Fish!

Today we learned all about fish:

They live under water.

They are vertabrates which means they have bones.

They breathe with gills instead of lungs.

Dolphins and whales are not fish because they breathe with lungs like us, and they "nuh nuh" (nurse) their babies.

We had some fun with fish vs. shark tic tac toe, and some fun fish puzzles. You can try this one:

the last few weeks...

We have music time quite frequently...
For Halloween we made spider web cupcakes- Moose is quite the baker! He loves to use the electric mixer- and he doesn't need Mommy's help!

Moose went to see the dentist for the first time, so we talked about oral hygiene and we're working on flossing.

With Thanksgiving coming up we did some turkey art projects and talked about what we're thankful for. We listed everything then prayed & thanked God for them.

Here are all of Moose's recent art projects: the turkey we just made, another turkey from a fun Thanksgiving themed playdate, and Bob & Larry from Veggie Tales. (The spin art is from Family Fun Night at church last year)

And our big project was making our own Christmas wreath ("from scratch"- we used hatmaking wire & green garland) Moose picked out the decorations himself!

Last Week, in reverse order

We did some gardening. A month or so ago we planted yellow squash, lettuce, basil, parsley, chives, rosemary, tomatoes, peppers, and cilantro. Here you can see the squash is thriving. We're not even sure what everything else is. Next year we will label what we plant!


We learned that plants need water to grow...wait Moose, we have to turn the hose on first!

We've been doing story time & then a related art project. Our favorite book so far is "How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon?" by Jane Yolen & Mark Teague. Last night we read this book 4 times! (Appropriate since the doctor gave us some medicine that Moose is not fond of, so he's learning from the dinosaurs that you have to be good & take your medicine if you want to get better!)

then our related art project- a Diplodocus (we've become very fond of just slamming the markers into the paper- it's Moose's trademark)

Here Moose is learning about the letter F:

Also last week, we read Noah's ark in our toddler Bible, and then we did an art project with stickers!

Apparently the Elephants didn't quite make it on board the ark, and the monkeys are flying over it...creative liscense ;)

And only 1 zebra made it- since for some reason the sticker pack came with 2 of everything except the zebra. Our work with the flash cards is paying off, as Moose was able to tell me that the rain was blue- even though it was light blue, and he's used to seeing royal blue when we talk about the color blue.

Yes we had class last week

but I took all the pictures in raw format, so I'll have to convert them all before I can post them here. getting around to it, I promise. We had some fun projects to share.

Art Class Fail

Note to self: my child is too young for painting.

We decided to try watercolors, since I found my old watercolors from college, and I wasn't going to be doing any painting any time soon. Besides, he begged.

I told myself not to freak out because he was going to mix the colors. It was inevitable. And like I said, it wasn't like I was going to use them again. I did not freak out when he mixed teal with every other color in the pallette. (Although I did gently encourage him to use one color at a time- or mix it on the paper). But then he decided to pretend to drink the water, and then he dumped the water all over the table...art class over.

So we did Sesame Street flash cards again...the good news is he knows more colors & shapes than last week. And he's definitely just messing with me when he says the wrong colors- I can tell when he's just guessing & when he actually knows.

Speaking of shapes- we walked to the post office today, and on the way back the school crossing guard helped us cross with her hand-held stop sign, and Moose recognized it from his shape cards and tried to tell her what shape it was, except I think he said hexagon (not sure, he was mumbling, and the cars were loud), but still, that's pretty close, and it's kind of an advanced shape for a 2 year old, I think.

We also went over words that start with the letter D...his favorite was dump truck.

Field Trip #2

Today we took a field trip to the zoo with our friends Holly & Landon. The most fun part was playing in the big tree!
Then we had to do our favorite zoo thing- feeding the lorikeets!
Here the boys are breaking the rules & going over to the birds instead of waiting for the birds to come to them:

The birds can tell Mommy is a bird lover, there are always at least 2 on her at all times.

Moose was brave and actually fed the birdies until they were full this time- and none of the birdies "crunched" him!

Here you can see him in action:

When we got home we had art time & made our own lorikeet! Scissors + glue stick= fun times!

C is for Cookie!

Each day we've been going over a letter of the alphabet & all the words that start with it. Today was C, so we decided we'd color, cut, and cook. So Moose colored in his letter c with his crayons, while we talked about [Larry the] Cucumber, cats, cookies, Cranky & Clarabel (from Thomas & friends), and the crab from Nemo.

then it was time to cut:

We are very careful to keep our other hand out of the way:

Then we decided to make Chocolate Cookies!
We didn't have chocolate chips, so we grated some semi sweet chocolate squares- Moose thought it was better to just eat the squares right out of the package. (P.S. we couldn't cook in our nice Eli Manning jersey)

Then it was time for tasting!