Back to School ;)

Although we're not technically "doing school" yet and I don't ever have the mindset that we HAVE to do anything school related...we used this week as a transition from our holiday break of routines and reality back into real life. I didn't plan at all, just gave the girls the opportunity to play with some of their "school" toys/activities old and new that we hadn't played with for a while.

A moment of sharing: the girls LOVE their new M & D Pattern Block Puzzles they received for Christmas. Here big sis is helping/guiding Tiny to put the triangle where it belongs :)

After playing with the beginner pattern blocks, I let them explore with "real" pattern blocks I used in my first grade classroom. Little Bear has played with these before a few times, but Tiny had never experienced them. LB dug all the triangles and squares out of the bucket to put on her tray and after playing for quite some time, they both loaded the blocks back into the bucket.

Fun with playdoh! We don't get this out often, so this was a special treat for the girls and they played and created for over and hour! Little Bear used her new cookie cutters to cut out letters.

This was a first time experience for Little Tiny ;) She wasn't quite sure what to do at first, but got excited when I handed her some "tools." After a few taste tests ;) she realized it wasn't worthy of a snack and she played away! She means business, can you tell??!!

One of my favorite moments from the week was watching the girls play with puff balls on the kitchen floor. I gave them several sizes of containers, tongs, spoons, and scoops and they had a ball (literally!). Tiny was focusing so hard on using these little tongs to pick up that big puff ball...she worked on this for several minutes :)

Winter is here! We got our first snow this past week, causing roads to turn icy and schools to close (we really only got a tad more than an inch!). However, this called for making a snowman! Little Bear used some cotton balls I had in the cabinet to make an adorable snowman. I pre-cut the snow for the bottom of the page, the hat, the nose and arms, and we used black hole punch cut outs for the eyes and white ones for the falling snow.

She was VERY proud of her finished product...I think he's (or she's) quite cute myself :)

I have no idea what sparked this idea, but Little Bear had been asking all week to make some snowman cookies. I wasn't even aware that she knew we had a snowman cookie cutter :) So we mixed up the sugar cookie dough on Friday night and began rolling it out and cutting away on Saturday afternoon. We made a big mess (which Daddy wasn't used to seeing) and had a BLAST! She absolutely loves to bake with me and I'm quite fond of the fun we have together as well :)

Decorating with lots of sprinkles and "glitter glue" icing was her favorite part. I just love how creative she can be when she's allowed to do whatever she wants! So much fun :)

I am super excited to start a mini-unit this week based on the book by Jan Brett, "The Mitten." Almost all of the ideas were found here, on the Totally Tots blog. I have always loved this book and we read it all the time, not just in the winter so I'm very anxious to see how Little Bear responds to all the activities we're doing throughout the week.

Warm regards to everyone!