Week 5, the letter N and the number 5

So I changed some things up a bit this week since it is our first official week in October.  We started with the letter N and the number 5.  During our morning circle time I'm now having Connor make the sound of the letter and counting to the number we are doing.  He seemed to do pretty well with it.  Emma is also getting in on the letters and numbers. She could probably start kinder with him. . .HA HA, just kidding.

Counting and matching

So we are going to work on his numbers now, counting to the number 20.  He is so good at counting. . .to 13 and then it gets crazy after that.  So I wrote the numbers on the back of the "nuts" and he had to match them and then we would say the number. He did pretty well, the matching might have been a little hard because mommy's writing is not like the the numbers on the page (something I'll have to work on next week)  and then we would count all the numbers.  Not a bad little game :)

Tracing letters

We also started to trace words this week (instead of just the number we are working on) He would write the word, say each letter and then say it.  He did pretty good with this one too and had fun. Only struggled with letters we haven't done yet, and they were lower case (his upper case is pretty good). Something we will continue to do each week.

Coloring

We are also practicing his first and last name.  He struggles with the "r" and writes the "C" backwards but all in good time.  He won't do his last name though, but at least he knows it :)

At the library this week we got new musical instruments to play with. Emma didn't want to give these back.  The library has kind of been  a regression for us, he wants to run around and be crazy like Emma. Sigh. . .

Helping make dinner

This week I let him help me make dinner. This was like Christmas for him.  He got to shred the lettuce and slice the cheddar.  He wants to have salad every night now, even though he hates it.  Silly guy.

What can be caught in a net

This was another fun little game on "what can be caught in a net."  It was kind of tricky because things I think can be caught in a net (like a whale for example) I would put yes.  But this was a small net.  So basically in this activity, only bees and butterflies can be caught in this net :)

Tracing numbers

Big and little

After the net game, we took the animals from this and divided them into two piles, big and small.  He would also name them, he actually named the walrus!  I had no idea he even knew what that was!  So crazy!

I still struggle with this teaching thing. "I'm doing a good job?  Will this help?  Is he learning?"  I think he is, but I don't know.  This whole thing of getting him into kindergarten makes me crazy sometimes.  I have so many people putting their two cents in, and they are totally valid two cents (let him stay out another year, he'll be so much better off" or "No, he needs to go now or he'll be behind) that I'm really conflicted.  I honestly want whats best for him, I just want him to have the same chance other kids his age will have, as do most parents.  But I'm constantly wondering, "Is this enough?"  Honestly, I don't know.  It makes me sick that he misses the cut off by 8 days.  I wish it was by 2 months and then it wouldn't be a question.  Will he succeed?  Will he fall behind?  Will he shoot forward?  Who knows.  All I want is for him to have his chance.  But it will honestly all depend on where we move next year, if we move into the school district we are thinking, it won't matter and he'll have to start in 2016.  Is that better? I honestly don't know.  Will it make me crazy him staying out another year, trying to find things for him to do to keep him engaged on a fairly tight budget? Probably.  Unless your in my boat, no one really understands. But one thing I do know, I've got incredible support from my family, so whatever happens in the next 6 months, will all be part of God's plan and I've got all the support I need :)

Lydia Stevens

For those of you living in the Phoenix area, please keep an eye out for Lydia Stevens.  This 16 year old girl was on her way to the bus stop for school and disappeared, without a trace.  It has been 7 days and not a clue or anything has turned up regarding her whereabouts. She left for school with only the clothes on her back, no phone, nothing else.   If you see her, or have any information regarding her location please contact the Phoenix PD at the numbers listed on the photo above or call 911.  She was last seen in the area of Cave Creek and Union Hills. This hits home for not only parents everywhere, but knowing that this can happen anywhere. This is my neighborhood.  Her church has been stead fast on getting her face out that it has already reached Nancy Grace on HNL. I do not know her personally, but her youth group leader is a dear friend so I'm doing what I can to help pass the word.  Even if you don't live in the Phoenix area, say a prayer for her, her family and all those people assisting in the search.  Sadly she could be anywhere by now.  For more information visit a Facebook page set up in bringing her home.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/588137661297969/

Thanks for reading.

