Photos taken in or around the Lake Merritt Gardens.
Category Archives: Posts
emma at three years and five months
Clover is a few days shy of three years and five months and now seems so big. I tell her every day that she is growing so well. I see more of a big kid than the toddler that she once was.
Clover still loves the same things: books, Calico Critters and playing with her tea set.
Clover also now really enjoys legos, acting out stories for her wooden Little Bear friends, blocks and transportation toys.
In the mornings she plays for hours and with every single things that she owns. Its amazes me.
Sometimes I plan activities but mostly she likes free play that is self directed. Play dough and painting are fun activities we like to do together at the table.
There is always time for sitting down and reading books. All books, all the time around here. ^_^
big puzzle
We have had this one for a couple weeks but Clovey can now do it all by herself! It is actually harder than it looks because the fish are so varied and colorful. Part of the challenge is to stick with a task that takes a bit more time. But now she probably has it memorized. ^_^
lately in photos
Sakura! Cherry blossoms! So beautiful!
Magnolias in the gardens!
Emma is unable to get rid of her beloved purple coat.
Eating a baguette smothered with with butter and jam, and my favorite Heath ceramic mug at Cafe Clem.
Celebrating Chinese New Year at the Oakland Museum by making a dragon and dressing up.
Played at the best park ever! The Yerba Buena Gardens children’s playground wins for best slide.
learning about the mail
For Valentine’s Day we made some cards and sent them to Emma’s aunts, uncles and cousins that live in Los Angeles. I cut out animals from a roll of cute wrapping paper that I picked up at the reuse center and Emma pasted the animals on folded paper. We took a field trip to Paper Source and bought some red envelopes and came home to stamp (rubber stamp and postage stamp/sticker) and address them. The next day I thought it would be fun to walk downtown to the post office. The downtown Oakland post office is in a gorgeous old building and there was no line when we got there so bought some more postage stamps. We talked about all the p.o. boxes that we saw and dropped our valentine cards in a mail slot.
Since then I have actually had to mail a few other things and Emma has been super interested in the stamps, the writing on envelopes and such so today we made a mailbox. I used a shoe box and cut out a hole. She can lift the lid to take things out and then stick them back in again. I already had a whole bunch of little envelopes and cards for her to play with so we were good to go without any prep work involved. It was a fun activity to reinforce what she knows and include some pretend play. This could definitely be an activity that includes writing so we may incorporate that more next time. ^_^
