Fun with Sound

Today was a LONG day.  Both kids slept in a little, then we read some books as has become our morning ritual.  We had a good breakfast, then got everyone dressed and headed to the doctor.  James was cleared to return to all activities, without an additional xray.  He was trying to hang from the counter while we were checking in.  But he flipped out when the doctor walked in the room.  I think he remembered the pain he was in last time we were there.  By the end he was smiling and gave the doctor a high five.  Big difference from last time!

We spent the rest of the morning at grocery stores, home for lunch and naps.

With a slightly later nap, both kids slept later than usual.  By the time Carolyn was done listening to her book, James was up.  We finished reading the last sound book and then had some fun.  We made a "telephone" out of string and 2 cups.  Both kids had a blast playing with it and taking turns listening/talking.  I also filled 5 wine glasses with varying amounts of water and let them play using a spoon.  They really liked and switched between playing the glasses and with the phone.  Great learning afternoon!

And then our night turned into running around cleaning in a hurry.  Jon was out looking at houses with our realtor and she got a call for a showing.  I had 30 minutes to get the house in show shape, with both kids!  In the end, I did the best that I good and took the garbage out with me on the way out.  We headed down to the park to let them look.  Fingers crossed that they liked it, because that was terrifying.  It's a couple relocating for a new job, so they could want to move quickly which could be good.  We have seen a potential rental house that's only $1k/month.

I added pictures to some previous posts since I uploaded tonight.  Here's the crafts we have done so far that I took pictures of:

Ready for a 3 day weekend!

Sound books

Today was a bit of a lazy day.  Had planned to head to the beach, but just didn't feel like packing everyone into the car (now you see why we NEED to move!)  The kids were playing nicely on their own as while, so I didn't want to interrupt that.  After breakfast they played together in Carolyn's room for a while, and then came out in the living room to play store.  They had taken the letter and vehicle magnets off the garage door and put them into a basket, it was their money.  For a while they pretended to buy things, then would take the money to the bank for me - a way to give them the money back.  After a while this degenerated a little and then I was cooking things for Carolyn while she didn't do much.  So I suggested we head downstairs.  I got in my workout while the kids played some more.  They nearly emptied out the kitchen onto the table down there eating "lunch".  Amazing how much they'll play on their own and use their imaginations when left alone.  Afterwards we came upstairs and read some books before lunch.  I am often amazed at how much both children love reading!

After a short nap, Carolyn listened to another book on tape.  Then she picked up the remaining sound books to read.  While I finished my work, James woke up.  So I ended up reading 2.5 books about sound to both of them.  The first and last were non-fiction, while the middle was fiction.  I like to mix it up as I feel that Carolyn often relates to the fiction better.  Got some ideas too for projects we can do, especially this winter.  String 2 cups together to play telephone.  Make a pan pipe out of straws. 

Hoping that both kids get some better sleep tonight, because they were both exhausted tonight.  We have James' collar bone check up in the morning and then we're heading to 2 stores for grocery shopping.  Jon is going to look at 3 houses on his way home from work.  Looking forward to a 3 day weekend though!

Sense of sound

Another pretty good day today.  James was up early, before Jon left for work.  But Carolyn slept until 7:40, possibly a new record for her.  Although she was up at about 10 last night with a night terror.  They seem to happen about once a month now, when she's extremely tired.  So hopefully the extra sleep this morning and decent nap today will help for tonight.  After breakfast we gathered the library books and headed to the library.  I gathered a bunch of new "preschool" books for Carolyn about the 5 senses, community helpers, and a couple books for math lessons.  Both children enjoyed playing at the library for a while.  Stopped at the store on the way home, talked to the neighbor for a while, read some of the new books, then had lunch and naps.

Carolyn started off listening to a book on CD again.  It's developing into a really nice transition time for me, to wrap up anything I'm in the middle of and transition to smaller emails I can work on while helping her.  Although I need to reorganize my closet a little to make it easier for her to get the CDs and books.  Then we read 2 books about sound.  The first was more so about hearing, explaining the ear as well as how sound is a wave.  Lots of good pictures and a few key vocab words.  Then we read a picture book about the sounds of the different seasons.  Carolyn got a little annoyed I think with me trying to demo while reading to her, so asked to do a project.  I pulled out her next book to make and after reading it together she worked on cutting and pasting the sentences.  By then James was up, so she moved to coloring in the 2 books she's completed.  I encouraged her to color more detail and she did a great job with it.

