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| So, my toddler found a marker ... |
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| Art Days |
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| Art Days |
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| Library animal show |
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| Yes ... that is a rabbit. I didn't know they got that big. |
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| Asleep on a cardboard box |
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| Sailor suit |
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| No ... no more pictures please. :-) |
Monday, September 26, 2016
A Photo Drop ... Just Because
Sunday, September 4, 2016
Our First Week of Homeschooling ... Kind Of
... I say "kind of" because we did our P.E. for the year during the month of August and a bunch of cool educational-ish activities all throughout the summer. But, starting this last week, preschool is in full swing and we're loving it!
First, like I said, all during the month of August we did our P.E. portion of the schoolyear when I got a one-month swimming pool pass and did my best to teach Ellie her first swimming lessons. I had to pay for the pool membership either way, and the formal lessons weren't scheduled at the most convenient times for someone who doesn't have a car available every day, so I read through the beginning toddler's lesson description - 'blowing bubbles, kicking, mostly having fun' - and I figured, "well, I can at least do that." It went ... ok. She didn't drown. Just kidding - it's not as if I would trust her around the water by herself yet, but she's had a decent introduction, which is all I was planning on. We spent more hours with more one-on-one time than she would have had in their group lessons without having to pay for them. And she's gotten more comfortable with it. It's a work in progress, but she got a good start.
I don't have any pictures from the pool, but here she is at the splash pad in the bathing suit I made for her this summer. (The skirt didn't turn out how I wanted, but I think the top and the bottoms under the skirt went well!) She usually wears this one in the indoor pool and has another one with sleeves that she wears outside.
This last week we started preschool in earnest, and she's loving it!
I set it up so that we do only about 1 1/2 hours a day, 3x a week. For preschool I think that's just about right. And then we just try to check out a lot of good library books and attend as many good events in the area as we can, mostly for her to get to socialize (I want to take her to the Provo Library's weekly preschool activities and the Bean Museum's science reading for kids on every Thursday, but this week she was still getting over a cold so we didn't get to go).
For this first year, each week we'll focus on a letter of the alphabet, and then the last few weeks will be alphabet review, vowels vs. consonants, matching capitals with lower-case, writing her own name, etc. for a total of 32 weeks (starting in Kindergarten in 2 years we'll do the average school year of 36 weeks if we're still homeschooling by then). Each week also has a math and science topic as well. This week's topics were the letter A, the primary colors and how they mix to make secondary colors, and counting review (although some of the letter activities covered more science & math skills as well, as you'll see).
Each day at 9 AM we start out with an opening prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the song of the week (this week's song was "Our Primary Colors" from the LDS Primary Children's songbook). I'm debating whether I want to add a scripture of the week or wait until Kindergarten for that. After doing all those things, we get out the fantastic Dollar Tree workbooks I got (no, really, the Dollar store has AWESOME educational stuff, especially for preschool!) and we practice writing the letter of the week with Mommy's help (we have four workbooks on the alphabet - a Winnie the Pooh one, a Mickey Mouse one, a general Disney one, and a Little People one, plus I also got some worksheets from online, and we spread those out over the three days so she gets 1-2 pages of writing practice each day of school). Then after writing practice, we break out some fun activities - mostly around the letter of the week. I found so many great ideas online! This week we did a lot of activities around the theme "A is for Apple." Some of the things we did:
We went "apple picking" around the room for red, green, and yellow "apples," and then we used them to practice counting, sorting, making patterns, & making a bar graph.
We did two separate apple science experiments: first, we cut some apple slices to leave out during school one day and we put lemon juice on one half of them to see how it keeps apples from turning brown. Then, we tried putting an apple and an apple slice into a bowl of water to see whether they would float or sink (they both float).
We also read Dr. Seuss' Ten Apples Up On Top, and then we counted and glued red pom-poms on top of the heads of the three characters from the book (a lion, tiger, and dog that I was able to print out from online). We also did some "apple prints," where we painted apples sliced in half with red tempera paint and stamped them on paper. You can see that project in the corner of this picture - I thought I had gotten a separate picture of the stamped art but apparently I didn't (and no art piece lasts very long around here these days before someone has ripped it up for fun - it's as if the toddler and the baby have decided to take turns with that duty). And she also practiced some cutting by coloring and cutting out an apple, too.
