JellyBean’s recent activities…

t JellyBean is taking some developmental leaps. She is getting much more verbal, saying more words, and learning some of the words to Jesus Loves Me and some of the letters to the ABC song. Oh, and let’s not forget Barney’s I Love You song! (TV…what? Nah, that doesn’t happen here! Hehe) We have saved Barney's ABC episode because she loves singing the ABCs with Barney. I think that will be one of her best learning tools in learning the alphabet because of her love affair with Barney.


 JellyBean has enjoyed getting right in there with JayBird with drawing (well, scribbling) and cutting. Yes, she’s using scissors! She doesn’t hold them correctly, but she does manage to cut the paper all around the edges.


Through our summer adventures, she has gotten over her sensory fear of sand and has gotten down and dirty at the beach…well, maybe not that dirty, but she did play in the sand! (Oh, and JayBird got over his fear of the water and the waves. Yay!)

Okay, well…she almost got over her sensory issues with sand…
 
JellyBean continues to take part in some tot school activities. Some she loved and others she could do without. She was not into dropping stacking pegs into the cardboard of a paper towel roll, but she LOVES sorting colors with our counting bears. She caught on quickly and always caught herself if she made a mistake. JayBird joins right in with her tot school activities, sometimes because they love to play together and sometimes because they are just fighting over toys.


 

And here is a video of JellyBean’s favorite activity…the one that left her saying “More!” She caught on so fast with sorting the colors. We also tried working on verbally saying and remembering the color names and sign names, but that is still definitely a work in progress.

Back…and finally blogging!

I’m back! :-) So where have we been? Well, back in July we went on vacation for a week and a half to visit friends and family many states away. Once we arrived home my husband Jonathan went on a missions trip to Belize for a week. In that time the kids and I tried to get unpacked and back into the swing of things here at home…not that I really know yet what the “swing of things” is! Really, I keep thinking about forming more of a routine for our day. I know it would help us out. I know that when I have more of an idea of how our day will go and the activities and projects we will do that our days will go smoother. So why don’t I do this more consistently? I am just not sure! We just have not found our “swing of things” yet. We need to find our groove! And in these past few weeks that we have been back home, while I have wanted to write a blog post (or two or three), I have just done other things higher up on the priority list.



Though we have not consistently worked on our actual preschool curriculum since we’ve been back (another reason I haven’t blogged), we have done plenty of things that we can go right ahead and classify as preschool (which is why I actually DO have a lot to update about)! We have enjoyed some fun in the sun summer activities with friends, squeezing in some playdates and such before many of our friends start preschool at school. We of course have have been reading books and playing play dough…and really, just having a fun time playing together in our home!






And of course, JayBird turned play dough time into letter time. He loves forming letters our of everything and anything.


The main thing that JayBird has been doing lately is art! While traveling in the car on vacation something just clicked in JayBird’s brain and he began drawing all sorts of things! Where he used to just draw and paint a rainbow, he was then in the car on vacation with his dry erase board drawing pirate ships (lots of pirate ships!), and cars, and Noah’s Ark. Now he LOVES to draw! He took his new love into our home after vacation and just keeps on drawing. ..and cutting…and drawing some more. So fun to see! And now my house is adorned with artwork taped to the wall everywhere and my dining room floor is cluttered with markers and paper scraps. This new found love of drawing has taken away from his interest in reading…but that is coming back and will as he is ready to continue to learn to read.



I captured some of his drawings in the car with my cell phone…

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More drawings done after vacation…

 

These are of me doing yoga.  :-)  JayBird said the first drawing is the warrior pose and the other is my arms up in the air getting ready to stretch to the side.

Mommy, JellyBean, and JayBird on a sunny day.

A Beautiful Butterfly

Cooking with…children?? And a Surprising Lunch Creation

Cooking with my children is not my forte. Well, cooking in general is not my forte! It takes me so much time to plan out meals and prepare for them only to:

 

* have plans rearranged so we can’t stick with our meal plan (this happens a lot in our busy life and schedules with a husband in full-time ministry)

* have the meal not be liked by the kids

* have the meal not be liked by me or my husband

* a gigantic mess…and a husband stating that I just need to clean as I go, which I can’t seem to do otherwise something will get burned!

* end up frustrated in the kitchen while I cook (often with something spilled all over the floor or glass shattered everywhere…or both!)

 

So the idea of cooking in the kitchen with my kids “helping” is even more difficult for me. Since my natural tendency is to get frustrated in the kitchen, adding children into the cooking mix just makes it more likely that I am going to become frustrated with them and not be the mom I want to be.

