ANIMAL DAY

Friday was Animal Day at our house!!

Long before I had Caden and I was just entering the blog world I was so excited about someday being able to do "theme days" for my kiddos. As I am sure many of you know and read there are a LOT of creative mommies out there that do some really neat things with their kids! I knew I wouldn't be quite like so many of the mommies because I just don't have that artistic, crafty skill set that so many do... I like doing all of it, but I'm not necessarily good at it. BUT I figured it doesn't matter if you are "good" at it or not, what matters is that you and your kiddo have a fun day of planned activities to do together and it will be something that they will remember (as they get older) and cherish... just some mommy and me time!

Yesterday won't be something that Caden remembers, but I will! And I hope that we can continue to have these "theme days" as he grows older and as we add to our family... oh the fun we will have.

The greatest thing about yesterday was that I didn't have to do too much planning, I went with something that we already had a lot of and I picked something that I knew he'd be interested in. I went to the library and checked out a few extra books to add to the mix and the rest of our Animal Day fun I just scrounged up at home.

So are you ready to see a little glimpse of what Animal Day looks like in our house??!!

It all started with a YUMMY gorilla-shaped breakfast! (You may laugh as hard as you need to at my breakfast and lunch creations... I never said I was an artist, remember?!)

The excitement on Caden's face after seeing the gorilla he was about to consume was worth every bit of mockery I might get for attempting it... he was SO excited!!

While he was eating his gorilla we read one of his favorite books... Good Night Gorilla!!

After breakfast we had some errands to run, but when we got home we had an ANIMAL DAY counting activity. I saved an old box of animal crackers and emptied it out. Then we counted out 10 animal crackers from our bigger sack and then put them in the box. We took them back out and counted them again and then we ATE them! We also checked out all of the fun animals on the box and sang our first of 50 rounds of "I went to the Animal Fair... the birds and the beasts were there..." You know the tune...

While we were eating up the last of the crackers we read our next book, Dear Zoo! It is such a cute book!!

And since we were having so much fun I decided I MUST snap a pic of the two of us! :)

The next idea I had was a BUST for Caden... but he LOVED watching me "be an elephant!" I used two of Justin's more hideous ties (one of which he told me he loved when he got home...oops) and tied them around our heads... and we had instant elephant trunks! I walked around swinging my truck pretending to be an elephant and we talked about how the elephants used their trunks to eat their food and drink their water, etc.

Caden wanted that thing OFF his head!!

And the next few pictures are just to redeem myself from the previous picture where the Animal Day tornado has hit my home... actually the mess has NOTHING to do with Animal Day... it was awful! So I spent 2 hours during naptime CLEANING ... see... I really do keep a clean house most of the time...

And now... Mommy the Elephant! I know... scary, isn't it?!

For lunch, Caden ate a giraffe!!

And again the excitement on his face and in his "ooooooooooooo" that he made when I placed it in front of him was worth EVERY bit of mockery! :) When I showed Justin the pics from our day last night he LAUGHED so hard at my culinary creations! :) And I must admit they are pretty hilarious!

After lunch and before nap time we read The Elephant Story, a book that we checked out at the library... it has beautiful illustrations but the story is a little too matter of fact for me...it's more like an encyclopedia entry about elephants than a story... but Caden loves the pictures so he sat still and listened!

After nap we colored three different animal pictures that I traced from a book we have.

While he was coloring we read another of our library books called Gumption... it is a CUTE, CUTE, CUTE story that Caden loved! It is about a boy and his Uncle Nigel who go on adventures in far away lands... this one in Africa... so we saw lots of giraffes, elephants and tigers!

After Caden was finished coloring we talked about where animals came from and how they were made. And we learned our Bible verse to help us remember how God made them the way they teach us to at church, with hand motions... :)

" Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air." Genesis 2:19.

After that I thought we should try the elephant trunk game again... STILL NO LUCK! :)

And other than the 50 other times we sang and danced to "I went to the Animal Fair..." that was our Animal Day fun! It was simple, sweet and was a GREAT distraction to my suddenly VERY troublesome little boy! It kept him out of the corner ALL afternoon and that is progress! :) I guess a little bit of structure every now and then is not a bad thing! :)

Happy Weekend!!