A Peek Into Our Week – Cherry Blossom – Week of 9/27/21

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A Peek at Our Week in the Cherry Blossom Classroom!

This week was all about Fall.  We talked about all of the things we will notice as summer changes to fall.  The temperature outside will become cooler, the leaves will change colors and fall from the trees.  We talked about what different animals, like squirrels and birds, are doing to prepare for the change in seasons.

We also discussed the 4 Seasons this week.  This is a topic we will return to several times this school year as we take the time to observe the world around us as it changes.

Also… Happy Birthday Ms. Sam!  We hope you enjoy your special day!

Your Children Worked HARD This Week!

We saw our first signs of normalization within our classroom this week. “Normalization is the foundation upon which ‘spontaneous discipline, continuous and happy work, social sentiments of help and sympathy for others.…’ (The Absorbent Mind) arise. It is a time where children learn to focus and concentrate their energies for long periods of time, while taking personal satisfaction in their work.”

https://montessoritraining.blogspot.com/2008/04/stages-of-normalization.html

While the plan may have been to study the seasons, your children had other interests in mind.  For them, this week was all about letter sounds, sand trays, and the continents!  So we followed their lead, introduced them to some new work activities, and watched as the amount of time they are able to focus on a work grew and grew.  Ms. Sam and Ms. Tonya are so proud of our Cherry Blossoms!

This child is using the Sand Tray with the Sandpaper Numbers to practice writing the numerals with her finger.

This child is using the Sand Tray with the Cursive Sandpaper Letters to prepare for handwriting.

This child is reviewing the letters and letter sounds that we have been working on in the classroom.  He is using his knowledge of letter sounds to place the picture under the sound that the word begins with.

Ms. Tonya introducing a child to the Moveable Alphabet.  This child is using her knowledge of letter sounds to sound out the words “cat”, “car”, and “rat” using pictures as a guide.

This child is being introduced to the names of the continents using the Continent Globe and the World Map Puzzle.

Ms. Tonya introducing a child to an extension with the World Map Puzzle.  Now that this child is comfortable with the map of the continents, he can trace them to create his own map.

Check out that map!  Do I also spy the word “World” written  on the top in cursive?!?

Work Plans are still going well in our classroom with our older students!  Some of the children have begun to write their own work choices onto their work plan!

Peek Into Next Week!

We will continue to learn about about Fall/Autumn, as well as study the Parts of a Tree.  We will spend some extra time outside this week as we observe some of the trees around our school building.

Letter: Ee

Number: 5

Sight Word: is

PICTURE DAY is on Tuesday, October 5th!  

For Parents that signed up to be a party helper – look for the Halloween Party Sign Up in your email soon!  Halloween Party with be on Friday, October 29th!

A Peek At Our Week: September 20, 2021- All About Apples

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This week in Aspen, it was All About Apples!  We learned how apples grow, classified different types of apples, and discussed the parts of an apple. We also took an apple taste test and tried different varieties of apples!  Ask your child what kind of apple was their favorite! After exploring these concepts we watched a video called How Does It Grow: Apples. We learned many interesting facts about apples. For example,  did you know… that apples are actually part of the rose family? Did you also know… that the apples we eat today were not native to North America?  Your child is now an apple expert, they can tell you all about these facts and more! We also explored various numerical concepts and fractions as we sliced the apples for our taste test. For fun thematic crafts, we created apple prints with the apples we sliced and made apple sun catchers. It sure was a fun week! Ask your child about their apple adventures in the Aspen room this week!

Kindergarten students continued their work with geography and hemispheres this week!  They also learned some interesting geographical facts.   Please make sure that your child is completing their homework and returning it the following day.

 

       

 

Having fun counting apples on an apple tree! (Equating Numbers with their corresponding symbols)

 

Exploring the linear sequence of numbers.

 

Fun with the phonetic sounds (letters)! Moveable Alphabet work.

           

 

 

Using the dropper to transfer water!
Cylinder Block extension activity and memory training activity! Grading knobbed cylinders from a distance.

 

Fun creating works of art with Ms. Varela.
         

