Kidlet Hilarity #4

We've had a busy month with vacation and school and lots of other activities going on! In the midst of all this, I've been trying to keep track of all the funny and cute things the kids say and do! :)  They had a ton of fun on vacation, but I didn't write a lot down, so I'm sure I've forgotten a lot, too! :(  So, here are the things I CAN remember!

When Natalie accomplishes something (like drawing a circle) or gets excited about something (like surprise hot chocolate to drink with supper), she shouts "Way!" which means "Hooray!" :)

Natalie fell down on the porch and bumped her head.  She came running, crying into the bathroom to tell me, and I could not get her to calm down, so I asked her what would help her feel better, and she responded, "Bow!"  She wanted me to put a bow in her hair.  So I did, and she stopped crying immediately! Love having a girly girl!

Our friend James was getting set up for a wagon ride at camp during a ladies' retreat.  He asked Zachary and Natalie if they wanted a wagon ride since he had everything out, and Zachary was very excited and jumped right in the wagon!  Natalie was scared by the tractor, though, and cried and refused to get on the wagon.  The whole time Zachary and James were gone on the ride, she kept saying, "No like tractor. Cry. No like." Hopefully she'll get used to it before camp!!

Zachary said "I like spiders a lot, because I'm a boy.  Boys like spiders, but girls, not so much." :) He has been insisting lately that spiders are his favorite animal.  But when we saw one in the bathtub one night, he sure climbed out quick!!

After falling down in the living room one day, Zachary laid down on the couch and said, "I need to get some rest since I fell down.  Natalie, would you please be quiet so I can get some rest?"

One morning I asked Zachary if he had any bad dreams the night before. "Yes", he said, "but I didn't come in to your room." "Why not?", I asked.  "Peace", was his response. "It's called peace. God gave me peace."  The faith of a child!!

Natalie's favorite shirt is her 'purple cakey' shirt that her aunt Anna made for her - every day she wants to wear it, and one week I had failed to do the laundry in a timely manner and she had not been able to wear her purple cakey shirt for several days in a row.  When it finally showed up in her drawer one morning, she pulled it out and excitedly exclaimed, "Purple cakey WASHED!!"

Natalie says "lalala" for Violet (her favorite puppy toy) and violin - and "tunnel" for piano and pillow! :)  Zachary is always asking her to say things, it is hilarious to hear her repeat everything he suggests. :)  She says necklace (Neh Nas) and this week at her Daddy's urging she said, "Ouchie-wa-wa!" Too funny!

Davey is making all kinds of noises now, too - he says "nin nin" when he's upset or tired sometimes, and growls ALL the time. One day we were looking at a book with some pictures of kids in it, and he would grab their faces and growl at the kids! Mean baby! :) When you wave at him, he will sometimes wave back, too, I have a video of it I need to put up! And he does this little dance where he bangs his head up and down, it is SO funny! :)

While listening to a kids CD, we heard the Fishers of Men song.  Zachary said, "If you were really catching a man in the water, that would be silly.  But it really means to tell people about God."

I accidentally threw all the kids Sunday School papers into the bag without looking at them, then when we got home, I was sorting through them, and some of them had fallen on the floor...anyhow, at one point in the sorting, I asked, "Whose Jesus is on the floor?" "What?", Zachary asked.  "Whose Jesus?", I asked again.  "Jesus is God." was Zachary's correct response. :)

Natalie is such a sweet sister - she's always patting Z's back when he's upset, saying, "Okay, Bubba, okay".  Or she will do the same for Davey, saying, "Okay, baby. Okay." if he's crying. :)

We have been really into pretending (complete with silly voices, of course) around here lately.  One day as I was pretending to be a character from a Pokemon book and allowing Z to show me around his yard, he said, "My mommy's really good about being careful when there's thorny bushes." :)

Later, I was pretending to be a cat, and Natalie needed help with something, so she said, "Help, cat! Help!" :)

Right before Easter, we did Resurrection Eggs, and so we had been talking a lot about Jesus dying on the cross.  As Natalie prayed one night, she thanked God for each member of her family, as she does each night, and then she wanted to thank God for one more thing - the Cross!!  How sweet! That has to make God's heart smile! :)

Watching a commercial on TV one day, Zachary saw a lady wearing an evening dress that only covered one shoulder.  His assessment: "Her dress is missing a piece!" Lol!

I bought the kids a 'Scribble Slate' to play with in the car on our trip and instead of Slate, Zachary kept pronouncing it "Slah-tay" as if the word were French, it was hilarious.  It made me laugh every time during the long day on the road!

As we were driving in the car one day, David was turned around (as much as he possibly could) craning his little neck to stare at Joel.  When Joel noticed, he pointed it out to me, and we all laughed about it.  Then Zachary piped up from the backseat, saying, "You need to put that on Facebook!" He knows me too well, I think... :)

The kids really like to help with the laundry - the most fun part is throwing everything down the laundry chute (which I LOVE having!!) One morning as they were working to empty David's hamper down the chute, I overheard this gem of a conversation: "If we work together, it will go faster.  Don't put your head in the hamper, Natalie, we're not bobbing for apples.  Dump it over like this.  Mom, we should do bobbing for apples sometime!" :)

SO thankful for my three blessings and the JOY they each bring to our home every day! :)

Preschool - Letters U, V, W and Easter Fun!!

