All About the Journey

Tot School

2011-09-28T19:29:00.000-07:00

LilSweetie is 24 months

(During this TotSchool)

She plays so well by herself and is undemanding of my attention for the most part. Actually she takes it further and really prefers to do it herself - story reading, project work, playing with toys. "Do it myself - Mommy go over 'dare" is almost her mantra. On the other side, Turbo prefers to have my time and attention every minute of the day. He wants to do his school work on my lap (mostly a 'no') and considers me his primary playmate. Too many nights I've put the kids to bed and realized LilSweetie's only 1:1 time with me was story and lullaby before bed. Can someone say Mommy guilt!

So I'm especially grateful to do Totschool with LilSweetie as it's ensuring she gets my focused time. She, now, understands we do 'school' together and we're both enjoying this time tremendously.

We're using Carisa's TotSchool Printables combined with tray activities.

Since we're doing most things together, I don't have tons of pictures - plus I forget to take them.

This was our first weeks of TotSchool, so I kept the trays to a minimum and used these for two weeks to get a sense of what she really enjoyed, how she'd respond to a toy she'd mastered and what she didn't prefer or seem to understand.

Here's where I keep her trays.

Sorting. She didn't care to do it at all. Maybe I should have put a picture on the bottom of each container. Even after a week of just playing with the items, when I encouraged her to put the Monkeys here and the Turtles there, she wasn't interested. Next time I'll change it up and make it more simple for her.

Lacing Snake. She enjoyed this at first and chose it several times. By the next week, she had started to pass it up.

Puzzle. She played with this shape puzzle significantly more than I anticipated. I imagined it would be easy and boring for her, but no. She chose it almost every day for two weeks.

In/Out/Open/Close. HUGE HIT. She played with this often for the entire two weeks. She'd lay out the cups and put a ball on top. She'd open the container, put in the balls while counting them, then close it up.

Color Wheel. This was a completely new concept for her. She'd not worked with clothespins before nor done color matching. She enjoyed this and chose it several times.

Lots of drawing on the whiteboard. She does great with the pens so I leave them out for her.

Playdough!

Much more stuff, but seriously inserting a picture to blogger from picasa webalbum is getting frustrating because of some technical problems. I've been trying to post this for almost a week and so I have to just move on. Darn blogger - I love you and you frustrate me!

Learn more about TotSchool here!
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Preschool ~ Oceans Theme Part 2

2011-09-07T21:53:00.000-07:00

We loved this theme and could have continued on for another two weeks with all that Turbo still wants to learn! Here's some of our activities these past two weeks.

Art - We stamped an Under the Sea poster with large foam stamps. This is a terrific activity for him. It's helping him practice 'staying within the lines' and I saw a quick improvement to his coloring.

He did a free painting with a circle foam brush. He says its round fish and waves. We also make these adorable ocean animals by connecting their parts with brad fasteners.

We read Over in the Oceans, a lovely book and were inspired by one of the pictures.

So we made this....

Build a Fish
We used the cute templates from Sparklebox to make these adorable creatures - 6 in all. Even LilSweetie got in on the fun. You poke holes in the pieces and attach with a brad. The kids loved that the parts moved! LilSweetie's is the Turtle and she cherished it!

Games
Of course we played Go Fish! He loves this game and will play it 100 times in a row if I will too. Daddy does, but not Mommy.

We also played Fish Bingo. I thought this was from Monterrey Aquarium website, but can't find it now. Sometimes we dumped them on the floor and other times we put them in ABC order. They have a paperclip on them and we used a magnetic fishing pool to fish and then mark our BINGO cards.

Sensory Tub
What's a fun theme without a sensory tub? The kids love these and I love that I can now leave them out! Both kids do a great job keeping it together.

Outing
We went to the beach of course! Love this beach because the sand is so soft and the water is rocky. That means the kids don't want to wade too far into the water and I can more safely take both by myself.

I had some directed play activities, but didn't use them at all. They were having such a great time playing with the sand that I didn't want to interrupt that.

Turbo was SO excited to see Sand Bugs. Lil Sweetie and I say....Ewww.

You can see our Ocean Theme Part 1 and Ocean Book list if you're looking for more.

Ocean Books

2011-09-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the Ocean Theme books we read these two week. I'm sharing the ones we read more than once and the kids enjoyed.
This is a sweet story about seasonal changes on an island and the secret it has to share.
This was an absolute Favorite! We made Seaweed soup at the beach, pretended to make it at home and read the story several times.
Touching and unique story about a boy and his walk with his Gramma. She’s in a wheelchair and still they go to the ocean, around the lighthouse and see the sights together. Loved this tear jerker!
Our favorite book about Tide Pools. Great use of words to describe the feeling, look and movement of the sea life. Great info too!
the kids really liked this one
A great book about Sea Turtles. Lots of facts written in the form of a story. This was read many, many times.

The following books were also enjoyed! These are fiction/fact books vs story books.
Starfish
The Seashore
Starfish, Seashells and Crabs
Seashore, Eyewitness books
Exploring the Sea
Wonders of the Sea
Exploring an Ocean Tide Pool
Life in the Water
Life in the Sea

See our Ocean Theme Posts
Oceans Part 1
Oceans Part 2

Ocean Theme ~ Part 1

2011-09-06T01:03:00.000-07:00

In addition to our Core Lessons, we had an excellent time learning about the Oceans. It's a vast subject and I wasn't sure where to being. I was thrilled to find the Sea Searchers Handbook to give some spine to our studies. I went through the online book and selected several units, then got some supporting books from the library. These were all terrific!! We learned about Wind and Waves, Tides, Crabs and Food Webs. I don't have pictures of everything because I was playing too! Here's one though....

Tides to Siphon: Here we are learning about Tides. We added rocks, gravel, plastic sea creatures to our tub, then filled it with 4 large bowls of water to simulate High Tide. As it filled, we talked about which creatures were getting covered by the water and which ones were out. We used a plastic lid to make waves and see how it lapped up over the tallest rocks. Then we siphoned the water out to simulate the tide receding. That's when the tide learning stopped and the "how a siphon works" learning began. He was SO interested in his. He would raise and lower the end to watch the flow slow and speed up. He would add air to make it stop and have me restart it. Eventually we went back to the low tide and tide pool discussion, but the highlight was siphoning!

Ocean Words ~ Turbo loved reading each of these during the day as the mood struck. It also helped to remind him what he learned and would spark questions. He mostly wants to know about "what does it eats and who eats it." He ends up using the vocabulary frequently in conversations. Adorable.

Tide Pool Fan
This was so fun! Turbo got to cut, glue and hole punch. He did a great job with the hole punching too! It's from here.

Commotion on the Ocean Fun!
What I Learned book
Each day I read an ocean book to Turbo and he would recount something he learned from it and draw a picture. Drawing and coloring have not been favorite things for him, so I wondered how he'd like this. He had a great attitude and enjoyed it. You can see he used the Tide Pool Fan as a reference point for his drawing. He had a hard time grasping what I wanted initially, then worried that he couldn't draw a good picture. A little encouragement and he did a great job!

We also did several other parts of that unit. The graphing with tricky pieces thrown was huge fun around here. Turbo loved to identify all the tricky pieces before we got started and used them for a different activity later. We did the Ocean labeling, Schema and Devotion to the Ocean. There's still so much more here for another go-round!

Science
Does and Egg float in water or saltwater? We tested the eggs and completed a little booklet. The egg does indeed float in saltwater. Turbo thought that was very cool. Then we poured out half of the salt water and added the fresh water. Can you guess what happened? It floated in the middle - under the fresh water and on top of the salt water.

Blubber Test
After our ocean visit where the water was quite cold, we read about whales. Naturally the question "How do they stay in that freezing water so long" came up. So we did an unplanned experiment to explain. Take one bowl of icy water, 2 ziplock bags and 1 container of Crisco and you've got your very own blubber experiment. They first put their hand in the icy water until it was reeaaalllly cold - about 45 seconds for Turbo. Then we put the Crisco in a ziplock to simulate the blubber. We didn't want greasy fingers so we covered our hand with a second ziplock. Then into the blubber and into the icy water. "WOW!! Where's the cold" was the response. You couldn't feel the cold at all for at least several minutes! Very fun experiment.

Circle Time Activities

Rhymes ~ She Sells Seashells; A sailor went to sea;
Reviewed the Oceans on the globe
Sang Oceans songs - My Bonnie, I'm a little fishy, Take me out the Ocean, and the very favorite "Did you ever see a fishy". We ran around to the songs, but this one kept us running the most.
Videos from Monterey Bay Aquarium

Pretend Play
Pretend to sell seashells

Nature Table
Shells and Magnifying Glass was a huge hit.

Books ~ Oh my! We read tons of books these two weeks. I began reading to them during dinner and they LOVE it. It also helps dinner time go smoother ~ less goofing, chattering and such. More eating, listening and talking. (yes, there's a huge difference between chattering and talking!) All the titles are downstairs right now so I'll do another post.

Resources ~ It get time consuming to post links on each item when there's so much overlap. I will absolutely do that when I have time. Since I won't post without the link-backs, I wanted to at least get them in the easiest way.
Balanced Literacy Unit - Commotion on the Ocean - Great resource with TONS of stuff. We did several things and will go back for more next go-round.
Monterey Bay Aquarium Teachers Place - The Sea Searchers Handbook and online videos were a key part of our theme learning.
Learningpage.com, Kidsparkz.com ~ We used theme printables from these sites. (If you're looking, I didn't post about them.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's our Weekly Wrap Up post and Stay tuned for another post with our Books, Art, Games and Outings!! (Updated: links to related posts)

Linking to: Preschool Corner

Preschool Week 1 & 2 ~ Wrap Up!

2011-09-04T01:25:00.000-07:00

We had such a great start to our Preschool!! It was better than I expected. Turbo was thrilled about most of the activities and thinks school is super fun. Here's a few things we did.

Character: Orderly
We learned the song and verse from HubbardsCupboard.org. We created some new Order within our playroom and we looked for opportunities to compliment each other being orderly. This has made an impact in our relationships. He's really looking for nice things to say to me and his sister. I LIKE THAT!

Handwriting:
We worked on l, t, i, j & v these two weeks. I'm using the Kumon Lowercase letters workbook with various warmup and practice to start.

Reading:We're using Hooked On Phonics as I found an excellent deal on an older version. While Turbo placed in the First Grade book, I decided to start him in Kindergarten. I thought the transition to structured phonic learning was enough for him to tackle. Good decision. He saw the words, thought it was easy and started rushing the reading. He made mistakes on words he knows very well. By day 3 it was vastly improved. Stickers are such a motivator.
He also chose his Tag Reader, Bob Books and various Early Readers for additional practice.

Math
We started RightStart Math Book A. It was a toss up because he placed in Book B and the staff at Rightstart encouraged it. Still, I decided to order both A & B as I'm sure LilSweetie will start in A. Upon looking through both books, I chose A for Turbo. It goes a little slower and that's our pace for this year. He likes it and thinks it's fun. Here's a picture of the items for one lesson. No pencil in that box!! Just fun manipulatives. Turbo loves that part of the program.

Theme: Oceans!
Turbo loves themes and so do I. We incorporate our theme into circle time, books, hand-on learning activities, videos to watch and so forth. There's a ton of activities here - I'll do another post.

Outing: Beach
Somehow we hadn't made it this summer. While we went last year, the kids didn't remember that. So it was like seeing it for the first time again. Oh how I love these early ages!! The joy as they played in the sand and splashed the water. Turbo was so surprised it was COLD! We played with driftwood, found crabs (alive and dead), built sandcastles and chased seagulls. We saw a pelican dive for fish to the surprise of LilSweetie. It was a special day. The thing missing was Daddy. I'm sad he didn't get to join us due to a work situation. We might make another trip next week together.

Power of language

2011-08-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

Last month, we're in the car. Music on, Mommy and LilSweetie singing.
Turbo: Mommy, I know what this is called a collar (pointing to the collar on his shirt)
M: Why?
T: Because it sits on your collar bone.

HA! At least one of us was having deep thoughts. Not sure how he knew that was the collar bone though.

Today our interchange goes like this...
Me: "Turbo" (only I used his real name), go get dressed please.
T: No thank you
M: Honey, it's time to get dressed
T: (in such a nice, sweet voice) Mommy, I said no. You say no sometimes and I listen to you. When I say no, you should listen to me.

As much as I tried to suppress, a laugh escaped as it was so funny and unexpected. I reminded him I was the Mommy and with a big hug and a tushie pat, sent him to get dressed.

Oh the joy seeing him connect and use language for understanding and... persuasion.

Happy Day

2011-06-17T08:19:00.000-07:00

Today is my birthday (I'm 35) and for my 22 month old, should be like every other day.

As usual, this morning Turbo and I go to Little Sweetie when she wakes. She greets us with her sweet, little "Hiiiiii" and huge smile, just like everyday. As I reach her crib, she says "Happy Day" to me. This is her "Happy Birthday". Let me tell you, my heart just melted. Happy Day indeed!!

Book Storage

2011-06-16T23:15:00.000-07:00

Books, I love books. The ones on our shelves are full of amazing ideas, information and stories. When our family grew, our personal space shrunk. At a time when we had less room for bookshelves, we had all new genres of books we were adding (parenting, child education and ALL the kids books). We purged our shelves donating many wonderful books and storing the ones which we couldn't part. I'm reaching another critical mass with books and am not willing to do another major purge - so what to do?

Two things -
#1 ~ We found some additional room for a bookshelf!
#2 ~ This is the brilliant one for me ~ USE BASKETS. This allows me to categorize the kids books and store them front to back on the shelf - expanding the number of books that will fit ~ by a lot! YEA!

I just had to post because it was brilliant and if I put it here, I won't forget the idea or where it came from. If you want to see pictures - check out Three Plus Two blog just be prepared, she has A LOT of books.

Summer & Preschool Plans

2011-05-25T23:47:00.000-07:00

I'm so excited that Summer is just around the corner - despite the chilly weather we're having!

This summer is shaping up to be a full one! The exciting part is our Holiday to visit all our East Coast family. This is the highlight of our summer and we are looking forward to it more than I can say. The kids know Rick's parents well and are super excited to see them, visit their house and see their cousins. We're expecting another niece or nephew to join the family soon!! So we'll get to meet the baby on this trip too. After we get back, we'll have a little down time, Vacation Bible School, then a little Camp through our community. Blink ~ The summer is over and School starts. They say that the years go by faster once your kids get in school.....Seriously, I can't even imagine, but it will happen this year!

Turbo turns 4 this year and it is very customary in our area to send them to preschool. We picked a great one where Turbo would go 3x per week for 2.5hrs per day. We enrolled, paid a deposit and on some frustrating days, I found myself counting the days until he'd go! However, once it came time to turn in all the final paperwork, Rick and I decided it wasn't the best strategy for Turbo or our family.

So we're not sending him to traditional Preschool, but will do it together instead. While it was a difficult decision at first, I'm THRILLED about it now. I'm looking forward to our continued freedom to go and do as we'd like instead of being tied down to the school year when the kids are so little. With the kids at 4 & 2, we'll be able to spend much time on adventures and exploring.

So I'm in the process of planning away. While we won't be heavy on the academics, I want to provide him with material that keeps him a bit challenged and interested. We'll be doing lapbooks, TONS of outings, art projects, and lots of other learning through fun stuff.

So that's it for now. No pictures again ~ I know. It's the biggest challenge in why I haven't been blogging. So many have suggested Windows Live Writer that I will look at it over the summer and see if that makes it easier to blog. I really want to blog weekly once we start school. It was awesome to look back over these past 18 months and relive such fun moments.

Ok, I found a couple to post! Here are soem from our Dirt Park riding adventures earlier this month. You can be sure we'll be doing this often. The kids had a blast. Turbo was amazing on the big hills. Sweetie just wanted to be on his bike with Daddy pushing her. Cute!

