the sound of music

We listen to music in the car and at various times during the day.  We also play instruments and dance and keep rhythm.  Ella loves it when Leslie joins our little band :)

Last week we listened to bluegrass and traditional American folk music and tried to play along . . .

little red hen/farm play

This week we are expanding our "Little Red Hen" story unit to include the farm.  We spent the morning setting up the Fisher Price farm.  (Check out how Ella lined all of the animals and farmers up to count them with no prompting!)

Library Time

On our way to the park this morning we made a little detour and stopped in at the library.

Ella liked the fish and the turtles . . .

. . . and the dinosaur model!

And, of course, we found some great stories to read.  This one was good for some crafting fun . . .

Some of What We've Been Up To

playing with the fisher price dollhouse and zoo

some fine motor games

making a chicka chicka 123 tree with a painted forearm, special scissors, and number stickers

acting out goldilocks

making bracelets

Ella and the Seven Dresses

Okay, by now I am fully aware of Ella's love of dresses.  She loves to wear her cool J Crew frocks (and change them often) and she is pretty excited when she can convince people around her to wear a nice dress too :)  We recently had a conversation about her aspirations of becoming a fashion designer one day.  She plans to design a dress for Grandma because Grandma doesn't like to wear dresses but Ella is sure that she will wear one when Ella gets married one day.  That being said, imagine my delight when I unearthed this book which is all about dresses from my library the other day.  Ella's reaction?  Read it again!!!!  And so, after we read it a few times, I broke out the scrapbook supplies and a template of a paper doll body and we got to work designing seven dresses for Ella's own paper doll.  The only problem I can see with this project is that glue takes such a long time to dry!

Ella's Restaurant

Ella loves to play restaurant and pizza parlor.  Last week our teddy bear picnic transformed into a teddy bear diner as Ella acted as waitress (writing orders - yeah literacy!) and head chef.  

All About Bears

Bear caves, bear hunts, bear games . . .  Goldilocks!  We turned the house into a big bear jamboree today!

Ella's Bear Cave.  Looks like those bears are having an important meeting.

Bear puzzles.  Noticing Ella likes  loves anything to do with fashion and dressing things up.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?  We read the book and then played with a Colorforms version. 

Goldilocks on the velcro board.  

We made puppets and sets and Ella acted out Goldilocks . . .