January 31- February 2

We have completed our first month of the new year and so did Gavin’s work on his Lego land. With Emanuel’s help it was quite the creation!

Quite the metropolis

Lots of activity

Spooky section

Gavin’s turtle (too large for the city)

Ken and Ted took a ride out to The Source, a gaming store to peruse the merchandise and to pick me up some oversized dice for the kids. While they did I finally got to see Frankenweenie! I saw ParaNorman back on New Years so I am catching up on my animations nicely!

Dice

I am so proud that the boys BOTH made their reading goals yet again! I am so glad I can help them find a love of reading at such a young age.

We had our next book to share Happy Chinese New Year, Kai Lan! We had the corresponding episode on the video we got from the library… Celebrate with Kai-Lan.

Gavin and our book

There is a definite benefit to subscribing to a site’s feed. Art for Kids sent out a terrific 10 monster how  to draw book to all the people subscribed to them. I am going to have to sit down and hole punch and put all these amazing instructions into a binder all organized and ready for the boys to use whenever they want!

Wacky monster pictures

Talk about excitement for our almost birthday boy! Baba took Emanuel and myself to get Emanuel’s hair cut before his birthday party! It is like he grew up years as the hair came off… in looks anyway! Can you believe he is 7 on the 3rd??

So smooth

Of course the kids opted to spend even MORE time sitting with Uncle Ted. They just can’t get enough of him!

Quality time

Trinity roped him into playing Skylanders with her as well! They work so well together!

Skylanders!

Friday was a bit of a ruffled day. The kids do not function well with Ken working at home right now. It has been bitterly cold so they cannot burn off energy outside, plus there is the knowledge Ken is there and not available. That and the need to be quiet so he can work makes them all owly. So to take a bit of the edge off we made our Chinese lanterns for our Chinese New Year. You can follow our instructions on Activity Village HERE. I added to the activity by bringing out the markers and letting them colour the paper if they wanted.

Working on lanterns

Lanterns

This was our last day with Ken home actually. Come Monday he is supposed to have his own desk at one of the three buildings. I am hoping that him being out of the house will help Echo deal with less time with Daddy.

Time with Uncle Ted while Daddy works

Emanuel finally got around to colouring in his Mammoth pictures that Gammie sent him to go along with his interest in elephants! He does love a good elephant or prehistoric animal!

One colourful Mammoth

With dinosaurs on the mind we completed our smaller puzzle. One Emanuel got for Christmas!

PUZZLE

Our book from the day was a National Geographic one – Celebrate Chinese New Year. The kids love the images in this one.

Zander and our book

I have to say having Ted here is so much fun. Like back home, the guys are cracking jokes, talking shop and generally hanging out. I have missed that here. We don’t see much of the guys here which is a huge change from how things were up in Alberta.

Relaxing

As the first Saturday of the month it was also the Home Depot free craft day. The boys made little mail boxes for Valentines. Painted and everything!

Painted and everything

When Ken, his dad and the boys returned Ted, Ken and I ran out to finish some shopping – I needed cardstock for the kids’ schooling and Ted needed to do some present shopping. Target is so much fun.

After shopping EMANUEL snagged Ted to play Skylanders (he will be pro by the time he goes home!).

Gaming in comfort

He also made Ted a special picture to take home for his fridge in Alberta.

Art for the fridge

It really was an Emanuel creative day. If it wasn’t Home Depot it was drawing or making something interesting out of blocks.

This is a storekeeper with his till and table

I am glad to see that something I created is being used too – the kids had a tea party with the set I made Trinity for Christmas.

Tea anyone?

Saturday meant trying to get everything ready for the party on Sunday. There is something so comforting about having Ken and Ted together to help out. I feel so lucky that January and February has given us a taste of the people we have been missing. Saying good bye later is never easy BUT the visit makes it all worth it!

If only the fairie could magic up a way for them to stay longer… or forever!

This “frightful lizard” was found in Alberta and Montana. A meat eater (much to Emanuel’s dismay), the Daspletosaurus was slightly smaller than the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Found in the late Cretaceous period it is thought to have some of the largest teeth of any known dinosaur. So while not as famous as the T-Rex it is a dinosaur of interest!

This dinosaur was featured in our Planet Dinosaur videos and while we could not load the images on the site, there is a great image of a hunter in action on the BBC site HERE. Of course Kidsdinos.com had their charts and graphs HERE. DinosaurKing has various statistics on this voracious hunter HERE. Dinosaurs.about.com has a brief entry HERE. Animal Planet has this dinosaur listed as only found in Canada but has a great picture of a fossilized skeleton HERE. There is a great human/dinosaur size comparison on Prehistoric Wildlife HERE. Of course Wiki has their entry HERE. And you can find out colouring page (though when Ken printed it for us it had the stamp across it, Emanuel was still happy) HERE.

Such a grin

As I have mentioned before Emanuel does love his herbivores… so we moved onto the Ankylosaurus. These armour plated dinosaurs are 4 legged tanks. Club tailed and spike covered, they really are a visual joy for the herbivore loving dinosaur fanatic. Now let’s get onto our videos…First the ever requested I’m a Dinosaur.

Our second video didn’t make the cut with Emanuel, he simply could not sit through it today, BUT it is about dinosaur bones found in the province we used to live in and dealt with the Tyrell Museum (another favourite of the family).

That leads us to the links… Found at the end of the Cretaceous period we had a few good links to share with you. Science Kids has some nice images including the skull and bone structure HERE. Kids National Geographic has a short blurb and an image HERE. Discovery Dinosaur Central as a lengthy article with lots of interesting information HERE. We always love Kidsdinos.com and their charts HERE. Why not check out a site dedicated to the Ankylosaur HERE? Dinosaurs.about.com has a list of the connected dinosaurs HERE. Wiki has an article HERE, and of course there is the colouring page from HelloKids.com HERE.

Rainbow herbivore