Super Fun St. Patrick’s Day 2010

Okay, so I’m kind-of known in my family for taking millions of pictures, but unfortunately, it’s been brought to my attention (again) that people rarely get to see any of those pictures.  Somehow, even though being a stay-at-home mom with no kids in school shouldn’t be very time consuming, I’m ALWAYS, EXTREEMLY busy.  And blogging has been, unfortunately again, lower on my priority list.  But it is important to me, and I do REALLY want to do something with all these millions of pictures I take.  Pictures to me, really is how I journal.  Events and activities anyway.  I do keep a journal as well, and I put other thoughts and feelings down in there.  But pictures is how I chronicle (is that how I’d say that?) my and my families' lives.  I’m going to try to better, but I’m just going to start with these.  They were what were up on my photo filter on my desktop when I was reminded that my family don’t get to see any of the pictures I take.  And since it was such a fun day for us, and I took the pictures really looking forward to sharing them, I thought it was a good place to start.

I’ve been blogging officially for over a year now (I can’t believe it!).  A few posts ago, I pointed you to last years’ ‘Super Fun St. Patricks Day,’ and I thought it would be fun to show you this years.  If you know me and/or keep up with my blog at all, you’ll know that I love holidays.  I love doing a bunch of activities focused on a theme of any kind really…. (I’m going to be a great preschool teacher some day. :)  )  As I’ve said before, I love the opportunity they give for teaching and learning, and doing some fun and special things with my kids, and making memories.

I want you to know also, that I don’t post these pictures to get a hundred ‘good mom points’ and comments about how awesome I am.  I post (this post in particular, and also all posts) for a couple reasons…. 1) To share my ideas with anyone who can use them in hopes of letting you have a little more fun with your family, 2) just to share with my family, far away friends, and close-by friends some snippits of our lives, and 3) to journal/record/scrapbook some of some of our day(s).

With (all) that said… here we go with our Super Fun St. Patrick’s Day 2010!!

For first breakfast: the leprechaun turned our milk green, and left us a box of Lucky Charms!  A special treat because we usually don’t get sugary cereal like this.  Note: I really am a very health-conscious person… I try really hard to eat and serve healthy foods every day.  But I also do special things at times, especially on special days.  So… I’m sure we ingested more than our fair share of green food coloring this day… sorry if that disgusts anyone… lol… we had fun doing it though.  :)  

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next, we made green jello, so it could be ready for a snack later.

      Snack:

 

We didn’t get to this last year, and I missed it, so I made sure we did it this year.  For second breakfast.  :)  (Don’t worry… my kids definitely eat enough for two breakfasts… and they were a couple hours apart…)

 

 

Amazingly, the kids scarffed them!  I didn’t think they would, but they loved them!  Score!  That was a really fun activity… getting to watch the food coloring change the eggs color.  And any time I can bring reading and books into activities, I’m in heaven.  I love connecting literacy to life.  Its the teacher in me I guess.  Readers are smart kids.  Smart kids struggle less in school and life.  Who wouldn’t want that for their kids?  I want, more than most anything, to raise readers.  Readers and artists.  (That’s a soapbox for another day. :) )

 

So… Moving on, (and yes, most of our activities centered around food… most of our day centers around food actually… I swear these kids eat more than I do…)  Anyone who knows my kids knows they’re ALWAYS hungry.

So next is lunch: clover shaped sandwiches with green mayo, & kiwis.  Yumm-o!

Then we did an art activity… mixed green glitter in glue and painted a shamrock with it.  After they dried and we cut them out, they turned out so pretty!

Next, more food coloring!  Green cream cheese bagles with green sprinkles!  Huge hit, of course.  What couldn’t be with sprinkles involved?!

A CD I picked up at a thrift store a month ago, that we listened to… literacy, art, and now music into the picture!!  I can just see my kids’ brains enlarging!!  :)

Another activity – coloring a picture and filling the ‘pot’ with gold.  Great fine-motor!  (Yes, I am a teacher… what can I say?)

And, after a day-o-fun, we finished it off with a delicious green dinner, complete with green shamrock napkin rings!  The menu: Green Chili’s Casserole (remind me to post that recipe sometime… Delish!), Green beans, green salad & green jello.  Want to be even more impressed (I know I said I wasn’t posting this to impress anyone, but this part is definitely impressive…)?  I didn’t PLAN any of this until the night before.  All the food I already had!  Yay me!  (It probably would have been better to have planned before, but that’s besides the point.  That’s with the exception of the Lucky Charms and green jello, which are not staples in our home, and I’d bought the week before  in anticipation.  But everything else, for all the other meals and snacks, I had on hand.  Lucky me!!  (Since I DIDN’T plan ahead of time…)  I got creative.  You’d never have known' I came up with it all as I went though huh!

And, finally, for dessert, one last treat/activity.  Making a pot of gold snack mix (darn!  I just thought about these little black pots I have for putting salsa and guacamole in that would have been perfect to put this snack in!  I’ll have to remember that for next year!)  Anyway… Lucky charms, pops for the ‘gold nuggets’ and green m&m’s (which were left-over from Christmas m&ms… resourceful!

 

Yeah… I’m a little chincy on the candy… there are a couple down there though… see them?

And finally… two happy children and a fantastic day.

I know it’s April now, but Happy St. Patty’s Day Everyone!

Oh Boy!

Thanks Hillary for doing the work for me on this one!

Click HERE for an adorable story about my sweet little girl, and this picture:  Too cute!!

