Ceaseless Praises

Kidlet Hilarity

2012-01-25T22:43:00.001-05:00

The kids have been hilarious over the last month, but I haven't had any time to write! Thankfully, I have a new app on my phone that is like a sticky note, and I can record all the funny things they say there! :) So here's all the hilarity I've been privy to the last few weeks! :)

I put a pair of socks in Zachary's stocking that had the little non-slip bumps on the bottom, and I told him that they would help him not to fall down (especially on the wood flooring in our upstairs, if you wear socks, it can be very slippery). So the next day, he wore them, and proceeded to stand in the living room and fall down on purpose. It was hilarious. He was throwing himself down on the ground, and then said to me, "I thought you said these socks would keep me from falling down!"

One day at supper time, the kids switched places and sat in each other's seats. I said I didn't mind, and Z said, "That's good, because Natalie didn't finish her cookie at snack time!" :)

At supper, when we prayed, Natalie said she wanted to pray, but then didn't say anything else, just closed her eyes and sat quietly. Z said, "I think she's talking to her head." :)

Natalie is saying all kinds of new words - it is SO fun!! She comes up with something new every day - today she brought out her monkey & her purse and said, "Ah-ah, purse." Ah-ah means monkey, because that's the sound a monkey makes. She brought her monkey to nap with her, and a few hours later, when Daddy came home and asked her how her nap was, she said, "Ah-ah. Nigh-nigh." She is such a cutie. Zachary uses these certain hand motions when he talks - he's very serious, always shaking his head and gesturing with his hands, and Natalie often uses the exact same motions. :)

When we were on vacation, Davey slept in our room while Z & Nat slept in Grandma & Grandpa's room - one night, Nat woke up in the middle of the night, and Z came to find us, saying, "Mommy, Natalie needs you!" I thought it was so sweet...the first time...not so much the second or third time that night... :)

While we were on vacation, we met my sister's boyfriend, and the kids especially loved him. Nat often pretends to talk on the phone to him and whenever I say anything about Auntie Beth, she adds, "And Don!" :) Anyhow, while we were together, Zachary was practicing his counting, and Auntie Beth asked him if he could count to Don's age. "No", replied Zachary, "I can only count to 60." :)

On the second leg of our trip, we spent time with the kids first cousin, baby Reed! He is about a month older than Davey (but Davey is quite the linebacker, he has him beat in height and weight). :) They do look a LOT alike, though - many people commented that Davey and Reed could be brothers instead of cousins! Every so often, Zachary would look at one of the babies and ask, "Which baby is that?"

There was a treat table set up at Grandma's house, and the kids knew they had to ask if they wanted a treat throughout the day. One day, Zachary asked his uncle Jason, "Can I have a treat?" "Hmmm, I think that's a Mommy decision." Jason replied. "No, I think it's your decision", Zachary responded. "Well, then my decision is no," said Jason. Zachary thought for a second, and responded, "No, it's a Mommy decision." :)

One day when I asked Zachary to throw something in the garbage for me, he instead responded, "Let's have Natalie be the volunteer."

At the doctor, Zachary was asking all kinds of questions, so the doctor asked him, "Do you want to be a doctor when you grow up?" "No," he responded emphatically. "I want to be a daddy!" I LOVED this one! :) I seriously almost cried, it was so precious! :) All of our kids adore their daddy, he is so good with them. :)

One night when I put Natalie to bed, I forgot to pray, so she asked to pray by saying, "Amen! Amen!" Then I started praying and thanking God for Natalie, and Davey, and she interrupted, "and Bubba!" which is what she still calls Zachary. :) She certainly adores her Bubba, and does everything he does.

At Joel's parents church in Iowa, they have pagers in the nursery to let you know if your little one needs you, which is a GREAT peace of mind, especially when you have a fussy baby or a tiny one! Anyhow, halfway through the service, sure enough, the pager went off, and I went to collect my fussy, exhausted Davey. Their sanctuary has windows at the back and you can sit in the entryway and still hear the sermon without disturbing anyone, so Davey and I sat back there. During the closing song and prayer, a little boy, about 4 years old, came out and was running around being silly. Davey was a little tired & slap-happy, and he got the giggles about the boy running around. He was laughing so loud that everyone in the vestibule was looking at him, and I couldn't help but laugh along with him! :)

Z: "Natalie, can you say mess?" Nat: "Yes." Z: "Well, go ahead and say it, then." Nat: "Mess."

Z: "Natalie, take your thumb out of your mouth and say this with me." (Can you tell he's the oldest child?)

The most common phrase we hear in our house is "Me, too!" (from Natalie, of course, constantly) I feel like I live in a Little Critter book! :)

One day when Z was sitting on the potty, Natalie was playing in the play kitchen, and Z called out to her, "Natalie! I need some tea!" Nat responded so seriously, "Okay! Here come me!" and kept running in, bringing him things while he was sitting there. I found it hilarious. :)

I told Natalie it was time to get in the bath. She leaned over, peering into the empty bathtub, turned around, looked at me, and said, "Water?" :)

As we were playing GeoBingo the other day, Zachary had trouble pronouncing some of the state names, and I was commenting on how hard they were. He picked another one up, and said, "Oh, this is a hard one, too, but I handle it pretty well." :)

Well, if you made it all the way through, you get a prize! Unless you're a grandparent, and then you're supposed to think all these things are just as hilarious as I think they are. :) I just love the hilariously unexpected nature of what my kids will say & I hope you all enjoyed them, too! :)

Also, we are back to school, nearly finished with the letter N, and I hope to get a post up about M and N sometime soon...not going to be more specific than that...since coming back from vacation, I've found the need to really unplug from a lot of what I used to do online. I've missed my friends' blogs & the time on Facebook, but honestly, my family needs me the most, and my days go a lot more smoothly when I'm not as distracted by online interactions. When I do have the time, I'll be online, but it may be a little bit sporadic. I'd love to hear how other moms of little ones balance their online time with LIFE, if you have any tips or suggestions! :)

Preschool - Letter L!

2011-12-27T15:29:00.000-05:00

We're back! :) Actually, this is a summation of pretty much the entire second half of December - we studied the letter L and had LOTS of no-school days due to doctor appointments, visits with friends, birthdays, and lots of other fun activities. :) We did manage to fit the letter L in, though, and lots of fun Christmas activities! :)

Here is our circle time board for the letter L. Natalie loves to play with the gumballs and the velcro weather clothes. :)

Here is our Bible time board - the song this week was called God Gave the Law, and it was an overview of the ten commandments we've already studied. (website here) We have one more song, one more week on this CD, and then we're going to move on to Sovereign Grace's To Be Like Jesus - again, one song a week with a corresponding verse. I'm hoping to add a few more Bible activities into our school weeks next semester.

Here's Zachary doing a sequencing page - he's getting better at these as we go through the year! I got this book from the Dollar Tree a couple years back.

Natalie coloring on her Log L.

Zachary coloring his Log L.

Making long lines for wood grain. The circles he drew (he drew!!! He never draws!) are knots in the logs. :)

Natalie's finished Log L

Zachary's finished Log L

Natalie coloring a Color by Shape page from Carisa's Tot School website (1+1+1=1).

Zachary coloring by shapes, too.

Their finished pictures - Nat's is on the left, and Z's is on the right. :)

Tracing the number 12 - his handwriting (and willingness to TRY at handwriting) has improved GREATLY since we started in September. He even tried (& succeeded at) writing a 12 himself on the empty bottom line! Worksheet from www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com.

Tracing an oval, and the word oval.

Showing off his work. Shape tracer worksheets found here.

Zachary telling me something interesting while doing his blend ladder (found here).

We studied candy canes this month - did you know the candy cane is really all about Jesus? We read two books which I got from the library about the candy cane. Zachary preferred this one...

but I actually thought this book did an even better job of explaining the candy cane & it's connection to Jesus.

We colored a page about a candy cane (from here).

And then, of course, we had to eat a candy cane. :)

Zachary ate one, too. :)

We did these puzzles. I wish I could remember exactly where these came from, but I'm pretty sure they came from one of the links on this awesome list of advent activities. :)

We made sugar cone Christmas trees on Christmas Eve- Zachary has spread frosting on his cone & is now eating some frosting. :)

I spread the frosting on Nat's cone for her, and now she's sticking candy on. :)

Here's Zachary's finished tree!

And my finished tree! :) After we did our craft, we had three trees, so I told the story of the Three Trees (from memory, I failed to check out this book from the library in time). :( Anyhow, I went and was working on something else when Z said, "It was actually a good thing that Jesus died on the cross." I came back, sat down and talked with him about Jesus for a while, and after we talked for a few minutes, he said he wanted to ask Jesus to live in his heart! And he did! Every day since then, he has said, "Jesus lives in my heart now!" What a special Christmas joy! :)

Natalie's messy face after licking all the frosting off her tree. :)

Here is our Christmas countdown calendar - we did not do a great job of keeping up with this every day, but it was fun when we remembered to move the bear. This was mine as a child, so it's neat to share it with the kids. :)

Zachary drawing with their Christmas present - these washable dot markers.

Natalie drawing with the dot markers. :)

Zachary was also in our church's Christmas program this month - he sang with the kids and also sat on the stage during the production (as a visiting neighbor kid). He did a GREAT job, and took it very seriously, as you can see. :)

Here he is singing with the kids! :)

And Natalie celebrated her 2nd birthday!!! She is such a joy, though she is definitely exhibiting signs of being two! She wants to do everything herself, her way, and will not stand for being told otherwise. :) Here she is getting ready to enjoy her dirt cake at her family birthday dinner. :)

And here she is enjoying dancing in her new tutu from her great-grandma! :)

Merry Christmas!

Hope you all had a blessed celebration of Christ's birthday! :)

Well, we're taking a few weeks off for a holiday break, then we'll be back towards the end of January with the letter M! Hmmm...I need to do some school planning before then... :) Hope everyone has a Happy New Year! :) Check out what everyone else has done lately for Tot School and Preschool Corner! :)

Preschool - Letter K!

2011-12-08T13:47:00.015-05:00

We studied the letter K this week! I didn't take a ton of pictures, and we were busy with Z's birthday and some other things going on, but we did learn a lot, despite the fact that I don't have many pictures of it! :) Here is our K circle time board for the week:

And our Bible time board. We studied the commandment about coveting your neighbor's stuff. I think Z could define the word 'covet' now. :) I loved the point that we need to be content and not covet other people's things because God has given us everything we need. I can't say enough good things about this CD that we're using for our Bible curriculum! :)

We used construction paper and a glitter glue pen (and a googly eye) to make a King K this week. First, Z colored his royal robes. Then we punched circles out of yellow paper and glued them onto the crown, then painted the crown with a glitter glue pen - we squeezed the glitter glue onto the crown and then the kids painted it with paintbrushes. I am waaaay to wimpy to let my kids craft with actual glitter, they literally have never used glitter in any craft ever.

Nat made a crown for her King K, too. :) (I just print out one K per week for her & she colors, dot paints and crafts all on the same paper).

Zachary did a Kite cutting page from www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com 's Letter of the Week Curriculum. He has really improved in his small motor skills since the beginning of the school year! :)

The kids did these 3-part Christmas puzzles one day - Natalie couldn't figure them out, but they were too easy for Zachary. But he enjoyed them anyway. :)

I printed these smiley faces on colored paper a couple of years ago, and you can use them to match clothespins that you color, but this week we played a more active game with them - the kids jumped on the color that I called out. They really enjoyed this. Natalie knows the colors purple and brown, and is working on the rest of them. :)

We also played a Twister-ish version where we reviewed body parts, too - I would say "Put your elbow on the blue smiley face". :)

Natalie enjoyed jumping on the smiley's too. :)

We colored a Christmas tree color by number. I thought Z did a great job coloring all the little pieces, though he didn't color much in the green sections. :) Natalie did a lot of coloring on hers, too, so I was proud of her for that! :)

We made reindeer with handprints & footprints- sooooo cute! :) Z's is on the left, and Nat's is on the right, and they turned out so cute that I HAD to make a little teeeeny one to keep for Davey! :) I might never take it down, look how little his teensy widdle footeypwint is! :) :) Anyhow, I got the idea here.

As I mentioned, Zachary turned FOUR this week. Really? Oh, yes, really. He has been talking about it nonstop for a LONG time now, and was VERY excited about his big day finally being here. :) He got a lot of books and games for presents, so that was really fun. Here he is playing with a big United States floor puzzle from his Auntie Beth:

Daddy helped him put it together and it was SO cute to hear him pronounce (so badly) the names of all the states. :)

This is a present from his great-grandparents, a Crayola Glow Board. You can draw on two different plexiglass levels, and then they light up individually or together - it's really cool. Natalie enjoys drawing on this, too. And we did discover that the markers are washable. So that's good. :)

Zachary got this Mega Blocks Match & Build game from his great-aunt & uncle, and he LOVES it. We have played it several times. You spin a spinner and go around a board picking up pieces of blocks to make a little animal with - you have to see which blocks you need & then put them together like the card says.

He won the very first game we played! Here he is with his little bear!

He also got this GeoBingo game - he didn't understand the 5-in-a-row Bingo part, but wanted to fill his card UP, so we read through the state cards till his card was full. :) Again, I just loved hearing him pronounce the states so badly! :) He is really learning about the states from this game & the puzzle, though & can name many more of them than he could last week! :)

He also loved having a turn to read off the cards (and lots more hilarious pronunciations). :)

Here he is blowing out his candle!!! We will have a combined party with some friends for Z & Nat (who turns 2 in 2 weeks), but we had a special dinner with our family - he chose chicken wings, cottage cheese, olives, Doritos, and chocolate cake. :) All delicious & lots of fun. :)

Davey had rice cereal for the first time this week! :) He does better each time I give it to him, only 3 times so far. :)

Davey also pulled on his carseat toy on his own & can pick things up now, so that is really fun! :) He is going through a difficult sleep stage (I think he is just done with being swaddled, but he doesn't sleep as well unswaddled, so aaaaargh...)...anyhow, I am looking forward to him figuring that out. :) But he is SUCH a happy guy in between his sleep/nap issues!

And here's a super cute picture of sweet Natalie, and her eye-hanging hair. :) I have found some clips that work pretty well...she keeps them in for maybe 2 hours at a time and will bring them to me saying, "Bow!" so I can put it back when she rips it out. So that is actually a great improvement. :) She is talking more every day - on the way home from church last week she kept saying, "Dop! Dop!" and we could not figure out what she was saying until I was singing later in the week and she held her hand up to me and ordered me to "Dop!". Apparently it means STOP. :)

I'm not linking up this week since I'm SUPER duper late getting this post up, but you should really check out everyone else's great ideas at Preschool Corner and Tot School if you're interested. :)

Let's see...this is Friday, and at this point we have only had school ONE day this week (today), though we may have school tomorrow. Anyhow, the kids' birthday party is Monday, and I'm doing grocery shopping tomorrow, and um, CLEANING at some point...so probably not. And so letter L will probably be carried into next week and then I'll post about it after we get it done. :) My goal for the fall was to finish L before Christmas, and we are going to do that, and then take a couple weeks off of schoolwork to celebrate Christmas break & then vacation to visit our families around New Years! :) Then we'll come back and dive into M & the retreat season in January! :)

Who Believes in Santa Claus?