San Francisco MOMA

2011-04-04T00:54:00.000-07:00

Taking a 3 year old to MOMA wasn't high on my to do list. However, we've been doing a group art class with 5 other kids and it was so fun. What better way to supplement our activities then by going to see some of the real things! Plus I'd be going as a group, so that would work. Then to find out Rick had to be out of town and Little Sweetie would join us.

The idea of bringing a 1.5 year old (who wants to walk everywhere, touch everything and climb constantly) to MOMA, while also trying to interact with my 3 year old (and keep him from touching) was just below getting a tooth pulled without pain meds. HA! Still I put on a positive outlook and hoped we'd last an hour! I set my expectations really low and decided to go for it!

The day was a huge success! Turbo really enjoyed the museum. They have a small kids area and on scheduled days have Art related crafts for them. Today we made Zeotropes.

The kids were able to make Mondrian inspired art on the computer. He was the first artist we studied 7 weeks ago and the kids all still remembered his name and his art!

Little Sweetie played with the blocks, climbed on the chairs and read the books

We went on the Family Tour. It was a tough time for Little Sweetie since she wanted to be walking. There is art and platforms everywhere and just too tempting for little fingers. So Little Sweetie was mostly held. The Docent was terrific! She just took Turbo up with her and went about the tour. I was so proud of him that he really listened to the directions and didn't touch the art at all.
The tour was on the museum sculpture.
Turbo enjoyed creating his own puzzle piece sculpture.


INSPIRATION

Finished Sculpture!

Lots of outdoor sculptures (Although I didn't get many pictures due to a squirmy girl!)

After the tour we walked around a bit more. Turbo was intrigued why chairs, equipment and such were art. We talked about grouping with an artful eye and artistic display of common items and how those can both create art.

Then we went to the cafe for a snack. Doesn't this Mondrian cake look amazing! Even the kids were impressed!

We were there for OVER THREE (3) HOURS! Can you believe it! We were on our way to the elevators and Turbo declares he would like to see even more. Nothing a promise of a Pocky Stick in the car couldn't change. Here's all of us at the end of our long and wonderful day.

COUSINS!

2011-04-04T00:51:00.000-07:00

We were able to connect with a visiting cousin on our way to SF MOMA today. She had her wonderful beau, Doug, with her (we all liked him very much!)

We played in the Yerba Gardens and chatted while the kids ate lunch. They were their usual selves! Turbo was cautious on the equipment and full speed running around the grassy area. Anne-Michelle was such a good sport playing airplane and any other game Turbo thought up! He was also showing his 3 year old funny side.

Little Sweetie was fearless as usual - going down the super fast slide with excitement and determination to do it again and again. I went with her each time because it was that fast! But when she got to the top while I was still chatting with Anne-Michelle, I just planned on catching her at the bottom (it was very, very fast slide). Doug, bounded to the top of the slide and went down with her - such a hero!

She then lead him to the top of the higher than high slide. On the way up, a precocious 7 year old girl asked Doug "How old is your child?" He says "1", the girl informs him that "You must be at least 5 to be on this equipment" Trying not to laugh, he continues to the top with Little Sweetie.
Now, I don't normally get nervous at slides, even high ones. However, this was the highest slide I'd ever seen at a playground and while it was a full tube I was still very nervous about Lil' Sweetie going down. Thankfully she realized herself it was too high and led Doug back down. Guess the 7 year old was on to something (HA!)

It was a wonderful visit with two amazing people. Anne-Michelle captured Turbo's heart as he asked me several times when we'd see them again.

We love you guys!!

Art Class - Georgia O'Keeffe

2011-03-14T20:45:00.000-07:00

Art Class Week 3 was Georgia O'Keeffe. While she is most famous for her flowers, the Mommy teacher this week taught us she really a Nature Painter. She painted all sorts of images from nature and would take something small, like a pebble, and use that one image as the entire focal point for her art - making the pebble fill the canvas and become larger than life.

Black Rock and Blue sky

From the Lake I

The teacher had the kids do two projects - both creating something from nature.

Project 1 - Oil Pastels - Free draw something from nature - Turbo titled his piece "Multi-Colored". He said that nature had many colors and so he drew "Multi-Colored"

Project 2 - Watercolors - Free paint something from nature. I think Turbo was just painting at random for this art, because when asked he said he didn't know. Being the (bad!) helpful mom, I suggested it look like a Lake (I try to NEVER do this! ugh!). Of course he said "Yes, that's it, it's a black, purple and greenish Lake"

We're also going to do a few other O'Keeffe art projects since I have really grown to like her work - specifically the flower paintings.

Art Class - Paul Klee

2011-03-11T08:09:00.000-08:00

For our Second Weekly Art class, Turbo and I were both very sick, so I was unable to teach my lesson plan BOO! Thankfully the coordinator, Rachel, filled in and both hosted and taught my plan (THANKS!). Turbo and I still worked in the art activities into our day. It was a nice break from sleeping and watching movies!

I created a laminated page of Klee art for the kids to reference during and after class. We talked about how Paul Klee paints in a simple, child-like way with Bright Colors, Geometric Shapes, Faces, Animals and sometimes funny aspects to his work. Turbo looked at the art and told me what he saw, what he liked and what he found funny. He liked the faces, especially the cat face. He saw lots of colors and animals. He thought it was funny the cat face had a bird in it and that the bird picture had one upside-down. I loved that he really looked at the art and evaluated it. I also noticed he paid little attention to the art work without faces, animals and such.

Project 1 - Crayon Relief - Color with brightly colored crayons then wash over the drawing with black watercolors.

Project 2 - Stencil Shapes - I printed a page with various shapes, laminated it and cut them out with an exact-o knife. We had both Positive Image and Negative Image stencils. This was Turbo's first time with stencils of any kind. Using a scrap paper, I used a square stencil to demonstrate the technique for Turbo. Then I placed the square on his paper for him to try. That was the extent of my 'help'. After doing the square, he noticed the triangle and immediately thought of houses and decided to make this art! He did the entire project on his own - 3 houses with chimneys and smoke and 1 sun. I will be framing this for sure!

Project 3 - Texture - Paul Klee painted with various mediums and would often add texture aspects to his work. We mixed 2 parts basic shaving cream to 1 part white glue and added some paint for color. Turbo gooped it onto his paper, spread it around, mixed the colors and used forks, sticks and other items to add texture to his art. It dries puffy, so the final piece has some texture also. Very cool!

Art Class - Piet Mondrian

2011-03-07T22:54:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago we started an art class. I'm so grateful to the Mom with the idea and who coordinated schedules to get 6 kids (4 Moms) together once a week. Our group is 3 & 4 year olds, so we decided to focus on a different artist each week. We start with a circle time (song, discussion of the art/artist, and activity or story), then the kids do 3 projects in the style of that artist. Each Mom will teach twice and we'll do a field trip at the end.

We've been having a terrific time! I know little about famous artists, I'm not very 'artsy' and it had been awhile since we'd done art - much less done it regularly. Our class has really been an inspiration for both of us. Turbo has been asking to do some kind of art every day since the start of class. It's awesome to hear him create something and say - this is like Paul Klee, Mondrian or O'Keeffe. I've been learning about various artist and expanding the tools and mediums we use to create art!

Easy, Fun and Inspirational. Here's a sample of Piet Mondrian's art.

Project 1: Glue bright colored geometric shapes and black lines onto paper

Project 2: Chalk on Black Cardstock - the kids put masking tape in various locations on black cardstock. Then colored with Chalk. Removing the tape, left uncolored black space between the colored areas.

Project 3: Paint on White Paper - similar to above, the kids placed masking tape in random locations on Paint Paper. Then painted with various colors. Removing the tape left crisp white lines between the painted areas.

Where are we?

2011-01-18T20:14:00.000-08:00

HELLO! You might thing I've forgotten about my little blog, or maybe that I'm just sitting my kids in front of the tv all day and have nothing to blog about (my friends are laughing at that!). Thankfully neither of these are true. I haven't been blogging for a bigger reason and one that I'm disappointed to confess. I have no pictures. Sad huh. Really, what's a blog without some pictures - just a bunch of words that jumble together and aren't nearly as interesting. So sadly, I haven't been blogging. Don't even get me started on the guilt that my dear daughter has a paultry amount of pictures of herself compared to my son.

Today is no different, I still have no pictures. I'm here because I missed loging our fun and we've had such a terrific time through the holidays and so far this year. It would be boring to detail it all in a single post, so I'll just summarize. (forgive me my friends and famiy if I forgot something major! Just remind me please!)

October ~ We continued to learn about trees and spent a HUGE amount of time at our local pumpkin patches. Our city has THREE terrific patches that have many things to do. If you recall, Turbo was completely dis-interested in our Tree Nature walk and I wondered if we'd continue with trees. We did and it turns out that he still, to this day, will tell me that Trees need water, nutrients and sunlight to grow. Sometimes that boy leaves me scratching my head.

November ~ We learned about Thankfulness, pilgrams and turkeys. The highlight for Turbo was making this paperbag turkey with Little Sweetie and our friends. It was really cute and he still talks about it. It was Lil' Sweetie's first glue project. We'll wait awhile for the next one. We spent Thanksgiving with our dear friends as we've done for 10 years! Only missing ones when we were visiting back East.

December ~ We learned about the meaning of Christmas and did tons of Christmas'y' crafts. We read lots of books and spent lots of time with friends. Christmas Day was spectacular! The joy, amazement and wonder in my children's eyes were my greatest gift. We also went down to SoCal to visit with family the week after Christmas. It was wonderful to see the kids with their Uncles, Great-grandparents and Grandma. We ended the year celebrating at our friend's house for a party and sleep over. The kids stayed up until 11:00pm when they started asking to go to bed!

January ~ We're learning about Insects and also the Character Trait of being Orderly. We're having fun with this theme and will soon drive down to Pacific Grove to see the Monarchs migrating. Oh what a lovely site that will be! We just spent another week in SoCal visiting my Mom and Grandparents again. We went to the Living Desert Zoo, The Largest Dinosaur exhibit and lots of time visiting. My Grandparents live in Indiana, so it was an opportunity to spend more time with them before they went home. We also spent two days visiting a long-time friend and her family who are all so dear to my heart.

I'm leaving out and forgetting tons, but that's the gist of it. My camera will be found and charged over the weekend so I start taking pictures again! Hopefully you'll see some color on my blog soon!

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-24T23:10:00.000-08:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS!! I can't believe it's finally here. It's been greatly anticipated in our house - mostly by Rick and me. Of course Turbo has been super excited about Jesus' birthday, Santa, all the lights, activities, parties and yummy food that's been surrounding us these past 3 weeks! He really 'gets' it more than ever - although he won't fully understand until the morning! We can't wait to see his face, feel his excitement and hear all the funny things he's bound to say. Our Little Sweetie isn't sure what's going on, but she's been having fun along with us. She enjoys the lights and especially loves to whack at the tree ornaments. (It reminds me of what our cats used to do!). Should be fun to see how much she enjoys ripping the wrapping paper open on her gifts!

I hope you have a safe, warm and happy Christmas!

Trees ~ Week 1

2010-10-01T20:45:00.000-07:00

I'm thrilled our first two weeks learning about Apples were successful. We did most of my planned activities and had a great time. Now we're on to our Tree Theme! I found several great ideas from The Adventures of Bear and her tree unit as well as PreKinders Forest unit.

Here are some of our learning objectives. Given Turbo's lack of interest, we might not get in depth on these.

There are different kinds of trees
Trees grow things
Trees have roots, trunk, bark, branches and leaves
Trees are plants
Trees need water, nutrients and sunlight to grow
Trees provide food, shelter, wood, paper and oxygen
Trees have different types of leaves
Leaves make the food for trees

Field Trip
We kicked off this week with a field trip to our local preserve for a nature walk. Turbo was to take pictures of nature, parts of the tree and anything else that interested him. I thought this would really get him excited about our nature walk. Nope. He wasn't interested in the nature, the activities or the topic. He just wanted to ride in the stroller next to Little Sweetie. Our only highlight was throwing sticks off the bridge into the rushing stream. Let's just say that I've scratched the Redwoods field trip off the schedule for next week! Still, ~~I forced him to have fun and take some pictures,~~ he happily took some pictures of tree parts.

We watched this great slideshow about trees. It covered all of the learning objectives and Turbo payed careful attention and asked for it most days. I wish I could find something like this for all our units as it was cute, concise and accurate.

After collecting leaves (mostly by me) from our neighborhood to supplement our sad, tiny collection from the aforementioned nature walk, we did some leaf activities. We haven't been doing many arts/crafts, so this was makeup day!

Inspecting and Comparing - we taped leaves to paper and used a magnifing glass to look at their veins and compare the differences.

Leaf Rubbings - with both crayons and chalk

Tree Bark Rubbings - Turbo had the idea "Let's do this on a tree!" so we set off to rub on all trees in our yard.

Paper Plate Wreath

Leaf Collage - Turbo surprised me with this present he made while I was getting the paint for his leaf painting. Awwww. Seriously sweet little boy.

Painting with leaves - it was so funny, he really wasn't sure how to paint with these. Although he enjoyed it! Not really a tree learning activity, but a fun way to paint!

Then we played "Does it grow on/live in a tree?" game. I had him yell Yes or No as loud as he could if it grew on a tree or if it lived in a tree. We didn't have enough dry leaves to crunch one for each answer, so we yelled instead.

We read Fall Leaves Fall by Zoe Hall. We also read this last year and likely will every year! Such a lovely book. At the end we got out the silk leaves and pretended to be the wind and trees.

Kumon Books ~ We continue to work our way through the Kumon books. We're starting off very easy and once I start RRSP, then we'll move onto the Capital Letters book.

Weekly Game - This week we're doing puzzles. He does fairly well, but they don't hold his interest long. After putting it together once, he doesn't want to repeat the same one again.

Pretend Play ~ He asked me to play grocery store this week. He wanted to play with a 'credit card' and really needed the phone since the clerks have them too.

That's it for this week. I'm not sure what we're going to do next week. He's not that into trees. Maybe I can find some fun science experiments. If you have any, let me know!

I'm linking up to Preschool Corner over at Homeschool Creations

Tot School ~ Little Sweetie ~ 13 months

2010-09-25T21:05:00.000-07:00

Tot School

Little Sweetie is 13 months

While we do a lot, again, I don't have many pictures. I need to get my little camera and sit it next to me while I work with Little Sweetie. I've been using Rick's SLR camera and while it's wonderful, it's big and a complete baby magnet!

Here are the hightlighted things I had out for her this week

- Ball and basket ~ HUGE Hit. She really loves ball and is getting good at throwing!

- Laugh and Learn Piggy Bank - This is still one of her favorite toys. She can do all of it herself and plays with it often.

- Bowl, spoon and cup - She's getting good at feeding herself at meal time and enjoyed the pretend practice.

- Blue Bristle Blocks - Wasn't interested in playing with the few in the basket. She likes the big tub.

- Stacking Cups - She loves to play these with Turbo and by herself. She understands the nesting and tries to stack them.

- Baby Touch & feel books - this girl loves her books and will happily sit there while I read book after book.

We played ball a lot this week. Rolling, dunking, and a little bit of keep-a-way by Turbo.

Hanging out with Brother working on food matching. This climbing business is new to me as she is really very daring!

Family Calendar Time. Little Sweetie really has the cruising down and goes after what she wants!

She is so excited when Turbo builds something for her to knock down.

This girl is into her ACCESSORIES! She especially loves to use Turbo's (clean) underware as a bracelet.

Or a Hat.

Big smiles for her brother

Going after the chalk

Working together

Working on a drawing

Other Posts This week
~ See what Turbo did doing during Preschool Time
~ Check out our Calendar Time for this year

Head over to 1+1+1=1 to see what others are doing with their Tots!

