Our fall weeks so far have been filled with lots of fun things including going to lots of parks, playing with friends, learning time, playtime, reading books, library story time, BSF (Bible Study Fellowship), and swimming lessons during the day, and lots math tutoring in the evenings for me. Here are a few videos and pictures to bring us up to date!
On Mondays we usually get all of our errands and housework done, including groceries, cleaning, and laundry. We do try to squeeze in some park playtime, though! Here are a few pictures of the kiddos playing at "The Dinosaur Park" by our house along with our favorite neighbor twin girls, Faith and Noelle.
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| Noelle, Faith, and Summer "jumping" off the side of the park. 1, 2, 3 GO! |
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| Summer is master of the "Big Kid" stuff now. |
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| Colton LITERALLY wants to do EVERYTHING his big sister does and will follow her all over trying to do everything she does...he can't, but he likes to think he can:-) |
Here is a little video of Summer, Faith and Noelle playing Ring Around the Rosy.
On Tuesdays, we like to go to library story time, were Ms. Sarah does a great job putting together songs, actions, poems, and books for a half hour of fun! Summer loves to do all the actions, and wrote the "U" and the "E" on her name tag this time. Colton loves the "sticker" nametags, and singing "Happy and you know it stomp your feet"!
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| Ready for library story time! |
The kids still love reading their library books as much as ever and we usually have between 20-30 checked out at a time. We often spend between a half hour and an hour (sometimes more) just reading. And when I need to be doing dishes, cleaning, etc, it is not uncommon for me to find the two of them looking at books! Summer likes to read them (she memorizes the words when we read them and then reads them to herself.) Colton likes to be like his big sister :-). He loves any book that has a truck in it!
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| A common sight at our house.... |
On Wednesday mornings we go to BSF. BSF stands for Bible Study Fellowship. While I attend the women's Bible study (this year we are studying the book of Matthew), Summer goes to the
kids program where they learn the same lesson as we do, sing the same hymns we do, and do all sorts of other fun things! Colton also gets taught about the love of God. When I drop him off, they ask for a prayer request for him so they can be praying for him as they love on him. They also sing hymns to him and teach him about God! When I picked Colton up from his class this morning, the teacher told me that Colton learned that Jesus loves him. Here is a little video of him telling so....
On Thursdays, we have swimming lessons and Grandma Kirkwood comes over to play. Grandma took this video of Summer doing her favorite things at swimming lessons: "The rocket".
Fridays are often our day to go to the zoo, do a play date with friends, go to a
Mom's Club activity (this Friday we are going Apple Picking with Mom's Club), etc.
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Summer and I usually do preschool after lunch while Colton starts his afternoon nap. While last week we focused more on
Reading and Writing , this week we focused more on math and science. Summer was very interested in Tigers this week (since our library story time theme was Jungle Animals) so we checked out a non-fiction book about tigers and read that together. (I learned a lot too!) She also LOVES the piggy bank that Grandma and Grandpa T gave her for her birthday, so several times this week we dumped out her coins, sorted them, named them (pennies, quarters, nickles, dimes), talked about how many of each make a dollar, counted them, and did addition and subtraction. She is getting better at her addition and subtraction in her head and can add 2 or 3 to small numbers now. (For example, if I ask her....I have 3 pennies and you have 3 pennies, how many do we have together? ..she can say 6 without counting them). When we add unlike numbers (like 3 + 4) she knows to count them to find the total. She loved it and kept asking for more "maths". Of course, at the end of the lesson we get to "feed" her piggy bank--and she loves doing that!
It is harder for me to find one-on-one time with Colton, so usually Summer "helps" me teach him. Summer likes to put all the shapes from his shape puzzle on one side of the room, ask him to go get one, and he will toddle/run over to pick one out and come back and put it in his puzzle. He always gets "hexagon" right, usually gets "circle" right, and the rest are iffy :) But we all have fun with the game and clap when he gets one right! Here he is doing his favorite puzzle (it has motor vehicles on it!) I have to laugh at how animated he is when he does puzzles.
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This week Grandpa T was down in the cities on business and the kids LOVED playing with him Monday nights! Paul shot these videos of them playing outside while I was tutoring. The kids LOVE this little $5 slide we picked up at a garage sale a few months ago!
The kids kept Grandpa busy reading books, sliding, playing hide-and-seek, and "playing" piggy bank with Summer :). Great to see you Grandpa T!!