2011-11-30T21:19:00.003-05:00

Well, not Zachary.

I always wondered what we'd tell our kids about Santa Claus. I think I remember discussing it with my hubby once or twice. I don't remember what our conclusion was. On one hand, telling your kids that Santa Claus brings them presents is a fun and innocent tradition that as far as I know, has never scarred anyone for life or led anyone to mistrust their parents' every word. I was a Santa believer as a small child, and it is a fun part of Christmas. On the other hand, it's just a story. It's not really true. So if I tell Zachary that Santa Claus is real, I am 'technically' lying to him.

Anyhow, through last year, when Z turned 3, we just kind of ignored the whole 'Santa' part of Christmas. We read about Jesus' birth and the Grinch and Rudolph and introduced the Santas we saw on TV & at the store as, "Oh, yep, that's Santa" without elaborate descriptions of his Christmas-Eve-chimney-naughty-or-nice-list-keeping ways. It was just as if we were saying, "Oh, yep, that's Spongebob (or some other cartoon character he would recognize)." No further explanation needed.

Now, somewhere in the last year, Z has heard stories of Santa and his gift giving habits, and in the process, has decided on his own that Santa is just a story. Just a man dressed up in a red suit that people like to pretend about at Christmastime. And I think that's fine. I'm definitely not going to try to convince him otherwise, especially since what he believes is actually the truth. I also think the idea of Santa being real makes him a little nervous, because he always seems to be reassured when I tell him that he's right, that Santa is just a story.

I have been trying to help him understand, though, that lots of children DO believe in Santa. I'm trying to keep him from going to Sunday School or MOPS and telling all of his 3 and 4 year old friends that Santa isn't real. He says, "Yeah, okay. Some people believe Santa is real. But not me. And not Natalie either." Like she has a clue. :)

So, if your child is Z's friend and he/she comes home and tells you that someone told him Santa is just a man in a suit, and you have to deal with the fallout, I'm so sorry.

So, what do your kids think about Santa? Do you tell your kids he's real, at least while they're young? I'd love to hear how other moms have dealt with the Santa Claus 'issue'!

Preschool - Letter J!

2011-11-20T15:54:00.015-05:00

We studied the letter J this week! We had a busy week with MOPS & other things going on, but we managed to squeeze in quite a bit of school! :) We did Circle Time and Bible time each day - here's Nattie about to check out the circle time board. For our Bible time this week, we studied lying, and Zachary did a good job with our verse. Our Bible story was about Ananias & Sapphira lying about the money they gave, and I think it made an impact on Z. :) Our song was called Do Not Lie from this cd.

The kids enjoyed playing with some magnetic games on Monday, to start out the week. Z is playing with magnetic dress-up Joey from Melissa & Doug, and Natalie is playing with a magnetic shapes book.

On Wednesday, we started our school week with a J/j sorting game.

Z did a good job with it, and Natalie wanted to help too. :)

Not sure exactly what Natalie's doing, but Z's doing a blend ladder. :)

Z did his J handwriting page.

He did this Mayflower/pilgrims counting game (yes, he is sitting on the table, why do you ask?) :) This is from Musings of Me (an awesome site for adorable early learning printables).

Zachary and Natalie colored with markers on these little jigsaw puzzles (these are from Joann's, they are meant to be cards & come with envelopes that they fit in). :)

Then we took apart our puzzles and glued the pieces on a Jigsaw puzzle J. :)

Here's Zachary's:

And Natalie's:

Z did a #10 handwriting worksheet:

We played with Rocket Numbers (you put the missing number where it belongs) - these are also from Musings of Me - from her Space Unit.

We played a matching game with Z's beginning sounds consonant cards: (these were part of our weekly curriculum last year)

We dot painted:

while Davey watched from his new Bumbo seat. :)

Whoa, Mom, that's enough with the camera! :) This was just one of those moments where my heart was full and I was so thankful for all of my children and I could just feel it, it was perfect, all of us together at the table, the older 2 working, and the baby watching happily, and it was just wonderful. A great homeschooling moment. :)

Zachary colored a letter J page.

Then we did this craft - a leaf rubbing tree. Leaf rubbing is harder for three year old boys than it would appear. Anyhow, we persevered and Z rubbed some leaves. :) And also a little pinecone and some pine needles (which did not work at all, but he wanted to try). :)

Then I cut out the leaf rubbings, and we taped them onto a paper towel tube. Cute! :)

Also can be used as a megaphone. :)

We did a pilgrim hat size sort (also from Musings of Me), which Z did very well at. Later in the week, I did this activity with Natalie and we discussed the meanings of big & small/little, which one is bigger, which one is smaller, and she basically didn't seem to get much of it at all. However, she did enjoy holding the little hats up to our heads & pretending we were wearing them. :)

We finished up our schoolwork this week with a snacktime activity, using Cheerios with our Add It game (found here.) First, you put the correct number of Cheerios in the green & yellow boxes to correspond with the numbers on the left.

Then you use your super cool scoop to scoooop all the Cheerios together down into the blue box.

Then you count the Cheerios & find the right number to complete your math fact! I think this is a great & fun way to teach the concept of addition! :) Z had fun with it! :)

It snowed again this week, and we got to play outside, complete with snowpants this time. Natalie still did not have any boots, but she had a pretty good time anyway. :) (I would like to add that I finally got on the ball & bought boots for her this weekend). :)

And of course Zachary had a great time, too. :)

Well, we're taking the week 'off' for Thanksgiving - Joel's grandma is visiting, so I have some special Thanksgiving activities we may do, but if we don't, we'll save them for next year. :) See you in two weeks! :) Check out what everyone else is doing over at Preschool Corner & Tot School! :)

Preschool - Letter I!

2011-11-13T15:55:00.010-05:00

We studied the letter I this week! This was kind of a crazy week for us - Daddy was gone to a conference from Monday morning to Thursday evening, and I was NOT looking forward to being home with the kids all that long without him - so I scheduled something for us to get out & do every single day - crazy, right? Well, yes, it was. :) The result was that we had 'regular school time' Monday and Friday, did a couple crafts on Wednesday afternoon, and finished up our last schoolwork on Saturday evening. :) But we got it all in! :) Plus we baked & frosted cookies with friends, played at a nearby McDonalds Playland for 4 hours, had an appt. in town one morning and visited a friend's new baby on the way home, and the kids spent Tuesday morning with an awesome friend who played on the playground & did crafts with them. :) And Mommy had some alone time while Davey napped. :)

Anyhow, I didn't do a great job of taking pictures this week, unfortunately. We did do circle time, but I forgot a picture of that, and our Bible time board, too. Our verse was "Let the thief steal no more, but rather let him work." And our song was Do Not Steal, from this cd. The kids really enjoyed the song, as usual. :) Our Bible story was about the sin of Achan in Joshua 7, called Because Achan Stole, in the Egermeier's Bible Story Book. I also didn't take pictures of most of our regular worksheets (handwriting, beginning sounds, etc.) but we did all those things, too. :)

We made Ice cream I's this week, too. Natalie's is on the right on the piece of paper. :) Just construction paper & cotton balls. :)

We dot painted.

We painted with ice cubes. I made these with food coloring and water, and froze them with popsicle sticks in it. This was one of the crafts we did on Wednesday afternoon.

I wanted to do it outside because I knew it would be messy and food coloring stains, but it was getting cold...and by the end it was getting dark - at 5 pm! I forgot about the time change affecting that! Anyhow, this was like the FAIL craft for the week. It just didn't work - the ice cubes were, um, frozen. Of course. And they wouldn't paint. We even waited ten minutes for them to melt, but they didn't.

Finally I went and got some water which I poured over the ice cubes and then they worked a little bit. :) So we painted on coffee filters. :)

Here's the finished product:

We cut them out in heart shapes & put them up with a sign telling Daddy how much we love him when he came home. :)

We also made this Welcome Home sign for Daddy. :) I let the kids color on these with markers, but then you couldn't really see the words, so I wished I would've used crayons.

Zachary played with bottle cap words - I made these a long time ago for Z, and he did a very good job of matching the letters with the words.

We got a package from Grandma & Grandpa this week - which had some Melissa & Doug wipe-off crayons and math fact mats in it! Z used the crayons to color on a M&D fire truck coloring wipe off mat that Grandma & Grandpa brought him a few weeks ago when they visited. :)

We talked about igloos this week, and we made igloos with half a paper cup, frosting glue, and mini marshmallows for ice blocks. :) Natalie just ate the marshmallows.

Zachary used a spatula to spread frosting on his cup...

then used his marshmallows to make an igloo! :) (idea here)

And then he ate it. He wanted to eat it all (lol!) but he just couldn't. He saved some of it for supper but still didn't finish it. :)

They both ate all of their frosting. After this craft, we went outside and ran around! :)

Here is a picture of the kids watching something on PBS kids. Z goes through cycles with his favorite shows - he loves Sesame Street consistently, and watches that almost every day. I love it because it's an hour long so if I need to go back to bed due to a rough night with Davey or take my shower & do devotions, it gives me more uninterrupted time. :) He was on a Dinosaur Train kick for a while, but now his favorites are Berenstain Bears (which is actually on Sprout, I think), Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That (much more educational than I thought it would be & very fun), and Super Why (very educational about reading & letters & very cute). I also think that Dinosaur Train is very cute, though they do talk about millions of years more than I'd like, and WordWorld is SUCH a cute show & a cute concept, I try to talk him into watching that some too. :) Natalie loves Bob the Builder and Elmo- she brings me the remote & says "Show. Bob." or "Show. Melmo." :) We've been watching Angelina Ballerina a little bit lately, too. :)

In other news, it snowed this week! Like, more than just on the trees. :) It actually stuck, and we went out to play in it - we threw snowballs and rode on our little sled. We made a tiny snowman but Natalie didn't understand what we were doing and kicked it over - which of course Z thought was hilarious and so we made & kicked over several more snowmen. :) Here's cute Z in his jacket & boots. :)

Nat has a jacket but no boots yet, poor thing, so she's just wearing shoes and her little ankles got cold! :( She also did not enjoy the sled but did enjoy kicking the snowman & throwing snowballs. :)

And here's Davey doing his newest favorite thing - sitting in his new Bumbo seat! I have always wanted one of these & then I mentioned to one of my awesome friends that I would love to have one, and she found one on a garage sale site and went and picked it up for me! :) Davey will let me make lunch while he watches from his seat and it is SOOOO helpful! Nat likes to play in it, too. :) Here he's watching Z color on his fire truck mat. I love how his darling little hands are folded! :)

To see what more organized people are doing for school this week, head on over to Preschool Corner and Tot School! :)

Preschool - Letter H!

2011-11-06T15:05:00.018-05:00

We studied the letter H this week! And started the month of November? Wait, wasn't it just August last week? Crazy!!! Only 2 more weeks of school before Thanksgiving break! We'll be taking Thanksgiving week off to spend time with Joel's grandma who is flying here from Texas! She has never met Miss Natalie, or, of course, little Davey, so we are really looking forward to her visit! :) Here is our circle time board, which we still enjoy changing every day:

For Bible time this week, we talked about the commandment not to commit adultery. Of course this commandment is difficult to teach to children, especially preschoolers, and I really like the way the song from our CD (website here) relates this to being faithful to God and how He is always faithful to us. Let me also say that the way my 3-year-old says the words 'faithful' and 'faithless' is super cute. :) Our Bible story was about God's promise to Abraham that he would have a son & a great nation would come from his family, and then the fulfillment of that promise with Isaac's birth.

Zachary loves anything that I call a 'game' - so we started the week with a GAME where we matched colored hippos with the colored words that go along with them (from here) - I wish I had printed out a set of the color words in black and white to challenge Z a little more, since he already knows his colors. :) But he enjoyed it.

Then we made words with our blend ladder, I'm not sure why Natalie's upset here. And Z has a letter in his mouth...yep, this is school some days. :)

They are drawing in a Pooh chalk book, you can draw with chalk right on the special pages - they both loved this & did it twice this week!

Natalie is playing with her Tupperware shape sorter, she is pretty good at this but gets frustrated when the oval won't fit into the circle, etc. and she thinks it should. :)

We made handprint H's - here is Zachary's - he did his first & because of the non-washable ink we were using, I was more worried about that than getting pictures, I guess...

Here's Natalie, not wanting to get her hands dirty...

she finally did. :)

She made up this small motor activity on her own - sticking pick up sticks into these nails from our toolbox set. :)

We dot painted! (printable here)

Natalie dot painted, too, on a beginning counting worksheet from www.beginningreading.com.

Zachary used his dot marker to mark which number was correct on his counting worksheet, also from www.beginningreading.com.

This is consistently Z's favorite activity - his Letter Hunt story! I think the fact that it's a story that we can read and then circle the letters makes it his favorite. :)

We played with our Alphabet Builders - you know, I thought this would be one activity he would consistently love to do this year, but actually he doesn't love it, and sometimes has a hard time with it, so we may take a few weeks off from it.

We played with a counting clothespin number wheel.

Our theme for the week was hands & skin, so we used this magnifying glass to examine our skin, and lots of other things. :)

And here they are fighting over the magnifying glass...

Natalie did get a turn with it. :)

Zachary did a sequencing page, which I think is so good for him - this book is from the Dollar Tree, and we also have a shapes & colors one that he enjoys doing every so often.

He did a great job - even glued the pictures on himself with a glue stick! Again, he likes this because it has a story along with it.

The last activity we did this week was a great gift from a friend who teaches preschool - a Parmesan cheese container with milk caps inside that have the letters of the kids names on them! We also used pick up sticks with the holes in the top of the containers, and Natalie enjoyed putting in the milk caps and taking them out.

Zachary worked on spelling his name - first he came up with Zaachry from sounding it out, so I thought that was pretty good. :)

Here's just an extra cute picture of Natalie this week! I know her hair is getting long in her eyes, I try to put a barrette in it, but she takes it out. I don't want to cut it & make her have bangs, though!
And here's a super cute picture of Davey in his exersaucer!!! He is getting so big and enjoys sitting in his exersaucer - but only if everyone is around, and only for a few minutes at a time! :)

This is my favorite picture of all 3 kids to this point! Davey in his exersaucer, the other 2 gathered around. Nat has a great smile, and Z is playing with Davey. I also love that Z's gun is right there, he had been telling David something about how it worked right before this picture was taken. :) I love watching my 3 interact, it is just triple the fun & blessings! :)

Well, I'm a little late getting this posted, but you can check out everyone's creative ideas for school at Tot School and Preschool Corner! We'll be back next week with the letter I!

