Kids Say the Darndest Things 100

"I'm the littlest in the family not counting the cat so I get anything I want except another sister."

                              - Jenny

"Everyday I get a little bit bigger and everyday you get ... a little bit older and soon you'll be a grandma."

                             - Jenny talking to mom

Settling in over the Summer

It has been quite the Summer. We've pretty well settled into the new normal that has been permanent social distancing. When we first started nearly 6 months ago, it was quite a bit of an adjustment with practically overnight schools closing and moving to working from home. We have had a really quiet Summer not going on trips or to museums or any of the normal things we usually do. Missing just random interactions with strangers at the grocery store or park was something I was surprised at how much I missed at first. While all the changes were hard at first, we've settled in pretty well. It's amazing how you can get used to even big changes so quickly. 

We haven't gone to any splash pads or pools like we usually do in the Summer. We did find some ways to keep cool while social distancing. We got 4 water guns and have had family water gun fights. We've been running through the sprinklers. We've played in our backyard baby splash pad we've had for a few years. Then we also bought a slip and slide and have been playing with it a lot.

We've also been to the pond and lake near us and splashed around and been stand up paddle boarding which has been really fun and we've been able to do while social distancing.

We didn't do our normal big Summer birthday party but we did little celebrations at home. We did presents and cake and ice cream at home and spent the day on each of the girls' birthdays just playing with their new toys that they had gotten as presents. We were a little more liberal with the birthday spending budget as I treated it kind of as part of the entertainment/party budget. The girls love playing with their new toys so they both had really fun birthdays.

For Jenny's birthday, she wanted a vanilla cake with chocolate frosting with pink sprinkles and rainbow sprinkles and a #4 candle. She also wanted 'C' and 'c' shape cakes as in 'C' for cake. She's really into letters lately. They weren't too hard to make as I just baked them in pie pans and then cut them to shape.

Tessa wanted a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and a vanilla cake with vanilla frosting in 'T' and 't' shapes with a mermaid theme with rainbow sprinkles and a #6 candle. It turned into a bit of a hodgepodge of a cake but she was happy with it so I was happy.

Then the best part of making cake of course is licking the bowl!

Last Summer we read our first chapter book - Charlotte's Web. The Lehi library had selected it for the Summer reading program. It took us the entire Summer from early May to late August. This Summer, with it being harder to get library picture books, we've spent a lot of more of our reading time reading chapter books. We read James and the Giant Peach, Holes, and the Phoenix of Destiny, as well as half of The Boys Start the War. We did little parties to celebrate finishing each book which made it fun.

We read James and the Giant Peach first and did it as a book group with a cousin and sister-in-law in our circle so it was really fun to get to have the party with a friend. Tessa made decorations for the party.

We made ladybug hats.

We played a matching memory game that had pictures of characters from the book to match with descriptions.

We decorated cupcakes like ladybugs.

We made paper airplanes decorated like birds tied to a peach.

We made dirt cake with gummy worms.

We also made centipedes from green grapes, did quiz questions about the book, and watched the movie of the book. We had a lot of fun with the party! For our Holes party we made baseball caps like Stanley wears in the book.

We ate sunflower seeds, onion rings, and sploosh (the food not the shoe deodorizer) on waffles.

We made our own nail polish like the Warden does in the book. We used kool-aid though instead of snake venom.

We acted out the whole book like a play. We also "dug" for treasure. The girls didn't want to dig real dirt so I buried their treasure under blankets and they had to find the right pile of blankets. For the treasure, I put gold wrappered candy in a suitcase. The girls had a hoot finding the the candy.

Then we also watched the movie Holes. It was a really fun book and a fun party. Next, we read Geronimo Stilton and the Phoenix of Destiny. It's not a book I would have picked but it was a free hand me down book we already had on the bookshelf and one the girls asked to read. It's a chapter book with lots of pictures and humor kids enjoy; they loved reading it! For the party, after finishing reading it, we made a dragon craft since there are many dragons in the book.

Then we also played this chasing game where we pretended to be characters from the book. We also made extra chewy, extra chocolaty chocolate chip cookies like Geronimo makes in the book. Then we also did some quiz questions from the book and we watched an episode of Geronimo Stilton.

It's been a fun if not unusual Summer. Some of it has even been good. We've gone on a lot of family walks and bike rides and hikes and spent lots of time at home as a family just playing and doing crafts. It's been a little bit nice to be forced to slow down when I used to be so "go, go, go" particularly during the Summer. It's been a bit of a transition but I think I've settled it by now. At the start of quarantining, I regularly googled, 'How long are we going to be quarantining?" and "Will school re-open in the Fall?" but by the end of the Summer, I feel like I've settled in and even appreciate some aspects of the change. We've even decided to homeschool/online school this Fall. It's been a lot of preparing but we start next week and I think it will go well. Wish us luck!

 

 

Kindergarten Graduation

 Belmont had a little Kindergarten Graduation, which we did as a car drive by where we picked up Tessa's "diploma" curbside. So that was kind of fun. I took a picture of Tessa with her little diploma when we got home. Tessa was pretty excited after getting it told us multiple times that she was a first grader now.

