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!
Saturday, October 04, 2008
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!!!
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!
Monday, September 08, 2008
A Good Monday
I think I mentioned in my last post that I was starting "school" with Kate. Each week we have a theme and we do different activities and workbooks covering language arts, math, science, social studies, cooking and art. We are doing pretty basic things, I'm not too crazy! This week our theme is Apples. Today I put apple cutouts all over the house, and she had to go find them all and put them in a basket. I figured she would like this, but I had no idea how much. I ended up having to do this many, many times. We also made a book about apples, after she listed her favorite things about apples. I was not really sure when I chose what we are doing if she would be able to, but she is always surprising me with how much she understands. It's been really fun so far being her teacher!
Everett is coming more "alive" everyday! He smiles all the time and is such an easy going little guy. I love the little noises he makes, and he is always moving. That's kind of scary actually! He goes for his 2 month check up later this week, and I'm excited to see how much he has grown. I'm pretty sure he'll be in the 90th percentile or higher. Kate always is and he seems bigger to me.
Tonight we had dinner with our volleyball team. It's something the team does every week. Thirteen girls between the ages of 14 and 18...it made me happy that I don't have a teenager. No matter how hard it is to have a toddler, I was thinking tonight how much harder (in a very different way) it will be to have teenagers.
Well, it took me a few days to write something again, but at least I did :)
Everett is coming more "alive" everyday! He smiles all the time and is such an easy going little guy. I love the little noises he makes, and he is always moving. That's kind of scary actually! He goes for his 2 month check up later this week, and I'm excited to see how much he has grown. I'm pretty sure he'll be in the 90th percentile or higher. Kate always is and he seems bigger to me.
Tonight we had dinner with our volleyball team. It's something the team does every week. Thirteen girls between the ages of 14 and 18...it made me happy that I don't have a teenager. No matter how hard it is to have a toddler, I was thinking tonight how much harder (in a very different way) it will be to have teenagers.
Well, it took me a few days to write something again, but at least I did :)
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Try Again
It has been almost a year since the last time I posted anything, so I am going to try this whole blogging thing yet again. I'll basically just be writing about what our family is doing, and anything else that I find interesting.
Life has changed for us since last September, mostly because now we have a little boy! He's almost 2 months old now, and he's soooooo cute!!! He is a really good baby, and I know I am very lucky for that. He already sleeps well, but he is starting to be much more demanding. Kate is almost 3 now, and she is everything you expect a 2 year old to be. She is very sweet and smart, but she is also so exhausting and obnoxious sometimes. I will be happy when this stage is over.
I started doing preschool with her this week. She really likes it, but she has a hard time focusing after awhile. I started spacing it out more throughout the day so that there was a break between each thing that we are doing, and that seems to be working better.
I am going to attempt to write everyday about the kids, what new things they are doing and how they are changing. Hopefully I will be diligent about it, because I know when they are older I will be really happy that I did this.
Life has changed for us since last September, mostly because now we have a little boy! He's almost 2 months old now, and he's soooooo cute!!! He is a really good baby, and I know I am very lucky for that. He already sleeps well, but he is starting to be much more demanding. Kate is almost 3 now, and she is everything you expect a 2 year old to be. She is very sweet and smart, but she is also so exhausting and obnoxious sometimes. I will be happy when this stage is over.
I started doing preschool with her this week. She really likes it, but she has a hard time focusing after awhile. I started spacing it out more throughout the day so that there was a break between each thing that we are doing, and that seems to be working better.
I am going to attempt to write everyday about the kids, what new things they are doing and how they are changing. Hopefully I will be diligent about it, because I know when they are older I will be really happy that I did this.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Crazy VB Week
This week has been one of the busiest weeks that I have had in a long time, maybe ever actually. I don't know if everyone that is going to read this knows, but Brian and I help with the varsity volleyball team at Brian's high school. Well, this week the girls had games on Tues, Wed and Thurs, and then we had a tournament on Friday and Saturday. I was tired just watching all of that volleyball, so I don't know how some of our girls were even walking by Saturday night. We ended up getting 3rd at the tournament, but it was a moral victory...I won't bother with the details on that. It would be boring to anyone not involved!
On Tuesday, Kate and I hosted her play group that we are in. It's just moms from the church we used to go to, so it's not too weird or anything. We have a park next door to our house so the kids played over there. It ended up being quite dramatic, because one little girl fell off of a picnic table right on her head and Kate ended up with a pound of sand in her eyes. There were a few more minor injuries as well. I don't think I'm going to be up to hosting anymore, it was stressful! Being that we have never taken Kate to the beach, I had never had to deal with any sand problems. I had no idea how to get sand out of her eyes...I basically just poured water over her until it seemed like she could see again. All day little bits of sand kept coming out of her eyes. I felt so bad for her, but she didn't seem to really notice. So that was our week!
And today is Janna's birthday, so Happy Birthday again Janna!!!!
On Tuesday, Kate and I hosted her play group that we are in. It's just moms from the church we used to go to, so it's not too weird or anything. We have a park next door to our house so the kids played over there. It ended up being quite dramatic, because one little girl fell off of a picnic table right on her head and Kate ended up with a pound of sand in her eyes. There were a few more minor injuries as well. I don't think I'm going to be up to hosting anymore, it was stressful! Being that we have never taken Kate to the beach, I had never had to deal with any sand problems. I had no idea how to get sand out of her eyes...I basically just poured water over her until it seemed like she could see again. All day little bits of sand kept coming out of her eyes. I felt so bad for her, but she didn't seem to really notice. So that was our week!
And today is Janna's birthday, so Happy Birthday again Janna!!!!
Monday, September 24, 2007
Kate - 21 months!
Here are some pictures from the last couple of weeks. I'm going to try and do this more than once a year, and Brian is going to post on here too now. He'll be much better at it than I am!
For those of you who don't see Kate very much, here's a little update...she loves to talk, play outside (which she is finally getting to do after a very long, hot summer), color on everything, and watch Little Einsteins. She's very polite and outgoing. She pretty much says something to everyone we walk by in a grocery store or Target. It's not my favorite thing since I don't particularly like talking to people I don't know, but it's cute. I know I am very blessed to have such a sweet little girl!!!
At Nana and Papa's house.
Kate and her cousin, Austin.
Kate and Brian at a Diamondbacks game.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Schnepf Farms
A few weeks ago we went to a farm in Queen Creek, AZ that has a pumpkin patch and rides and other fall type things. I finally was able to dress Kate in some winter clothes, and she was so cute! Kate went on her first carousel ride...she wasn't a big fan. Although she did really like the pumpkins and the pig races!
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