September Stuff

The month of September was busy, and it was over in the blink of eye.  Here's a peek at some of what we did.

 Reagan went to see One Direction with Allison.  They had a great time.

Reagan's soccer team.  She has teammates named Tyler, Collin, and Katelyn, and they all spell their names the same way our children's names are spelled.  How funny is that?

 Kate started taking swimming lessons at the Barrington Y.  She LOVES it this time and really looks forward to going.  Her teacher is wonderful.

 Kate and I went to a zoo class where we learned about giraffes.

After the zoo class, we spent some time with the goats.  Kate enjoyed feeding, brushing, and loving them.

 It was just about this time that a zoo employee told Kate she was giving out a little too much love.

 Reagan saw an orthopedic doctor at Boston Children's and we learned that she has extra bones in her feet.  She is doing physical therapy to help with her ankle pain.

 Spirit of Somerset was fun!

Disney on Ice was a birthday present for Kate, and she was very happy to share that experience with Reagan.  We had a great time!

 Reagan started playing the cello through the school strings program.

 Public Safety Day fun!

 I love Kate's corner kick.  So cute!

 Reagan is playing in a weekly field hockey league at Moses Brown in Providence.

 Magna Tiles are awesome; they are played with often here.

I took this picture looking into the top of Kate's Magna Tiles tower.

Kate enjoys patterns.  We have tons of these little erasers, and she used them to make a few different patterns.

We ended September with an early start on Halloween horrors!  Almeida's haunted hayride had some of us in stitches laughing, while some did not find it funny at all.  A few tears were shed that night, but it was fun to have a big group and overall it was entertaining.

Giraffe Snack

We have been reading On Noah's Ark by Jan Brett.  In this book, Jan Brett imagines Noah's granddaughter on the ark helping all of the animals settle down and live together for forty days and nights.  I think the story is very creative, and in true Jan Brett fashion, the illustrations are beautiful, but there is no reference to God at all in the book, and that is a bit odd.  C actually noticed that right away.  We still enjoyed the book for what it is.  Sometimes I welcome the opportunity to discuss problems in books that aren't laid out as problems, and this book gave us that opportunity.  Children often learn more from a book when they think there is something wrong with the story, so I wouldn't ignore this book due to the fact that God is not mentioned.  Books become what we want them to become, and they can teach lessons that are not always meant to be taught.

Anyway, I love giraffes and the animal was recently featured in the April 2011 issue of Your Big Backyard magazine.  We spent some time reading about giraffes and decided to try the giraffe snack in the magazine.  I thought our two giraffes would go along nicely with the book.  I made a few changes to the snack, but it is based on the idea from the magazine.

For our snack, I cut bread into these shapes:

I then covered the bread with peanut butter and added pretzel stick legs and horns.  The eye is a chocolate chip morsel (the magazine recipe calls for a raisin) and the spots on the giraffe are crispy rice cereal (the recipe calls for breaking a cracker into small pieces, but I thought this was easier and provided the same effect).

C and R weren't so sure they looked like giraffes, but they still ate them.
 

Giraffes

I enjoy reading Shel Silverstein books with my children, and this book has had us laughing out loud since we found it at the library a few days ago.  The repetition and rhyme in A Giraffe and a Half make it perfect for young children.  

The giraffe is my favorite animal.  I think giraffes are beautiful.  Last week, I found out about OneMillionGiraffes.com; this is simply an effort by one person to collect one million giraffes made or created by people (no store bought giraffes or photographs of live giraffes).  I decided that it would be fun to contribute two giraffes made in our house.

This is how we made the giraffes:

First, paint your child's hand yellow place it on paper.  The four fingers will become legs, and the thumb will be the tail of the giraffe.

Next, paint the side of your child's hand yellow and place it on the paper to create the neck.

The head is a thumb print.

Finger paint brown spots on the giraffe and then add details with marker or crayon.

Here is the giraffe that R made:

C made this giraffe: