Tuesday, May 6, 2008

We are the Winners!!!

At Kylie's preschool they participated in Pizza Hut's Book It program for beginners. We (parents) were supposed to read to our children as often as possible throughout the months of March and April. We recorded the books we read to our children on little cutouts in the shape of the characters from the childrens show Maisy.

Every night Kylie and I read books before we went to bed. I would read the book to her and then she would "read" it back to me with amazing acurateness - even on books she had never heard before!

Well today when I dropped Kylie off, Mrs Cindy told me we were the winners! We read the most books in the 2 months that we participated in the program - a total of 120 books! I didn't realize how many we had read, I just knew it was quite a few. Kylie makes reading books easy because she loves to have them read to her, she will listen to as many as you are willing to read to her. I hope she keeps her love of reading as she grows up.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Fredrick Meijer Gardens


Kylie and I went to the Fredrick Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park on Saturday. They had a butterfly exhibt that I knew Kylie would like to see. She has been asking me all winter when she could go see the butterflies again - she saw them at a different exhibit last year and loved it! So when I told her we were going to see the butterflies she was so excited, little did she know it was going to be more than a 10 minute ride like last time. I wished we could have been outside more but it was so windy and cold that it made it somewhat miserable to be outside. Here are some pictures of our time at the park:



One of the many butterflies we got to see. They were in a large terrarium which was set at 85 degrees. I didn't get any pictures but they even had quails running around, they were just too fast for me!





Here is Kylie with the butterfly mascot, "Flutter". I am amazed she let me take this picture, she normally does not like costumes where the face is covered. She was very proud of herself after she took the picture!





This chandalier is even more amazing in person. Kylie even noticed it and thought it was 'cool'!

Kylie standing in front of the sculpture of Leonardi da Vinci's horse. She was amazed at how big the horse was!

The story about the sculputre.

She thought the gate to the childrens gardens was so neat, it was just her size.

She is looking at butterfly wings. They had a childrens activity center which had a sorts of different activities that they could try relating to the butterfly since that was the theme at the time. Everytime I see this picture I think she looks like she is older than 3!

She loves puppets!

More buildings in the childrens section of the gardens. They had lots of activites for outside and I feel bad she didn't get to do very many of them since it was so cold. But we are planning on going back when it is warmer.

A sampling of the exotic plants that were in the butterfly exhibit. By the way did you know a butterfly only lives for 2 weeks! I had know idea, I thought they lived longer than that.