Dust

Last week a dust cloud settled over the region.  I heard it reached as far as Pakistan.  We all wore masks and there was no recess at school for the worst two out of the four days it lasted.  The good thing about the cloud was that it blocked the sun so the temperature was at least a little cooler.

St. Joseph's Table

We made a sweet little St. Joseph's Day Table on the 19th in honor of the patron saint of fathers and carpenters.  All of the table's accessories are pretty small so it took all eight little hands to find everything in our Playmobil bins....

Rainbow Toast

For snack on St. Patrick's Day we had Rainbow Toast.  I found this idea on another mom's blog and thought I would try it.  The kids all loved it.  All you do is toast some bread and then dye evaporated milk.  The kids took turns painting with each color and then topped off their creations with colored sugar sprinkles. 

Horsin' Around: Happy Birthday Marcella! You're 8!!!!

Marcella chose a Horse and Pony birthday theme this year (much to my delight).  For decorations she gathered her favorite Breyers and displayed them on our buffet with her Precious Moments.  Over Christmas the girls received a "Pink Pony Party Ideas" book and from there we found a cute carousel cake as well as  yummy "Bluegrass Punch."  Casey made his scrumptious Pepperoni Pony Tails and Marcella put togather a yummy plate of horse snacks.

For games we played Horse, Horse, Pony (much like duck, duck, goose), Pin The Tail on the Donkey, and Hide the Pony.  Eben refused to wear the mask for PIn the Tail on the Donkey but he did love being turned around. 

We hid the party favors in a bucket of "hay" and each child got to search for their special prize.  Marcella had a lovely time as you will see below:

Our Little Daisy

Theresa is loving being a Girl Scout Daisy.  The group meets every other week after school and right now they are studying plants and nature.  Yesterday she came home with a beautiful paper filled with various herb cuttings.  She always wears her daisy apron from Oma to school on the day she has Daisies.  At Daissies she puts on her vest.  Theresa blooms wherever she goes!

Hammer Practice

I stumbled across a neat Montessori exercise the other day and thought I would try it out with the kids.  It was called the "Stump" but we have no stumps here in KAUST so we used fallen off chunks of palm tree.  The kids wore their safety goggles and began to pound away.  We started with just nails and then added sequins.  They loved being little workers and kept commenting on all their hard work.  The palm tree chunks turned out so pretty!



Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up Her Wash

A perk of doing story times is that I have a lot of props for stories.  Here we are doing the wash with Mrs. McNosh.  This gave the little ones some great clothespin practice.