After quite a break... something AWESOME!

As I expected:

The rash from a few day's ago adventure has indeed been followed by a bought of the sniffles. She was fairly congested this morning, but was almost completely clear and normal tonight. I am interested to see how she is in the morning.
As such, our day's worth of errands was aborted and we sat at home all day recuperating. I cleaned off the bar some, knit a little bit during the day (freak occurrence no matter what John thinks...), and snuggled within an inch of my life. There were lots of books, I think the favorite of the day was The Library by Sarah Stewart. It's a very cute rhyme about another bibliophile. I swear, our house might just someday look a bit like hers did.

Sick Day Story Time

There seems to be some sort of plot to keep us from going to story time at the library. We've been a whopping twice in all the kid's days. Every time we are set and ready to go something happens, like they take a break for a month - or we get sick. Like today. We were all set for the 10:30 story time for Dory, and um, well... she's got a cold. It came on hard and fast last night.
So, I told her we would have our first one right here at home at the same time today.
Here was the program:

A, B, C, D, E by Justin Roberts on Great Big Sun
We handed out the shakey-shakies (egg rattles) and sang our ABCs.

The Z was Zapped by Chris Van Allsburg
Dory named each letter. Jack tried.

Number 1 by Hot Peas and Butter from Jack's Big Music Show, Season 1
Everyone did a boogie dance to the song.

Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
We talked about the difference between seeds and bulbs.

Mahna, Mahna from Muppet Hits (sorry, no link... )
Tried to clap the rhythm. It's a bit hard...

Hush!: A Thai Lullaby by Minfong Ho
Everyone joined in on the "Hush!" and we practiced some signs for the different animals and words we knew.

If You've Got 1 by Justin Roberts from Great Big Sun
We did all of the motions the song suggested. :) It was fun.

As they "put away" the rattles I ran upstairs, grabbed a rubber stamp and pad and met them in the hallway as they "left" and passed out pretty yellow daisy stamps to match the Growing a Rainbow book.

Our first mock story time was considered a huge success since Dory and Jack wandered around for 5 minutes showing everyone they could their stamps... including the dog.

First Day of ASL

Since we are homeschooling, when do you get that great traditional first day of school picture? I'm not sure. But, we are starting our first add on class of ASL and so, I took my chance in case this is it. So... there you have it, Dory's first day of 'school'. She was excited and it went really well. I feel really good about how many signs we already know, and we are going to practice finger spelling the ABC's now as well. I'm enjoying it, and I know Dory is too. Too bad it's only once a month right now! When she gets older it will be more frequent.

Schooling! ASL

And it *begins*!
We had our getting started meeting with her Sign Language instructor this morning, and while Dory decided on the way there that she no longer wanted to go and was going to pitch a fit, she ended up having a blast, loving her teacher and playing with one of her classmates (a knitting friend's son). It turns out Dory is just like I was, talking too much and giving out wayyy to much family information - making everyone laugh and me turn red while I'm all "shhhh, honey no one needed to know that". She told of how Daddy was sick, how she had to clean when Grandpa was coming over, every time Grandpa was coming over, or anyone else for that matter... lol
Anyway, she had a good time and is looking forward to classes. Me too!

Knock, Knock...

Who's there?
Bob.
Knock, Knock!
Who's there?
Bob.
Knock, Knock!
Who's there?
Ty! And we're going knock your house down!



Michael is in bright yellow shorts and Ty was in a grey shirt and green pants. I don’t know any of the others.
We arrived right as the cheering started and literally, we were there in the nick of time! Dory loved it even though she tripped getting out there and again when going back to the bus. FIL was supposed to go with or keep Jack at the house, but his car broke this morning so after having talked to Dory about it for two days, I loaded them both up and just did it. It would have been much better the two of us, but well… eh. Still worth it.
Nope, I didn’t meet him. But, we were there to see the house come down - you know, in the name of homeschooling! ;)

An 'Art Show'

Dory misunderstood 'art project', meaning 'holiday craft' for leaving to go to an 'Art Show'. But that said, once Grand started poking holes in the orange for her, those cloves went in easy. Her cloved orange was a wonderful centerpiece along with Patty's leaf placemat and we didn't even go anywhere. She recovered from the sad fact that art project did not involve a gallery.

The Garden Begins

Dory finally got around to getting her garden planted.... okay, I finally got around to getting her outside to plant it. We put in 4 plants... basil, bee balm, oregano and sage.... and 5 kinds of seeds... 2 flowers, marigolds and then carrots, kale and new zealand spinach. We'll see how they do. She did great and then we came back inside and watched capsule sponges grow and talked about how they are like seeds. Then she wanted to go and see the seeds turn into plant right then. LOL