Mini Preschool Fall Theme

I mentioned a few posts ago that we had finished letter day. I was sad to be done with letter day, but proud of us for making it all the way to the end of the alphabet. I liked having something on the schedule every Thursday morning, and have been wondering what we are going to do now, to fill that time slot. Suzy came to the rescue. She came up with the idea to invite a couple more moms with kids the same-ish age as ours and do a little mini preschool, having a different theme for each month, and then each mom would take one of the weeks and have a different assignment such as crafts, music/movement, cooking, etc. When we get together all the moms come too, which is nice, since the kids are still pretty young. (18 months to 3)

Today was the first day, and actually, the schedule doesn't officially start until October with the Halloween theme, but since we were done with letter day, and I had found a really fun painting activity I wanted to do, we decided to throw together a fall themed preschool day for today.

We started off by going on a fall walk. Each of the kids got brown paper sacks to collect leaves in. Turns out they all wanted to collect more than leaves. Lincoln was especially interested in pine cones and walnuts, not so much in leaves. Between Lincoln and Ivan we also got dandy lions, flowers, several rocks, and some vines. Lincoln was very distraught that he couldn't climb up the trees to pull the leaves down. But I do think everyone had a good time, and it was a beautiful day.

I should also mention really quick that I cannot take credit for the beautiful picture collages. That was Cali's work, and I stole them off her blog. :) But I did not have any time to take pictures of my own, I was too busy trying to sheep herd three children (oh all right, Adelia was strapped to me, so I didn't really have to herd her, but still) along the path and help them pick up leaves.

After our walk we came back to our house and the kids each got to pick which fall color of construction paper they wanted, and then they glued their leaves etc. to their papers in a collage. I pretty much left Lincoln on his own to do his because I was helping Ivan and trying to keep Adelia calm. Needless to say, I think Linc used about a half a bottle of glue, and he still couldn't get his pine cones and walnuts to stick. Oh well. I finally talked him into trying to glue some leaves down. Ivan needed a lot of help, but he chose which thing out of his bag he wanted to glue down, and then I did the glue for him and helped him press the leaf to the paper. I like projects like this because all the kids did about the same thing, walked around and picked up leaves, but their collages turned out so different from one another. That's what makes projects like this fun. My pictures aren't near the caliber of Cali's, but here are Lincoln's and Ivan's collages.

The next project I was really excited for. I found the idea for it here. Each kid had some sort of box, like a shoe box lid, or a cake pan, or a cereal box cut in half with the sides taped up. Inside the box we taped a piece of paper. Then I took red, yellow, orange, and brown paint and dipped an acorn in each color for each child, and we put them in the box and rolled the acorns around to make a cool abstract fall painting. Once again, each kid's painting turned out to be unique, and they were all great. And here are Ivan's and Lincoln's acorn paintings.

Cali brought an awesome snack that was so tasty and still somehow managed to avoid all the allergies we have in the group (milk, eggs, nuts, chocolate). They were pumpkin cookies made out of a spice cake mix and a can of regular pumpkin mixed together and baked at 375 for 12 minutes. Guess what I'm going to be making later this week?

Fall Trees

Have I ever mentioned that I love Fall? Oh, I have...well I still do. I also love fall decorations, something about the warm earthy colors just makes me happy. Unfortunately, we are poor students so we can't afford to buy cool fall decorations. Instead, I usually make my own by printing out online coloring sheets and coloring them myself and cutting them out and taping them in the front window. I will probably get around to doing that this year, maybe. But I figured since the boys are old enough to do art projects, that I could probably find ways to let them help me decorate. And it would be a two for one because not only would we get decorations out of the deal, but it would occupy them. :)

I found a really simple, but super cute craft idea here for making fall trees. Today turned out to be the perfect day too, because Adelia actually took a long nap in here own bed (which meant I didn't have to hold her! It also meant we missed the library today...oh well, you can't have your cake and eat it to I guess.) so we had a good stretch of time where I could easily help both boys with their project. 

