A Trip to the Zoo

One day Katrina asked me if bears were just "details" (I wrote about it here). Turns out she thought details were things that were made-up. :)

So, I thought we better try to get to a zoo and see a real bear! I was excited when I found a Groupon for a zoo and went ahead and got some tickets for my parents, too. We all headed out one day and had a grand time :)

The girls LOVED the petting zoo.  That $1 for animal food was well worth it!  We saw some pretty cool animals and even a real bear! :)

I snapped this lovely shot of Katrina looking at the deer and thought I had a nice angle and a really cute shot... until I got home and looked a little closer!  Can you see what I so masterfully caught in my shot?  Ahem... you couldn't have caught that action shot better if you tried!  Awkward..

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A Trip to the Farm and a Dream Come True!

Two years ago we went to visit a friend's farm. (I blogged about it here) We were able to go back a second time that year when my sister and her girls visited. Sadly we missed going last year and this year a trip to the farm was right at the top of the girls' summer bucket list, so I'm very happy that we made it happen last week!

We arrived, drove up their long driveway and rounded the corner to a beautiful view that made me feel like I was on vacation because it was so relaxing!

Soon the girls were having the time of their lives, jumping on the trampoline.  Talia exclaimed, "It's been YEARS since I've been on a trampoline!" :)

Next we visited the goats, donkeys, and miniature horses.  One of their goats has become quite famous after an incident they caught on camera inside of their house!

After our last visit, we knew that there was a rule that you should be 8 years old in order to ride a horse (Talia heard that and never forgot it).  So Katrina was surprised and excited when she found out she could ride this miniature horse (at age 5!).

A small girl on a small horse ;)

After the little horse ride, the girls spent some more time with the miniature horses, donkeys and goats. They brushed their hair and fed them grass and thoroughly enjoyed them. I was amazed by how comfortable they were around the animals!

Then they each got to take one of the miniature horses for a "walk" and they had so much fun!  It was the craziest thing to see the girls so comfortable with the horses and the horses so content to be with the girls.. it was like watching a child walk a dog, except they were horses!  So cool and what a beautiful place.. I couldn't stop smiling while watching them!

I was especially surprised to see shy little Katrina (who was so nervous about that elephant ride at the circus) so confident with that little horse!

After playing for quite a while with the horses, the girls gave them some water and in the photo below, Katrina's giving one a mint.  Then we went inside to have a drink, rest, and the girls had fun playing with the cats.

I cannot blog this event without telling you that Talia's dream came true on this day!  She has been talking about riding a horse when she's 8 for a good two years and it was as if she practised in her dreams because she was so ready for this moment!

Later we visited with the cows and the girls fed them tons of hay. :)

What a wonderful day filled with special memories!

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Simple, Easy Animal Birthday Party

As I type this, we are closer to Katrina's 5th birthday than her 4th but I still haven't blogged about her 4th Birthday party, so here we go! :)

(Now that my hands are doing better and the kids are in school, I'm playing catch-up!)

At the time of her 4th birthday, my hands were not doing well. I love to create fancy birthday parties for my kids, but I knew it wasn't possible this time around, so I went with a less labor-intense plan. I wanted some kind of theme (it just helps me to focus when I'm deciding what kind of plates/food/whatever to choose). So, we went with animals.

She requested a ladybug cake (you know how much she loves ladybugs), so I made this cake for her:



It wasn't too hard for my hands to handle (the squeezing of the icing tubes is the hardest part when my hands are hurting), because most of the icing is just spread on with a knife, so I just had to make it through the border & the dots :) (I love making cakes- I worked as a cake decorator at Baskin Robbins for a while, and it's something I think is really fun, so it was hard to resist trying to make a fancy cake!)

A Visit to the Farm

Last month we were fortunate enough to go and visit a friend's farm with our girls. They LOVED it!!

Well, it wasn't love at 1st smell ;)



But pretty soon there were other things to pay attention to:



One of their favourite things to do was to feed long grass to the cows:



Another highlight was when we got to meet a brand new (that morning) calf!



And watch (and feed) the new Mommies and babies! (it was so cool because there were several pairs and you could totally tell which ones belonged together because they looked alike, and they would be together).



Look at these two! (a little cow kiss!)



There was rain that day, so when it got to be a bit much, we came inside for a break, a snack, and one of Talia's favourite parts- holding this cat like a baby! And we finished the visit off by making one of Talia's dreams come true when she got to sit on a huge horse! Now she really wants to take horse riding lessons!



Thank you, thank you to Sandy who showed us around- the girls loved you! And to John for bringing that little baby over for us to meet! We loved our visit!

Go Fish Feelings Game

Chasing Cheerios posted recently about an animal groups file folder game from File Folder Fun.

I had never tried "File Folder Games" although the name seemed familiar, so I checked out the website. I found some cool games there that I know Talia will love. We started right away by printing off the "Go Fish Feelings" game.

Talia loved watching the pages come out of the printer :) I cut the cards out (she put her hand on mine to "help me" cut them out, and then I laminated them.

Then we played & played! She "got" the rules of the game and caught on quickly, learning the names of the individual fish.

When we were finished, she even started making up her own card game with the cards! (If you don't get a match, you put the poppy on them- we got a poppy in the mail for Remembrance Day).

This was a definite success & I'm sure we'll enjoy the game many more times! I'm looking forward to exploring the File Folder website to see what else we might be able to use!

Library Topic of the Week

We've been choosing topics to research at the library each week for a few weeks now and I think it will be a lasting thing!

Each week as we approach our library day, I announce that we need to pick something that we want to learn about from the library, and Talia chooses a topic. She will often make comments during the week like, "Oh, we should get a book about that!", or she'll ask questions about something and I'll suggest getting a book about it. It's been great!

Topics we've done so far:

- Insects
- Zoo Animals
- Birds
- Fruit
- Crocodiles & Alligators

This week is fruit, but she also wanted to know the difference between Crocodiles & Alligators, so we got a couple of books on that topic as well.

I'm sure we'll revisit each topic in a number of ways in the future as there is so much more to learn than we can cover in a few books. I'm still getting the hang of trying to incorporate more learning activities into our days, and I'm sure you could choose a topic of the week and have lots of learning activities and field trips and other experiences planned to help your preschooler to learn more. I've already discussed the Aviary with Talia and hope that we'll be able to visit sometime- she's been talking about how she'd like to go see the birds in real life :)

We've also used the library for craft ideas (we got out a book of ideas for crafts using pipe cleaners).

The library has been a wonderful resource for us!