Hannah's Book

This is actually her second book.  Her first was done with stamps.

This book tells the emotional story of Aunt Marissa coming for a visit...

playing, and then sadly leaving. :(  Although we all seem to have smiles on our faces at the end, so maybe it wasn't as sad as Hannah let on.

Someone might be a little obsessed with her aunt.

CANstruction

Our local food pantry, Harvesters, does a yearly competition where businesses build structures out of cans.  Then when the competition is over, all the cans are donated to Harvesters to feed those in need.  The designs are on display at the mall for about a month.

We got inspired to make our own CANstruction at home!  Can you tell what we made?  (ha- unintentionally pun)

Did you guess?  It was a giraffe, rainbow, and castle.  Constructing with cans was free, fun, and (bonus!) I had an organized pantry when we were all done.

Monkey Bizness

Hannah's dream came true.  We went to Monkey Bizness inside Great Mall of the Great Plains in Olathe.  She calls it BIG Monkey Bizness, since we've been to Little Monkey Bizness several times.  It was similar to all of the other indoor playplaces that we have visited.  I was afraid Olive wouldn't be able to climb on things, but she was fine.  She could do everything except the giant inflatable slides. 

Funny story: during our visit a boy befriended Hannah and called her his "girlfriend with the long hair."  Olive was not happy to share her sister.  She growled at him and then tried to choke him with one hand.  Who knew I would have to give time-outs for attempted homicide?  That was not in any of the parenting books I read.  The boy is not in any pictures due to our on-going legal battle.  Just kidding.

In happier times.  She looks so sweet...

I let Hannah play in the toddler area because we were the only ones in the room for awhile.  The girls built this elaborate trail with pillows.

Science Night

Hannah hasn't had a playdate with her buddy Ollie in awhile, so she was super excited to meet him for dinner at Chick-Fil-A and then play at Science Night.  She was also super excited to touch a tarantula and talked about it all day.  I thought she would chicken out when she saw it.  Nope.  She even inspired Ollie to hold it, too!  Olive wanted no part of the spider.  She liked the bunny best.

Olive petting a mouse and Penny in the background.

Look closely....

I love these two together.

What a great night!  Hannah and Olive had so much fun with Ollie and Penny....although I think Olive might have overwhelmed Penny a little.  I got lots of hugs and hellos from my old students and parents. I miss being at such a great school!

A look back at Science Nights of Yore:  2010, 2011, 2012, 2013

Goings On

Time for another exciting installment of what is going on at our house!

* One of posts from Teaching Every Day got pinned and repinned on Pinterest...and so 700 people from 15 different countries visited my blog IN ONE DAY!  That's not big for real bloggers, but it was huge for me.  I'm in complete awe that people all over the world read my words.  One thing I loved (and miss) about teaching is the feeling that I was "making a difference" and helping kids learn.  I'm so excited that maybe I can still do that by helping parents teach their kids.

* I joined a playgroup.  It is out of my comfort zone...but I do like talking to other moms, and the girls like to play, so we tried it.  We went over to someone's house that lives right down the street.  So far so good.

*Every so often Steve gets in a "clean the whole house and get rid of everything we don't use" mood.  Last weekend he cleaned out the basement and garage and has listed quite a few things on eBay and Craigslist.  It looks great!

* Hannah switched to a booster car seat.  She could actually switch at 4 years old and 40 pounds, but I wanted to keep her in the five-point harness as long as possible to be safest.  Alas, she is a tall girl and exceeded the maximum height.  I'm still weirded out that my kid is old enough for a booster seat.

* We got a new trashcan that opens automatically.  Olive is "scared" of the new trashcan and refuses to use it.  I'm pretty sure this is a ploy to get out of her chores.

* Olive is STILL potty-training.  I swear.  I can do a lot of things well as a mother...potty-training is obviously not one of them.  Does anyone know of a potty bootcamp for stubborn girls?  I'm going on five straight years of changing diapers...

* After getting her new bed, Hannah has been obsessed with keeping her room clean.  Every night she makes sure everything is in it's proper place.

*Grandma and Grandpa got the girls a CD of music I liked as a kid.  They are hooked.  They play "Sneaky Snake" and "The Mysterious Fox of Fox Hollow" on repeat and dance around in Hannah's room for an hour.  They even make up little plays and dress up in costumes "so the the fox can't find them."

* We are hooked on the Olympics.  This is the first year that the girls (okay, really just Hannah) are  old enough to care about them.  I can't believe that she was a baby the last time we had the Winter Olympics.  Time goes by way too fast.

Zoo in February

Grandma and Grandpa spent the weekend with us and then we met Aunt Marissa at the zoo.  It was nice to have a little sunshine after all the cold, dreary days we have had the past few weeks.

The moon jellyfish are now on exhibit in the penguin building!

watching penguins swim and doing crazy poses

riding in style

I said "Ride that elephant!" and this is what she did...

