This was the first book that she read more than a few words at a time. I was so proud of her. The look on her face when she finished was priceless.

We are reading together every night and practicing her "popcorn" words. She knows all the words on the list we received from school and several other words I have added to her "popcorn bucket". She is up to about 70 words in her bucket.

Recently she was tested on whether she knew her popcorn  words at school. If they knew more than the ones they learned so far, they could read them off the list that was given to them. Allison told me that she knew all but two, so I asked her which two. She looked at me like I was crazy and said "I don't know Mom - I couldn't read them, so how would I know what words they were?" Ha ha. I was thinking that maybe the teacher told her what the words were when they were finished. 

Just Pulling Your Leg...Off!

Allison and Mia spent a few days with their Nana and Papa recently. I love hearing what they did while they were at my parents' house, and this time was no exception. The kids were apparently kidding with my Dad and my Mom asked Amelia if she "was pulling Papa's leg."  Since this was an expression neither of the girls have heard before, Amelia looked at my Mom with a puzzled expression and then looked at my Dad's leg and said, "No, I'm not touching his leg."  My Mom explained to them that the phrase "Pulling your leg" is a way of telling someone that you are only joking with them. However, the girls don't quite remember the actual phrase - so now when the girls make a joke, they finish up by saying "I pulled your leg off!"