Showing posts with label kids activities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kids activities. Show all posts

Sunday, June 4, 2017

Summer in the City - Week 1

Lauritzen Gardens
Happy Summer y'all!

Summer has officially started. MrC is now FREE of school till August 17th I think and has made it through the 3rd grade and will be advancing thru to 4th grade this year. He is turning into a kind and thoughtful young man who is really really good with little kids and it's been interesting watching his interest in all kinds of building type things. MissG is on her last FREE year before she enters her school years. She starts preschool in August 2 mornings a week and her schooling will continue for 20+ years if she decides to be a doctor. She has been saying that since last Sept/October before she turned 3! She told my chiropractor she wants to be a doctor of bones.

I thought I'd take a page from The Seasoned Mom and share some of the FUN activities we are doing this summer. Heck this might become a series! Hope she doesn't mind! There is so much that is shared online that is FREE and The Omaha Public Library is the very first place I check starting in April as I plan our summers.Everything else we do is planned around their activities!

So here we go:
Monday I had no kids since it was a holiday. 

Tuesday we began our day at the YMCA. MissG still had 3 days of swimming lessons to go. She was so excited about going to lessons and swimming and playing with MrC and then she would get stiff as a board and fight the teacher. It's a simple introduction to water and swimming so it was to help them get comfortable getting their face wet, moving in the water, lying on their back and crawling in the water. She does ok until the teacher asks her to lie back and put her head on the teachers shoulder and then she stiffens up. She did make it through the lesson though. Afterwards I had a chiropractor appointment. We were early about 40 minutes so we stopped at the park to play for a while. 
 
Wednesday ~ MrC got a cool surprise when a former daycare mom stopped by during naptime with a HUGE drawer thing filled with Knex, the motors and even a solar panel to make the motors run. After nap we went to our first library activity & both kids had a blast! M.E.S.S. stands for math, engineering & science stations. This weeks activity involved racing balloons, creating a gas with baking soda and vinegar to blow up a balloon, etc… The kids loved it & I loved that it worked for both kiddos.

Thursday my bathroom was getting painted in the morning. YAY! This has been a 6 year battle with my landlord. His mother was dying and all his time and resources were tied up in her care till about a year ago. My bathroom floor was falling apart and the wall behind the toilet was having issues. My landlord is 70 now and he told me he didn't expect it to be such a HUGE job (It's been over a month and my litter box is still in the living room till the baseboard is finished - hopefully in the next week or so). I love my new padded flooring and the ADA toilet which is higher than most. I have a bad hip and it has helped me with my pain so much! YAY

Anyway, the kids and I went to Lauritzen Gardens on Thursday morning to get out of the house. We wanted to go see The Amazing Stinko which is supposed to be a rare plant that rarely blooms. It's supposed to be the stinkiest too & I wanted a picture of them holding their noses.... Entrance to the gardens was supposed to be free until it bloomed - you guessed it - it bloomed 3 days before we went. I decided to go ahead and pay to get in so the kids could see the trains, childrens gardens, the new observatory which is a huge rainforest. There are bananas and a huge trumpet shaped carniverous plants in there! (It eats bugs!!)
(I will be posting all my pictures of Lauritzen gardens as well as review in another post. )

Friday ~ MrC wasn’t feeling very well in the morning. He seemed very tired and Ms G was doing great (no swimming lessons!). I put her down for a nap because we were going to the farmers market to listen to music that night and so she could dance. You guessed it – the music was over by the time we got there, we went home and her Dora book wouldn’t work even with new batteries…. Friday was a very difficult day & it didn't help that no one got to play with the knex because they were left out the night before. You see we have a little rule - if I have to put them away they are MINE for 3 days.... They'll get them back on Monday.

Saturday night: Mr C and his mom took me to see Peter Pan at The Rose Theater. That was fun and it was nice to actually do something non work related for a change.  Review


What did you do last week?

Sunday, May 28, 2017

Summer in the City ~ Starts NOW!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend.... This month I've been working on Summer Plans for the kids. For those of you don't know I have a very very small "daycare". OK, it's more of a shared nanny between 2 families. I have a 3.5 year old girl who is FINALLY getting past her tantrum stage and getting better in control of her behavior and will start prek 2 mornings a week this fall. Then I have a 9.5 year old boy who I love as though he's my own. He is a super neat kid (ok, both of them are). This year for the first time in 3 years I have kids who are both old enough to have fun doing the many busy activities I have planned & we don't have to work around a strict nap schedule (I hope!!!).
I thought I'd share some of the activities on the calendar in June/July & you all are welcome to steal some of them for your own family.... Basically what I do is list everything I think they will be interested in and then let them take turns choosing which activity they want to do.
1) Both families are providing YOUTH memberships to the YMCA this summer. Youth memberships are $15/month and right now until 5/31 I believe the $49 registration fee is being waived. Check with your local YMCA to make sure it's still available and take advantage of the opportunity for summer swimming. Otherwise, they have open swimming for $5 most days. We are planning to swim 2 times a week so the Youth Membership is the best option for us. http://metroymca.org/find-my-y/ (search by zipcode to see where a Y is in your area)
2) The library here in Omaha offers an amazing summer program - be sure to check in your area. This years theme is Build a Better World. There are all kinds of STEM related activities - science, math, reading, mazes, robots, building, etc and most of it's for 4 but I think Gianna (3.5) will get to do quite a bit. We also get to go to Shakespeare on the Green and the Planetarium for Storytime & there's stuff for the grown ups too! Activity Guide: bit.ly/2qnWxxa
Also, the Public Schools here have the Sherwood Public Library Program. The kids get to do crafts, electronic learning, storytime, and receive a free book each week. We've done this for the last 5 years and I will call the schools directly if I can't find info on it. The kids love it!
3) Kid's Stewardship has a great Summer Vacation Survival Kit available for $6.99. It's designed by 2 teachers and provides 20 activities for the kids to work on without an adult telling them what to do all the time. I think this is something we'll use on rainy days and those few days I don't have anything on the calendar. Learn more at: http://bit.ly/SumSurvivalKit (Affiliate Link)
New Playground at Hanscom Park, Omaha, NE
4) Lastly: we always take bikes to the playground to ride, find new playgrounds (Omaha has hundreds of them), there's Hummel Park, Zorinsky Lake, Fontenelle Forest, the NEW Hanscom Park playground (above), etc... picnics, free movies at Regal Theatres, both Kids Bowl FREE and Kids Skate FREE programs, and there is so much more!
June Calendar - amazing huh? This just shows the library schedule nothing else!

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Koala Crate - get $10 OFF your order!




Hey guys - I love Koala Crate! I just ordered another crate for Gianna & Madison to play with next week. Madison is off school and hopefully it will save me from a few hours of arguing and whining. =D The last time we got one we got to watercolor and play with paste & the kids loved it!


Would you like $10 off your FIRST Activity Crate from Koala Crate? 
They are giving my readers $10 off! Click the picture below to learn more!



Shared at:

 “Inspire

Disclaimer: I ordered a box of goodies from Kiwi Crate and was given a code to share with my readers and was offered $10 for each reader who orders to put toward future orders. You can do this too - just order from the link above and you'll be given a code to share with your friends!!! =D