 

As I write this out, it is making me realize that I think we need to begin cooking more together. In addition to all the normal lessons that cooking can provide children (math, science, reading, home economics), I think that cooking together will be able to help JayBird learn to cooperate and follow directions better (which is the main source of my frustration when he is helping me cook) and will help me learn more patience and self-control! I will have to be purposeful about creating some menu ideas that JayBird and JellyBean can help me with.

 

The Homeschool Village is discussing cooking with your children this week. As you have gathered, this is not something I regularly do or encourage with my children, but coincidentally, JayBird made his own lunch creation this week. I walked in on him creating a, um, delicious (??) butter and grape sandwich (grapes were his second choice as we were out of bananas). He was quite proud of himself and ate the WHOLE thing…and thoroughly enjoyed it! The recipe? Well…I think you can easily figure that one out on your own! :-)

What’s In The Bible? 3

Woohoo! I don’t enter a whole lot of contests, but this would be a fun and beneficial one to win! A Few Short Cuts is offering a give away for the video What’s In The Bible? 3. I’d love to have this for my kids! JayBird learns so quickly and remembers so much, that I already find myself looking for more to read, do, and see with him to enhance our Bible learning together. What a great addition this would be to our resources and video library, which right now only consists of Signing Time DVDs (thanks Mimi!), a couple of Veggie Tales DVDs (thanks Aunt Lisa and Aunt Laura!), and a couple of Praise Baby DVDs (thanks Freecycle!) As you can see, we just don’t put our money into videos. Though What’s In The Bible looks like a video series I would be happy to spend money on. But hey, if I can win won of their videos, even better! Check out A Few Short Cuts giveaway and video review with the link above and enter for your chance to win! (Oh, and yes, I get an entry for blogging this…thanks for reading!!)

Learning Room…or Play Room?

As I have mentioned before, JayBird and JellyBean really love the new learning room. They often bring toys from their bedroom into there, which is not what I intended, but is fine by me so long as we tidy up at the end. They also enjoy using the Tot School toys for open ended play fun. I try not to interrupt them during these times they are playing nicely together. Even if I have an activity or preschool oriented thing for them to do, I don't interrupt the sweet, and sometimes rare (but getting more common) times. I certainly won’t squelch their desire to play and have fun together…and maybe even learn a little something along the way (counting? colors? cooperation?)

Happy 4th of July!

Here is what we did in honor of the 4th of July!!

* Learned about the parts of the American flag and counted each stripe and star.
 

* Found what was missing on a flag printout and therefore added the stars back in using our fingers dipped in white paint.
 
Jelly Bean looks so enthused, doesn’t she?  We tried to get her to dip her finger in the paint, but she would have nothing to do with that. She still doesn’t like to get messy..except when eating, but even then she wants to use a million napkins.

* Made firework art. It was Jaybird that remembered about the smiley face fireworks he has seen. So of course he had to add that!  :-)

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* After firework art, JayBird had the idea of making a firework out of Tinker Toys. Love his creativity!

* Made an American flag cake! Mmmm!!

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Into my readers' hearts:
~ What did you do to celebrate and learn about Independence Day?
~ I found myself having a difficult time trying to share what this holiday is about with my preschooler. How do you share this day's significance with your preschooler?

Thank you God for making me!

We have almost completed our first full week of Heart of Dakota’s little Hands to Heaven. But for us, an HOD week will really be a week and half or so in most cases since we are going at half speed and adding in other activities. This week we sprinkled in some 4th of July activities.

We have been learning about God’s creation this week…how God created everything from nothing. And that He made you and me! Other activities included:

Learning to count by two’s (up to 10)

Learning about patterns…stripes, polka dots, plaid, checkers, floral…

He learned these patterns through Mom and Dad’s clothes then went into his own closet to find similar patterns. Here he is below being goofy as always!


Drawing his own patterns
 

We did some activities and songs with the letter ‘A’, which was largely taped to our floor. For JayBird, these are just fun activities as he knows all his letters and letter sounds. We have yet to see if these might be a benefit to JellyBean at her young age (not quite 2 years old yet). Certainly it at least exposes her to a world of letters. She played with JayBird making stuffed animals dance on the letter ‘A’, tracing the letter ‘A’, and having races on the letter ‘A’. Through all this, she has become quite good at saying the ‘A’ sound (“ah”). We’ll see if she catches on to ‘B’ and its sound later…or if she just thinks that all letters taped onto our floor sound like the letter ‘A’. lol
 

We acted out the creation of Adam and Eve. JayBird decided that he would play the part of God (hmm…), I would be Adam, and JellyBean would be Eve. JayBird, as God, pretended to pick up dust from the earth and blow it into the air forming Adam(me). He then pretended to take a rib from Adam (me) to form Eve (JellyBean). Even JellyBean enjoyed acting with us…but then she thought she needed a rib taken out of her too. LOL

Here is JayBird shouting “Thank you God for making me!”