Learning about Apples ~ week 2

2010-09-24T18:12:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of my approach for this year, we're taking our time with each theme, repeating activities throughout the week when we find ourselves ahead of schedule. It's actually working out great right now. Last week was Apples Week 1 We had a great time and are both excited about more preschool days.

After breakfast each day, we do our Calendar Time.

We did a lot of apple learning outside this week.

Apple Toss & Catch: First we played catch with the apples. He's great at throwing and has good aim. He's improving on his catching skills. Since I was playing, no pictures.

Ready, Aim, Fire ~ He tried to roll the apples into the circles. Very challenging!

Apple Races ~ We raced our apples down the driveway. We learned which ones roll the fastest (more small and round, the faster) and why some wobbled all around (very knobby/less round)

Feed Me ~ The bucket is hungry and we needed to fill it up with as many apples, while tossing from ~~behind~~ on a line.

Apple Fractions Puzzle: We grabbed a bucket, our apples, some sidewalk chalk and a knife. I showed him 1 whole apple, cut into half and apple, then into fourth and finally into eighth. Then gave him the pieces and he got to reassemble the apple into a whole again. He liked this.

Apple Fractions Hopscotch
He played hopscotch while dropping the apple pieces in the correct 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 section.

He got to stomp on the final apple ~ loved that!

Hide & Seek - Hot and Cold Game: I hid an apple in the Family Room. Turbo would try to find it and I would say " colder, warmer, or hot" depending on how close he was to the apple. He LOVED this game. It took a couple times for him to really get it and process it all and now he asks for it most days.

Board Game ~ Hi-Ho-Cherry-O ~ Closest thing to the theme I have. It is a big success. Something he can play easily and enjoys. One afternoon he took it into his room and played it by himself. Did I mention Lil Sweetie was napping? Oh yea, 20 minutes by myself! You bet I love this game.

Patterning: He laced red, green and yellow apples (faceted beads) onto a pipecleaner. It made a bracelet and he wore it for a nanosecond.

Counting ~ I used Confessions of a Homeschoolers Apple Counting sheets for Turbo to count the seeds from our apples. I only asked for two sheets - low numbers and higher numbers, just to see if he has the concept and to work on simple addition. We took the seeds from 6 and slid them down to 7 to realize we needed to add one more. I still think Math is a boarderline concept for him right now and need to think of more fun, hands on math activities.

Pre-Writing ~ Costco FINALLY has the Kumon books back! I seriously looked most weeks for months and months. Of course I bought all the ages 2-6 books We're starting with My First Book of Tracing. I want to assess Turbo and see if I can get him to slow down a bit and really focus on his pencil holding and writing form before moving on....we'll see.

Tons more Playdough/Pie making play ~ he continues to ask for this every day.

His imagination is in overdrive these days. Which says a lot for an already imaginative boy. He was doing a lot of cooking on his own. He would say the funniest things to himself ~ "just gonna pop this in the oven for a few minutes"

Cutting and Gluing ~ Confessions of a Homeschooler's cutting practice and cut/glue Apples onto a tree activity.

Books ~ We continue to read "Apple Pie Tree" by Zoe Hall. We talk about the seasons, lifecycle of the trees and apples.

Well, that's the bulk of our Week 2 activities.

I'm linking up to Preschool Corner over at Homeschool Creations

Calendar Time

2010-09-23T23:17:00.000-07:00

Here's our calendar routine for this preschool year. While we have a large home, we have very limited wall space. So it had to be compact and easy to put away.

It's simple and has the key pieces. Most importantly it is quick!

The background is a white foam board. The colored pocket holders came in a pack of 10 from the dollar store. The small one is just a larger one trimmed.

Calendar
The calendar frame is printed on 11x17 paper. I created it in MS Word.
The month and number pieces are from Childcareland in their free printables section.
We attach the numbers with tape. At the beginning of the next month, I'll put up another calendar frame.

First thing we do is Pledge of Allegiance. Yep, we say it every time. Turbo has learned to be still and respectful during the pledge - as I take this very seriously. The great printable came from Homeschool Creations.

Everything else below are printables from Carisa at 1+1+1=1. I printed them out, laminated, cut and attached velcro dots where needed.
Weather - Turbo LOVES this part. He runs over to the door to check if there are clouds and picks the right card and puts it on the velcro dot. (see main board picture). Then we sing the song.

The Date - This is when we put the new calendar number on the calendar. Then we sing all the songs that follow.

Months of the Year -

Days of the Week

Every Week

That's it! Short, sweet and space saving!

Tiny Talk Tuesday

2010-09-21T22:34:00.000-07:00

We just studied apples and now we're studying trees. (note, I'm posting a week behind in my preschool posts) In effort to take our learning outside, we went for a nature walk at one of our city's reserves. This isn't my thing, so the main reason we went is because I believe my kids need the experience of nature. Often to my chagrin.

On our walk, Turbo sees some large green rocks stacked and decides to climb them. Already I'm wondering what creature/bug/spider is hiding in there. I start asking him to get down and see he's not looking and is about to put his hand in some god-only-knows what kind of animal poo.
Little. oblong. poos!!!! maybe rat, squirrel.....EWWWWWW.

No calm Mommy here. I'm squealing: "Ewwww, Stop, Don't touch anything. " Turbo is looking worried about what went wrong. I show him that it's animal poo. After a few moments, he says "You know Mommy, it looks like seeds... Apple Seeds, yep, that's what it looks like".

Honestly, I was so busy washing his hands and emptying my bottle of purell on them, that it didn't register until later. Then we both got a great laugh.

Head over to Tiny Talk Tuesday for more great laughs!

Tot School ~ Little Sweetie!

2010-09-19T22:32:00.000-07:00

Tot School

Little Sweetie ~ 13 months

I think this might be my first real Tot School post for Lil' Sweetie. I'm not structured in my approach with her. We're just playing together and having fun. Alas, since we're playing together, I'm not taking many pictures.

I'll start with her 'trays'. They're not really trays, just pieces of felt that designate an area for the highlighted weekly toys. We have little cars and a paper tube; Leapfrog Magnet letters; a chunky puzzle; pompoms and a tall container; spoon and bowl; nesting/stacking cups.

The things on the bottom shelf were a smash hit! The things on the top were mostly unloved. The puzzle got some playtime, but not much. I rotated their placement throughout the week, but it didn't help much.
These are all the pictures I took of her tray play. Be assured we played with those stacking cups more times than I can count!

The thing she wants the most is Turbo's car. Just to make it interesting around here, Turbo is ultra-possessive of this car. Can you hear the crying from our house every day? It's worth it to see her very excited face while playing with it. (we're working on the sharing thing, I hear it can take awhile HA! any tips?)

She played with Playdough for the first time (*blush* didn't even think to give it to her earlier) You can see she really loved it. It is the perfect thing to occupy them both while I'm making dinner.

We also did a lot of outside playing. We're outside everyday ~ in our yard and often to a park.

Playing toss with brother. She LOVES to play ball.

Intently listening to the directions on how to play toss & catch.

Yep, I know it's not Christmas, but I found this in a box of old things I had for Turbo and had to squish her in it while I still could. Her legs are bent and the back couldn't zipper all the way - but doesn't she look cute? The photo op went quickly down hill.

Playing with the very old camera. She was able to get the strap on and off as well as crawl with it around her neck. (closely supervised). She really likes to do the things she sees her brother doing! Although it would be nice if she would emulate the walking sometime soon!

Tot School playing really helps ensure I get that focused time with Lil'Sweetie every day ~ Just for her and totally at her level. I love the joy of just playing with her!!

Head over to 1+1+1=1 to see what others are doing with their Tots!

Learning about Apples ~ week 1

2010-09-17T00:11:00.000-07:00

Turbo likes to be intrigued. He is very curious and if I can excite that part of him…then we’re sure to have some fun. Part of that is, anticipation. I had this Five Senses chart out when he woke up. He immediately wanted to know what it was, what it said and what we were doing with it. I casually said it was for our preschool and he’d find out after Breakfast. That piqued his curiosity!

Then it was time to get started! We started with calendar time, post on that coming soon. Then I grabbed a closed brown paper bag, hiding an apple (another point of anticipation), and went to the 5 senses chart.

We reviewed the 5 senses and then Turbo got to stick his hand in the bag and guess what was in there. I was a little surprised that he easily guessed apple! We first went through the 5 senses with the apple whole (reminding him not to bite it yet about 10 times). When we got to Taste, he said "Mommy, I have to bite it now" with a huge smile. We went through all 5 senses twice, once before tasting (responses above the line) and once after (responses below). This was a very interesting exercise. I learned about him and was really proud of his thoughfulness.

General Learning ~ Apple Types; Similarities / Differences & Parts
As he was eating his prize, we did some General Apple education. He examined several types: Fuji, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith and Braeburn. We talked about the similarities - apples, have the same parts, grow from seeds, grow on trees, etc. Then the differences of outside appearance and inside taste. Finally, we cut open and examined the insides and learned all the parts. It was reinforced throughout the week with a little felt apple puzzle.

Grouping:
He grouped apples by type, color and size. This was really easy for him. Next time we'll do graphing along with it.

Taste Test ~ Of course we had to taste and compare all these different apples. I didn't get a picture for some reason. Maybe because we both LOVED this part of the day. My favorite continues to be the Granny Smith and Braeburn. Turbos were "all of them".

Sequencing ~ Sequenced the eating of an apple. Very, very difficult for Turbo. We did it together and he was happy it was over. We should have used real apples and taken bites out of each of them. It would have given it more meaning ~ but I didn't think of it until just now. ~~Sadly, I can't remember right now where I got the sequencing cards. I will update my post when I find it.~~ Found the cards at Kidssoup.com

Art/Crafts
He colored in the "I like Apples" booklet. After we're done with apples, I'll make a little lapbook for us to review and remember this fun theme.

Apple Prints

Playdough
A wonderful blogger over at Counting Coconuts has some great Playdough ideas! She also did Fall this month and did Cinnamon Playdough with little apples and let her little one make apple pies. It was a HUGE hit over here.

Books:
We read Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall ~ love her books & 10 Red Apples by Pat Hutchins We did this pocket chart activity for 10 Red Apples. We start with 10 apples on the tree. When we got to 7, Turbo announced he was almost done. When we got to 5, he looked at me and said - "I get it. Can I be done now?" Uh, ok. We won't be doing these types of counting activities again. Cute activity ~ just not a good fit.

Spoon Transferring Apples

That's the bulk of what we did on this short week. Stay Tuned for week 2!

I'm linking up to Preschool Corner. Check it out for more great Preschool Ideas!

My Approach for 3 year old Preschool

2010-09-13T08:09:00.000-07:00

Last year was my first year doing this sort of thing. I have to admit, it does not come easy to me. Despite that I used others pre-created things and ideas, it took me A LONG TIME to pull it all together. I was over-thinking what we should be doing; Learning myself about how/what to prepare and teach; etc. There are so many great ideas, things to learn, activities to do.... It was a bit overwhelming in that I wanted to do and teach it all.

This year, I'm doing things differently. I've assessed my goals. Turbo turned 3 at the end of June. This very well maybe my last year with him full time. Next year, he'll likely go to a local Preschool, then it's off to Kindergarten and then....well, the time just flies. *sniff* I get a little sad just thinking of it.

So my goals for this year are very simple, but keep me grounded in my planning.

1. Have Fun!
2. Explore
3. Learn New Things
4. Play Outside *note: we play outside everyday, but I'm talking about taking the learning outside and playing in different ways and places then we would normally.

That's it. No goals for him to write his name, count to 100 or anything like that. I'll work that into our learning of course and he likely will do that, but really it's not my main focus.

Main Elements of our Preschool
We're doing Themes and I'm super EXCITED about it! There are so many things Turbo is interested in doing and learning. This is a great way to explore these areas in more depth.

- Activites - Our Preschool time will be interactive with a lot of hands-on type activities. We'll touch it, take it apart, put it together, make it, break it etc. He's that kind of a boy!

- Outings - We will do outings related to the theme we're doing. (This is my favorite part!)

The Second key element are what I call the Weekly Extras - These are the tray type activities that we'll work in when we have time or he needs something to do and I'm otherwise busy. I'm planning 6 trays per week - they'll be letter of the week worksheets, Playdough, word games, puzzels etc.

Lastly, we'll play a different game for several days each week. These could be board games, card games and such.

There are other things I want to incorporate - like country studies, Raising Rock Stars Preschool, Artist studies and more. If I have time, we'll work them in. If not, then no worries, I have the basics planned!

There you have it! My approach for the year. I'm planning less things (although it still takes me a long time) and allowing more time to complete them. What if we get it all done early? Then we'll do them again! Preschoolers love repetition!

Start of Preschool 2010!

2010-09-10T14:46:00.000-07:00

WooHoo, the fall schedules are coming back. While I love summer, there's something magical and exciting about the coming of fall that I really enjoy. Here in California, there's such a mild transition, that it's often it's just the joy of being outside all day since it's not so blazing hot. Settling in to routines and the anticipation of the holidays that will fast approach. Ah, I love fall!

We had our first two days of preschool and they were great! I'm more excited about doing Preschool with Turbo than ever. There are these moments - where he realizes something new, where he puts two things together that were once apart in his mind, where he's concentrating so hard to do it 'just right', the laughter, his excitement ~ that really make it a true joy. This is a wondrous time and I'm thrilled to be along side sharing those moments with him.

I'm super busy this weekend and won't get a chance to post our week until early next week. However, I couldn't wait to tell everyone how excited we are about this year.

Stay tuned next week for a post about my approach for 2010/2011.

Little Sweetie's first birthday

2010-09-01T13:45:00.000-07:00

Here they are! Some pictures of Lil' Sweetie's first birthday party. It was her first piece of cake and she had NO problem getting her hands into it right away!

Notice the SIZE of that piece of cake!

Many of these later....

It was GONE! Seriously, I still can't believe she ate the whole thing. At one point I tried to take it away. There was much squawking and the start of some crying. Of course I put it right back down.

So pleased with her self! (either that or the huge sugar rush that had to be happening!)

In case you thought it might have ended up on the floor. Nope, not much to speak of!

Something tells me this look is going to be trouble in the future

Tiny Talk Tuesday (almost)

2010-09-01T00:51:00.000-07:00

I almost made it. Maybe we can pretend that I'm posting from Hawaii and it's only 10pm on Tuesday.

About the pear he picked off the tree...

"I winned it. I winned it off the tree. I win all sorts of things - animals, food, bunnies" We'd recently been to a carnival where he'd won a stuffed animal and a toy bunny.

Over the past several months, my little guy has had an imaginary dog that scares occasionally.

T: A dog is coming.

M: what's the dog's name?

T: "Baahoo The Scary"

Me telling Turbo he needed to share with his sister.

T: "Mommy, is today Monday or Saturday?"

M: "Today is Friday"

T: "I don't share on Friday. I only share on Saturday."

Fastforward to Saturday

M: Turbo, share with Lil Sweetie

T: "Is today Monday or Friday?"

M: Today is Saturday.

T: (a pause as it sinks in) I only share food on Saturday. Sometimes I share toys, but mostly I don't.

He was belly down, sliding off our hearth head first....

"Look Mommy, I'm coming out of my egg"

Tiny Talk Tuesday is hosted over at Not Before 7

Tiny Talk Tuesday

2010-08-24T10:17:00.000-07:00

I'm not really back to blogging yet until September when we start our Apples and Trees units. I'm so excited about these! In the mean time, I'm linking up to Tiny Tot Tuesday. Here's some funny quotes from Turbo these past couple weeks.

