Happy Mother's Day!

I'm enjoying a quiet, uneventful, mother's day with the two sweet kiddos who made me a mommy!  What a special way to celebrate.

Dentist

Logan had her first "real" dentist appointment this week.  We took her last year but it was a very basic, preliminary look at her teeth.  This time she got a full cleaning and had a big visit with the dentist.

We love the dentist we've got here!  Dr. Buddy is so fantastic with kids.  If you're in the WF/Raleigh area, I would send you to Triangle Pediatric Dentistry in a heartbeat.  They had me fill out a questionnaire prior to coming about her interests.  So, while he was checking her teeth he kept describing different princesses that he was finding in her teeth and having her guess which ones he was talking about.  They were protecting her teeth against the cavity monsters.  :)  It was fantastic and put her so at ease.  At the end of his visit with her he painted crowns (fluoride) on for the princesses and all she could talk about for days were the crowns that were on her teeth.  

At the end of the appointment they gave her a big girl token and let her go put it in a prize machine of her choice.  Of course, she beelined for the princess one.  When she turned the nob an got the ring out she looked at me and said, "I love this, but I'd like to have my money back, please."  Maybe we need to start a piggy bank for her.

She came home with a great report, no cavities, super clean teeth!  We'll head back in about 6 months for another checkup.

P.S. We didn't do any pre-schooling this week.  Mike was home a little more than normal this week and since he's leaving next week we spent a little extra time with him.  We'll study the letter I in the coming week and she's itching to get started!

Preschooling: Week 2, Letter E

Week 2 is almost complete.  We will finish up with our letter for the ABC book this afternoon.  This week we had a few new, fun activities.  Logan's favorite was the color by number we did:

We've tried color by numbers in the past and they've always flopped.  The concept was a little over her head so we put them away for several months and I was a little nervous when I saw this one on the lesson plan.  But, something clicked and she knew just what to do!  She was so proud of the finished product she hung it on the refrigerator herself to show anyone who comes over.

We made a fun purchase this week for preschool, too!  We've been looking for an alphabet mat of some sort and we've also been looking for a replacement foam mat for our porch and when we saw this one, it fit both qualifications.  It's fantastic, Brody can play outside without scratching up his knees and Logan and I can work on identifying letters.  She likes to jump on random letters that are called out and then say their sound as she hops on them.

We also hit a big milestone this week!  Logan has had the ability to write her own name for a while, but usually she can only do it after several, several promptings to practice.  I also usually need to be around to remind her what the letter shapes are to help her out.  BUT, I walked out on the porch yesterday and found she had done this all on her own:

 (we'll ignore the fact that it's on two different lines--she's still having a hard time making the letter L small enough to fit the rest)

She is getting too big, too fast!  She continues to love preschooling and asks to do it all the time.  She can't wait to get Brody down for his morning naps so that she can get to work.  I'm so glad she's developing a healthy love for learning!

This week I found that independent activities were what worked best for Logan.  The activities where I had to stand over her and help her were not her favorites.  She loved the ones that I explained and then left her to do, I think she really liked being able to show me that she had gotten things done on her own.  

We did not make it to the library again this week.  But we did work to find books that had the letter E in the title (not hard) and also found letter E on the words on the pages. I wish I had made it out to get the book list, but we had bad colds at the beginning of the week and it threw everything off.  Thankfully, we have almost all of the books here on the list for this coming week so I don't even have to bother with it!

Our Very Own Splash Park

The summer that I was pregnant with Brody, we went to the splash park/wading pool a LOT.  It was hot, we needed relief and it was the perfect place for it.  Last year, we went a few times.  Brody was still an infant and so I'd go during his naptime and lay him in the shade.  This year I doubt we'll make it out there much at all.  Brody rarely sits still, he's not walking, and I think trips to places like that are just out of the question for us until he's a little older.  

Thankfully, we have a few neighbors with little ones in our building and we've pooled together (no pun intended) to get several water items for the kids to use in our little "yard."  We've even rigged it so that we can hook a hose up to our sinks so that we can fill our water toys without lugging buckets of water down (like we did a couple of times last year).

We were so excited about the hose hook up because it's also allowed us to get sprinkler toys!

Crazy hair: 

 Logan loves the sprinkler, she asks for it at least once an hour, all day long.

 Brody hates the big pool.  He refuses to even put his toes in it.  When you hold him over it, his legs curl up into fetal position and he just screams until you get him away from it.  Prior to the sprinkler, you could find Brody playing in the mud puddles created by the hose (all boy, I tell you).

 The sprinkler was the perfect alternative to the pool for B, though!  He can play in the water on his terms.

 All of the kids in the building are loving the cool activities that the water toys provide in this 95+ degree heat!

 The sprinkler even opened the door to the baby pool for B and he actually sat in it for a while on Friday.

It seems crazy that it's already (pretty much) summer! 

Preschooling: Week 1, Letter A

Our first week of preschooling was  raging success, if I do say so myself!  Logan actually had so much fun that she began to ask to do school activities whenever we had a free moment.  

I probably went a little overboard on the laminating this week.  There were some activities that it was really helpful to have laminated and others that we could have done without.  I'll definitely make note of this for future weeks.  

Thankfully, she was only bored with the color activity.  She knows all of her colors and actually knows their different shades, too, so having to identify the colors was a little below her skill level.  I'll probably leave those out of future weeks or adapt them so they're a little more on her level.