They had to stand in every circle.

Bad picture, but the mother and baby orangutan were right next to the glass.  I've never seen them so close before!

Static

We dug our inflatable climber out of the basement for one last play session.  It has a leak that can't be repaired.  Sigh.  Goodbye old friend.  

Valentines

Happy Valentine's Day from the love bug!

I spent the day with my little valentines crafting, swimming, and making cookies.  Our local YMCA is having an open house and it was free swimming!  Steve brought home a heart-shaped pizza, so I didn't have to make dinner.  That is enough of a present for me!

Hannah made her shirt with fabric markers.  She put together his special valentine outfit.

Bow Head

 This is what happens when you have girls.

Notice the sofa fort in the background.  Steve built it for the girls and I didn't have a sofa for almost a week.

Museum Scavenger Hunt at the Nerman Museum

The closest art museum to us is the Nerman on the campus of JoCo Community College.  It is a small contemporary art museum.  We went on a field trip and made a little art scavenger hunt.

Notice the yellow/green boxes.  We have daily lessons in problem solving to fix mistakes and then letting it go...

Hannah was all about the scavenger hunt.  She marked things off as we found them.  And it helped her stay focused on one piece of art long enough to notice it could fit several different criteria.  Our favorite was an installation exhibit called Illuminate.  

When you walked close to the pieces, they lit up!

Norah's Birthday

Norah's 5th birthday was at Paul Mesner Puppets for an Anansi the Spider show.  I used to read lots of Anansi books with my students when we studied Africa.  So it was fun to see the puppet Anansi act out the stories.  Olive laughed a lot!

Teaching Every Day

I have a confession.  I have another blog.  It is called teachingeverday.com.  Yep, I even purchased a domain name.  And I haven't mentioned it before because, well, I'm not sure why.  Probably because I didn't know if it would actually work out. I still don't.

Okay, so I've been doing *this* blog for over five years.  But this is just taking pictures of my kids and writing about what we do on the weekends.  A scrapbook for family and friends.  It isn't even a public blog.

Here's my idea for Teaching Every Day.  I love teaching and kids....and since I'm at home teaching my own kids....why not teach other parents how to teach their kids?  I think there is a lot of learning in the everyday.  Hannah isn't going to preschool this year, but that doesn't mean she isn't learning.  We do math problems with laundry.  We talk about shapes and symmetry with blocks.  We read for at least 30 minutes EVERY DAY, write letters to family, make our own books, and put on puppet shows.

When I was a teacher, parents used to ask me all the time what they could do at home to supplement their child's education.  Sure, you can do workbooks.  But there are plenty of ways to work learning into fun activities....or make not-so-fun activities more fun.  And since I was doing these activities anyway with my kids, why not blog about for other parents?  I love talking about teaching stuff and parenting stuff...and so teachingeveryday.com was born.

As I said before...I'm not sure what I'm doing with it.  It is on Wordpress instead of Blogger, so it has been a steep learning curve for me.  I'm not really happy with the blog design, but I've been reluctant to put any money into it (beyond the $7 for a domain name).  I have been posting very sporadically since August.  I feel like I'm gaining momentum now, though, and I will post more regularly.  And hopefully I'll figure out how to make it prettier.  And maybe even put some ads* on it.

So please check out teachingeveryday.com.  It mainly has tips for teaching kids, but there are also posts about my new stay-at-home lifestyle.  Some posts are identical to ones on House of Kerrs.  Some have the same pictures, but different content....like the Puppet Theater on House of Kerrs vs. Teaching Every Day. ...or Snow Paint here vs. there.  House of Kerrs will mostly be pictures of what we did.  Teaching Every Day will be more explanation and different ideas for learning.

Another big difference is I'm not using the girls' names on Teaching Every Day.  I feel like it is a good idea since it is a public blog.  I refer to them as Big Sis and Little Sis.  So if you comment on Teaching Every Day, please don't use their real names.  Maybe this will change in the future, but right now I just want to give them a little privacy.

*Note: You may have noticed I put ads on House of Kerrs.  I don't expect to make any real money because it isn't even a public blog.  I am just trying them out since I eventually want ads on my other blog.

Chinese New Year

We went to the Chinese New Year celebration at the art gallery again this year.  We didn't see the Lion Dance because the dancers were off schedule. This year I reserved (free!) tickets to the Lily Cai Chinese dance performance.  I love watching dancers and I am so glad that I can share that with my girls.  During the performance I was wondering what I would do if I had boys....probably drag them to Chinese dancers, too. :)  It was the first time Olive sat and watched a live performance like that.  The dances with giant streamers held her interest, but they were broken up by Lily Cai explaining the traditions and dynasties behind the dance...so a bit much for a two-year-old. Here's an example of some of the dances we saw.

Hannah wanted to pose

Then Olive wanted to pose