Tag Archive | lolly stick stable

Learning Our Way to the Year of the Horse (mah)

January 15-22

We are definitely revisiting some old favourites with our Chinese New Year reading. And with each one recognizing facts we already know and gems yet to be learned. One of my favourite aspects of Chinese New Year is the celebration of prosperity, family and all things positive. We can always use a little positive energy right?101_5877 We slipped in some time to make a get well soon picture for a mom I met online through a multiples group. We figure a fun picture by the children would be an even better pick me up than a simple card! I am so impressed by the lovely heart all these mommies show.101_5878 Our new books definitely had the boys ready to read read read.101_5880 And we made ourselves a stable for our Chinese New Year year of the horse. We got our popsicle stick instructions from Activity Village HERE. It was a goup effort. The girls used markers decorate the stick while the boys did the gluing together.101_5882 This week was the week of sweet Echo pics. She is in the middle of a hat phase and 2013’s Christmas present from myself fits her better this year – a teddybear ear hat. I got the pattern off of CrochetSpot HERE.101_5883 The next day we had to brush out her hair, dress her up and take a few big girl pictures too.101_5887 The girls also modeled the aprons I made them for Christmas in front of the kitchen set they got from Aunty Holly, Uncle James and Cousin Jimmie! You can find that pattern HERE.101_5892 Friday was a total wash with a run to deal with passports. A WHOLE morning eaten up by the rather intense application process at the only office in the state. We had an appointment time thank goodness and the poor girl had a boatload of paperwork to do. Thankfully Ken and I had wandered down memory lane and got all the transcripts that exist for Ken for the entire time he was in public school. You need that proof to show that he was in the US enough for the kids to qualify for dual citizenship. My OCD of keeping lists of our addresses, baptism forms (which are a viable secondary ID here in the US???) and all that fun stuff came in really handy as well as Nana coming along to wrangle the kids. You have to have them there for a visual confirmation of their application and both myself and Ken to agree that they should even have the darn thing in the first place! But what a gateway passports are to getting all the other ID set up like Social Security and sorting our kids out so that they are set to live in either country! Lucky babies!

After all that government related fun the kids kicked back with some gaming. Funny how touch screens are natural to them!!101_5930 Our weekend was a quiet one. Saturday there was lots of time to play with those new toys… and for Trinity to work on her sticker book. One of those lovely ones where you pick up sticker packs and collect what you need.101_5931 101_5932Of course on Sunday they had Sunday School and an excuse to take ANOTHER picture of them all dressed up. I look forward to spring when going as a whole family and staying for service will be much more reasonable.101_5933 We did luck out with the Sunday afternoon thaw. It was so nice that the kids were out there without coats, shovels in hand to help clear out the driveway. We are not on the best side of the street for the sun to melt it all away completely.101_5936 101_5938We are loving the idea we found on Facebook of freezing coloured water in balloons to freeze and then burst and display. Nana and the kids have expanded to include freezing coloured water in other containers to add to what they are now calling her ice garden.101_5942 101_5940My favourite is the blue balloon.101_5945 We started the next week with dinosaurs…101_5946 potty sticker sheets (still spotty luck on that one)…101_5947 and well dressed scouts…101_5948 and boys in the mood to learn how to swim!image

On Tuesday we roped Daddy into teaching us about the first of 3 Chinese locations – the Great Wall (which became Trinity’s favourite). I have to admit to some interest myself on that amazing landmark.101_5950

With a Lego rendition of a portion of the wall

With a Lego rendition of a portion of the wall

Of course we continued with other learning leaning to China and all things Chinese New Year. We used Activity Village AND the official Kai-Lan site thanks to Nick Jr. HERE. Even Echo is getting in on the language practice.101_5951

101_5952101_5959We had a short reflection on what we could remember so far about China and Chinese New Year. I do love seeing what sticks in their brains.101_5953

And of course more stories.101_5955

We rounded off our first half of the week with some lovely dragons all ready to dance thanks to the generosity of Lakeshore. At our last visit to them to craft it up we mentioned we could not make this upcoming week… Ken had his vasectomy scheduled. So the girl gave us the shapes to add to our own paperbags. I had the presence of mind to photocopy this for future use!101_5956

Miss Trinity had a proud workbook completion…101_5957

And Emanuel lost ANOTHER tooth. So time for a tooth fairy note!101_5958

More Chinese Characters…101_5960

101_5963books…101_5962

and creative time…101_5964

With the kids covering Terracotta warriors with Daddy! 101_5961

I think we are well on our way to enjoying our countdown to our second very special New Year celebration of our year.101_5949