Back to Friday Playdates

Our sweet friends Kristin and Wyatt have been out of town for a couple of weeks, so we were extremely excited to get to have a good old Friday playdate with them today.  We had a ton of fun catching up and just hanging out.  Rachel had a quick visit to check on the rash on her face and, as we suspected, it's poison ivy.   Thank goodness it doesn't itch too much on her face, but her eye was a little swollen shut this morning.   We've definitely got to spray some stuff around the back yard, the poison ivy is out of control!!
We were able to do some writing, drawing, building, math, and playing this morning, too.  I went to see some of my old students during nap time who are graduating, so the kids stayed at Baba's for a relaxing moving hour.  Then we came home to play with an awesome activity from Ms. Lisa.  She sent them each a container full of these water beads with all kinds of things to play with (aquarium castles, small sea animals, sifters, measuring spoons and cups).  We had a great afternoon playing "water trays".  Then it was pizza night here at home.  We had a super relaxing evening and now everyone is crashing.  Here's hoping the weekend is low-key and fun!

Pick Your Own

We've been doing our own things today.  Ford wanted to draw, so while we were getting things out, everyone else wanted to draw.  Ruby wanted to read stories, so as we were reading a story, everyone else came over and wanted a story read.  Rachel wanted to whine and push and get in everybody's way...yep, Ruby and Ford decided to do the same.  So, once we got some math done (I couldn't believe how quickly Rachel caught on to +9s!!), and a little handwriting done, we went for a walk to get some fresh air.  We stopped in Vanessa's yard for a little while to swing (she was on her way out to Winston when we were coming around the corner).  While we were swinging, Rachel decided she wanted to pick strawberries.  Then Ford decided he really wanted to pick strawberries.  Ruby just wanted to eat the strawberries.  I wasn't sure I could tackle strawberry picking on my own, so I called Ms. Lisa but she didn't answer.  Then I called Baba, but she didn't answer.  So, I told the kids we could walk home and call the strawberry place and see if they even have strawberries.  While I was trying to call everyone was being extremely obnoxious, so I told them that the strawberry place didn't answer (which is true, but the message said they were open and there were strawberries still available).  Once I got them to listen and help clean up and change their moods, I told them that we'd drive out to the strawberry place and see what happened.  It was absolutely the best thing we've done in awhile.  Everyone was so well-behaved and worked together and we had a gallon bucket filled in no time!  Ford is the official "bucket holder" for strawberry picking.  The kids who loves dirt and mud decided that strawberry picking was too messy and sticky for him.  I can't tell you how many times Rachel said, "I love to pick strawberries." and Ford said, "Strawberry picking (or bucket holding actually) is my favorite thing."  Ruby kept finding the cutest little berries and putting them in the bucket.  We made a deal that if they didn't eat any berries while we were picking, they could have as many as they wanted for lunch.  Not one berry went in anyone's mouth, so we ate a TON of strawberries for lunch today with some toasted English Muffins.  It was an awesome lunch and turned out to be an awesome way to spend what could have been a miserable whiney morning!

Beads and Dirt

We started out our day by taking all the beads off all the necklaces in our house that we have ever made and putting the beads into a bead sorter container thingy.  Then each kid got one string and made their own necklaces.  After lots of impatient whining and crying and complaining while I untied knots and got it all sorted out (this was their idea, so I didn't have much time to prep!), they must have spent 30-45 minutes working together and helping each other and stringing beads.  I wasn't sure I would actually make it to the bead stringing part, but once they got going, it was an awesome activity.  They were using manners and asking each other nicely to pass a bead or help each other find a certain color. I was actually able to balance my checkbook while they worked!  Then Ruby realized she was missing a necklace, so once we remembered she left it at Baba's, we took a road trip to pick it up (and get a snack and watch a show because that's what you do at Baba's house).  Then we came home and played in the backyard for awhile.  When the mosquitoes started getting to us, we moved to the front yard in played in the dirt for a LONG time!  These kids love some dirt and for some reason, when it's dusty and not muddy, I can handle it much better.  We re-built the fairy house, moved rocks around, cleared a space for Ford's road, and watered our flowers.  It was a great morning.  Oh, and somewhere in there, Ford sat down at the table with me and wrote every single letter in the alphabet on his own today!  He was so proud of himself!!  The afternoon didn't go as well, but that was due to a lack of napping in this house.  Let's just say it's 7:02 and 2 out of 3 kids are already asleep!!

