Which Craft.

David started a new school last week and he stays there until 3:30 pm. So far (6 days only) I am pretty happy with his new school. The school assesses all their students, so as to appropriately place them into a class that suits their abilities. For example, if the child knows their alphabet already, there is no reason why they should learn letters again; rather, they start him/her on learning phonics. He was assessed last week and did "exceptionally well". I don't know what that means, but as Seth put it, that's simply what it means -- exceptionally well.

But instead of making my job easier by leaving him there until the middle of the afternoon, it actually made my life more stressful. There are days when he doesn't nap at all, and he'll now eat little-to-no lunch. So, once he gets home, there's an initial half-hour of calm where both kids are cooperative, so I try to keep them occupied with various arts and craft projects, book reading, and game time.
After 4:15 pm, however, all hell breaks loose. So, how does our afternoon look like when both kids don't nap?

David pretends to be a Super Man. Julia is pretending to be a baby mummy from her currently favorite Where's My Mummy? book.

And this is how much energy David has when he doesn't nap.

The kids still love playing games, although for David it is all about winning whereas Julia simply enjoys the process of playing. He just recently decided that a winner should get a sticker. I figure, it is a small price to pay for a few extra minutes of calmness.

Julia just recently started drawing faces. This is a picture of a monster she drew with sharp teeth, two eyes, some hair and that stick on the top of a head? It is a monster's pony tail (Julia wears her hair in a pony tail).

After listening to Laurie Berkner's "Pig on Her Head", David requested to make a pig and a lamb. I was happy to oblige.

The most fun project was yet to come though. The kids like to blow air out outside before getting in a car, pretending to be dragons. I thought it would be fun to make a dragon. David and Julia actually ended up playing with their dragons once they were completed.

We also made some flowers. David decided to add a Valentine's theme to it.

The kids and their friend made fall trees using construction paper and a roll from a paper towel that I cut in half.

We started working on some Valentine's projects this past weekend. At this point, I can leave all the cutting to David, so he cut out all the hearts and then he and Julia painted them. We'll probably end up making garlands out of them. Julia kept asking me to draw more hearts and for David to cut them for her.

A lot of these projects are planned ahead while Julia is napping and David's at school. Most of the time, however, David just takes an initiative and creates things on his own. In the morning, while we were still sleeping, he made "tickets" for everyone. This past weekend, he made a car, cutting paper rectangles, gluing two circles to it for wheels and then adding a square for a window. Then he went on to making flags for himself, me and Julia, coloring them with everyone's favorite color. He told me he was a flag person.

And as always we are still desperately looking for a house.