Valentine's and Homemade Ice Cream

Yesterday was a family flop. Today's an unofficial kindergarten day - as in we just are doing the activities and skipped opening routine.

Matt's making homemade ice cream today, and the girls are helping.

In between, we are making valentines for friends.

And suddenly the valentine making turned into playing hot and cold finding the valentines.

Noel's valentine making is taking longer than everyone else's because she needs to make 6 - one for each Joy School friend for the Valentine's Day party tomorrow.

Reading Marathon and Game Day

Today we had a reading marathon and a game of Monopoly Jr. in the place of normal school because I was low on energy.

Cousins in the Middle

Today we started Mom Class - printing and laminating Joy School things to make the next Joy School binder. Then THE and Melissa and Vidalia showed up. Yay! We took a pause from school to play with them.

After they left, Amy wanted to do the word search I made the other day, but she couldn't find it. So she chose listening to a book on CD. She wanted The Hobbit, but I finished that yesterday, and Daddy took it back to the library. Then she wanted Don Quixote which we are also listening to. It wasn't in the car... (where is it right now?) so we opted for Gulliver's Travels which we are also listening to right now. (They aren't always available at the same time at the library so I start a new book even if I'm in the middle of something I had to turn in because of due dates.) So we listened and kept printing Joy School stuff.

Noel chose blocks for her activity. It's still all around.

Hodge Podge

Today it was hard to convince Amy to have school because she was doing word searches (she's obsessed, and we think it's awesome that she can do them though she can't read.)

Finally I decided that we could make word searches for Mom Class. She was all aboard for that one. It was fun. She wrote family names and other words she asked me to spell.

For activities, we did a little word search/ puzzle book play, each in our own.

We read a couple books including finishing a graphic novel version of Huck Finn we've been reading.

In between all of that I put Eliza to bed and got her up (she didn't sleep) and prepared a grocery list for Matt. Amy kind of said she wanted to do that with me but then didn't. She was a bit distracted today. I'm glad she settled on some books. Amy always likes books.

School at Barnes N Noble

Today we had school at Barnes N Noble. It was fun! We:

picked up Daddy's birthday book. (I stopped by before his birthday, but they didn't have it in stock and had to order it.)
looked around a lot
played with legos
looked at wedding books
carried around gift bags
played with pillows shaped like cupcakes
played little pianos on books
identified children's books that we own
played on their little stage
acted like animals
did some ballroom dancing
hide and seek
had intermission
avoided signing up for the kids club thing that just meant a bunch of annoying emails
had a great time

Lots of Hiding

Today was a struggle with attitudes. We got a delay to the start, and I did the minimum number of activities to not totally hurt anyone's feelings and called it quits to avoid further frustration. The kids are playing nicely downstairs, and I'm going to take a little break. :)

Mom class was a Spanish lesson.

Amy tried to choose Trafalga. There was no way I was up to that choice myself with the three kids.

Noel chose a hiding game.

That led to Amy choosing hide-and-seek. They really don't have the idea yet. They hide ALL THE TIME, but they prefer to jump out and say, "Surprise! I was hiding." They often do that before the person even had the chance to know they were hiding.

So that was it. We may go to Trafalga for FHE tonight. We'll see.

A Big Change

Mom Class: Print and Laminate Joy School things.

Noel: Hair cut. (Amy got a hair cut earlier in the day, and Noel wanted one too. So we did that at the beginning of school. I got mine trimmed while we were at it. The girls got quite a lot off and have matching bobs. They look cute!

Amy: Pinball computer game.

Then the girls chose picture books to read during our closing routine instead of the usual scripture story.