Slowing Down for Summer

Yesterday was a vacation day for Papa, so we did our own little version of Field Day and it was awesome!  We had sack races, Jump the Brook, an obstacle course, football toss, bunny hop, a 50 yard dash, and a "marathon" run.  The kids had a blast and all rested well during nap time :)
Today we're sort of getting back into the groove.  Story time is over for the summer (we don't go to the crazy story times during the summer where everybody in town shows up because of the free a/c), so we just went and got some books at the library.  Music class is over for the summer.  Art class is complete.  Violin is over, but we will continue on with 8 summer lessons.  Everything seems to be slowing down, so we are, too.  I was always a fan of looking into year-round school when I was teaching.  The kids in our community desperately need it, but I like the idea of not losing your skills over the break.  We will definitely be doing some writing, some math, and LOTS of reading during the summer, just not every day and not in such a formal way.  With Allen around more, I see more science activities happening.  Rachel is also going to be taking tennis lessons and is so excited about that.  Plus, we've got to start getting things ready for our Daisy Scout Troop in the Fall.  Oh, and did I mention, we've got to start getting ready for the newest pupil at Ingram School due to arrive around January 5th?  Maybe it's not going to be such a slow summer!!

Tape and Tracing

Rachel discovered a fun activity today.  In a fairy book she got for Christmas there was a page where you could trace the fairies on a thin sheet of paper kind of like wax paper.  She loved lifting the paper up to see that what she had drawn looked almost identical to the professional picture on the page before.  While she was doing that, Ford and Ruby and I had a blast playing with Scotch tape.  So simple, yet so fun.  We just kept taping pieces of paper together and making a fairy walkway to go with the fairy bridge we made.  Teenagers love duct tape, but toddlers and preschoolers prefer Scotch tape!
We did some math, some reading, some coloring, and played a lot of games like Baby Horse (where Ford gets doted on by his sisters and talks like a baby even though he's supposed to be a horse), New Fairies (where they get to choose their talents), and, of course, read some fairy books.
Around 11 we were ready to get out of the house, but it was muddy and looking a little overcast, so we just went on a walk around the block.  We were able to meet up with Vanessa and her crew for our walk, then we stopped by and checked on the neighborhood garden, and came back to our house to play and eat lunch.
Another great day!

Wonderful Wednesday

We've had a great day today playing and writing and drawing and visiting with our friends.  Rachel did some more reading this morning and a couple of catch-up math reviews.  I put some crayons on the table and called out colors in Spanish and the kids picked the right color crayons to match what I said.  Then Rachel and Ford practiced writing the colors in Spanish and Ruby drew some great pictures.  We read a fairy book and a few other library books.  Then we went for a walk in the nice weather and stopped at Vanessa's.  She had planned an activity for us to plant zinnia seeds and to put some mint into new pots.  Then we played outside for a long time, played inside for awhile, and then ate an awesome lunch on her homemade bread followed by dessert of our homemade cookies.  It has been a great day.  If the rain holds off, we might be able to wrap up the day with some water park action!!

Reading and Recitals (Tuesday's post)

I got a little behind yesterday, so I'm going to post twice today.  We have been doing TONS of reading around here.  Rachel and I are both determined that she will be a reader by the end of the summer.  We have lots of great resources from Ms. Lisa including Dick and Jane books that I am shocked to see how well they work!  I see why they've been used forever to help kids learn to read.  Rachel loves reading them and the repetition helps her recognize words so well.  We also discovered the BOB books from Ms. Lisa but there were some pieces missing.  Now we have three whole sets and will move to those next after we get through with Dick and Jane (and Sally).  As a family, we've also been working our way through the Rainbow Magic Fairy series.  It's amazing how well our kids sit still to hear these stories.  They are chapter books,  but they will sit still for the entire book just to find out how crazy the goblins are!  Each series has 7 stories and we finish the whole series in 3 or 4 days with no problem.  I don't know what we'll move to after that!