One month completed and what I've learned.

Was a failure in my eyes.  Nothing went according the schedule but I'm finding out that it really doesn't have to. As long as Connor gets his learning in on the days that is required, then that's all I could really hope for.  I'm finding that he is wanting to learn and do things in his own time, which to me is fine right now as he is only 4. But I say as long as he gets everything in that I need him to, then that's all right with me.

Monday we did our tumbling again.  Its great for the kids but I'd be lying if I didn't say I will be glad when this is over.  Connor wanted nothing to do with it today and Emma just likes to run around.  And with this being a "mommy and me" class, I'm being pulled in every which way.  I have one more week and then we'll be done, which is great because it's wedding week for my best friend and I don't think I could handle it ha ha!

Tuesday was a free day but we ended up visiting the library.  I've decided that Tuesday's and Wednesday's are the best days to go to the library as Mrs. Teri is there and she's awesome. Thursday is always a crap shoot on who you're gonna get. Some people are great, some aren't.  When you've got two, you can't gamble on the crap shoots.

Wednesday was a tough day.  We headed to the library and then would break for lunch and then come back for Play on the Go. Well Emma is at that stage right now where she likes to run around like a banchi and this is having a negative effect on Connor. I attend these story times so he can learn how to listen to stories and sit with other children, but when you have your two year old sister not listening and running around, why should he!  We ended up leaving story time early and sit in the car for 30 minutes (until Play on the Go started) which they were not happy about but they need to learn there is a time and place for monkey business. And before anyone freaks out, I was in the car with them, it was a nice day out and the windows were down :)

They did get to do something with Play on the Go, Emma is really good at putting things into containers and Connor had fun golfing.  They both took their turns at finger painting and I hope to buy some paint here soon so that we can do some of this stuff at home.  I know they would love it.

It was a pretty standard week here, we mastered the number 4 and letter R. But now that I have finished my first month this is what I have learned.

Playing at the pumpkin festival.

Teaching is hard. I never said it was easy though. I come from a long line of teachers and I know first hand that it is one of the most thankless jobs.  I love my kids and I will do anything for them, hence why I am making a terrible attempt at teaching them anything.  But I have noticed a few things.

Connor is learning.  He is getting better at writing his letters and recognizing them and counting.  He is getting better at coloring, cutting paper, matching items and all sorts of other things.  He is learning something, even if it is a little.

-Things I'm changing for October-
I have changed the pages that Connor was writing his letters on.  They had both capital and lower case letters on them, but no room for him to "write on his own."  I have found a new page that he can trace a few upper and a few lower case letters and then have some blank spots for writing them on his own.  He is WONDERFUL at tracing, but he needs to learn how to write his letters with out tracing.

In the middle of the month I also had his name up at the top so he could learn to trace that.  I will now also have him do his last name too.

During morning circle I am now going to have him make the sound that the letter of the week makes.  I will also have him count to the number we are learning.  I'm also having him find the letters and numbers of the week with his magnets on his easel.  We are also writing the letter and number on the chalk board now too.

In the stuff I have downloaded for school, they had tracing words. I didn't do that before but I"m going to start now.  He doesn't need to know what they say yet, but just doing different letters every week should help with his writing.

In the matching game we would do I have written numbers on the back so now he must match the number on the back to the number on the page.  This will be better once I have a picture of him doing it.

October is going to be a busy month!  It's festival time and wedding time for my BFF. Pray for my sanity!

The sickness. . .

So last week, after I had posted the blog entry on the 22nd, I got sick.  What?  Mommy got sick?  Yes, it does happen once in a blue moon.  Thankfully on the 23rd I had my MOPS meeting and the 24th was Emma's birthday so I was able to coast on those two days with help.  Thank the Lord!  Thursday I believe fell by the way side.  I was feeling better but I don't think I did much with regards to school.  I'll call that day a wash.