Us Lately

2011-11-03T15:37:00.004-04:00

Zachary came out of the bathroom after a long time with only the bottom half of his pants completely soaked. "What happened?" I asked him. "How did your pants get wet?" "Don't worry", he replied, "It didn't come from my wee-wee. I accidentally poured water on myself." Oh, ok. No problem.

"Rollercoasters are so tall. Taller than a house. Taller than a BIG DOG." (Z)

Natalie uses the word 'need' all the time lately. Like if you're eating chips, and she feels she needs some, she points to the spot on her plate where the chips belong and insists, "Nee! Nee!"

A melt-my-heart moment - Z & I were having our before-bed prayer time while Davey sat on my lap & burped. I had my eyes half open to make sure Davey wasn't about to flop backwards from me or anything, and I saw that he was smiling at his big brother, who was at that moment thanking God for our family. :)

While watching football on a Sunday afternoon, Natalie was concerned for the players' safety. Every time they made a play and fell down, she would say, "Ohhhh, down! Okay-kay?"

Natalie has a hilarious new response to most any question, she puts her lip out and responds forlornly, "Yeeeeeeah...." in a 'yeah, I guess so' kind of tone. After Joel had taken her shopping the other day, he asked her, "Did you have fun with Daddy today?" and she looked down and responded, "yeaaaahhhh".

When we finish praying I say, "In Jesus' name we pray, and we all say..." and Z responds, "Amen!" Natalie's response lately has been "A-moo!" Getting close...

The kids were popping their heads out of the playhouse window and pretending to be cuckoos on a cuckoo clock. I asked Z, "What time is it?" and he responded, "59" or "100". When Natalie popped her head out and said cuckoo, I asked her what time it was and she responded with a proper Sunday school answer, "God". Zachary cracked up and said, "I guess it's God time!" :)

A Natalie Pronunciation Guide:
"Mee-mee" = nose

"Boooh" = book

"Boo-boo boo-boo" = Belly button

"Ba-ba" = Bubba or Bottle

"Sausage" = sausage

"Beh-ee" = Berries

"Nigh-nigh" = sleeping or jammies or bed (anything to do with sleeping, apparently)

"Ah-ah" = monkey

"Puh-pol" = purple or any other color

"Sigh" = Outside or inside

"Cheews" = shoes

"Gah" = God

Davey is a big 3 month old now! I moved his swing into his room so he takes naps in there in the day time now, and he is doing pretty well with that, though sometimes he's had a harder time going down for his naps than he did when his swing was in the living room. He also does better riding in the car than he used to, especially if he will take his binky. I got out the exersaucer this week and he has sat in it a couple of times, and seems to really enjoy it. Zachary and Natalie love to play with him when he's in there, too! :) He has started blowing raspberries ALL the time - whether he's happy, sad, or mad! It makes me laugh when he's frustrated and he's blowing raspberries. :)

Preschool - Letter G!

2011-10-31T15:13:00.008-04:00

We studied the letter G this week! We stuffed school into 3 days again this week, because my parents came to visit later in the week! But we enjoyed learning about G! :) We did circle time those 3 days.

For Bible time, we studied the commandment that God gave not to murder. Our Bible verse was about how Jesus considers hate to be the same as murder and the song reinforced that concept. The song, called Do Not Murder, can be found here. Our Bible story was about Cain & Abel, and Z referred to it several times during the week, about how Cain disobeyed God and God was not pleased with his gift, but Abel obeyed God and his gift pleased Him.

We used green tissue paper, cut in thin strips, to make a Grass G. Z cut some of the strips and I cut some, too.

Then we glued them on our G's. Natalie did one, too, but I guess I missed getting any pictures of her gluing! :(

Our finished Grass G's:

Here is our alphabet on the schoolroom wall - A-G from this year, and H-Z from last year!

We used these cards to study the parts of plants, and we played a matching game with them.

We did a dot page - Natalie dotted on her stamping page from last week instead. Z's dot page is from here.

He wanted to show it off! :)

We played with pom-poms and Dot Numbers.

Natalie enjoyed playing with the pom-poms too. :) She used a little plastic scoop to stuff them in & dump them out.

The kids wanted to go outside & use their butterfly nets but it was too cold, so we threw pom-poms around the room & pretended they were butterflies instead.

We did a G color by number page.

Z did a pretty good job with this!

She's so cute. :)

Z did his G handwriting page!

This picture was to remind me of 2 activities we did - our G blend ladder, and our uppercase/lowercase G/g sorting game!

We did a Beginning Sounds worksheet (from here). Notice he didn't circle the garden, he told me he thought it was a farm so he didn't circle it. :) I thought that was rather logical. :)

Here's Natalie, getting out our Alphabet Builders.

We made a small g, but couldn't figure out really how to make a big G with them.

I finally bought some M&M's and we were able to sort them by color! I had this in the plans 2 weeks ago & we never got around to it until now! :) Of course they loved this activity!

Natalie just ate hers! :)

So I sorted them for her. :)

We did Gumball Graphing, and we used Bunny Grahams to graph with this time - they were a little big for the squares, but we worked on taking our time and carefully counting, which is something Z's been struggling with lately. :)

That's all of our 'schoolwork' for the week, but we enjoyed playing with blocks & trains & reading MANY books with Grandma and Grandpa throughout the weekend, so learning was definitely still taking place. :)

Zachary always asks to hold Davey, and then he says, "Mom, take a picture!" Here is a cute picture of them together! :)

Natalie likes to hold him sometimes, too. :)

And just for the sheer cuteness of it, here is a happy Davey! :)

And we got our first snow this week - it snowed a little on Thursday, and it was still on the ground when Friday rolled around. Then it melted and on Saturday it snowed several inches again - probably about 3 or 4 inches! It is beautiful and cozy, but I am definitely not ready for winter!!!

To see what everybody else did this week, head on over to Tot School and Preschool Corner!

Preschool - Letter F!

2011-10-23T16:28:00.025-04:00

Well, I'm finally able to write my school post for last week! I had some kind of issue uploading my pictures, I kept trying over and over, and I just finally got the last few uploaded tonight! They would upload, but they were all streaky with streaks of color in them - has anyone else had any issues like this, or have any tips for me??? I was so frustrated!

Anyhow...we studied the letter F this (last) week! We did circle time each day (Z loves changing everything on the circle time board with me each week, I think it makes him feel like he's big). :) Notice Natalie getting into the 'gumballs'...every day we have to count the gumballs to see how many she's put on the board while we're doing other school stuff. :)

We studied the commandment to honor your father and mother, and Z learned the verse to go along with it. This is our favorite song on the CD - you can hear it here. Our Bible story for the week was about the Prodigal Son.

Here is what the kids do while we listen to their Bible song - they either dance around the room or rock on the rocking toys. :)

(love the boots in this dancing picture) :)

We made a Fire F with red and yellow tissue paper that we crumpled up & glued on our F's. (idea from here)

We used our blend ladders to make a few words - Z wasn't as into this as he has been.

We did the last two number order puzzles, and he loved these! He specifically asked for them even though I hadn't planned on using them this week! We counted to 50 while we did them! I wish they went up to 100! :)

We used goldfish crackers to measure some fish!

I gave Natalie a paper, too, but she just ate the goldfish. :)

Zachary did a dot page, and Natalie dot painted on her Fire F.

Here she is playing with the cap of her dot marker - I just love this hat. :)

They did some coloring. (Speaking of colors, Nat's favorite color is purple - she says 'pur-ple' for red, blue, pink and purple, but if you ask her which thing in front of her is purple she usually points to the right one - now Z knew a lot of his letters at 22 months, but not his colors! I guess it goes to show you that every child learns different things at a different pace!) :)

We used some bottle cap number cards to play with this week, and Z seemed to enjoy these.

I let them use some stamps & ink to have fun stamping.

Going along with our fire theme, Nat & Z dressed up as firemen & we pretended to fight fires. This face is what you get lately when you ask Z to smile. Nice, huh? :)

One day while we were playing on the porch, Z set up a bowling game for me to play with him. And then he decided to play 'slide bowling' like this - I thought it was so creative! :) We used a bunch of different things that were on the porch instead of pins to see what would happen, too. :)

And Natalie rode on Z's bike. :) She's getting so big!

Speaking of growing up, Natalie moved from her highchair to a booster seat this week! Look out world! :) She loves it - she wanted to be a big kid like her "Bubba" instead of sitting in the highchair. And now Davey's seat can go on the highchair & he feels more of a part of everything, too, so he likes that. :)

Isn't she just so cute? :)

Speaking of cute, here is your weekly dose of Davey cuteness! He is just getting so much more fun - he turned 3 months old today!!! He laughs sometimes when you tickle his belly & make raspberry sounds with your mouth. :) Plus, he sleeps through the night occasionally, which is totally awesome. The other day he didn't get up till 6:50 - it was so great! :)

I'm not going to link up this week, since I'm so late getting this together, but check out what everybody creative is doing for Tot School and Preschool Corner this week! :)

Preschool - Letter E!

2011-10-16T15:35:00.006-04:00

Hard to believe we're already done with letter E! We had a good time studying E this week, though it ended up being quite a busy week!

We did circle time each day:

And for our Bible time this week, we focused on the commandment about taking a Sabbath day. Our verse was about God resting on the 7th day after creating the world, and we talked about that being the foundation for our sabbath day each week. Our song was called Rest, from the Summer Celebration CD (website here), and for our Bible story we read about Creation and then talked about God resting.

We started by dot painting a page with a small and large E on it (From COAH):

Z did a great job!

Then Z colored a letter E page with an elephant & earth on it:

And Natalie colored on her dot painting Ee page:

We played a clothespin game where we matched clothespins with a letter on them to a disk (of laminated paper) that has something that starts with each letter around the edge - this was super easy to make and a great tool for matching letters & beginning sounds - she also has a version where you match uppercase & lowercase, and I have those, too, but we didn't use them this week. :) You can find these here.

Natalie played with some other clothespins I had. :)

Zachary and I did some number puzzles that involve counting, and he LOVED these! The next day we did even another one, so we counted to 30 with these puzzles this week! (found here)

We also did an elephant Color By Number this week - Natalie just scribbled on hers:

But Zachary thought the concept was fun and did a good job on his!

You can find this here.

We did some cutting practice (found here):

And we made elephant E's! Here's Natalie pretending to glue:

And coloring on her E:

Zachary's Elephant E! I let him put the trunk pointing down because he wanted to, but I think it would have looked better pointing up. :)

It was a pretty rainy week, but we did manage to get out for one cold walk in between rainstorms! Here's Natalie pointing at something. :)

And examining something we pulled off a tree by the driveway.

We also examined a plant with burrs on it & discussed how burrs are one way seeds travel from one place to another.

Zachary decided to help some of them along... :)

We went to the park with Daddy on his day off this week - it was so fun! :) Here's Zachary playing:

And Zachary standing on his chair:

And the requisite cute picture of Davey!

The school year is going SO fast, it is just crazy to me! So thankful for the opportunity to teach my little blessings! :) I'm linking this post to Tot School and Preschool Corner, if you want to see what great ideas everyone else has, head on over to those sites! :)

Preschool - Letter D!

2011-10-09T16:07:00.009-04:00

We studied the letter D this week! Our theme was D is for Dinosaur, and we did circle time each day!

Our verse this week was about not taking God's name in vain, and our song was Honor the Name, about honoring God's name, and many of the different names for God. It is very catchy & I had it stuck in my head almost all week. :) It is from the Summer Celebration CD (website here). Our Bible story was a study on different names for God in the Hebrew language (such as Jehovah-Jireh which means God Provides, etc). Z is a little bit interested in languages right now, mostly Spanish, so this was interesting to him, I think, and it was very interesting to me. :)

We have been doing several sight words each week, from the Dolch list (printables here), and Z is excellent at them. I always thought I would use solely phonics to teach him to read but I printed out the sight word flashcards just as an extra activity at the beginning of last school year, and he just memorizes them at first sight, it is pretty amazing to me. :) Here is our sight word wall, with all the words we've reviewed in school so far.

We made a dragon D this week. Here's Z with the beginning of his dragon, playing with him & making him talk. :) Sidenote- I love that he uses different voices to make his food/toys/anything talk now, it is so funny. :)

Natalie made a dragon D, too! Gluing on her dragon's spikes :)

Zachary gluing on his spikes.

Our finished dragon D's! I got the idea here.

Zachary did a dot painting sheet (found here) and Natalie dot painted on the back of a Kumon coloring worksheet.

Then Natalie colored her worksheet.

And Zachary colored his D page in his A-Z coloring book (from Priddy books). He also enjoys tracing the words in the book!

We used our Blend Ladder again this week, although he was not as interested as last week.

We played with playdough, it was a gorgeous day, so we played at the picnic table on the porch, and used some of the toys from our kitchen set to make pretend food - mostly cakes. :)

Natalie played with the lids to the containers, taking them off & putting them back on a lot. :)

We got a PIANO this week!!! My husband heard about this free piano at a local rest home, and so his friend helped him go get it & bring it home! The best part was it was a complete surprise to me (I have wanted a piano for SUCH a long time!) - the kids & I came home from a quick trip to the camp playground, walked in to the schoolroom, and I said, 'Oh! There is a piano in the schoolroom!' I was so thrilled! :) The kids love banging on it, and I can't wait to teach Zachary to play. :)

We did some graphing this week, with dinosaurs and Cheerios. We lined up Cheerios in the boxes to count how many dinosaurs there were in each box, and we discussed what a graph is. This is from the LOTW curriculum, found here. We also did a lot of the same worksheets we've been doing, and I've included pictures in previous posts of his handwriting, etc. - this week I just didn't take pictures of all the worksheets. Handwriting did go better this week - I backed off & just gave instructions while doing something else & let him do it himself, and he was much less stressed & ended up doing a great job. :)

We are stuffing lots of fall fun into these last few weeks before winter, and we were able to go play in the little creek at camp this week, which both older kids loved! :)

Davey came along, too, and rode in the wrap & wore a little hat. :)

Nattie is messy! :) I think I put this in here so I remembered to say that we made homemade pudding pops this week (make instant pudding, let it set up & then stir in some whip topping, then spoon into a homemade popsicle mold & freeze - they're so yummy!) I let the kids help with the stirring & spooning and it was Sooooo messy! But they had fun. :) Then we ate the leftover pudding, and this was Nat's face. :)

I'm linking this post to Tot School and Preschool Corner - head on over to those sites to see what everyone else did for school this week! :)

Random Thoughts

2011-10-07T21:30:00.004-04:00

I love that Zachary uses the word "clumbe" (pronounced 'kloom') to describe when he climbed up something - he will say, "I just clumbe up onto the ladder and slid down the slide!" :)

We took David to the dr. this week, and Z was so cute with him - sitting on the table next to him, saying, "Oh, David, you're okay. David, you're so cute." When the dr. turned Davey over onto his back, Zachary said excitedly, "Oh, tummy time, David! Tummy time!" The doctor and I thought it was hilarious. :)

Natalie is joining in the talking fun, too, especially lately - she's even started saying two or three words together! One day at snack time we were eating yogurt parfaits with frozen berries in them, and she said, "Berries coooold." Then she looked over at Zachary and said, "Bubba! Bubba berries cold?", asking if his berries were cold, too. :)

Natalie is in love with her purple crocs - they are girly ballet-shape shoes with butterflies on them. One day I told her to get her shoes and she said, "Purple. Shoes purple." She walked to her room and came back with the purple crocs! :)

One day we were getting ready to go on a walk and I told Natalie that I just had to wrap David in the stretchy wrap (like a Moby), and then we'd be ready to go. The next thing I know, while I'm changing Davey's diaper, Nat is dragging the big long wrap in so I can put it on! :)

Natalie loves Bob the Builder. Whenever she sees him, she squeals, "Bob!" We have a little toy of Bob the Builder, and Natalie carries it around all the time, kissing it repeatedly. :)

Natalie also sings - mostly things that repeat over and over in songs - like from the worship song, Undignified, Natalie sings "Na na na na na Hey!" It's really cute.