"Mommy, smell me. I smell like cherries" after taking his vitamin (guess it was cherry flavored)

Couple weeks after we had our carpets cleaned, I was wiping up a spill on the carpet

"Thank you for being Stanley Steamer Mommy!"

Speaking of his sister, while she was following him around the play kitchen...

"I'm pretending she's garbage. What happens if we throw her in the trash can"

While sitting on the potty, he put the lid on his back

"Look Mommy, I'm a turtle."

There's so many more as with all our kids. These are just the ones I remember right now!

My Little Girl is 1!

2010-08-10T19:53:00.000-07:00

HOORAY! Our littlest baby has turned 1. I don't have pictures of her family birthday party as they're on my hubby's computer and he's traveling. But I didn't want to wait on my post!

Sweet Pea /Lil' Sweetie (Turbo's nickname for her), is such a joyous addition to our family. She's happy, curious, easy going and such a terrific sleeper (Mommy really appreciates that!). She loves to imitate, be tickled and play with any of us, but especially big brother.

Here she was just one short year ago.

Stay tuned for the 1 year birthday pictures over the weekend!

My Baby Turned 3!

2010-07-05T20:40:00.000-07:00

Last weekend my sweet little boy turned 3!! There has been so much wonderment in watching him grow and develop.
These 3 years have been full of amazement, laughter, tears, fun, challenges, excitement and mostly love. I love that little boy more than words could ever express.

He is a sweet, busy, energetic, funny, sensitive and loving little boy. I'm so proud of him and to be his Mommy.

Bird Cards

2010-05-05T13:02:00.000-07:00

Here they are! If you're interested in using the bird cards we used during our Birds/Nests week, here's a link to the download. I printed, laminated then cut them out. If you don't have a laminator, print on cardstock or just plain paper. They won't be as sturdy, but hey, it will be good practice in teaching Practical Life skills that sometimes we have to be gentle with our activities.

I like to leave it in a MS Word document so you can modify it for the birds in your area, but that means the formating can be off sometimes. Please drop me an email or leave a comment if the file doesn't work perfectly for you. (of course I'd love a comment either way!)

Download Bird cards

While you're here, be sure to visit my giveaway!

Another cool giveaway

2010-05-03T10:27:00.000-07:00

Shannon over at Welcome to our Wonderland has reviewed and is hosting a giveaway for a very beautiful book and game for our kids!

Go check it out

Hurry, it ends on Thursday!

Birds & Nests Week

2010-05-02T22:34:00.000-07:00

Turbo is 34 months

Sweet Pea is 8 months

Be sure to check out my very first GIVE-A-WAY! I know so many families will love this as we do.

This week was birds and Turbo loved learning about them!!

Learning Aid: Bird Cards
Since the zoo cards were such a hit with Turbo, I decided to do a similar thing for bird week. I selected 7 common birds to our area: Scrub Jay, Crow, Sparrow, Robin, Morning Dove, Mockingbird and Hummingbird; printed up picture cards and laminated them. They really facilitated our activities and he was able to refer and play with them as he thought about it.

We started each day with one of the birds. We talked about the bird, it's colors, the different body parts and how we thought the bird would talk/sing. Then we looked at some YouTube videos to see and hear the bird. I'll put some links to some videos we liked at the end of the post.

Sensory Tub: Bird Seed (of course!)
He loved swirlling the bird seed around the bowl. A cup, a funnel and he was lovin' it!

Build a Bird Nest
We gathered materials in our yard and mud from last weeks' sensory table and made our own birds nest. Turbo was again not very excited about touching the mud, so I helped him through the first stage. He enjoyed adding the twigs, leaves and bark to make it look real. Then we got out our rubber ducks and pretended it was their nest.

Math - Count the 'eggs'
Cupcake papers, muffin tin and playdough. Fun and super fast. I'd help him create a bunch of 'eggs' and then he'd put the correct number in each tin. Turbo asked for this several times during the week.

Patterns - I don't think he really grasps patterns yet, especially creating them. It's something high on my list to work with him. Do-A-Dot markers and some lacing beads. He seemed to know exactly what I wanted him to do. He then turned the paper upside down and did the pattern the other way. Then he was done. If you have any tips ~ please leave them as a comment!!

Songs and Music
We do circle time almost every day. We start with songs, then read a story, then do some songs again. Then it naturally transitions into an "activity" as I call our TotSchool. We added "Two Little Blackbirds" to our songs this week and I cut some blackbirds and a hill out of felt so we could pretend to be Jack and Jill. This was highly anticipated each morning.

Bird Feeder
I found one from the dollar store, but couldn't find a great place to hang it outside where we could see it well. So we used an old piece of baguette to make our own. Turbo smoothed on peanut butter and sprinkled the bird seed. We placed it on our patio table and got to see a lot of different birds come to partake.

Of course we sprinkled birdseed on our walks too.

Make a Bird
Got the idea from here to use a TP roll tube, paint, google eyes and construction paper to a make a cute little bird. So fun!

Bird Seed Cookie
Cute idea from here to make a cookie to hang off a tree in the yard. It was not successful for us as it completely fell apart. Could be that I didn't have corn syrup so I used Molasses. Oh well, we had fun making it!

Letter of the Week ~ N n - Nest
Turbo was very perplexed that we were doing N instead of B this week. It was cute how he was always reminding me that 'birds' starts with a b. As you may know, I use Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter of the Week resources. It saves me a ton of time and are super cute. We did the usual letter tracing, number sequencing, puzzle, letter sorting, cutting, do-a-dot pages etc. He enjoys these and it's nice to have similar activities from week to week. Instead of cutting the color cards to make them matching puzzles, I placed them around the hearth and we called out a color and an action (purple & hop) - then do the action and race to get the card.

Additional Bird activities ~ We didn't get around to these, but they were on my idea list.
Bird Graphing
I was planning to do a bird graph to track the birds and quantities that we saw throughout the week. We just didn't get to it. But we'll definitely do it the next time around.

Edible Bird Nest
I found this cute little recipe for a rice crispy edible birds nest. We still might do these this week as I have some leftover Peeps and jellybeans from Easter.

Egg Carton Bird Feeder
Can't find the idea link, but it's basically attaching some twine to the corners of the bottom half of an egg carton, filling the carton with bird seed and hanging it in your yard.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Funny picture of the week
I've mentioned before that Turbo is obsessed with types of cars. He knows them all! He's always checking out cars to see what kind they are. He asks everyone that comes around "What car do you have". He has no concept that one kind might be 'nicer' than another. Here he's 'shining' his bike and tells me "Mommy, I'm cleaning my Jaguar". I just about died laughing - so unexpected!

Some good YOUTUBE Videos I remembered to bookmark while we were watching.
Scrub Jay's Taking a Bath (Turbo's favorite!)
Western Scrub Jay
Scrub jay Sings
Cackle of Scrub Jay

Crow Cawing
Northern Mockingbird Calling

Ok, I have to go to bed. I'll post my Bird Card learning aid as a file to download this week. If you'd like me to email you when I post it, just leave me a comment below.

GIVE-A-WAY!

2010-05-01T22:47:00.000-07:00

I'm so excited to be hosting my first give-a-way! While this is not an educational item, it certainly facilitates the PLAY factor in my house, so I thought you all would love it too.

A few weeks ago, I found and purchased a terrific solution to screen off my back door called "Bug Off Instant Screen" and blogged about it. The manufacturer read it and offered to give a screen away to one of my lucky readers! Since we really love ours, I'm sure this will be a great fit for many other families!

FEATURES
The screen is a high-quality mesh, there are two panels that close together with magnets to enable hands-free use. It opens easily and snaps closed behind you. There are weights in the bottom to prevent it from blowing all around, even in my windy area. It hangs from a tension rod in your door frame and leaves no marks or damage if you remove it. The price - terrific! When I purchased mine, I received it quickly and put it up in 3 minutes!
We love ours. I have my back door open almost all day. The fresh air and breeze is so wonderful. Turbo is able to play outside and easily come in/out without letting in all the flies!! My sanity is preserved by not having to even once say "close the screen door" and there's no cringing waiting for the slam either. We really like the Bug Off Instant Screen!!!!

There are many great benefits of the BUG OFF INSTANT SCREEN and they're all detailed on the website, however, I'll list my favorite here ~
**NO flies or other bugs in my house

**NO yelling - close the screen door

**NO damages - by either kids running into a screen or to your door frame

**NO slamming/banging - when it closes

**NO pinched fingers

**NO high costs

** For you dog owners, this is a terrific option for a pet door!

~~ WIN IT ~~ One lucky reader will win a standard single door screen in 30", 32" or 36" width in either of their standard height options. (This give-away is not for the larger widths, french or sliding door screens. If you have questions about the product or the item for the giveaway, just ask!)

Required Entry: Leave a comment telling me your favorite feature of the Bug Off Instant Screen.

Extra Entries: (be sure to leave a separate comment for each additional entry!)
** If you watch the demo video, give yourself an extra entry.
** If you blog about this give-a-way, give yourself two extra entries.
** If you subscribe to my blog in a reader or via email, give yourself an extra entry.
** If you follow this blog, give yourself an extra entry.

This Give-A-Way is open to USA only. (although after this one, I'll have a long over-due giveaway open to everyone, so my friends abroad, stay tuned!)

I will select a winner using Random.org, so be sure you leave a separate comment for each entry.

Contest ENDS 11:59PM PDT May 16, 2010. Winner will be announced here, and emailed. Winner must reply to my email within 48 hours or another winner will be chosen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.
The winner is comment 33 ~ Congratulations welcometoourwonderland! I'll be in contact with you via email as well. Please respond within 48 hours to confirm your prize!!

If you didn't win ~ the prices for this screen can't be beat starting under $40! Go to Bug Off Screen to get yours today!

Tot School

2010-04-28T01:31:00.000-07:00

We did a partial Tot School week last week since we had a playdate every day. Playdates are always interesting. Some days Turbo plays with the other child and other days he just wants to do his own thing. Mostly during park playdates or with shy kids he tends to go his own way. When we're at home or when he's with older kids (12-18 months older), he plays much more interactivly with them. It's very interesting to watch the transition from parallel play to interactive play. Of course Mommy is his biggest playmate right now, and that's just fine with me. The time will quickly come that I'm just the taxi, so for now, I'll enjoy the attention from him!

Cow Milking ~ As a follow up to our Farm Animal week, we 'milked a cow' using a latex glove. Just fill a glove with water, tie at the top, prick a little pin hole in the tip of a finger, then squeeze like you're milking a cow. FUN! This made it real for him and he thought this was a very fun and silly activity. Thanks to my friend Sarah for the gloves!!

Do you remember our sensory table from last week - it was dirt. Well, it rained and I forgot to cover it. So this week we had....MUD! Turbo didn't love it. No mud pies for us. He just used the barn to scoop and pour a bit - then asked to wash his hands.

Speaking of scooping and pouring, he asked for his dried beans again. Let me tell you they still work! I get at least 30 minutes - if not 45- of mostly quiet while he plays. I *heart* dried beans!!

Basket Play ~ I brought down a laundry basket to add to our day. It's always fun to see what he'll do with it. This time he was the band. I tried to sing along with him - only to be told "Don't sing. You are the story teacher. I'm the song teacher" HA!

Have I posted about his Strider Running Bike? I saw this first on a review Carisa did last year and made a note this would be a great Christmas gift for Turbo. Rick's parents bought it for him and we've had it since February. It is AWESOME!! He rides it every day, all the time! You'd think I'd have a better picture of him balancing, but no. He's usually riding while I'm doing chores and such, so this the picture I have. I have no idea where his other sock or his pants went. He gets going quite fast and is able to balance for several seconds without putting his feet down and it's usually just to give himself more momentum. I've been very impressed at the quality of the bike and how much he loves it.

Cutting
We're doing a lot of cutting practice. In addition to cutting paper, he cut playdough into small pieces. He still struggles a bit with keeping the scissors in the correct position. I like that it challenges him and yet he still asks to do it.

Balancing
We're putting things on our head and trying to balance them for a few seconds. He just likes to goof around with this activity right now. It's actually a lot of fun, good practice and a great opportunity for us to get silly with each other!

That's about it for Tot School last week. This week we're doing 'BIRDS and Nests. I have some more resources to share so stay tuned for next week's post!

SNEAK PEEK ~ I have a GIVE-A-WAY coming at the end of this week! It's going to be about a Super Cool product I recently found. (hint!).

Something SUPER cool!

2010-04-19T12:31:00.000-07:00

YEA! NO MORE FLIES!!!!

I have a backyard and my son loves to play out there. He plays well independently outside for a little bit, but really wants to be able to see me or check on me in the house. So we end up leaving the backdoor open. Since I don't have a screen door - that also means we have flies. One day last summer, we had 6 - SIX - annoying flies buzzing around this house. UGH. I know you can relate!-right?

I've been putting off getting a screen door because I didn't think it would really be the best solution. Here's what I wanted

NO yelling - close the screen door
NO damages - by running into it
NO slamming/banging - when it closes
No fussing around with the door when my hands are full
NO high costs
NO bugs

Sounds like I need a curtain right? That's what I thought too. Since I know how to sew now, I googled "make screen curtain" to get some patterns. I didn't find a pattern, but I found a solution!!!

It's a screen curtain! Yep, someone already thought of the idea. It's better than I could make it for sure. The screen is a nice mesh, there are two panels that close together with magnets to enable hands-free use and then will close behind you. There are weights in the bottom to prevent it from blowing all around. It comes with the rod to hang. Seriously, this is exactly, exactly what I wanted. The price - terrific! I immediately purchased mine (I bought off amazon), received it quickly and put it up in 3 minutes!

from bugoffscreen.com

If you need a quality, inexpensive and easy screen for your door - (tall, short, sliding, french) - take a look at BugOff Instant Screen. I'm seriously in love with ours. My house is full of fresh air, we're playing out back and there are no flies in my house! WOO HOO! Just wanted to share this amazing product.

Tot School - Late

2010-04-13T21:11:00.000-07:00

TOT SCHOOL

Turbo is 33 months & Sweet Pea is 8 months

Ok, so this is totally late! I didn't have internet since over the weekend. Sheesh! What did people do before computers, the net and blogs! Thank goodness for my iPhone or I would have been so sad!

Rick had to leave on Easter for a business trip and was gone until the following Monday. While we really missed him, the days went quickly and we had a great time on all of our activities. I had a full schedule to ensure we didn't go stir crazy!

I totally thought I took more pictures! It seems I spend a lot of time holding something - a baby, a hand, a bag. The camera is an oft forgotten bystander.

Here's some Tot School Activities:

Cutting: He's getting SOO much better! We haven't cut for awhile and he surprised me by doing a great job! I had been a little discouraged that he wasn't able to do a great job a couple months ago. Patience was the key here. His coordination, muscles and such just needed a bit more time.

Letter of the Week activities: Our letter this week was A for animals, ants etc. I used Confessions of a Homeschooler's printables for our activities. For some reason I only took this one picture of all the letter activities!! So here's Turbo tracing. He's doing such a great job. We're working on holding the pen - I find that the taller the pen the more space he uses for his hand. I might try putting black electrical tape in two places so he knows where I want him to keep his hand.

We also did our art from last weeks' letter of the week. Z for Zoo/Zebra. We had such a great week last week - I wanted to use our pictures as a part of our letter. So we made a Zebra Z then used mini pictures of him at the zoo with his friends, the animals and such to glue around the paper. Voila!

Word Building: We love these Melissa & Doug See & Spell boards. There's 10 or so boards and tons of letters for them to use. Each board is double sided too! It's all wood pieces and very sturdy. To set things up, I find the right letters for the boards I'm giving him and put them all on his tray along with the boards. At first I let him find and place the letters in the order he wants. Then we do it together placing the letters one at a time in the correct order - Sounding out the word as we go. He LOVES it.

