Friday Fashion

Before I had a child, I would see kids in horribly mismatched clothing and think that their Dads must have dressed them.  And my child was never going out in public wearing mismatched clothes (or clothes with chocolate milk and ketchup on them, or even pajamas for that matter)!  Ummm.  Yes.  Well, I try to make sure she's not covered in the remnants of breakfast or lunch before we go out.  But the other two?  Eh.  Who cares!   And so I give you a dose of some toddler fashion.

Along with declaring it pajama year, E has expressed a great interest in hats.

This white sunhat is her "bonnet" and of course it goes perfectly with the zebra tutu and striped sweater.  All stripes match each other, didn't you know?  And the mittens are just the thing when one is reading about the Three Little Kittens.  That way you can share with them.  And maybe you can all have pie.

Of course, you must always carry around your extra hats, because you never know when you will need to change your head-gear.

Like for nap time.  One must always wear a different hat to bed than the one that was worn for playtime.  I think it's a unwritten rule, or something.

Here's to tots picking out their OWN clothing!!  :)

My Nemesis (Maybe TMI??)

Ha!  No, really, potty training is seriously my nemesis.  And I'm putting this out there in hopes that someone may have had the same problems that I am currently having.  And maybe you can give me some advice!

We have been in potty training limbo for almost a year now!  And it isn't getting any better.  E mostly refuses to go in a diaper, makes a HUGE fuss anytime I ask her if she has to go potty or tell her it's time to go potty, and ends up wetting her underwear all day long. 

I've tried incentives, I've tried taking away toys when she wets her pants.  I've tried a potty schedule.  I've tried to just ignore it and put up with the wet underwear all day, but it really annoys me!

I've even put her back in diapers for a couple of weeks to try and "reset."  She loves our diapers - we use cloth and I made pretty ones with hello kitty and owls and all kinds of patterns.  But now her "diaper butt" is too big to fit under her clothes, and I don't think wearing diapers should be something she likes at this point.  Spending money on disposable diapers when I have perfectly good cloth ones makes me cringe.

And even when she's in diapers, she won't tell me when she has wet them.

At this point, I'm not sure if she's just being stubborn, is getting too involved in her play to bother going to the bathroom, or if she truly doesn't know when she has to go.  I should mention that she has had surgery dealing with her urinary tract system about a year and a half ago.  But I've mentioned my concerns to her urologist and he puts it all off on her age, not anything wrong with her system.

Any advice from one mom to another?
Thanks for letting me make my mini-rant!

What's on the Shelf?

As promised, here are the new activities out for E on her practical life shelf right now.

I switched up her pouring and used some of the red (orange) lentils and black beans from last month's sensory box.  I'm sure she's ready to try water pouring, but until she starts really paying attention to what she's doing with it, I'm not ready to try it on the school shelves.

Next to dry pouring is her spooning work: glass pebbles into a butterfly-shaped candy mold.  Which E, often as not, chooses to use her fingers instead of the spoon.

I pulled out an old activity that we haven't used for quite a while: sponging water!  E loves this activity, and will work happily with it for 20 minutes or so.  And she's gotten much better about not dripping water everywhere, so I'm happy.

On the bottom shelf, I FINALLY found a cheap appetizer tray with four sections to use for sorting.  Seriously, I don't know why this was so hard for me to find!  Last week, we dyed four different shapes of pasta into four different colors.  So her sorting can be done by color or by shape.

Next to the sorting work are our pumpkin life cycle three part cards.  I saw a neat tray/box for three part cards at Montessori Services - it had separate sections for the three sizes of cards.  I'm wondering if there is a way I could DIY it at home, it would be helpful to not have them sliding all over the tray all the time.

I also changed up our language shelf.  Nothing big over here, I just swap the letters out every week or so.  On the top shelf, we have our begining sound sort.  Right now E is working with /n/ and /k/. 

Our BOB alphabet books are on the top shelf as well, and I have the specific books with /n/ and /k/ out on top of the box.  E is always welcome to  take more books out of the box, but I like to put the letters we are working with on top for easy access.

Our Laurie CVC puzzles are on the middle shelf.  E loves these things!  I have eight different puzzles.  Right now, I try to put out ones that have no letters in common.  We talk about begining and ending sounds and she has to match the word to the picture.

Not pictured, but next to the CVC puzzles is our sand tray.  Right now, I will write a letter, and I have E trace it after me.  She wants so badly to learn to write her name, I thought this was a good first step.
On the bottom shelf is our alphabet puzzle.  I have a couple of different puzzles that deal with alphabetical order, and I rotate them to keep up her interest. 

Also on the bottom shelf, we have our geometric tile pictures.  These are another favorite and right now they get used almost every day.


I'll try to remember to post pictures again when I change out the shelf activities in a few weeks!

Musical Munchkin

 Are we ready to start piano lessons yet??? 

How about violin??  (although E tells me all the time she wants to play the flute like Mommy.)



playing "violin" with two of the brown stair blocks

I wonder if there are any good suzuki schools around here.  I can for sure do piano, but violin is a bit beyond me.

School this past week . . . or two . . . or three

Whew!  I took a bit of a break there!  Life has been getting a bit hectic, trying to fit in my work, E's school, housecleaning, and holiday crafting!!  I'm still feeling the pressure, so I probably won't be posting quite as much as we head into the holidays, but I'm going to try to get some school posts in here and there.  We ARE doing school time - 2 to 3 days a week.  I'm trying hard to keep 2 days with our Montessori work, the third day is often baking, nature walks, and art projects.  Another day in the week we have MOPS, our moppettes program is awesome, they really do some good "bible school" type work with the kiddos.

Anyhow, last week we had "pajama school!"  Every morning E woke up and wanted to do school work but would not get out of her jammies.  Isn't it great to be home and not have to put on real clothes until you want to?

Tuesday was an awesome day all around. I went to take a shower and when I came out, E was already hard at work with the continents map.

She also made up her own extension for the shape stacker.

 
I finally got around to printing out the pumpkin life cycle three part cards.  And I thought I would give it a go using the words as well as the pictures this time.  E really enjoyed the work.  I was pleasantly surprised that she was able to match most of the words on her own.  She got triped up on "seed" and "seedling" - I think that one was the only one she didn't self-correct. 

We also put together a pumpkin life cycle on a paper plate.  I got this printable from  A to Z teacher stuff, it includes a lesson plan (more for older kids) and these lift-the-flap type coloring pictures.  I had E match the words on this as well, first I wrote the word on the paper plate, then I had her find the coloring picture that matched and glue it on top of the word I wrote.

Other work E did this week included the sandpaper numbers (she traced them all and helped me put them back in the correct order), and the brown stair.  After she built the stair correctly on her own, I showed her how to match the pink tower cubes up to it.  E thought this was the coolest thing ever!  I just love the enthusiasm of the preschool set!

I'm currently (well as soon as I get off the computer) switching out practical life and language activities in the school room.  I'll have a post up on what's out as soon as I finish. 

Linking this post up to Montessori Monday at One Hook Wonder.