Journal: preschool for Clem

TODAY

Out my window: nice. nice nice.  The deck door is open at 5PM letting fresh air in!!!  This has me so ready for Spring, but everyone I talk to seems to insinuate I'm crazy for not thinking we have more Winter ahead of us.  People!!  Whatever the case may be, I am very grateful for the outdoor play this little break in the cold weather has afforded us.  Winter (or the children) may not kill me after all.  We shall see...

 

Around the house: I decided it was time for Clem to start Letter of the Week preschool at home with me.  Both other kids started the September they were 3, but Clem is six months behind them with his Summer birthday and just didn't seem ready this past fall.  Lately, though, it has been apparent that he would probably get a lot out of it so I decided (semi on a whim) this past Monday to go for it and he really loves it so far!  I am going a little non-traditional though and we're not doing ABC order.  Gemma was appalled.  I have used this handwriting book (highly recommend) with all three kids, and by he time they started it (in their 4s) I thought they were all just a little too old for it, so I went ahead and started it now with Clem and we'll use it for our LotW guide.  He already loves and is very familiar with the wood pieces, so adding the book is a very natural next step.  It introduces the letters in order of ease in writing them.  Vertical and horizontal lines, then curves, then diagonals, etc.  Our first four weeks are L, F, E and H.  I may or may not have picked up over 30 books from the library this afternoon.  I LOVE any excuse I can find to check out good books, and this is a great one!  Checking out ones for him to enjoy as well as ones geared more towards the older kids.  Good times. Picture books are my favorite.

 

The kiddos:  Well, I'd say I updated on Clem enough above!  He had his 3.5 year old pictures taken (see side-bar), and for whatever reason has (finally!!) decided he is no longer two and has started telling people, "well, you know, I'm three-and-a-half now."  Funny kid.

Gemma is preparing to make her First Reconciliation next week!  So exciting!  Helping her prepare has really helped re-orient my relationship with this Sacrament as well.  It's been good.

Kolbe seems to have leveled out after getting all the bad holiday and birthday food out of his system.  We are back to being fairly careful with his diet and just realizing that occasionally (especially with school-related events. and holidays.) he just takes a hit.  Sigh, it's so frustrating for us and him. Kolbe has been building lots of legos lately. 

In the kitchen: This past week we had grilled meat with green beans and potato casserole, fajitas, tacos and lots of leftovers.  Creamy tomato tortellini and salmon turnovers (store-bought and re-heated) tonight.  Next week: French dips, crispy chicken salads and pesto chicken with boiled potatoes and steamed carrots.  I have gotten into the bad habit of leaving Friday up in the air (you know, in case the dinner fairy decides to come...) so we'll see what we end up doing late-week.

Learning: It is Catholic Schools Week!  We are so, so grateful for the Catholic education available to our children with the Catholic school system we have in our diocese.  I seriously do not know what we would do if we didn't have these Catholic schools as an education option.  There is hardly a day that goes by that I don't have a very deep sense of gratitude that this integral part of our children's formation (religion and education and so much more) is so richly provided for by the generosity of so many.  God is good.  Abundantly good.

We've started using the First Communion Catechism (which is an adaptation of the Baltimore) at the breakfast table, and the kids, all three of them, have really surprised me with how much they are getting into it.  I've always bemoaned the fact that we don't do much memorization, so this helps with that plus it teaches such solid theological concepts!  Win-win!!

Reading: Bible.  Trying to get a "chapter" of The Imitation in before the kids are up on days that I'm able. Not much else currently.  Mr. Popper's Penguins with the kids!  The chapters are the perfect length for the breakfast table.

Watching: the usuals.  I won't bore you with our nerdiness.

Bringing me joy: Grace.  Good people. Fun conversations. Preschool lessons with Clem. A good meeting (who knew such a thing existed?!).  The sacraments.

Thinking about: Confession, sin, grace, forgiveness. etc.  Please say a prayer for Gemma (and all of us) as she prepares for her First Reconciliation.

Pictures to share:  

Baptism anniversaries!

Sunflower update II

The sunflowers have continued to grow...taller than Gemma!!  We're hoping to get some seeds from them to plant next spring!!

