Dinosaurs

On Saturday we went to the Natural History Museum in Mesa. Kate liked seeing all the dinosaurs, and panning for gold. Mostly she just liked playing in the water. I'm sure she had no idea what we were trying to get her to do. Before we left we went to the little museum gift shop and let Kate pick out something. Brian was showing her the little dinosaurs, but she wanted a bag of rocks. She played with them for a long time yesterday, who knew rocks could be so entertaining.

Kate waiting to watch the flash flood reenactment. There is a Tricerotops and a T-Rex that move and roar on this "Dinosaur Mountain".

Ben & Everett's first boat ride

Last Sunday it was actually cool enough to go on Papa's boat. Kate was very excited, she has been waiting all summer. It was the first time that Ben and Everett were able to go out on it, and it went very well! There was no sea sickness, and everyone made it back alive.

First Suns Game of the Year

Last week Brian took Kate to one of the Suns preseason games. He is a brave man! Actually, it went pretty well. She didn't make it for the whole game, but they did stay for half time. Kate's favorite things were the gorilla and Steve Nash. Good girl!

Next

This last week I have been reading a book that my friend Ruth told me about called The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise. It is a book about homeschooling using the classical education approach. I had never even heard of this, which is sad since I was an education major. It is an approach that the US education system has gone away from, which I now believe is one of the major problems with our society today. It makes so much more sense then what is being done in schools now. I feel that I was given a pretty good education at College Heights. I never knew exactly why what they did there seemed to work, but now I know it was because they were somewhat using this system. I have no idea if it was intentional, but hopefully it was! I would love for my kids to learn this way, so I'm thinking about teaching them myself. We'll see!

For Kate's preschool I have lessons figured out until the 2nd week of February, and then I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I wanted to do something more literature based, but I wasn't sold on any of the programs I had seen for her age. Then I found a book called Storytime from A to Z. I haven't ordered it yet, but it seems like what I was looking for. There are 26 lessons, one for every letter. Each lesson is based on a book and then there are different activities that go along with the letter and the subject of the story. I think Kate will like it!

Saturday Morning

I was just sitting here drinking my coffee, not really doing anything. That doesn't really happen very often. It's nice! Anyway, I thought it was time for a little update. This last week in Kate's school the theme was Dinosaurs. Kate actually really likes dinosaurs. For about 5 months the only book she wanted read to her before bed was How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by Jane Yolen. She also has a stuffed T-Rex that she always sleeps with. She liked playing with some miniature dinosaurs that I bought her. We did some classification with them, which she really likes doing. She loves sorting things and putting things in order, even if the order doesn't always make sense to me. I taught her a few factual things about dinosaurs, and then showed her on a world map where different dinosaurs lived. It always surprises me how much she loves maps. Maybe she will be a cartographer when she grows up. Do they still have those anymore? We also went over the letters L and M, and reviewed the numbers 1 thru 5. I have a feeling she is going to be able to write all of her letters before she can even read. A little backwards, but she really likes trying to write the letters. I wasn't even planning on teaching her to write yet, but she always asks.

Today we are going to the Arizona Natural History Museum. It will be Kate and Everett's first trip to a museum. They have a lot of dinosaur exhibits, so it should be fun. I'll put pictures up later. Then tonight Brian and I are going to his parents annual Wine Tasting Party! Yeah! I actually get to have wine this year. I've been pregnant for 2 of the parties, and not being able to have wine at a wine party is not that fun.

Another first for this lovely Saturday...Brian is at Dunkin Donuts right now buying some yummy breakfast. Well, I've actually never had doughnuts from there, but supposedly they are so good. I'm excited to try them!

Kate's 1st Haircut

We finally took Kate to get her first haircut. Since Kate was practically bald until she was a year old, I had a hard time wanting to cut her hair. It was getting kind of crazy though, and quite a few people told me that it would probably start growing a little better if she had it trimmed. A friend said she would do it, and so we took her in. She was very good in the chair. She barely moved, and she did everything that Julie told her to. I think Kate actually liked it even though you couldn't really tell by the expression on her face. She says she wants to go back though!

Fall pictures!

A few weeks ago we took Kate and Everett to Portrait Innovations to have their first pictures taken together. It's a great place to go if you have one near you. Pretty good prices, and the photographers actually have real cameras so they can move around. Most of these types of places have stationary cameras so you're just trying to get your kids to actually look at the camera. Here are the adorable results!

3 Months

Yesterday Everett was 3 months old! He is the cutest, sweetest little boy. He already lets me sleep through the night, how nice of him. He smiles and laughs at all of us, especially Brian. He is "talking" more everyday, and I'm afraid he is going to be just as loud as Kate. He can almost hold his head up when he's laying on his stomach, but he's not on the ground as much as he probably should be because of Kansas and Kate. They don't like to leave him alone. He's grown a lot in his first 3 months...5 1/2 inches and almost 6 pounds. He's a big guy! Here are some pictures from his 3rd month.

Pets

The theme for this last week was pets. Kate enjoyed this subject, especially since she already really likes to talk about Kansas and Aunt Amy's two kitties. The main book we used was Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell. It's a cute little book about why certain animals would not make very good pets. I also decided to add a new hands on toy or game every other week for Kate to try, and this week I bought some lacing cards. She likes the idea of doing them, but would get frustrated and stop. I think another few times and she will understand what to do with them. She learned the letters H & I and the number 4 this week too. On Friday I set up a "pet store" in the loft and we took turns buying and selling pets. She could have done this for hours. I think it may have been the first time she actually used her little cash register. Saturday we ended pets week with a trip to the pets store!


Next week we will be doing colors and shapes!

September

September was a busy month! Not only did I start doing preschool with Kate, but volleyball started as well. Kate loves "doing school". She asked to do school as soon as she woke up this morning. Apparently I need to have things for her to do even on Saturday. I enjoy planning everything we're going to do, but it is time consuming since most of the things we do involve quite a bit of prep work. As she gets older, I imagine the prep work will be less.



After "apple" week, our theme was safety. Most of the theme ideas I'm using are from a book called Themes to Grow On. It's a book for 4 to 6 year olds, so I have to adjust some of the activities, but she is able to do most of them. For safety week, she learned what different signs meant, and we talked about fire, water and home safety. I don't think this was her favorite subject, but it's always good to talk about these things every so often.



The next theme was teddy bears. We read a lot of books about teddy bears, and did quite a few sorting activities. Luckily, she has way too many stuffed bears or this wouldn't have worked. We had all of her bears out and she had to sort them from smallest to largest. She did this pretty well, she did need help when she was doing the smallest bears. One lesson that I liked was math with Goldilocks and the Three Bears. It's easy to teach sizes and sorting with this book.




At the end of the week I try to come up with an activity or a "field trip" that goes along with the theme. At the end of teddy bear week, we took her to Build A Bear. She loved it! She was very funny interacting with the people who worked there. They were a little strange and overly outgoing, so she would just stare at them whenever they asked her anything. It took quite awhile to finish her bear, because they have a ridiculous variety of bear clothes. She finally settled on a princess outfit complete with pink shoes, a crown and a wand. She wanted to just name it Bear, but eventually she agreed to name her Giselle.


Every week we go over two letters of the alphabet as well as one number. She already knows her abc's and numbers up to about 14, but she is learning the letter sounds. I am not teaching her to write, but when she was learning the letter E she actually wrote her first letter! On her white board she made a lowercase e. I had left to go get something, and when I came back she said "Look Mommy, a little e!" It was so cute!!!

I'll write about what we did last week on a different post, because this is really long already. I have more September things to write about, so maybe I'll actually have more than one post per month!