Monday, October 28, 2013

Reading, reading, reading

This is kind of a disjointed post. Sorry about that! I realized I hadn't updated in a few weeks, though, so I wanted to put some new pics up.

We had the girls' parent-teacher conferences a week or so ago. As expected, they're both doing great in school. Maisie, it turns out, is now reading at about a third-grade level. She reads all the time! She reads over my shoulder when I'm at the computer or on my phone. She reads words I didn't know that she knew. She gets her nose stuck in a book in the morning and I have to promise her she can take it on the bus, or she won't get ready for school! We love it and more importantly, she loves it too.

The library has been a great source of books for us. Maisie has her own library card, and has now for a while. But one other way it's keeping us in new reading material is the ongoing book sale!
The organization Friends of the Hennepin County Library operates a little bookstore at the downtown library. They sell books that the library is getting rid of, along with books that other people have donated. It's a super source for inexpensive books! They usually cost a dollar or two, but last week they were running a sale where all books were a quarter. These are some of the books I picked up there for Maisie, all of which she's really enjoying. She reads Babymouse in bed at night, when she is supposed to be sleeping. :)

This weekend the weather was really, really nice out. It was a great change from the cold gray fall we've been having. It was still brisk, but warm.

To get outside on Saturday afternoon, the girls and I walked around the neighborhood on an impromptu scavenger hunt. I wrote the list for Maisie...


And she added to it as the walk went on.


I did Ella's list in pictures. It was a fun little activity and a nice way to get outside and enjoy the warm fall sunshine.

Sunday we went to a corn maze with Dylan and Auntie Laura! That was super fun, kind of nuts, and merits its own post. Probably tomorrow.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Color days

One fun thing that Ella's preschool class has been doing is color days! For a few weeks now, each day has been assigned to a certain color. The children then note who's wearing something with that color on, they talk about foods and things that are that color, and so on. Ella has really enjoyed planning her color day outfits to maximize the amount of the day's color that she's wearing. So I figured I'd share a few of her color day outfits with you!

Here we have Pink Day:

Pink jacket, pink shirt, pink pants.

This is from Red Day:

Ella's favorite animal is pandas, so she adores this shirt.

Along the way we've also had orange, green, brown, blue, gray, black & white, purple, and yellow days. This week they're wrapping it up. We had favorite color day (she wore all purple), and it's ending with today's theme:


Rainbow day!