I didn't get pictures of some of these other activities, but we also read a book called Watch Apple Trees Grow from the library and then labeled a picture of apples with the seeds, the flesh, the stem and leaf, and the skin. And we also did another activity where we rolled dice and counted the number we had rolled and then got to count out that many "apple seeds" (chocolate chips) onto a picture of an apple and then we ate them. :-)
For our primary colors experiment, we copied yet another idea I found online where we put a few drops of food coloring hidden inside baking soda and then squirted each container with vinegar and you could see it fizzing in different colors. After the first time we added drops of a 2nd primary color to each container to see how blue turned into purple, red turned into orange, and yellow turned into green, etc.:
We also did a fun random activity where we used Lego duplo blocks to practice symmetry and talked about "balancing" the two sides (pre-algebra, anyone? :-) )
And for math we just did some count-and-match worksheets, some patterns worksheets, and some one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others worksheets that I found online. That's all we'll do for math the first couple of weeks, and then I plan to start her on the other Winnie-the-Pooh and Mickey Mouse workbooks I found at the Dollar Tree on shapes and on writing/counting the numbers 1-10 and so forth.
There were some other coloring pages we did as well, like practicing writing the word "apple" and doing a dot-to-dot that made an apple, and a coloring page of "A is for Animals" as well. And I also have some good preschool memory card games I got from the Dollar Tree (that practice colors and shapes and letters and Bible heroes) that we used for filler when she was getting antsy. But that pretty much sums it up.
This next week we have some good "B is for Bee" and "B is for Bridge" and "B is for Banana Bread" activities lined up. :-) But don't worry, I don't plan to go this much into our curriculum every week - I don't want to make this a homeschooling blog simply because everything I'm doing I got from other wonderful homeschooling blogs or from the Dollar Tree, so I don't really have anything new to share. But my sister-in-law Serena has a great toddler homeschooling blog she's starting up (http://homeschooltoddlers.
In case anyone is wondering, here are some of the other blogs and websites where I got my ideas and worksheets and clip art (this list is by no means exhaustive - there are so many out there! I can get a more organized complete list if anyone's wondering):
http://www.oopseydaisyblog.com/mommy-school
http://teachingmama.org/
http://www.themeasuredmom.com/
http://fromabcstoacts.com/
http://www.worksheetfun.com/
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/ (you can search just for the free stuff)
http://www.growingajeweledrose.com/
http://happyhooligans.ca/
http://www.playdoughtoplato.com/
http://www.homemade-preschool.com/
... basically I started with pinterest and it grew from there. And, like Serena mentions on her blog, Kent's older sister homeschooled her boys and gifted all her curricula to Serena and I, and I'm planning on using some great ideas from her too. I've been putting stuff together for months and I'm still working on filling gaps in the curriculum a few weeks ahead as I go ... and I still need to add in calendar stuff and possibly a scripture for the week at the beginning part of every day. But so far, so good. :-) She's loving every minute of it! And I'm pretty proud of myself - after doing a TON of research as to what other people are doing and what's expected at every age level, I think I pretty much nailed it as far as getting activities just at her level of what's challenging enough and short enough to be interesting but not challenging enough or long enough to be frustrating. I know some days will be better than others - Day 1 this week went spectacularly but then Day 2 she got a little bored, but we saved it. :-) We're happy with it, and we're learning a lot together!
First, like I said, all during the month of August we did our P.E. portion of the schoolyear when I got a one-month swimming pool pass and did my best to teach Ellie her first swimming lessons. I had to pay for the pool membership either way, and the formal lessons weren't scheduled at the most convenient times for someone who doesn't have a car available every day, so I read through the beginning toddler's lesson description - 'blowing bubbles, kicking, mostly having fun' - and I figured, "well, I can at least do that." It went ... ok. She didn't drown. Just kidding - it's not as if I would trust her around the water by herself yet, but she's had a decent introduction, which is all I was planning on. We spent more hours with more one-on-one time than she would have had in their group lessons without having to pay for them. And she's gotten more comfortable with it. It's a work in progress, but she got a good start.
