Dancing Queen

Today was Eva's very first dance recital and she absolutely amazed me!  I have to admit- I was convinced my shy little love wouldn't get up on the stage, let alone dance but I was wrong.  She danced her sweet little heart out!  It doesn't hurt that one of the songs her class danced to was Laurie Berkner's "We Are the Dinosaurs" and we all know how much Eva loves dinos.
Here she is in her recital outfit:

And here she is showing off her dance moves, complete with a dinosaur roar:

Hippity Hopping

I love that Eva is at the age to start enjoying playing hopscotch!  We drew a simple 1-10 one on the driveway the other day (with the words "go" and "stop" on each end since she is starting to read them).  Eva loved hopping from number to number and even practicing counting backward.

I also drew a bunch of circles and she pretended that they were lily pads and she was a frog.  So much fun!

The options for hopscotch are endless!  You could put letters in boxes (or circles) to jump to in order to practice letter recognition, alphabetical order or even spelling words.  Shapes or colors would be fun to jump to also.  Or you could just ask your little one what they would like to jump to- that's how we came upon the lily pad idea.  Have fun hopping!

Dandelion Painting

We are guest blogging about all the fun we had painting with dandelions over at Greening Sam and Avery today.  Stop by and say hi!

We're Back!!!!

Thank you to all of you who have been so patient over the last few weeks.  I have definitely been in a bit of a blogging slump.  I don't even know if slump is the right term.  It's more like blogger's block.  I've done a lot of reflecting and come to the conclusion that I'm just not loving the direction I decided to take the blog this year.  While learning about new places is fun and exciting, it doesn't seem to be enough to keep Eva's (or my) attention.  I think I was just too structured in what I planned for the year and then I felt trapped.  So I've decided to let go of my need to plan out everything and go more with the flow.  Occasionally I will still do theme weeks and the like, but now that Eva is old enough to initiate her own ideas and select things that interest her, I'm going to let her be my guide.  Throughout the next week I'll be sharing some activities we've done that I felt didn't "fit in" with my plans and therefore didn't post.  (I swear, we haven't been sitting around staring at the walls lately!)  Thank you again for your support and I can't wait to be back in the blogging world!

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there who love their babies with all their hearts!  You are all amazing!  A very special wish to my mom- the woman who taught me so much about being a good mother through her everyday actions and endless love.