Happy (belated) Valentine's Day

Since Drew, Hannah, and I were still in the hospital over Valentine's Day, we decided to celebrate a week later once we were all home.  Although I had a bunch of activities planned for V-Day, I downsized the plans and just celebrated over breakfast.  Of course we had to wear some sort of red or pink to get in the mood and the table was decorated to celebrate the occasion.

I made LOVE GOGGLES out of pipe cleaners for the kids to wear, although they weren't huge fans of them.  Ha!

A festive breakfast - heart-shaped pancakes, yogurt with pink sprinkles, a fun heart straw, and frozen pink milk ice cubes in their milk cups.

All dressed up in pinks and reds

Even Hannah dressed up for the occasion.

Both the kids got a Valentine's book

And there were a few pieces of candy in their little mailboxes.

Week 21 - Letter Q

The week before Hannah's arrival we did the letter Q.

Wikki Stix

Quilt lacing card

Letter Match

Size Sort

Pre-writing practice

Letter Maze

Poke Page

Letter Q Pattern Blocks

Grant was having fun bouncing on the exercise ball while Jenna worked.

Do-a-dot markers - very colorful!

Color shape puzzles

Letter Hunt - Letter Q was a tough one for her.  It's easily confused for the letter p, b, and d.

Jenna and Grant made the letter Q with their bodies and then used the stick for the "tail".

Color Page

Number cards - she did really well with this activity.  She did them all by herself and got them all correct.  I love how she tried matching the colored paper clips to the colors of the cards.  She's definitely my child.  ;)

Alphabet lacing - She spelled the word "quilt".

More color puzzles

Of course the kids used the iPad to do the Letter School app and the Starfall app.  Still their favorite!

Letter writing practice

Cutting practice

She used her pattern blocks to copy the quilt pattern.

For her ABC book, she taped q-tips to the letter Q.

Letter Q puzzle

Phonics page - I believe she was writing her name along the bottom.  She wrote "JEN", but then ran out of room and continued "NA" next to the J going the other direction.  I think it's funny how preschoolers will squeeze all their letters in wherever they can fit them, even if they're not in the right order.

Geoboard - She made the circle all by herself, but then  needed help adding the tail.

We played a matching game using quilt pieces.

A color-by-number page

Uppercase/Lowercase sort

Fine motor practice - balancing marbles on tees.

We used Quarters to graph the number of Quilts in each square.

Of course she added the letter Q to the coconut tree.

We also played a quarter toss game.  She had a cupful of quarters and had to toss them one-by-one into another container.  She actually did a good job tossing them in and really enjoyed the activity.

Boonshoft Museum of Discovery

We decided before the baby arrived, we wanted to have a fun family outing so we took the kids to a local museum called Boonshoft Museum of Discovery.  We had taken the kids once before, but that was a year and a half ago, so Grant was only 1 year old and Jenna was 2 1/2 years old. 

We all had such a great time!  It's always fun watching the kids enjoy themselves and explore new things.  Plus, we get to be kids again and experience it through their eyes.  It was the perfect outing before adding Hannah to the mix and adjusting to being a family of 5.  As Drew says, we've gone from man-to-man defense to zone!  ;)  We're officially outnumbered now!

Walking hand-in-hand up to the museum

Water play is always so much fun!  This was probably Jenna's favorite area in the museum.

Of course Grant enjoyed it too!

We watched a 3-D video titled, Sea Monsters.  It was about dinosaurs of the sea from long ago.  Thankfully it wasn't too scary for the kids and they were actually intrigued by it.

To be honest, I didn't know if they would last the entire video, but they did.  Grant kept saying, "bad guy" whenever he'd see a "bad" dinosaur. 

There's an awesome play area at the museum where you climb up the net and then can slide back down through an enclosed slide.  There are also a few more levels that you can climb up once you climb to the top. 

Jenna climbed up to some of the higher levels all by herself.  She loved it!

Jenna climbed through a tunnel and then could peek at a (fake) bear through the dome window.

Looking through the window at some meerkats.

In the Cassano's play area where you can pretend to make pizzas.

This recycling truck was so much fun.  There were wooden shapes of different recyclable items that the kids would stick in different slots on the side of the truck.  Then there was a button you could push at the back of the truck and it would spit them all back out into the recycling bin.  They played there for quite a while!

Jenna loved playing veterinarian.  Here she is examining an x-ray.  She collected almost all the stuffed animals and was putting them down for naps.  Then she'd pretend to write some notes down on a piece of paper.  It was so fun to watch her!

Again, they loved playing in the water.

Here they are helping with an archaeological dig.

Jenna really got into it and put on a glove and used a brush to uncover the different bones.  The "dirt" was just little black rubber pellets. 

I'm sure we'll be back to visit this museum again.  They had a blast!