"Z" week

Here we are at the end of the alphabet!  Our "Z" week overlapped with the first week of the Summer Reading Program at the library, so we enjoyed these fun "Z" books:

• Z Goes Home
• Zoo-Looking
• Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! I'm Off to the Moon!
• Never, EVER Shout in a Zoo
• Charlie at the Zoo
• Z is for Zookeeper 
• Zella, Zack and Zodiac
• Zinnia's Flower Garden
• There's a Zoo in Room 22

Gemma made this Zebra craft from DLTK.  She had me cut eye-holes in it and put elastic around it so she could wear it as a mask, which she thought was very cool.

And that concludes our ABC's.  :-)

Gemma's sunflowers

Back during "S" week, Gemma planted some sunflower seeds.  With the early, long spring they did great this year and bloomed well before Summer!

"Y" week

Part of me is sad to be coming to the end of our letters, part of me is ready.  It's been a great year, we've learned a lot, and I feel like I've done a lot of work that benefited us this year and will potentially benefit us in future years with other children.  Lately I've been thinking about the coming year and what I'd like to accomplish with Gemma and Kolbe when it comes to learning at home...all the while keeping in mind we have a third little one joining our family here in a about 6 weeks.  I've found a lot of great resources, and thought a lot about our daily routine, and am confident (?? maybe that's a strong word...) that we'll be able to continue learning together, even if our "schedule" isn't quite as structured as it was with our Letters of the Week (and believe me, that "structure" has evolved as the year has gone by and our needs have changed and shifted).  But I'm getting ahead of myself now.  I plan on posting in the next couple weeks about some ideas for the future, but for now, our "Y" Week activities and books included:

• "Y" is for "Yes, Lord!"  Another great activity/craft from Catholic Icing.  Have I mentioned that I am so glad I own this book?!!
• Month by Month a Year Goes Round -  great rhyming book that talks about the changing days, months and seasons of the year.
• Just Like You -  A very sweet, multicultural book that talks about babies from all around the world.
• We had fun singing "Yankee Doodle" with this book.
• We looked at a great picture book about Yellowstone National Park and discussed the various things we saw.
• We enjoyed Yellow: Seeing Yellow All Around Us (our version from the library was just in English) and did this Y/Yellow/Yarn craft from DLTK.
• We're almost to the end of A is for Altar, B is for Bible and Museum ABC.  These have both been great resources throughout the year.

"X" week

Seriously, what to do for X week?  I mean, really.  It was a stretch.  I thought I'd share some of the books we found though, because I really had trouble thinking of anything.  I stumbled upon something somewhere online that did get me thinking outside the box enough to find books with the "X" sound though, instead of ones with words that begin with X (since xylophone is the only one that comes to mind, and that doesn't even make an "X" sound...BLARGH, English!!)  So here are some of the books we enjoyed:
Max's Wacky Taxi Day
Fox Tails (Four Fables from Aesop)
Hattie and the Fox
A Fox (The Sound of X)
The Adventures of Taxi Dog
Fox in Socks

Gemma colored some short and long popsicle sticks and made capital and lowercase X's out of them, and I hot-glued them together for her.  For whatever reason, coloring popsicle sticks is something she really gets a kick out of.

She also colored a picture of a fox and some X's and cut them out.  I am amazed at her cutting lately.  We recently worked through the book More Let's Cut Paper and holy cow, she has really taken off.  I bought My First Book of Cutting as well, with the intent to go through it with her next, but I think I may save it for Kolbe.  She's doing really well.

We had fun finding X's when we were out and about (lines in the sidewalk, grout in tile, street signs, etc.)

Both kids gave me some eXtra help in the kitchen for breakfast several days.  French toast has been a recent favorite around here.  

And that's about all.  A very uneventful "X" week for sure.  Here's to "Y" and "Z"...where has the year gone?!

