Let's Play Ball

My kids have come up with some fun things to do these past couple days. Today Bella said, "Let's play ball!" I was shocked that she would suggest this since she's usually not a fan of ball games. But I wanted to encourage this in her and agreed. I quickly realized I misunderstood when she started prancing around the room in her dress-up outfit. Ball didn't mean base ball or soccer. She meant ball as they do in fairy tales - a grand ball, ie. a dance. I was somewhat disappointed, but this still seemed fun, so we pulled out the cd player, put on a primary songs cd and danced. She assigned me to be the queen, Benjamin the knight, and she was the princess. It was so much fun to be silly together. I danced with both the knight and the princess, with them taking turns coming over and asking, "May I cut in?" I insisted that royalty must be proper. :) Then when I got tired, I "became faint" and they had to call in the doctor to help me. After he did, they allowed me to rest as they performed various dances for me. Kids this age are so fun. No inhibitions. Just pure joy. It was a wonderful dance filled afternoon.



Some other things they've wanted to do was make soft pretzels. So we did that and they didn't turn out too bad. While they were baking, Bella decided to finger paint on the counter top with the egg wash. Not so happy about that but luckily she didn't eat it.


Another day Benjamin wanted to take his toys for a swim in the sink, so he got a big bowl and his animals and dolls and set them swimming, with a sponge boat to float on. They both had a blast with this and of course, got soaked head to toe. I think this was inspired by one of his favorite books, The Tub People by Pam Conrad. Very cute book.


I also wanted to see how much the kids understood about money. In Kindergarten Benjamin will be learning a lot about counting money and so I decided to play bank. I got out some pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, as well as 1, 5, 10, and 20 dollar bills. Then we took turns being customer, banker, or security guard. The customer came into the bank, filled out a withdrawal slip (just a blank piece of paper with one line on where they'd write the amount), then took it to the banker who gave them that amount of money. Then the customer would steal from the banker, get run down and killed by the security guard (Benjamin's favorite part) and the money would be returned. I was impressed with them. Benjamin needed help counting out the money, but he knew what each coin was worth and that you can, for example, give 5 pennies or 1 nickel, etc. Even Bella did a great job. When she was customer, she wrote three circles on the paper, brought it to Benjamin, the banker, and said, "I'd like to have 79 cents please." It was so cute.

So we've had fun trying to survive what is hopefully the last of cold winter days.