I'm thinking tomorrow I will push a math lesson a little bit since it's been a few days.  I'm hoping also that James will sleep later, since I don't have any demos.  Overall things continue to go well though and Carolyn's behavior seems to have really improved.  I think she needs the challenge of learning some truly new things each day. 

James can count to 3!  He does it consistently now, and even counts objects.  We're working with him a little on identifying colors as well.  He can get green most of the time, and that seems to be his favorite color.  But we're working on the others as well and he's coming along.  He enjoys listening to the books on CD here and there as well.  While he doesn't page through the books really as he's reading, I figure it's not horrible for him to listen to a story being told.

It's amazing how different 2 kids brought up in the same house can be at this young of an age!  Haven't decided what's on the plan for tomorrow morning.  But strongly considering the beach or a spray park since it's going to be a HOT one.

C is for Clock

What an awesome day and beautiful weather!  Got a bit of a slow start this morning, Carolyn sleeping until 7 so didn't get to breakfast until about 8.  By the time I was showered and everyone was dressed it was about 9.  I had decided to get my workout in after naps, so wanted to keep near the house.  I remembered we had received a case of playdoh for Christmas (thanks Dad) but never got around to opening it because James was still eating everything and then the house was on the market.  So with the beautiful weather, we took it outside. Only opening 4 colors, they had a blast.  We made balls and then compared their sizes.  We made different shapes.  And then James starting rolling things down the driveway.  So I suggested we make different shapes, and proceeded to make a sphere, cube, and cone.  Carolyn added a circle and then tried to roll them all down the driveway (love having a small slope for this!)  Obviously the sphere won and we talked about that a little. 

But then their imaginations just ran wild.  It was so awesome to watch and made me think about what everyone says about today's kids.  They don't get enough free play time and aren't left to use their imaginations.  We made cookies, James cooked them on the concrete sticking out from the garage.  They turned playdoh into a workout too, running all over the yard.  We made a motorcycle, scooter, bat, and bat food (Templeton from Charlotte's Web - really a rat).  I don't even remember all the different things we did.  They played with playdoh for <1.5hrs before I called an end to it because James was clearly done.  Will definitely bring this back out in about 2 weeks or so because it was an awesome hit.  The kids then rode around until getting too hot and thirsty that we came in for a few minutes before lunch.  I have a fear that sending them to school will squelch this imagination.

Both kids slept better today, leaving us with about an hour for preschool activities.  Carolyn read a book on CD and then we worked on the letter C.  She wrote it, found it, then we read Hickory Dickory Dock.  Another poem memorized for her and definitely a letter mastered writing.  It will be interesting to see if there are any letters that give her trouble.  She then cut out and out together a grandfather clock.  She enjoys these projects so much, even though they're very simple.  Will post pictures when I upload at the end of the month.  James woke up as she finished, so she finished her "I See" book as he got some of his snuggle time.  She was excited to finish her second book that she can read on her own.  I will need to spend some time this weekend printing up some more letters and books I think.  I think these books are going to be exactly her way into reading too!

After snack we walked down to the park so I could workout.  I was a little nervous at first because sometimes James is a wanderer.  But both kids spent my running time chasing me.  They pretended to fall and nap in the field.  We exchanged high fives and walked together through the field.  It was a lot of fun and nice to get in my sprints.  Afterwards I pushed the kids on the swings, they went down the slides and then we wandered home.  Both kids seemed pretty exhausted by the end of the night.

Baa Baa Black Sheep

Had a great first day with Jon at work.  Didn't have much time this morning with early gymnastics.  So we had breakfast, got everyone dressed and did Carolyn's hair, put together a snack for James, and went out the door.  James was somewhat sad to not get to play again this week.  But hopefully he'll get to the next time we go!  Carolyn had another fantastic gymnastics class.  She can kick up into a handstand, do a backward roll down a wedge, do an almost perfect cartwheel, jump and land on a beam, and do a back walk over off a mat!  There are 2 other girls that are older than her but can not do as much.  It is amazing to watch how easily she learns these tricks.  I'm looking forward to watching her progress throughout this year.

Didn't have much time for preschool because James woke up pretty early.  But we worked on writing B's, which she did with ease, as well as finding B's in other letters as well as the poem.  We read Baa Baa Black Sheep, and then struggled to find the rhyming words.  I'm going to look for some other resources on helping to identify rhyming words.  Then she got to color in a picture of some sheep.  Hoping tomorrow is a better day with napping for both of them!