I love fall. Something about the gorgeous leaves, the cooler weather - I love hot summer, but somehow the coolness of fall is just welcome. I always get the feeling of trying to squeeze in some last outside time (since our winters here are SO long and SO snowy), which makes every outing to the creek or woods or camp playground that much more exciting and meaningful, wondering how many more times we'll be able to enjoy the outdoors without dressing in boots and mittens!

Walking down the back steps the other day reminded me of coming to work on the house last year...last October/November, our house was just a project and a dream. I came over every spare minute to paint and sand and scrape wallpaper, Joel spent every minute he could working in the house, and all kinds of people were in and out helping us make our remodeling dreams a reality. Natalie was still just crawling around, and we couldn't let her down in the living room area because of all the construction. And we didn't even KNOW about Mr. Davey yet (who is now TWO MONTHS old - and weighs 14 lbs - little chunker!!!) It is hard to believe we have lived here for 10 months now! We are so thankful for the house God has given us!

Preschool - Letter C!

2011-10-05T10:59:00.011-04:00

Well, we did study the letter C! A while ago now! :) It took me a while to get this post together for some reason - but here's what we learned about last week! :)

Here's our circle time center, all set up for the letter C! I haven't shared much about what we do during circle time, but we start by looking at the calendar, and crossing off what day it is today. Then we change the date on the circle time board, and sing the "months of the year" song - to the tune of Ten Little Indians - yelling when we get to the current month. :) Then we put the day of the week on the right day, and sing the "days of the week" song, to the tune of the Addams Family, again yelling when we get to the current day. Then we discuss the letter, and what starts with that letter, and the rhyme, color & shape of the week. Then we talk about the weather, turn the dial to the right weather, and then Z gets to pick out some clothes that are appropriate for the weather and velcro them up. Finally, we count to the same number as the date, by putting gumballs up on the gumball machine. :) This usually takes about ten minutes at the beginning of our school time.

Next, we move on to Bible time. We start by looking at our verse, and saying it together (at the end of the week, I turn the board around & we say it without looking). Then we listen to our song (from the Summer Celebration CD), and dance and sing while we listen, of course. :) One day a week, we read a corresponding Bible story (this week was the Fiery Furnace, a story that Z loves, we read from Egermeier's Bible Story Book, and we don't always do this at 'school time'- this week we read it at a meal or snack time, I can't remember which), and one day we read through the song lyrics and talk about exactly what they mean. Then we do our 'active exercise card', and then review our sight words for the week.

Then, we move on to our daily work - starting with worksheets, or crafts, then moving on to games and other school activities. This week, we made Caterpillar C's. I got the idea at No Time for Flashcards, but tweaked it a little. :) Zachary started by using a circle punch to punch out circles from several different colors of construction paper. He loves to punch, so that's mostly why I used the punched circles instead of pom-poms.

Natalie glued some punched circles on her letter C (which is from here).

Zachary put some glue on his construction paper C...

and he glued some circles on.

Here's Zachary's caterpillar C!

And here's our ABC on the wall with the rest of our alphabet from last year. :)

And here's Natalie's caterpillar C! :) She loved the little eyes the most! :)

Zachary did a Beginning Sounds worksheet from www.beginningreading.com!

Then he did a counting worksheet, also from www.beginningreading.com.

He wrote a letter C, which he did very well! :) (worksheet here)

We played this Caterpillar Dice Game, which used math & counting to figure out how many spaces to move. Even Natalie enjoyed rolling the dice a few times. :)

Zachary did his dot painting sheet (From Homeschool Creations), while Natalie dot painted on a coloring page. :)
Then they colored with crayons, Natalie on her Big Bird coloring page, and Zachary in his alphabet coloring book (from Priddy books).

Z did a great job coloring in the lines!!

Then we used our Blend Ladders with our magnetic alphabet to make some words!

Zachary really loves this activity & asks me how to spell words the whole time. :)

Another activity that he absolutely loves is his Letter Hunt worksheet (found here).

He worked on writing a number 3, but got very frustrated with trying to write one on his own, on the bottom line. (worksheet here)

We played with puzzles, I picked an easy one for Natalie to match up (with the animals, I think this one is from the Dollar Tree), and she did a good job matching up some of the animals! Zachary played with a Melissa & Doug fishing puzzle, and then they switched. :)

We made caterpillars turn into butterflies this week! First we made our caterpillars out of a clothespin & some pom-poms, and then we made cocoons out of toilet paper rolls & some yarn. The caterpillars waited in their cocoons for a few days....

while we painted wings for them... (as you can see, Natalie enjoyed this...I think she was mad because she wanted a different color of paint?)

Zachary's painting on his coffee filter...

we got a little too much paint (it came out of one of the finger paint containers really fast!), so we stamped with the extra on plain paper.

Natalie did eventually enjoy painting. :)

Here is the finished product! (I got this idea here).

Zachary built with his Waffle Blocks this week, he had a lot of fun with them. :)

And we played Candy Land, which was actually not as fun as I remember..... :) but it was fun, I'm sure we'll play again. :)

Here's Davey showing off his new skill - rolling onto his side! He's only done this once, but he's definitely starting to scoot more, especially in his crib, and he was using his hands to bat around the toy that hangs from his car seat this week, too. He is ten weeks old now!

Well, I'm not linking this post to anything, since I'm so late getting it done, but you should check out everyone else's great ideas at Preschool Corner and Tot School! :)

Preschool - Letter B!

2011-09-25T20:31:00.015-04:00

Well, we've finished our second week of school! We focused on the letter B this week, and we had a great time. Zachary seemed to enjoy the activities I had picked, and we managed to fit them all in, even though we were finishing our handwriting worksheet on Sunday afternoon... :)

We did Circle Time this week again, using our Circle Time Center, and I wanted to show that I actually got the gumption to put up our calendar, and we used it during circle time this week as well.

Our verse was Exodus 20:2-3 about not putting anything else before God, and our song was No Other God, from the Summer Celebration CD (website here). I loved studying this, and I had the song stuck in my head several times throughout the week! :) Our Bible story was about the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, since the song refers to it. We used the story from Egermeier's Bible Story Book.

Zachary dot-painted a sheet about the letter B (from Homeschool Creations).

I gave Natalie a letter B from the A-Z Collage Sheets over at Confessions of a Homeschooler, and let her use it for crafts this week. First, she dot-painted on it.

And of course she had to put the cap on & take it off over & over... :)

Zachary used COAH's Blend Ladders along with magnetic letters to make some words this week - he really enjoyed this, and it gave us a lot of good opportunities to talk about short vowel sounds, which he struggles with.

We made the word bin together.
And then he made the word band on his own!

We discovered that the door from the schoolroom to the mudroom is metal & therefore magnets stick to it, so the kids played with magnetic letters on the door!

We used COAH's Alphabet Builders (I made these out of craft foam), and we made a big B and a small b.

We did a Beginning Sounds worksheet from www.beginningreading.com - a great site for free preschool worksheets! Z enjoys identifying the pictures & he did a great job drawing circles around the ones that start with B!

Zachary used a #2 handwriting worksheet to practice writing the #2. He got a little frustrated because I was trying to get him to hold the marker the way I would typically hold a pencil- I would be interested in hearing how others of you have handled handwriting and teaching a preschooler to hold a pencil!

He colored the B page in an A-Z coloring book that I have, I think this is by Priddy books.

He colored in the lines and even traced the words on the page, which were bee & butterfly!

Our science theme this week was on bees and beehives, so we watched a couple of Youtube videos about bees - this one from Sesame Street, and this one about bees dancing to show other bees where the food is.

We also made a bee out of a letter B, this craft is from www.notimeforflashcards.com. I didn't get any pictures of us making this craft, but Z enjoyed gluing it all together.

While we were making the bee, Natalie was fingerpainting with yellow paint on her B - here's her final result, I didn't get any pictures of her in the process either. :(

We did a letter hunt worksheet (while Natalie colored in the background - she mostly just put the crayons in & out of the box). :) Zachary had a hard time drawing circles around each letter B, so he pointed to them and I drew the circles.

Here's Natalie 'coloring'. :)

Zachary did a size sort with butterflies (from COAH).

We also played a Missing Numbers game, where you fill in the blanks with which numbers come next in numerical order. He did a great job with this, but didn't want to play very long. I put it in our binder with this week's work, maybe he'll play it again. :)

He also did a letter B handwriting worksheet, and again struggled with holding the marker. He did a good job, though.
I thought that last small b was especially excellent - I was very proud! :)

He LOVED these M&M themed color-matching puzzles that I made for him! You can find them in the letter M section of Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter of the Week curriculum.

As far as 'Life School', we played played soccer in the yard, and discovered two really cool inchworms, and the kids also helped me make lasagna one day! They got to sprinkle the mozzarella cheese on each layer, and Z helped me lay out the noodles on the layers. :)

I am always so amazed at how God blesses us through a little local thrift store - their clothes (kids & adults) are $1 a bag, so we get a lot of clothes there, and their toys and books are free! So we get a LOT of books there, and occasionally some nice toys. We visited the store this week, came away with some great kids clothes, and a bunch of books, and as we were getting ready to walk out the door, they put out a big bag of Little Tikes waffle blocks!!! I had the basic set of these as a child, and we came home with a whole big tub full of them, including a set that makes a spaceship and has all kinds of cool 'space' stuff in it! :) Here's Zachary putting together the cute little alien spaceship:

And, for some eye candy to close with, here's David in his Sunday outfit, almost smiling: (um, he turned TWO MONTHS old this week - where does the time go??? He is smiling more (but not for the camera much), and cooing occasionally, and just getting sweeter & more alert each day. :)

And Natalie, wearing my shoes: (have you ever seen eyes so big and precious???) Zachary has gone golfing with his daddy the last two Monday mornings, and so Natalie and I have had some fun one-on-one time (while Davey naps) each week - it is so fun to be able to focus on just her and play and read together. At twenty-ONE months now, she is talking up a storm, and it is hilarious to watch the new ways she can get across what she wants to communicate - it seems like she says or does something new every day! :)

I'm linking this post to Preschool Corner and Tot School, so head on over to those sites to see what everyone else did for preschool this week! :)

Preschool - Letter A!

2011-09-18T19:12:00.010-04:00

School is back in session at our house!! Zachary wasn't entirely sure if he was excited for the school year to start, and I wasn't exactly sure how we were going to fit our schoolwork into our already busy days! But this first week has been fun (due to a family trip early last week, we stretched the first week of school into two weeks and did two days of school each week, so it was a little bit spread out, which helped ease us into the school year, too, I think). We usually 'do school' in the morning - typically after we have breakfast & I clean up the kitchen while they play. Of course now this depends on David's schedule, and one day we didn't start school until noon because David was fussy & eating after I had the kitchen clean.

Anyhow, once we do get started, our school time starts with Circle time, then Bible time, which we all do together, and then we move on to any worksheets or seatwork that Zachary has for the day, and then I usually try to end with some kind of educational game (like a file folder game or puzzle) as the treat that we look forward to, just in case the seatwork doesn't thrill him. :) So far, Natalie has been working alongside Zachary, as you'll see, and other than one puzzle-shelf-dumping incident, it hasn't been working too bad. So here are some pictures of what we did this week!

We have this amazing Circle Time board from Lakeshore Learning - a gift from a wonderful teacher friend, and such a blessing! :) We start school each day by interacting with each part of the Circle Time board, talking about the date, day of the week, and weather, and then Zachary's favorite part of Circle Time, counting the gumballs! We always count to the same number as the day's date.

I am going to put up an actual monthly calendar on the wall so that we can interact with that at circle time as well, by crossing off each day, but I haven't gotten around to that yet. :)

After we finish circle time (which takes 10-15 minutes), we move on to Bible time with our Bible time board. Our verses and songs for each week focus on the Ten Commandments, at least for the first 13 weeks of the year. I picked out a verse and a Bible story to go along with each song on a CD we recently received from our pastor's wife - her son was a part of the group that recorded the CD, and each song teaches about one of the commandments - I loved the lyrics so much that I wrote the rest of our Bible curriculum to go along with it. The CD unfortunately has not been released yet, so it can't be purchased, but I did find this website, which has some of the songs lyrics & motions on it for you to see & hear.

As you can see, our verse this week was Mark 12:30 - Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. We did some fun motions & had fun memorizing the verse along with the music. Our Bible story was about God giving the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai, from Egermeier's Bible Story Book.

Zachary did his first handwriting page this week! I kept his seatwork for the week organized by putting it all in a binder, each page in a separate plastic page protector. This way we can use a wipe off marker to write on the worksheets, and then keep them and use them again. Here's Zachary writing a letter A! and a letter a! :)

Pretty good for the first time, I thought! :) We did a #1 handwriting worksheet, too, but I didn't get any pictures of that.

We did this apple patterning activity from the LOTW curriculum (from Confessions of a Homeschooler). Zachary hasn't done much patterning before, but he seemed to kind of get the hang of it, and brought it up a couple other times during the week, saying, "Mommy, is that a pattern?" :)
We made an alligator A out of construction paper - I got the idea from No Time for Flashcards. Here's Natalie coloring a scrap piece of paper.

