A Note from Caley

I went to a place today. I went to church and we learned about Jesus and I was playing with my toys in my class with my friends. I played Lost Little Sheep and Tigers with Janessa. I took a bath yesterday. I went to playgroup today. We played and we danced and we sang songs. And we went to James' house and we took a nap last time when you (Mommy) went bye bye. (Caley picked out this picture to include, it's from May or June 2008.)

Caley's Reading!

And Amelia's pooping (she actually was pooping when we were reading and taping). 

The Easter Story

As mentioned before, I'm not with it enough to plan ahead and do Easter activities in anticipation of Easter. So Monday we did our Easter lesson. We read the story in the Bible about Jesus getting baptized by John the Baptizer, which tied in nicely with Caley seeing people get baptized at church the day before. First we made a cross on the hill at Golgatha and Jesus (played by an Indiana Jones action figure) died on the cross and was then wrapped up in lots of cloth (white yarn). The red yarn on the grass shows Jesus' blood. Then Jesus was placed in a tomb (chocolate cake that Mommy hosed and was all gooey) for three days, then rose from the dead! The women who came to the tomb were played by Princess Atta and Ariel the Little Mermaid, and Peter the disciple was our own dinosaur friend. 

Eating the cake was the best part! Yummy!

The girls had a lot of fun acting out the story and I hope it made the Easter story more concrete for them (especially Caley). We talked about why Jesus died and rose again, which is the whole point, that she learn about Jesus' love for her.

He is risen indeed!!!!!

Zaccheus and an Easter House

My old neighbor, bible study leader and friend, Trisha, generously shared her Easter VBS curriculum with me recently. It's designed to be a 4-day week-long preschool, with each day teaching part of the Easter story. A whole week is a little intense for our life right now, so we are doing the curriculum at playgroup this month. This week Caley learned about when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and the people praised him with palm leaves. It was so fun for the kids to take turns being Jesus while everyone else shook their palm leaves saying, "Hosanna! Blessed be the name of the Lord!" Next week the playgroup is doing a ballet dance at the retirement center. Miss Acacia has been teaching them a routine to "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." 

This week at Gerlach school we did the reading book--Caley is up to lesson 28. We also read about Zaccheus in the Bible and did a little play. The moustached doll is Zaccheus and Caley is Jesus in this video:

We also made an Easter house! Actually it was a leftover Christmas gingerbread house (THIS is why I hoard stuff--I got the gingerbread kit for $1 in January). We dyed the frosting pastel colors and put it together. The girls were mostly eating the candy, or at least licking it before putting it on the house. It's not really fair for me to expect any different, they're only 4 and 1.

Another thing to note is the girls storytime behavior--they're awesome! This week at storytime they sat next to each other, intently listening to Miss Monica read the books. While the other kids (mostly Amelia's age) were running around being crazy-like, Caley helped Amelia sit and had her arm around her. It was so cute! Storytime is an integral part of Gerlach School, because they learn to listen to someone other than Mommy.