COUSINS!

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

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

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

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?

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!

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

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

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

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