And Zachary coloring on our alligator A.

We added some googly eyes & teeth, and here's our alligator! Super cute! :)

We dot-painted a letter A - again from the LOTW curriculum. I made Natalie her own of these, and she enjoyed it. :)

Here's Zachary dot-painting his A!

Natalie decided she needed to work on fine motor skills by taking the cap off of the dot painter & putting it back on repeatedly. :)

Zachary found all the letter A's in his Letter Hunt worksheet - he really enjoyed this! :)

So much that we did two of them! Here's the finished one - you can't tell really which letters are circled because we were using a light green wipe off marker, but all the a's are circled. :)

We did a worksheet about which vowel sound is in the middle of the word, and he got them all right on the first try except one.

Another dot-painting sheet for Zachary! He really enjoyed this one, and I think these sheets are very well done. The dots are not too big for the bingo daubers as some of the other sheets I've used are. You can find this set at Homeschool Creations.

Natalie worked some more on her letter A from the first day. :)

And on her fine motor skills with that cap.... :)

And this is after she was putting the marker in her mouth so I had to close it up & take it away....not happy! :(

We played the Paint Brush Color Match game this week, and Zachary enjoyed it, and did a great job matching the colors!

Natalie enjoyed playing with the little brushes & wanted to try putting some in, too!

She got one in!

Pretty happy with herself... :)

We did an apple cutting page, which Zachary was kind of hurrying through because it was Saturday morning and I had told him when he finished his work we would watch the Bob the Builder movie we borrowed from the library....anyway, this was the result:

He did pretty well, though, just ripped it a little more than usual since he was hurrying. :)

We played with our Melissa & Doug fishing puzzle this week - since all the puzzles were out after Natalie decided she wanted to play with a puzzle and accidentally pulled down the entire puzzle shelf.... :)

And I found Zachary reading this Little Red Riding Hood book to himself! I love when I hear or find him reading by himself. :)

And here's Zachary playing 'tent' with little David - who will be 8 weeks old tomorrow - hard to believe!!! Zachary loves to play with him, and Davey's getting more able to respond, so it's really fun for both of them. :) Natalie loves to play, too! :) And I love watching my 3 little blessings interact! :)

I'm linking this post to Preschool Corner and Tot School - go check out what others are doing with their preschool age kids & tots! :)

David's Birth

2011-09-06T22:06:00.002-04:00

Here is the story of how David was born! For all of those guys reading (or others who do not wish to hear the particulars of a story of a childbirth), you may turn back now - just fair warning for what's ahead! :)

Well, I finally had my 'natural' childbirth - and by that I mean I had no pain medication! And it wasn't even on purpose! With the other 2 kids, I went to the hospital saying, "I'd like to have this baby without any medication, but if I feel I HAVE to, I will have an epidural." and both times, between back labor and pitocin, and the fact that I have no pain tolerance, I ended up having the epidural. This time, I walked in to the hospital, and while we were being shown to our room, I saw the anesthesiologist go into another room & say to another laboring mama, "So, you want an epidural, huh?" and I jokingly said, "Don't go too far, I'm next!" - I had resigned myself to the fact that an epidural was the way to go. :) Apparently God had other plans this time... :)

So, this was my third pregnancy, and the third time my due date came and went without any baby to show for it. My due date was Saturday, July 23rd, and nothing much happened that day. On Sunday, the 24th, I started to feel just 'icky' in the afternoon - I took a nap when the kids did, and while I was laying down, I finally had some mild contractions start up. They continued to be about 10-20 minutes apart through Sunday night and Monday, and I could feel that David's position had moved - somehow he was pinching my bladder when I would try to walk, and it was very painful. I was so thankful that the end stage of this pregnancy was easier than that of Zachary and Natalie - I think it was definitely God's mercy because I was so busy with Z & Nat, and with the busy summer camp season - I wasn't to the point of major discomfort until the day after my due date. That Sunday was also the day that we finally picked out David's middle name - Isaac. :)

On Monday, the 25th, I went to my OB in the afternoon, and she checked me - I was at 2 cm, and she said that I was 'induce-able', so if I WANTED to, I could come in Tuesday morning and be induced. To which I said, of course, "No, I'd rather waddle around on my swollen ankles, wincing in pain from my pinched bladder for a few more days, please." NOT! :) I actually got giddy & said something along the lines of, 'Sign me up!' :) She had told me that she would induce when I was a week late, so I was pleasantly surprised that she was willing to induce me earlier! We left the office, called our families to tell them the news, and headed home. That night I sat with Zachary before he went to bed, and we chatted about the coming baby, and I told Zachary that the baby's name would be David. This whole pregnancy, he has been telling everyone the baby's name will be Charlie Brown, and I didn't want him to be disappointed or unprepared for the fact that a brother named Charlie Brown would NOT be happening. :) Instead, he surprised me by replying, 'I like the name Titus instead.' He finally decided, after another talk with Daddy, that he could like David's name after all. His exact words were, 'I guess I suppose I could like it.' :) I continued to have contractions about 10-15 minutes apart all night, so a good friend came over & stayed the night 'just in case'. But David wasn't that anxious to make his appearance after all, so we got up Tuesday morning & got ready to head to the hospital!

We arrived at the hospital around 8:30 am, filled out paperwork, and waited until about 9:40 or so for my dr. to arrive. She checked me, told me I was at 3.5 (at which point I thought, "Great! Almost to 4, when I'll ask for my epidural!", but then she said she wanted me to progress to 6 before the epidural so that my end stages of labor would go more quickly. Sigh. She started a low dose of pitocin, and I waited for it to kick in. Which it did!! :) I labored in bed for a while, even playing a few turns of a game with Joel on his iPad, and when the contractions got stronger, I moved to the birthing ball (basically an exercise ball that you sit on), which feels amazing when you are in labor! My way of coping with the pain of the contractions is always to squeeze my husband's hands while doing my labor breathing, which he is very patient about. We have a picture of his mangled hand from when I was laboring with Zachary, but didn't have a chance for that this time! But I

promise you, his hand was just as mangled. :)

After I had labored a while, I asked to be checked, and we discovered I was at 5.5 cm. Just shy of the epidural mark. I remember saying, "Can't you just call the anesthesiologist? I'm sure I'll be at 6 by the time he gets here..." but apparently my dr. was very strict on the 6, so I kept on laboring. The nurse helped me get on my hands & knees in the bed (with my top propped up on pillows) to see if that would help my labor progress more quickly. Someone else was delivering or something at this point, so all the nurses disappeared for a while to deal with that, and I labored on my hands and knees but the contractions in that position were VERY painful, so eventually I got back onto the birthing ball.

Finally, about an hour after my last check, the nurse came back to check me again, to see if I could have my epidural now. I remember her saying excitedly to another nurse, "Oh! She's a rim! This girl is a rim! Call the doctor now!" and I remember thinking, "What exactly is a rim, and can I have my epidural now?" Turns out a rim is 9.5 cm, and yeah, I missed my chance for the epidural! I just remember being so exhausted at this point and thinking, "Really? I don't get to have my break from the epidural where I rest before the pushing? I don't know if I can do this!"

When the doctor arrived, she checked me again, and announced that baby David's head was facing my back instead of my front, and we needed him to flip over before the pushing could begin. She said the best way to get this to happen was for me to flip over on my hands and knees. Being the mature person who handles pain so well, I responded, "No way! That hurts too much." I kept refusing to turn over, so finally she had me lay on my side. Switching positions at this point was a BIG deal, because they kept saying, "Tell us when this contraction is done," but I was in so much pain that the contractions never felt like they were done, so I couldn't tell them, and it took me forever to turn over or do anything! Well, after about 30 more minutes of painful contractions and no progress towards David's flipping, the doctor (with Joel's insistent help) finally talked me into getting up on my hands and knees again. I don't remember much about this part except that I kept saying over and over in my mind, "I CAN do all things through Christ who strengthens me." and singing the song that has those words, over and over... and at one point, the nurses told me that I had to let go of Joel's hand because it was literally BLUE from how hard I was squeezing it! I should note that HE never complained about it, though, and even shook his head to dismiss the nurses' concern when they noticed it! :)

And then, all at once, David flipped, and then he was on his way out! They even had to call quick for the doctor, because she had left the room! I pushed about 2 times total, and there he was, and they said, "Don't push any more! Get respiratory in here!" because he was coming so fast, they weren't prepared, and I heard someone else say that his cord was wrapped around his neck, which freaked me out- but a minute later I heard him cry and was very relieved. Then one more push, and it was over!! And I have never been so exhausted, and so relieved, in my life. :)

David got all wrapped up & then I got to see his little face & watch Joel hold him for a while & when my body finally calmed down & stopped shaking from the shock of his birth, I got to hold him, too! He is so precious & we are so thankful for him! :) His brother & sister got to come and meet him later that night, and they were thrilled.

I couldn't believe that I did it without the epidural! I also felt very shaky & my abdomen was more sore right afterwards than usual, which I guess was because I didn't have the after-effects of the epidural still in my system to numb me a little, but after a half hour or so, that started feeling better, and I was thankful that my legs weren't numb like they were for at least an hour after my other two were born! And later that night I felt like I was able to get around better than I had the other times as well, so overall, I think it was nice afterwards not to have had the epidural. And I'm glad I got to have the experience, even though I wouldn't describe it as 'fun' or anything! :)

I guess David's birth story is just another example of how God's plan, even though it may be different than what we expect, is always perfect!! :)

He's Here!!!

2011-08-02T20:52:00.003-04:00

David Isaac arrived on July 26, 2011, at 2:04 pm. He was 8 lbs, 5 oz, and 21 inches long. He is now ONE WEEK old!!! Crazy how time flies!!!

Here I am holding him for the first time:

Here he is after his 4 am feeding, just hanging out on his Boppy:

Being held & adored by Daddy:

Here are Zachary & Natalie meeting and inspecting David - sorry, bad picture! :(

And Joel & David & I, ready to go home!!

Here's Davey being adored by his big brother, Zachary! :)

We are so thankful for our sweet little Davey - at one week old, he is eating about every 3 or 4 hours, and sleeping in his own bed in between feedings at night, so I think that's pretty good. :) He is usually pretty content to sit in his car seat or swing and be adored by his brother and sister during his awake times, as long as someone is there for him to watch. :) He is such a precious blessing! I hope to take time to write his birth story later this week, but for now, I just wanted to update about his arrival! :)

No News...

2011-07-19T10:20:00.003-04:00

Well, I don't have any baby news to share - had an ob appt. today where I learned that I have made basically no progress, but at least I'm not having contractions all the time! The dr. said that this baby will be born, one way or the other, by July 29th, so we have a date to count down to now, for sure. :) So, since I have nothing in the way of babies, I thought I'd tell some stories about what my older 2 have been up to. :)

Zachary came into the room with his tape measure draped around his neck, pretending it was a stethoscope. "Hi, I'm Dr. Seuss. Do you need anything, Mommy?" He proceeded to use the 'stethoscope' to check out baby brother. :)

As we were reading a book together, with Natalie sitting between Z & I, I had to ask Natalie not to pick her nose. The next time I looked over, the words out of my mouth were, "No! Don't pick your brother's nose!"

Zachary opened up his toy Barney laptop, saying, "I have to figure something out on the internet." Wonder where he gets that???

Zachary informed me that he was scared about a new staffer coming to watch him while I went to my doctor's appointment. "Oh, she's not scary. She's our friend", I told him. "Well," he replied, "she's a pretty scary friend." Lol. :) They ended up getting along fine. :)

Zachary and I were working on some notes to encourage our staff friends, when Daddy came home for a minute. Zachary grabbed a note, and brought it over to show him, exclaiming, "We're making these notes for our friends!" Natalie watched him, then grabbed a note, and ran over to Daddy, waving it at him and exclaiming in her baby voice, "Ohgobagabobovuapual!!!" or something along those lines. It was hilarious - she's such a little imitator. :)

Zachary prayed this morning, "Dear God, thank you for my tape measure and why does Natalie always say 'mine'? Amen." Oh, God must have loved that prayer. :)

Speaking of Natalie, yes, she is speaking! New words about every day now! Hubby took Zachary to Sam's Club one afternoon this week, and Natalie and I stayed home, napped, and played & read books together. She said, "Dachwy" for Zachary a couple of times and must have asked me where 'Bubba' was at least a hundred times! :) She very clearly said 'cookie' this weekend, and when Daddy came home today, she couldn't find him (he was coming up the stairs stealthily to surprise her) and she put her hands out & asked, "Where-ee-go?" :) She also babbles constantly which is so very adorable. :)

As I was sweeping the kitchen floor, Zachary came over and excitedly asked, "Wow, Mama, why are you sweeping? What friends are coming over today?" Maybe my housekeeping could use a little work... :)

When we walk to camp (we try to walk over and back once a day, which totals about 40 minutes of walking), I occasionally have Braxton-Hicks contractions & have to pause for a minute to breathe. Z always asks me what I'm doing. One day as we were playing at home, Zachary stopped, put his hand out towards me and said, "Stop. I have to breathe." and proceeded to take deep 'labor' breaths for a minute - it was so hilarious. :)

"Take your time, just take your time" has become one of Z's favorite phrases lately - he uses it when someone is lifting something heavy or doing something hard like when Natalie walks down the stairs holding my hand.

If you ask Zachary to do something & he doesn't want to right then, he might respond, "I don't have the right kind of energy for that right now."

So, just a smidgen of the hilarity that's been going on around here. :) We're looking forward to adding a third dose of laughter to our family - I don't foresee that happening until next week, but I would love to be pleasantly surprised!!! :)

Friends, Blessings, and Flying Rodents

2011-07-16T21:31:00.004-04:00

God has blessed me in so many ways lately! I did not know how I would make it through this summer - it is such a busy time for our family - my husband's full-time ministry takes him to camp almost every minute that he's not sleeping in the summer and with our first two children being so young and so busy, and with me so largely expecting our third, I knew I would have to depend on God's strength, and not my own, but as usual, I am amazed at all the ways that God has provided for our family already!

