First Lunch

Okay, I may be getting sentimental here, but I just had to get a picture of our first time having lunch in the family child care. Here are Orianna and Josephine dining on macaroni and cheese, peas, and carrots.

Second Day . . .

Day two, and all is well! Again Orianna and Josephine were so involved in their play that I had to "interrupt" them for a project. But they were extremely enthusiastic and worked intently on decorating their terra cotta pots.

Here is Orianna at work . . .

Orianna's pots:

Josephine's pots:

This one, by Josephine, is especially wonderful, as it truly is evidence of her love of process. She was "playing" with the pen, and got a big glob of paint on the pot, and then asked for a paper towel to wipe it off. That, of course, only smeared the paint around, at which she exclaimed, "Oh, I meant to do that! I'm going to do it some more!" Here is her finished masterpiece:

Each girl made two pots, so one we are going to save for our upcoming lima bean growing experiment, and the other can be for whatever they would like.

First Day of Kindergarten . . . and of the Afterschool Program!!!

No words can accurately express my excitement as a parent on this, my only child’s first day of kindergarten, but then again, I don’t have to even try, as any parent can surely understand the momentousness of this occasion. I made Josephine’s dress myself, as I’d found this adorable fabric covered in a pattern of little matryoshka dolls. She proudly picked out her lunchbox, Hello Kitty. I tried to convince her of the merit of other lunchboxes, but this was our compromise to replace her first choices, Barbie and Bratz. Sigh.

Right away at school we ran into Georgia, who happens to be in the same class as Josephine, and will be spending Friday afternoons with us after school.


Then on our way to the classroom, we ran into Miss Bonnie, their teacher!

Josephine and Georgia settled immediately into play without a care as to where their parents were.

Josephine was thrilled to discover that her kindergarten classroom had its very own dress up area, as this is one of her favorite pastimes.

Miss Bonnie then led the children in a “Goodbye Parents” song, and we all reluctantly left the room.

I then attended the coffee that the PTA held for kindergarten parents, and afterwards gravitated back to the classroom area for a little bit of spying, which paid off. I caught a glimpse of Josephine’s class on a little tour of the school with their teacher.

Georgia spotted me and gave me a friendly wave.

And then Josephine saw me as well, and said hello, continuing happily on her way with her class.

After school Orianna, also in Miss Bonnie’s class, came home with us. The girls started off with a snack of Goldfish, string cheese, and grapes.

After playing for a while, they did some watercolor painting.

I don’t think I could ever lose my fascination with children’s art, so here is a sampling of today’s masterpieces.

Girl, by Orianna

Rainbow, by Orianna

Monkey in a Cage, by Orianna

Tiger, by Orianna

Falling Sky, by Josephine

Mickey Mouse, by Josephine

Sharing Butterflies, Sewing, and Butterfly Surprises

The butterflies have now lived past the time we read they should live, so we think we should let them have at least a day or two of freedom before they reach the end of their short lives (about 4 weeks total). But first we took them out and had some fun holding them and looking at them up close. Sunny and Ida are so wonderfully gentle with them. Here are the two sisters sharing a butterfly, pasing it back and forth.

Later in the day we did some sewing.

The sugarwater-soaked paper towels that we had placed in the butterfly pavilion had what looked at first to me like spores of mold. However, after calling Insectlore, the company that provided me with the five original caterpillars, I learned that the spores were actually butterfly eggs!!!

They were extremely tiny. Here is just one (sorry it's out of focus) next to a penny.

After my phonecall with Insectlore, I looked more carefully, and some of the eggs had actually hatched!!! There were little miniscule caterpillars all over . . . and they were so tiny, that they could go right through the holes in the net of the pavilion.

Here's one next to a penny. So tiny!

I learned that they like to eat thistle, which fortunately grows plentifully in my garden. In no time they made the thistle leaves look like lace.

Playdough, Pippi, och Prickar

Pardon the Swedish word in the title for those of you who don't understand Swedish. I was going for alliteration. Prickar means "freckles", so it is very appropriate, if you read on.

I didn't get around to pulling the camera out during the actual play, but I thought the table afterwards merited photos. Today we combined the play dough with small plastic animals.

Sunny had all of hers in a circle around a clumb of dough . . . sort of a surreal watering hole of sorts.

Josephine slowly and carefully lined up a whole row of animals down the entire length of the table.

And somebody left this imprint of a scorpion in a piece of dough.

Later in the day the girls dressed up (well, they are actually dressed up all day long, but they changed to new costumes).

Ida was transformed into Pippi Longstockings. She insisted on having her horse along as well.

Here I've tried to zoom in on their faces . . . pardon the poor resolution, but I wanted to show that they all wanted to have freckles, so out came my lipliner pencil. It all began with a dire need for freckles on Pippi, but then everyone else was so enthalled with the look that we ended up with freckle-faced princesses as well.

The playhouse gets a floor.