A photo shoot with a Tween!

 My oldest wanted to do a mini photo session this evening and boy was it a quick one.  Now mind you she is really testing the weather in this outfit.  It's one week away from Christmas in Minnesota, the temp was around 34 degrees when I took this photo.

November: In the classroom

As of September I took the big leap and returned to work full time, I'm assistant teaching preschoolers in a Montessori school.

One idea I found online I felt would definitely benefit our students was this idea using unpopped popcorn in a glass bowl.  I used scrabble tiles same as shown below and taught the students how to use their pinchers to find the letters to form the words on the sheet of paper.  The younger students are working on letter recognition while the older students are asked to state the letter and sound it makes. 

Next month I've got plans for the winter theme...I've dyed rice blue and have blue letter tiles from a container I bought years ago from Walmart.

http://mymontessorijourney.typepad.com/files/thanksgiving-story-bracelet.doc from http://mymontessorijourney.typepad.com/my_montessori_journey/2009/11/thanksgiving-story-bracelets.html

For our Thanksgiving unit I read to the kids the story of Thanksgiving each day for a week (I wanted to add something I did while homeschooling my kids during their preschool years...Five in a Row program).  Yesterday the students made retelling bracelets that I found online to go along with the our unit.  We also made a turkey for our door.  I had the kids pin punch out red maple leaves from construction paper and asked them what they were thankful for this year.  In the end all the leaves formed the turkey's feather tail.  We also made this together as a class for our cooking project and had it for dessert at lunch:  http://thecraftingchicks.com/2010/10/mini-pots-of-pumpkin-cream-pie.html  .  We actually used whole milk and the kids used one graham cracker square in a ziploc baggie to pound themselves and pour the crumbs into a small plastic cup to start their own personal pumpkin cream pie.  Almost all of them loved their treat and I was especially proud to hear a student that is a little fussy when it comes to eating their lunch say they LOVED IT and asked me numerous times to give the parents the recipe for them to make at home.

I found this cute little guy at the Target dollar spot a few weeks ago on a quick trip to the store and thought this was perfect for our students to work on number sequence, colors and fine motor skills with the puzzle.

I traced the entire puzzle on cardstock than laminated it so the kids had a guide for self correction.  

            

A's Senior Pictures

Last month I did a senior session with my niece's best friend.  Here are my top 3 choices, she asked for lots of sun and softness for her session.   I believe we captured both!

Happy Halloween!

 Teaser went to my preschool Halloween party Friday night as Clark Kent.  I was able to talk him into this costume just by saying, "anyone could be superman but no one would think of going as Clark Kent, you'd be original."  Of course he was!

 Nutmeg went as a good witch Halloween night.

Teaser than got into character Halloween night as the Walking Dead.  Can you tell who has been watching bad movies with daddy?

Back to school clothes

Sweetpea wanted to do a quick photo shoot to show off her new school clothes.  I chose to do them all in the new wood chair I bought early this summer to practice poses

No summer is complete without an ER trip!

Teaser was attacked by a 9 month old black lab puppy this past weekend at the lake cabin.

 This here is his left leg that was bit first, just bruising and scratches from the puppy teeth.

This is where the worst had happened...left leg the dog clamped down hard and punctured the leg at the top.  The ER doc said they don't stitch dog bites up any longer due to infections being worst that way.  So teaser is on meds to fight the infection and is a bit sore when walking around too much.  The bruising has gotten worse each day hopefully by the first day of school he'll be mostly healed.

Hubby said teaser's new nickname should be "milkbone" or "scooby snack". 

So teaser has now moved up in the lead to having the most ER visits between all 3 kids.  Of course, hubby said he's still in the lead for most scars in the family.

He caught the BIG ONE!!! and more...

 Teaser had a great time this past weekend at the lake cabin...papa and hubby took him out fishing for just 1 1/2 hours and he came home with a load.

 This sunny is our favorite...what a BIG ONE!!!

2011 Summer Soccer

 It was quite a full month in July for us when it comes to sport tournaments.  Nutmeg ended her soccer season shortly before sweetpea's softball and teaser's baseball.

Way to go nutmeg!  SCORE!