Pulling Up

Joy's newest accomplishment.
Nap time just got a little harder.

Little But Mighty

Joy is crawling!
For the past month and a half, she has been SO close and every week I'd say, "She'll be crawling by next week for sure" and every week she was more mobile (she would scoot like a seal around the room) but not crawling. I was getting impatient because Claire crawled at 5 months and Joy is almost 7 months; although according to the doctor we should adjust her age by one month since she was early so she is a 6 month old when it comes to milestones.

Just a few days ago she started staying up on her knees instead of taking a break on her tummy between steps. She is quite proud of herself.

Poor girl can't even crawl with out big sister being in her face.

She is a lovable one! All 13 lbs of her (still).

Good job little big girl!

Bubble Art

While Joy was napping this morning, I decided to try making bubble art with Claire. I mixed water, dish soap and tempera paints in cups, put straws in and let her blow bubble to her heart's content.I saw online that you are supposed to blow the bubbles over the edge of the cup and then lay the paper on top of the bubbles.

So we did that for the first picture.

It was tedious to do one at a time (for Claire) so she tried blowing all of the cups and then putting the paper on.It was great fun to try to keep all of the cups "bubbly" at the same time. She loved this and thought they looked like ice creams.On our second paper, I had her try setting the cup on the paper and blowing the bubbles til they overflowed.
As you can see, not the greatest results either way...

but she had a fun.

Another Ballet Class

Right after Claire's last ballet class came to and end, we signed her up for another with the same teacher and same location. I mostly decided that would be best to try to avoid the first 2 weeks of crying and being "shy" but it didn't help.The teacher had some fun new things for the girls in this class including ribbon crowns and ribbon sticks along with new butterfly wings that weren't misshapen or falling off. Yay!All of these photos were taken during the last class "performance" I could tell Claire did much better this time than the last class. She was more confident and capable.

They performed the same butterfly song and the same "Jack in the Box" song but they did a little ribbon dance....

and their main dance was new.

Here is a clip of the main dance. It was the worst of the dances but it gives you and idea of what the poor teacher dealt with for 6 weeks.




The video starts abruptly because we missed the first part due to Claire having "itchy buns" and she had to come over and let is know. You can see that the itch is back closer to the end of the performance.

Claire's main problem is that she likes to watch her neighbor rather than her teacher. The curtsy at the end is hilarious.

A Sunday Ride

This past Sunday, my friend Sara let us come over and ride her horse Jack Pot again. It's been over a year and half since the last time we rode him. Claire was so excited all day until it was time to go to Sara's house. I have never seen her so willing to clean her room and play area.

Sara had him all ready for us which was very kind. Getting horses ready to ride is ridiculous.

At first Claire rode by herself while Sara led Jack Pot around. This was all fun until Jack Pot shook really hard. Claire hung on tight but after that she was nervous he would do it again so she wanted Sara to ride with her.

They were going pretty fast for a little while! I admit I was a little nervous.

Later, I got to ride for a bit and then Claire came with me.

Joy was there too! Here she is with Mr David.

We had a fun time!

Colored Rice and Caramel Confession

I am constantly on the look out for new ideas to use in my AWANA Puggles class. I am finding the 2 year old age group a difficult one as the abilities of a just turned 2 year old are a FAR cry from the abilities of a 2-almost-3 year old. We are in the second half of the year now so the children are all much more able to handle things than they were when we first started.

This week I decided to do colored rice art. I've seen this idea floating around various preschool blogs for awhile now and I'm feeling adventurous this week so I thought I'd give it a try finally.

I always let Claire test out the ideas before I present them to my group of Puggles. That way I can find and fix any issues and prevent mishaps. (Although, Claire is a bit more capable than 10-16 2 years olds with supervision spread among 3 adults.)

First, I let Claire squeeze the food coloring into the rice. We had a mini lesson on mixing colors and how to make green, orange and purple.

Then I set the rice in the sun to dry. One tutorial said it could take anywhere from 5 hours to 2 days to dry but this is Arizona so they were dry in about 20 minutes.

Claire cautiously sprinkled the rice onto her gluey paper. She doesn't like to be messy anymore.
I guess she is growing up:(

The finished product...When I asked her what it was she said it was a picture of eggs. "Easter eggs?" I asked, trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. "No, just plain eggs." she said. Okay.......

I put the rice in my handy dandy containers and they are ready for Puggles tomorrow!
Oh, oops, should I be ashamed of picture? Naw, but if you saw the other dozen of Trader Joe's dark chocolate covered caramel containers in my cupboard I might be.

Some of them are from my mom, I promise! I asked her to save them for me because they are perfect for storing things like paint, play dough, and colored rice.

But since I brought them up, I must ask. Have you tried them?!?!?!

They. are. to. die. for.

Kites!

Last week, we were playing outside on a windy day and realized that Claire had never flown a kite. Today, we picked up a pack of 2 at Dollar Tree and tried them out.

They flew amazingly well! Claire was in awe the first time it lifted up into the sky.

She liked trying to catch it as we were pulling it in.

At first she didn't quite understand that she couldn't run toward the kite as it was flying and that she needed to keep tension on the string.

But by the end of the afternoon she was a pro kite flyer.