First of all, I'd just like to say: ONE WEEK!!!! We are so close to our little guy making his appearance - finally!!! I really am not nearly as uncomfortable as I remember being at this stage with the other two- I am still sleeping in 2-hr stretches at night & I remember specifically that when I was in my last couple of weeks with Nat, I was up every hour and my hips were MUCH more sore with her pregnancy for sure. I think being late pregnant in the summer has helped, actually, because I am able to get out and walk every day, instead of being snowed in (my other 2 are December babies). And chasing 2 kids has helped me stay more active and flexible this pregnancy, too, I think. :) Although I would be happy to deliver tonight, believe me! :) I finally feel like all the 'essentials' that need to be done before he arrives are taken care of - hospital bag packed, car seat cleaned & ready to go in the car, adorable little clothes washed & folded, guest room & bathroom cleaned for our families when they come, etc. :)

Speaking of cleaning: God has provided such awesome friends to help me out with that during these last few weeks of pregnancy! Earlier this week, two friends from camp staff (Judy & Jen B.) came over to watch my kids while I went to my ob appointment (seriously, God has provided so amazingly, I have not had to take the kids to an ob appointment without help this entire pregnancy, it has been such a blessing - my ob's office is VERY busy & you often have to wait a very long time, you never know, so it's kind of a big deal to watch 2 kids while waiting an hour or two). Anyhow, while those friends were here, they lugged my vacuum down the stairs, vacuumed my downstairs rugs, and then swept & Swiffered my floors. I was toooootally nesting that night, and with that motivation, I was able to get the guest bedroom tidied up for when my parents come. Then, on Friday, another awesome friend of mine (Anna) drove an hour to come see me & hang out, and specifically, she came because wanted to help me clean my house. :) Her adorable son is 4 months old, so I had the added benefit of holding him quite a bit, and watching my kids interact with him - and it was SO fun, I can't wait to see them as big sister & big brother (again). Zachary was especially adorable with him. :)

Anna ended up cleaning two of my bathrooms, including scrubbing two showers & floors (which would be WAY too much for me at this stage), and also, she saved me from a bat. A real, live bat.

As I was showing her the baby's room, with its monkey stickers on the walls, I noticed a weird something on one of the monkeys. I went closer to look, saw that it was a little bat, and said something like, "Oh, Anna, nasty. Let's get out of here and shove something under the door so it can't get out." That was my entire plan for the bat situation. Close the door, shove something under it, and call husband. That is my Emergency Bat Plan, apparently. Anna, who is rather brave and once caught a mouse for me in my old house, had another plan. It involved a book, a bucket, a broom, an open window, and lots of whacking & screeching noises. As the door was closed, that's about all the details I know. But the bat is gone, and Anna learned firsthand that apparently bats hiss and scream - who knew? Now that is a pretty good friend who will catch a bat for you, I think. :)

Another thing that gets harder as you get closer to the end of pregnancy, in my opinion, is shopping. Since it's summer, I haven't had to do as much grocery shopping as usual (we just eat at camp most meals), but my friend Judy has been coming with me when I do have to go to town, and she is not only a big help with the kids but a huge blessing to me as well. This week, she stayed with the kids while my friend Sandy and I did some shopping in town. Sandy is an awesome blessing to me, too - not only helping me with my shopping, but also working to organize the kitchen staffers to help me with the kids when I need a break or help around the house, and just her constant attitude of thinking of everyone else instead of herself. She is an amazing woman, and I'm so thankful for her friendship and presence in my life!

Praise God for all of the people He's using to provide for our needs as we approach the end of this pregnancy and the beginning of a new stage for our family! :)

Family Update!

2011-07-07T16:40:00.003-04:00

Natalie is really starting to be quite the social little bug - she remembers our staff friends from camp, and will go up to them and hold her arms up so they pick her up, and she's even getting much more comfortable going up to 'strangers' at camp, so that's fun for the campers. Her favorite word is still "mine!" but her newest words are "na-na" for bunny and "za-za" for pizza!!! :) I love the pizza one, I make her say it all the time and then she thinks she's going to get pizza....I'm such a mean mommy. :) She loves to 'neigh' for horses or cows & anytime we're driving down the road, she will yell out, "Neigh! Neigh!" if she sees any horse-ish kind of animal. :)

Zachary and Natalie moved into the same room this week, which has been...um...exhausting. The first few nights, they did NOT go down well at all & were in there talking until 10 pm. Natalie will sleep extra in the morning if she's tired, but Z was up at 6 & would NOT go back to sleep. So I had two tired & grouchy kids on my hands for the first few days. The last 2 nights have gone better, though, with Natalie going to sleep right away & then Zachary and I read a couple of books together and then he goes in & has been so tired that he hasn't even disobeyed - he's gone right to sleep, quietly. So I am very thankful for that. :)

Z was reluctant to go to story time at the library this morning -it's funny because he's very outgoing, with his peers, and with adults, even people who are strangers, at camp and church - but both of those places are pretty much an extension of home for us. At the library story hour, he sits on my lap, instead of on the floor with the kids - while Natalie goes right up to sit with the kids! :) On the way to the library today, Zachary declared that he did not want to go to story time, and he was NOT going to have any fun. I said, "Well, honey, that's a choice. You can choose to have fun or not." After we arrived home, I asked him if he had fun, and he laughed and said, "Yes! I did - I accidentally had fun!" :) He does really like to do the crafts they have, and then they bring out toy cars & trucks, and by then he usually joins the other kids to play. :)

16 days until Baby Boy is due! Nothing new on that front - still big & pregnant, no progress or dropping to show for being so close...but my dr. said she wouldn't let me go too far past my due date before she would induce me, so, though I'd like to go on my own this time, I'd be happy with that at this point (and for sure once I'm at my due date!) :) Of course my hips are sore, etc. but I really do feel like I'm doing well for being this far along, and I'm not having too many of the 'practice' contractions yet, so I'm VERY thankful for that fact. :) I got all of his darling little clothes washed and folded & put away in his room, and now I just have to get his crib in & get it ready & put his monkey stickers on his walls. :) Oh, and pick out a name - ha! That's kind of important, and nope, we haven't decided yet. :) I should probably pack a hospital bag at some point, too...honestly, it still seems so far away but it's really just a few DAYS! Crazy! :) I AM getting really excited, though- I can't wait to meet him and see what Zachary & Natalie think about him, too! :)

I'm so thankful for all three of my little sweethearts - they do bring so much joy to each day, and I can't wait until all three of them can play together & just multiply the joy even that much more. :)

Just Talking

2011-06-26T22:48:00.003-04:00

I mentioned to Zachary that when the baby comes out, that's the day that he's 'born' - his 'birthday'. Zachary said, "His birthday? We can have a cake!" When I explained that the baby won't be able to eat cake (only milk), Zachary said, "That's okay - I can eat the cake! And I will share the cake with all the other big people who can eat it!" :)

Whenever Z doesn't want to eat something I give him, he has started saying he's allergic to it. This week he's been 'allergic' to chicken, banana muffins, and vegetables. :)

Natalie & Zachary's favorite ways to play together lately involve spitting & screaming. They will sit in their car seats, and one will spit, then the other. We try to talk them out of this. So then they get to screaming - Zachary screams, then Natalie screams, and they just laugh hilariously. It is loud but very funny. :)

My friend's 3-year-old daughter loves to comment on my belly, usually with a comment like, "Ohh, your baby is growing!" Sunday morning was no exception - her statement this week was, "Wow, your baby's getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger!" :)

Zachary is always excited when he gets to sit in the grocery cart - he likes Sam's Club because their carts all have two seats. On the way to Sam's Club, he mentioned that all the carts have two seats, so two people can sit in them! "Yes!", I said, "and who do you think should sit in them? Should I sit in the cart?" He responded, "Oh, no, you should not sit in the cart. You might break it. Natalie and I will sit in the cart, and you will stand and push the cart. There is a handle for you to hold while you push the cart." :) A few seconds later he said...."Were you just kidding?" :)

Natalie isn't a big talker yet, but she is starting - her newest words are 'mine' (which she uses frequently and always in the correct context) and 'dir-ty' (when she is about to eat something off of the floor...or just ate something off the floor...) She also makes several animal noises "ah-ah" for a monkey noise, "oof-oof" for a dog, a squealing "oowwwww" sound for a cat, a growl for a monster or Cookie Monster, and today Zachary taught her "neigh" for a horse, which she imitated several times & was encouraged by Zachary's & my giggling at her while she practiced. :) She is very good at following directions - you can give her a toy or pair of shoes & tell her to go put them in her room or Zachary's room, and she usually will, or she will throw her diapers in the garbage for you. She also will go find her Crocs & put them on herself (not always on the right feet) if you tell her to. :)

Zachary can pretty much dress & undress himself, though he is convinced that he can't take off his own shirt, and sometimes has trouble putting his arms into his shirt. But he can even put on his own socks! And he always asks "Do socks matter?" meaning, 'does it matter which sock goes on which foot?' :) This week we worked on the concept of 'tag goes in the back', so that has been helping him to get his clothes on more independently, too. :)

And he is doing really great with potty training (well, still no progress at all on #2, but doing great with #1). He wore undies to church all day Sunday & to town this morning with NO accidents! After I typed this, I took him to camp in undies & took him to go potty, while in the bathroom he pinched his finger in the stall door & by the time I kissed his owie, it was too late & he had an accident on the bathroom floor - sadness! :( But, really, he's doing pretty well overall, I think. :) Any tips on how to motivate him to go #2 in the potty are STILL appreciated. :)

Tot School

2011-06-26T22:46:00.004-04:00

Just a few pictures today of some things we've been up to this week! I am working feverishly on planning preschool & making the activities that we'll use this fall for Z's curriculum. Here is the first one I finished, and I was so excited for him to try this - it is a Numbers Handwriting Practice book - I laminated the pages & cut them into strips, then punched them & put them on a book ring. I got the idea and pattern here.

Zachary was being contrary this day, and did not want to write. He said it 'was not a school day'. Anyhow, I wrote on the cards & he wiped off what I wrote, and he thought that was fun. :) Notice Natalie playing Potato Heads in the background. :)

cutie :)

On a hike this week, we saw a dragonfly and he just sat still for about five minutes to let Z look at and pet him!

I am working on a new system to organize my school games - I put each one in a page protector to keep the pieces separate & organized - I hope it will work well! Here is the Rocket Size Sort I made a few months ago - found here:

And this is the Missing Letters game from Confessions of a Homeschooler:

And the Butterfly Size Sort Game, also from COAH:

The COAH curriculum also has these adorable M&M color matching puzzles - you cut them apart into two pieces & the kids match them up by color. :) I think Z will really like these - I cut them out & laminated them. :)

So that's about all the learning we've been up to - along with reading. :) Our library's summer reading program starts this week with a kickoff tomorrow night & a story hour on Thursday, so I'll hopefully share more about that next week!!! Check out more Tot School over at 1+1+1=1!

Tot School: Summer Fun Edition

2011-06-19T21:25:00.008-04:00

Well, summer has officially begun here in the Hart household. We kicked off our summer camp season tonight with a dinner for our counseling staff at camp, which means my Hubby will be busy serving at camp for the next nine weeks, and I'll be hanging out with the kiddos (at home and at camp each day). Baby #3 is due in about 5 weeks, so everything will change then for sure, but for now, we're enjoying summer fun & excited to see our staff friends (old and new!) and be involved as we can at camp!

We finished our school year about 3 weeks ago, and moved on to summer fun! We've been doing a lot of learning these last 3 weeks, though we haven't 'had school'. And I've been spending a lot of time planning for our fall preschool curriculum - I'd like to have it all done before Baby arrives! I have up through letter G's activities planned, and all the games and activities that need to be laminated or cut are printed out, so I am working on those as time allows.

And here's what the kids have been up to! We had a few hot days, and so to keep the kids cool (until I could get to the store to buy a new kiddie pool, since our old one had a hole in it), I set up a water table - this is an under-the-bed storage box resting on 3 chairs and filled with water. Hey, it works in a pinch! :) I was definitely feeling the heat and enjoyed having them splash me as they played. :)

Then I got to buy a kiddie pool, and we have enjoyed that several days. :)

Here they were working together to fill up this bucket with water & then dump it out - so cute. :)

One morning I caught them both sitting next to each other on the living room floor, reading books. But Nat saw me coming & is starting to get up in this picture. :(

Zachary is reading the board book version of Go Dog Go. Another book that we have LOVED lately is a treasury of 7 original Curious George books - 400 pages of Curious George - we have read a story from it almost every day since we checked it out from the library 5 or so weeks ago! Z will be disappointed when we've reached our limit of renewals on that one. :)

We have taken lots of walks outside, too! Here are the kids walking down the driveway (I just love this one for some reason):

Zachary is using a stick to draw in the dirt:

So Natalie is drawing with a stick too:

We got some new toys from the consignment store, which the kids have been loving! Zachary's 'treat' for being good while I was shopping for Baby Boy's 'coming home from the hospital' outfit was this Barney Banjo (only $1.50, with batteries!)- it is very cool - it has a red 'laser' light & sensor inside the circle & only plays the tune when your hand or other body part or object is in the way of the light. Z is playing it with his face, while Natalie waits a little grumpily for her turn. :)

I also got these blocks - the whole set for $2, because I remembered playing with some as a child, and thought they were cool. I didn't even realize that they were educational, other than a small motor skills activity, but they came with these little green pieces & I realized that each block has a picture & corresponding letter on it & each one has a little green piece that goes along with the picture to teach what starts with the letters! Here is the lion piece with the lion block:

The lion piece with the L side of the block:

The blocks open up, so the lion can go inside!

And you can build cool things like this:

or this:

They've really enjoyed this set! :)

A friend gave us some gifts for the kids & included was this book about shapes - the pages are magnetic & the little shapes are magnets - so fun! It is by Priddy books, I think (I love their stuff!)

Natalie is doing awesome eating with a spoon - she is definitely ahead of where Z was at this age with small motor skills, though she's slightly behind him verbally, I think. Here she is eating some yogurt with a spoon all by herself!

And we took a family outing to the zoo! The kids enjoyed seeing the animals - Z more than Natalie of course, he said his favorite was the gorilla, but he talked a lot about the giraffe, too. :) Here he is with Daddy riding on the carousel. Of course my 'daring' boy is riding on the bench instead of any of the animals. :) :)

Here's Natalie watching them go around:

And here's Daddy, Natalie & Zachary all ready to ride the train around! We had a great time together. :)

Zachary and I sometimes play games together while Nat falls asleep at naptime (otherwise we read books for about a half hour and then he lays down for his nap and they usually wake up about the same time). We picked up a great educational game that I've wanted for a while - $2 at the consignment store - it is called Hi Ho Cherry Oh. You have to count the cherries, but there are only ten for each person and you never have to count higher than four, so it didn't really challenge him in the counting area. But where it did challenge him is in the 'following directions' area - and I wouldn't let him cheat & pick '4 cherries' every time with the spinner, so that was a challenge, too. :)

We have had a lot of fun playing this! :)

I also taught him how to play Uno - I wasn't sure if he was thrilled with it, but he said later that he had a good time, so maybe we'll try it again soon. :)

I love this picture because the expression on his face is so perfect - he is disappointed that he can't 'match' anything! :)

So that's what we've been up to - oh, and potty training!!!! #1 is still going pretty well, most days he can stay dry even when we're at camp or church, even if he's in a pull up, so I'm really proud of the progress he's made in that. #2, however.....oh, boy. This has been a rough weekend in that area, I was actually in tears at one point. He just does not WANT to go #2 in the potty, so he just refuses. Any tips would be appreciated, and I just want to say I really appreciate all the advice & help everyone's been sending my way - SO encouraging to hear stories from friends & moms who have been here (and aren't anymore)! :)

As far as Natalie, she'll be 18 months on Wednesday, and she is definitely quite the little personality. :) I love this age, but she is definitely starting to show a stubborn streak at times. She's still a little sweetheart, though, happy most of the time, and loves cuddling & being tickled. And she loves my belly button. She just thinks my belly button is hilarious. :) She and Zachary have started this thing where they scream back and forth at each other for fun and while it's loud, it's also really funny to watch, because they're screaming & laughing hilariously. :) It's great. :)

Well, if you want to see any more creative ideas about what to do with your tot, head on over to the Tot School homepage at 1+1+1=1! :)

How It's Going

2011-06-02T18:04:00.005-04:00

It's going well! I'm so happy! :) We have tried several times to potty train, unsuccessfully, but this time, I think Z is finally ready! Today is Day #8 of training, and we have not had any accidents for several days - I am so thankful!

