Pandas, Penguins, and Pirates

Last week at Mommy School J & G learned about pandas, penguins, and pirates: the letter P! Our first day we learned about Pandas. Youtube really is the best resource ever as Jake watched videos about Pandas for about an hour. I then decided to get creative and let the kids make Panda cupcakes. I have a great cupcake cookbook called Hello, Cupcake that gave us the idea, but I'm sad to say our cupcakes fell way short of the ones in the book. I am NOT Martha Stewart nor am I a perfectionist of any kind so unfortunate craft projects are a regular occurrence at the McCathran house. The kids did have fun making them though and even more fun eating them. My main problem was I didn't have all of the necessary ingredients. Also, a two and four year old were assisting and "helping." Here's what the pandas were supposed to look like:

Here's the McCathran version:

sad panda

The next day we learned about penguins. I wish I would have videoed J & G walking like penguins all day…so cute. We watched more youtube (lots of fun videos of penguins falling over) and made construction paper penguins.

We also had pirate day. I was pretty sure that this was going to be a huge hit. I had a treasure hunt planned and everything. But, by the end of the week, the kids were tired of humoring my attempt at "Mommy School" and weren't so thrilled with pirate day. They didn't think making hats and eye patches was as fun as I did. They didn't find the treasure hunt interesting either. But, later in the weekend, Jake did put on his pirate hat and played "treasure hunt" quite a bit. Guess it just had to be on his time :)

the pirate princess with the treasure map

Jake dressed himself up for his own treasure hunt

I definitely don't know how homeschooling moms do it. It's hard to get your own children excited about school everyday. We've been trying to work on Jake writing his name, and he can actually do it pretty well now, but he hates me asking him to do it. It has to be his idea. I'm pretty sure that "P" this week wasn't just for pirates, penguins, and pandas, but was for patience, too!