Meet My Mummy

This year Eva wanted to be a mummy for Halloween.  And not just any mummy, a "purple girl mummy".  This costume was actually pretty easy to make.  I cut out a pattern for a dress (because "purple girl mummies" wear dresses) by tracing one of Eva's tunic style dresses.  Eva picked out a lovely shade of lilac muslin for the dress and after cutting out the pieces I ripped the rest into strips.  (I used 3 yards but had about 1/2 a yard left over).  Before sewing the pieces of the dress together, I tacked on the strips, just zig zagging them down the fabric as I sewed leaving a few strips hanging down.  Then I sewed everything together and used fray check to keep the strips from unraveling further.  I saved one long strip of muslin to wrap around her head.  

She loves it and I think she's the cutest "purple girl mummy" ever!

Autumn Art

Our local library hosted an Autumn Art Show and all the children who visit the library were encouraged to submit a piece of artwork to hang in the gallery.  I had found some leaf and pumpkin doilies at the dollar store and Eva and I decided to use them to make her artwork.  She started by painting an entire sheet of sturdy white paper (we used cardboard) with watered down glue.  Then she placed the doilies all over the paper.  We added another layer of glue (I had to help a little here as some of the doilies started folding over) and another layer of doilies.  We ended with a final layer of glue and then Eva sprinkled everything with glitter.
Yesterday we received a call that Eva had been awarded First Place in the art show!

I love how this turned out and I'm thinking of having Eva make another one on canvas to keep as a fall wall hanging for our home.

First Day of Preschool

I have a preschooler!  I can't believe my little baby is in school already.  The past three+ years have just flown by.  Eva was so excited to go to school this morning.  I made her purple pancakes for breakfast (her favorite color) and even though the color wasn't dark enough she ate them up.

Then she got dressed in the outfit she picked out special for today and bounced around the driveway waiting for it to be time to go.  She was so excited!

Once there, she found her hook

and then she was off to play with her new friends.

The best part- no tears from either of us!  (Although I'm sure I'll shed a few on Thursday when I actually have to leave her there!)
When we got home I had her draw a picture of herself.  I plan on having her do this at the beginning (and possibly the end) of each school year to see how she changes and grows.  I must warn those who are faint of heart- Eva is in her nudist phase.  All of her drawings are naked because according to her she "doesn't know how to draw shirts."

Back to School

The buses are rolling through the neighborhood again so we broke out a favorite craft from last year- the shape bus.  It's fun to see how much difference a year can make!  Here is last year's:

And here's this year's:

We got fancy this year and added pom poms for lights and Eva wanted other details like a road, hubcaps and a traffic light.  I also had her tell me a sentence about the picture and wrote it down for her to "read".  (By writing down children's own words you give them ownership to the story and because they spoke those words, it will be easier for them to read them.)

Good Bye Summer!

Labor Day is the unofficial end of summer and Mother Nature is following course. Today is cool and rainy with that whisper of Fall in the air.  We have been cramming as much summer as we can in these last few weeks.
We've hit the beach:

the amusement park (for roller coasters big and small):

gone swimming:

and played in the backyard:

(Eva's lawn furniture sculture)

And done all we can to keep cool:

Today we whipped up a batch of play dough and I dug out some of our fun fall activities from last year.  While Eva's been playing, I'm been coming up with new ideas to share with all of you over the next few weeks.  I hope you are enjoying the last bits of summer!

Bird's Nest Art

Throughout the spring we watched a momma robin build a nest in our lilac bush.  She laid four eggs and guarded them day and night.  Soon little baby robins hatched and we watched as they grew and learned to fly.  No one has been back to the nest for a while now so decided it was safe to take it down and examine it.  Eva loved looking at it but decided it was lacking- it needed eggs and a bird!  "Let's make a sculpture!" she shouted and Daddy was game for helping her do so.  First they gathered some rocks to use as eggs.

Then they used a pinecone, some bark, a leaf and two little berries to form their bird.

They needed to use some wood glue to hold everything together but soon had a bird to rest in the nest.

I think it turned out adorable and I love how creative kids can be when we let them do their own thing!

Early Literacy: Sight Words

I recently noticed that the number of words Eva is able to recognize and spell has been increasing.  For a while she knew her name and ours and that was about it (besides boo which she has hung onto since Halloween).  Now she is noticing more words in the environment and starting to hold on to them.

While she can read and spell them, she does not know how to write them yet.  (The only word I've actually taught her how to write is "love" so that she could sign birthday cards for family members.)  The other day I sat down with her and wrote down the words she can both read and spell to make a chart to help her learn to write those words.

I hung it from one of our window shades and left some sentence strips and markers for her to use to write when the mood strikes her.  She grabs the word she wants to write and sets it above her sentence strip for a reference.

I love finding her "writings" and knowing that she has embraced this and done it on her own.

Some other things we do with her little word wall are:

• use a pointer to point and read the words
• I say a word and Eva points to it
• take the words out and spread them on the table then Eva closes her eyes and I hide a sticker under one of the words; she then has to read a word and then look under it to try and find the prize
• trace the words with her finger
• take a word and make it with magnetic letters
• take a word and stamp it with alphabet stamps

As she learns new words I'll remove some of the really well known ones and put the new ones in their place.