Rainbow week 2!

Today is our first day back into rainbow week, since yesterday Alli had school in the morning and Stanford in the afternoon.  I was hoping to find a miracle cure for why she doesn't wear her right hearing aide, but the best the ENT could come up with was that there was some wax in her ear, which he took out.  I tried putting both aides on today, and again when it came time for the right one, she freaked out.  Now I don't know if that is because she is so used to it bothering her and if I could just get it in she will see that it is ok, or if the wax wasn't the issue at all.  I hate to pin her down and traumatize her, but I don't know how else to get it in.  Maybe tomorrow...

So I tried real hard to have everything prepped and ready to go for Emily and Alli when Em got home from school today.  I had everything all laid out and organized ...

And when Em got home she was really excited!  And thanked me for setting everything up.  :)  This is definitely the way to go.  In the past I knew what activities I wanted to do, but nothing was set up, so the girls had to wait around while I tried to get all our supplies together.  which isn't ideal as sometimes patience wears out or they loose interest.  She wanted to do the counting bear activity first (the purple tray) I suspect because it was new lol!  

This is a cute game and there are several ways to play it.  Em got a little confused at times though.  She kept thinking you needed to get 10 bears to win.  Which you do, but you need 1 bear of each number counting up to 10 to win.  So she didn't always get that concept, but she still won!  I wasn't easy to play with Keira around, she kept stealing the tray and throwing the bears on the ground. Then Alli showed up...

And immediately started linking all the bears together regardless of their numerical order.  Next we read the rainbow fish book...

and of course did a Rainbow Fish activity after.  I set Keira up with a fish to color...

But she wasn't interested.  Every time I would read a page, she started vocalizing very loudly!  It was frustrating, and nothing I did or gave her seemed to make her happy.  I finally took her down, and Alli showed up on the scene..

She took over Keira's spot and really got into the coloring...

 All done!  With Emily I set her up with glitter and glue to make the pretty shiny scales.  

 She painted the glue on with a brush, and then I helped with the glitter, then she wanted to try the glitter on her own, and she was pretty good.

 But after about 4 scales she wanted to be done with the glitter and use markers, and really make it a rainbow fish.  She used all the colors of the rainbow and colored the rest in.  I can't believe I didn't get a pic of the finished piece.

 Then Alli wanted to try her hand at glitter, and of course spent most of the time throwing little pinches of glitter on the floor. 

 And just when I tried to confiscate it, she would fake me out and put some glitter on the fish...

Finally I had to take it away.  And this whole time I'm dealing with the glitter girls, Keira is fussing and pulling on my legs and I'm alternating between holding her and then setting her down again to help Em or Alli.  It was not easy, and I finally put all the glitter mess away, and went to try to get Keira down for a nap since she was so sassy.  She fell asleep, but not before Alli stole my bag of chocolate and ran off into the other room with it.  Such a beast!  

I finally caught up with her and the empty bag and this is how she looked!  This picture does not show the brown coated hands, bed and sheets.  UGH!

Anyway, I cleaned her up and did some chores while Keira napped, then it was time for Emily's ballet class.   When we came back home we had some visitors in our driveway...

They weren't very scared of us, and Matt even got out to film them and they still hung out for a few more seconds before they ran up the hill.  

I had great intentions to make a healthy dinner tonight and even meal planned for the week, and went grocery shopping. but when we got home, all heck broke loose and there was no way that a fancy dinner was going to happen, so we did fast and not so healthy just to shut everyone up .  I'm still bummed that I can't seem to find a way to do the dinner thing, but It's impossible to move around the kitchen with Keira attached to my leg, pulling my pants down.  

After dinner though we managed to get a few more activities in.  I never push it, Em always asks.  She is very eager to do these projects, and while I have stuff for Alli too, she tends to want to be in her own little world playing with her busy books.  If she comes up and seems interested I will give her something to do 

She joined us again at the table for this gluing and matching rainbows project, but spent most of the time sticking glue on her fingers.  This is the second time I tried this project since she seemed to like this activity when we did the farm one, but both times, she just played with glue.  Go figure.  

Meanwhile, Emily is painting a rainbow...

 And then we attached some clouds.  There are clouds for the other side, but the tube is drying so it isn't put on yet.

I introduced Emily to dominoes rainbow style and that was fun.  It would have been a lot more fun, if Keira and Alli didn't keep stealing our dominoes.  

Emily won of course. :)  And of course this whole time Keira is climbing on all the chairs when she isn't busy stealing cards.  But the problem is she climbs up and then gets frustrated because she can't climb down.  So I solved that problem...

