Playing in the Rain

We've been having summer showers all week. Tonight, Nathan couldn't resist playing in the rain.

Cousins Camp - Planet 51

We went to the movies today for Cousins Camp. It turned out great because it was rainy outside. We saw Planet 51 at Studio Movie Grill.

Waiting to be seated.

Enjoying his lunch before the movie starts. He loved his drink and the french fries the best.

The happy campers. Everyone was all smiles after the cute movie.

Jaxon, Julia, Joelle, Jordan

Jessie and Nathan in the front.

Cousins Camp - Rosemeade Rainforest

Cousins Camp was at the Rosemeade Rainforest today. Nathan has been taking swimming lessons there each morning, so we just stayed after his lesson to swim with the cousins.

Nathan taking a break and eating some apples.

Nathan loves playing at this pool. He likes the spray/splash area and shooting the water guns. He doesn't like the bucket that dumps all it's water out on your head without giving a warning. Nathan also loves the baby pool because he can touch the bottom.

We had a great time with the cousins. It was a long day for Nathan. He had been at the pool since 9:30am for his swimming lesson and we left around 2PM. Nathan, of course, quickly fell asleep in the car on the way home. He was wiped out.

Summer 2010 - Summer/Beach Week

This week's theme is Summer/Beach.

We had fun this week celebrating summer. Nathan loves this time of year. He loves to be outside in the bright sunshine playing outside or swimming.

We started summer week with a craft that we got from our playgroup activity swap. It's a great opportunity to get some crafts that I wouldn't think of to do from the other members of our playgroup.

We received this mini bucket, shovel, rack and scooper. The bag was filled with foam stickers and a marker to decorate the bucket.

This activity is right up Nathan's alley. He loves stickers. Pulling the backing off the stickers is a good fine motor workout. Fine motor skills helps to coordinate hand muscle movements like eating with silverware and holding a pencil, which Nathan needs help with.

Here's his finished bucket. He even decorated his shovel with stickers. He asked that I write Summer Time and his name on his bucket with the marker.

We also started our Cousins Camp this week. We get together with Nathan's cousins at least once a week during the summer. We don't get to see our cousins as much as we would like to during the school year, so we make up for it during summer. We go on lots of fun field trips to keep the kids busy like visits to the library, swimming pools and this week we went to the beach.

About a 30 minute drive from our house is this great beach on Lewisville Lake. The sand is very soft and great for sand castles.

We met the cousins there after swimming lessons, so Nathan was a bit tired. He enjoyed playing in the sand and filling his bucket full of water and dumping it out near our feet. Here he is just kicking back and eating some lunch. Shortly after lunch he was exhausted and begged me to take him home. He quickly fell sound asleep in the car. Once we got home, I just put him right in his bed, sand and all.

Nathan and I made a new sensory box this week. For our beach week, we added some shell shaped pasta, sea shells. starfish, his mini bucket and shovel and foam letters and numbers.

Can you tell that Nathan loves playing in the sensory box? He likes to feel the different textures of each item. Sometimes he likes to take items out of the box and examine them on his blanket. He really enjoyed the foam letters and numbers and putting them together like puzzle pieces.

Since it has been so hot lately, we decided to make a cool summer treat. We made yogurt popsicles.

We mixed vanilla yogurt, strawberries and bananas in the blender.

Nathan pouring the yogurt in the blender.

After mixing and pouring the smoothie in the molds, Nathan put the lids on top. Then, we had to wait for them to freeze. It was hard to be patient.

Nathan enjoying the yummy cold popsicle. It was a nice cold treat on a very hot summer day.

Here's a list of our favorite books we read this week about summer and the beach:

Pig Little by Mike Thaler

All Summer's Fun by Daniel Skalak

Sand Castle by Brenda Shannon Yee

Mouse's First Summer by Lauren Thompson

Duck Dunks by Lynne Berry

Bats at the Beach by Brian Lies