Sensory Tub: As we're focusing on Animals our sensory table this week is DIRT. Oh what fun was had with this one. Thankfully the weather cooperated! We brought out our barn & farm animals (target dollar spot) and created our own farm, pens and lots of other farm pretend activities. We had been to Little Farm just that morning so it was fresh in his mind.

Still, we continue to play with the Rainbow Rice. Its hard to put that away after just a week or two!! Check out my Rainbow Rice Tutorial to make your very own!

Art: Our friend's babyshower was this weekend, so we painted her wrapping paper. I buy nice white wrapping paper as our base, then let Turbo paint all over it. I really love this personal touch. It also makes him feel like he was part of the gift too. He surprised me with wanting to finger/hand paint!! Normally, messy hands are not to his liking!

Outings:
In addition to playdates and other friend activities, we went to the Zoo again and also to Little Farm. Little Farm seemed to be a large petting zoo. So there wasn't much 'farm' learning. However it was a great place to see farm animals up close and personal! Next week we're going to a real working farm! I'm really looking forward to that!

Here's my favorite picture of the two kids this week. Sweet Pea has such a look of happiness, awe and love for her brother. Melts my heart!

A few other things we did:

I posted some cute pictures of Turbo 'nursing' his baby doll. Seriously sweet!!
Also in my Zoo week post, you can see the Zoo Animals Ring Book I made for Turbo and download a copy for yourself!

Fun Week - already!

2010-04-07T23:08:00.000-07:00

WOW, what a fun and busy week this week already. The weekend was full of Easter activities and some sewing/crafting. I'll be posting all about it this weekend! I'm really not very creative, but I can be crafty (read: I can follow directions well!) Anyway, it's great to have so many projects checked off my list!

Monday we spent a lot of time outside enjoying our lovely weather. Turbo absolutely loves riding his Strider Running Bike. Seriously, this thing is so cool. It's a little bike with no pedals. He sits on the seat and uses his feet to push off. After just a day or so, my cautious little guy was already lifting his feet and gliding a bit. He really goes far and fast now! Our neighbors came out and the kids played together. Its really a special thing to have a sense of community and friendship around us.

Tuesday we went to the zoo again with a friend and her kids. We all had a great time. I wasn't sure that going again so soon would be fun for him, but it really was. He likes the familiarity of seeing the same animals and knowing what to expect. There was a lot of discussion about Siamang monkeys! I think he really likes saying Siamang. Plus he had a whole week with the Zoo Animals Ring Book I made him, so he could tell me more about the animals. I added four extra pages to his Ring Book for Goat, Sheep, Bat and multiple Reptiles.

Today we did some TotSchool and errands in the morning. Then after an unsuccessful nap attempt, we went to a BBQ with a girlfriend that was visiting from out of town. We got home just in time for the kids' bedtime (AHHHH). Both kids are wiped out and went down without a peep! So is Mommy and I should be going to bed too!

Tomorrow is another fun-filled day with a visit to one of our large city parks. There's a little farm onsite along with rides, a steam train, botanical garden, and more. Turbo is so excited to go and we're meeting a good friend so that makes it extra special.

What I realized tonight while preparing for next weeks tot school is that we didn't do as many theme related TotSchool activities as I had planned. That's not a bad thing at all, but I decided to extend Farm / Animal theme for another week to give us more time to do explore the theme after such great outings. I think the outing/activity/stories combination is really going to work for us.

Ok now for some Sweet Pictures. I know I'll have to remove these in a couple years when he's mortified about them, but for right now, I have to share!

getting his 'nursing cover'

Aww, aren't those so sweet!

Zoo Week!

2010-04-05T01:10:00.000-07:00

HAPPY EASTER!!
This week was our Z / Zoo week. I really like tying our letters of the week with a main theme/activity. Monday our playgroup headed to the zoo. I was a bit nervous about taking both kids, but it was super fun.

The night before I made this booklet for him with animal pictures, name and facts. He LOVED it! I brought along star stickers so he could mark the animals he saw.We also used the start stickers to mark animals off on the zoo map. For the first few animals he was really into it, but then we put it away so he could run around. The whole way home he read looked through it again and again. He still asks for it. Are you going to the zoo? ~~Leave me a comment or email me (there's a link in my profile) and I'll email it to you!~~
OK, I think I have a link for all of you!! HOORAAY!
ZOO ANIMALS RING BOOK FILE
Should you have any problems at all with the file, leave me a comment and I'll get right back to you!

In addition to the zoo and fun playdates here's some of our other learning activities:Build a zoo from blocks - The monkey is on a 'platform' just like at the zoo!

Rainbow Rice ~ LOVE THIS!! Seriously this enables me to have many a phone conversation in peace. I have a couple little spoons, funnel, cup he uses too. I always put this container on a larger tray and he is required to keep all the rice, toys and items on the tray. If not, we're done. While there's always a little to clean up from the floor, it's very minimal! Learn how to make your own in my little tutorial.

As I mentioned in this blog post, I'm going to be using resources others create for most of our letter activities. These are from here.

Letter Activities

Puzzle ~ now that I have a laminator (LOVE IT!) Turbo likes these activities so much more! The pieces are much sturdier and that really helps. However, it also makes things more slippery. So I put our puzzle backsheet (printed in b/w) on a cookie sheet. Then I use glue dots to secure thin magnets to the puzzle pieces (printed in color).

Freecycle.org ~ Ok, not a letter of the week activity, but I wanted to give some kudos to this great resource. It's a message board where you post if you have something to OFFER or WANTED. I needed some thin magnets for the above activity & others so posted a request. Here's what I got and there's more waiting for me to pick up tomorrow! WOO HOO! I've been using it for years and have been happy to both give and receive.

More fun with our Do-A-Dot markers

Number sequencing on our super-cool new pocket chart

Color Matching puzzles. Daddy cut these up and did a great job!

Music ~ Lots of Music as usual around here. He's getting back into playing his keyboard. Until recently his guitar captured all his attention.

Puppets. Got these ages ago on clearance and was so excited to make them. Then was disappointed because the bags were so small they didn't really fit my hand. Turbo didn't enjoy them - much to my surprise - so we'll save them for another time. I have visions of Turbo and Sweet Pea putting on puppet shows for me in a couple years.

Photography: He's very, very interested in taking pictures with my camera. While he has several cameras and a couple that actually work, he wants to learn mine. He got so much better the next day. As you can see, he wanted to take pictures of his Mommy. Awwww.

This week also marks the start of a few things.

1) Really asking "WHY?" about everything. I mean everything. Seriously. The wonderment of childhood!

2) Making up names for characters without one. For instance: The Cat in the Hat: the boy and the fish do not have names. They are now Drop and Gingoam respectively. Although tonight the boy's name was changed to Ringack. Hysterical.

3) Funny, I can't remember what I was going to type... Guess I need to go to bed! Hmm, Maybe it's that he is saying "I DID IT" about everything he does. Very sweet. I enjoy seeing his sense of accomplishment.

This has been going on for awhile, but I haven't mentioned it yet. This kid knows the make of every single car he sees! It's so funny. "That's a Dodge Ram" "That's the old Dodge Logo" (when he sees the old pentagon/star logo), Cadillac, Honda, Chevy, Corvette, Ford mustang, Oldsmobile, Mercury, Audi, Buick - you name it, he knows it. Today was the first day in a long time he saw one that threw him off - a Daewoo. This has been happening since late January. Of course he knows the VW bugs. Every time he sees a Prius he calls it the "Toyota bug". I can't possibly correct him, it's so cute!!

Here's some cute Sweet Pea pictures - She's 8 months today!:

Tot School ~ Letter K and more

2010-03-27T23:07:00.000-07:00

Turbo is 33 months

Sweet Pea is 7 months

What a fun week we had! It was such lovely weather, so we spent more time outside and less time on Tot School this week again. But there's rain-a-comin' so we wanted to enjoy the sun while it was here.

I'm getting better having my camera handy!! YEA! So we actually have some pictures this week.

SENSORY TUB: Turbo's favorite activity by far this week! I hid a bunch of keys - luggage, old house keys and toy keys. I also put in some key chains for fun. The one you can see is an adorable keychain from Tupperware that's a replica shape sorter.

Letter Art: We used an idea from notimeforflashcards.com for our K letter art. Turbo thought this was tons of fun. However, I realized this was the first time I actually cut up his art. I've cut around his art before, but never actually cut it up. He saw me cut it and got his feelings hurt when I crumpled the extra and put it in the recycle. Mommy felt SOOOO bad!!! All was forgiven when he saw he got to glue the pieces.

Easter Egg hunts - He loved this! I would hid them in difficult places and give him hints to reinforce 'over, under, behind, above, beside, around, near, closer, too far etc.' He knows these pretty well, but I learned he gets 'behind' and 'in front' mixed up sometimes.

Household Life: Turbo has a couple routine jobs he does around the house. He removes the lint from the dryer while I'm folding the loads and he helps me unload the dishwasher. He surprised me by asking to take pictures after we unloaded the dishwasher. Awww!

Practical Life: We've been working on independent dressing/undressing a lot this week. I didn't get any pictures of our TotSchool time on this, but here's Turbo doing some 'independent study'. HA!

Another 'independent study' was when he started pouring water back and forth from my very large cup into his small cup. I was very impressed that he stopped at the right time when pouring into the smaller cup. He stopped the water right at the little inside line. Guess all that previous water pouring work really helped!
Letter Activities ~ This week was letter K and we did a bunch of the pre-made activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Aren't they just adorable! We didn't do as many as I'd hoped because I didn't have a laminator and the thin, flimsy pieces of paper weren't working for us. So I ordered a laminator WOOHOOO!! I can't wait to do our Letter Activities next week.

Awwww, such as sweet big brother.

Art Projects: In addition to our Collage Box, we did our new Do-A-Dot makers. These are a huge hit around here. Turbo's favorite part is working on color blending. He loves to stamp red, then cover all the red with yellow. He shouts ORANGE Mommy - I made ORANGE!

Fine Motor Skills: We worked with Playdough this week. One of the Moms in our Moms Club gave us this awesome toy. It seriously keeps him busy for close to an hour.

Music ~ As usual, we played the guitar, sang and played the keyboard all week. I'm seriously considering some violin lessons for him when he turns 3. They don't do guitar until 5. My hesitation is that I don't want to smother his passion with structure if he's not ready. However, I want to follow and expand on his interests.....

Science ~ Sink and float. We mostly did this last week, but he asked for it again on Monday.

Other Activities this week:
Check out the evolving Collage Box Art

~ ~ ~ Tiny Tot School ~ ~ ~

Ok, not really, but isn't she getting so cute! I love that she's a part of our story and play times. She's so easy going and mellow. Her latest thing is shaking her head no. Turbo and I laugh like crazy when she gets going. The two kids are very sweet together. Turbo is really gentle and tender with her. He brings her all his soft toys and makes sure that all the hard toys are out of her reach. He got worried and 'corrected' me the first time I gave her his wooden blocks. Yep, that's a protective big brother! We haven't seen much jealously from either of them about time, attention or toys. Hopefully that will continue as Sweet Pea gets more mobile!

Next week is ~~Farms & Animals; Letter A~~ _ OK, I've changed it already. My playgroup is going to the zoo on Monday, so we're swapping weeks. Next week will be zoo instead! I can't wait!

Collage Art

2010-03-27T23:01:00.000-07:00

Shannon over at Welcome to our Wonderland is hosting a weekly link up for Collage Boxes. If you remember all our Open Ended Art projects were inspired by her themes and link-ups. I've seriously been needing to get back into a Weekly Art link up because I'm not the crafty, creative type. So I'm excited that she's hosting the weekly Collage Boxes.

In the late Summer last year we did a Contact Paper collage. I taped Contact Paper to the wall (sticky side out) and gave him some tissue paper, google eyes, pompoms, and construction paper. I thought for sure I had blogged about it, but can't seem to find the post *snif*. At a little over 2 years old, he was very interested in the texture of the items, the stickiness of the paper and the defiance of gravity when he put the items on the paper. He was very intent on filling up every inch of the contact paper with all the pieces. There wasn't really a pattern or order to the placement.

I decided to see what he'd create 8 months or so later, given similar materials.

Here's his art at the end of Day 1.

Day 2 - he took down all the google eyes (he loved that part) and this is what he created. You can see there's a definite pattern to his use and placement of materials today. He did a lot of sets of 3s.
Also, he talked about the pieces as he placed them "long, orange rectangle; green circle, red pompom etc." I glad about that because when I tried to work on long, longest, short, shortest with him earlier in the week, I was convinced he'd forgotten it all as he was not at all interested. Sort of like my story about money, here Much to my joy, he was listening even if not interested. (Hope his teenage years are like that!)

Day 3 - Today he added hearts and squares. He seems to be keeping the shapes and items organized on his paper. I wish I could find the picture from months ago so you could also see the change.

Day 4+ - He lost interest in it towards the end of the week. That's ok. He really enjoyed it the first few days and I know he will enjoy doing this concept again next week.
I think I will do this more often - bring out old projects/materials to use again in a similar way. It's fun to see how his thinking has changed and how he brings in concepts we've learned to art!

Mind of their own

2010-03-27T22:49:00.000-07:00

This is just a side note, funny story. Probably more for the grandparents than anyone!

Turbo is all about playing with his coins. He loves to carry them around, put in/take out, and especially play grocery store! I've been looking for ways to teach him counting by 5s, 10s. Coins seemed like a great way. So while we were playing grocery store, he had set all his coins out. We sorted them and I started telling him that dimes are 10 cents; nickles are 5 cents; quarters are 25 cents. He looked uninterested and went back to moving his coins around. I tried again (mistake) and said so cheerfully - Turbo, look here, this dime is 10 cents. It's worth 10 pennies." I think I saw his eyes roll! He looks right at me and says "Don't care about that. Just want to play grocery store! Don't care about that" Ok, then. We'll be saving that concept for a different day - in the distant future. Seriously, it's laugh central around here!!

What's coming...?

2010-03-23T01:55:00.000-07:00

SPRING HAS SPRUNG!! It is so lovely here. The sun is warm, the birds are singing and there's a feeling of awakening in our neighborhood and community. Now that the days are longer and the weather better, we're spending more of our time outside - parks and playdates.

While that still leaves time for TotSchool, my other interests have taken me away from all the planning. I've decided to set perfection aside in the interest of moving forward. There are many wonderful online resources for TotSchool. Therefore, now through the end of summer, I plan to primarily use these pre-created ideas. This will lessen my prep work significantly, still give Turbo plenty of great activities and hopefully leave me the time to blog about our fun too!

Here's a sneak peek into our broad theme for the next several weeks. Turbo is going to love them and I'm very excited about the topics! It is my plan to have most/all of the next four weeks of resources and activities together by this weekend.

THIS WEEK - March 21 - We are doing - what else - KITES! Perfect for springtime.

week of March 28th - Farm Animals

week of April 4th - Birds, nests,

week of April 11th - Flowers/Gardens

week of April 18 - Earth Day, recycling (maybe weather too)

week of April 25 - Zoo

So that's what I've got. How are you planning for your kids' educational time?

Tot School - Letter G g

2010-02-16T22:28:00.000-08:00

Turbo is 31 months; Sweet Pea is 6 months

We've had so much fun this past month. I must say that with this time off, I'm a bit out of practice in having my camera near by. So I didn't get as many pictures as I'd like.

G is for Grocery Store - again, sorry about the lack of pictures!
- Cut pictures from the Safeway ad and glued them onto a list
- 'shopped' at our pretend grocery store using our play kitchen food & pennies
- Field trip to Safeway! His first time loose in the grocery store. All things considered, he did great! The most fun was the produce department. He helped me pick the produce, put it in a bag and then weigh each bag before tossing it into the cart. Typically I have Sweet Pea in her car seat in the basket of the cart. Obviously that wouldn't work this trip! So I had her in a front carrier. It limited my mobility a bit in chasing Turbo when needed, but other than a minor apple pile tumble, we didn't cause too much damage. There were so many learning opportunities at the store - Scales, weight, vegetables, fruits, quantity, etc. The next time I'll leave Sweet Pea with Rick so Turbo and I can do list shopping and more.