To start out I traced one each of their hands connected to their arms, to make a tree trunk looking shape. Then I cut them out and glued Ivan's onto his paper for him. Lincoln got to use a glue stick and glue his own on. Then I gave Ivan some fall colored markers and let him draw on his for awhile, while I helped Lincoln get started. I took fall colored tissue paper and cut it into small squares and put them in a pile for Lincoln. Then I gave him some Elmers glue and showed him how to make little glue dots on his paper and then stick the "leaves" to it. Then I let him do his thing, but had to remind him every five seconds to make small glue dots, not big ones. Then I put glue dots on Ivan's paper for him and helped him stick leaves to the dots.

It was interesting to me to watch how differently each boy went about the project. I don't know if it was age or personality that made the difference. Probably a little of both. Lincoln did his very methodically. He started at the bottom and went up the side of the tree in a straight line, and then on each of the fingers, and then back down again to the bottom, and then up the center of the tree. He glued all his orange leaves first, then yellow, then red. And then filled in the rest at the end, with some encouragement from me. Ivan was all over the place. He didn't care about what color or where it went, he just wanted as many leaves on his paper as he could get. And when I wasn't getting glue dots down fast enough for him, he's just pick up the tissue paper and put in on the paper without any glue. And he kept asking for more.

I think our trees turned out cute, and I plan on hanging them in the window (in place of our tulips that are still up) when they dry all the way.

FHE: Follow the Prophet: Enoch

We've been pretty hit and miss with FHE since Adelia was born. I'm really hoping we're getting back into the swing of things. We're still working on our Follow the Prophet song...I love that that song has so many versus, it just makes planning so much easier when all I have to do is pick one. :) Tonight we did Enoch.

So of course we started by singing the song, the Enoch verse goes like this:

Enoch was a prophet
He taught what was good
People in his city did just what they should
When they were so righteous that there was no sin
Heavenly Father took them up to live with him.

Then we read the Enoch story out of the scriptures (which actually happens to be in Moses chapter 7, I always thought it was in the Bible. Go figure.)

For the activity, I showed the kids a picture of Jesus and explained that Jesus lives up in Heaven with Heavenly Father. I put the picture on the back of the couch and told them that was going to be Heaven, and down on the floor was Earth, where Enoch lived. I told the kids that Enoch and his people were trying to build a righteous city. We got out our white board and our wooden blocks.  We told the kids that being righteous meant doing good things that would make Jesus happy. We asked what are some things that make Jesus happy? And prompted them to come up with things like scripture study, prayer, going to church, taking the sacrament, listening in nursery, sharing toys with each other, helping Mom, etc. And for every thing they said they got a block so they could "build a righteous city" on top of the white board.

When they had a decent sized city built (and rebuilt, since Ivan knocked it over a couple times), Aaron lifted the city up into Heaven to be with Jesus (up on our couch).

We sang the song one more time, and called it good. I have no idea if they understood any of it, but they did have a lot of fun building the city.

Piglet Plunge

 Here we are nice and clean before the race. Linc is pointing to the first muddy hill we had to run up.

Aaron's brother Ryan and Ryan's wife Melissa started their own photography business called Flo Foto. They have recently teamed up with a race called the Dirty Dash, which is a 10k run through mud, to take the pictures of the runners doing that race. Aaron has been doing the website for them. Last week they went up to Idaho to do a Dirty Dash race. After the Dirty Dash they do what they call the Piglet Plunge, which is a smaller race for 2-12 yr olds with a lot less running, but still a lot of mud. When we saw the pictures of it up on the website, I knew I wanted to sign Lincoln up for the Utah race.

Krystal and Lincoln going up the muddy hill

Aaron said my punishment for signing him up for the race was that I had to run it with him. (Adults were allowed to run with their kids.) It wasn't much of a punishment though, since I was secretly hoping I'd be the one that got to run it with him. They gave us a small Dirty Dash logo to stick on Linc's forehead, had us sign a waver, and we were good to go.

The night before the race, I was telling Lincoln that he and I were going to run a race. He was really excited about it. I told him it was a mud race so we were probably going to get a little dirty. He thought about it for a minute and said, "But not in my eyes. And not in my ears. And not in my nose. And not in my hair." I told him we'd do our best to keep it out of his eyes, but I couldn't promise anything else.

