Seahorses and Treasure Maps

My mother in law ordered some awesome books for the girls through her Usborne books party with me and this cool book was one of them! So many fun things! Today was one of those days where I felt crafty and productive and everything seemed to flow! I love days like today!

 



 

Claire picked a seahorse craft. Apparently they were supposed to be small for pencil tops but I didn't pay attention to that and made them much bigger. Claire picked orange and Kellyn picked green.

 

Luke picked pipe cleaners to attack during craft time!

 

Here they are. The girls only wanted to color them but didn't want to help actually glue them together. They turned out pretty cute.

 

I suggested the treasure map since we had everything to make them.

 

Claire thought it was fun putting their papers in the tea to soak. It soaked for an hour like it said to do in the book and it took an hour or two to dry. I didn't really pay attention how long exactly since we were busy with other things during the day.

 

Claire's Turtle Island turned out really cute. Drawing turtles is newer for her so it's fun to see her trying to make new pictures.

 

Kellyn actually drew her island, named it Pizza Island and I drew the rest. She colored too and had a hard time not being able to scribble black marker all over it. Normally I'm all for scribbling your heart out but this took hours to make the paper so I had her stick with crayons instead.

 

After they were done Claire was excited to go on a treasure hunt. They ran upstairs while Kellyn yelled, "ho, ho, ho" and she sounded more like Santa then a pirate. It was cute. I could here them running for a bit until they ended up back downstairs in the playroom. They found their treasure which was the kittens.

 

Like I said, today was one of those days I felt productive. We unfortunately had to leave the house for a couple errands. I didn't want to but we needed paper towels, baby wipes, wet kitten food and to drop some mail off at the post office. Once we got home the girls helped me clean the bathrooms. I vacuumed the entire house, did the dishes, put dinner in the crock pot, gathered dirty laundry for tomorrow, gathered all of the garbage bags, all while accomplishing two crafts in a single day. We even read SIX books at bedtime. I usually just read two but I was feeling wild. Watch out world!



15 Days Until Summer

  Yesterday I took the girls to a different library in our county. As we were checking our books out the librarian told us about their current reading program! She told us about the 1000 Books Before Kindergarten program. We fill out a log sheet of all the books we read. For every 50 books we log, we bring it in and the kids get a prize. The goal is to read 1000 books. Luckily we read a lot anyway so this will be fun to finish! The girls also got a stamp card so once we visit the library 6 times they are entered into a drawing to win an empty cardboard box.... sounds lame but it's not because they get to take the box to the library book sale and fill it up and they get all of those books for FREE! You gotta love free books, that's why I signed up as an Usborne Books consultant! ;)

  I was very proud of Claire at the library. The librarian asked if either of the girls were starting Kindergarten this fall and I let her know Claire is 5 and we homeschool. Claire smiled a big smile  and told the librarian how she spells her name and a few other things. She's pretty proud of all of these new words she's learning to spell. The coolest part about her learning is that she's completely self guided. Big surprise another one of my posts includes homeschooling. I guess because Claire isn't registered for Kindergarten that homeschooling feels more real. I feel 100% confident in her ability to learn anything and everything she wants to learn, I just worry sometimes about the outside criticism of trusting her love of learning and living. I don't worry daily about other peoples thoughts of our decision, just every once in a while when I have self doubt like every parent does. I snap out of it by the next day usually! I would love for everyone who reads my blog to please check out this awesome post!! I could have written everything she writes except for #6. I do want to homeschool long term. That may make people feel uncomfortable but the more I learn about homeschooling the more I know this will be amazing with our girls and I look forward to our years of learning together! One day I'll group together a bunch of articles and blogs that inspire me but that's for another day!

 

  Claire has mentioned lately that she wants her own hammer so she can fix stuff. I think it's a great idea and I need to go check out home depot with her to pick out a small one. I need to find a bird house kit or some kind of kit so she can actually build something or pound away at nails on a board! Here she is this afternoon with a screwdriver and her toy barn. She was happy to take it apart and put it back together! 

 

 

      We have another fun family day tomorrow. We are heading to another car show in the morning and in the afternoon there is a pet rescue thing in Alpharetta. It's been 3 years since we have had a baby in the house so I'm hoping that Chris will be ok with me getting a kitty. No, I don't want another baby so don't get any ideas! A kitty would be fun though!

 

  This upcoming week we have a lunch date with friends at a new restaurant I found online. We have a creek day and a pool party too! We are enjoying our week days with so many friends and our weekends exploring Georgia with Daddy! A friend posted her family summer bucket list and I thought it was a great idea so I'll post about our summer bucket list soon as well!