Glitter - Lots of texture here and it was fun to draw letters and shapes in it too.

G g matching - Turbo placed all the G g correctly, but when it was time to glue them, he lost interest in sorting.

Shapes with fingers - Surprising, this was a harder for him than I expected. The easiest is the triangle. We're making circles with our arms as it's challenging for him to make them with his fingers.

Money Play - Turbo loves playing with coins. He typically carries them around, puts them in his 'purse' or plays with them in his Cozy Coupe Car. This day he was dropping them in the bottle - figuring out the quarters didn't fit, so he stacked them on the top.

Sensory
Foam Peanuts

Flour

Same / Different Cards

Box Guitar - if you've been around here awhile, you'll know that Turbo loves music! His piano has been his prized toy every day and I thought he'd like a guitar. I saw this on a crafting site that I can't find again. :0( Get yourself a kleenex box, a paper towel tube and some large rubber bands. I used a felt bar as the bridge, but you can use a dowel, pencil, pen (with the point/ink part removed) or maybe even a straw - it just needs to hold the bands up a bit. Cut a hole the size of your tube in the side of the box. Paint everything. Assemble and play. I suggest reinforcing the top of the box on the side where you cut the hole. The rubber bands made it collapse a bit after a few days.

Real Guitar - His new favorite toy. I will post a video of his first day playing it. This kid's a natural I tell ya.

Here's a picture of him at Toys R Us last november. This is right next to the train table and a bunch of other toys available for the kids to play. This is what he wanted to do.

Rainy Day Fun - we had a lot of storms the past 4 weeks. In fact it hailed so much one day, the ground was white!

Hammer and Ice ~ This kid loves to eat ice. While potty training we needed to give him A LOT of liquids. This was one of the ways I kept him very well hydrated. He gets to smash the ice into edible pieces. He thinks this is terrific, so we've done it several more times.

Have I lost you all yet? I didn't realize this was turning into a marathon post! Guess that's what happens when you don't post for a month. While we did so much more, I just don't have pictures of most it.

That's Sassy

2010-02-16T13:29:00.000-08:00

When I ask Turbo to do something, occasionally all the time lately, he looks right at me and says "NO". I've been telling him, "That's sassy to say no to Mommy. When I ask you to do something you need to say "Yes Mommy".

Today he asked me to play starfall.com and I was in the middle of doing something with Sweet Pea and said quickly said "no". He comes right over to me, looked me in the eye and said "That's sassy to say no Mommy. You need to say "Yes, Turbo" (except he used his real name). Oh my, I'm still laughing about that!!

Where are we?

2010-02-11T01:16:00.000-08:00

Have you been hearing the sounds of crickets on my blog? Our break has been considerably longer than I anticipated! I thought we'd be back to full Tot School and blogging by the 2nd week of January. Uh, not quite.

I can't believe we've only been home for 5 week! We got back from vacation then my Mom came to visit, then we potty trained, then Rick's parents came and this week I'm sick. I've completely lost my voice and my poor husband is again out of town and can't enjoy it. (Just kidding, right honey!) Sweet Pea is 6 months old and the funny thing is this happened to me when Turbo was 6 months old too. I lost my voice 3 times between him being 6-9months. I wonder if there's any connection between their 6 month mark and a decrease in my immune system. We'll see if it happens again. Not if I can help it! Anyway, then Rick's parents come back next week, then I head out to San Antonio for my brother's Air Force Basic Training graduation. Then it's March!

While we're still doing Tot School things each week, my creative prep work and blogging has taken a back seat these past 5 weeks. I have a limited amount of evening time and I've been spending it learning something terrific! I'm learning some serious money saving strategies involving coupons.

Towards the end of last year, I decided a goal for 2010 would be to get savvy about really saving in my everyday budget. Things are going great! In January, my average saving for all my purchases (not including eating out) was 73%! Wow! To do this I shopped sales, used coupons and submitted rebates. Coupon shopping now certainly isn't what I did 12 years ago! There's nothing like leaving the grocery store with 8 boxes of triscuits/wheat thins and 4 packages of mission tortillas for ...nothing. Just a smile and thank you
In the mean time, please stay tuned, I'll be back with our regularly scheduled programming soon!! Our latest letter is G g, so watch for a post up this weekend for sure!

Potty Training Update - Days 2-5

2010-02-03T05:45:00.000-08:00

WOW! I can't believe how fast it's gone. I'm so far behind in posting, that I'm going to make this a quick recap

Day 2 (Saturday) ~ "Mommy, need a diaper" This was heard again today during his normal pooping time. When we told him he wore underware and went on the potty, he replied "Need a diaper, so sad about that" with those big eyes filling up with tears. Later in the day, he managed to escape our view for a minute and hide out of site to go poo. Rick caught up with him just 30 seconds after and got Turbo to the potty. He didn't go any more, but it was our first training moment for #2. As for the pees ~ he stayed dry ALL day again!

Day 3 (Sunday) ~ We decided to brave a family lunch outing since he'd been doing so well. We went to one of his favorite places, Baja Fresh. This kid loves guacamole and mango salsa! It's 15 minutes each way, door to door. We had him go potty before we left, then we had a leisurely lunch and came back home. I was honestly so surprised he didn't have an accident! By the time we got home it had been 1 1/2 hours since his last potty and he'd drank a big milk at lunch! He went the whole day with no accidents!

Day 4 (Monday) ~ Rick went to work, so the three of us (Turbo, Sweet Pea and I) flew solo for potty training. Guess what, we had a pee accident. He was playing with the games on our iPod Touch and I was making lunch and didn't remember to ask him if he was dry for awhile. When I asked again, we both realized he'd had an accident. In this moment, I was reminded that this is still new him and that I have to remember to continue asking him and celebrating if he's dry. As for #2, he didn't ask for a diaper today! He felt that he had to go and ran into the bathroom. By the time he got there, he had gone in his pants. However, he is making steps in the right direction!

Day 5 (Tuesday) ~ WOOHOO! He made it to the potty for his poop! He actually tried about 5 times to go throughout the day and one time actually went. By the time he had gotten to the potty he'd gone 1/2 way in his underware, but finished the other half on the potty!!! He was so proud of himself. We celebrated and called Daddy right away. Another huge milestone today, he went pee in a public potty. He doesn't like that the flushes are so loud and was very nervous about going. We compromised that he would go, then leave the bathroom and I would flush. It worked for today. For the next trip, I'll have the portable potty that arrived today. My girlfriend recommended it and it seems to be great. I'll post more about it after Turbo uses it.

Tomorrow is Wednesday. Rick is picking up his parents from the airport for their visit and taking Turbo along. It's 45-60 minutes each way. We thought we'd put a pull-up on him, but Rick doesn't think he needs it. I'm inclined to agree. We'll see how it goes!

Potty Training - Day #1

2010-01-30T21:32:00.000-08:00

Friday was the day that we kicked off our potty training with Turbo. Rick took the day off work so that one of us would always be by his side. We didn't know what to expect and if the transition would be difficult.

Thursday night I put out 10 pairs of underwear and 5 pairs of soft and ease to slide off/on pants. I also had some rags and cleanser ready for the accidents. Of course we had the step-stool and potty seat.

Friday morning I went into get Turbo. He was happy as usual and ready to start the day. I decided to start with underwear after breakfast so he would be able to run to the potty when needed. After breakfast and a little play, I told him that today was the day we were going to go on the potty. Now I should say that for the previous 3 days, I told him that he would be going pee/poo on the potty starting Friday. Still, he seemed a bit surprised, but I was already pulling down his pants and removing his diaper. I decided to leave off his underwear for a bit to help reinforce that something was different - plus, 2 year olds LOVE to be naked. He was so excited about being without pants that he took off his shirt too. I have some adorable pictures of that little tushy running around, but cropped them for a little privacy. It wasn't long before we put the underwear on, but it was a fun transition for him.

The day went super easy! Rick and I kept saying we must be missing something it's going so well! There was one time that Turbo was on his own, Rick was occupied with Sweet Pea and I was cleaning up the lunch dishes, all of a sudden we hear the toilet lid go up and the sound of him peeing all on his own. WOOHOO. There was two times during the day that he asked for a diaper. We're assuming because he had to poo. Of course we told him that he was a big boy now and wore underwear and went on the potty. He managed to hold it in the entire day. So as bedtime approached, we celebrated a wonderful and successful day potty training. No fighting, No whining and No Accidents. It was a dream day.

Since I'm behind in posting, I'll soon be posting about Day 2. Stay tuned to see if the 2nd day went as smoothly as the first.

January Update #1

2010-01-28T22:10:00.000-08:00

Goodness, it's been awhile since my last post! I've missed blogging and sharing our lives this past month. It's hard to believe we've only been home three weeks! We've fit so much into that time. That first week home we got some organization projects completed that had been lingering. The best part is that I now have more room for my TotSchool supplies! Here's my closet almost entirely dedicated to his TotSchool - there's more room to the left and another shelf up top and room below the last shelf. YEA!

Then last week my Mom came for a visit. It's always fun when she's here. The kids absolutely adore her and she spends tons of time with them. Her visit was great timing because Rick was traveling and it rained the ENTIRE week. It was nice for all of us to have the company! For several weeks last year she was in India training their offshore staff, so she brought us some treasures from there. She brought Turbo some instruments made from wood and reeds. They are lovely and absolutely treasured by my musical boy. There were gifts for all of us that are just lovely and very 'India'. We are so grateful for all she did to buy and bring them to us!! She's going back again in March, so it will be a few months until we see her again.

This week we're undertaking potty training. YEP! Starting tomorrow Turbo will be in underware! Rick and I are both excited and nervous about it. The timing is really perfect since with Sweet Pea's nap and Turbo's rest schedule, we're home most of the day anyway. Plus Rick's parents will be here part of each week in February and the extra attention and time for Turbo will really help with the training. I'll be posting every day with our progress, more about the 'method' we're planning to use and how it evolves over the first few days. Stay Tuned & wish us luck!!

January Update #2 - COUPONS

2010-01-28T13:27:00.001-08:00

2010 is going to be a great year - I can feel it already. I have written out most of my goals for this year and a plan on attaining them. One of my plans is to use our money more wisely. I want to be spending less and getting more for my dollar. My biggest focus for January has been learning to use coupons, rebates and sales to stretch our money for groceries. We returned home on Jan 5th and that first weekend I went out to the stores, armed with my coupons and scored some incredible deals!! Seriously, I can't believe how much money I had been wasting by being uneducated in the strategies of sales, coupons and rebates. Does it take time? Yep! In fact those first two weeks it took a LOT of time. It was an investment and one that I happily made. Seriously when you see that big "You saved 70%" at the bottom of your grocery receipt, you realize it was time well spent. See that $79.48, that's what I saved.

So let me tell you, I am now THAT mom, the one with the big basket of groceries and handfuls of coupons that you DO NOT want to be behind in the checkout line! I have a funny story, I purchased a bunch of groceries at Safeway and after my coupons it came to $.08 - yep - even the checker was impressed. When I went to swipe my credit card, she couldn't believe I didn't have $.08 and had to use my cc for the transaction. She razzed me a bit, in good fun. When I got home and told Rick about it, he laughed and made me start carrying a quarter with me for my next super deal!

February plans are to make all the phone calls to reduce or comparison shop our monthly and annual expenses such as insurance, cable, etc.

Do you have any strategies to save your family money this year?

We're Home again!

2010-01-09T01:46:00.000-08:00

We've been gone for awhile and I've missed blogging! We traveled to Pittsburgh to visit my husband's family. He has a large immediate family and a huge extended family (think of the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding") in both the Pittsburgh and Allentown areas. While visiting his parents, we were blessed to see all his siblings and many of the cousins that were also home for Christmas. It was non-stop visiting! The best part was watching all the kids running around, playing and having so much fun together. There was such a sense of family and love - even with the kids. For part of our trip we drove to the other side of Pennsylvania to visit Rick's Grandmother (Dad's Mom) and all the family on that side. It was a very special time to be together. I'll be posting updates over the next week or so with pictures from our visit.

I must take a Mommy bragging moment here - MY KIDS ARE AMAZING!! Travel is tough for little ones with our very early and long travel days, TONS of new people all at one time, off schedules, many different enviornments, not as much dedicated time with Mommy, different foods, not all the favorite books, etc. My kids were terrific!!!! Turbo was excited to be in new places and did great on all the travel days (air and car!) I was so happy at his behavior - he kept his humor and easy going nature for the entire trip. Sweet Pea was sweet and adorable during the days. She was fine being passed around and smiled/laughed for everyone. Yes, they are absolutely amazing.

Now, before you think it's all a picture print by Currier and Ives, we did have major sleeping challenges. Basically one or the other seemed to be up constantly throughout the night and only Mommy would do. Sweet Pea screamed during bedtimes like I'd never heard her do before and was so out of sorts I thought she needed to go to the doctor! After a day she was better, but not completely herself as she wouldn't sleep by herself for naps or bed. So I napped her in the carrier or held her. It was so nice to have the time to just hold her - I didn't mind. As for the nights, let me just say, I am still amazed at how little sleep a Mommy requires. Honestly, it was inconsequential compared to the memories we created.

While visits are fun, there's also a joy in coming back home and settling back into routine. Next week we'll start TotSchool and our other activities again. More posting to come!

Grateful!

2009-12-24T00:10:00.000-08:00

We're heading to Pittsburgh to visit hubby's family for Christmas, so this might be my last post of the year. 2009 has dealt economic challenges to our family as most of the country, but that is not what we'll remember years from now. This year we've brought a new life into the world with our daughter's birth, witnessed the astounding growth of our son, strengthened friendships and continued to grow as individuals and as a couple. There are so many reasons to celebrate and be grateful this (and every) season. Here are just a few blessings that top my list.

We are healthy, fed, warm and loved
I'm tremendously grateful for my amazing husband that provides such a wonderful life for my children and me. I love him dearly.
My two children - healthy, happy and very sweet little people
Our family and friends for their love and support
I'm deeply grateful to those that really love my children. As we don't have family nearby, I'm especially grateful to my friends that show such love for Turbo. Thank you for being our 'village' and allowing us to be yours too.
I'm very grateful to you that follow our blog! The encouragement and care for our family is heartwarming
I'm also very grateful for the fellow bloggers that provide so much inspiration. Seriously, what would Turbo and I do all day without you guys?!?

Wishing all of you a very warm, peaceful and merry Christmas!

Season for giving

2009-12-22T23:48:00.000-08:00

Turbo is 29 months and Sweet Pea is 4 months

2 weeks! Wow, I can't believe it's been that long since I've posted. We've been busy, enjoy the holiday season with play, parties, friends and giving. It's the giving aspect that I want to nurture in my children. We did two specific acts of charity this year with Turbo.

ADOPT A FAMILY
We adopted a family through the local CASA Program. CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) program services the foster child population in almost every county in the USA. These children have been abused, neglected and/or abandoned and finally become dependants of the court. They are placed in foster homes, group homes or at times with another member of their family. The CASA program is comprised of volunteers that assess, then advocate for the child's best interest regarding education, mental health, medical/dental, sibling/family visitation and placement interests. During the ever changing enviorment of a foster child, a CASA volunteer is often the only stable relationship the child has while in foster care. I was a CASA for over 5 years before my son was born. It was such a tremendous expereince to be brought into these kids lives (8 kids in all). The picture below is of one my kids and me several years ago.