Free Conference Preschool Age Journal

I made this journal for conference and I put it up on my sharing blog.  Hopefully some of you can use it this conference!

Real Simple Mag Cover

I hope you all had a great St. Patty's Day.. We sure did!  I'll post all about our adventures on my sharing blog (with a link here) later, but I'm so excited about something else I wanted to share now.

I just finished a photography course in San Francisco, which I have been LOVING!!!  I have lots to share about it, but I couldn't wait to share this one.  This was one of our last assignments, and I LOVE how it turned out.  I styled & took the picture, added the text, etc.  It was a fun assignment, and a challenge, and I learned a lot.

You like?

St. Patrick's Day Ideas

Last year, we had a 'super-fun' St. Patrick's Day.  I re-posted the blog post I wrote about it on my sharing blog.  I started this blog to give back ideas to the WWW... because of the many, many years I've been taking ideas from it.  Hopefully you can take a look and find something fun to do with your family.

http://crystalshares.blogspot.com/

Christmas in March (part 1)

Okay, so I’ve been busy, busy, busy (as always) and blogging has been a lower priority, but I still wanted to share some pictures from December.  There are a lot… but I’m tired of not posting what I want to post, in fear of boring you, so look at what you want and skip what you want.  I’ll never know!  :)  I’m just happy to finally be getting some up here!  AND, since my online journal is about to be integrated with blogger, I’m super motivated to blog more… now I don’t necessarily have to blog, and journal the same events!  How cool is that!?

Beautiful Haylee:

Picking out a Christmas tree:

Mmmm… Christmas pancakes.

Excuse the finger gouges in the gingerbread man pancake (ahem, McKay…)

Decorating the Christmas tree:

Daddy helping McKay decorate:

 

Just love this picture – Christmas tree lights - long exposure, hand held, motion intentional:

IT SNOWED IN CALIFORNIA!!!!  It really, truly snowed.  I didn’t get up early enough to see it really snowy… it was pretty icy by the time I got up.  But way too cool just the same.

Random picture from December: I found Haylee like this, talking on the phone.  She’s definetely going to need her own ‘line’ (I guess that would be cell phone these days) when she’s a teenager.  Can’t you just see her as a teenager talking on the phone, from this picture?  Too cute.

A fun little story: This is what happens if I don’t pay attention to my children for about ten minutes at a time.

I turn around and Haylee’s got the painting smocks on her and McKay… how adorable.

 

They had gotten into the paints.  Oh my.

But adorable just the same.

And this was (sadly) the very next day: McKay got into my stamping ink!!  What a (cute) mess!!!

Another sweet story: Haylee likes to ‘help’ McKay eat his food.  She is so sweet to him.  I love watching it.  They giggle and laugh together.. It’s the best sound.

 

Some of my favorite ornaments.  Aren't they beautiful?  I love them. 

Thanks for looking at our Christmas in March.  There will be more to come.

Happy Valentine's Day!

(click to enlarge)

Haylee’s Room Make-Over

We had a great time re-decorating Haylee’s room yesterday.  I wrote all about it on my new ‘creative adventures’ blog:

http://crystalscreativecourtyard.blogspot.com/

More about that later, but for now, go take a look at Haylee’s new room!

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Happy Groundhog's Day!

I love holidays. (If you haven't been able to tell before now.) I just love the opportunity they give to do some extra fun things, and do a little learning around a theme. I thought I'd share what we did today for Groundhog's day. I had fun with this day when I was teaching... reading books about groundhogs, making books, learning about shadows, doing shadow activities with manipulatives on the overhead, writing about fears (because the groundhog is 'afraid of his shadow', which is why he goes back in his hole if he sees his shadow.)

Today, is February 2... Groundhog's Day. In case finding out whether Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow or not, wasn't on your top ten list of things to do today, I'll tell you. He DID see his shadow, which means 6 more weeks winter is on the way.

Here are some pictures of the fun things we did to celebrate the day:

By the way, I've started a new blog sharing my teaching ideas etc.  I've taken a lot from the internet through the years, so I thought I would give back and put back out there some of the ideas I've gathered/compiled/come up with through the last few years.  So to see more information on these activities, including links & instructions, and for additional activities, go HERE.

Every good 'unit' starts with BOOKS! I love books! I use them to introduce every topic I teach. Today, we read these two that I made (actually, my aide's helped) when I was teaching. The first one is a class book we made where each student made a page and we bound them all together in a book.
Haylee & McKay made grounds hogs that popped up out of their holes, with a poem in the grass.
And Haylee worked (VERY hard, I might add...) on a coloring page. We talked about the letters she was coloring as she was coloring them and she learned the letter 'P' during the activity!
This is actually the first picture I've really seen her spend so much time on. Until now its been mostly scribbles. But I was VERY proud of her for spending so much time and working so hard on this one. She was so proud of her 'rainbow.' And I can't believe how well she stayed in the lines! I'm so proud of my not-so-little girl!Happy Groundhog's Day!!

November

I have sooo much blogging catching up to do!!

Here's a little bit.

Some of my favorite November moments/pictures:

Homemade apple pie Haylee helped Auntie Janeal make

Preschool Thanksgiving Party:

Wow......

Love this picture - it was during our huge 5 family garage sale... McKay loved all the stuffed animals.

This was so sweet... McKay was downstairs taking a nap and Haylee had been playing down there, but after awhile I realized it had gotten really quiet. I went down to check on things and there she was, curled up next to her brother, asleep on the couch. So sweet!

This was pretty cute too... Haylee and McKay came in the room like this... Haylee had put them on them both. Adorable.