Week Twelve Recap

Monday:

Nothing better than a rainy miserable Monday to start off the week before vacation. Ugh. Luckily for me, the kiddos have been rather pleasant and we got to try some new activities this morning. After we got dressed after breakfast, I brought down the Chromecast and found some toddler yoga videos on YouTube. I found Cosmic Kids, which is a story-telling adventure while doing simple poses. I have never done for real yoga in my life, but I thought this would be fun to try. We started with Squish the Fish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cNjAj_o0SI and the kids lasted through the first five minutes, which I was impressed with. I think if I learn the story and the moves, I can prompt them and they might last for the whole adventure. It did end up with me in a plank position with both of them on my back, but that’s about right when it comes to the two of them! After we were all stretched out, we did some Greg & Steve songs and then we painted our Ladder L’s. We got a chance to read our new story---Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See (which I might have to make another felt board story for) and then got ready for nap. Our nap schedule was a little off today, so we didn’t finish lunch until about 3 and I had some straightening up to finish upstairs so we played up in Lily’s room for a little bit then came back down for fruit snacks and some TV time. It is supposed to be bitter cold tomorrow so I’m prepping for a few different projects and sensory activities to keep us busy and entertained!

Tuesday:

Remember that week of perfect fall weather we had this year? Yeah, I miss that. It is bitter cold today so we are stuck indoors again. Not that I have any desire to brave the wind and chill. Lily is currently sitting up in her bed zoning because the wind is so stinking loud. Brr. Anyway, we started today as usual with some breakfast and then did some yoga before we got dressed. I am enjoying the stretching and moving it provides before we start the day. The kids did a little bit of it today, so hopefully if we continue this as part of our routine, they’ll start to participate more. After some free play with cars, blocks, and then musical instruments, we started our Thanksgiving projects. First they each painted a paper plate brown (mainly because I have no brown construction paper, but it also was a good time killer). While they were painting I prompted them with questions about what they were thankful for. I asked what their favorite foods and toys are and who they are thankful for. Their answers were adorable as usual and I jotted them down on multicolored hearts I cut out. Once the plates were dry, we glued eyes, a beak, a gobbler, and our hearts to them and voila---Thankful Thanksgiving Turkeys!

Wednesday:

Man, I thought it was Thursday allllll day today. Bummer! But we did manage to get a lot of stuff done! After breakfast, yoga, freestyle dance time, and getting dressed, we did some laps around the house, straightened things up, and vacuumed. Once we got some of our energy out, we started our projects. First we glued precut ‘feathers’ together for our Toilet Paper Roll Turkeys! Then we glued on eyes, beaks, and gobblers onto our TP Turkeys and attempted to attach the feathers. Our Elmer’s glue wasn’t holding too well, so I ended up hot gluing them together during lunch. Our next project was making your basic handprint turkey. And then we added some footprint Pilgrims and Indians! They came out very very cute!

Thursday:

Today started off a little slow. We ate breakfast and did some yoga before getting dressed. They can get up to about minute five before they lose interest, or sit on me as I am trying to fold my body into an awkward shape. I have been trying to make it the full fifteen minutes myself but I, too, get easily distracted. The movie Sofia the First was on the Disney Channel and they became entranced which gave me a full ten minutes to prep a project and straighten up some stuff around the house. For our project, we made another crafty turkey out of a paper plate and some scrap pieces of paper. With the excess paper I had from other projects this week, I cut out some simple shapes for the kiddos to glue onto the paper plate to make Shape Turkeys! I cut the plate in half and on one half, we smeared some Elmer’s and the other half was colored brown. While the kids were gluing the shapes, I was asking them what colors and what shapes they were using. We added eyes, a beak, and a gobbler to complete the look. Added bonus--the only thing better than using fine motor skills to pick up and glue tiny shapes is using fine motor skills to peel dried glue off your hand! It’s slightly more mild outside today so after nap and lunch I might attempt a super bundled fast wagon ride, just to get us out of the house and switch things up a bit.

Friday:

Well, it’s Friday. I would like to say we did another awesome turkey project or tried out a new sensory project. But truth is, we did not. We pretended to take off in a space ship this morning and then floated through the house like astronauts. And then we just had free play time. I brought them up to Lily’s room after they ate lunch, put Frozen on, and attempted to pack, fold laundry, and post this blog while they were preoccupied. Tristan had a rough week with naps so I haven’t been getting much done, and I didn’t realize how much I appreciate but also need that full hour to myself. Today I was finally able to get him to go back to sleep in the back and play and suddenly a tractor appeared blowing leaves, a gang of motorcycles revved up the street, and my hopes of getting anything done during nap disappeared. We’re off a week so we’ll figure it out when we get back on schedule.