 

 

 

A Peek Into Our Week – Cherry Blossom – Week of 9/20/21

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A Peek at Our Week in the Cherry Blossom Classroom!

This week was all about PUMPKINS.  We held them, danced around them, read about them, and discussed their life cycle all week long.  But the best part about learning about pumpkins is getting to visit a real life pumpkin patch at Ramseyer Farms!

A new enrichment for us this week – Library with Ms. Cat!  We will visit the library here at Absorbent Minds every 3 weeks.  Ms. Cat talked to us about the library, introduced us to the vocabulary words: cover, spine, and author.  We even went on a bear hunt and practiced mindfulness by pretending to be a tree.

In the classroom, we introduced work plans to our older students.  Work plans are an important organization tool for students in the Montessori classroom.  We have listed the different academic areas of the classroom on the work plan, with pictures that match the labels on our shelves.  The students use their work plan to help them choose a work from each area of the classroom.  They then place a checkmark on their work plan and periodically check in with a teacher who assists with writing down the name of the work.  Students will be using work plans daily in Kindergarten and the Elementary classroom, and the work plans we use in our classroom are a wonderful, age appropriate, introduction!

Peek Into Next Week!

We will be learning all about Fall/Autumn and the Seasons.  We are very excited to watch the leaves change colors and fall from the trees.

Letter: Tt

Number: 4

Sight Word: she

 

Peek In Our Week ||| Buckeye Room ||| Week Of September 20, 2021

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Buckeye Room Bulletin

Line Time:
Living and Non-Living-  This week we talked about living and non-living things. Your children now know what makes a living thing.  All living things reproduce, grow, eat or take in nutrients, breathe or exchange gases, and need water. We are all in agreement that plants, animals, trees, grass, are living things!  My shoe is not a living thing nor am I at 5:00 am.  Some of the parents are not living until they have had their coffee.  My youngest son’s shoes may or may not be living.  I do not get close enough to tell due to the smell and I may have seen them move on their own….  Boys that are 15 1/2 years old, SMH.

 

Fun Fact:
No Mosquitos In Iceland?
Iceland is one of the few habitable places on the planet that is mosquito free and nobody really seems to know why. It’s not nearly as cold as Antarctica, which is so frigid that mosquitoes (and people, for that matter) could never survive exposure to the elements there for long. There is only ONE mosquito in Iceland and is it the one that has lived in a jar of alcohol at the Icelandic Institute of Natural History ever since the 1980s, when a scientist captured it in an airplane.

 

A Message From Mr. John (My Conundrum):

 

Cultural Subjects:
Your children can now count to ten in 8 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese)

 

Know Your Languages (Japanese):

 

Peek In The Classroom:

Ms. Angela observing/giving a lesson with a student on Sandpaper Numbers. The direct purpose of the Sandpaper Numbers is to teach children the symbols that represent each number, allowing them to visually identify any number from 0 – 9. In Montessori education this is specifically taught separately to counting from 0 – 9, where children often fall back on rote memorization.

 

She is working on the Sand Paper Letters. The direct purpose of the sandpaper letters is to teach the child the sounds of the alphabet by means of muscular and visual memory. The indirect purposes of the sandpaper letters are preparation for reading and writing. The sandpaper letters are an exciting and important material for the children to discover. Also, look at the concentration of the students in the background.

 

Another look at the focus of the child rolling a mat. Rolling and unrolling the mat is one of the preliminary activities children learn in the class. The mats are used every day and they help to define a child’s work space. Rolling and unrolling the mat promotes co-ordination of movement, development of muscles and concentration. Look how straight this mat is.

 

This boy is working on his Kindergarten Binder. He is writing from 1 to 100. Then he will progress to writing 101 to 200 and so on.

 

Peek Into Next Week:
Line Time- Mammals

Letter Of The Week- F f

Rhyming Word Of The Week- big

Next Language is Arabic with the Lebanese Dialect

 

Academic Enrichment aka kindergarten:
Since we live in the great state of Ohio I felt it was needed to become familiar with the states that surround our home state. We started with Ohio which is the Buckeye State and the abbreviation is OH.  We then looked at the state to the east of us named Pennsylvania (not Transylvania) which is called the Keystone State and the abbreviation is PA. We traveled south and discovered West Virginia which is the Mountain State and the abbreviation is WV. Moving to the west we ran into Kentucky which is the Blue Grass State and the abbreviation is KY.  Moving more westward is Indiana or the Hoosier State (what is a Hoosier anyway?) and the abbreviation is IN.  To my chagrin I introduced the students to TSUN.  I can not bring myself to even say the name….  xichigan  wolverine state.  