Painting!

So we went to the Children's Museum. We managed to go for $11 for all four of us when it normally would have been 44$.  There was a groupon that did a buy one get one free and then the culture passes at the library will get you two in free (for those of you in Phoenix, I highly recommend checking these out, please note the Zoo and the Museum are always out)  The first thing they did was paint a castle. Probably should have done this last, as Emma had more paint on her than on the castle.  It's okay though, this stuff doesn't bother me and it does come off.  But they had a blast doing it. 

Play kitchen

 This play kitchen is alot better than ours ha ha!  They had everything you can think of in here. Emma and Connor were in here for quite a while.  I sure hope they don't expect us to be a brick oven in the house :)

Xylophone 

 Pretty sure Emma is going to be my musical kid. She could have spent all day in the music area.  Guess we know what we are getting from Santa this year :)

Time to check out.

This was really cool. They had a little store with baskets for kids to check out food and push carts and then go and check them out.  Connor loved checking out kids groceries and Emma loved to fill her cart with anything she could find.  Good thing daddy was there to help put the stuff on the counter.

 It was a great day, despite me not being 100%. I'm so thankful my hubs took the day off to spend it with us, I really needed him to keep up with these monkey's here, as I couldn't have done it by myself in my medical state. Happy 2nd birthday Emma! Plus, they did so much educationally stuff while they were here, I count this as a field trip!

Week 3

So here we are at week 3!  Week 2 was a bit of a struggle. Connor was just not wanting to do school on Tuesday and Thursday so we had a rough end to the week (especially Thursday)  The two of them were bouncing all over the library which made life a bit hard for mommy.  I've decided that once Tumbling is over (we have two sessions left on Monday's) that I'm going to sign the kids up for an art class that runs on Thursdays.  That will give me time to do my Sprouts runs on Monday's (instead of the weekends) and this will give us a straight through Tuesday thru Thursday school schedule. Maybe the break every other Tuesday is causing confusion.  Plus as fun as the tumbling is, it is a mommy and me class, and I'm only one mommy.  The art class Connor can do on his own while I help Em.

Pour in the mix

Careful! Two hands!

Mix together

 So Saturday after quiet time I let Connor make his pudding mix that he got at Play on the Go.  I wish I had gotten a picture of his face for he was SO EXCITED. It was like Christmas morning for him.   He did a great job of putting everything together and mixing it.  Too bad it didn't taste that good (it was a cookie dough flavor I guess?)  None the less this was the highlight of his weekend I'm sure. Sunday was a bit rough, I'm pretty sure we all sat around and did nothing all day.  Daddy has started to work on Sunday's too so he's doing a 6 day schedule right now.  Kinda makes mommy sad.  But Connor did want to do some cutting so he managed to cut out a triangle, square and rectangle.  If it wasn't for my mother in law coming over with dinner, we probably would've all had Ramen ha ha!

So since we have started a new week, our letter is U, number is 3 and shape is triangle.  Our theme is the United States.  Connor is getting better at remembering what letters we're doing and that we go through all of this every morning during morning circle.  He's in a routine now that he knows what to do and where to do it.  We still say the pledge every morning and check the weather.  He is still a bit confused on the country and state business (right now I think he think's we're in Poland since that's last weeks theme)  But I think he's starting to understand.

New activity.

So today's activity was "find the animals that live underground. Since there is not a lot of things to do with the letter "U" they provided this activity.  It was pretty cool except for the fact that Connor wasn't sure of some of the animals (myself included) so we did this together.  He did pretty good with the obvious ones (ants and rabbits are underground, horses and turtles are not) but there were some he wasn't quite sure of (like the fox and some animal I had no idea what it was)  But it was a fun activity to do together.

