Glittery Fresas

Our Spanish teacher, Senora Vanessa :), is easing out of maternity leave and back into her official post as Spanish/Art teacher for Ingram School!  She came back strong today with an awesome day at her house for all of our children.  We spent the early part of the morning here doing some reading, writing, and math and then we headed down the hill to our Enrichment Activity.  Vanessa had an art activity ready for us to make fresas (Spanish for strawberry) so that we could continue our F theme.  She had cut out the strawberry shape, the kids taped the strawberry to their papers, then drew a green stem at the top.  She brought out glue and paint brushes to make dots on the strawberry and then came the magic...GLITTER!  Who doesn't love glitter?!?!?!  Glitter is one of those things I miss because it can be such a pain to clean up, so we don't risk it while our house is on the market....maybe when it's warmer and we can go outside, but definitely not an indoor project for us these days.  Our fresas were beautiful and everyone was excited to sprinkle glitter everywhere.  Then, we bundled up and went outside to collect pine cones.  We promised Ms. Dare at story time that we would bring pine cones for next week's project (even if we don't make it to story time, we'll drop them off earlier).  While we were outside, it was a lot colder than we had thought, so we moved to the sunshine and Ruby discovered a stump that we all turned into a Fairy House.  I love fairy houses!!!  We broke the rules a little bit, but it was still fun and exciting.  In the book, Fairy Houses, you learn that you should only build the house out of natural things that you find lying around.  You're not supposed to pick flowers or pluck leaves off trees, but anything that has come off naturally is fair game.  Well, it was too tempting to pick the red holly berries and pointy leaves to decorate the house, so at least it was natural materials.  We told the kids that the fairies preferred to eat the red berries, but humans could NOT eat them.  Amazingly, I didn't see one kid put a berry in his or her mouth.  We played some more and then went inside for lunch and now everyone is napping.  We had such a great morning.  Being with wonderful friends and being able to get outside makes for a wonderful day.  Top it off with some learning and that's how we're living these days.
Oh, and just because I can't write a post without mentioning the potty....Ruby used the potty twice at Vanessa's where she gets a chocolate chip for going!  Her third chart is almost full, so we're hoping to go to the Education Store tomorrow to get a treat.  I'll keep you posted....