Can you imagine 3 boys having a blast learning about tea? Not to say boys can't have fun with tea, but I am not sure it would be a topic I would go to first for a group of boys. I know, I know, it's not good to stereotype. But there are general gender differences. That being said, all my boys have loved taking babies for walks in strollers and my husband and I do not fit into typical husband wife rolls. So things are certainly not black and white.
Honestly I had tea day up for quite a while and just didn't pursue it, winter break and all. But we got a bit tired of TV watching and video games. I had seen the results of painting with tea bags on the other
Blog Ambassador blogs and asked the boys if they wanted to paint with tea bags. They were super excited!
Mother Goose Time provided us with a cut out of a teapot and a tea bag for each student. I then put hot water in a bowl and gave them each the tea bag. They dipped the tea bag in the water, watched the water change colors and then dabbed the tea bag on the teapot. The results were really cool. Even Adam (21 months) joined us.
Lachlan used his baby brother's scissor scoopers he got for Christmas to grab his tea bag. Of course tea stains everything but I never thought of using it on paper. It gives it a cool antique look which would be fun to use on a treasure chest art project or something like that.
His project is really coming along.
Then we added paint. Peter covered his whole teapot in paint to the point where you couldn't see the marks the tea made. But that's okay, it's his project.
Lachlan finished his up quick and then I put him to work making his bilingual book. This month we are focusing on Math and how it shows up in many projects we do with MGT. So I just have to point out that each page in this bilingual book is numbered. Lachlan had the task of putting them in order.
After painting with tea, the boys really wanted to drink tea. Two at of the three at the time had a cough so I thought tea with honey was a good idea. Of course I had to steep the tea in a teapot. Lachlan got to pour his own cup. I taught him how to hold the lid. We added a couple of ice cubes and some honey.
He thought his tea was quite good! Of course we had to drink Billy tea which is an Australian tea in honor of our Australian guests we had this year for Christmas.
I added a few extra ice cubes to Adam's tea and he stirred and stirred and stirred his tea.
We actually jumped into some of the lessons from the next day's topic of House Guests. What a fitting topic for this time of year. First we did house guest math. I got out our people manipulatives from a previous month and Peter lined one up at the door of the Lego house Lachlan got for Christmas. Knock, knock.
Peter did the simple math story cards and lined up 4 guests at the front door. I gave Lachlan (my 1st grader) the more challenging math story card which had him make 3 families of 4. We were able to multiply 3 x 4 to get the answer 12.
Our friendly bee this month focuses on being loving. How can we be loving to house guests? We talked about how we should turn off the TV and video games when guests come over so we can spend time with them and give them our attention. We talked about taking our guests coats, offering something to drink or eat. After talking all about it we put on our Loving Bee Badges.
I told Adam he could show love by giving hugs.
My husband's father was born and raised in Australia. So all of my husband's cousins live over there. This year, his cousin Bec, her husband Lachlan and their two children Tim and Emily came to America to go on a cross country RV trip. They started their trip in California and drove up to Oregon to be with us for Christmas. Lachlan loved meeting another Lachlan.
Little Lachlan would walk up to Big Lachlan and say "Hi, Lachlan" he would return with "Hi Lachlan". It was pretty cute. I asked my Lachlan to ask the other Lachlan what he did for a living. He found out he was a pastor in Australia and I gasped "does that mean he has Jesus in his heart like you?" Lachlan (Big) "Do you have Jesus in your heart?" Yes, do you? Yes. High Fives all around.
They even got to build Legos together.
There is a lot more to say about their visit and how Lachlan (little) got to be named Lachlan. Hopefully I can get a post up specifically about their visit. But I have to say, I could not ask for a better Lachlan for my Lachlan to look up to.
Here is the whole gang, minus Adam who was sleeping. I was trying to encourage everyone to keep their eyes open and in doing so look like I am surprised about something. None the less, it was great to get a shot of us all together, as this reunion will not happen too often since it requires a flight halfway around the world.
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