 On the way down the hill we saw Aaron and Ivan and Adelia and stopped to wave at them.

First they had us run up a big hill that they were spraying a giant sprinkler onto to make it muddy. Once we'd touched the sprinkler we had to run back down the same hill, and then up the mountain side where they had set up a huge inflatable four-lane slide. They were spraying a fire hose down the slide to make it wet and slippery, and then at the bottom was a ton of mud.

Krystal and Lincoln and the viking standing behind us in line. Not too dirty yet... 

Because there were a lot of kids and their parents running in the Piglet Plunge, and not very much ground to cover, a line built up on the mountain side of people waiting to go down the slide. While we waited we got our picture taken with the viking standing behind us. People dressed up in all sorts of crazy outfits to run this race. Lots of people were in shirts and ties, we saw Tarzan and Jane, and one group of girls even had on long white formal gowns.

This video is of us going down the slide. When we got to the top of the line, and Lincoln realized that the fire hose was going to spray on us, he kind of freaked out. He was too scared to get on the slide by himself, or to even try running/sliding on it by himself. So I had to half carry half drag him, which made it a little hard for us both to get down the slide. Uncle Ryan was at the bottom snapping pictures, and he got some really great shots. When I get a hold of those ones, I'll post them.

We got soaked, and then came down into the mud. The mud was really slippery. I kept trying to get Lincoln to slide on it, but he was still a little apprehensive. I ran and slid on my bum to show him it was fun. And then tried to get him to come to me. He still didn't want to try it though.

He tried walking to me instead, but slipped and ended up sliding down on his bum anyways. :)

Here we are at the bottom of the muddy part after the slide. The next step is to run down the mountain side and over to the big mud pit. Now that we were done with the big slide, it suddenly became Lincoln's favorite part of the race. He kept telling me it was so fun, and he'd point to it and say, "I goed down the big slide!"

This video of Aaron and I interviewing Lincoln right before the mud pit is one of my favorites. The next video is of us getting into the mud pit. Linc was a little nervous about this one too, but I told him I'd hold his hand the whole time, and he seemed to be ok with it after that.

We walked over to where Aaron, Ivan, and Adelia were watching from the side so Aaron could take our picture. The mud was about as deep as Lincoln's waist in most places, sometimes a little deeper, sometimes a little more shallow. And it was uneven along the bottom, so you never knew if your next step was going to trip you up or not. I assume it was this way on purpose, so people would come out even more dirty. :) I was glad I kept a hold of Lincoln's hand though, to keep him from going all the way under.

The flags were put in as an obstacle I'm sure. They were draped just right so that you either had to lift them up and go under them dripping gooey mud on your head, or you could possibly try to jump over them. We opted to go under.

At the end of the mud pit was a big hill you had to climb up, and then slide down the other side to the finish line. The hill was pretty slick, and I had to push Lincoln up most of it.

Here we are at the top of the hill. I tried to talk Lincoln into sliding down head first, but he opted to go on him bum. I on the other hand, decided that it's not every day you get to slide down a mud slide, and since I was already dirty anyway, I went head first. :) I thought Aaron would approve.

We finished! While we waited in line to get our pictures taken professionally in Ryan and Melissa's photo booth, we showed Aaron our big strong muscles.

We went through the photo booth and Ryan's friend Garrett took our picture. I'll post those when I get a hold of them.

When we came out of the booth, we found Aunt Melissa, and Lincoln and I gave her a hug to get her all muddy. :) Linc thought that was funny.

I thought maybe Ivan was feeling a little left out and that he'd want to play in the mud. So we stripped him down to his onsie and I stuck him in a mud puddle. I was very wrong. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with the mud. At all. He stood there whimpering with his hands up in the air for me to pick him back up.

In this picture we are all standing in a large mud puddle, and a kid ran by and it splashed Linc in the face, and he was pulling such a funny face about it that I couldn't help but crack up.

Next we had to take the kids to the "showers". Which were just a bunch of pipes you could stand under that had ice cold water spraying out. I felt bad, both my boys screamed bloody murder the whole time I was washing them off. But there was no way they were getting back in our van as filthy as they were. Once we all got rinsed off and changed we loaded up and headed home. Such a fun day!

