Summer Time Fun!

We have such big plans for this summer!  We have two weekend beach trips with the kids...one weekend coming up we will be spending it in Long Beach Island with friends, and in August we will head to Cape May with just the four of us!  And now that I know how much both kids love the beach (we went to 7 Presidents in Long Branch this week with a group of friends from church...it's awesome!) I can't wait to go with them!  All we will need is flip flops, buckets, swim suits, sun hats, and lots of sun block!

Until all those beach weekends come it is business as usual around here...reading, circle time, library story time, and arts and crafts, and day trips to the park!  Wednesday is art class and usually I break out all the paints, the aprons, and newspaper, and we go to town.  I even bought a new crayola box set with bigger brushes so we can paint on our easel outside!  The kids did a great day with our hand print project for John's Father's Day gift.

We also will be doing some Macaroni Crafts this summer.  Next Wednesday, after nap time, we will be lacing macaroni on string and making necklaces.  I'm also going to have the kids paint the macaroni before we lace it (to stretch out the project but also to include painting because they love it so much).  While our macaroni dries we will be making shapes with macaroni on paper and using Elmer's Glue to make it stick.  A big pre-school goal is to have the kids know all their shapes and colors so this is a great project to reinforce that.  Also using fine motor skills with painting and gluing is very important too.  It keeps them so busy.  Mark's favorite part is washing his hands when he's all done.  Julia could paint for hours.  And lacing is a very important skill to master.  We have lacing boards here too to play with (I actually got a set from the dollar store!).  I also found some more arts and crafts ideas for macaroni.  Click here to see Macaroni Sheep.

Julia's last gymnastics class was Friday, June 17, but the last week of June she begins Gymnastics Camp!  She will go each Thursday for 3 hours!!! She is going to love it!  They will do gymnastics, crafts, snack time, and games!  I'm so excited for her!  I wanted her to have something special this summer to look forward to and to still be with her gymnastics friends and teachers.  We've been really blessed to be a part of such a great school, and watching Julia progress on the equipment really makes me so proud of her!

 

On that last class in June they did so many fun things.  Here they were on the trampoline pretending to be a train, and each time Miss Michele would jump the kids would bounce up it was too cute!

This is Julia's buddy Madison.  These two are inseparable.  They are very cute together!  Here they were giving each other a hug as they were eating their lollipops.  Madison's mom just had a baby, Alexa, and Julia asks Madison about the baby every week!

Currently we are working on our Graduation Ceremony for Daddy!  John is going to video tape as the kids get dressed up and perform/recite all the key things we have worked on this past year, from memorizing Bible verses, to counting, memorizing story books (The ABC Coconut Tree book, Brown Bear Brown Bear, Who is Coming to Our House?), singing songs (The B-I-B-L-E and He's Got the Whole World in His Hands) reciting our Presidents in order from George Washington to John Quincy Adams...we have a lot of fun things to showcase, and I know the kids will love looking back on the video to see how far they've come, and let's face it, how cute they were at ages 2 and 3.

Since we still go to the library at least once a week in the summer we are going to be doing a summer reading list of our own!  I love goals and so when we went to the Matawan/Aberdeen Public Library and they had a list of books for the kids to read as Pre-Schoolers (click on Pre-Schoolers to see an online list) I was so excited.  Many of the books we've already read, but there were surprisingly a lot we haven't read yet, I say surprisingly because we read A LOT and since I was a classroom teacher I had a lot of the classics already.  Click here to see a great summer reading list for ages 3-5 years old.  Here are some of the books we have yet to read:

1. I Did It, I'm Sorry by Caralyn Buehner and Mark Buehner
2. I Knew You Could! by Craig Dorfman
3. Bugs! Bugs! Bugs! by Bob Barner
4. Me and My Dad! By Alison Ritchie
5. Monday is One Day by Arthur A. Levine
6. Fun Dog, Sun Dog by Deborah Heiligman
7. If you Give a Moose a Muffin By Laura Numeroff

I always let the kids take out 2 books of their own choosing, and mommy always throws in a reading list book along with their choices.  It makes me feel good to be reading books that have met a standard.
I also came across a really good article about how to get your child ready for Kindergarten, not just academically but socially to.  Click here to read the article.

Congrats to my Katrina!

I can't fail to mention how much fun I had at TCS's High School Graduation!  I got to take pictures with students I had in third grade who are now off to college!  I am so proud!  Click here to read my Class of 2011 tribute to my little third graders all grown up!

Congrats to my Kia!

Congrats to my Ciarra!

Congrats to Erin who graduated from 8th grade!

Here's my Abbey, (a Freshman) I taught her in third and fourth grade the year I looped!

My Casey is going to be a Junior next year!  I taught her in third grade.

Here are my buddies who are now college students! I babysat the red heads when they were itty bitty!

It was great hugging all my teacher friends and catching up with them!

God has blessed me with so many great friends and mentors! ***Happy Birthday Jeanne (6/24)

It's been a busy week, but as always, I'm excited and ready for the weekend!!! I'm trying a new chocolate chip stuffed oreo cookie recipe this weekend, if it comes out yummylicious, I'll post it next week!