Broom Tree

Here are some photos from our time at Broom Tree...finally! This really is a beautiful place, and fun!

Outdoor play just outside our cabin. 

Matilda enjoying the motorcycle at the playground.

Tavin is a good climber, he did pretty well on this.

This was a fun playground! Tavin made some girlfriends.

They were grabbing handfuls of rocks, climbing up the steps, going over the bridge, throwing the rocks down the slide and then sliding down the slide. They did this over and over and giggled equally hard every time.

Another view outside our cabin. Ah! Bare buns!

Another view outside our cabin. Beautiful, isn't it? I think our cabin had one of the best locations.

The pool! Tavin and Matilda enjoyed some floating around. Those floatys weren't even ours, people were very nice about sharing.

A view from inside our cabin. It was a rather decent size with a nice kitchen too. If we go next year we'll be a little more prepared now that we know what to expect....and, ahem, remember our pillows.

Something about rocks make Tavin want to do this. 

Sweet girl.

Off we go on our nature walk/Stations of the Cross Trail.

They can't resist picking up sticks wherever they go.

Harvest Time Preschool - Week Five!

Harvest Time Week Five
Primary Book: Pelle's New Suit  
Enrichment Book: How We Use Wool 
Activities: Weaving Project
Field Trip Idea: Yarn Shop
Art: House of Cards
Poem: Johnny Appleseed Song 
Flower Fairies: Kingcup Fairy & Coloring Page

Pelle's New Suit is an adorable book. One of our favorites so far. The story teaches a good lesson and the illustrations are darling. The copy we picked up from the library was an Inter library loan and in very fragile condition. I think the copyright was 1959. I put the book safely out of reach after every reading. Matilda loves to randomly attack innocent books, ripping paper is one of her favorite things to do. Don't EVER give her a pop-up book unless you want it destroyed.

Here they are shoving pipe cleaners into the holes of our steam basket. Great activity. They love pipe cleaners and any of our kitchen items, put the two together and they will be entertained for a surprisingly long time.

Dropper and water transfer. Next time we'll try it with food coloring, spruce it up a bit.

Counting with horse chest nuts. They got a lovely basket filled with horse chest nuts for a birthday present from a friend. What a wonderful idea! Very Waldorf. 

The weaving project. 

I made looms from card board box flaps and yarn as suggested in the curriculum. This is another one of those projects that is about the process and not about the product. The "weaving" lasted longer for Matilda than it did for Tavin but they both played with the yarn quite a bit in many other ways. A ball of yarn is almost as exciting to a toddler and a preschooler as it is to a cat. 

We went to Michael's to pick out the yarn. Our trip to Michael's was pretty fun for the kids, actually. Many neat things to look at in that store. I let them each pick out some yarn and they thought they were getting the coolest "toys." Tavin picked blue yarn and Matilda picked pink yarn. Funny how that happens, I didn't encourage those choices either. They both wanted to hold their yarn on the way home.

Before we left for Michael's I said, "Ok, let's get ready to go buy some yarn." Tavin said, "Are we getting a cat?!" 

He makes me laugh. So many kids books that have pictures of cats in them almost always show the cat with a ball of yarn. He doesn't miss a thing.

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We picked out some fun costumes today. The kids love playing "dress up" and with Halloween around the corner and a gift card in my wallet, I thought it was a good time to get some costumes. 

Matilda Bugs Bunny

Matilda the Fairy

Sir Knight Tavin

Tavin, I mean, Woody The Cowboy

Officer Matilda

For Halloween, Tavin wants to be Woody and Matilda wants to be a police officer. That may change, of course, but I think they are excellent choices.

Harvest Time Preschool - Week Four

Harvest Time Week Four

Primary Book: The Little Red Hen

Enrichment Book: Grains to Bread 

Activities: Quilt Square

Yello Cake 

Art: Kitagawa Utamaro 

Poem: Little Boy Blue 

Flower Fairies: Review Week 

We were coloring on brown bags, just for something different.

