Some more great sites for kids

I realized that i have never shared the all time favorite website for my kids.
It is fisherprice.com You go there and then on the left hand side you click on Family and Fun Time and then on Fun and Games Online. There are all kids of games for kids of different ages, and they are educational. My kids have been playing these for over a year. There are ABCs and number games and shapes and colors. They especially love it because they can do it themselves. Once you get them set up all they have to do it press any key on the keyboard, I usually have them us the space bar since it is big, and it will go to the next letter or whatever. It is a great thing to entertain them for a while too. There are some game you have to help with, but i mostly just use the ABC, Sports(which is numbers for each goal) and the Shapes and Colors ones.
Check it out

Another one i found the other day on accident is one to help kids learn to read and learn the letter sounds. Is is starfall.com. I haven't used it yet for Brinlee, but it looks really great and i want to start letting her watch it. Let me know what you think about it.

Hiding the rock

So we have been working like crazy on our yard, and man, I have to say that it is looking AWESOME. I tried to take pics but they just dont do justice so i need to get some better one. Budd has done most of it and been doing such a great job. We keep taking huge loads of branches and fallen trees to the dump. He gets these loads so high, about 10 feet high and then puts a tarp over it. We also had a neighbor, who is a construction worker bring us a bunch of free dirt that he got from digging out something. He used a little tractor to bring it to the back yard and he filled in some holes. Then he also helped us move, what ended up being a huge cement slab that Budd had been digging at and couldnt get out. He dug a deep hole for it and just barried it, because there was no way we were moving that thing out of here. SO here are some pics of that crazy event. Thanks to Curtis, he really helped us out.

Easter Fun Sunday

The fun continued into Sunday. Jeffers and Brit stayed over and brought gifts for the kids. They loved it. Check out Brinlee's darling bunny slippers. She wears them every morning as soon as she wakes up. She says " They keep my feet warm."



We had fun dying eggs, and we did some cool "camo" ones since Jeffers is in the army.



WE had a fun day. Later we went to church and had a great Easter feast. I made my first ham and was happy with how delicious it turned out.

Easter Fun Saturday!!

We had a really fun and eventful Easter weekend. On Saturday our friends the Ahern's had a fun little egg hunt for the kids. It was great and so much better than the big city Egg hunts where your kids get trampled over and get no candy. I was so happy Emilie put this one together.

Later in the afternoon a bunch of the neighborhood kids came over and asked if they could play. They wanted to see the Gerbils and then they played with Brinlee outside. They ended up sticking around for quite a while until we started a fire that night in our back yard for our dutch oven dinner. I also ended up babysitting some kids for my neigbor and in the end we had 8 kids and 4 adults out there. Oh ya, my brother Jeffers and his girlfriend Britny came up. It was kinda crazy trying to watch all the kids around the fire, but they had fun roasting marshmellow. And the dutch oven dinner turned out superb.
This is not the end. That night, Budd and Jeffers sent Britny and I on a treasure hunt, where if we got the clue right we would get a flower, until in the end we both ended up with 5 flowers each. This was so cool, because it was like a little easter hunt for us, and how often do we get to do that anymore. What nice guys!

1 week with Gerbils

We've had the Gerbils for a week and they are still alot of fun for the kids. Brinlee loves to get in the empty tub with them and let them crawl around on her. If she wears Budds sweatshirt they will climb all the way up and give her a kiss.

Spencer is a little shy of them, but he likes to watch them and he actually opened the cage this morning and let them out in our house. Luckily Budd was home and could catch them fast. AHHHHHHH. THis is a great fear of mine, that they will get lost in the house, and i am not into trying to pick up these squirmy little guys.

Gerbils are a hit

Yes, the Gerbils have turned out to be quite a hit on this first day. The kids watched them all day, and when they were sleeping they kept asking, "are they awake yet?" I taught art class tonight to 7 kids in the neighborhood and they all went crazy about them. They all wanted a turn in the tub letting them run around them and tickle their feet. We have found that our deep tub is the best place for interaction with them, since it is the only place we dare let them out, so they cant run away. What fun!

Cousins

My brother's wife Meg and their daughter Lily were able to come to Utah for a week and we were able to see them. They live in Hawaii so we don't see them very often. They kids loved seeing Lily and playing with her. We couldn't get them all to hold still enough to get a pic, so this is the best we got. Meg, did you get any better pics?

Yes, We still have snow

After days of nice 50 degree weather, we had a sudden snow storm, (it was actually the afternoon right after our easter egg hunt, crazy huh?) The kids really wanted to play in it and especially loved eating it.

The Hunt is on

We are loving our new neighborhood. They do alot of fun stuff together. On Saturday we had an early Easter Egg Hunt. There were about 15 families that participated and 50 kids, so we each put 50 eggs in our yard and the kids went around and could find one egg in each yard. It was a blast. The kids really loved it and havent stopped eating candy since.


We Check out the pic of the all the kids. We were so amazed They all stood still long enough for a photo.

What could be more fun.....

Budd decided the other night that he really needed a new past time, since he has stopped gaming for now and he wanted to get a pet for the kids and this is what he decided on....





























Yup, Gerbils. We picked them up monday night and wow have then been a hit for the kids, and the one big kid. The kids even named them. Brinlee's is the tan one and she named it Teeka, she totally made up the name. Spencer named the black one Bubba and he calles it "My Bubba or My rabbit" It is so cute. Budd lets them get in the empty tub with them and they run around and tickle their toes. I never knew how much fun it would be for the kids. Very cool.

Great website for Preschoolers

I found this awesome website today while looking for preschool art ideas. It has everything from numbers, letters, art ideas and everything for kids. Plus it gives you all the templates for everything, and you can print out letter and number practice pages. It really is great. I think i will be using it all the time and I though all moms out there with young kids would like it.

http://www.first-school.ws/theme/artapp.htm

Greek Vases

Here are a couple of the Greek vases my 5-7 year old students made. I was so impressed with them. We talked about the history of greek vases and I showed them pictures of real ones. We also talked about the designs they made .Then they chose which kind of vase they wanted to do and we used black crayon to draw it and put designs on it. Then we painted it with orange tempera paint. Pretty simple.

Egyptian Art

Check out these cool Egyptian Sarcophagus that we did in my Cultural Art class. It was my first time doing it and i thought they turned out so awesome. Good job students! Click on the pic to be able to see the details.

Playing in the Sink

One day my kids asked if they could play in the sink. It started by sitting on the edge and just playing with cups and their hands in the water. Then Spency sat in the sink, and Brinlee soon followed. They loved it and still ask to do it all the time. How i miss being a kid and being entertained by the simplest things.

Castles

I found these cool looking packaging box things at the school i teach at and thought they would be perfect for making castles. Since Brinlee is so into castles and princess, i brought them home and let the kids paint them. They loved it.