Bat Diamond

Just another day as a super hero.

Nora Lee's Bonfire Birthday

I was looking for inspiration. Nora Lee's birthday comes on December 29th, right after a month of other family birthdays, Christmas and New Years. We are often pooped as are the families of Nora Lee's friends. In prior years we have invited many of the people we adore and have had rather large parties (last year we had about 60 friends over).

A few weeks before it was time to decide what to do for Nora Lee's birthday this year, I stumbled upon the video from last year of Nora Lee blowing out the candles on her cupcake. She looked totally stunned. You can even hear me asking on the video, "Are you okay?" She was overwhelmed and I realized that although it's really fun to have a big party, it's intense for it to be focused on any one of us, and especially for a little one.

So this year I was looking for an alternative. One morning Nora Lee was lamenting the winter (yeah, it's so hard here in sunny California during the winter) and asking when it would be summer again. I asked her why she was longing for summer and she said, "I miss the beach, when we can go again?" This gave me an idea. I said, "You know, we could go to the beach in the winter, we could even have a fire there!" Nora Lee went crazy for this idea and that's when we came up with the idea of a winter bonfire birthday. This time we invited a lot few people and roasted hot dogs and made s'mores. Matty and Brian played beautiful music, the kids played in the sand and it was lovely.

Cement

Today at Mud Pies and Butterflies we learned about cement. The kids (and parents) got to learn how to mix cement and how to make it the right consistency to make a hand print in. We learned about why it's important to make cement rough for sidewalks so they are not slippery when wet and this evolved into a conversation about what makes a house structure sound in an earthquake. Each child got a box of wet cement with which to make a hand print and decorate with shells, stones, or beads. The photo of Nora Lee's hand print did not turn out very well, but the hand print itself did. I was particularly tickled since today is Nora Lee's 5th birthday. It seemed special to mark this day with a print of her sweet hand.

Christmas

Cookies for Santa along with a painted snowflake that Nora Lee made for Santa because "Why does Santa give all the presents and never get any?"


Our tree after Santa came!


Nora Lee enjoys the contents of her stocking




Each of us received a recorder in our stockings

Holiday Park Day

Last week at Mud Pies and Butterflies, which is the Thursday afternoon park day we attend, we talked about different holiday traditions. Jessica told a story about Kwanzaa and the kids acted it out. Jessica and her family made a traditional danish cookie- cake and decorated it with flags from around the world as well as religious symbols.








I love that this boy showed up to park day in this yellow mustache. You may be thinking that he wore it to perform in the play, but no, he wore it because he wanted to. It was unrelated to anything else we were doing that day. It ended up being great for playing an old man in the kwanzaa play the kids did but he didn't bring it for that reason. I absolutely love that about homeschooling. Nora Lee gets to wear her high heeled cowgirl boots constantly and if she wants to show up in her bright pink cape, no problem, we don't have any rules about that. In fact, the more outrageous, the better.



This is the fabulous Jessica. She leads this park day and always plans an interesting educational theme and project for the kids.

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