Let us end not on a low note like the last sentence in the previous paragraph and present the “official” things for the state of Ohio…

Mammal: White Tail Deer
Fossil: Trilobite
Tree: Buckeye
Bird: Cardinal
Flower: Red Carnation
Drink: Tomato Juice
Rock Song: Hang On Sloopy

*****  Notice how most of these things refer to Buckeye Football/ being red or scarlet.  Also, why does Hang On Sloopy have importance to Buckeye Football?  *****

The state of Ohio has one football team…. O-H!

 

Handwriting:
We practiced writing  in cursive  Pp Qq Rr

 

Next Week:
Weekly Theme: From biggest to smallest and smallest to biggest (Milky Way to your street address).

Synonym Of The Week: SAD: miserable, gloomy, depressing, downtrodden, glum, unhappy

Sight Words Of The Week: from he

 

Upcoming Events:
Picture Day- Tuesday, October 5, 2021 

Halloween Party- Friday, October 29, 2021 (details to follow)

 

Frolic, Friends, and Fun:

Cleveland Indians eye wear.

 

This picture was a hard sell but a great dancing photobomb.

 

Goofy tongue creatures.

 

The first and mild case of raspberry fingers.

 

 

Your Child says The Darndest Things (Mario Cart):

 

 

A Peek At Our Week: September 13, 2021 – The Parts Of A Tree

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This week the Aspen Room began the first of many botany lessons, we explored the Parts Of A Tree and their functions!  We discovered that each part of a tree has a special job that helps it grow and develop.  The Aspen class also learned that trees are vital for our survival and that we depend on them for the air that we breathe. As a class we then discussed how trees depend on us for carbon dioxide and we depend on them for oxygen. Therefore, creating a symbiotic relationship.  Besides, exploring these concepts we also engaged in a few activities that allowed us to classify and identify species of trees.  While making classifications, we learned the terms deciduous and conifer. Ask your child about these terms!  On the playground we searched for examples of the parts of plants and trees for our botany tray. Did you know…. that a tree is just a really big plant???  The Aspen class discovered this and and more! Ask your child about what treasures they discovered outdoors for our botany tray.

This week our Music Enrichment class started and we had our first music class of the 2021-2022 school year with Ms. lisa. In music, Aspen learned how to sing a few songs and engaged in movement lessons practicing music line time etiquette.  We also had our first Taekwondo demo lesson! All of the children seemed to enjoy this as they practiced movement and self control.

Kindergarteners are contnuing their lessons with geography and cursive letter writing with Mr. john.  In reading group, we continued to practice fluency, sounding out words, and discussed the importance of being a letter detective by sounding out words while paying close attention to each sound! A Letter Detective doesn’t need to guess a word, they use their sound clues!  We also discovered that sometimes there are words that do not follow the phonetic rules. Therefore, we learned all about sight words, letter teams (phonograms and blends), and general word(sound) exceptions.  Each week we will look at a new word that does not follow these rules.

Next week our topic is  All About Apples!  We will learn about the Life Cycle of An Apple,  learn to classify different varieties of apples, taste test a few varieties of apples, and begin preliminary fraction work using apples.  See you next week!

Learning to use an eye dropper to transfer water!

 

Comparing height with the Number Rods!

 

Working on the Cylinder Blocks!

 

Making new friends!!
Geography work with the U.S.A, Puzzle Map!

Peek In Our Week ** Buckeye Room ** Week Of September 13. 2021

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Buckeye Room Bulletin

Line Time:
Food Groups,
This week we had fun learning about the food groups in our class. Grains and Cereals (pasta, rice, bread, cereal, crackers), Fruit (apples, grapes, kiwi, mango which is my favorite), Vegetables (cucumbers, carrots, potato, broccoli, eggplant, which is my favorite) Dairy (my favorite… milk, cheese {I love cheese/smoked gouda}, yogurt), meats (beef, pork, chicken), and proteins, fats and sugars and how many servings we should have per day.

