Mm Monkey Mask, and Magic . . . . . gunk

Today, we made monkey masks and had a monkey ball. It was very fun. For snack, I was all sorts of excited about Magic Pudding. It's vanilla pudding, and you say a spell, and stir it with your magic spoon, and it will magically turn colors. Such a great idea, such disgusting pudding. I think the kids were all excited until they started stirring, then I think there were a few that were just trying to keep their cookies down. So there you go, not the raging success we were hoping for, but you live and learn. Maybe I'll experiment with different kinds of puddings, and find one with better consistency. It is pretty funny though.

Mm Monster Mania

We had such a fun day today. I have to apologize about the sugar high. Although marshmallows and m&m's are great Mm foods, maybe they shouldn't be served together. Just so you know, they both got a thumbs down on our "is this food nutritious?" scale. Today we talked about manners, continued about the months of the year, and of course we read a whole slew of monster stories. We made the greatest monster mobiles today. They were so fun to make, and the kids did a great job. Here are the finished monster guys. I also found a monster foot on my floor, so let me know if anyone is missing a foot.

Tt Wayne Thiebaud

We had a great week with the letter Tt. We learned about telling the truth, which according to one little was "telling your mom what really happened, not just what you think happened." We talked about transportation, triangles, and our artist of the week, the fabulous, Wayne Thiebaud (1920 -present). For snacks, we made Wayne Thiebaud cupcakes, a massive success, and we read a great book, illustrated with his paintings. Here are a few photos of that day.

Ansel Adams

Our artist for the letter A a is Ansel Adams. We looked at a book of his photos, and then the kids got to take their own nature photos. My printer of course was not being cooperative, so I wasn't able to print them out. I'll work on it for tomorrow. Meanwhile, here are the nature photos taken by the Studio kids.

Toooooooooooo much cutting!!

I'm learning how to do this every day. Today for example I learned that 10 animals is too many for preschoolers to cut out! After about four, they were whining and not excited about the project any more. Oh well, it's worth laughing at. Speaking of laughing, I heard the funniest thing today. One of the kids, a cute and tiny girl, was hiding under a blanket. Another kid pulled the blanket off of her, quite innocently, and the tiny little girl let out a small growl and said through her teeth "Uugghh!! You ruined my evil plan!!!" I totally laughed out loud, which didn't make her any happier, but then we had snacks, and who can be sad while eating a chocolate animal cookie?

first days

Wow, the last couple of months have been absolutely crazy!! My amazing parents have been here day and night doing floors, cabinets, baseboards, everything under the sun to help me get the studio up and going. We finally finished everything, and it's awesome!!!! I love it so much. I will never be able to repay my parents for their non-stop efforts on my behalf. I hope I can be such a cool parent. So anyway, I started class last week and can I just say, what a fun job!! I love it. My kids are so stinking cute, and funny, and creative, and it's like having a small craft party every day. I know that's not for everyone, but chaos, paint, lots of chatter, playing, funny questions, scissors, stories, and everything that goes along with it is so my cup of tea. I haven't gotten permission from my parents to post pictures of the kids yet, but I'll post pictures of the finished preschool and bathroom. My mom did all of the tile, she's so good! My dad did all of the finished carpentry, and as only my dad could do, he showed up with a small pallet, four different colors of paint, and a couple of brushes, and did a perfect touch up job on a pre-finished wood baseboard, in oil of course. It looks so good!!! I have to write a couple of funny things my kids have said. We had just come home from camping the day before school started, and my house was a wreck So, I'm traipsing the kids through my disaster, and I asked the kids "does your house ever look like this after vacation?" and hooray for you moms, EVERY CHILD except my own looked at me all sorts of confused and said "no." one little girl said "my mom would die if my house got this messy, she would make my sister clean it because she never goes with us anyway." hee hee hee. another little asked me that same day, "why don't you just give your kids some jobs, then they will clean it." ok, so I needed to clean up!!! No worries, it's done. This is going to be a great year.