I don't have any pictures from the pool, but here she is at the splash pad in the bathing suit I made for her this summer. (The skirt didn't turn out how I wanted, but I think the top and the bottoms under the skirt went well!) She usually wears this one in the indoor pool and has another one with sleeves that she wears outside.
This last week we started preschool in earnest, and she's loving it!
I set it up so that we do only about 1 1/2 hours a day, 3x a week. For preschool I think that's just about right. And then we just try to check out a lot of good library books and attend as many good events in the area as we can, mostly for her to get to socialize (I want to take her to the Provo Library's weekly preschool activities and the Bean Museum's science reading for kids on every Thursday, but this week she was still getting over a cold so we didn't get to go).
For this first year, each week we'll focus on a letter of the alphabet, and then the last few weeks will be alphabet review, vowels vs. consonants, matching capitals with lower-case, writing her own name, etc. for a total of 32 weeks (starting in Kindergarten in 2 years we'll do the average school year of 36 weeks if we're still homeschooling by then). Each week also has a math and science topic as well. This week's topics were the letter A, the primary colors and how they mix to make secondary colors, and counting review (although some of the letter activities covered more science & math skills as well, as you'll see).
Each day at 9 AM we start out with an opening prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the song of the week (this week's song was "Our Primary Colors" from the LDS Primary Children's songbook). I'm debating whether I want to add a scripture of the week or wait until Kindergarten for that. After doing all those things, we get out the fantastic Dollar Tree workbooks I got (no, really, the Dollar store has AWESOME educational stuff, especially for preschool!) and we practice writing the letter of the week with Mommy's help (we have four workbooks on the alphabet - a Winnie the Pooh one, a Mickey Mouse one, a general Disney one, and a Little People one, plus I also got some worksheets from online, and we spread those out over the three days so she gets 1-2 pages of writing practice each day of school). Then after writing practice, we break out some fun activities - mostly around the letter of the week. I found so many great ideas online! This week we did a lot of activities around the theme "A is for Apple." Some of the things we did:
We went "apple picking" around the room for red, green, and yellow "apples," and then we used them to practice counting, sorting, making patterns, & making a bar graph.
We also read Dr. Seuss' Ten Apples Up On Top, and then we counted and glued red pom-poms on top of the heads of the three characters from the book (a lion, tiger, and dog that I was able to print out from online). We also did some "apple prints," where we painted apples sliced in half with red tempera paint and stamped them on paper. You can see that project in the corner of this picture - I thought I had gotten a separate picture of the stamped art but apparently I didn't (and no art piece lasts very long around here these days before someone has ripped it up for fun - it's as if the toddler and the baby have decided to take turns with that duty). And she also practiced some cutting by coloring and cutting out an apple, too.
I didn't get pictures of some of these other activities, but we also read a book called Watch Apple Trees Grow from the library and then labeled a picture of apples with the seeds, the flesh, the stem and leaf, and the skin. And we also did another activity where we rolled dice and counted the number we had rolled and then got to count out that many "apple seeds" (chocolate chips) onto a picture of an apple and then we ate them. :-)
For our primary colors experiment, we copied yet another idea I found online where we put a few drops of food coloring hidden inside baking soda and then squirted each container with vinegar and you could see it fizzing in different colors. After the first time we added drops of a 2nd primary color to each container to see how blue turned into purple, red turned into orange, and yellow turned into green, etc.:
We also did a fun random activity where we used Lego duplo blocks to practice symmetry and talked about "balancing" the two sides (pre-algebra, anyone? :-) )
And for math we just did some count-and-match worksheets, some patterns worksheets, and some one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others worksheets that I found online. That's all we'll do for math the first couple of weeks, and then I plan to start her on the other Winnie-the-Pooh and Mickey Mouse workbooks I found at the Dollar Tree on shapes and on writing/counting the numbers 1-10 and so forth.
There were some other coloring pages we did as well, like practicing writing the word "apple" and doing a dot-to-dot that made an apple, and a coloring page of "A is for Animals" as well. And I also have some good preschool memory card games I got from the Dollar Tree (that practice colors and shapes and letters and Bible heroes) that we used for filler when she was getting antsy. But that pretty much sums it up.