Of course both boys crashed about 10 seconds into the drive home. :) And they actually got descent naps out of the deal because coming out of the canyon we got stuck in football game traffic and spent the next 45 minutes going from the mouth of the canyon to our apartment. (Usually a 10 minute drive.) Gotta love Provo on a fall Saturday.

But really, we had such a good time at the race. I hope we get to do it again next year. And if anyone is interested in the professional pictures, check out Ryan and Melissa's website at flo-foto.com the pictures should be up by Wednesday.

Z Day: Zebra, Zoo, and Zigzag

Today was Z Day. I can't even believe it's our last letter. We've been doing letter days now for just about a year. It's been really fun. The kids have enjoyed it, and Suzy and I have enjoyed it. but more importantly, I think the kids learned something too. And if nothing else, we now have a whole alphabets worth of activities for Ivan and Adelia when they are old enough. :)

To start out the letter Z Suzy read Zeely Zebra to the boys. Zeely is a Zebra who wants to be on the racing team but isn't very fast. So she enlists the help of the cheetah and together they practice until Zeely is fast enough to win the race and be on the team.

After the story, Suzy gave each boy a paper with a Zebra on it. The boys put glue over all the zebra's stripes and then dumped sand onto their pictures. When they shook the sand off, the sand stuck to the glue and made the stripes colored.

After that Suzy read another book called Color Zoo, which used different shapes to make different zoo animals. It was funny to listen to the boys try to guess each animal. We talked about what kinds of animals you can find in the zoo. And then we made a zoo animal. Suzy chose to have the boys do monkeys as their zoo animal, since they act like little monkeys a lot of the time. :) She gave each boy the different shapes and they got to glue them to their papers and then color their monkeys. The boys put bars across to show that the monkeys were in the zoo.

Then Suzy played the song "Zippity Do Da" for the boys to listen to. She also drew a zigzag and a zero on the ground with chalk. While the boys listened to the song, they ran around the zigzag course. I think this was their favorite part. Of course we couldn't convince them to run in the same direction, so they frequently collided, but no one got hurt.

For a snack Suzy gave everyone zoo animal crackers.

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Adelia Update

Things in the baby department have been going much better lately. Knock on wood. A few things have made this possible.

#1 The discovery that Adelia likes to sleep on her tummy. Go figure. Although it shouldn't really surprise me because Ivan was a tummy sleeper too, and Lincoln could very well have been if I hadn't been too afraid as a new mother to let him do it. Sids schmids, if they'll sleep on their tummy, then on their tummy they will go. I make sure they're well ventelated and that I can hear them...but for the love, we've got to sleep.

This is just a cute picture of Adi with her bum up in the air while she's trying to get some gas out.

#2 The Moby Wrap. Oh. my. gosh. I love this contraption.

 I've mentioned before how Adelia is probably a colic baby, since she fusses for no apparent reason, especially at night. We were putting her in the Bjorn to keep her calm, and she liked to be there. But my shoulders could only take it for so long. Several people suggested trying a Moby Wrap, and after I looked into it a little bit, and asked around about them, I was very interested. I never read a single negative review for the Moby. The only problem was that they cost $40. No way could we justify spending $40 on a piece of cloth. But lucky for me, I also know several people who know how to make them, and they were kind enough to share their knowledge. :) And they aren't hard to "make" either. I had a 50% off coupon at JoAnn's so I went and bought 5 yards of a stretchy material that I liked (I think mine is 95% cotton 5% spandex, ribbed knit). The fabric cost me $25 and then when I got home I cut it in half down the fold line, so I had two pieces of fabric that were 5 yards long. Done and done. I can sew around the edges of mine if I want, still debating that one...and I can give the other one away as a present or use it when the first one is in the wash. All the instructions on how to use it are right on the Moby webite, with pictures and videos and everything.

Adelia really likes the wrap. And I love it. It's super comfortable. It doesn't put any weight on my shoulders or lower back. I feel like it holds her more securely against me, allowing me to bend over. It doesn't have any annoying buckles or straps hanging out all over the place. On Wednesday I canned 24 quarts of peaches at my mom's house and Adi was in the wrap the whole time and she didn't get in my way at all, or even start to feel heavy. She's happy in it and I get things done. It's a beautiful compromise.