After the that we did the matching colors of unicycles and then went straight to coloring.  We didn't have much time since we had to go to the grocery store (due to mommy's laziness on Sunday) and then go to tumbling.  Tumbling makes mommy and Emma tired.  Hopefully it will make Connor tired too.

So today was a good day. Hopefully I can get him to write the letter U after his quite time.  Tomorrow will be our second meeting at MOPS.  Wednesday we will be skipping school for it's Emma's second birthday and we'll be spending the day at the Children's Museum (which will be educational enough) and Thursday will be a modified day as we have annual doctor appointments for the kids (and two kids getting shots, fantastic!)  But they'll be fine.

Dig the hole

Plant

Water

I bought some Basil today to start growing on my window ledge since the sun is now on the south side of my house.  I had Connor help me by digging the hole, planting and watering it.  I'm going to have him help me keep the plants alive by watering them.  We have Dill already but I want to get Parsley too.  He'll love it.

While in the grocery store, I was telling the cashier Toni that we had to hurry because we had to get to tumbling after the store. She told me "You do swimming too don't you?" And I told her that was last month, but that we try to get out of the house every day during the week for school stuff.  She told me that its great that I'm working on educating them while I stay home with them and not just putting them in front of the TV/iPad.  I told her we have those days too, but during the week I try to educate them.  She praised me on taking an active role in their education.  I'm trying, and sometimes I wonder if it's sinking in.  But I see him getting better and better every day. Just like my mom always says "A little, can go a long way"

Cloudy with a chance of rain.

That's what they really should have said with regards to this Tropical Storm that was heading our way.  I know its only Wednesday but all its really done is just sprinkle.  I'm okay with that since I know alot of people got flooded last week. I knew this would happen though, because everyone is prepared this time.  We still have tomorrow and possibly another TS heading up Mexico.  Only time will tell.

Narnia!

So we did some running around on Tuesday to prepare for the storm, so we went to Sprouts :)  We also decided to go to the library today.  This was a struggle. Em and Connor were all over the place at story time, so I was "that mom."  Ugh.  It was frustrating to say the least.  We only did morning circle today since I wanted to go to the store before the library.  I tried to get them to do some cutting or coloring but they weren't having it.  Since today is not a school day.  I didn't push it.

Cutting out "Gifts" for Babcia

The front read "Happy Birthday Babcia" on it, this on the inside is Babcia, Connor and Emma

Emma scribbles for her Babcia

Like all their grandparents, these kids really love their Babcia.  Babcia loves to come over and cook for us too (which I love). But today was her birthday.  So we invited her over for dinner and the kids made birthday cards for her.  Needless to say she loved them.  I'm pretty sure they are on her frig as we speak. For those who don't know, Jonathan's whole family is 200% Polish.  Babcia is "grandmother" in Polish.

The Letter P

So when we woke up today we were happy that we weren't under 6 inches of water (or any inches for that matter) so I started the day as I would any Wednesday.  After morning circle we did some activities.  Here, Connor is writing the letter P on his new easel he got from Papa and Grandma.    He went right up to it and wrote a perfect P.

Find the P and the 2

Since the letter P and the number 2 are what we are working on this week, I had them find the P and the 2 (the 2 has gone AWOL) But here Connor is taking the letters and putting them up at the top, as well as naming what the letter or number is (Em is too)  This just proves he is being lazy sometimes, as he knows these letters and numbers.

Awesome!

Today for coloring, he did a pumpkin.  Which is cool since we are learning about the letter P at home, they are doing fall pumpkins at library,  They are reading stories and singing songs about pumpkins and they even made a pumpkin growing cycle.  It tied in perfectly!  Above Connor is coloring a pumpkin.  I'm going to venture that this is the first time, he colored everything the color it is.  This is on our frig :)

The country Poland

Since we are doing the letter P, I have also introduced the country Poland.  Since half of our family is from/lives there, he should know a bit about it.  He learned today what Poland is and that the capital is Warsaw.  He is coloring Poland above and then I asked him to point out Poland on an Eastern Europe map.  He got it right away!! (This was a matching shape type of exercise) Tomorrow we have a craft to make the Polish flag.

