It's a Bird's Life

This month is brought to you by the Peregrine Falcon.

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/peregrine_falcon/id

Mister has a tendency to get really focused on one thing and will not let it go.  If you guessed his latest obsession is the peregrine falcon. 

" Hey, did you know that the peregrine falcon can fly 200 mph? If it was flying on the highway, it would get a ticket for flying that fast." 

"Did you know they eat other birds?"  

All day long I'm learning about these birds.  Unfortunately, we won't see one of these birds in our backyard, but that's not stopping him from looking every day.  In the meantime, we are learning about birds.

To kick off our month, here is their Backyard Bird Sensory Bin.

• Green Rice - Grass
• Seeds for eating
• Birdhouse
• Duck Pond
• Nests
• Eggs
• Flower for nectar
• Insects for eating
• Labels
• Backyard Bird Toob plus a hummingbird
• *I will add a tree when I find a branch (we have no trees and no sod right now) or my trees, which are probably packed in a box.

Lila Doll Review

The Wee One has two goals in life:  To be a bakery (yes, a bakery) and to be a mom.  For Christmas she asked Santa to bring her a pacifier doll.  Santa spent countless hours reading reviews of dolls and putting them in and out of her Amazon cart.  Finally, with a week to Christmas it was do or die for that pacifier doll, which she had not stopped talking about.

Here is what we, Mr. and Mrs. Clause decided would be the perfect doll:

Corolle Lila

Those Corolle dolls get me every time with their sweet smell and cuddly bodies and then I look at the price.  It's a good thing I had a major coupon for Creative Kidstuff or I would still be looking.

When she threw up her hands and screamed, "Pacifier baby!"  that is when I knew I nailed it...or so I thought.

We are almost 3 months removed from Christmas and while she loves her pacifier doll, Carly, it is not her go-to doll.  The Wee One still has a soft spot for Ladybug's first Coroelle doll.  She is often annoyed with the crying and turns Carly off, which is totally fine by me - You've never heard a parent say a toy is too quiet.  The pacifier and the bottle are easy to insert in the doll's mouth, but I wish the pacifier would have come attached to the wrist or with a clip. We ended up using a ribbon to tie the pacifier to Carly's wrist after I spent hours (hours!) searching for it.  The doll is a good size, soft, and smells divine.

Overall I think this doll is a good doll and far less annoying than a lot of other interactive dolls.

It's a Baby Thing

Poor June. Poor sweet number four June is defiantly the baby.  She wears hand-me-downs times three and gets recycled gifts.  The good news is that she's not my test model so there's that. 

Her March box of crap (treasure basket) was one of the Wee One's favorite.

All About Brushes

You Drive Me Wild, Valentine!

Just tuck this in your back pocket for next year.

Amazon Prime add on stickers + Avery design and print online = You drive me wild, Valentine. 

Factor in that I didn't have to take four to the store in tundra weather and you have a winner, folks. 

Art Tackle Box - A Review

This year my husband and I decided to have a small Christmas with more focus on family and less focus on stuff.  That stuff seemed to pile up in the corner, spill out of the basement playroom (an entire basement dedicated to toys), and eventually spend more time in Toy Time-Out than being enjoyed. 

The kids were asked what they wanted and Ladybug, who loves artys crappsy kinds of activities, asked for a blue art tackle box or better known as the Lakeshore Arts & Crafts Supply Center.  Over the next few weeks I kept asking nagging because I wanted her to be really sure and she kept saying the same thing.  Really though this thing looked like my worst nightmare. 



Lakeshore Arts & Crafts Supply Center

Now, I was skeptical because:

A.  It had a lot of awesome supplies and those supplies would end up everywhere.  Remember that stuff that was in Toy Time-Out?  I was mentally adding the blue tackle box to the list. 

B.  I had a coupon for half-off. Was it too good to be true?

C.  I could only find reviews where the product had been supplied by Lakeshore and reviewed.  Now, I know that these reviews are suppose to be unbiased, but I wanted a review not associated with a coupon or Lakeshore.

I gave Santa the green light and now we are the proud owners of a blue art tackle box. 

 

We've had the blue tackle box for almost two months and it is used every single day.  My concern was the awesome supplies would be everywhere, but it seems the novelty of the small clear boxes helps keep her supplies organized. There is enough variety in supplies that it keeps all of them interested and creative. 

 

 

I would recommend to blue tackle box to any budding Martha Stewart.

 



Dropping the Ball

Do you know that awkward greeting when you've been meaning to talk to somebody for a long time and you keep putting it off?  Maybe time escaped you and then you kept putting off the shifty eyes and that bumbling, "Hey.."     Yeah, I know the feeling - Hey.

I would love to tell you that I rode off into the sunset, wine in hand, angelic kids signing sweet songs off to the tropics.  That's not what happened.  We are still in the tundra, but made the BIG move five minutes from our old house.  No more babies sleeping in the closet and no more Learning Room. 

We had a baby.  Our sweet June Bug was born on June 19th to complete our family.  Mister was not impressed with another sister, but he really is the best big brother to three sisters.



Is she not the sweetest? 

We are officially in crazy town putting our house on the market a month after June Bug was born, two in kindergarten, one in preschool, one in diapers and moving an entire house less than a week before Thanksgiving.  Now that I've started to regain my sanity, I'm ready to get back to some of the things I love and try new things. 

Rrrr, I'm Gonna Eat You - March Work

This month we have been talking about food chains and dinosaurs.  Honestly, I am not too interested in dinosaurs as a stand alone topic and neither is Ladybug, so to appeal to more than one person in this family I have attempted to combine the two.  

We started the month talking about herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores and the dinosaurs that fit into each category.  The dinosaur toob has been a great resource for this month.

Each time I have introduced a dinosaur I have given a fact sheet and a coloring sheet from Enchanted Learning.

Match the carnivores with the picture and name.  Each dino has their name on the underside.  We also discussed features that made the carnivores alike.

We have also talked about the animals that are not extinct.

After Mister and Ladybug had a good grasp of what eats what we moved on to who eats who with food chains.

Simple Food Chains 

Apparently a cactus grows in the savanna.  Mister and Ladybug pick a producer and two consumers to make a food chain.

More Complex (Complete) Food Chains

Chose the pictures to make a food chain and label the omnivore, carnivore, or herbivore.  

Art

How to draw a dinosaur!

Math

Number writing practice because who doesn't love a white board?

Fill in the missing numbers on the dinosaur eggs.  This was defiantly a challenge activity for Mister and Ladybug.

Game for two

Literacy

Dinosaur egg sight words (Mister's word) .  Ladybug is reading Biscuit books (her choice) and Mister is reading sigh word readers.  

Sight Word Soup - This game is played like Scrabble Soup, but with sight words.  Each sight word is written on a card and a chip.  One person picks the top card and shows the sight word.  The players put in their spoon and scoop out sight words written on wooden circles and blank circles.  When they find the the sight word they call it out and put it on their board.  When the cards are all gone the person with the most wooden sight words wins.

Practical Life - Name Writing

The Wee One

Two of the things on her shelf

Sensory

Dino feet prints

Dinosaur eggs

March?  Not so much in the tundra, which is why we are still in our pajamas in some of these photos.  I mean it's hard to get out of them when the windchill is still hovering around 0.