We adopted a needy foster family through CASA this holiday. We bought the kids and caregiver gifts and then delivered them to the CASA office. Turbo was so excited to give! It was heart warming to see his smiling face as he saw the gifts carried into the office. Can you believe I didn't get one picture of this entire process?!!?

FEED THE NEEDY

What does it look like to feed 28 families for 2 days?
112 cans of vegetables
56 cans of fruit cocktail
56 cans of tuna
28 cans of spaghetti sauce
28 boxes of pasta
28 boxes of tuna helper

Another project was preparing bags of groceries for the hungry. The bags contain: pasta, sauce w/ meat, tuna helper, tuna, canned vegetables and fruit. It's designed to feed a family of 4 for two days and are handed out as the needy come for a meal at the local soup kitchen. I chose this project because Turbo could participate in every aspect of it.

Turbo had some terrific Tot School moments.
General: We talked about the food groups. We worked on same/similar/different using the fruit and vegetable cans. I think Turbo got it. We'll see if it translates to other things besides peas, corn and green beans! Concepts of high and deep while stacking the cans 3 high, 5 deep and heavy/light between the cans and boxes. You get the idea.

Counting: It was great opportunity to count to larger numbers than normal. We counted boxes, cans and packages. While we did mostly consecutive number counting, I showed him the concept of counting by 5 and by 2, while I don't think he understood it completely, it got his attention. He also counted for Daddy while helping to bag the groceries. (4 vegetables, 2 fruit etc.)

Sorting: It doesn't get better than this. We had boxes and cans galore for him to carry, sort and stack. Truely a 2 year old's delight! He's very interested in the pictures and words on cans and boxes now.

Following directions: He had to hand Daddy just the right vegetable, fruit etc. It was good practice for listening and following directions. I was so proud of him and his wonderful attitude!

Here are the bags, filled and ready to go. We'll be doing this again soon!

Our Winter Wonderland!

2009-12-07T21:38:00.000-08:00

Wow, we woke up this morning to snow on the ground!! We live in Northern California bay area, so it's very unusual to see snow here! Turbo has never seen snow before this week! Our snow melted after a couple hours so we headed out to the hills to play.

Tot School

2009-12-06T16:54:00.000-08:00

Turbo is 29 months and Sweet Pea is 3 months

Oh what fun we had this week!! It's been a busy posting week for me too. Be sure to check out these other related posts.

Our letter this week was R. Here's the post all about it.
Sweet Pea decided to Roll Over. I caught it on video!! You can see it on this post.
Open Ended Art - Hans Hoffman inspired a Rolling good time!

Now for other Tot School things:

Circle Time - Turbo LOVES circle time. This week we did a memory verse from the December 2's curriculum from Hubbards Cubbard (free!), then we danced to some happy music. We always read a book or two. This time we're reading our new Bob Books.

Turbo is dancing to "I've got that Joy, Joy, Joy" song. His joy is just bubbling over!

Train Run - There's something about a loop that makes kids run! Turbo's favorite is the loop around our kitchen island. He grabs his train whistle and a letter off the fridge (making the sound too) then says "come on Mommy" and we'll run around the island pretending to be a train. Each time we run by the fridge we get a different letter. He'd run all night - I'm good for about 15 laps then I get dizzy! It's such a fun way to burn off little boy energy and work on a skill at the same time. Do you have a loop that your kids love to run?

Patterns with Ornaments - He's not been interested in patterns until this day. Baby steps!

Winter Bingo - from Preschool Printables He LOVED using the drums.

Dried Beans and a Gumball Machine

Glass Gem counting - He decided it was more fun to hand them to Mommy and have me place them. That worked great because it was adding/subtracting practice as he gave me the gems. This idea has been on my list for ages since I saw it at The Adventures of Bear

Color Round up - Orange - Despite his happy face, he's not enjoying these, so we'll try them again next year.

Rhyming Cards - While we read tons of rhyming stories, I've never focused specifically on rhyming. I printed these cards from kidssoup.com (I think). At first we just reviewed the cards and saying the rhyming words. Then when he asked for the cards, we did this game where he had to pick the card that rhymed.

Button Snake - He asked for this again this week and is doing so great with it. Read how to make your own at the terrific Counting Coconuts blog.

Game Play - We play a lot of games during the week. Lucky Duck is his favorite. Sweet Pea and the dog that Daddy won last weekend, played with us.

Match the letters/numbers with Lines - I was so surprised that he did so well in drawing the lines! I first saw this activity here . I wouldn't have thought to give him something like this yet.

Color Wheel. On one side of the clothespin is a color and he matches it to the color on the wheel. He's doing it upside down now for added interest. We first did this months ago and he still enjoys it. The idea came from here.

Color Stomp and Color Match up - I spread several colors all around the room, then have Turbo shout out a color while we race over to STOMP on it. After that game, we clean up by matching them to their pair.

Snowman window cling. Fun and good workout for fine motor skills.

We read about the birth of Jesus in several books. I'll update with the titles tomorrow. We're talking about Jesus and the real meaning of Christmas every day. Hope to get some Christmas crafts in next week!

Letter of the Week - R r

2009-12-06T15:05:00.000-08:00

R is a terrific gross motor letter! We had so much fun pretending to be rockets, rabbits, robots and more at every chance.

Playing Ring Toss

The Rock Maze at our local amusement park

Rolling and Running were even more fun for R week.

We worked on Rainbow patterns.

We matched shades of rainbow colors

Coloring with rainbow colors

Rainbow puzzle- this was the left over scraps from a different rainbow activity I attempted, but didn't go as planned. I was putting these in our scrap paper pile, and realized this would be a terrific rainbow example for coloring and a puzzle for him to put in the correct order. He liked it too!

Leaf Rubbings - Turbo liked this more than I anticipated!

We wore red and especially our Red Rocket jammies. The best wearing red was on Friday before bed, Turbo was helping me sort the clothes from the dryer. He thoguth Daddy's red underware were very cool. This is what I found after putting Sweet Pea to bed. Yep, took of pants and diaper to wear Daddy's underware. Oh my, I'm still laughing about that.

We made and played with Rainbow Rice. I posted a tutorial for you earlier this week.

Ate 'r' things. This was a rice cake with peanut butter and raisins. We also ate ravioli.

We practiced Rhyming cards from Kidssoup.com

Few other things we did, but no pictures:
- We attempted to make a rainbow rice covered R, but Turbo insisted on using a glue stick. So, the process was fun, but the outcome was a slightly sticky R with slightly sticky rice all over the counter. I wish I had a picture because it was very funny!
- Watched rocket videos on YouTube.
- Reviewed our R poster from Kidssoup.com
- We talked about R things like recycling, reindeer, robots, rain, and routines.

I am so happy to be back doing letters of the week. However, we're going to take off again until the new year. We have a very full next two weeks with other activities and we'll be doing some traveling over the holiday. It's going to be so much fun!

Rainbow Rice

2009-12-03T21:49:00.000-08:00

Turbo really enjoys sensory activites. As I've mentioned he has a love affair with dried beans but has not been interested in rice. Thinking it needed some visual interest, I decided we'd add color. Good timing too! It's R week, perfect for Rainbow Rice!

Supplies

White Rice (I used 1/2 cup rice for each color)
Zip-close baggies
Food Coloring
Rubbing Alcohol
Paper towels for quick clean up
Work area covering (we used a cookie sheet)
Drying containers (I used one per color to avoid transfer)

Directions
* Have your assistant pour rice into the baggie.

* Put 1/2 teaspoon rubbing alcohol in the baggie of rice. I believe it speeds drying. I did this step myself.

* Have your assistant help carefully add food coloring to the rice. I let Turbo hold the bottle, then put my hand over his to help him squeeze and for quick removal if necessary. There's no pictures of this (obviously)! We used this opportunity to count drops. It helped him remember to squeeze slower so he could see them.

* SEAL THE BAG - then double check. You do not want to be dealing with food coloring stains!

* SHAKE, SHAKE and SHAKE. Turbo loved this part. He was amazed the first time. He kept stopping and telling me the rice was turning red. For every color after, I asked him what he thought would happen to the rice. He said - "get dizzy, bounce around, shake up, maybe get painted." I was dying laughing and that encouraged him to come up with more funny things.

* Dry the rice in a container or on a cookie sheet. (doesn't take long at all)
* Repeat for each color.
* MIX!

* PLAY

Here's my approx drops for the 1/2 cup rice:
Purple - 8 drops of red and 2or 3 of blue.
Blue - 8-10 drops
Green - 8-10 drops
Yellow - lovely and bright with only 3 drops.
Orange - added 10 drops of yellow and 2 drops of red.
Red - wasn't able to master that color. With 10 it looked a bit red, but more pink. I did it again with 20 and it was much better, but still not red, red. Thankfully I didn't enter into a Rainbow Rice contest, so it's all good.

Got Beans?

2009-12-03T06:20:00.000-08:00

~ Dried Beans ~
We seriously cannot get enough of these things. Turbo asks for the beans every week - sometimes every day. He scoops, pours, sorts, fills, glues, slides, transfers and more. This post about sorting and this post with our art work are only a few of the many, many times these beans have been used since September.

Yep, September, these things have Staying Power! That's what I need in all my toys. Who knew this $3 bag of beans would buy me more time than....well almost anything except his $1 music erasers and his keyboard.

While at the Dollar Tree recently, I saw this Gumball machine and it just screamed to be used with the beans. It was a HIT. He loves to move the lever and see the beans rush out. It's terrific practice for him to put the beans back inside - patience, fine motor skills - all good.

R is for...

2009-12-02T15:00:00.000-08:00

ROLL OVER!! Evidently Sweet Pea's in on this being R week. She rolled over for the first time today. Tummy to back over her right hand side. She was so close for about 3 minutes so I grabbed my camera and was able to get it on video!! HOORRAY. She didn't seem all that surprised to have rolled. Such a cool cat. She did it another couple times right after.

Then we had company and too many little feet running around so she didn't stay on the floor for long. Can't wait to see if she'll do it again tomorrow. I don't know if I'm ready for her to start moving her self around yet. Ha, I don't know if Turbo will be ready for that either. This is the first step to her getting into all his toys.

In the video I say she's 4 months old today, but she's 17 weeks today. She'll be 4 months on Friday. Yep, tired.

Hans Hoffman Inspired Art

2009-11-30T20:51:00.000-08:00

Hans Hoffman is the inspiration for this week at Open Ended Art. I created a collage of Hoffman's work and posted it on the wall in Turbo's playroom. We also looked at Hoffman art on the computer. Turbo looked at 10 or more pieces (a new record) and really enjoyed identifying colors and shapes on the art. His favorites were Autumn Gold and Landscape.

The supplies were paper, cut rectangles of various colors and sizes and a new painting tool - the roller. Oh my, he was in heaven!! He had so much fun painting with that roller!
He painted....

and painted...

and painted.

MUCH to my surprise he got his hands in the paint. It started with squishing the roller then proceeded to full finger painting!!

This is hysterical because he does not like paint on his hands (at all!!) and I've been wanting to make handprint painted turkeys all month. He absolutely would not do it - even when Daddy and I both did. Now that he's broken the ice, I'm hopefull he'll do it again!

Overwhelmed and making adjustments

2009-11-28T21:40:00.000-08:00

I've been a bit overwhelmed with Rick's seemingly non-stop travel and the added responsibilities of the new baby. It has been challenging to work in all the daily duties, our classes, playgroups, playdates and our tot-school activities. An extra pair of parental hands helps so much and I miss it when they're gone. My heart goes out to the military wives who have husbands deployed. They are true heroes in my book.

Until a class ended last week, we've only had 1 morning a week open. That quickly got filled with errands and such. There just hasn't been enough time to do all the things I wanted to with Turbo and Sweet Pea. It's funny how just one short activity outside the house can require an additional hour or more for getting ready, commuting to and from, then getting settled at home again. Mornings are golden hours for learning and they've been disappearing during the week.

I've learned so much from all my TotSchool peers here in bloggy-land that I'm more confident than ever in my ability to teach and productivly play with my kids. I no longer feel like I need to have several classes to keep my kid(s) occupied. I know I can do that myself! 2010 is going to be a terrific year.

That being said, I've decided to cut back on outside activities next year. We won't be doing Mommy and Me preschool since the class wasn't well managed and the activities required so much parental involvement - I ended up doing several myself (and I'm ALL for the openness of art.). We have two playgroups each week and I'll have to see how it works out. At this point I think I'll skip one playgroup day(each) per month. I'm sad to say I will likely drop MOPS this time around too. That will give us at 2 or 3 open mornings each week. Music Together is the only class we're keeping, because Turbo absolutely loves it. In addition, it's the only class that is targeted for ages 0 - 5 in the same class - and actually works well!

I'm excited about our upcoming TotSchool week. I have a lot on our plan and hope to accomplish most of it. When we first started TotSchool, I was doing a letter of the week. We're getting back to that with the letter R ~ inspired by a Rainbow we saw on Friday.

Stay tuned for some fun posts this week. I have several coming up....including a little gift sent our way!!!!

Are you adjusting your schedule in the new year? What changes are you making?

Life School!

2009-11-24T19:59:00.000-08:00

This past week we had Rick's sister, her husband and their two wonderful girls here for a visit. It was such a special time to share our home and lives with them for a short time. I'm so grateful for Rick's wonderful family and wish that we lived closer to all of them. Turbo was in HEAVEN with his two cousins ages 11 & 7. Both girls were great with him and Sweet Pea. They were a joy to have around and we all miss them already.

As they hadn't been to Northern California before, we spent a couple days in San Francisco and then a couple days closer to home.

Here's some pictures of all our fun! (When I finally find my camera, I can post pictures of our other adventures / activities.)

Turbo and the two girls.

Almost everyone (Brother in law is taking the picture & Sweet Pea and I are at home)

In one of the cells on Alcatraz

Just hanging around

Our weekly Music Together class

Me, Turbo and the girls making spin art and marble paintings (SOO FUN!!!). Turbo was not at all interested in doing the art - he wanted to wash dishes in the sink. It worked out perfectly!

I'll find my camera soon - I hope. Pictures on my iPhone just don't cut it for the blog!! So happy to be back after our little break!

Kids Bathroom Decor

2009-11-19T22:32:00.000-08:00

The bathroom next to Turbo's new room needed some kid decor in a bad way. Until he moved into his new room, all his teeth brushing and such was done in our Master Bath - so the hallway bath hadn't been a priority. Ages ago I found this idea and decided it was time to just get it down. Here's the new pictures.

Super cute shower curtain, matching towels, a couple themed accessories and a Bulletin Board Under Sea Life pack from the school supply store (laminated) = DONE! No painting required (thank the Lord!)

Turbo had so much fun placing some of the sea creatures and telling me where the others should go. Great thing is we can move them around or swap them out easily. Seriously fun!

Walk, Run or take a Bus - Get to a Toys R Us!

2009-11-10T21:46:00.000-08:00

Can you feel the heat? That's because this is a smokin' hot deal on Hasbro Games.

Toys R Us has great games for $3.99, $7.99 or $9.99. If that wasn't sweet enough, you can score extra savings!

Spend $25+ on these games & TRU will give you a $10 gift card!
Hasbro has a rebate offer of at least $2 for most of the sale games.

Here's what I did.
Purchase #1
7 of the $3.99 games that are also on Rebate - (See my game list below)
Total $27.93
$10 gift card
$14 rebate
= $3.93 ($0.56 per game!!!)

Purchase #2
2 $9.99 games and 2 $3.99 games (that are also on rebate See my game list below)
Total $27.96
$10 gift card
$8 rebate
= $9.97 ($2.49 per game!)

* They say your gift card will be activated in 6 hours, but mine worked right away on my second purchase.

All in all I purchased these 11 games (there are others available!) for $13.90. WOOHOOO!!