I didn't have to work much today, so I got a chance to look over the next lessons and find books to pick up from the library.  Have a nice long list of books to get.  I'm thinking the social studies will be mostly just reading books, at least for now.  But have a list of community helper books to read through.  Looking forward to keep working through everything!

Ready to Start!

What a weekend!  The last few days have felt pretty packed, although I guess they weren't really that busy.  Yesterday we went to 2 stores, then came to have lunch and finish cleaning for our showing.  Showing was good and bad - the agent was very impressed with the house and said it showed well - the buyers are aparently looking for a high end kitchen.  You can clearly tell from the pictures that we do not have that.  Maybe they'll keep looking around though and decide that they love everything else about our house, including the lot, and that they could fix the kitchen.  Only time will tell.  Kids took a nap and then they played in the pool.  Today felt crazy, but I just went shopping in the morning, then worked and made dinner. Jon went to see the house we've had our eye on and was disappointed.  It needs a fair amount of work, and the family room is much smaller than anticipated.  Without a basement this just won't work.  See we will keep looking and trusting that God has a great house for us that just isn't on the market or in our price range yet.  Jon starts work tomorrow, so we have other things to focus on.

Haven't done too much with Carolyn the last couple days because I'm running out of what I had planned.  In just about 10 days we've gone through 5 science topics, 4 math lessons, 1 letter sheet, almost 2 reading/writing books, and 1 social studies unit.  Looking like we'll have to be onto 1st grade things before this year ends!  She is just such a sponge.  Since I keep forgetting to buy cotton balls, I printed out some sheep for her to color so we can move on to B tomorrow.  I'm wondering if we'll do a letter each day this week though!  While she's napping tomorrow I should have time to take my plans further out, including making a list of books to get from the library.  We should start making it there weekly now. 

We're off and running now though... ready to fill the tanks of these 2 little ones as much as possible.  Starting with gymnastics tomorrow morning of course!  Debating about whether to start new toy rotations as well.  With the weather predicted to be so nice I'm thinking we'll just take the opportunity to be outside more.  But then there's always James' arm to worry about.  At least we go back to the doctor on Friday to see how it's healing!

Sorting and Hands

Today was another productive day.  Jon took the car in first thing this morning, we had breakfast and got dressed while he was gone.  When he returned we all went for a nice, long walk.  We've been talking about houses a lot lately, so did more of that.  Carolyn enjoyed commenting on the different barns we walked past.  We can see cows during our neighborhood walks as well.  Played outside for the rest of the morning, had lunch, then the kids took naps.

Got in another 2 lessons when Carolyn woke up.  She listened to another book on tape, and then we did some math and science.  We did lesson K5 out of CSMP which she found quite easy.  We read "5 little kindergartners" which she enjoyed.  Then we did sorting.  She easily found different ways to sort the objects I pulled out of her box along with some of her beads.  She enjoyed playing with the box, so I let her do that for a little while afterwards.  When she got bored we read a book about hands, did a couple activities with them, and then traced her hands.  She then cut them out, glued them onto other paper, and colored them.  I think she's really enjoying all the art projects.  Good thing Jon's mom is bringing some more construction paper tomorrow!  James woke up at that point, so we were done for the day.  Still having a lot of fun.  Feeling like the math stuff is WAY too easy for her, but just planning to do it more often to get to the harder stuff more quickly.  Will likely started the first grade curriculum I figure in the Spring.  We will see how everything goes.  Still having fun with this so far.

We've been talking and looking at a lot of houses lately.  Trying to decide what it is we're really looking for.  I was getting frustrated looking at things, because a lot of places out there are awkwardly laid out (split bedrooms, master bedroom in the basement, etc) or just huge.  After talking more today we've decided we don't want a huge house.  We're fine with a ranch without a basement.  And in fact, we've found a ranch home that we just might be interested in.  It's about 325 sqft bigger than our house here.  Which, if you think about it, is considerably bigger.  And let's be honest, we don't really use the basement all that much except for storage and to work out.  With a 2.5 car garage, that takes care of storage, and we can sort out where to exercise.  Looks like the inside is in good shape and the work that it needs is all outdoor cosmetic.  The low payment that would accompany this place along with its location will allow us the lifestyle we're seeking.  So Jon will go see it Monday.  Wondering if this is the plan God has laid out for us, or if we'll be disappointed.  Time will tell!