 

 

Fun Fact:
Sea otters hold hands while they sleep.
This ridiculously cute behavior is an effort to avoid floating away from their partner while they sleep. Sometimes they hold hands in groups, producing a “raft.”

                                             

 

A Message From Mr. John:

 

Cultural Subjects:
Your children can now count to ten in 7 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French, Greek)

 

Know Your Languages:



Peek In The Classroom:

Ms. Angela working on handwriting with pre school students.

 

SO proud of his work and it is taller than he is.

 

She is practicing writing her name with the help of the Movable Alphabet.

 

Our newest reader!

 

Peek Into Next Week:
Line Time- Living and Non-Living Things

Letter Of The Week- D d

Rhyming Word Of The Week- bag

Next Language is Japanese

 

Upcoming Events:
Ramseyer Farms- Friday, September 24, 2021.   Check your child’s take home folder for the field trip permission forms and return promptly.

 

Academic Enrichment:

Kinder students showing off their favorite direction or body of water.

Weekly Theme:
North America–  Since we live on the continent of North America I thought it would be a great idea to identify some of the larger countries (Canada, Mexico) that border the U.S.A.  Also, we identified bodies of water (Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Hudson Bay, Gulf Of Mexico, and The Great Lakes {H.O.M.E.S.}) that “touch” and are in our continent. We also reviewed the Cardinal Directions of North, East, South, West (Never Eat Soggy Worms).

Handwriting:
We practiced writing  in cursive M m, N n, O o,

Next Week:
Weekly Theme: Ohio and surrounding states

Synonym Of The Week: HAPPY: cheerful, content, jovial, joyful, merry

Sight Words Of The Week: our was

 

Frolic, Friends, and Fun:

Ya shoulda seen the other guy.

 

Friends eating snack.

 

Some girls are ready for Halloween.

 

Super Muscles

 

Your Kids Say The Darndest Things:

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Peek Into Our Week – Cherry Blossom – Week of 9/13/21

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A Peek at Our Week in the Cherry Blossom Classroom!

This week was all about Living and Non-Living.  We discussed how we determine if something is living or nonliving.  All living things need food, water, and clean air.  Living things will grow or change, react to their environment, and reproduce.  We practiced determining if something was living or nonliving and read the best book – I am Josephine and I am a living thing!

Also, in true Cherry Blossom fashion, we learned more by singing and dancing with our friend Jack Hartmann.

https://youtu.be/tzN299RpJHA

 

Preschool lesson continued our study of apples by reviewing the life cycle of an apple and parts of an apple.  We also made a super cute apple craft!  You can check it out in the hallway.

 

More Enrichments this week!  We attended our first Music Class with Miss Lisa.  We tried out Taekwondo with Master Barnick.  We drew a beast with Ms. Varela in Art Class and hypothesized about sinking and floating with Mr. John in Science Class!

 

Happy Birthday to our newest 4 year old and our newest 5 year old!

 

What have the 3 year olds been up to in our mixed age classroom?

 

This child is working with the Tonging activity from the Practical Life area.  Currently, we have small acorns to tong on our tray.  We will change out the items used for tonging every couple weeks to keep this tray interesting to the children in the classroom.  Tonging is a wonderful activity to encourage fine motor development that the children will need for handwriting!

This child is working with our Knobbed Cylinders from the Sensorial area.  The children use the pincer grasp to hold onto the knob of the Knobbed Cylinders to take them out and place them back into the appropriate space.  There are 4 sets of Knobbed Cylinders which allow the child to explore different depths and widths.

This child is working with the Number Rods from the Math area.  This is a child’s first introduction to quantity as they count each red section and each blue section of the rod, using one to one correspondence.  They are also able to visually see that nine is larger than three.

This child is working with Picture Matching from the Language area.  This type of matching activity helps develop focus in the Montessori classroom.  We will change out the cards every couple weeks to keep this activity interesting to the children.  They are currently matching picture to outline which makes the activity a little more challenging.

