Toddler for Hire

Friday, 26 May 2006

Monday, I was franticly looking everywhere for a talk I'd written back in March that I need to give on Sunday at another ward conference. For a number of odd reasons, I'd hand written this talk, and not written on the computer the way I typically do. As a result I cleaned out the computer desk and created a rather large pile of papers to shredded.

With school out and no schedule to stick to, this morning was the perfect day to shred papers and Samuel became my diligent helper. For nearly an hour he and I shredded documents. Once we got through my pile, we started searching the house for other piles waiting to be shredded.

While I sorted, Samuel shredded and then once the container was full, he'd dump in into a large black trash bag. We filled two bags with paper pieces. What I found suprising was that he quickly learned that envelopes didn't need to go through the shredder, so when he came across an envelope, he'd toss it in the trash bag and move on to the papers.



Saturday, 27 May 2006

Garage Clean Up Day. Sam helping GR salavage some shelves he was getting ready to rehang in the garage.

House Guests

For Christmas Emily got a Butterfly Pavilion - a pop-up mesh cylinder complete with post card to mail in for your own Painted Lady larva, aka caterpillars, to hatch your own butterflies at home. At the beginning of the month I filled out the post card and patiently waited for our larva to arrive. Monday night GR brought in the mail and there they were, 10 little caterpillars barely an inch long each. The peanut butter looking goop at the bottom of the "habitat" (jar) is what they eat. And the webbing - silk - is what they spun to help them more easily move around the habitat.

The kids and I have been amazed at how quickly the caterpillars grew and formed their chrysalides. Friday night the kids had a sleepover with Grandma and Grandpa, and most of the caterpillars had migrated to the top of the habitat. By Saturday they had started to form their chrysalides, and by Sunday night they were pretty much done.

The next step is to open the habitat (something we haven't been allowed to do until now), remove a paper disc that the chrysalides are attached to, and pin it to the inside of the pavilion and then wait for the butterflies to emerge. This has been such a great project!

I've been trying to ask Emily how long she wants to keep the butterflies in the pavilion before we let them go - since the temperatures out side are perfect right now for butterflies. She's still working on that concept. The idea that a butterfly doesn't have a life span like that of us humans or even other creatures, is starting to sink in. So we'll see how long they last in the house, before the children are ready to say good-bye and release them into the "wild" of the neighborhood.

Becoming a 1st Grader

Thursday, 25 May 2006

Today was Rebecca's last day of Kindergarten. They had fun little Mexican Fiesta to finish off the year, and their month long study of Mexico and Spanish culture. Rebecca has been quite interested in Spanish for the last few months... wanting to know how to say lots of different words and phrases in Spanish - of which I'm no help, my Spanish is barely at Sesame Street level... I'm not even to Dora the Explorer yet! So this past month she's learned a few songs and words for common things... baby, hand, etc.

I was asked to come up with a craft for the Fiesta and found the directions for a Mexican Bird Rattle which looked fun and do-able with a little prep work. I started saving toilet paper rolls and found a stash of them at my mom's house Mother's Day weekend which helped me complete my set of 14 needed for the class. As the prep work, I assembled the basic rattle closed the ends of the toilet paper roll, and taped the handle to the roll. Then let the kids, color and cut out the beak and bottom decorative strip. Then all they needed to do was glue everything together. It still took much longer than I thought... surprise, surprise, they weren't very focused... but the kids enjoyed the end product - they looked so cute! - and they used them to perform the Macarena for the parents who were there to help with the fiesta.

Rebecca wrote a really cute little note to her teacher, which we enclosed with a pendent I got for her on a jewelry website I love! Her teacher always wear's beautiful sterling sliver jewelry so I've been watching the site to find just the right pendent or ear rings to get her. I ended up going with an oval pendent with a mother of pearl center. Simple, classic and would go with just about anything. Rebecca's Thank You note to her teacher, went as follows... she dictated it to me, I wrote it out for her and then she copied it onto the card:

"Mrs. C____ , Thanks for the great things you have taught me. You are a wonderful teacher. Love, Rebecca."

P.S. We just found out Emily will be in AM kindergarten and Mrs. C (who I think is the head/senior kindergarten teacher) told me today she put Emily in her class! Excellent! We couldn’t be happier.