$3.99 games:
Ants in the Pants
Cootie
Don't Spill the Beans
Don't Break the Ice
Hi-Ho-Cherry-o (x2)
Candyland
Chutes and Ladders
Memory (all versions)

$9.99 games
Scrabble
Connect 4

Between this deal and the Weekly Reader Deal, my gift closet is stocked for all those birthday parties next year.

Correction & Praise

2009-11-08T07:26:00.000-08:00

While these are usually two sides of the same coin, I try to make praise my 'go-to' side. As most kids, Turbo learns the best through praise, praise and more praise. Lately, I've started creating opportunity for that praise. Here's an example.

Turbo had been taking off his diaper during nap, then playing and finally peeing in his bed. This went on for weeks, almost everyday. I was never mad about it. I just spoke to him several times about not taking off his diaper (blah, blah, blah), then washed the sheets. I tried putting his diaper on backwards and that worked for a week. Then I decided to potty train. I didn't know what else to do and didn't think he should be punished for removing his diaper. Turbo got sick and we had to postpone the training. With Rick out of town and company coming, we now couldn't do it until Dec or Jan. So, I came up with a different approach - Create an opportunity for him to "do" what I wanted and praise him for it.

I decided to 'catch' him with his diaper on. I put him down for his nap and went back in after 10 minutes (since he was still playing). His diaper was off, but no pee. I made a big, happy deal about there not being any pee in his bed, put his diaper/clothes on reminded him to keep his diaper on then laid him back down. He continued playing. I went in after another 10 minutes. His diaper was on! To say I made a big deal would be an understatement. I looked like a lunatic - cheering, jumping, hooting, hollering, spinning, shouting "YEA Turbo", picking him up and swinging him around. All because he left his diaper on. You should have seen his face. He was beaming with pride, smiling ear to ear and cheering along with me. I set out to catch him in the act of doing what I wanted. It's a small change in tactic, but one that's really working for us.

Guess what, every day since then he's left his diaper on. Every single day. The first thing he says when I get him is "YEA! I left diaper on!!" every time. And I praise him for it.

The words we use with our children live in their hearts and minds. They genuinely want to please us and live for our acceptance and approval. Sometimes catching them in the act of being good is the best motivator.

I have a lot to learn about being a good parent, picking the right battles and making the right choices for correction. Some days I do better than others. Typically I'm at my worst when I'm tired and we're in a new place where I'm distracted. He's curious and wants to find/test the limits of the new location and I'm trying to keep up with him, manage Sweet Pea and talk/shop whatever. I just need to avoid that situation when I'm too tired to handle things correctly. (what, I'm NOT superwoman? LOL~Nope!) So, it's nice to have a strategy that work and builds up my son, his confidence, his security and our relationship.

I was inspired to write this by a post at Tired, Need Sleep. She's reading The Minds of Boys and wrote up some tid-bits on Love and Learning. It's interesting to see how the two are tied together. She has a great blog, so check out her other posts while you're there.

Tot School

2009-11-07T22:23:00.000-08:00

Cross Off Game: Formerly known as Number Race, it was renamed by Turbo. He loved this game. We rolled the die, counted the dots and crossed off one shape next to the number rolled. Similar to this activity. I love that I had Turbo focusing on marking one spot on the paper. After about 10 rolls, he was done counting dots. We switched to using cards and we finished the paper.

Then we sorted the cards (You can use any cards at all - we used crazy 8 cards, you can even make your own)

We sorted things by their beginning letter. It was soooo difficult to find something to use for J. Thankfully I hadn't put away our Halloween stuff yet, so I had a Jack-o-lantern. I purposely used items from the house and mostly his toys to continue associating the letter sounds with our everyday things.

Drawing - he was calling out all the letters he was 'writing'. So so cute.

Color Round up! - He get so excited to start the activity, but quickly get distracted while looking through the toys. We have a ton of things with red. Here's what we gathered before he was completely onto something new.

Our New Game - Lucky Duck. My friend Christy gave this to us (THANK YOU!) and he plays it many time a day. While we were playing this game with Daddy, Sweet Pea laughed for the first time! Oh sweet music to my ears. We were all there to see and hear it!!

Cleaning with feathers - next week is feathers for Open Ended Art. I bought the duster at the dollar tree. Turbo is having a lot of fun with it before we dismantle it for our project.

Singing Yankee Doddle - "...feather in his cap..." Me, I'm LMAO! I'm so happy I had the camera handy.

Of course we did Open Ended Art, check out our Matisse inspired art.

Check out our 5 Senses Pumpkin Activity

To see what other families are doing - visit these two weekly linkys and be inspired!
1+1+1=1 and My Family Forever

Pumpkins and 5 senses

2009-11-07T21:57:00.000-08:00

I wanted to do a 5 senses pumpkin activity with Turbo for weeks. This week we finally had time!

While Turbo was napping, I put our workmat on the kitchen floor with the pumpkin in the middle. When we came down he was immediately interested. "why is the pumpkin there, what are we doing, why is the desk on the play mat...."

We sat next to the pumpkin, I told him he had 5 senses and asked if he wanted to use them. I played a guessing game to introduce the senses. "Ok, here's number one, can you guess what it is?" Then point to my ear. Of course he said ear and I said, "Yes, and the ear hears things. Hearing is a sense." We did all five very quickly.

Then we went through the 5 senses while exploring the outside of our pumpkin. For instance, I asked him to touch the pumpkin and how it felt. If he didn't give an answer right away, I asked leading questions "does it feel smooth, sticky, rough, soft etc." Then he would say yes/no. I asked him to guess what it tasted like since I didn't want him licking the outside of the pumpkin.

His answers:
TOUCH: Smooth, soft*, hard, bumpy, heavy. Stem was rough and poky
SMELL: good and dirty (um, ok)
HEARING: quiet and butter (I'm at a loss on that one)
SIGHT: round and orange
TASTE: he projected it would taste sweet.
* I made a mental note to explain the difference between smooth and soft as he described pumpkin skin as both.

After his exploration and a good game of Pumpkin rolling, I asked what he thought was inside it. He said toys! To show me he got a little toy and put the pumpkin on top.

After carving it open, Turbo pulled off the top and said "There are SEEDS, Lots and lots of seeds. Toys, nope."

He spent TONS of time scooping out seeds! When he was done with scooping out, he scooped them back in.

Then we talked about the 5 senses again for the inside of the pumpkin:
TOUCH: Slimy (this was his word, he said it so matter of factually)
SMELL: Good
Hearing: Quiet
Sight: Messy
Taste: Yummy. I gave him a very tiny sliver of raw pumpkin.

Carving a pumpkin face isn't something I wanted my 2 year old doing. Since things work out better on activities where he's the primary doer and I'm the observer, we saved that for next year. I gave him a marker and he was happy as could be!! He also learned about smearing.

Good thing I waited until we had time. We spent 75 minutes on this one! Seriously, we've never ever spent this long on any single themed activity before. I even ended it before he was showing signs of being done. Got to love Open Ended toys!!

Inspired by Henri Matisse

2009-11-04T14:19:00.000-08:00

This week's Open Ended Art theme is the artist Henri Matisse. After reviewing his art, I chose to do something like Le Gerbe. I bought a leaf punch and we set to work.

The punch required a bit of arm muscle, so I held the paper while Turbo used two hands on the punch. When he first started, he couldn't get the punch without a little help from me. Then he figured out the leverage and pressure and was able to do it by himself with just stabilization help. He absolutely loved punching the paper!

He's never used a glue stick before. I'm not sure he realized it was glue - he likely thought it was a fat purple crayon!

Then the experience went a bit south. It was completely my doing. My sweet Turbo was experimenting with his materials (as we always do), fiddling with the punch and crumpling his leaves with happiness. Me, I sat and got frustrated ("don't do that" was heard more than once). I tried to encourage him (ok, told him in a frustrated voice) to place his leaves... It was everything I could do to keep my paws off his art. This is the first time I've felt this way about our projects. Probably because it's the first time I've really had an expectation of the outcome. Plus, I really liked my idea - found a great art, bought a new tool....so I'm sure there was a bit of ego investment.

He did a terrific job, but it wasn't the art he wanted to create. I was a bit too involved and invested on this one. Of course I'll have a lot more chances to practice and improve. Good learning experience for the Mommy today.

Go visit Mommies Wise Little Bookworms to see some other Matisse inspired art! Then join in!

Tot School

2009-11-01T22:02:00.000-08:00

Turbo is 28 months. Sweet Pea is 12 weeks.

We had a terrific and week. It was busy with activites and Halloween parties, still we were able to get in a good amount of Tot School. Here some of the highlights.

Our Art Journal - We started an Art Journal. You can read all about it here.

We played with our bugs a lot this week. Here Turbo is transferring and identifying all the bugs.

Honestly, I thought this would be a hit. Hiding his bugs in a container of rice. He loves the sensory aspect of working with rice and he loves his bugs. Good combo, right? Nope. It was like pulling teeth to get him to remove all his bugs. Go figure.

We quickly moved on...to beans. He asked to scoop and pour, but ended up dumping them out and sorting. 30 minutes!! Yes, 30 and I ended the activity because it was time for dinner. I seriously am in love with these beans right now.

Walking while balancing a pasta on a spoon. I've learned that he is not very interested in doing an activity if he doesn't get it right away. This was one of those activites. It required a lot of instruction and encouragement from me to keep him engaged in this. It was worth it. He learned a lot and was very, very proud of himself each time he made it to the destination.

Problem Solving - I'm driving, he and Sweet Pea are in their carseats. The sun is right in his eyes and he's yelling "TOO BRIGHT" over and over. I tell him to close his eyes or look away. He continues yelling. Then he's quiet. I look back. He's obviously assessed his surroundings and found a solution. He took Sweet Pea's blanket off her car seat and used it to cover his head. I was very proud. Thankfully Sweet Pea still faces backwards so she was fine.

Piano Playing by Elivs :-)

Pinata fun. He did fairly well with hitting the target too.

Soap Play - this was an *ahem* unscheduled activity. He decided to dump out all the liquid baby soap I'd left within his reach (opps) while I changed Sweet Pea's diaper. Not to let it go completely to waste, we learned about the thick texture of soap, how to rub it and get it foamy, we made letters and drawings in our soap, then 'erased' them and of course some cleaning practice.

Nature Bracelet - This was a BLAST! I put a wide Masking Tape (you could also use packing tape or painters tape), sticky side out around his wrist to make a braclet. Then we went on a Nature Walk. He stuck different things onto his bracelet. Some things were too large or heavy and fell off. We talked about why that happened. He loved this activity and is asking for it a lot now.

Circle Time - Most every day, we gather his stuffed animals and Sweet Pea to have circle time where we sing a bit and read stories. While we sing and read a lot through out the day, there's something special about circle time. It's so heartwarming and fun to see Turbo absolutely in love with Sweet Pea.

Kite Flying - Windy days = Kite! Check out my post here for a quick paper kite tutorial.

Color Round-up. We did Black this week. Turbo had a terrific time and has a great eye. I first saw this idea at 1+1+1=1.

Open Ended Art - This week was pumpkins. Check out what we did here.

To see what others are doing with their kids head over to 1+1+1=1 and My Family Forever (yep, found another terrific site that hosts a link up - go check it out!!)

Pumpkin Painting

2009-10-31T22:29:00.000-07:00

Another fun Open Ended Art project. This week was Pumpkins. Yep, anything goes as long as it's related to pumpkins. We had a couple small pumpkins from our visit to the patch. We decided to paint one! Turbo loved the idea and worked with great focus and interest in the project.

I realized up until now, we've done all of our painting on objects made for painting - paper, craft items etc. I can't remember having him paint something not made for paint. Open Ended Art has helped me think outside the box with our art. Go visit Mommies Wise Little Bookworms and get inspired too!

Blustery days & Kite Tutorial

2009-10-31T14:15:00.000-07:00

We had a very windy day this week ~ So we made a kite.

I don't have pictures of us flying it. Turbo needed help to get it going and we were having so much fun that I forgot to take another picture.

We made kites several times last year and they are always quick and easy. Here's how you can make your own!

Supplies:
Sheet of copy paper
8" rod (Straw or wooden skewer)
Ribbon (use regular ribbon, crape paper, cut plastic bag) Ideally about 6' - but don't let it stop you if you have less.
6'+ String (yarn, string etc)
Spool for string (papertowel/TP tube, large plastic spice jar (like sprinkles))
Scissors
Hole Punch
Tape

Directions:
Figure 1: Fold the paper in half
Figure 2: Fold top sheet on a diagonal - 1/2" from the fold at the top to 3" at the bottom.
Figure 3: Tape
Figure 4: Tape down rod item (we used a straw cut to size)
Figure 5: Tape down ribbon (I didn't have long enough ribbon, so I used what I had)
Figure 6: Straighten out the back fin. Hole punch about 1/3 down from top and attach string (we used yarn). Wind remaining string around spool item (we used a Toilet paper tube.)

photo: http://www.ntsb.gov/Kids_Site/play/fan_clip_image001.jpg

Art Journal & Free Photo Book

2009-10-30T23:02:00.001-07:00

As I was looking through Turbo's older art, I realized again just how much his drawings and paintings have changed. The first pictures were clumsy swipes and dots - (ok, he was really just banging the crayon...but they were still dots.) I smile remembering those first drawings and how often more crayon in his mouth than on the paper!

I want to document the ongoing progression of his art in a way that's easy to look back on it. I have two great ideas!

#1 - Art Journal. What a great way to have a single source of his drawings in a way that is easily stored, reviewed and preserved! It will be so fun to turn the pages and see his art evolve and take shape into pictures of his life, experiences and thoughts.

Using a Michaels craft store 40% coupon, I purchased a hard-bound book with blank pages. You can also find these at many book stores. Each month he'll draw in the book. I'll date it and eventually ask him to write his name on the paper. What a great way to see his signature evolve too! We started today.

#2 - Photo Book - I'll take pictures of his arts and crafts through out the year and then put them in a photo book. It's a great way to preserve but not keep all of his work. My favorite place to make books is Shutterfly. They have the best templates, are super user friendly and have great quality. Use this Shutterfly link to get your free Photo Book. If you go there directly, the promo code is: UR48-4V38-GZB3-4Z1A7. The offer expires 11/30/09, so get over there soon. It's FREE - think Christmas gift, birthday gift or keep it! You could make a timeline book - say highlights of 2008 or 2009. You can also make a theme book - say the last 6 years of family Thanksgivings (easter, summer vacations, birthdays, crafts, nature activities - whatever!)

shutterfly.com picture

Have any other ideas? What are you doing to keep your child(ren)'s art?

Little Bunny Foo Foo

2009-10-30T00:11:00.000-07:00

This song is by the lead singer of Toad the Wet Sprocket and it totally rocks. Such a hip version of a childhood song. Although be warned, you can't get it out of your head!

Turbo and I have been reading the Little Bunny Foo Foo library book and listening to this song almost every day. We hop around, chase each other and even pretend to BOP the field mice. Mostly he likes when he's Bunny Foo Foo and I'm the good fairy. (A little real-life reenactment.)

<a href="http://glenphillips.bandcamp.com/track/little-bunny-foo-foo">Little Bunny Foo Foo by Glen Phillips</a>

Thanks to Mommies Wise Little Bookworms for sharing this!

KERPLUNK

2009-10-29T02:01:00.000-07:00

Kerplunk. That is the sound one tiny turd makes when dropping into the potty - Oh sweet music!

On his own, Turbo decided to pee and poop in the potty tonight. Just in time as we're potty training him on Saturday. Why? See here and here for a couple reasons. (the diaper fix didn't last long and pushed me over the edge) All the talk about it this week has made him so excited that he didn't want to wait!

I didn't have my camera (lucky readers), so here's a picture of Turbo on the potty in February. He never went, but it was a cute photo-op.