The letter U, number 12, color Green, and shape Octagon

I wanted to do something unusual for the Letter U ("unusual" has 3 letter U's!). So I thought about Sea Urchins - these little critters are very unusual, and they would be fun to create. And that's just what we did. When all the girls arrived at our home Monday morning we scurried downstairs to look at real pictures of Sea Urchins. I pulled up several pictures on the Internet, and we watched a short video of Sea Urchins scurrying across the ocean floor (in "quick time" of course). We talked about the Sea Urchins defense - their spines, or "pokey's" as Becca called them, and talked about what Sea Urchins ate. After everyone had a good look at the Sea Urchins, we marched upstairs to create our own type of Sea Urchin. (It's amazing that even on our 22" computer monitor I heard, "I can't see!" {We rotated the front row spot so everyone could "see"}).

These little critters were busy making their own Sea Urchins using a Styrofoam ball (spray painted green since we were learning the color 'green'), and 12 pipe cleaners (because we were also learning about the number '12'). We glued on googly-eyes after the Sea Urchin's pokey spikes were in place.

Mary-Gail was so into this little project! She created TWO Sea Urchins, and then promptly dismembered them. Poor little guys!



I couldn't get a picture of Mary-Gail's two Sea Urchins before she plucked off all their spines; Becca seemed to have acquired more than 12 spines on her Sea Urchin...must have taken them from Mary-Gail's dismembered urchins.


Reese's Sea Urchin

We got a snack - large marshmallows and pretzels - and headed outside for some good 'ole fashioned hopscotch. (I had hoped the girls would create an edible Sea Urchin with their marshmallows & pretzels, but they were starved and quickly devoured them). Mary-Gail found some flowers for me - lovely dandelions (already?!) and I savoured every last one she plucked - all 9 of them.

"Ma, this is for you. It's so pretty"

Hopscotch was just having the girls hop to the number/letter/shape that I called out. I had drawn large letter U's, large number 12's, and large Octagons on the driveway Sunday afternoon in preparation for Monday. I really liked that game, and so did the girls. Although my heart snapped in two when I hear one girl say to Mary-Gail, "I don't want you by me." Mary-Gail doesn't care what people think anyways, so no biggie, but I was stung by those words. So, we changed games and I pulled out the Bouncer (I had plans on using this for the Letter O, but the Bouncer was wet from being outside!), and everyone enjoyed the Bouncer. I was going to play hide'n'seek and have the girls count to 12 before finding everyone, but I quickly X'd that idea since everyone was having fun jumping. We'll save hide'n'seek for next time.

Becca & Reese go down the slide.

That's my Mary-Gail: happy, carefree, and oh so loveable!