This next week we have some good "B is for Bee" and "B is for Bridge" and "B is for Banana Bread" activities lined up. :-) But don't worry, I don't plan to go this much into our curriculum every week - I don't want to make this a homeschooling blog simply because everything I'm doing I got from other wonderful homeschooling blogs or from the Dollar Tree, so I don't really have anything new to share. But my sister-in-law Serena has a great toddler homeschooling blog she's starting up (http://homeschooltoddlers.
In case anyone is wondering, here are some of the other blogs and websites where I got my ideas and worksheets and clip art (this list is by no means exhaustive - there are so many out there! I can get a more organized complete list if anyone's wondering):
http://www.oopseydaisyblog.com/mommy-school
http://teachingmama.org/
http://www.themeasuredmom.com/
http://fromabcstoacts.com/
http://www.worksheetfun.com/
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/ (you can search just for the free stuff)
http://www.growingajeweledrose.com/
http://happyhooligans.ca/
http://www.playdoughtoplato.com/
http://www.homemade-preschool.com/
... basically I started with pinterest and it grew from there. And, like Serena mentions on her blog, Kent's older sister homeschooled her boys and gifted all her curricula to Serena and I, and I'm planning on using some great ideas from her too. I've been putting stuff together for months and I'm still working on filling gaps in the curriculum a few weeks ahead as I go ... and I still need to add in calendar stuff and possibly a scripture for the week at the beginning part of every day. But so far, so good. :-) She's loving every minute of it! And I'm pretty proud of myself - after doing a TON of research as to what other people are doing and what's expected at every age level, I think I pretty much nailed it as far as getting activities just at her level of what's challenging enough and short enough to be interesting but not challenging enough or long enough to be frustrating. I know some days will be better than others - Day 1 this week went spectacularly but then Day 2 she got a little bored, but we saved it. :-) We're happy with it, and we're learning a lot together!
Thursday, March 10, 2016
February, plus a baby blessing and dentist visit...
Little Kent is getting big! He's such an easy baby. This is him growing up during February:
Tummy time:
Sleeping with Abuelita:
And playing with Grandpa Nelson:
And just hanging out in the onesie Mommy made:
Ellie has been having a lot of fun lately being a big sister and having so much family to visit:
Little boy had his baby blessing a couple of weeks ago. We had Kent's Uncle Keven and Aunt Carol come, and my sister Lauren with her hubby Josh and their baby Zoey, plus Kent's parents who were visiting. He slept through the whole thing, and didn't wake up until the very end of sacrament meeting. :-)
Then today Ellie had her first ever dentist appointment. She was a little apprehensive at first, but there were no tears! The dentist and hygienist pronounced all 20 pearly-whites to be beautiful and healthy.
(Little boy waiting for his big sister at the dentist):
Tummy time:
Sleeping with Abuelita:
And playing with Grandpa Nelson:
And just hanging out in the onesie Mommy made:
Ellie has been having a lot of fun lately being a big sister and having so much family to visit:
Little boy had his baby blessing a couple of weeks ago. We had Kent's Uncle Keven and Aunt Carol come, and my sister Lauren with her hubby Josh and their baby Zoey, plus Kent's parents who were visiting. He slept through the whole thing, and didn't wake up until the very end of sacrament meeting. :-)
(Little boy waiting for his big sister at the dentist):
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Introducing the newest member of the family
We have a new little adventure in our home! - and boy, did he decide to start things out with a sudden bang. Ellie took about 12-13 hours to get to us once labor started - quick for a first baby, but not that amazingly fast. Our little Kent took less than 3 hours from my first contraction; he came too fast for us to even get out of the triage room at the hospital before delivering. But more on that soon; isn't our little boy just the cutest thing ever?!:
And Ellie is such a good big sister! This is when I found her "reading" to him:
But now a quick recap of the birth for anyone who's interested (and this is the only birth story I'll post): I awoke with my first contraction at 3:18 AM and everything seemed to be going at a normal speed at first. But, we arrived at the hospital at 5:25 AM with me seriously starting to panic because I was feeling the baby very low and contractions were getting to be literally on top of one another. I went into full panic mode when they said I was fully dilated with baby at a +2 position already and they started wheeling equipment into the triage room - that's when I realized I wasn't getting an epidural. The doctor (who had to rush there from home) was holding him at 6 AM on the dot after something like 4 pushes (remember, we walked in at 5:25). I didn't know contractions could go from 5 minutes to 2 minutes to 1 minute apart in one car ride.