We went to story time yesterday for the last time for this school year.  I talked Rachel into taking her violin to play for everyone because Ms. Dare and Mr. Jason have both asked her to play.  I thought it would be good practice for her recital last night since she's never played in front of a crowd.  She did great and realized it wasn't too big of a deal to play in front of people.  Last night she played every note perfectly at her recital, but she looked terrified sitting there and waiting her turn.  I thought she'd be one of the first ones to go, but she was almost at the end.  I'm glad we did a trial run at story time!  She was so cute and so grown up at the same time playing her violin so well in front of everyone.  I was super proud!!

Float, Sink, or Swim?

We did a little science experiment today to see which of our toys would sink or float.  I got a big glass bowl out and filled it with water and then I had each kid go find a toy that could get wet.  Since they all picked something that I knew would float, I grabbed something that I knew would sink.  We made a chart with "Sink" and "Float" at the top and then listed our items down the side.  We had a Lego, a plastic cow, a plastic block, and a  key.  We tried to guess first which items would sink and which would float, then we checked the appropriate column on our chart after we dropped each one in the water.  Then we talked about hypothesis and how we could now make some pretty educated guesses about other items.  Rachel ran outside and got a rock, then Ford tried a pencil.  Ruby just kept wanting to put her cow in the water.  After lots of wet toys, we decided to summarize by saying that things made out of plastic and wood tended to float and things made out of rock or metal would sink.  Then we went outside to try some things out in the water table, but that turned into too much craziness before lunch time so we saved water park for after nap time and swam and played in the pool and the mud for two hours!!!

Smell-icious

Today we talked about smell.  The process is definitely hard to explain (not that I'm qualified!), but we played a fun game of smelling different things with our eyes closed to see what was in my hand.  Ford never wants to close his eyes for things like this, but the girls loved it.  I just would let him smell last and cover his eyes.  They did a great job of waiting for everyone to smell before they tried to guess out loud.  We smelled cinnamon, dirt, and Play-Doh.  It was actually pretty funny.  We could have kept going but they wanted to draw noses.  That turned out to be extremely hard.  We talked a lot about how most people have a hard time drawing noses on faces, but they did a great job.  I'll be interested to see what the noses they draw look like from now on.  We read a book a while back that had a funny joke about a girl with three nostrils, so they knew that term already.  We spent a lot of time just playing today and doing things they wanted to do.  For handwriting today we got out the Handwriting Without Tears wooden pieces and made lots of letters.  Rachel made them on the mat, Ford made them on the paper that comes with the blocks, and then after they had done several Ruby wanted to try.  I was very impressed with how well she made letters!  It was like a puzzle to her and she loved it!!  I think she and Ford are definitely hands-on learners.

How to keep your kids from wanting coffee

Today was TASTE day.  We drew pictures of our tongues and put the different types of taste buds on them.  I got out some coffee filters and put lemon slices for sour, salt for salty, and sugar for sweet in them.  Bitter is a hard one and a few days ago I had asked Allen what he thought I should have them taste for bitter.  He said coffee grounds.  I thought that sounded disgusting, but I couldn't come up with anything better, so one filter had coffee in it.  I had them try the coffee first so we could get it over with.  They completely understood bitter and have all mentioned several times today that they don't ever want to drink coffee and keep asking me over and over if I really like coffee and how do I drink it??  It's pretty funny!  They like sticking their finger in the salt to taste it because it reminded them of pretzels.  Then I had them lick the lemon slice for sour which they actually didn't mind too much.  Then I took the slices and dipped them in the sugar and they thought that was the most delicious thing they'd ever eaten.  Seriously, I might start buying lemons and dipping them in sugar for a snack!  They must have eaten and licked and dipped for 20 minutes with one lemon slice!!