#3 We've dropped one feeding. Hallelujah. Every time any of my kids have ever dropped a feeding I cheer. Not only does it mean more sleep, but it means less nursing. Don't get me wrong, I think breastfeeding is wonderful in the sense that it gives baby everything baby needs and has a ton of benefits--but let's be honest, I don't love doing it. And I only do it for the above stated reason. Oh, and because it's free :) Anyways, now-a-days Adelia's night time routine goes something like this usually. She'll either stay awake fussing until 1am and then sleep straight until 7 or 8am, or she'll go to sleep at 11:30pm wake up to eat around 3am and then sleep until 7 or 8am. Either of those options are doable.

And in other news, Adelia is smiling and starting to get chubby. Love it!

Y Day: Yodeling, Yellow Yarn Yaks, and Yelling

Today we learned about the letter Y. After I introduced the Y and told the boys what sound it makes, I taught them how to yodel. Nathan did a really good job of it, but Lincoln was too shy to give it a try. Oh well. To demonstrate yodeling, I showed a clip from The Sound of Music of the Lonely Goatherd song. I love the Sound of Music, so any excuse to show some of it is a good one. :) And the kids were really into it too.

After that we talked about yaks. I asked the boys if they knew what a yak was. They didn't. So I showed them this picture of Lincoln's Uncle Kelly riding on a yak in Mongolia, where he served his mission.

We talked about how the yak is part of the cow family, and how they live in cold parts of Asia like China, Russia, and Mongolia. People raise herds of yaks and use them for milk and to carry things.

After that we made our own yaks using the letter Y and some yellow yarn.

First we glued a yak shaped body onto a white piece of paper. Then used the letter Y for the horns and face of the yaks. We talked about how yaks have long hair to keep them warm because where they live it gets really cold. I gave the boys some small strips of yarn, and let them glue the yarn on their yaks for hair. Then we got out the markers and crayons and drew grass for the yaks to eat, and mountains behind them, where they live. Lincoln made his grass orange and blue, and his mountains look and are more like "pokey dots", as he called them. But I think these yellow yarn yaks turned out really cute.

For the last activity we went outside to play a game. I used Word and Clipart to find pictures of things that started with Y and I printed them out and cut each one into a square. Then I folded up each square so you couldn't tell what was on it, and stuck the papers in a bowl.

For the game, the boys took turns drawing out pieces of paper. Then we talked about the Y word that was on the picture. Then we had a yelling contest. We had to yell the word on the picture as loud as we could before anyone could draw out another one. The boys thought this was so funny. I'm sure our neighbors didn't appreciate it.

And I slacked on a treat this week and didn't do one. I thought of York Peppermint Patties, but didn't have time to run to the store, and yogurt, but didn't want to fight the battle of not letting Ivan have one when everyone else was. So I left it at no treat. Sorry guys.

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Fall Sunday

I love fall. It's my favorite season. Our little family started a tradition when Lincoln was just a baby, of driving up Provo Canyon and up the Squaw Peak road in the fall to look at the leaves changing colors. Aaron and I always enjoy it, but this year Lincoln got really excited about it too. He kept saying "We're way up high on the mountain! Look down there! We're way way up. Look at the leaves Mom, they're all kinds of crazy colors." And he jabbered on and on from the backseat the whole way up to the top. :)

Here is the view from the top of Squaw Peak. It was really hazy. Someone said something about a forrest fire somewhere. But the haze made the sun reflecting off Utah Lake look really cool.

Here are the five of us at the top. Aaron took this picture, but you can't really tell. He is good at faking candid. It was pretty windy at the top too. So we all look like models with our hair blowing in the wind. Ok, maybe not.



Lincoln and Ivan were at the height of their glory throwing rocks off the mountain side. Gotta love cheap entertainment. And I didn't get any good pictures of Adelia. The wind was blowing and she wasn't very happy about it, so she just burried her face in my shoulder for the duration.

Such a beautiful day. I LOVE FALL!!!