USA: day 3

As I was getting pooh ready for girls club I asked her if she wanted to wear her American flag tee-shirt.   Most mornings she won’t wear anything without a princess on it, but today, she said “yeah, like this one,” and she showed me her red, white and blue finger nails.  Yay! Connections!

I was worried they would be tired of red, white and blue so I tried to think about other American symbols.  I came across the Statue of Liberty in my Google search.  I don’t know that they understood symbolism, but I think if they see the Statue of Liberty, it will be familiar so we’ll just call this an exposure day.

We have a plastic microphone that I got for 3 bucks from target a long time ago.  The chicks like it, sometimes they fight over it, but I thought it would make a good torch.  I didn’t really want to spend 12 dollars so I was looking for some other ideas in the dollar section at Target and I found dollar microphones!  We taped on green triangles for flames.

Pooh pulled her “flames” off before we even finished puting them on.  She just wanted to hear herself on the mic.

We talked about the torch leading/lighting the way.  Here I had asked them to hold it up high and light the way.

Later we made crowns out of paper plates and painted it green.  I got the idea here.  I thought about including discussion about copper and pennies  and tying all that in but decided it would just confuse them.  So we just went with the green.

Hal was the most thorough  painter.  The other chicks got distracted quickly and went to play since we were outside.

At the end of the day they put on their dried crowns and held their torches.  Pooh complained that it was too itchy and one by one the rest of them copied her.  I got one picture before half of them took off their crowns.

I knew my 4 year old would want one when she got home so I kept some of the crown spikes for her, I cut them thinner and I think that it came out better (less like a sun).  If you look at the Statue of Liberty, the crown spikes are really thin looking.

God Bless America!

AMERICA: Day 1

I have to admit, I thought I was going to have a hard time coming up with ideas to fit this theme.  Once I started looking, one idea triggered the next.  We started with the globe and talked about where our country is.  I talked to the chicks about what made our country great.  I talked about the Book of Mormon as much as our 2 year olds could understand.  We talked about the name of our country and wrote the name on our chalkboard and had Tank underline the USA in the United States of America.

Then everyone had to color on the board, so we moved the chalk party outside for a little bit.

Back to the lesson.  I gave each of the chicks red construction paper and white stripes and had them make a red-white-red-white pattern.  Then we added a blue rectangle to the corner and then white stars.  I think you can tell where we were going with this.

Then I had the great idea to make apple pie.  I thought I had apple pie filling.  We made the crust and went for the apple pie filling that wasn’t there.  I quickly searched for a pie filling recipe and cut up apples as fast as I could.  The first time I baked with the chicks it was a little chaotic and a lot messy.  Then I remembered how I baked with the boys.  We had one helper chair and the chicks rotated around the chairs with each ingredient.  Whoever was in the helper  chair would add the ingredient.  No arguments and not as much flour on the floor.

Then I let the chicks have free time for a little bit.  I brought them to the table one by one and painted their nails red, white, and blue.

We’re so patriotic!!