Library day

This Wednesday is the 3rd Wednesday so every other Wednesday is a story time/ Play on the Go day.  These days are exhausting for me. Story time is from 11:15 to 11:45 and then Play on the Go is from 12:15 to 1:15, so for 30 minutes we have nothing to do, plus they need lunch.  This is usually our "picnic in the car" day, and I take them out for lunch. But loading and unloading twice, in the rain, was crazy.
 Connor though had a GREAT library day!  You can see above that he went to sit with the other kids today and he listened to the whole story. He was particpating in the story (it was a counting pumpkins story) and when they did songs he got up and moved around.  It gives me hope that just maybe, I'm doing something right.

Play on the go!

After we got back from lunch we had play on the go.  Connor spent most of his time playing with play kitchen food (which is so weird we have that here lol) And Emma is placing little cupcakes into a cupcake dish.  She loves to put things in and taken them out again.

Disney matching game

Once we got a cranky Emma home and in bed, we had about 15 minutes before Connor went to quiet time so we played the Disney matching game.  Whoever got this game for Connor for his birthday, it is a huge hit. Connor LOVES this game.  He does really well with the matching too.  I know he's beaten mommy on a few tries :)

Well, the house is quite which leads to me to believe the kids have finally fallen asleep. Maybe I need a quick moment to charge my batteries for the afternoon, or watch an episode of the Blacklist.  Today, was a great day and I like having days like this, it makes me feel like I'm actually doing something good for Connor and Emma, that they are actually learning something. Hopefully it'll pay off and when testing time comes for kindergarten, Connor will fly through it with ease :) Below is Connor in his library class today.  So proud of him :)

Week 2

My loves.  Em looks like a Ginger!!

First off, this weekend was CRAZY busy.  Since my kids were born two weeks apart, a lot of times we do a joint birthday.  Connor turned 4 and Emma will turn 2 next week.  We did a Lego Movie theme and Connor was Emmett and Emma was Wyldstyle.  It was a lot of fun, but crazy.  20 adults and 9 kids.  I'll leave it at that.  But thankfully its over and now we can move on to the next big event.  My Best Friend's Wedding, I'm MOH.  Never a dull moment for me I tell ya :)

We had gone to a kid water park in my friend's community which took up a good chunk of Sunday, but Monday came around and it was back to the grind.

Connor is struggling with this whole school business today, all he wants to do is play and that can get frustrating at times.  We still managed to do morning circle and color, but everything else was just out the window.  I'm sure it is because I don't really have a "learning" section and a "playing" section like most schools do, my house is just too small for that. I may need to move some things around in our house to make it more divided.  Time will tell.

Emma is doing great, we worked with some blocks that are a little above her age range and you could tell as she got frustrated a few times with it.  Connor helped her so they seemed to have some fun with it.  Connor is regressing today and right now he can't seem to tell you any number from 1-9.  I know he knows them, he's just being lazy. It's really frustrating.

We did go back to tumbling today and the kids seem to enjoy it.  I may find something else to do on Monday's or Thursday's when this one is over, I'd like to have them do something where mommy can just watch ha ha! Also even though the tumbling is so fun, this is a "mommy and me" type of class.  I am one mommy, they are two kids. Makes mommy tired ha ha! There is a art class that comes up in October that they can both do, I may try that one.

This week we will be doing a little rearranging, we don't have MOPS this week so Tuesday is normally our Free Day, but if you can believe it, Phoenix and Tucson are in the path of a Hurricane coming up from Mexico ha ha!  Not that it will be a Hurricane when it gets to us, but rumor has it we are going to get dumped on like we did last week from the last Hurricane.  I'd rather not be out of the house while the Pacific Ocean is being dumped on my city :) So Tuesday we will try and do some school stuff, in case we can't get out of the house on Wednesday and Thursday.