From the Book Corner

E and I wanted to share with you one of our all-time favorite books.  I think she started "reading" this one to me when she was about 16 months old or so.  It is one we check out from the library at least once a month.

E loves the Maisy books, but Hooray for Fish is her absolute favorite book, and has been for some time.  I finally found a copy on half.com, and it came last week in the mail.  She was SO excited!  And then proceeded to "read" to me the whole book.

The illustrations are bright and cheerful, just like the Maisy books, and there are so many different kinds of fish to look at.  Especially fun are the pages with many fish, one page has a pineapple fish and a strawberry fish!

Go check it out from the library!!

In the Kitchen

E wanted to help me out in the kitchen today, so we made Giant Breakfast Cookies from Heavenly Homemakers.  I was very excited to try them, and as I anticipated they were (and are) soooo good!  I followed the option of soaking my grains before baking the cookies - I've heard a lot about that recently.  Apparently, it is supposed to make the grains easier to digest and be healthier for you.  Frankly, little E can use all the digestion help she can get.  Other than the time waiting for the grains to soak, these cookies were quick and easy.  They are made with whole wheat flour and oats.  Honey is used to sweeten instead of sugar, and butter instead of oil.  I am not a breakfast cereal eater, and E does not like to eat breakfast cereal with milk, so we do lots of granola bars, fruit, eggs, and toast for breakfast.  I am happy to have a NEW, delicious, healthy, and quick breakfast option.

E: They are very all-too good!

Mama: 5 stars, we'll be making these a lot here in the future.

A Lighter School Week

E is 25 months

We had a lighter week of school this week.  Ahhh, winter and the germs we get!  We started off the week on Sunday night with a 24 hour stomach bug, and then progressed into urinary-tract-infection-land by Tuesday.  Sooo . . . we did a little school time, and a lot more reading and relaxing time.

Here are our shelves for the week:

Top Shelf: Alphabet stacking blocks and pom-pom transfer with a spoon.


Middle Shelf: Beads to string, Madagascar magnet book, and color box 2


Bottom Shelf: Push pins and styrofoam ball, shape puzzle




For some reason, I never had my camera when we were downstairs working, so I don't have a lot of pictures this week.  The big hit was the styrofoam ball with the push pins.  I bought fancy star shaped push pins, and showed E how to push them into the styrofoam.  She was all over it!  She did ALL the push pins - it was a box of about 25-30.

 

Another favorite activity is the magnet book.  E got this for her birthday from Grandma, and she LOVES it.  She puts all the magnets on one page, swipes them off, and does the same on the next page.  She especially loves the penguins (that's my girl!) and has to put them on first in every picture.

In other activities, we did some painting this week, in which E decided she MUST paint her hands purple.  I think I need to turn the easel around.  I was sitting and reading in the chair while she painted.  All of a sudden she came up to me and said, "Look, mama!  Purple hands!"  *sigh* upstairs to wash . . . .

We tried a little bit of yoga . . . .

A also worked on our gymnastics skills, since we missed class due to the stomach bug.  E will FINALLY do a summersault!  I have to help her, but previously she wouldn't even let me close.  Being upside down bothers her.  I also brought out a long ribbon and we practiced walking on the line.  She would only keep one foot on - she does MUCH better with the real balance beam.  So we decided to make it into a road for her cars.

My favorite picture of the week:

Itty Bitty Christmas Tree

E got a fun practical life lesson yesterday.  My parents had visited a home and garden show and brought her back a little pine tree.  This guy is maybe 6 inches tall.  So yesterday we went out and bought a pot and some soil.  E helped me put the soil in the pot, and plant the "itty bitty Christmas tree."  Then she helped me water it so it can "grow big and tall like E."  No pictures of the process, it was too messy to leave alone to grab the camera!  But here is our little tree.  Hopefully, we can get him to grow and be able to plant him outside.  Our yard is in DESPERATE need of trees.

From the Book Corner

E and I have some new favorite books to share with you today.  We recently found the Pebble Plus series at our library, and we LOVE them.  I have been looking for some simple non-fiction books about animals to share with E.  Specifically ones with great photography, rather than drawings.  Enter Pebble Plus.  I like the Eyewitness books, but they are way over my 2-year-old's head.  Too many things going on on the pages.  The Pebble Plus books are simple.  3 or so sentences per page, and some great huge photographs.  E's current favorite is the one about meerkats, part of the African animals series.  She tells me, "Meerkats are from Africa.  They eat lilards (lizards).  I love them."  They also have books about big trucks and construction equipment, plant systems, landmarks, personal health and hygiene, and weather/seasons.  I'm finding them to be a wonderful, age appropriate, non-fiction series.  We have to pick up at least one each time we go to the library.

On a slightly related note . . . do you know how hard it is to drag a 2-year-old book lover from the library WITHOUT any books because you forgot your wallet at home??  Yeah, it was a real fun morning.

The Ongoing Debate

In my ongoing debate between keeping E at home for preschool or sending her to a school, I am leaning more towards keeping her at home.  Which has led me to much research and thought into HOW exactly I would do that.  This in turn has led me to look at repurposing some of the rooms in our home.  I love moving things around and re-decorating.  Maybe it's a girl thing, maybe it's just genetic.  My mom always "fluffed" our house when we were growing up.  You get tired of things and get in a rut.  Changing things around makes everything seem new again, even when it's not.  Unfortunately, in my house, with the furniture that we have and the layout that we have, my "fluffing" opportunities are few and far between.  So I am jumping at the chance to remake our office/exercise room (yeah, right, we never use that eliptical!) into a school room for E.  I have spent the last week measuring, pricing shelves, deciding where I would put certain things (like our computer, for example).  I have had great fun looking at my favorite homeschool and Montessori blogs, seeing how their learning spaces are set up.

I have also been doing a LOT of research into the Montessori materials themselves.  Which to buy now, which to buy later, which to make, and which to forget about.  I hear there is a yahoo group dedicated to making Montessori materials.  I guess I need to get a yahoo account.  I have decided I think I can inexpensively make things like dressing frames, sound boxes, and fabrics.  I am looking at making some of the sandpaper materials as well: land and water cards, rough and smooth boards, and perhaps the land and water globe - I have an old globe laying around that I could do something with.  I have also seen the constructive triangles that some people have made and think I could make those as well.

I don't, however, think I want to make sandpaper letters or numbers - cutting that much sandpaper does not appeal to me.  I think I will buy those.  Along with the pink tower, cylinder blocks, brown stair, red rods, geometric cabinet and solids, metal insets, binomial cube, and some of the cultural materials.  I have several spreadsheets dedicated to the decision of which materials to include at this time and I think I can get what I want AND get the schoolroom set up for price of about 2 month's tuition at my favorite of the Montessori schools we went and toured.

I am still trying to get the husband on board 100%.  He's about 75-80% there, but I want his full support before I go into something like this.  My biggest problem right now is trying to field all the "You want to keep her home for preschool???  Isn't playing with the other kids the whole point of preschool??" comments from well-meaning family and friends.  All I can say right now is that my mind is not totally made up.

Preschool Play-by-Play

I saw one of these on another blog somewhere, and I thought it would be good to see exactly WHAT we are doing with our school time. And maybe some of you out there that are more experienced than I can tell me if this is typical, or if I should be doing some things differently to get a more desirable result. I posted yesterday about my frustration with E's lack of concentration. I know she is only 2, but it doesn't seem like ANYTHING other than sometimes her animal figurines or our rainbow rice box can hold her attention for more than 3 minutes. The exception is books, she will sit for hours and ask you to "read another" and "read it again," but when it comes to playing or working on something, she will not stick with it for any length of time.

Here's what school looked like this morning:

8:50 - roll out mat and choose animals and zoo book

8:55 - "All done with the animal book, put it away."

8:56 - choose pouring beans

8:59 - "All done." choose spooning rice, refuses to use spoon. I switched out the rice for beans so she could use her hands. Her process was: move one bean, spend 1 1/2 minutes running around, fixing her shoes, finding stuffed animals, etc, repeat.

9:11 - put away the rice and choose nesting/stacking blocks

9:17 - ask for help putting the nesting/stacking blocks away

9:19 - choose color box 2 (still only 6 colors, I have yet to make the rest)

9:22 - I gave E a demonstration on how to line up the color pairs at the edge of her mat

9:24 - put away the colors and choose folding cloths, asked for help right away

9:27 - E refused to pay attention to my demonstration with the folding cloths, so I left her to herself, figuring I would come back later to demonstrate again. She was not happy.

9:30 - put away folding cloths and asked for help rolling up her mat.

There you have it, a total of 40 minutes this morning. I usually try to do some art, music, or sensory box time when she is done with her work, but today we had to make a trip to Target, so I'll have to tell her Daddy to give her those options when I am at work tonight.