Hero's Among Us: A Tricycle Update

Last Fall Gordon and Connie Hankins (volunteers for Pioneer and the TOT project) hand delivered Vada's new bike. They even assembled it to fit her here for us. (You can read about their visit last fall, here.) However, Vada was still a bit to small to reach the pedals, even with double the blocks on them!

8/31/12

This Spring we pulled the trike back out to see if Vada could reach and she could!

5/2013

Up and down our sidewalk we went. Over and over again! She loves her new bike!

Thanks again to an amazing organization and couple, for Vada's new set of wheels! 

'B' is for Books

Our BOTW has been Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See? So, I thought that it would be fun to go to the library and get more books about bears.

 I had actually spent most of my morning talking with my husband verses teaching Vada which is something I normally wouldn't do because he would either be working or sleeping but we got caught up in conversation and time slipped away from us. It was really nice actually. I miss him, he's been working a ton lately. So, Vada and I would have got a late start to school anyway.

I did start Vada out like I would a typical school day so she was on a "B" mindset at the library and then we were off...

We began our hunt for any and all bear books that we could find. I wanted easy readers and first facts mainly -books with lots of pictures but also with some good information or fun stories. We were able to find both!

We also got out some books that pertained to Earth Day and read about how we could make a difference in our world. Vada happens to be a "pro" at throwing things into the garbage cans here at home! Now, if I could just get her to distinguish which things are suppose to be thrown away and which are not! The recycling aspect can come later! 

Vada loves books. The library is like a toy store for her. At least I would like to assume. She seems content and happy here. I know I am!

I like knowing that she wont rip the pages in the books. She has only done that twice and it was accidental and she was so upset that she had done it. She brought me the books each time for me to fix and I did.

Next weeks letter is the Letter 'C'. The theme is caterpillars so along with the bear books we also got some butterfly books. Apparently, you cant get books just on caterpillars, their lives just aren't interesting enough. I think that we will probably be reading The very Hungry Caterpillar for our BOTW as well so it'll all go well together.

Thursday night we read a few different bear books before bed...

Please pay NO attention to the disaster of a bedroom in the background... "Spring cleaning" is going on.

Old Bear even had a page full of Butterflies in it. 'B' is for butterflies.

I was able to find a really good children's Dvd by Disney called Animal World: Bears and Deer. You were able to choose (in the main menu) if you wanted to watch a video on bears or deer, which was perfect because I actually thought we would end up having to watch both!

After Vada and I watched the video and she put her babies to bed we cuddled up to read some more books about bears...

The educational books were interesting but these other books I saved for the last day of reading because they are such great books. The three of them are such fun books for different reasons but Can't You Sleep Little Bear has to be the sweetest bear book that I can think of, by far the sweetest that we checked out!

A St. Patty's Day Sensory Bin

For Saint Patrick's Day I decided to get creative and when I say "creative", I mean I totally copied off of another more originally creative blogging Mamma and her St. Patty's Day sensory bin idea.

In Vada's rainbow rice I buried "gold" coins and necklaces for her to find and then put into the shamrock. As she placed the coins into the shamrock I counted out loud for her. 

In the end, I put her into the bin with the rice. She was a little taken back from the way the rice felt and the fact that it was there regardless of where she moved. 

I made this rice quite some time ago and we've brought it out to play in several times for the girls and even their friends to play in but it has been awhile since Vada's last time and I think that she had forgotten the way it felt

After we did our mini celebration of St. Patrick's Day I got out another one of our sensory bins to play in . 

So far, this is Vada's favorite bin.

We spent most of our time in this bin just playing. Every now and then I would take her hand and together we would scoop up the beans the correct way, so that she could feel in her wrists and hands the proper position for scooping. Otherwise we just had fun.