Picture-palooza!

I tried to post these last night, but my computer wouldn't cooperate. So, I'll bore you with them tonight instead!!

We made a Christmas tree with our hands! How cute is this? Anything made with the babies' hands is adorable in my book. Usually, I let the kids decorate their fingertips with big sequins, and then I overlap the hands, so the tree has a "fringy" look to it. Unfortunately, I didn't have any sequins on hand, but I did have pom-poms. They still look cute, but I could do without so much wall showing :(

A close-up of the fingertips. At least I had cute pom-poms. I bought this huge bag of about 1,000 pom-poms, all different sizes and colors, so the babies had many to choose from for their hands.

The babies made "lights" again this year to string around the room. I LOVE these!

We started with some green and red construction paper, and some awesome peel-and-stick foam Christmas shapes that I actually bought at the dollar store!

The babies cut the spirals and the star, then stuck on the shapes...

...and ta-dah! Christmas trees!

We wrote letters to Santa the other day. They're pretty generic. I wrote the letter on chart paper for them to copy. Normally, I sit with each baby individually and help them write exactly what they want Santa to bring them, but I just didn't have the time this week. I'm going to try and do another letter next week that's more personalized. (If you click on the picture, you can enlarge it, and actually read a couple of the letters.)

We made the requisite paper chains during math time the other day. Of course, we were working on AB patterns!

This unit in our reading series is about food, and last week's big book was Apple Farmer Annie. The back of the book has several recipes for different apple "things," like apple sauce, apple cake, apple muffins, etc. Last year, when we got to this unit, I brought in my crock pot and we made "cinnamon apples." The babies lost their minds!! They LOVED them so much, it became a weekly thing. I loved that we were actually using up the apples from the lunchroom, because hundreds of them get tossed in the trash every week. Well, I knew this year's babies would love cinnamon apples, too, so we made them last week. They were such a hit, I told them we would try to do it every week, as well.

Tuesday, I brought my crock pot and my apple/peeler/corer/slicer back to school, and we got busy.

Ms. Nikky in the lunchroom gave us lots of apples. (I had already peeled about 10 before I snapped this picture)

On my favorite gadget, the apple/peeler/slicer/corer from Pampered Chef!

In the crock pot they go...

...with a sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon!

Turn it on and let it cook! Oh, except for one thing....one of the little bastards, I mean babies, unplugged the damn crock pot at some point!! I didn't notice until about noon, when I was wondering why our room wasn't filled with the delightful smell of cinnamon and apples yet. So, instead of cooking for a good 4 1/2 hours, like they did last week, they only cooked for about an hour and a half. They were still pretty crunchy, not all soft and mushy the way we like them. But, they still tasted yummy! How can you go wrong with apples and cinnamon, right?
OK, I'm about to throw this damn computer out the window! It's taken me about 3 hours to finish this damn post, thanks to all the pictures!! Does anyone else have trouble when they try to post pictures? Anyway, time to hit the sack, as it's after midnight. I've got a looonnnggg day tomorrow. I'm letting my son have a party tomorrow night, and I still have tons of cleaning/straightening/shopping/setting up to do before the kids arrive at 7:00. Plus, I have to attend a wake at some point tomorrow afternoon. My sister's ex-father-in-law passed away Tuesday. My two nieces have just been so upset the past couple of days. The older one was supposed to come to the party. As a matter of fact, she was going to come home with me after school tomorrow and help with all the party prep. Now I'm screwed since I put it all off til the last minute, thinking she was going to be helping me. Man, it sucks to be a procrastinator!! I wouldn't be so worried about it if it was just going to be the kids, since they'll all be down in the basement. But, I invited the moms to stay if they choose to, which means the upstairs needs to be presentable!! Damn! OK, bedtime for Bonzo!!