To help celebrate, we made a graduation cap out of paper and embroidery floss. So it was fun to see her wear it around the house and be excited.

I've been really pleased with Belmont. I've been really impressed with how quickly they were able to adapt. Schools closed on a Monday in mid March and by that Wednesday the school had packets for us to pickup curbside and had online eduction. I was really impressed with how much Tessa has been able to still learn online too.

With Tessa doing schoolwork at home, we had Jenny do some too. She would often watch the more fun lessons like music with Tessa. But we also had her do some workbooks to work on her letters and handwriting. I had bought a pile of dollar store workbooks ages ago and we never used them but we pulled them out this Spring and they have been great for Jenny. I think the way Jenny is sticking out her tongue to help her concentrate is super cute. 

Shortly after closing the school, Belmont also threw a little parade where all the teachers drove by all the neighborhoods in the school's boundaries. We made some chalk art to thank Belmont for their hard work as I really appreciated all they had been doing. The girls had fun making signs and decorating to get ready and then enjoyed seeing their teachers and a fire truck and a DJ that came by in front of the house.

Easter

This was the first year that Tessa really, really wanted to know if the Easter bunny was real. I tried the whole trick of saying "What do you think?" when she asked and that worked for about a year but this year she begged for me to tell her until I finally did. She did pretty good with not telling Jenny.

We usually do Easter at grandma and grandpa's house in Nephi but we did it on our own at home this year.

The girls seems to have had a lot of fun with it.

We had a lot of fun getting ready for Easter leading up to it. Here Tessa is in the fun bunny ears she made.

We made and played pin the egg in the Easter basket.

We also colored eggs.

Then we also learned about the religious reasons behind Easter and Passover. We made resurrection roll and talked about resurrection. We also learned about Passover and made matzah and watched The Prince of Egypt. Then we also did a humanist Easter tradition where we wrote kind notes to each other, put them in eggs, and hid them for each other to find. So we had a really enjoyable Easter.

Staying home - staying busy

We've been staying home with the Covid-19 pandemic. We've been trying to keep busy to stave off boredom. The girls have been doing a lot of playing particularly playing pretend and dressing up. Jenny is dressed up as a rockstar below. She picked the outfit herself and I think she was feeling pretty cool in it.

We've been staying busy by getting really into chalk art. Instead of just randomly drawing, we'll pick a whole scene that we want to draw and then the kids will play pretend in the scene. For instance, we'll draw a beach scene.

Another popular scene has been a castle scene complete with throne room, dungeon, and moat.

We even created a chalk art obstacle course that was nearly a block long.

There has been A LOT of taking apart of the couches to make something fun to do. Here the girls have made a royal throne to sit at. 

Most commonly, we'll take apart the couch to make a fort.

Lately, we've added themes to the forts too. The other day we made a haunted house fort and cut out paper bones, rats, spiders, and bats to decorate the fort with. Crushed forts are fun for pirate ships or gymnastics courses or sometimes they're set at slope and turned into slides or pretend treehouses or climbing walls.

We'll also take the couches apart to make obstacle courses. Here Tessa is running an obstacle course David made for her. He'll time her too just to make it a bit more fun.

Tessa has been doing school online. I like her set up she arranged for herself here. It kind of reminded me of myself.

She's been doing really good working hard on her schoolwork everyday. When they first announced school closing, I was nervous because she had been making so much good progress since starting kindergarten and I was afraid that would stop but I was happy to find that the online school has been great she has been making a lot of progress still.

We've been playing boardgames and card games. Here I am teaching Tessa how to play Set.

We've been doing puzzles.

I've tried to keep busy with coming up with fun activities to incorporate practicing writing. In one, we pretended that Tessa had lost a favorite toy (I hid it). She then had to make a missing poster for the lost toy. Then after completing the poster, I walked by the poster and pretended to be someone who had seen the toy and pretended to call Tessa and told her where I had seen her bear.

We also did playing pretend restaurant where Tessa made the menus to practice writing

Then just for something fun to do, we went backyard camping. It was too cold to spend the night outside but we did the rest of the camping stuff. We set up the tent.

We hiked up the to big house at the top of the hill near our house just to have a bit of a hill to go up and a destination to make it to.

And we roasted hot dogs and s'mores in the fire pit in our back yard.

Desperate for something new and fun to do, when the girls asked if they could sleep in the hallway, the other Friday night, I relented. They wanted to be right next to each other and I wanted to make sure they didn't block access to my room causing me to step on them on the way to bed. The solution that everyone was happy with ended up putting Jenny part way into the laundry room - LOL. 

The Lehi library announced that it would be closing so right before it closed I checked out as many books as the library allowed - most of them kid's picture book. A month after it closed, we had read all of them and were itching for some new books to read so I actually wrote a few little books and printed them. I printed them in black and white and used clipart images so the books doubled as coloring books. So that was kind of fun.

The kids have found other random little ways to stay entertained too. Here are a few: