Tot School - Letter B, bees and easter

Tot School last week... Baby animals, Bees (letter & sound Bb)

We learned about Bees and letter Bb and the sound it makes. So they made Bees :)




We used 4 different types of paper eggs to sort them into their matching piles. And another day Nicholas and Celia each picked 2 egg types and made AB patterns with them. Nicholas caught on quick and Celia was doing well, but started to forget to continue the pattern. I told her the two eggs had to 'take turns' and then it clicked for her and it was a breeze after that. Funny the differences in their reasoning and thinking. It struck me as a way that a female would make sense of the patterning. ha ha
After they made their pattern trains (at least thats what we called them) i had them lay down next to it, took their picture, and then they looked at their picture to decide which was longer - their pattern or themselves.


They used a magnet to make baby animal matches (fine motor skills). This didn't last long either. I think next time I'll put these in a tub with rice or sand and have them maybe use little pinchers to try to take the pictures out and match them.



They played with a tub with sand and magnet disks in it. They needed to use a magnet wand to retrieve the disks. They were good about protecting Aaron from getting ahold of the disks (choking hazard). Can never be too careful with this tough! Note they are still in pajamas...



They worked on lacing.

They worked on matching baby animals to their mothers (this was too easy)


We did some fun Bee songs and fingerplays as well. This was one of their favorites. Excuse my singing. There is a reason I didn't win a Grammy this year. Eh - you can't do it all. ha ha


I found a new preschool curriculum I liked better and we're going to start it up next week. This week we are finishing some hodge-podge easter things. Next week we'll go back to letter Aa and our theme will be ants. Tomorrow we're headed to the library and to Hobby Lobby to buy an ant farm. Should be fun!

Spring.

Spring is nearing... we hope. I took Aaron outside this evening for some practice. I've been shooting indoors these last long months and I'm a bit dusty outdoors. Everything is in relation to the sun - where to shoot from, which angle, what time of day, in shade/out of shade. It's a whole new ball-game outside.
It was chilly still, but we are having some hope for the low 70's later this week! How awesome to have Good Friday and Easter weekend with some warm temperatures! :)



The bikes are ready to go...
And Aaron is ready to mow the lawn.

The grass is even looking a little green.


C'mon Spring!

My bigger Two :)

My all-too-quickly-growing-three-year olds. . . .

I just love the colors in his eyes. :)




And this is what you get when you stick a camera in their face full-time for their 3 years of life...


"Yay! A sucker!"
1. examine the sucker carefully...
2. Tastes pretty yummy!

3. Give mom a preview of my face when I'm 16 years old...

Tot School - week 1

Being an elementary teacher in my past career and absolutely loving teaching my own children, we've started homeschool preschool - 'Tot Time' (see blog button on the right sidebar). And Nicholas and Celia love it. After Aaron lays down for his morning nap, I pull out some activities I planned for them to work on. For example, last week we worked on starfall.com letter Aa and the /a/ sound, then read an alligator book, and then made an alligator 'A'. This week (pics to come) we're working on letter Bb.
With spring on the horizon we sprouted bean seeds in plastic ziploc bags and wet paper towels. It took a couple days for the seeds to sprout, but they were able to check on their baby plants each day and see them growing. Normally this would be happening in the soil, so its pretty awesome to see.
I made some baby animal building puzzles which help them work on visual discrimination. They had a small animal and then all the parts and they needed to recreate the animal. It's actually quite tricky.
They practiced coloring in a picture and matching it with its name (the colors give the clues/answers) and then we played a matching game with them. They had to write the first letter of their name on each back. I didn't get a picture of Celia's, but Nicholas did almost all the N's by himself.


For fun they put Easter stickers on paper. Good fine motor control building.
Aaron woke up after a while and I had him work on putting objects in a container. He did very well. I know I'm a mom and I'm biased towards my own kids, but I really think Aaron is an intelligent baby. He catches on to things so quick and seems to put a lot of thought into what he does.

some recent examples:
1. He will find one of the drum sticks and go find the tom tom drum and drum.
2. He picked up a hair brush last night and tried brushing his hair a couple times.
3. Today he was standing up at the cabinets and I saw him search for a hand hold and test a couple before he fully put his weight into it. He will ease himself down on his knees and onto his tush when he wants to sit from standing. He will not crawl off the trampoline - he just is careful for a just 10 month old.

We sing songs, play games, play drums, and just love each other during the day too. Of course there is cartoons and free time and time when I'm just too busy making dinner or cleaning up as well. But it is so satisfying to know that they are learning something I taught them. They are learning things I taught 5 year olds. I really am enjoying it. And it is so important to make the learning fun. One of our ultimate goals is have them love to learn - and the most important goal of all is having 3 children who love and follow Jesus as well.
Meshing all my loves together - Jesus,being a mom, teaching and photography.
I've taken a whole bunch of pictures from this week's tot time... I will get them up once the week is through. :)

My baby is growing up.

My baby is growing up. I was thinking about how he is almost 1 year old. Its amazing how quickly this time has gone. I treasure it as much as I can. Before I know it my boys will be taller than me and my daughter will be asking to borrow the car.
But for now... Aaron has almost 5 teeth. He's cruising - but he's a very cautious baby. He will carefully get down from standing or stop before crawling off the trampoline. The first time he tried to crawl off the trampoline i basically let him fall, but caught him at the end so he wouldn't hurt himself. Only way to learn, right? :) I can say it over and over... this baby is such a sweetheart. Pictures of my 2 other sweeties soon!

Daily activities.

I am going to be trying to make a concerted effort to plan activities for Nicholas and Celia to do during the week. This week we are working on thinking about spring (cause if we think it, then maybe it'll come.. ha ha). So this week our theme is a hodge-podge of 'baby animals', 'spring' and some beginnings of Easter. I'm finding inspiration from a website called 'Tot School' or '1+1+1=1'. You can see a link to 'tot school' on the right side of my blog. She has children at similar ages as nicholas and celia and some awesome activities for them. I may have a mom or two interested in doing this as well, so perhaps we can trade materials and share our time that way.
Aside from activities at home (and the two listed above are more like 'tot trays' which are based on montessori trays) we are trying to make it to story time at the library on wednesdays and take mini field trips. We went to the pet store last week just to look at the animals and talk about them. This week we are hoping to go on a nature hike with some other kids and their moms at the nature center. And they are doing sport activities at the YMCA like swimming this month and when April ends we'll be beginning gymnastics.

I'll be posting pictures from our weekly activities later on this week :)

Using an eye dropper to transfer colored water on to the little 'cups ' of this sponge holder builds great fine motor and eye hand coordination.

Kids love to dive into different textures of objects. This tray allowed N&C to sort the beans and just feel, practice scooping and pouring them. They are doing a nice job helping to pick up so aaron isn't tempted to recover some objects and taste them. We talk about aaron choking-hazards a lot.

Some people may think a stay-at-home-mom has it easy. Well, you could... if you didn't do anything. But I feel more busy than I did when I was a full-time working woman with no children.

7am kids all wake up. N&c play or watch a cartoon while I nurse Aaron
7:30/8amish - breakfast for all of us, then get dressed, clean up from breakfast, play a bit. I may unload the dishwasher from the night before and do some other jobs around the house, check email, etc. Its crazy that time goes so quickly until aaron's first nap.
9am - I quickly nurse aaron before his nap and then I hop in the shower while N&C watch an educational cartoon on pbs.
As soon as I am quickly in/out of the shower, hair brushed and dressed we start some of the activities so I can focus on them while Aaron is asleep.
10:30am - Aaron wakes up from nap and all 3 kids play downstairs or we do some other activity.
11:00/11:30ish - lunch time for the kids
after lunch N&C calm down with some quiet time. Then I put them down for nap and after they are asleep Aaron lays down.
12:30-2/2:30 nap time is when I can work on photography or cleaning the house or planning activities for tot time.
2:30 they wake up and have snack
the afternoon is our time for errands and shopping, etc.
5:00 pm comes and it is quickly time for dinner. Cook and clean!
6:00 Aaron goes to bed at this time. He is exhausted by this time and getting cranky.
7:00 N&C brush teeth, go pee and we go off to bed to read books.
8:00pm they are usually all sleeping and Jason and I can watch a TV show
9:30ish Jason heads to bed and my night shift begins (to study photography, clean, plan and make activities)
I'm often up until midnight, but I need to be better at going to bed earlier. Listing this all out makes it seem like there isn't much to do... but there is so much!!! It's never ending. lol

p.s. these posts are often written in advance and planned to post on a certain day. so for example, it is monday when I am writing this cause I don't know if I'll have time later in the week.

Pike 1

Swim class Pike 1 has begun. It's been about a year since we had swim class. I was pregnant with aaron when we were in their last class (shrimp Kippers class). This Pike 1 class is only for children who have passed Shrimp Kippers and are also at least 3 years old. My sister-in-law Julie and her daughter Heather came to visit from Green Bay this morning, so Heather was able to take some pictures and video for us.
Nicholas was a bit hesitant this first week. We just had our second class this last saturday and he was much more at ease. Celia, as her adventure girl attitude remains, was quite relaxed and willing to try most of the swim tasks (note their body language in the top photo).
They start out by having the kids sit on the edge and the parents entering the water first. Then the kids have to go in the 'safe way' by putting their hands on one side of their bodies and lowering themselves into the water. Then they hold on to the edge by themselves and then bob up and down. First to get their shoulders wet, then their chins, blow bubbles with mouth, blow bubbles with nose... see where we're going. Eventually the little buggers will be going under (they don't know this yet). ha ha
Then they practice floating on their tummies and then on their backs. In the video you'll see Jason release Celia to float on her back and she actually does. She's always been very good at this. Nicholas is a much more cautious person so he's not quite ready to do this yet.
They also learn to use the kickboards (and enter to water on their own with the kickboards). The class is 30 minutes long. The last few minutes of class they get to stand on the edge and jump in to us. Last class they were jumping in and going under before we scooped them up. They did quite well. The first week Nicholas was so excited to jump in that he was giggling and could hardly compose himself to actually jump. It was so cute.
This swim class was a gift from my good friend Julie and also from Aunt Angy and Russ. I'm loving gift money for them towards some classes at the YMCA (and they are too!).



sitting on the edge ready to start
Getting in! Note the nice small class! The pool is about 90 degrees too.
Bobbing up and down
floating on their tummies like airplanes
Listening to the swim teacher

Sledding

As of this weekend all the snow is finally melted. I'm sure we'll get a bit more, but probably not much and not for long. Only about 2-3 weekends ago there was a lot of snow! We went to the park near our house and went sledding with Grandma Maus, Aunt Angy and Uncle Russ and Lauren and Sammy.



Winter can be fun... but we're ready for some sun and green grass and leaves on the trees!