Peek into Next Week!

We will be learning about PUMPKINS!  Those round, bright orange, fruits that make us so excited for the First Day of Fall which is on Wednesday!  We’ll be ending our week with our field trip to Ramseyer Farms!  Miss Sam and Miss Tonya are so excited to see you there!

A Peek At Our Week: September 7, 2021 – A Reason For Seasons!!

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Hello Aspen families!! It has been a very busy week for us in the Aspen Room. Your children have been so busy learning new and exciting things and have been working so hard within the classroom during the work period.  We are all settling into our routines and have become comfortable navigating the classroom with many of us establishing new friendships.  This week the Aspen class learned all about Seasons!!  During group lesson we learned why we have seasons, the names of each season, and discussed the many characteristics of each season.  As we discussed seasons we engaged in a really cool experiment with our Painted Globe and a flashlight!  We pretended that our flashlight was the sun and used our globe to illustrate why we have seasons.  As we explored this science experiment we also dicovered why we experience day and night.  Ask your child about what they learned with this activity.

This week we also learned a few new Spanish words!  We sang our days of the week song and then learned it in Spanish!  At the same time, we reviewed all of the Spanish words we learned last week. Lev and Kat also taught us The Good Morning Song in Russian! The Aspen Room also got to visit the AMMS School Library and had their very first library lesson with Ms. Cat!  We had so much fun learning about books and listening to stories. This week we also visited the AMMS Science Lab and had our very first science class with Mr. John!  In science we learned about what scientists do, what a hypothesis is, and then participated in an experiment with vinegar, baking soda, and a balloon.  It sure was a fun filled and busy week in the Aspen Room.

Next week our lessons will be the parts of the tree and their functions.  We will also learn to identify different types of trees.  Kindergarten students have been learning about globes, maps, hemispheres, and directions,  They have also learned the terms Equator and Prime Meridan.  They will continue to explore and expand upon these concepts next week.  See you next week!!

 

Tracing the continents from the Continent Puzzle Map!

 

Working on, The Reason For Seasons science experiment!

 

Associating quantity with their corresponding symbols.

 

 

A Peek Into Our Week – Cherry Blossom – 9/6/21

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A Peek at Our Week in the Cherry Blossom Classroom!

This week was all about APPLES! We talked about the different parts of an apple and created books to work on our handwriting skills.  We also learned about the life cycle of an apple from seed to harvested apple. We read many books and were so excited each time one of our friends brought an apple in their lunch.  If your family takes a trip to the apple orchard soon, please send us a picture!  

We also had in introduction to Geography this week.  We talked about the globe and looked at the Sandpaper Globe where we discussed land and water.  We’ll talk more about air, land, and water next week!

Preschool lesson included many activities this week!  Miss Sam worked with us on name recognition, color mixing with primary colors, and learning to count to 10 in German!  Miss Sam introduced us to another globe found in our classroom while we looked at Europe and found Germany on the map of Europe.

 

This child is working with our letter of the week – a!  We practiced saying the name of the letter, the sound the letter makes, and some words that start with that sound.

Letter a can also be found in our Handwriting Folder!  We’re practicing writing uppercase A and lowercase a.  Why do we teach handwriting in cursive?  Research indicates that cursive trains the brain to have better hand-eye coordination and reading efficiency.

Enrichments started this week!  We attended Art Class with Ms. Varela and Science Class with Mr. John!  Ms. Varela taught us about the different shapes you would find in art – lines, curved lines, dots, and circles.  We studied the art of Wassily Kandinsky, looking for the different shapes and enjoying the bright colors he used.  We then brought our new knowledge into our classroom and created our own art inspired by Kandinsky!

Happy Birthday to our newest 5 year old and our newest 3 year old!

 

Peek into Next Week!

We will continue our study of Apples, Kandinsky, and introduction of Geography.  We will also discuss Living vs. Non-Living and talk a little about plants!  Our field trip to Ramseyer Farm is coming up soon, information came home in your child’s folder!

Miss Tonya and her family visited the apple orchard over the weekend!