We made yellow cake to go along with The Little Red Hen. This got rather messy. The kids were a little rambunctious and at times couldn't agree on who stood where on the learning tower. I'll have to come up with a different approach for our next baking experience. We also made some delicious chocolate, butter cream frosting to go with it. It happens to be my birthday today, so the timing was great!

They were playing with a new molding clay here. The clay has a neat texture, it's fun to just squish it in your hands. Tavin was ripping the yellow clay into little pieces. He said he was making baby ducklings.

Fun at the easel. Tavin took a moment to give me a smile.

Imagnets. These are really neat. You make the pictures on the cards with the different shaped magnets. I love that they came in their own carrying case.

The mini sandbox. This is a fun thing to bring out every now and then. It entertains Tavin for quite a while.

Here they are coloring on fabric squares with fabric markers. We are going to make a Harvest Time Quilt at the end of the semester. The curriculum calls for a different technique with paint, but I thought markers would be better for the kids. Quilt making is out of my comfort zone as it is. Grandma Sandy will step in and help us out, thank goodness.

This week we also went to Kindermusik, cousin Cecilia's volley ball game, the Gillen's for dinner and play, a puppet show at the library and Grandpa and Grandma Erickson's for play. Grandpa and Grandma have a pretty cool back yard with two large pine trees. The pine trees are natural, ready made tree houses. Perfect for littles. The puppet show was cute. It was fun to watch the kids' expressions as they watched the puppets. We went on a nature walk and saw three deer! A mother and her two children. The mother seemed to appreciate that we were both out for a walk with our children. 

We went to Party Land today to get Curious George birthday party supplies for their combined birthday party tomorrow. The cake is decorated with Curious George riding a train! Absolutely perfect. 

Harvest Time Preschool - Week Three

Harvest Time Week Three
Primary Book: The Rusty, Trusty Tractor 
Enrichment Book: Tractor (MACHINES AT WORK) 
Activities: Tracks in the Mud
Field Trip Idea: Lawn Mower Store
Art: Children’s Games 
Poem: Little Boy Blue 
Flower Fairies: Mallow Fairy & Coloring Page

Watercolors! Tavin said his painting was of an anteater. The finished painting actually did look like an anteater. 

Tracks in the "mud." I just mixed up our good 'ole Melissa and Doug paint into the muddiest color I could. We gathered up a few things from around the house that we thought would be fun to roll in the paint.

The monster trucks and tractor were excellent choices for making tracks. Both kids started out so clean.

They both decided that their feet would make good tracks, and they did.

Matilda sat in the paint, which also made good tracks.

I found the Annie's farm shaped pasta at Hy-Vee. Perfect for our tractor theme week. We also just love anything Annie's! (I couldn't resist showing a picture of them, they're cute.)

Fun with scissors. Tavin isn't concerned with being very precise yet. He just wants to cut the paper into as many little pieces as he can.

More Do-A-Dot markers! This week was the letter "M." I think the blue marker will run out first. He usually picks the blue.

Here we are at the Tractor Supply Store. Our main field trip of the week. Benjamin and his mom, Lindsay, met us at the Tractor store. Tractor Supply has some pretty neato toys. Hmmm, what to pick?

Here they are having fun with the cones. 

       They stacked and unstacked the cones and re-arranged the cones in a few different ways. 

Tavin always enjoys sitting on a lawnmower.

This lawnmower must have had some interesting buttons.

The tire section was rather entertaining too. The kids bounced and rolled the little tires around. The employees didn't seem to mind us but they probably thought we were way too easily amused.

We switched Kindermusik classes. The class we were in only had kiddos Matilda's age. We didn't think that was best for Tavin. They were kind enough to let us switch to an older age group even with Matilda. In the new class the kiddos are more Tavin's age. Matilda seems to hold her own just fine.

