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Spring Is In the Air and In My Sink

Elephant Lunch

I started out slow today.  It is Wednesday and that is 'kids day' so I did not jump right into activities. I spent some time doing some necessary cleaning that I don't have time for during the rest of the week and helped the kids clean up their room. 

It is much nicer to conduct activities and lessons when the house feels clean. :)

After our cleaning I spent an hour on the computer while the kids enjoyed the space.  

So funny how it always feels new to them.  :D

They ran from my room the theirs, slid on their knees, and watched themselves make faces in the mirror.  

Now they were hungry so I made lunch (the above picture) I was thinking last night while trying to fall asleep that elephant shaped food might be fun.  I had no ideas on what I was going to do until I cut the PB&J in half then it all came together. 

Once lunch was done me and the kids went into the playroom and played elephants for awhile. 

Then I left to play downstairs while I went upstairs to set up our
Spring Sensory Sink
Spring is in the air and I had no 'E' or 'elephant' ideas for a sink so I went with Spring. 

I used 
  • Coco pebbles
  • Potato peels
  • Foam stickers
  • Small pots
  • Popcorn kernels
  • Fork (rake)
  • Spoon (shovel)
I hid some snakes in the 'dirt' for the kids to find and the popcorn kernels served as the seeds.  

I do not have garden play tools so I used utensils.  

Everything was dry at first. 
They smelled it and it smelled like chocolate!
They were too afraid to touch it with their hands first so they used spoons. 




Then in the hands went! 



Next was tasting.  Spencer had no interest in tasting but Athena tasted both the Coco Pebbles and the Potato peels.
"Mom please add water."






They stirred and stirred and giggled.  They were also pleased with the crackling sound the cereal made when it got wet! 

 This ended up being a great sink for all senses.  
And really messy! 
Two soaked kids, a wet kitchen, and


 Smiling (ish) faces.  

After clean up and my lunch I had another activity setup.  We started to make elephant faces out of paper plates.

We discussed color mixing to make grey before starting and the kids enjoyed mixing their own paint for their elephants. 

Observing Athena to pick up technique.


 Athena asked for more white to make her grey lighter. 
We used square foam paintbrushes and it took awhile for them to get the hang of it. 
Spencer ended up smashing the foam down to try and soak up the paint.  Obviously getting grey paint on his hands.  Once he noticed he asked me to wash his hands.  He doesn't really like to be dirty. 

 Athena realized that using the tip got the best results and then started 'stabbing' the plate. 

 I love her expression! 




Spencer attempted the stabbing too.

When the paint dry's we will glue it all together and I will post pictures of the finished project. 

This was all we did today.  I had a couple of other activities planned out but my interest was lost because of misbehaving. 

During the Sensory Sink the kids splashed water everywhere!  They have never splashed the water in  sensory sink before.  
I have a very small kitchen so the water was on everything, no joke, everything, along with coco pebbles. 
I did have the kids help clean it up so it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  

Between projects (and during the sink) the kids were not getting along.  Athena was antagonizing Spencer and he was whining (oh how I hate the whining).  Neither one of them were using their manners.  
So we had a talk about this. 

During the paint activity Athena started painting herself with her paintbrush.  She knows better then to do that.  Paint is for paper not for people.  

I know that I was not in the best mood today because of some personal matters with bio parents that I have do not want to deal with but have to.  

I realized that it was me and not the kids disobeying them just being kids so I put them down for their nap and grabbed my bible.  

This helped me a lot.  The rest of the night went smoothly and I am looking forward to a great day tomorrow! 

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