I put some cushions on the floor that she could climb, which quickly expanded into...

 More cushions!!  The girls had a blast running and jumping all over, but I had to keep warning them to watch out for poor Keira.  

Anyway, I think it got some much needed energy out.  I hope!  

So today was tough.  It's frustrating when you have a very willing child that really wants to do all these activities, but with Keira it is just so hard!  Which of course she can't help since she is so young, but I just don't know how to give everyone all the attention they need.  It seems as if it's needed all at once or none at all.    And while Emily is very independent, she still wants me around to help her which of course she needs with a lot of the projects.  So I somehow need to find a better balance and Keira needs to take longer naps!  

The rest of our rainbow days week 1

So we are officially extending rainbow week.  The last few days we just haven't had the time to do much at all.  I'm hoping things will quiet down next week and we can have more time to finish everything up.  I'm also hoping to get my reading area set up!  Keep your fingers crossed! I'm going to compile a few days worth of photos today, just because there are so few...  

Working at the rainbow table

We are coloring noodles 

Drying out. These are for a project that we have yet
to do.  

We did a counting game with our rainbow bears.
You roll the dice and add that number of bears in
colored bowl.  It's also color matching but Em needs
no help with that.

Keira was very interested in the game too.  When
we were done Em asked to play another counting
game

So I brought out our rainbow abacus.  Same idea
with the dice but using the beads.  Every time we
counted out a new color of beads, she pushed them over to
the left. Then we would just keep adding beads to the
left as we rolled the dice.  She wanted to count every
bead we used, so instead of just adding the previous
set of beads to the new set, she started counting from
the very first bead. Each time. Eventually she got all the way up
to 54.  Then we stopped.   She was really into this
game.  And keeps asking to do more counting games.
Now I'm scouring pinterest for more ideas.  I can't
keep up with her!

Playing with the rainbow stacker

The lighting is bad, but I took this picture because
at the time they were all playing so nicely
together.  Of course I come along with the
camera and mess it all up.  :)

Eating cheese and being cute

It's so nice when they play on their own without
fighting.  

I brought out the shape sorter for her to try.  She
got the circle but the other shapes were too
hard for her.

Just because.  lol!  Leaving Happy Hollow and
eating not only her Popsicle but Emily's too.

Another counting game, using our counting cubes.
This is after Happy Hollow which is why her face
painted 

We didn't do a whole lot of counting before it
turned into a look what I can make game.

Building towers.  It was pretty neat watching her
come up with new designs, and realizing
what the shapes resembled.  Like letters.  One
creation was a magnifying glass, but look at it
another way and it's the letter P, Yet also B and D, and
so on.  

That's it for this week.  I asked Em what theme she wanted next and she said Unicorns!  Uh oh.  I'm not sure I can find enough material for that.  We will see!

Rainbow week day 3

Well it looks like rainbow week will be extended another week.

It was another busy week, and we just haven't been able to get much done.  It also didn't help that I spent 3 days of it waiting for my liquid watercolors to come, so we could do some fun rainbow activities, when I had them all along.  They came in a small package while I was running out the door to pick up the girls from school, so I just threw it inside thinking it was work stuff for Matt, since most of his orders look like that.  Well 3 days later, I was checking my order status and getting riled up at UPS for delivering to the wrong address and on top of that saying that they gave it to a woman customer.  How could they accept a package knowing it wasn't theirs?  Why didn't they just tell UPS it was the wrong house.  Well Matt overheard my venting, and said the package came already.  It did?  Yes 3 days ago, you handed it to me when you were leaving. 

Oops!  Well why didn't you say so?  

Anyway, I haven't got around to using them yet, as we had a couple play dates since then, and there just hasn't been time.  But here are our Wednesday activities...

Here's that rainbow we were working on the other day
adding yarn to complete the rainbow effect. 

photobomber

That's Keira's hand trying to steal it

Meanwhile Alli is in the bedroom playing with her ponies
totally uninterested in what we are doing

We decided to read the Elmer book finally

Working on making Elmer's

Finished!

I did one too

Emily is taking pictures

Another Emily pic

Alli dropped by to check out the scene but didn't want
to make Elmer



It was a short day for us.  Sometimes we have time to do the activities, but the girls are playing nicely on their own so I never disrupt that.  And some days they are really doing well playing without fights or issues, so between that and school, various activities, and trips over the hill, we don't end up doing much theme stuff.  We need more time in the day!