Peek In Our Week ## Mr. John’s Class/Buckeye Room ## Week Of September 6, 2021

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Line Time:
Healthy Habits-  This week we learned how stay healthy.  We learned that we need to wash our hands thoroughly and keep our whole bodies clean by taking shower, baths, washing our hair, and brushing our teeth.  We now know how long to wash our hands by singing the ABC’s which is a good idea but we decided it would be too difficult to sing while brushing out teeth. Another way to keep healthy is to cover our sneezes and coughs with the inside of our elbow to trap germs from flying all over the place. Another healthy habit is to get enough sleep to rest our bodies and our minds. Exercise such as running, biking, climbing, and even walking leads to a healthy body and mind.  We discovered if we eat healthy food like fruits, vegetables, protein, and limited sweets that is good for our bodies.  More on that next week.

 

 

 

A Message From Mr. John (Whatcha saying Willis):

 

 

Fun Fact:
Pigs Don’t Sweat-  If someone tells you they’re “sweating like a pig” you might want to point out to them (if you’re that sort of person) that if they were being biologically accurate, that would mean they were not sweating at all. Swine are born without sweat glands, so when they need to cool off, their only option tends to be to find a cool puddle of mud in which they can roll around.

He is in Hog Heaven, Hehe. I crack myself up!

 

Cultural Subjects:
Your children can now count to ten in 6 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French)  Also, I will be posing a video with the language added for that week.   Oh ya, take a gander at the video below.

 

Know Your Languages:

 

Peek In The Classroom:

The short vowel sound for a is usually taught first because once children know the sound for the letter ‘a’ and a few other consonants such as m, s, t then they can start ‘reading’ and ‘spelling’ words. Teach to mastery. … This makes it less likely they will confuse short vowel sounds.

 

She is working on the introduction of the decimal system. The purpose is to introduce the child to the concept of the decimal system and to make the child familiar with the names and relative sizes of the categories. Also! To help the child with the difference in bulk between e.g. 6 units and 6 thousands

 

The Montessori Teen Board is a great way to introduce the concept of teens to a child. Not only children see how tens and ones are being build to make teens, but they are also physically building teens themselves. Have the child slide a wooden number two on top of a ten board, making twelve.

 

This boy is developing his fine motor skills by working with putting nuts on bolts. Fine motor skills are those that involve a refined use of the small muscles which control the hand, fingers and thumb. With the development of these skills, a child is able to complete important tasks such as writing, feeding oneself, buttoning and zippering.

 

Peek Into Next Week:
Line Time- Food Groups

Letter Of The Week- D d

Rhyming Word Of The Week- bag

Next Language is Greek

 

Upcoming Events:
Nothing is on the near horizon but it is never too soon to prepare and plan my birthday party which is in May.  Milkshakes and smoothies welcome in the morning.

Just In… Ramseyer Farms on Friday, September 24, 2021.   Check your child’s take home folder for the field trip permission forms and return promptly.

 

Academic Enrichment aka Kindergarten:
Hemispheres-  The kindergarten students and I went over hemispheres, The Equator, and The Prime Meridian.  Actually, the hemispheres are made by The Equator and the Prime Meridian.  The North and South Hemisphere are created by The Equator and the East and West Hemisphere are created by the Prime Meridian.  We delved further and identified the Northwestern, Northeastern, Southwestern, and Southeastern Hemispheres.  that was not as daunting as one would expect.

Two of the Kindergarten students were absent but where are they. We don’t know.

 

Handwriting:
We practiced writing  in cursive Jj, Kk, Ll

Next Week:
Weekly Theme: North America/Surrounding Bodies Of Water/ Canada, USA, Mexico

Synonym Of The Week: SLOW, unhurried, gradual, sluggish, stagnant, lethargic

Sight Words Of The Week: see her

 

Frolic, Friends, and Fun:

I am all about coupons. Thank you to the parents that left this for me. Obviously, a well seasoned parent.

 

Crowns and armor on her arms. I think she maybe a knight in shining armor or a princess.

 

Just being silly and that’s OK.

 

You should have seen the other guy!

 

Your Child says The Dardest Things: