Leah can write.

Who knew?

She asked to write a letter to her cousin. Sat down next to me with a crayon and a piece of paper. I helped with the y and the g. It's all her own content. She asked me how some words were spelled...


PS She's royally ticked off at me for being out of envelopes. The nerve of me. She needs to mail this RIGHT. NOW.

Schooling

So we're still doing this book: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. And Leah still loves it! We are in the 50 somethings. I know it's working and I know she can do it but ya know... Sometimes you're doing all this homeschooling stuff and teaching her everything you think she can absorb and you wonder if this is all doing any good. If that makes sense. But then a few things happen and you learn two new things yourself.

1. You underestimate your child and what she "can absorb" or is ready to learn.

The other day I thought I would print out an addition worksheet (just +1 problems. ie 1+2, 4+1, etc) and just introduce her to the idea and the math vocabulary. (I'm tired of counting) And she got down with the whole worksheet in less than a couple minutes. Forget the vocabulary. I explained it to her and the idea just made sense and she did the problems. Here I was all prepared with M&Ms to introduce the concept. Forget that too. She was way ahead of me.

Now we're working on other things with Math 2+3, etc. Those she actually has to stop and count in her head. Or she'll use the M&Ms or hold up two fingers on one hand and three on the other and count them.

I think I'll show her some subtraction today. We'll see how that goes.

2. You have no idea how much she's retaining. It's probably more than you think.

And the reading. I know she rocks at the lessons and she does really well. She loves to walk around sounding out words to herself and rhyming everything she can think of.

But yesterday in the van. She wants us to look at her doodle pad while we’re driving and there was this:

OPRĀT – operate

If she were to see that in the reading lesson book it would look like this: operāte - with a line over the a to mark a long a sound. they make the letters you don't sound out smaller in the lesson. She spelled that exactly right given how she'd learned it.

And don't ask my why she chose operate. We weren't discussing that. I just have no idea. lol

Anyway - look! It's working. I'm ever so glad. Not bad for 4!

Christmas Tree Cones

This was a fun idea I read on some preschool craft site forever ago. I didn’t save the link but it suggested using sugar cones. I just used a regular cone as you can see in the pictures (because it’s what I had in my house) and the candy was leftover from making Leah’s birthday cakes. I also had a thing of white ready made frosting so I just added some green food dye to it. Totally spur of the moment but Leah thought I was a genius.

Gum drop on top to provide the point of the tree (sugar cones obviously would have provided this).

 

The “star” is a piece of cut red licorice, two sizes of M&Ms, some gum drops, and red & green sugar.

Then Leah wanted to eat hers…

She says it’s hard to eat. Of course eating them was NOT the point. Silly girl.

I am thankful for my eyes.

Thankful Jar Post

We have been doing the thankful jar still. Although we've missed a few days here and there so we'll probably keep going until we've used them all.

Today was "I am thankful for my eyes."

It said to watch a movie together. We did that, of course, but then I got a handkerchief and blindfolded Leah. We talked about how she could hear the cartoons but not see them. Then I told her to go potty. Drew stayed close to her as she worked her way up the stairs and went to the bathroom. Then she came back down - asking Drew to carry her first but he said no. Then I got her a bowl of ice cream (I did not tell her what it was) and left her blindfolded to try to eat it. While she tried that with little success (there were many spoonfuls of nothing in her mouth) we talked about all the things that she wouldn't be able to see. Flowers, movies, etc. And she said - I wouldn't be able to see my mommy!! - which was very sweet.

Finally I took off her blindfold and let her eat her ice cream.

It was a good little mini lesson. I think she got the point about what blind really means. Not the depth of it of course but she's 4.

I wonder how I can mange it when we hit the "I am thankful for my ears" one...

Paper Bag Puppets

From Oct 15th - this has been sitting in my drafts file.

Paper Bag Puppet Ideas

Halloween Set (pdf) - this is the ones we did. Leah thought this was great fun. I cut them out but she did the painting/coloring and 90% of the gluing.

Good times :)

She really thought these were the best thing EVER.

The Thankful Jar

I got this idea from Connie's blog - who got it from someone else's blog - who got it... you get the idea. It appears to have originally come from sugardoodle.net - Thankful Jar

Here you can see a pic of someone's jar and papers. I did the same thing to the papers but not the jar decoration. We did glue a picture on the front of the jar. I suppose I could take a picture - and I probably will - but since my laptop is off in some Dell service place - I'm using Drew's little mini laptop and... well... some things are just too much work!

Leah loves any cutting and gluing so she loved the process of course but this morning when we got up this first thing she said was "Let's go do the thankful jar!" So we started the morning by pulling out a card - it said I am thankful for sisters - which I had written Aunts under because she has no sister, of course! So she decided we should color pictures for the Aunt she selected. I printed out some Thanksgiving coloring pages and we colored and now they are in the mailbox. She also loves that process - stamps, envelopes, putting in the mailbox.

The thankful jar is fun! Thanks for the idea Connie!

I'm off to do some Wii Fit Yoga now. Woohoo! lol

Popsicle House

Today Leah wanted to have school. She’s sick and it’s Sunday but she insisted. Silly girl. She really wanted to do a craft and I completely made this up on the fly. It turned out pretty good!

First we took this piece of construction paper and I folded it so there were 16 squares, then cut out the corner squares. (I don’t know why that picture is so blurry. My apologies!)
The cut out pieces I folded in half and used them to glue in the corners:

Then we just started putting glue on the sticks (just the bottom half) and sticking them on. Leah did one side & I did the other.

After they were all on I took another piece of construction paper (that I’d cut to be roughly the right size) and just ran two line of glue on it and set it on there. It stayed just fine.

We waited a few minutes and then used rubber cement to put the pieces on the roof. Leah really felt like the roof should be decorated. I thought the rubber cement would be better since the pieces didn’t slide while they dried.
 
Her gorgeousness:

We probably should have glued a door and windows on the front but she was ready to move on to play the promised games!

Pet Rock

Matilda & Tootsie

These are our pet rocks. I seriously have no idea where the name Tootsie came from but she picked it out! Many hours later she decided to change it to Kaitlyn and as I type she is discussing a new name. I told her "Leah! I love the beautiful colors on your rock!" and she says back to me - all nonchalant - "Yours is pretty too, mommy." but in a "not as cool as mine" kind of voice.

The Sun

Yesterday for school we made these "masks".

Those pieces of paper are glued to a paper plate that I cut the center out of. The "real" project called for cutting the construction paper into triangles. Cutting in triangles is not a specialty of 3 & 4 year old children so I did not insist on that! LOL And then we glued. They love glue.

Now she's the sun. Which I already knew but now I have visual proof. ;)

School

This week for school was fun. For our crafts, Tuesday we made a gingerbread house & a gingerbread train and then Thursday (no Friday - we had to switch the day we had school. It was definitely Friday. lol). We made snowmen with cotton balls on construction paper. They're adorable. I took the picture of them before we added the mouth. Then I realized we'd forgotten and I was too lazy to take more pictures. ;)

We aren't having school with Leah's cousin again until the middle of January. I'm going to my sister's house (with Leah) on Christmas day because she's having her baby! I'm sure we'll still do school there but the girls are going to miss each other!

Leah also got to go to the library today and make crafts - a bookmark, a bracelet, and she frosted/decorated/ate a cookie. It was a good day for her! And we checked out books, of course.

Anyway. The pictures :)

 

School Pictures

Still doing school & still having fun!

Although last Tuesday was not grand. Let's just say I felt like I deserved an award for not losing my cool by the end of that! Yeah me ;)

These are just some pictures from over the last couple weeks during school

This is a notebook that uses dry erase markers - just one of the things I rotate for them to practice on:














Aren't they cute??














We did a little lesson about color mixing & then they got to fingerpaint:














I think I might have posted this before. We did tattoos. They thought I was so cool! LOL














We made bracelets and necklaces out of noodles that I dyed. The ones on the upper left are the original noodles. These are all the colors we did. I forgot to take pics of the finished product. Duh.
(1/2 cup rubbing alcohol and about 10 drops of color, stir about 1/2 cup of noodles in that for just like 20 seconds or so? Not long really. Then spread on a paper towel and let dry. The color gets more vibrant the longer they dry - promise!)

Preschool & Halloween Craft

We had fun at preschool today. The girls really are so much fun! And they love it. After every activity I hear "What should we do next?" from both of them. They're so annoyed when our two hours are over.

A couple of pictures from today.

We use this to practice just holding the pencil, etc.

This is them doing an A. We are still working on ABC from last month & have added DEF this month. A little at a time. We also did counting with candy corn today. Yummy.

And we made this "Halloween Wreath". It's a paper plate with the center cut out. Then we painted them black & glued the shapes on. I had cut out the pictures before hand.

Cool Mommy

Leah came to me tonight with a dollar bill in hand "Make me a necktie."

Uhhhh. What?

Then I remember once at her dance class the teacher took Leah's dollar bill and made it into a bow tie.

So she sees it once and I'm supposed to know how to do it??

Well, being the coolest mommy ever, I have to find a way!

So I google it and a you tube video pops up!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsYjFP2ziDE (it says the the embed feature is disable. weird but it was the best one)

I make the bow tie & call Leah back in the room.

"Thanks. I want to wear it now."

Um.

I got a paper clip and clipped the bow tie on the front of her shirt.

"Thanks, mommy!" and off she went on her merry way!

*****

Today for preschool we made the Halloween Gingerbread House & I played "Go Fish" for a good 30 minutes with her today.

I'm just sayin', It was a successful mommy day.

Of course, now Leah has my sickness I think. 101 Fever. The next few days may not be so great!

Stuff

I am beginning this blog post with no idea where it's headed. Leah is asleep next to my, I have a cold AND I'm cold!.

My husband is the best nurse. He brings me stuff, makes me stuff, & basically caters to my every whim. What in the world did I do to deserve that??

Yesterday I asked for these frozen Thai eggrolls from the freezer. He made them, made me a drink, arranged them on a plate with a ramekin full of sauce & then sliced lemons, sprinkled some herbs on them and arranged those on the plate too. That's so sweet, right??

And when I came home from work yesterday morning. The bedroom was clean & he had gathered every snack in the house & put them all on my nightstand. 3 kinds of chips, pretzels, 2 dips, drinks, etc. And the bed was turned down waiting for me.

He's pretty fantastic!

Right now he's cleaning the kitchen!

***********

I don't believe I mentioned on my blog that Drew has not worked in a month. He's still getting some pay (like 1/4 of his normal) because the railroad is replacing track & so they laid off quite a few conductors. It's not permanent & he should go back any day but it sure stinks to be out of work for now!! He loves his job SOOO much too. It's hard for him to not get to go.

So I started doing some work for my biodad a couple hours each morning. He does merchandising at the grocery store. Nabisco, Keebler, Almos (several brands in there), Snyder (also includes several brands), several different jerky brands. Basically anything in the cookie/cracker aisle except the store brand. So I've been stocking, rotating, making orders, etc.

Woohoo.

I hate leaving Leah. She's okay though. She's with her Daddy!

***********

I should be doing homework. My 2nd semester of grad school has started & I haven't accomplished a single task. NOT good. I'm having a hard time getting back into. Blech.

Maybe I'll at least go check out some of the assignments. Maybe.

**********

Leah has become an "under the blanket" sleeper. Her head & everything. When she gets out in her sleep she will pull it off her head. But mostly she sleep completely cocooned in her blanket. It's very cute. At least I know she's warm!