Monday, January 31, 2011

Playing with Light

Saturday was such a beautiful day that we decided to take a walk into town and to the park.  I decided to take my camera along so I could practice some and try it out with different lighting situations.  Just a note never bring the dog along if you are wanting to play with your camera it is just one more thing to worry about. :)

So here are my first few attempts taken at around 11 o'clock. 

Phil was trying to teach me how to get a flare shot here...while holding the dog leash and a jacket. :) Pretty good first attempt but not great. I still thought it was pretty cute.
Second attempt at flare...better! Her shirt was a little washed out though so we tweaked it a bit in photoshop.
These next ones were when she woke up from her nap...oh how I LOVE late afternoon light!  I thought this one was pretty of her.


Another attempt at flare..got the flare but washed her out.  Phil said I needed to turn up the exposure compensation.
This isn't really a great picture but look at the light on her face I just love how it looks so golden at about 5 in the afternoon.
She was very tired of me asking her to sit still and was begging to play hopscotch.  I gave in but I got one of my favorite pics of her that day!

I definitely need to keep practicing but it was a lot of fun trying new things...it didn't hurt the weather was perfect!  I hope you all had a good weekend too!
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Friday, January 28, 2011

Sophia's Ballet

Sophia has been taking dance since September and has been loving it!  She keeps telling me that the tap part is her favorite.  I think it because she gets to be loud.  I wanted to share a few pictures of her in action.  All the little girls are so cute!  Thanks dayle and hannah for the pictures..totally spaced and forgot to bring my camera the day the parents were allowed to watch. :)

Sophia is in the purple and her good friend Sophie is in the baby blue. 
 This next one makes me laugh because it is Sophia wrapped up in one picture! Lot of energy,smiles and some bounce. :)



Another funny shot of Sophia...she is totally haming it up in the mirror!

Sophie had her class pet this week..so she wanted a group picture at ballet.
Sophia, Sophie, and Sarah

They were just measured this week for their costumes for the recital in June! I can't wait to see them all on stage! Just a little funny side story...I have had to explain to Sophia several times what a recital is. Everytime I bring it up she thinks I am saying recycle. She was very confused for awhile. :) I really loves this age she makes me laugh everyday!



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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Peter Pan

So I'm pretty excited mostly because Sophia is excited!  Sophia has been in love with the story of Peter Pan for awhile now as evident by her Halloween costume last year.  So when I found out Peter Pan the play was coming to Atlanta I couldn't resist and we got tickets to go...but not until March.  I'm not risking it getting cancelled for another ice storm. :)

Here is a video of what the play is suppose to be like.  I think she is going to love seeing them fly!  If your interested in going it is playing now until March 20th.






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The Mitten and other Random stuff

Sophia came home from school Friday and told me about a story she had heard that day.  It about a boy who loses his mitten.  A lot of different animals find the mitten and climb in until the mitten stretches and it literally explodes!  The boy comes back and finds the mitten split open but luckily his mom has a new pair for him.  I put cover pictures of both versions of the book below.  From reading the reviews though it sounds like a lot of people prefer the Alvin Tresselt version.  I think that is the one they used in Sophia's class as well.  I thought it sounded like a cute story and I knew she must have enjoyed it a lot if she came home and told me about it. 
 Here is the mitten Sophia made at school.  It looks pretty easy to copy if you want to try to make it at home.  You would just need to find pictures of the different animals.  The mitten opens and you put all of your animals in.  As you can tell Sophia's exploded as well! She was so excited to show me that it ripped when she was pulling all the animals out.  I doctored it up with some handy dandy tape and all was right in the world again. :)  Here is a link to Preschool Playbook she did a post on this same story with some other ideas as well.

Here are some other random things we have been doing.  I also found on Preschool Playbook these cute "bird feeders".  All you will need are pipe cleaners and cheerios.  Take one pipe cleaner and make a circle at one end.  Loop some of the pipe cleaner around itself.  This is so the cheerios don't fall off and when you get done you will loop the other end into the circle.  Once you have a circle at one end just start stringing cheerios on.  There will be a lot of cheerio eating going on with this project.


I found this cute number game from a Mailbox magazine.  You take a bag and decorate it for Valentines Day.  Please don't laugh at mine I made it in 5 minutes while Sophia was eating breakfast...in retrospect I should have let her do it but oh well.  Afer you have your bag decorated write numbers on pieces of paper and then fold them up and place them in the bag.  Then have your child pull out a number and tell you what it is.  After they tell you the number they have to blow that many kisses.  Sophia had a lot of fun with this and I acted like I was catching her kisses. 
I have a similiar game that I learned at Puddle Jumpers. You basically just write numbers on a medium sized sheets of paper. Once you have your numbers drawn place them around on the floor. Write more numbers on smallers pieces of paper and fold them up and place them in a bag. I just use a ziploc bag. Have your child pull a number out and tell you what it is. Once they tell you they have to go find that number on the floor and jump on it that many times. So say she picks a 5 she has to go find the 5 and then jump on it 5 times. Keep going until all your numbers are gone...I usually take them out so Sophia will get each number at least once.
We have also started sight words and BOB books.  This has been with mixed reviews.  I can really tell the days she isn't into it...like today. Other days she loves it and wants to do more.  The books are cute though and very simple sentences such as Mat Sat. Sam sat. I'll keep you updated on how it goes. :)
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Sunday, January 16, 2011

Sophia's 2010 Wrap Up

I meant to do this post back at the beginning of January but just never got around to it.  I wanted to post some pictures from this past year to see how Sophia has grown and to revist some of the things we were able to do with her.  So here is a very condensed version of our 2010!

January


February
 


March
 

April


 
May
May must have been a busy month for us...Puddle Jumpers, Touch a Truck, Mother's Day and Strawberry Picking were just a few of the things we did.





 
June

 

 
July
 


August
 


September
We took a spur of the moment trip to Savannah this month.  It was alot of fun..Savannah is one of my favorite cities and I couldn't wait for Sophia to see it.
 

 
October
Our trip to England was the biggest event this month.  We have a ton of pictures from that trip so I reposted Phil's video below in case you missed it before. 




 
November
Celebrated Thanksgiving Day and took our Christmas card pictures this month.


December
 

I hope you all have a wonderful 2011!

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