I was dreading potty training, picturing myself following Z around with the mop all day long, cleaning up accident after accident, for weeks on end. But thankfully it has gone so much better than that! So I'll share (so far) what's worked for us, and then we'll talk about the struggles we're still having...because we're not anywhere near 'there' yet.

We started last Wednesday, putting Zachary in big-boy underwear when he got up, setting a timer for every 10 minutes, and checking at each 10 minutes to see if he was clean and dry. If he was, he would get an m&m. Every other time I checked (so, every 20 minutes), we did the m&m thing, then I set the timer for 2 or 3 minutes, and had him sit on the potty. If he went #1, he got a Teddy Graham, and if he went #2, he got a Golden Oreo. (We had gone to the store together the day before to pick out his special treats together, so they were his choice.) The first couple of days were completely exhausting, checking the timer & resetting it, and going into the bathroom every 20 minutes, just a constant interruption to our schedule...but it was worth it. We had about 3 accidents in the first two days, but he really did very well! By the end of the 2nd day, he was saying without my asking, "I have to go potty!", running in the bathroom by himself, and going #1. I was so pleased!

Since then, we have not had any accidents at home when he's been in his underwear, except for one time. We aren't using the timer anymore, but I try to keep my eye on him & if it's been about 30-40 minutes, I have him go 'try' and that usually works. Lots of times he'll say he has to go & then go on his own. So I am very proud & pleased with how it's going! We use a pull-up at naptime, and a diaper at bedtime, just so he doesn't have to worry about it at sleeping times (and so I don't have to worry about changing sheets either).

So, here are the next steps we need to take: we need to conquer the big #2. We have only had one half-success with this so far, on the first day, I think. Since then, he has only gone #2 at nap or bedtime or when we were out & had a pull-up on him. I have tried making him sit for a long time when I knew he was getting close to ready, but it just hasn't worked. He is scared to go #2 in the potty, i think. So I guess we'll just keep trying & wait till he's ready for that.

We also need to conquer a nervousness about public potties. He has not used a public potty yet. So far, I've let him wear a pull-up everywhere we've gone in public, but I think he would do better with underwear instead, since being wet in undies is more bothersome than a wet pull-up, so we may try that on our library trip tomorrow. And I may have a story about shampooing the library's children's room carpet. But maybe I wont. :) I guess we'll see! :) Overall, I am very thankful for how we're coming, considering our previous attempts were measured in hours and accidents (and those numbers were always about the same...) :) Thanks to all who have given advice & encouragement as we have started this process! Any more advice is always appreciated! :)

As far as everything else in life is going...well, Natalie is 17 months old now, and Zachary will be 3 1/2 on Sunday. So time is flying by! We are enjoying the nice weather, and getting outside as much as we can. Natalie is definitely starting to enter the stage of toddlerhood that requires some discipline & she is starting to willfully disobey lately, and throwing a few more tantrums than she was previously, so that is becoming interesting - balancing discipline between 2 kids! But this stage is so much fun, and although Natalie still isn't talking much (at what point should I be concerned? is 5-8 words at 17 months normal?) she understands a LOT of things that surprise me sometimes. :) The other day I was trying to get her to SAY "All done" with her words, and she kept signing it instead (she throws her arms out wide to the sides to sign all done). I said, "Natalie, say 'all done' with your mouth." Frustrated, she stuck her hand in her mouth for a second, pulled it out, and threw her arms out to the sides, signing all done! I had to laugh! :) And of course the speech lesson was over. :)

Staff training (which begins our busy summer camp season) starts in less than three weeks, so Hubby is busy trying to prepare for that! And our littlest guy is due in less than 8 weeks (though who knows when he'll actually make his appearance)! It is getting SO close!!! I feel like I should have his room a little closer to ready, but that means moving Natalie into the room she'll share with Z...and I'm not nearly ready for that transition yet - let's get potty training & the transition to the summer camp season under our belts first!! :) Little Guy is healthy, always with a high heartbeat at my appointments, and more active in the womb than either of my other two were - body parts always sticking out all over & my belly bouncing like you wouldn't believe (I love it!). :) My hips are a little sore but I'm not too overly uncomfortable yet, so I'm thankful for that. :)

Well, just a quick update to let you know how we're doing! Hope everyone is doing great & enjoying nicer weather as the summer is here (or at least close!). :)

Tot School - Letter Z!

2011-05-30T19:51:00.013-04:00

Well, we have finished the letter Z! We are done with school for the year - woo hoo! Originally, I had scheduled two review weeks, and have the verses & songs to go along with those weeks, so we will see if we have some rainy days these next couple of weeks, we may pull one of those out at some point! And of course the learning won't stop - we'll be playing outside a lot, reading many books, being involved in summer camp, having a new baby, and doing some of our favorite learning activities at our own pace as we have time & the desire to. :) At the end of our letter Z post, I'll be sharing my plans for Z's fall curriculum, which I am getting very excited about and possibly a little bit obsessed with planning before the baby comes (8 weeks till my due date!) :)

So, we studied the letter Z! Here is our morning board. Our Bible story for the week was, Surprise- Zaccheus! :) Z loved singing the traditional "Zaccheus was a wee little man" song along with the song I chose for the week, and he learned his verse really well! He also took the Bible story to heart, about how Jesus loves sinners & helps them to change - one night as he was getting ready for bed, he asked me, "Why was Zaccheus a naughty wee little man?" :)

Here is Zachary asking me to read the words of our song - Jesus, What a Friend for Sinners. He loves following along with words as I'm reading & recognizes quite a few in books & on signs that we see when we're out!

We made a Zebra Stripe Z collage, which I was very happy with. Here he is spreading the glue stick all over the Z.
I cut out some long skinny triangles of black construction paper, and Z stuck them on our Z. :)

He was about done at this point, but I think it was fun. :)

Natalie thankfully can not get the glue stick open...

Our finished Zebra stripe Z! I really love how this turned out! Notice I added more triangles after Z got bored with it. :) (he said I could)

And here is our (almost) finished alphabet on the wall of our schoolroom!!! We still need to re-make our G since it got so greasy & ruined from the Goldfish crackers!!

When we finished, Z found some leftover string from our Yarn Y & was making it into U's. :) I don't know why, but I'm glad he made the connection & knows what a U looks like. :)

Another day, Zachary colored a Zoey page with markers & Natalie joined in, too, with her own coloring page.
Zachary's page was a maze, and he did very well at it. :)

We used our consonant cards to play hide-and-seek again, one of Z's favorite activities. Do you see the card 'hiding' on the window sill?

He found it! :)
We also matched the letter cards with the pictures for a few minutes, until it was naptime.

We played with playdough, and also used Pick-up-sticks to make our Z. Zachary did a good job, and I loved how creative he was, using the same blue stick for the bottoms of both the big & small Z's. :)

Natalie enjoying her favorite activity - putting the sticks in the container & taking them back out. She LOVES containers & putting things in, and taking them out, over and over and over. It is so funny. :)

We finished our school year with one of Zachary's favorite activities - dot painting! He did a Z is for Zebra page from www.makinglearningfun.com. Since the dot paints are NOT washable, Natalie is pretending to dot paint with the cap on. :)

Apparently she is still having fun. :)

And this is why I'm excited to be done with school for the summer - how can I make them stay in & do school work when the weather is like this??? We played at the camp's pond beach this week, and had a great time. :)

They worked together to fill up this bucket with sand, it was SO much fun to watch! :)

I'd like to share just a tiny bit of what I have planned for Zachary's preschool curriculum for the fall, and hopefully this writing it out (again) will help me think through it better, too. :) Zachary will be turning 4 in December, and is ready for a little more structured preschool time rather than the Tot School we finished this year, I think.

I shared last time about our new Circle Time board, so I am really excited to use that for circle time this fall (and summer, too!). Along with that, we will be using the morning board from this year - I plan to use the Active Exercise Cards again, and continue with the sight words we haven't mastered yet. For our Bible curriculum (memory verses and songs), I plan to use the Songs for Saplings CD & corresponding printables from Totally Tots. Click on any of the things I've mentioned to be linked to the activities or supplies I'm using. I like to use a weekly Bible story, too, that goes along with the verse, but I haven't found any ready made things like this available for the Songs for Saplings curriculum - does anybody know of any stories to go along with the weekly verses, or do I need to think of my own?

As far as our reading & math curriculum, I am taking most of the activities I'll be using this year from Confessions of a Homeschooler. She has a full preschool curriculum available, designed in the Letter of the Week format - called, appropriately, the Letter of the Week curriculum. I am going to use many activities from her Letter of the Week posts/printables section, and also several (almost all, really) of the activities from her NEW K4 expansion supplement to the LOTW curriculum. Zachary seems to be a little more ready for some seatwork at this point, he likes to go over to the table and 'do an activity' after we have circle time, which he was not ready to do six months or a year ago. So I have many worksheets that I hope to use with him along with learning games and manipulatives such as these M&M Color Matching Puzzles and this adorable dice game. A couple of other activities I am planning to use are these dot painting pages from Homeschool Creations, and several activities from www.beginningreading.com.

We are going to focus a lot on handwriting and tracing, since we didn't really start on that much at all this year. Just one more activity that I'm really excited to use with Z are the Alphabet Builders - I think it will be really good for him to start understanding how letters are put together using this tool!

As far as Natalie, she will be doing Tot School activities this fall, alongside Zachary - I won't be doing anything too structured with her since she will turn two in December, just playing learning games & exposing her to books & letters as I did for Zachary when he was two. No organized 'seatwork' for her, except coloring & painting along with her 'Bubba'. :)

Looking back on the last year, and where Zachary was learning-wise when I started planning for the school year, I am amazed at how far he's come! He is like a sponge that just soaks up learning & reading & just loves it. He would read books 24 hours a day if I was able to sit & read with him every minute. :) He is also becoming slightly more independent, finally willing to do some things for himself and by himself, so I am very thankful for that, especially with another very dependent one on the way! :)

Check out what everyone else is doing for Tot School this week over at 1+1+1=1!

Pretending

2011-05-24T15:37:00.001-04:00

Zachary will be three and a half in just a couple of weeks. It is high time for my stubborn sweetheart to be potty trained. Especially since I will have both a newborn & toddler in diapers just two months from now, and I'd rather not also have a preschooler in diapers along with the two of them.

As we were changing his diaper, I began to discuss the process of potty training with him. We've tried a couple of times, but each time it has gone miserably and we (okay, I) have given up and vowed to try again at a later date. He is excited about the prospect of picking out treats to enjoy when success does happen, but the rest of the process does not sound very exciting to him. :)

As I was finishing up changing him, I heard him muttering under his breath, "I am not a big boy. I just pretend to be a big boy. I'm really a little boy."

And I totally understood. Because I'm not really a big girl either. I'm just a little girl, intimidated by the thought of potty training, scared to death by the idea that in less than nine or ten weeks, I'll be responsible for three babies' welfare. But I have to pretend that I'm a big girl and bravely go along with this idea that I'm an adult now. Since I suppose I am. :)

And as I think about this 'pretending' and the feeling that I'm not ready for this, I'm not enough for the challenges that God has placed before me, the answer to Zachary's problem and my own come to me quietly. "My strength is made perfect in weakness. I will never leave you nor forsake you. When you are weak, then I am strong." (borrowed from 2 Cor. 12)

And that's why I can be the mommy to three darlings who are three and under (without losing my sanity). Because I'm not doing it on my own. When I'm 'done', 'at the end of my rope', 'out of patience', there is still more. There's God, and His immeasurable grace and love for me. And His all-powerful strength to pick me up and love my babies through tired, weak me.

And that's how we're going to do this potty training thing. This time we're not going it on our own. We're going to pray. A lot. We're going to keep our focus on what God wants for us, even in the midst of accidents and frustrations. And we're not going to give up...

At least for a day or two... :)

A Girlfriend's Guide to Getting Out of Bed During Your Third Trimester of Pregnancy

2011-05-18T21:50:00.002-04:00

Being that I am in the third trimester of my third pregnancy (in 3.5 years), I consider myself somewhat experienced in the matters of pregnancy. :) So I thought I would share with all of my friends a step-by-step guide to the plethora of middle-of-the-night trips that pregnancy (well, at least my pregnancies...) are famous for.

Step 1. Wake up. This is the easiest step of all, especially with the aid of a bladder the size of a pea and a preschooler who enjoys being tucked back into bed several times each night.

Step 2. Dislodge all of the pillows your oddly-shaped pregnant body requires in order to sleep comfortably, and place them next to the head of the bed.

Step 3. Using any muscle strength you can muster up, roll carefully so that you are laying on your side, belly protruding over the edge of the bed. At this point, if the previously mentioned preschooler is present, you may have to inform them that Mommy IS, in fact, attempting to get up, and ask them to please hold on a few more minutes, as the process is not quick.

Step 4. Since you have no ab muscles to aid you at this point, use your hands to help you slowly sit up on the bed. If there is no preschooler present, you may want to take a minute at this point to recover from the exertion the previous steps have taken.

Step 5. Carefully stand up and waddle to your destination. After meeting the needs of the child or bladder in question (or both), waddle back to your bed.

Step 6. Lay back down.

Step 7. Locate each of the necessary pillows and replace them in the areas they are needed.

Step 8. Sleep for an hour or two, then repeat.