Can You Hear That?

Today we talked about hearing and it was admittedly, not the most exciting thing we've ever done.  It's pretty hard to draw an ear.  It's pretty hard to explain how hearing works to the 5 and under crowd.  Looking at a picture of an ear with the parts labeled doesn't make much sense because they were totally confused when I tried to explain the part that controls our balance.  The thing we did do that was fun, was to go sit on the (freezing cold) porch and close our eyes and listen to what sounds we could hear.  There were lots of birds and lots of cars and even someone doing construction work.  I pretty much thought I blew it with the hearing lesson, but was going to move on past it.  Then, on the way home from story time, Ford kept calling out from the back seat the different things he could hear.  It was pretty cute.  We're using our sense of hearing today whether we like it or not.  And Ruby pooped in the potty, so the day is not a total loss!

The Five Senses

We are going to talk about the five senses this week and started today with Sight.  We talked about parts of their eye, what a blind person is and how they cope with not being able to see, and then we've spent a lot of time just talking about what we see around us.  We also played a game where I drew a picture of something in the house on a map (that we actually made out of Play-Doh, so these are rough drawings in the Play-Doh!) and they had to find the gold coins hidden in or near whatever I drew.  Some of them they got quickly, but some of the pictures they really had to work on figuring out what the object was.  The hardest one for them was the bathroom sink!  We spent most of the morning just catching up on chores and getting back in our groove for the week.  They each switched to helping with a new chore this week.  Ruby learned how to start the dryer, Ford helped unload the dishwasher, and Rachel got the playroom in order.  Then we played Play-Doh and "New Fairy" for awhile before heading down the hill for a picnic with Vanessa and the boys.  We tried a new recipe for lunch out of Rachel's cookbook.  It was a bagel half with a slice of cheese and an apple slice in the oven at 350 for 5-10 minutes.  Vanessa and I thought they were delicious.  The kids liked them, but I think they were more excited about playing outside!

The Park

We've worked hard this week and played hard this week and after a morning at the tire store waiting forever to have our tires aligned, we decided it was time to visit the park!  We love the park.  Now that the weather is more predictably nice outside, Friday mornings are becoming park time.  We love to swing, we love to slide, we love to explore the sap dripping out of the trees, we love to walk around the half mile loop, we love to play on the tennis court.  It hit me today, though, that we hardly ever see other kids at the park in the mornings.  If our buddies come to meet us there, that's one thing, but in general, we don't usually find that other moms and kids are using the park.  There are a ton of adults walking or running around the loop, but we usually have the playground all to ourselves.  It's just another one of those things that makes me think, "What are people doing with their kids?"  Are all the other 4 and 5 year-olds in preschool?  Are all the other 2 and 3 year-olds at daycare?  Or do people choose to play in their backyards instead of coming to the park?  This park is in a nice neighborhood but with the exception of sweet Webb, we never see any of the kids who live there actually using the park!  I just think it's odd.  I know people do use the park, so they must go when we don't.  Now don't get me wrong, we do love having the place to ourselves, but I just wonder where everybody is....

A Rainbow of Nature

We were all a little cranky this morning, so we didn't spend too much time at the table getting school work done.  We did some handwriting and math and tried to draw some pictures of flowers, but nobody was really into it.  What we really needed was to get outside!!  I had seen a post about mixing paint with glue and doing a pretty cool art project with things in nature, but I just wasn't up for it this morning and everyone was complaining, so we opted to go outside.  While we were out there, though, the kids were noticing all kinds of different colors of things they were finding.  So, finally, we had a bucket full of wild red berries, orange and yellow blooms off a tree in our back yard, green leaves, bluish-violet periwinkles, and pinkish-purplish flowers.  I ran in and got some paper and glue and we made a rainbow out of what we found in the yard.  Nothing too spectacular, but a pretty cool way of finding different colors outside.  It was amazing how all of our cranky moods lifted once we were outside (and I came to terms with the mud!).  It was so warm by the time we were ready to go in for lunch, that everyone stripped down and stood in the pool while I hosed the mud off of them.  We will definitely be opening the water park this afternoon!