Giving birth naturally was not an experience I was planning on, and NOT one I hope to repeat! Being able to feel everything does cause some anxiety when you've torn during delivery before. But it was actually worse after the delivery itself, because I had some retained placenta and that ended up being more painful. At least it all happened quickly! And, can I just say this is the 2nd fantastic experience we've had with Intermountain Healthcare in general and Orem Community Hospital specifically - the nurses and doctor were all so amazingly on top of things and sooooo patient with a panicky mom-to-be who was laboring much more quickly than they usually have to deal with! They did a great job of re-focusing me during the delivery, and everyone was so good to me afterward as well. Kent has been so sweet with me and with our little boy, and our ward has spoiled me rotten with meals and a welcome basket. :-)
A few hours after the delivery it was determined the bleeding and pain I was having were from some retained placenta and I needed a D&C. I felt soooo much better after that procedure was done. Since then, everything has been pretty much normal. "Normal" does include the same baby blues, bleeding umbilical cord stub that came off early, and repetitive bilirubin checks that we had to deal with after Ellie - yay for jaundice and raging hormones - but thankfully all those things have turned out to be mild again compared to what they could be, and we have been blessed beyond measure! Our little boy is such an easy, mild baby, with the most adorable smiles in his sleep, and we are so looking forward to getting to know him better as he grows up in our home!
PS: Yes, I'm aware there are some of you I know who have given birth much faster than 3 hours - and believe me, I fully intend to pick your brains the next chance I get so that I feel a little more prepared with the next baby! Consider yourselves warned :-)
And Ellie is such a good big sister! This is when I found her "reading" to him:
But now a quick recap of the birth for anyone who's interested (and this is the only birth story I'll post): I awoke with my first contraction at 3:18 AM and everything seemed to be going at a normal speed at first. But, we arrived at the hospital at 5:25 AM with me seriously starting to panic because I was feeling the baby very low and contractions were getting to be literally on top of one another. I went into full panic mode when they said I was fully dilated with baby at a +2 position already and they started wheeling equipment into the triage room - that's when I realized I wasn't getting an epidural. The doctor (who had to rush there from home) was holding him at 6 AM on the dot after something like 4 pushes (remember, we walked in at 5:25). I didn't know contractions could go from 5 minutes to 2 minutes to 1 minute apart in one car ride.
Giving birth naturally was not an experience I was planning on, and NOT one I hope to repeat! Being able to feel everything does cause some anxiety when you've torn during delivery before. But it was actually worse after the delivery itself, because I had some retained placenta and that ended up being more painful. At least it all happened quickly! And, can I just say this is the 2nd fantastic experience we've had with Intermountain Healthcare in general and Orem Community Hospital specifically - the nurses and doctor were all so amazingly on top of things and sooooo patient with a panicky mom-to-be who was laboring much more quickly than they usually have to deal with! They did a great job of re-focusing me during the delivery, and everyone was so good to me afterward as well. Kent has been so sweet with me and with our little boy, and our ward has spoiled me rotten with meals and a welcome basket. :-)
A few hours after the delivery it was determined the bleeding and pain I was having were from some retained placenta and I needed a D&C. I felt soooo much better after that procedure was done. Since then, everything has been pretty much normal. "Normal" does include the same baby blues, bleeding umbilical cord stub that came off early, and repetitive bilirubin checks that we had to deal with after Ellie - yay for jaundice and raging hormones - but thankfully all those things have turned out to be mild again compared to what they could be, and we have been blessed beyond measure! Our little boy is such an easy, mild baby, with the most adorable smiles in his sleep, and we are so looking forward to getting to know him better as he grows up in our home!
PS: Yes, I'm aware there are some of you I know who have given birth much faster than 3 hours - and believe me, I fully intend to pick your brains the next chance I get so that I feel a little more prepared with the next baby! Consider yourselves warned :-)
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