"V" week

"V" is for Vatican

We looked at the pictures in The Vatican (and other Christian Holy Places) and made our own Vatican Flag using the directions from my Catholic Icing Preschool Curriculum book.  Seriously, so glad I purchased this book.  We also found the Church/Vatican flag when we made a visit to Jesus at Church after our weekly trip to the library.  As an aside, the aforementioned book about the Vatican was a nice resource for pictures, I don't know that I would use it for anything theological however, I've an inkling the author was not even Catholic. :-D

"V" is for Virgin Mary

We made this Virgin Mary craft (also from Catholic Icing).  It turned out pretty neat, but it was way more work and way more mess than I anticipated.  I didn't use the stained-glass paints, I just mixed glue with acrylics, and while that worked fine it didn't wipe off as nicely as was implied when the kids painted outside the lines, and I had to repaint the black outlines after the kids were done.  And the kids (especially Kolbe) got pretty messy.  Like I said...quite a bit of time and mess, but the kids were proud of their final products.  They do look neat as sun-catchers, but we opted to hang them on our cabinet where we usually hang weekly projects so as to avoid tape on our (new) windows.  ;-D

This craft fit in very well this week since May is the month of the Blessed Virgin.  We also added a small Mary statue to our table centerpiece and start our morning prayers with "Immaculate Mary" in honor of the Blessed Virgin in the month of May.

"V" is for Vegetables

We checked out

Growing Vegetable Soup

and

Eating the Alphabet

Both great books for talking about veggies (and fruits).  Gemma also enjoyed this veggie-basket craft.

"V" is for Visitors

Our very favorite book for "V" week was A Visitor for Bear.  What a great story.  Gemma liked it so much, and I just thoroughly enjoyed reading it.  The vocabulary in it was fantastic.  Big words used in simple context.  And a fun, sweet story to boot.

We also enjoyed some visitors at our house...on Friday we hosted our first playgroup with my Catholic Motherhood mamas and their kids and had a splendid time playing with everyone.  Too bad I forgot to take any pictures.

That's all for this week!  Can't believe we're down to the last four letters!!!

Children's Book Review: Under the Sun and the Moon

Margaret Wise Brown rarely disappoints, and she was in true, good form with her book of poems entitled Under the Sun and the Moon And Other Poems.  The poems are cute, witty and short, great for toddlers and preschoolers; and the soft, colorful illustrations by Tom Leonard are the perfect complement to each poem.  We checked this book out from the library for "U" week and it was a good kick in the pants to get back into our poetry at lunchtime tradition, which seems to ebb and flow in its successfulness.  If you're looking for some short, nice poems to share with young children, this book does not disappoint. 

For our other "U" week activities, click HERE.

"U" is for umbrella

We did several activities during "U" week, mainly papers (coloring sheets and some various worksheets) I printed off for Gemma.  She's getting more into working on stuff like that (often while Kolbe naps) and her coloring skills have improved by leaps and bounds over the past six months.  Our "big project" for the week was umbrellas!  Gemma and Kolbe both had fun working on this.  Seriously, painting is so exciting for them especially the "special" paints, AKA the non-watercolor ones.  (Watercolors are my go-to paint of choice most times, they are so easy and the mess is minimal.)  I morphed this paper-plate umbrella craft from several ideas I found on the vast and super-handy interwebs.  It was very easy.

• Take a paper plate and draw scallops across the middle.
• Cut out.
• Use a sharpie to section it out.
• Have kids choose colors and paint sections.  Or just paint randomly in Kolbe's case.
• Let dry.
• Choose pipe-cleaner color and tape on back then make hook on bottom for handle.
• Glue pom-pom color of choice on top in middle.
• Voile!  Umbrellas!!!

We also read The Umbrella by Jan Brett, and this great picture book by the same title.  Picture books (without words) have always intimidated me.  I feel like I'm not creative enough to make them interesting, but we really had fun with this one.  The pictures were excellent, vibrant and colorful, they made you glad there weren't words to get in the way.  We also discussed the various paintings of umbrellas in Museum ABC.

Check back tomorrow for a review on the book of poems we enjoyed during "U" week!

"T" week

"T" is for St. Therese

Gemma is finally getting old enough for saint stories from our Picture Book of Saints.  I love being able to share the lives of the saints with her, and look forward to sharing more of these with both kids in the future.

 

We read about St. Therese, and then made some Sacrifice Beads (or Good Deed Beads) to hang on our fridge and use as a family.  This was a really great carry-over activity as we had talked a lot about sacrifices during Lent, and used purple beads in our alms jar for sacrifices made.  I'm hoping our Sacrifice/Good Deed Beads help us carry on this tradition throughout the year.  Or at least give us more of an awareness of the importance of making sacrifices.  Heaven knows I could use the reminder.

Gemma also colored this St. