Preschool Puffs and Plugs: Week ending Oct.3

Homeschooling updates from a proud parent's point of view
*Puff: praise extravagantly; to publicize with often exaggerated praise; *Plug: the favorable mention of something,
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I needed some sort of catchy phrase to start summing up our activities-especially since I am having trouble with daily blogging-and there seems to be a lack of jazzy synonyms for words like summary and review. So, I dug a little deeper, stretched a little farther, and found 'puffs and plugs.' I know I could use 'weekly wrap-ups, or Saturday summary' but I wanted something a little brighter with the sparkly touch that seems to be all things --me.

OK, let's start with the PUFFS:

Monday, September 29:Craft Project

On Monday, Sophie chose a pumpkin patch scene to create with a foamies kit bought at the craft store.
She figured out how to put the two trees together by herself.Then using the box as a guide she created her masterpiece.The only thing I did was hot glue the tree, fence, and sign to the base-right where she told me to.
She's a perfectly proud-of-herself preschooler. I am perfectly pleased at her efforts. I'm even more thrilled with her ability to follow directions; her capability of sitting in her seat content and behaving for almost an hour; and I couldn't be happier with her tiny little motor skills getting all that tape off the back of the foamies and the fact that she was able to figure out how to assemble this practically on her own.

Tuesday, September 29: Bead Sorting and jewelry design.

The Montessori lessons** I was using said to pick four shapes with same or only 2 different colored beads. I decided Sophie could handle something a little more challenging.
With a bit of coaching from me, she made the decision to sort by color instead of shape. Each time she got bored with a color she moved on to a new color. This kept her busy for almost 20 minutes! I think she enjoyed putting the beads into this container the best. She was really excited that the box tops snapped in place.

Then it was time to make a necklace and 'jam' on her guitar with it on. I couldn't get a great pic of the necklace though. I'll have to do some editing and post in the future when I get the chance.

Wednesday, October 1: P.E. and a little tool-time.

Notice anything about this bike? (besides the fact she is growing quickly out of it)

Yep. No more training wheels. She fell gracefully though and seriously had more of a fit wearing the helmet and knee pads than she did when she fell over. She's one tough cookie.

After all of that great exercise (for me and her daddy) she decided she still wants the training wheels.
So she put them back on. I may have helped a little.

Now for a couple of plugs:

Also on Wednesday we did a Montessori exercise playing I Spy with one of the actual I Spy books--the Halloween version. It's great for teaching letter sounds (I spy something that starts with a B,) colors (I spy something black,) and even a some higher level cognitive skills (I Spy something that flies only at night.) A bat was the answer to those three--in case you were wondering. Anyway, this was a fantastic teachable moment while at the same time disguising itself as down time-getting Sophie ready for a nap. LOVED IT! We will be doing this one often. I am sooooo looking forward to the Christmas version. It will be a staple in our Christmas time activity schedule.

This is Sophie giving herself a plug once the training wheels were back on. Good for you Butter Bee~Take a Bow!

*definitions from dictionary.com
**I have decided to tone down the Montessori pressure I put on myself by picking one or two activities for the week and then just improvising on the rest-relying on my former teaching skills to help me turn play-time into learning time. She absolutely lives in a complete educational environment, so pretty much everything she sees, hears, and plays with will help her grow leaps and bounds educationally in some fashion or another. This week was a LOT less stressful than last week, and instead of scrambling to fill time, this week we ran out of time to do all of the activities scheduled. Plus, if I use Thursday as a wrap-up day, I won't feel so damn guilty about not posting everyday. Today we were going to do science and practice making bubbles, but we will postpone until next week.

Saturday Summary Part 1: 9.20 to 9.23

Last weekend: September 20

Buying a new car takes forever. We've been looking and looking and looking for weeks--and we still spent several hours over a two-day period at dealerships before we finally found the one that works for us. I wanted to be a 'green' mom and do everything I can to help the environment and save the polar bears. Well.........................

Yeah. BUT--and I do mean BUT, they are giving away these giant gas guzzling beasts at the dealers for practically nothing (seriously this was the same price that my new Camry was 8 years ago!) and we really need a second car AND I have always loved driving the big giant truck mobile.....AND--we literally drive about 50 miles/week--maybe 75 if we go to the zoo. So, the way I see it? I am helping the planet because I am taking this dirty pollutant emitter out of the hands of someone who will drive it the average 230+ miles/week, thus preventing almost 75% less gas emissions on the environment PLUS since we don't drive much we won't need to spend too much at the pump. It is only 2 miles to the grocery store.

It's a really pretty truck too and Sophie LOVES the fact that she can sit in all sorts of places in the back and still have lots of room for her giant dog and all of her toys. Now, if I can move along the growth of this family and actually have more children--we're all set.

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Monday, Sept. 22, 2008

We had to grocery shop in the morning, and I let Sophie help me bag the fresh fruit and work on getting the twist ties around the bags. It's hard for her to manipulate the twist ties, but she's getting lots of practice. Then she was being so good at the store, I felt compelled to take her to open gym for an hour before heading to the health club. By dinnertime we were both exhausted and feel asleep very early. It was a great day though and the elliptical machine is getting easier!

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Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

There is something about Tuesdays. I don't have a clue why they are so trying, but they really are. Very. This was no exception. I have been behind on our schedule since last Friday, the day after the tea-party, so I feel a little overwhelmed with trying to come up with activities Sophie loves to do that will actually teach her something. On Tuesday mornings they have story time at Barnes & Noble so we headed over there, but we were late and missed most of the stories. We stayed for awhile though and read some books together and played with a couple other kids for awhile with the train set they have out. It's kind of a fun place to hang out when we don't feel like going to a gym.

When we got home, Sophie was itching to go outside so we decided this would be a great day to decorate the front porch for Halloween. Well, after about 10 minutes of trying to tether down the blow-up ghost and succeeding mostly in losing the tethers in the ground, Sophie got bored. Unfortunately for me right before she got bored she opened all of the boxes containing the 'stuff' and dumped it all out on the porch. I quickly changed the front screen to the glass door and let her decorate the door with window clings. This gave me about another 20 minutes of frantic 'let's get the stupid lights up and plugged in' time. Once she was done she gave up and went inside to watch Underdog for the trillionth time-leaving me to finish the front porch--or so I thought.

This is what happens when you leave a 3 year old unattended. She's done this before too--and I guess I just didn't learn my lesson the first time. She went out to the porch in the back--OK, no big deal right? I figured she could play out there until I was done out front. We have a fenced in yard so she's perfectly safe.

Anyway, when I first saw the chalk I quickly decided no use in getting mad and frantically trying to clean it up--I just let her be. I would have to clean her up anyway, so I might as well let her enjoy herself while I got dinner in the oven.

When I went back out to check on her I noticed that she had not only covered herself with chalk but had also decorated Jack with a bucket of yellow chalk. Poor guy, he just got over a round a antibiotics from an allergy to shampoo and here he was covered in chalk. My frustration level is quickly being bumped up to explode mode. But I hadn't blasted yet at this point.

I simply dusted out as much chalk as I could from Jack and then brushed his fur really well. I got it all out and let him back inside before she doused him with the bucket of bubbles she found while I was brushing Jack.

Now I should go back and say that I had made a homemade lasagna that day for Nate and the two guys that also work out of our house right now and part of the whole process was cleaning up the giant mess--including washing the kitchen floor--after it was all assembled and in the oven.

This is after an entire day of B&N, porch decorating, dog grooming, and now Sophie was a giant mess on the back porch.

I did what any normal mom would do and hand Sophie the hose and ran back in the house. I gave her the pleasure of washing off all of the chalk and bubble juice off the porch. Of course, her dress apparently needed cleaning too as well as the side of the house and all of the windows.

I had to yell at her through the back door to put down the hose, before I came back out.

Then I realized that Sophie needed a bath and some dry clothes before dinner and I only had about 20 minutes before it was done.

******sigh*******

I'm exhausted but "kept moving forward" as the Robinson's encourage and just got it done. Once Sophie was all cleaned up and changed, I was able to run downstairs and make the salad and get the bread out and set the table and serve the lasagna. I had given Nate and company a 10 minute warning. Then I had Sophie go downstairs and announce dinner. 10 minutes later I sat down to eat with Sophie. 20 minutes after that I had her run downstairs again to remind them that dinner was ready and getting cold.

They finally came upstairs and my top was literally boiling over with steam. I was super p/oed and wanted to scream--but couldn't do that in front of Nate's business partner. He knew how pissed I was though by the look on my face and the fact that I said nothing to either of them when they first came up. I sat with them though and chatted anyway while they ate their nearly cold lasagna before tackling again-cleaning the kitchen. I figured the best way to diffuse my frustration was to at least talk to adults for a little while, before the Wonder Pets came on.

At this point I was beginning to wonder if I would ever see my computer again--I'm just too jammed packed with things to do, and now I was too tired to even fire up the laptop in bed. At least Sophie was ready for bed. I can't remember how quickly we fell asleep that night, but I do know that both of us were in bed by 7:45 that night. I'm pretty sure I fell asleep before Sophie.

This picture doesn't do it justice--it almost looks better during the day because of the giant spider web--but it still looks pretty cool.

I think I just love this picture because of the possessed dog --his ears are sooo funny!

Thursday, September 18, 2008

"Tea Party Breakfast"

Because we are doing these activities at home and there are no other children for Sophie to play with-I am trying really hard to make all of the basic Montessori lessons I find as fun for her as possible. When we sat down to have this tea party breakfast, I had already made her crust less toast in little heart shapes with her favorite strawberry jam. I put the crust in her crown plate and added a few dollops of jam to dip in if she preferred. (I also stuck in her little box of cookies she wanted from the store that week because they were pink and looked cute on the table.)

As far as skills go, Sophie practice pouring and was even able to hold the saucer while she poured. She really had fun pouring (I used sugar-free cranberry juice in the teapot and we pretended it was our favorite passion herbal tea from Starbucks) and kept offering me more tea. I ended up drinking a lot of tea that morning, but that's OK, she really had a good time.
We also practiced some manners and used lots of words like, "May I" and "Please & Thank You." She was also getting a kick out of being the 'hostess' and kept offering me and Belle more and more things.
The only flaw was that she wouldn't take 'no thank you' for an answer and kept pushing. Hmmm, I wonder where that came from?
After breakfast I showed her how 'bus' the table and take everything to the sink where Sophie went ahead and washed all of the dishes. She had a ball!
We were spending way more time than planned on this activity, so I jumped in and dried the dishes for her.
I think it was a great success. She has excellent manners AND can manage to pour very well. Every bath time since she's had tea parties with her tub toys and has even added some 'foam' (suds) like they do at Starbucks.

If only I had stopped there for the day....... but oh no, not me............

Sophie grabbed her binkie/bunny right after she finished the dishes and said she wanted to watch TV. Well, I had already planned an afternoon at the pumpkin patch-including a fun little car picnic for lunch. I intended doing this for fun rather than using it as a learning activity. However, the petting zoo was empty and the workers really wanted someone to 'educate' on all of the animals as we walked through--the result was we were bombarded with TMI and by the time we got home we were exhausted and more than a little overwhelmed! We fed goats and pet the baby chicks and saw a giant pig just about to give birth and even pet the little baby horses and tried to feed them some corn as well. It was one LONG day! We did have a good time though.

The hay ride was her favorite part.

She sure does love these giant jumpy things though.



She got a big kick out of the train ride too.

Music class and a leaf blower........

This was Wednesday. (I'm a little behind.)

This is Sophie twirling in her new favorite dress. I tried to get her mid-twirl with the skirt out, but after several picture attempts chalked this up to the only one-and what happened to the color?

Then I tried for a close up-but she refused to put down her spoon.

She thought she was sooooooo funny!

Spoon or not--I think she's gorgeous. I can't stop staring at her eyes. Oh, and is it weird that I want my hair to look this good?
Anyway, we were both very happy to finally get back to music class today. We have endured an entire long summer without Miss Joan and we needed to see her ASAP!

Of course class was BRILLIANT and we left as happy as two little clams on a warm sandy beach!

As far as Montessori goes, well, do this count for practical life skills? I was really excited to see that Sophie has picked up on my leaf blowing fascination. It's my thing. I just find it so rewarding to move around a bunch of leaves and look back and see a clean, pretty lawn-instant gratification. (It's almost as great as shoveling snow.)

No Montessori happening here.........YET!

I mentioned before that teaching Sophie using the Montessori method is turning into a thing. Well, it is, and I am --for sure-- NO expert! As a matter of fact, I'm not sure at this point if I should even try to continue-maybe just plan little 'mini' lessons that I can do with her in the way I have already been trained as a teacher. **SIGH** Who knew it would be this hard?
Must do more research.
In the meantime there is a really cool book I am going to pick up called, Basic Montessori: Learning Activities for Under-Fives , by David Gettman. There are a couple of more books I can get to help with the whole 'Montessori in the home' thing. I think my biggest problem is that the web subscription I have is geared for the actual classroom-and it's a lot harder to do most of this stuff at home.
In the meantime-while I am still trying to grasp the basic concepts of Montessori-I am doing activities with Sophie based on what I think might be the way to go--a child-driven curriculum, or maybe it's just child-driven activities geared toward a specific curriculum. See? I'm confused. But I think it means whatever she shows an interest in-is what we do at that moment or during scheduled 'classroom' time. I have different activities to go with areas of interest-arts/crafts, language, computer, math, and so on. I think my biggest challenge will be consistency--at least with sticking to a schedule. It's so hard here at home when I don't have a boss breathing down my neck or even a time-card to punch.

On Monday she was interested in painting so I brought out the finger paints and let her experiment for about a half an hour.

I tried not to 'teach' her but just to show her how to finger paint. Seeing as I have absolutely ZERO artistic abilities, no actual pictures were drawn. She did love playing with it though and she definitely loved getting messy! Then I went a little further and let her "clean up" in the kitchen sink, cleaning the tray and washing her own hands. Made a huge mess for me, but Sophie was so content when she was finished that she didn't throw a fit when I said it was nap time!

Yesterday was a different story. I have yet to master the whole 'circle-time' thing, considering it's just the two of us, so I thought that before I get out the calendar and teach her songs I would get her used to sitting with me and 'planning' her day by having her set up a schedule. First we needed to put some Velcro on the pieces that I already had made-she seemed to enjoy this, but wanted to keep going after we were done.

She did a fantastic job of picking out the activities to do yesterday and put them on the schedule board herself. We have to work on order though. That's OK. It's only our first try right?

She was so proud of herself when she was finished. I love that she put lunch first and wanted to take a bath before dinner and go shopping afterwards. It was cute.

I rearranged it to fit our actual schedule, thinking that maybe sometime I could follow her way of doing things and let her be in control. Not yet. I will be snapping some new pictures to make some more cards over the next couple of weeks. (I made this board after Sophie's first birthday, so all of the pictures are old, but she got a huge kick out of seeing herself doing things as a baby!)

I was starting to feel stress at this point because she started to play with all of the Velcro and then found her scissors. I got out the scrap paper and her 'fancy' pink sparkle glue and we cut and paste for about 20 minutes. Again, I attempted to make a dog, but with my lack of artistic abilities, it looked like a giant bunny. At least Sophie got some fine motor skills tuning time and giggled in the process. She is getting very good at working with the scissors. I think I'll try to get her to cut in a straight line next time.

Coming up later this week: music class (YEAH!), window washing ("practical life" skills to put up some Halloween decals,) and a tea-party breakfast. I might throw in the pumpkin patch if time just because it just opened and won't be that busy yet. We'll see.