Parts of the flower

We did a simple little picture today of a flower and labeled its parts.  Rachel and Ford were able to draw their own flower aand label the stem, leaf, petals, and roots.  Ruby colored her flower very nicely :)  Just by coincidence it worked out today that Ford was wearing a shirt that says "Roots", Rachel had on a shirt with flower petals, and Ruby had a green shirt on so we called her the stem and leaves.  We read the book The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle which does such a good job of showing how a seed turns into a flower and what it goes through over the seasons.  This has always been a story they love, but it seemed to mean a little more today.  Ford even made the comment that he didn't like that the little boy didn't look where he was going and crushed a plant that had worked that hard to grow.  We went for a walk around the neighborhood and found some seeds, weeds, and flowers.  We pulled a weed up in our driveway and looked at the roots.  I'm hoping this afternoon I can get the Zoomy to work (it's a really cool microscope) so that we can look closer at leaves, petals, stems, and roots.

Rainbows and Umbrellas

To continue with the rain part of our theme this week, we talked more about umbrellas today and the kids drew and/or colored umbrellas.  Then we talked about how when the sun comes out after the rain we can sometimes see a rainbow.  They are really good at their colors of the rainbow (thanks to The Cat in the Hat's rainbow song!), so we drew rainbows and Rachel and Ford were able to color their own in the correct order.  Rachel even found an Indigo in the crayon box so that hers was "perfect".  There hasn't been much rain since we put that rain gauge out yesterday, but we're still hoping for a thunderstorm later this afternoon so that the rain will fill it up.  Otherwise, I just need the rain to stay away and let everything dry up so we can get outside!!  Ford and Rachel both wrote umbrella and rainbow on their papers to practice some writing.  Then Rachel also wrote solve and answer to prepare for her math lesson, as well as today's date.  We started a new math lesson today about solving for the unknown.  When we did this lesson in the Primer, I was shocked how quickly she got it, but today she had a little more trouble.  May have had something to do with "Jake" and "Tinkerbell" running around the house like crazy people, I mean fairies!!  We went to story time today and enjoyed talking about butterflies, dancing like butterflies, and making butterflies.  We're still looking for caterpillars outside so we can watch one turn into a butterfly, so it was cool that we talked about that today.  We tried something new for lunch today:  Personal Pizzas!  We cut English Muffins in half, put some tomato sauce on, sprinkled cheese, added pepperoni to the top, and baked at 400 for 20 minutes.  They loved them!!!  Ford said, "We should have these every day!"  It was a nice change from peanut butter for sure :)

Showers and Flowers

The weather for this week shows lots of rain in the beginning and lots of warm sun at the end.  So, we're going to talk about rain today and tomorrow and flowers Wednesday and Thursday (showers and flowers).  This morning we made a rain gauge out of a 2 liter bottle.  We cut the top off, then put rocks in the bottom, used a ruler to mark a 0, 1, 2, and 3 inch mark, filled water up to the zero, turned the top upside down like a funnel and put it inside the bottom half of the bottle.  We've been watching all day to see if the rain has made the water rise.  Rachel and Ford drew a picture of the rain gauge and we marked where the water was this morning and what time it was.  Then at snack time, we marked again (it had risen about half an inch...not too precise, but it was a good guestimate!).  We were going to mark again at lunch, but no more rain had fallen, so after nap time we'll just make a note on their charts that it was at the same place.  Rachel wants to leave it outside all week and see if we can get it up to 3 inches.  If we had put it out last night, it would be there!!!  Then they each labeled their pictures with the words "Rain Gauge" and wrote their names on them.  We read some books.  Rachel wrote some rhyming words (flower, shower, power, and tower) and then today's date.  Ruby did a lot of coloring and helped when she could this morning (she put rocks in the bottom of the rain gauge!).  We were able to practice some violin this morning, play fairies, read a book about weather, play trains, build with blocks, and read all of our library books one more time.  It's just been a yucky weather day and we've been trying our best to stay busy.  Vanessa and the boys stopped by for a short little play time and everyone got to slide and do forward rolls on our homemade couch cushion slide :)
We also are trying out assigned jobs this week.  On their charts, they each have a specific job to help with.  Rachel's assignment is dishes, Ford's is laundry, and Ruby's is straightening the playroom.  I think if we switch between those three jobs over the next few weeks everyone will get a turn learning how to do things around here.

Just another Friday

Not much to say...laundry...walk outside...looking for bunnies at Vanessa's...library...lunch...nap.  It's been an easy, relaxing, fun Friday morning.  When everyone wakes up, we're headed to our friends' house to play and then it will be Pizza Night!  I'm hoping it will also be Everybody Sleep All Night In Your Own Beds Night!!
Happy Friday!

Finishing up our stories

We finished our books today and they are pretty hilarious!  Ford just yesterday started playing with a blue football that he's had his whole life.  He told me he was dribbling it across the floor.  I thought, "How European of him to play futbal with a football!"  Then this morning he and Allen played catch with the football.  So, of course, on his page of What I Want to be When I Grow Up, he said he wants to be a football player!  Ruby wants to be a ballerina and Rachel wants to be a librarian.  Then for the final page I had them tell me a story of something they've done this year.  They told it and I wrote it all down.  Ford's story was called "My Blue Football", Ruby's story was called "My Trip to the Beach", and Rachel's story was called "My Trip to the Zoo".  Ford's was pretty funny and ended with "that's all I have to say the end."  Ruby mentioned splashing in the water about 100 times and not really anything else about the beach.  Rachel told about the giraffes at the zoo, but she did not want to talk about any of the other animals!
For handwriting today, I let Ford practice the word football and then the word soccer.  Now he wants to play soccer...  Rachel's been practicing writing the date out every day like Thursday, May 2, 2013.  I also had her write "I want to be a librarian." in her book.  I think it's time to start working on sentences.  She loves to add punctuation.  We're just going to do our own handwriting practice until the Fall at which time I will start the 1st grade book with her.  I see no need to rush into that!  I also had Rachel do some practice math problems that I made up for her.  I don't want her to rush too much through the math book either.  It's going to get harder and harder and I want to take it slow to make sure she's really learning the concepts.  I think we'll ease our way through the summer and then it will be officially Kindergarten for Rachel in the Fall and more intense work for Ford.  Ruby will still just be going with the flow, but she's good at that!

Giving the Answers

Today we continued with our All About Me books.  We did two more pages.  On the first page we listed the days of the week and wrote down what we do on those days.  Rachel flew through that section,  I had to help Ford remember some of the days, and I just wrote it out for Ruby.  (I did ask her what she does while Rachel is at her violin lesson and she said, "Baba Class" which is hysterical!)  The second page was to list their friends.  Ruby had no trouble telling me who her friends are including a few cats and dogs and adults.  Ford made a long list but he forgot one or two of his best friends, so I gave him a little prompting.  Rachel started listing people she hardly knows but then came around to put who I consider to be her friends.  I didn't want to give them the answers to any of the pages we've done, but I do want it to accurately reflect who they are right now and what they do.  It's funny to hear what they will say when I ask them some of these questions.  For example, they all three separately said their favorite food was macaroni.  I honestly don't know the last time we ate macaroni!  I made sure to have them work today by themselves so they didn't have the exact same list of friends (we've got some major copycats around here!).  Obviously, their lists were pretty similar, but I liked how they chose some different people (and animals!).  We will finish up our books tomorrow and we can't wait to share them and put them somewhere safe to look at again in a few months and years.  This has really been a fun activity.  We were fortunate enough today to be distracted by a HUGE backhoe in our front yard that kept everyone entertained while I worked with one kid at a time.  Too bad we don't always have a good distraction like that available!