We still visited the library this week, of course. In fact, I started referring to Before Five in a Row for book ideas to get from the library. It's fun to check out random books but they can be hit or miss. FIAR's books have been a huge hit at our house. Highly recommend them.

Matilda had a birthday! She's TWO now! Time flies. She had her two year check-up already. She's doing great! Long and lean. Surprise, surprise. 

Harvest Time Preschool - Week Two

Another fun week at the Lewis Preschool! Before this week started off we spent a weekend camping (in a pretty nice cabin) at Broom Tree for a Homeschooling retreat. We had a lot of fun making new friends and swimming, running, hiking, playing, grilling .... I'll post some photos of that later.

Harvest Time Week Two
Primary Book: Beatrice's Goat 
Enrichment Book: Milk:From Cow to Carton 
Activities: Butter Battle 
Field Trip Idea: Bakery 
Art: Siyavush Plays Polo 
Poem: Little Boy Blue 
Flower Fairies: Fushia & Coloring Page

Here the kids are blowing out the candle after circle time. (Don't fret, the candle is placed up where they can't reach it or bump it during circle time) For circle time I light a candle and we say an opening verse with actions, we sing a few movement verses, we say a closing verse with actions and then we blow out the candle. Circle time can be hit or miss. Sometimes they are all about it and other times not so much. Blowing out the candle is probably their favorite part. 

After circle time we update our weather calendar. Then we look at the tags on our clothing to see where they were made and find those countries on the map. (Idea provided by Nana.) We talk about where we live too. Tavin knows our address, next we'll work on him knowing a phone number.

Then it is free play for a bit. I don't want to push a not quite four-year-old boy into a lot of seat work too early, causing him to burn out by the time he is ten. Kids are capable of many things but there are parents who put too much pressure on their young kiddos to do things before they really should be doing them. It's unfortunate and I don't want to be that way. Ever. 

 I keep reminding myself that this is preschool, after all. For an article from another like-minded mom, go here. She probably articulates it better than I do.

The letter of the week was "F." The kids colored pictures of things that started with "F" and also did tracing and letter poking. Letter poking is when I draw a large capital letter and a large lower-case letter with a black marker on a sheet of paper and give them toothpicks to poke along the letters. They hold the paper up to the light when they're finished. They think that is pretty neat.

Bean and pasta sorting. Matilda ate some pasta while she played with it. *Crunch, crunch*

Tavin likes to play with these large nuts and bolts. Very creative.

They kids and I made herb and parmesan bread in the bread machine. They enjoyed dumping the ingredients in and watching the machine spin the dough.

When the bread was nearly finished we started making butter. The kids were having a lot of fun with the shaking for a while but I ended up taking over. 

Our finished products. Delicious. (There was a lot more butter than this. The butter pictured here is just from one jar.)

After Kindermusik we went out to lunch and then on a nature walk. We collected baby pine cones to bring home to our mini indoor sandbox. The kids also played with many sticks and rocks along the way, of course. We even found letters of the alphabet on our nature walk. Tavin loves finding "T" for Tavin!

Matilda is examining a leaf while Tavin is using a stick to pick up her shoe.

Do-A-Dot Markers! These are a hit in this house. More letter "F"

Here Tavin is sampling a piece of cookie at Great Harvest Bread. Our "field trip."

Tavin and Matilda share a laugh at Great Harvest Bread.

Tavin helped peel carrots and chop potatoes for our pot roast dinner this evening. He used the Wavy Chopper with my assistance. Don't be alarmed, it's kid friendly.

We also had a couple of trips to the libraries of Sioux Falls during the week. At the Main Library a librarian invited us to the back room to see where the books go once they are returned. It is more high tech than just dropping your book in some slot. It is all electronic now and very cool! Tavin and Matilda thought it was neat to see the books getting sorted and dropped into bins by a conveyor belt. 

Ted was traveling again this week but we (I) managed to keep distracted while he was away.