We HAVE been doing school the last MONTH...I just haven't found time to post about it! :)  So, without further ado, here is a sampling of what we've been learning over the last few weeks - OH, and these pictures are completely and totally out of order, and I do not have the time or energy to get them back in order - the new uploader is not very helpful and always puts them in my post in a random order, no matter how I organize them before uploading.  Now, my randomly ordered pictures of school and Easter learning. :)

On the Thursday night before Good Friday, we celebrated the Last Supper together by eating soup and crackers and washing each others' feet and reading the corresponding Bible passages - it was very neat, and I hope we make it a yearly tradition!

This week, we studied the letter W!  Our Fruit of the Week was faithfulness, and we talked a lot about what that meant.

Zachary made a monster face out of playdough! :)

Natalie played playdough, too - and it was a jammie day!

coloring some whitecaps on their Wave W's.

We put glue on our background paper, then sprinkled sand onto it - the sand that spilled on the table became an extra sensory activity. :)  I didn't get a finished picture of our Wave W's! :(

Z's verse snake this week. :)

We used our leftover Easter grass for a sensory tub - I hid some Easter eggs in it. :)

Finding the eggs and some Easter stickers!

BIG mess to clean up!!! :)

We made Weather Windows (idea here)- Z DREW on his papers, I was so proud - drawing is something he hasn't been willing to try - he says things like, "Oh, I can't draw real things." and he won't even try - so I was very pleased that he tried!  He drew a sun, some raindrops, a cloud, and when I first asked him to draw snow, I said, "Draw something that makes you think of snow" and he drew his brain - HA HA! It is on the bottom right. :) Quite logical!!

Several weeks ago now, we studied the letter U! Our song was 'Jesus, You're My Hope' from the Sovereign Grace CD To Be Like Jesus.  I really loved teaching this verse to Zachary, he learned about tempting and the word endure, and we got to talk about the concept of always having a choice when you're going through temptation, it was very good.  Plus this is probably my favorite song on the CD, it is always a great reminder for me, not just the kids! :)

Zachary's Underground U (idea here) - he drew the long worm on the bottom middle, and the big and small circles are rocks that he drew, too!  He also cut the grass fringes along the top.

Natalie's Underground U - she cut her own grass, too, and she loves to draw circles - she gets so excited, throws her pen down and squeals, "Circle!!"  when she draws one. :)  (This is one way that my 2 learners are sooooo different - she is so far ahead of where Z was with his fine motor skills at this age but yet he knew all his letters and numbers by age two and she doesn't know very many yet. So interesting to me!)

Z with his finished verse puzzle! :)

Davey swinging in his bare feet!! :)  He is really growing up  - he'll be nine months next week! He can feed himself Cheerios now, and he is using his toes & arms to 'crawl' around everywhere now! :)  This means I can occasionally put him down now, which is a very convenient development. :)

Our weather has been SO gorgeous this spring!! This was our weather board one week in MARCH, people. Seriously, shorts in March, in western NY? Super weird. But totally awesome. :)

Making a U with our Alphabet Builders (idea here).

Natalie is all dressed up as a McDonald's worker, thanks to our friend who passed on her old hat and shirt! :)  She is cooking me 'fwies', her favorite McDonald's menu item. :)

We also studied the letter V!  And our Fruit of the Week was Goodness.  It is so important to remember that God is always good to us, and we can be good to others as well. :)

We made a Peeps Wreath! Unfortunately, I could not locate a wreath form as I was supposed to, so we used this circle of cardboard cut out of a pizza box instead. Hopefully we can do it right next year!  But six colors of Peeps still made it fun. :)  We just glued them on, and they stayed just fine!

Our finished Peeps wreath!! Loved all the colors! :)

The kids coloring the parts of their Vase V's.

Natalie's is on the left, and Z's is on the right - he did a great job coloring his vase and gluing it together!  Nat had a cold or something this morning, and threw a huge tantrum and did NOT want to glue her V on her page, so I did it for her...with the bad memories of this craft, I just threw hers away - have you ever had a craft like that, where it turned out cute, but the process of getting it there was not as fun as you hoped?

We matched these Valentine cards - counting the hearts and matching them with the corresponding numbers.

Z made a 'verse snake' with his verse puzzle. :)

We painted these cute wood flower picture holders. :)

Zachary painted a balloon on his face :)

So of course Nat had to paint her face, too. :)

Finished picture holders!! I hot glued them together. :) Z's is on the left, Nat's on the right. (I finished hers up.)

We left the day before Easter for vacation, so the week before that, I was busy getting ready, so instead of an organized week of school, we just did some fun Easter activities. :)  Here we are sorting jellybeans by color in an egg carton.

Sorting...and eating. :)

The kids dot painting on some cardstock Easter eggs that I made tape patterns on...(idea on my Easter pinterest board!)

The painted eggs...waiting for them to dry!  

The finished eggs! They ripped when I took the tape off! :(  A friend used masking tape on hers instead of the clear tape the craft instructions called for,  I think I'll try that next time.

This was our FAVORITE Easter activity - we put a piece of paper in a box, picked 3 colors of paint, dripped some paint in the box, and threw in 4 plastic Easter eggs - they rolled the eggs around to make patterns on the paper - it turned out really cute, and they had so much FUN working together on these! :)  Will definitely be doing this again! :)

I loved how they were working together to roll the eggs all around. :)

These were our finished products!!  You could use them as wrapping paper for small gifts. :)

So that has been our month in learning!!  Only THREE weeks of school left!!  It will be great to have extra time to get outside and lots of time to just sit and read books!  I am also getting really excited about planning for our fall school (official Pre-K for Z this year plus preschool for Nat and some things to keep Davey busy and learning alongside us), and reorganizing/decorating our schoolroom to make it more efficient! :)