**I hope you've enjoyed this lighthearted look at some of late pregnancy's 'trials' and know that I am beyond thankful for this blessing (all three little blessings) that God has given me. I really do LOVE being pregnant & I smile and thank God for my sweet son each and every time I feel him violently kick me. :)

Tot School - Letters X & Y

2011-05-16T10:36:00.010-04:00

I think I should subtitle this post: The Slacker Edition. :) We are SO close to the end of the school year, and have had such gorgeous weather the last week or 2 (the last couple days excluded), we've been doing school & Z has been learning, but we haven't been as 'strict' with school as I sometimes think we should be. :) However, I did want to share an exciting blessing & the fun school-y things we did accomplish! :)

First, I want to share the most exciting thing that happened in the last two weeks - a box showed up at my door unexpectedly! A friend who has taught for years mentioned to me a circle time board that she had seen recently, and as we were talking about it, I realized that I had seen the same board in the classroom where my SIL teaches, and LOVED it! I was VERY pleasantly surprised when a box arrived last week containing the very circle time kit we had talked about! Here is a picture of it all put together:

I am so excited to use this with Zachary! I just finished putting together the whole thing this morning, but already Z has been asking me each day, "What day is it?" so he can slide the star to the right day. :) He was very excited to see it all put together! :) I'm thankful that God used our friend to bless us with this great learning tool! :) It is from Lakeshore Learning, if you love it, too, you can find a link to it here.

We studied the letters X and Y the last two weeks - the first week was letter X. We did an X collage, with small strips of paper that we made X's with on our X. Apparently the only things that start with X are xylophone and x-ray and I didn't know what to put on the collage, so we just made X's. This was more difficult than I thought & Z & I were both in bad moods, so I ended up doing most of it myself, with Z telling me where to place the X's. Here it is:

WE dot painted an X page - X is for Xylophone (from makinglearningfun.com), and Z loved doing this one. :)

We used our Wikki Stix to make an X on our Playdough Mat.

We also played Potato Heads - here is Mr. Silly, Zachary's creation. :)

We also colored! Here's Natalie's favorite part of coloring - taking the crayons ALL out of the box:

She did color, more than usual, so that was exciting. :)

Here is her finished page of coloring (the black spot is from Z's dot painting from last week):

Zachary colored, too, and he made the Grouch, Bert, and Ernie all the correct colors, so that was fun. :)

Then we studied the letter Y! We made a Yarn collage together. Here's Z asking me to put the glue on:

Here's Z putting the glue on himself:

Natalie watching:

Zachary putting some yarn in the glue:

Our finished Yarn Y:

We played with our Rocket Numbers again, and Z did a great job! These are from Musings of Me's space unit.

(notice that my (green) belly made it into this next shot - whoops! Missed that in the editing process!) :)

We did 'free painting' this week - Z was 'stamping' with a foam circle brush at this point. He kept saying something like, "Stamp!" :)

Natalie painted too:

And Zachary finished with a brush:

We played with playdough on the porch, on an old tablecloth so the playdough wouldn't fall through the cracks. Natalie took out the playdough & put it back in the container most of the time. :)

Zachary loves cutting his playdough with a butter knife.

He used 'worms' to make a big and small Y on his Playdough mat!

Although his little Y was kind of funny looking....

In conclusion, here is a cute smile from Zachary! :) He is growing so fast! I am looking forward to the break after we finish letter Z this week, but he isn't sure what to think. He keeps asking me what we're going to do when Z is done! :) Of course, we won't stop learning this summer, but we will be spending lots of time at camp, and playing outside...until baby brother arrives sometime in late July!

And here's a 'first' for Natalie - her first set of pigtails!!! I learned on this day that she does not have the patience for Mommy to put in pigtails. :) I basically had to wrestle her head still while the rest of her was buckled in her car seat to accomplish this look. At least it lasted all morning. :)

Well, to see what everyone else is doing for tot school this week, head on over to 1+1+1=1! Next week, I'll be sharing about our adventures with the letter Z (I'll try to be a little better about taking pictures this week, but who knows, we have a busy week planned - I think we'll be out every morning till Friday...maybe letter Z will go through next week too...). Anyhow, in my next post (the last for the year!) I hope to share a little about what I have planned for Zachary's fall curriculum. He'll be turning 4 in December, so we'll be doing more as far as 'preschool' type activities this fall, and I'm looking forward to that - I think he's ready for a little more of a challenge! :) At least I don't have to wonder what we're doing for circle time! :)

Tot School - Letters V and W

2011-04-29T20:35:00.013-04:00

Well, here's my bi-weekly post on Tot School! :) Apparently this is how I roll, at least the last few weeks. :) We studied the letters V and W these last couple of weeks - we are getting so close to the end of the year, and of course you know what that means- time for the real fun - picking out next year's curriculum and ideas & activities!!!! So exciting!!! :) When I get it a little more sorted out, I'll share my plans for next year. :) For now, I'll share what we studied these last two weeks. :)

Here is our morning board for the letter V:

Z enjoyed learning about what an 'orphan' and a 'widow' is & talking about serving others, though he kept saying, 'worphan' and mixing the two up. :) For our V collage, we used vanilla - we smelled it, tasted it & painted it on our V with q-tips. Natalie got to help, too!!!

The finished product:

Zachary did this cutting skills page (this is from the Musings of Me Space Unit), and he did really well! So far he's only succeeded at cutting fringes around the edges of stuff, so I helped him along & encouraged him to 'stuff' the scissors farther into the paper to cut lines & he did awesome! One day I told him we could play a game, and he asked to do this 'cutting game' again, so I guess he enjoyed it! :)

We used our consonant cards, and we played hide & seek with them! We looked at them first, discussed what they were & how they each started with V, then, as he played, I hid them around the room.
He is really bad at finding things, so here's an example of a 'hidden' card:

This week, we did this again & I hid the 3 W cards around the room & also 3 random cards that were objects that did not start with W. He really enjoyed finding all of the things & identifying which ones began with W.

We played a file folder game I made called Animal Match - you match the fur patterns with the bigger animal pictures - Z enjoyed playing this.

Natalie enjoyed playing it, too...she liked just playing with the pieces & looking at the animals. With a yellow strainer on her head. Of course. :)

We painted this week, too! Natalie painted on a plate with a brush & a couple of sponges...

while Zachary painted on our papier mache planet!

He had to add green for grass & plenty of brown for dirt. :)

Natalie ended up with pink 'rocker hair'.

Natalie's finished plate:

And our finished planet:

Our planet hanging in the schoolroom:

While we're at it, here's an updated version of Z's sight word wall. I never thought I'd teach reading by sight words, I always learned by phonics & thought I'd teach by phonics, and while Z does know the sounds that the letters make & we discuss it often, we don't often 'sound out' words. He just absorbs sight words & memorizes them so easily, we focus more on that. Anyhow...these are the sight words we've learned so far! :) Plus as we read books together & talk about the things he learns from Word World, I'm discovering words I didn't know he knew! :)

Aside note: Word World is an awesome PBS tv show - it is SO fun and educational & Z LOVES it - it is his current favorite. :) The concept of building words is so clear from the show & today he said to me, "Does bow begin with W?" I said "No..." and before I could launch into the whole "b...b...b...bow, what says b?" thing, he said, "Nope! But it does END with W!" I was like, Oh, wow! Ok! Yes, it does! :)

And here are some colorful posters on one end of the schoolroom - I picked these up at a local thrift store & I have had the clock since high school. :)

Here's Zachary's sunflower that he planted last week:

and my little plant!

Here is Natalie pretending to be a volcano for our Active Exercise Card of the week.

And Zachary the Volcano:

We watched a YouTube video of a volcano erupting, and it scared Z to death!!! So, that wasn't a hit! :)

Here's Zachary wiping off his tracing sheet - a pre-writing sheet from the Musings of Me Space Unit.

And tracing a V on his playdough mat: (love Nat's face in the background of the first one)

This 'treasure box' activity was in Zachary's High Five magazine (which he loves, it was a great Christmas gift), and he kept asking if we could get a pinecone so we could make it. So we did. :) It has been dropped on the floor several times and is more resilient than I expected! :)

We made Handprint Lambs a couple of days before Easter, and we talked about how Jesus is called the Lamb of God, and what exactly that means. We used this page from the book A is for Adam by Ken Ham to discuss it.

We also made Resurrection Rolls, on Easter afternoon. We flattened out canned biscuit dough, and wrapped it around a big marshmallow, then we rolled the whole thing in cinnamon sugar.

Ready to go in the oven!

The finished product: I read that the marshmallow is supposed to disappear - ours did get smaller, but did not disappear, it did appear mostly empty like the tomb - does anybody know if this is how they are supposed to turn out? My other theory is that our marshmallows could have been old.

We also studied the letter W this last week. Here is our morning board for the week:

Zachary had an easy time with our verse - he acted like he'd said it before, probably in Sunday school. He enjoyed being a windmill, too. :)

We played Play-Dough this week, and Natalie enjoyed playing, too. :)

For our W collage, we painted with the wheels of a couple of our little cars. First, we ran our cars' wheels on an ink pad (he picked yellow).

Then we drove our cars on the W paper & made yellow wheel tracks:

Our finished Wheel W:

We used our clothespin cards, with a new slider I made. :) I set a goal for Z of doing 5 cards this week, as he's always wanting to play or read books instead of doing the activities I have planned, and he did well with the set limit.

And here he is 'reading' a Berenstain Bears book. More often lately, I hear him being quiet & ask, "Zachary, what are you doing?" thinking he's into something, but instead he's just reading a book - I love it! :)

To see what everyone else is doing for Tot School, head over to 1+1+1=1!

Tot School- Letters T and U

2011-04-16T16:45:00.015-04:00

And we're back!! We took a vacation for two weeks to visit extended family, and stayed in a cabin with all of my husband's family in TN, so with packing & traveling, we ended up taking a 3-week 'Spring Break' from Tot School! While we were on vacation, we got some great deals on used books at a place called McKay's Used Bookstore in Chattanooga, TN. Too bad they don't have one around here - actually, my husband is probably very glad we don't have one.... :) Anyhow, among other great treasures (most of the kids books were between 50 cents & $2.50, in great condition), we got these two Eric Carle books - these have a top & bottom half of each page & you match the shape or color with what matches on the bottom half - they are so neat! We already have a corresponding Eric Carle Numbers book, so I was super excited to find these for $1 each!

I also found this great Melissa & Doug costume dress-up Joey set for Zachary for half price at the outlet mall (I think at the Carter's store?)- and he LOVES it!

Here are a couple of pictures of him changing Joey's costumes:

When we arrived home, we had a crazy weekend - a retreat at camp & Joel had to speak at 2 different churches that Sunday - but the church we visited in the morning gave the kids each a present - Natalie's was a baby - she plucked it out of the bag and exclaimed excitedly, "Be-be!" so I think she liked it! :) And Zachary's had a digger (which of course he loves) and this bubble blower in it! As you can see, they both LOVE the bubble blower! :)

So, we jumped right back in to study the letter T after we got unpacked & rested from our crazy weekend! The long break was JUST what we needed - Z was ready to learn again & all his toys & activities seemed new again, and I was energized & ready to teach again! Here is our morning board for the letter T! With Natalie checking out the weather cards...

And here is Zachary dot painting a T is for Turtle page I got from Making Learning Fun.

Natalie likes to pretend to dot-paint, too...too bad these don't come in washable.... :)

The finished product! My sister-in-law got a couple stamps for me for when the kids do worksheets & so I stamped his finished turtle with the dragon stamp & he was excited about that! :)

He made a T with his wikki stix, on his T playdough mat.

Natalie played with wikki stix, too...

working on the small t....
And he made the small one, too - all by himself! :)

We used our circle shape viewer to find a circle... our target!

We played a game that I was able to make during our busy first weekend back, I went to camp & sat with some of my friends who were scrapbooking at the retreat & I cut out some printables I had wanted to make for a while. This game is from Musings of Me - the space unit! I cut out rockets in 3 different sizes, and there's a sorting mat so your child can sort them according to big, small, and medium. Z liked this game!

Our letter collage was T is for Tape. All I could find this morning was Scotch tape, and Z loves getting into my Scotch tape, so he had fun tearing it off & sticking it on. :)

Then we colored the T.

Zachary wondered what a top was, and this is the closest thing we have, so he is playing with it. :)

Natalie even colored a little!
Our finished Tape T!

Zachary used his clothespin cards this week...

and I finally got a picture of the slider I made from cardstock - Z likes to play with this! Natalie ripped it apart this week, so I have to make a new one.... not a big deal! :)

I started doing some pre-writing sheets with Zachary this week - I just put them in a plastic page protector (or you could laminate them) and then use them over & over with a wipe-off marker. These sheets are also from the Musings of Me Space Unit. (I'm telling you, if you haven't checked out her site yet, go now!! Her printables are adorable & totally fun & free!)

Z did a great job for his first time tracing!

We also made this train - the red part was Zachary's arm & hand! :) Z enjoyed gluing all the pieces together. We found this craft here.

For our second week back, we studied the letter U. This week was rather challenging for me, because after another very busy weekend, a cold got the best of me & I lost my voice. All week. In fact, it's still not totally back as I type this. So while trying to take it easy & still communicate with the kids in spite of my laryngitis, we did press on and do school. I was amazed that Zachary learned his verse even with my whispering, but unfortunately, we didn't get to sing our song at all! :(

Here he is pretending to ride a unicycle: :)

We made an Umbrella U for our letter collage. (Natalie, your marker is upside down...) :)

Z showing me an umbrella he colored:

gluing the umbrellas on:

Our finished Umbrella U - made with muffin cup liners & pipe cleaners. :)

We made our papier mache planet! Well, correction - I made the papier mache planet, Z didn't really want to touch the wet paste! :( We'll put another layer on it & paint it this week. :)

We planted some flowers in some little pots!

We played this Frog Math game - this has been sitting in my 'to cut' pile since October or November, & I finally finished it! He enjoyed feeding the flies to the frog (you count as many as the number you choose - they go up to 30!) & making the frog talk - it's very cute to watch & play with him. :) We plan to decorate his 'lily pad' (sour cream container) with green paper soon. :)

This last activity is a number game, again from the Musings of Me space unit - this is about putting the numbers in order - you choose a card with 2 stars & a space & then you fill in the space with the rocket that has the right number on it. Z really liked this game & did great at it! The numbers go up to 20, but I only have 1-8 cut out so far, so that's what we started with this week. :)

Well, so those were our schooling endeavors since Spring Break! Z has been very helpful around the house lately, which I'm thankful for, and one thing he's decided he likes to do is unload the silverware from the dishwasher. One morning he offered to do this & I was putting away the other dishes & just grateful for his help, and I didn't check his work - and this is what I found when I reached for a spoon or something at lunch time! :) Ha! :) The next day we discussed putting certain things in certain spots... :)

And here's a picture of Natalie, taken by Zachary - so fun! You can see my baby belly in the back right corner.... :) I love finding the pictures he takes on the camera when I upload my pictures! :)

To see what everyone else is doing for Tot School this week, check out 1+1+1=1!