She loved the letter tracing activity.  We purchased some dry erase crayons for her to use with these and they were a big hit.  I'm so glad I don't have to deal with the mess of the actual dry erase markers and these are such a great solution.

The culminating activity every week is creating an art project to go in her ABC binder.  This week she made an alligator A.  I did the cutting but she put all the glue and pasted each thing on the paper all by herself.  

She also really loved the number recognition game.  She laid out all of the numbers and I called one out at a time.  She found the number, jumped on it and then picked it up and put it to the side.  

The main  book we'll be reading throughout the course is "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom."  It's a great alphabet book.  We made our own Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree and put it on our wall.  We'll be adding letters to it every week.  This week, obviously, we added the letter A!

The one thing this week that I wish I had done was go to the library and get the recommended reading books.  There's a great list of books for each letter that comes with the curriculum and I had every intention of getting over to the library to pick some up this week and just failed to get there.  So, next week, I'll make sure to go out of my way to get the books.  We did read a lot, but I'd like to have some more reading that's integrated with what letter we're studying for the week.  

Quick Update

There's not a whole lot going on around our house right now.  Daddy is really busy with school/work/Army so we've been finding ways to keep entertained.  I found some old toys that were in the kids' closet and Brody attached himself to the Mickey Mouse.  He calls him, "key! key!" and has started to sleep with him nightly now.  It's really sweet.

The kids are growing like weeds.  Brody still looks like a baby to me, but every little ounce of toddler I used to see in my little girl is no longer there.  She's all little girl now.  It's such a bittersweet feeling to watch your kids grow up.  

It's also really hard to get any pictures of Logan, anymore.  She doesn't see the need to look at the camera and smile--she thinks it's silly and unnecessary.  That's why I have so many more pictures of her brother, who still cooperates.

I'm sure he'll hit this time, too, so I'm going to enjoy the sweet little smiles for now.

And every once and a while with Brody I get a glimpse of little boy and less baby...like in this picture:

Can't we just freeze time for a little while?  Do they really have to get bigger?

Preschooling: Prepping the Curriculum

Today was a big day in our house!  We've officially started preschooling (pre-school + homeschooling= preschooling).  We've dabbled in preschool activities here and there in the last year, but it was time to start something a little more routine.  I've been researching different preschool curriculums for the last several months, and really just stumbled on the one that we've started using last week.  I had intended to go a completely different direction when I found this one--just by reading a blog post the girl who creates the curriculum had written.

I'm planning on blogging through our preschooling experience to keep records of what works, what doesn't and to keep track of what different things Logan is learning each week.  I'll label the posts Preschooling: ------- so that if you're not interested, you can just scroll on down.  Though, I will promise to post pictures of the cute preschooler in action, so you may just want to follow along for those.  

My first post is going to about the planning/choosing the curriculum.  I've decided to use the Pre-K curriculum over at Confessions of a Homeschooler.   I have pretty extensively researched homeschooling preschool curriculums (I'd love to be a resource for you if you're looking for one) and this one fit all of our needs and our budget.  Things I was looking for: something that fit in easily with our daily schedule, something that covered all subject area, something that fit in our budget, something fun, something that didn't have a lot of workbook work, and something that was easy to follow.  I also really wanted something that had some sort of Biblical curriculum-- this has a verse of the week included, however, I'm looking at creating more of my own curriculum for this area because we really don't like the idea of straight Bible memorization without any context.  More on that in further posts.  I love that the curriculum comes from someone who blogs about it because I have the added benefit of being able to reference her posts when I may have a question/etc.  She also is easy to contact if I have questions/need advice.  

Now, she has most of her printables available free on her blog.  She also offers to send them all to you, plus several extras, if you purchase the curriculum for $10.  Let me tell you--it's totally worth every penny.  Along with having all of the things you need in a couple of files, she also includes detailed lesson plans for the entire 26 week curriculum.  Everything is laid out plain and clear for me so all I have to do is follow along.  It wouldn't be hard for me to come up with lesson plans, I'm a teacher, so it really is second nature to me, BUT I also have two young children and to be able to take that out of the equation makes things so much easier.

So, I set the printer up and went to town.  I also borrowed a laminating machine and did quite a bit of laminating. I'd like to be able to keep a lot of the activities so that we can review them or even so I can use them in the future.  Aren't they pretty?

I've only got two weeks worth curriculum printed and set up to go.  My plan is to always stay 2-3 weeks ahead.  I bought this nice little file organizer and set it up for each week so that I can keep them all in one small area.

I will mention that the first 15 minutes of cutting laminated activities is a bit of a stress reliever, but after that it's a little torturous and reminds me of the hours and hours I spent slaving over the melted plastic when I taught first grade.  The memories aren't great.  These brownies were absolutely 100% necessary to my sanity during the two hours I spent cutting, sorting and filing two weeks worth of activities.  They are incredible (1 cookie dough square, 1 Reese's cup and a dollop of brownie mix and you'll never eat plain brownies again...ever).

Today we started our first week and so far, it's gone very well.  We're enthusiastic and excited about this new adventure!  I'll try and post weekly updates sometime on Fridays.  But don't hold me to that.  Remember, I have two small children.  Happy Monday!