Staging Legos

Legos just might be a girls best friend. In our house anyway. I am not sure what prompted Emma to stage and photograph her Legos, but that is what she did today. 

Her first photo

This is when Emma asked me to come see what she was doing. I asked her if she would like some back drops for her photos. 

I also really wanted to get a picture of her photographing her Legos so I gave her an old 35mm (with film) camera and had her take a few pics. 

She really wasn't a fan of the tiny view finder. Technology, aint it grand?

Providing a spear for this Lego man

At this point I just sat back and enjoyed the show. 

Umm, those aren't Legos. 

This, apparently, was the final battle (and photo). 

 

The other thing of interested from today (other than the fact that I ended up taking a 3 hour nap and that I will now be awake until 2 a.m) is that Emma read me a book tonight.

One of my favorite things about our library is their website. I can search through the library's book collection on-line, and reserve any of the books that catch my eye. Don't get me wrong, I love wandering up and down the isles of books, pulling out a random book here and there, but not when Emma is with me. She gets ansty, complains, asks, "When can we go to my section?" about 20 times a minute. So, I prefer to reserve my books on-line and have them waiting for me when I get there. Emma knows our first stop is to pick up our reserved books, then head to the kids section. At this point, I sit and look through the books to decide if I really want to take them home, while Emma searches for books that she would like.

When we went to the library on Thursday, Emma was drawn to the bin of board books. Seeing as she likes to listen to books that are geared towards kids who are 8 and older (we are currently listening to Inkdeath, the third in the Inkheart Trilogy), I figured she should also be able to read/listen to the books geared towards kids 3 and under. Plus, I got to sit in the super comfy extra wide glider rocker to look through my books while she searched for hers.

A sneakier reason for letting her pick out board books is that they typical have easy words, and not very many of them. When confronted with any book other than an easy reader, she will tell me that she can't read, and she believes it. Won't even try. So, I thought maybe a few simple books would help boost her confidence.

Here are the three we read tonight.  

This is from 'Cuddly Animal,' which Emma read to me.

Beautiful Babies (A Horse!)

Now if only she would stop telling me (and herself) that she can't read...

Photo Assignments - A Recap

For a detailed explanation of photo assignments, check out this post and this post. We just got back into doing photo assignments so I thought I would post the photos from the first two (done back in Jan) before I posted the third one which was done yesterday.

We missed two on this one, but I think it was dinner time and Emma was D-O-N-E! She did after all, do both list one and two at the same time. 

 

We have a few more printed up and ready to go. Assignment 4 is a list of colors. I had originally had each word the color that it is, but I decided that black would make her actually read the words, not guess. Assignments 5 and 6 are lists of outside words, so we will make a field trip out of it. 

In the future I will just post the picture as well as a link to the past photo assignment post for explanation.

Have a great day! 

Photo Silliness

It has been good to be home. An entire week even.

Emma and I had some fun this week. I made a very conscious effort to spend more time with Emma, not just near Emma.

We did a lot of snuggling on the couch watching t.v. or reading magazines (that I told her she couldn't cut up until we read them at least once). I may not have done as much as I would have liked, but I did do better then usual.

We did lots of crafty and artistic things this week, but I have to say my favorite was when Emma's Karate show turned into an impromptu and very silly photo shoot.

(Her karate show consisted of her kicking things around her room)

In walks Icky, the dog, and he distracts the photographer (that would be me).

He wants snuggles so I oblige, while still taking photos.

Emma is not one to be left out when photos are being taken:

And for some reason this photo gave me an idea...

Close up eye photos!

I wanted to take close up pictures of Emma's beautiful eyes. We took about 30 eyeball pictures, but I decided to spare you from all of them. The one above is significant because after this one I tried to move some hair out of Emma's face and...

I poked her in the eye. Oops, there goes mama of the year award (again). 

I might have still had a chance except I photographed her pain. Not once, 

but twice. Shame on me. 

Could't be helped, even when her eye has been poked, she is still stinking cute!

Thankfully it wasn't too bad of an eye poking, she got right back into the photo mood and wanted to get a picture with Icky. 

Icky, however, wasn't going to get that close to Emma without giving her a kiss. 

I then decided I wanted to take a picture of Emma's nose, but she wouldn't just sit there. She kept making this face:

Which of course led to this,

I love it when she laughs. 

Just as we decided to be done taking pictures, we realized that,

Da was home!

Which of course led to sharing the silliness with him. 

Friday was a great day :)

Photo Assignment #1

Hi its Emma. I did my first PA (photo assignment).


Yes, Emma did type that. Yes, it took a really long time, but whatever, it got her interested in sounding out and spelling words. She also got a mini typing lesson. She is still sitting in my lap snuggling with me. Normally she would be in bed now, but after gymnastics today, she was exhausted and ended up taking a longer/ later nap than I would have liked. 


Oh well.


We printed up Emma's Photo Assignment #1 this morning during breakfast and posted it on the fridge. We then spent most of the day out and about, so Emma never got a chance to discover the list on her own.

A very busy day for us=
1. New battery for the car. Check
2. Adjustable shelving tracks and brackets for Emma's room. Check
3. Staples for some wanted but not necessarily needed supplies. Check
4. Gymnastics for Emma (where she actually participated and did great!). Check
5. Lunch with Da. Check


Then we finally went home. We jumped right into putting up the shelves, and Emma helped me with the stud finder (she loves the noises it makes), as well as measuring and marking. Then she got board and played with her doll for a while. 


Emma got hungry, so she had a snack of pretzels and 5 M&M's. She was unhappy about the small number of M&M's and pouted about it for far longer then I was happy with. She even started to cry a few times, which is when I had her lay down. Nothing drives me crazy faster then a whiny child. The plan was to let her sleep for about 20 minutes, then wake her up.

She was NOT ready to wake up after 20 minutes. So, I decided to let tonight be a late night and let her nap a bit longer. She apparently needed it.

After another 20 minutes, I tried waking her up again and this time instead of tears and anger, she was just out of it. I asked if she would like to help me with dinner or watch some Curious George. She chose George, which was fine with me. It helped her to wake up.

I was still cooking (making a few meals at once takes a little longer, but is really worth it) when George was done, so I asked her if she would like to do a photo assignment.

She was very interested so I showed her the list and explained to her how it works. She jumped right in and started reading the first word, which was 'wall'.

She flew through the first list and really enjoyed it.

Dinner wasn't quite ready and Da was still a few minutes from home, so I asked if she would like to do another list.

"YES!" was her reply.

I should have quit while she was really enjoying it.

She did well for the first few but then started to get bored. She read all the words on the second list but decided 'shin' and 'heel' where boring so crossed them off the list and didn't take any pictures of them.

Oh well, you win some and you lose some.

Anyway, I think she really enjoyed the Photo Assignment, but I think one a week (maybe Photo Assignment Friday) would be plenty. Anything more then that and I think it might just get old.

And... Jared has Friday's off from school so it might be fun to incorporate PA's into field trips once a month.

Well, it is time to read some Bella Sara before bed. We are on book #3, and there are currently 11, so we had best get to reading!

Here are the photos from the two PA's she did today. You can find the lists here. Hope you have a great weekend!

p.s. I am headed out of town on Saturday. Unless I can convince Gramma or Da to post, it may be quite for a bit, but I will catch you up when I get home. Who knows, with Gramma around, Emma may be reading when I get back :)