Some Snow, Glow Night, Nasty Colds and Olympics Week

The kids were thrilled to wake up to about 2 inches of snow Saturday morning. :) I talked them into waiting until around 10 for it to warm up a bit before bundling up to head out.  Makin is usually not enthused about going out when Lorelei is, so after watching her for a bit he usually changes his mind and decides to join her. It actually works well this way because she can last way longer than he can in the cold, so it evens out and they are usually ready to come in at the same time. They loved helping Brad. And of course, gotta end our fun with hot chocolate and marshmallows. :)

We had some fun playing Go Fish and Old Maid. I love the egg cartons to hold their cards and I love watching them think through these games.

We then had our first official Glow Night. We had about 4-5 containers of glow bracelets sitting in a drawer so we opened a couple and the kids wore them on arms and legs and as necklaces while dancing around to Christian rap music in the dark! :) It was so much fun watching how the music brought out their dance moves! The extra bracelets lit up the floor and they loved grabbing them and throwing the whole pile in the air to rain down. We put a couple in balloons for them to hit around. They also have a some light up balls they had fun throwing and chasing. They then took all of them to the tub for a glow bath to finish out the fun. Its a great way to enjoy the darkness of winter evenings! (I was so disappointed in the lack of being able to capture this memory! The pictures cannot turn out in the dark, and when I tried a video it just showed up pitch black. I just sat back and tried hard to remember how much fun they had. I guess if we do it a few times each winter hopefully it will be something they remember.)

More snow fun later in the week...We must have gotten a little more snow, but not enough to really do a lot. It has been so cold we really haven't been able to enjoy it! I have to set the timer for Lorelei, who will play out in the snow even when its "feels like -7" and crazy numbers like that. She loves it and loves eating it. We also tried out spraying the snow colors and making water balloons with dye and freezing them. They are supposed to look like marbles when they are done. (If you try it, I'd recommend it being a two-adult job, but then again I don't have a lot of water balloon filling experience.) Figured we better do all the snow stuff we can in case we don't have another chance!

So, I'm going a little crazy on the lesson plans and themes but its just the way my brain likes to work. I get into teacher mode and could look up pinterest and print things for hours at a time (and sometimes do!). It actually has me somewhat excited for the month of February! Anyway, I have a different theme each week and find lessons for Lorelei as well as games, some for just her and some for all the kids, as well as a craft project for all of the kids to do together that goes with the theme. This week, it was the Winter Olympics! :)

Just a few of our activities...
Painting Olympic rings and then turning them into ice rinks...I tried a variation from what I saw on Pinterest and learned that they needed to be laminated! The girl's projects had some paint mixed in with the ice, and Makin refused to add water and mess up his painting job, so I laminated it later before making it into a rink. We did plenty of coloring pages, patterns, clothespin cards, and number puzzles, to name a few. They also loved the matching/memory game, but I forgot to get a picture of that. It really helped them learn the sports!

Makin's favorite winter sport is hockey. "Because I just like it." (His answer for everything, so I had to push more to get him to say more) "Because it has a stick and they hit a puck."

Lorelei's favorite winter sport is figure skating because "they ice skate really pretty."

It has been really fun getting the kids into the Olympics. I grew up watching the figure skating quite a bit and Brad grew up with great memories watching all of the winter sports. Both kids were super-pumped to get to watch these sports we were learning about all week. After the first night they were pretending to be snow boarders in the hallway. :) They were very unimpressed with the opening ceremonies and just kept wanting to know when we got to watch the sports. We have had some trouble with the timing since its right before bed, so may be catching things on the laptop instead. The first night went something like this. "Why is he all sparkly?" "When is the hockey going to be on?" "When are the boys going to be on?" "But, Makin, she is wearing green!" "Why does he look so girly?"   Ahhh the fun watching with a 3 and 5 year old! Can't imagine how it will be next winter Olympics when they are so much older!

Contrary to all the photos, we actually had a bit of a rough time this week. At the end of last week the girls we sit ended up going home because of a fever that started going around Allie's preschool. Tuesday afternoon Makin came down with a fever that finally tapered off Thursday. He was pretty rough and when this little guy is sick he wants nothing but to be held by mom 24/7. Thankfully now we are all just down to the sniffles so hopefully the rest of us keep the easy part of the cold and get better quick.