Thursday, February 16, 2012

Jonah and the Whale

From Life with the Bjorks

From Life with the Bjorks

From Life with the Bjorks

This week we talked about Jonah, sang songs, tossed balloon faces into a whale and made the whale spit them out, made a big fish with fingerprint scales, colored several coloring pages, and played with whales in soapy water (this fit in nicely with the theme but was really done to get all the ink off her little fingers. This was a fun week because it lent itself to so many activities. Plus anything involving water play is always a big hit with Rachel.

It is neat to see how much Rachel is absorbing. She likes me to repeat the stories we have already done from her Baby Bible Storybook and will even copy some of the movements. This week she imitated folding her hands during prayer time. Seeing those little pudgy hands folded in prayer warmed my heart.

So besides learning about Jonah, what have we been up to? Well, Rachel finally got tall enough to climb on the dining room chairs, and as a result she also got another lesson in gravity and that we sit in chairs. That one seems to have stuck because now when she climbs on the chair she sits down.

We also went to Petco one day since it was too windy to play outside and we needed to get out of the house. For a toddler, Petco is as good as the zoo and my wallet likes it better than the zoo. Petco is full of fish, tarantulas, snakes, lizards, birds, rats, mice, guinea pigs, chinchillas, and the occasional dog with its owner. Rachel continues to increase her language skills and was able to share with me that some of the animals were sleeping and some were eating as well as saying hi to many of them. She also enjoyed running up and down the fish aisle from tank to tank and back again. This will be added to our list of free and fun activities.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Mommy's Little Helper

From Life with the Bjorks
Activity: Make Muffadoodles
Result: Muffadoodles made and our clothes, counter, and floor were covered in cinnamon and sugar. Mommy got to clean the floor for a second time that day.

From Life with the Bjorks
Activity: Mopping
Result: The floor was extra clean around the china hutch thanks to Rachel.

From Life with the Bjorks
Activity: Putting away laundry
Result: Rachel understands that practice makes perfect, so she gave both of us extra practicing at folding and putting away clothes by doing it twice.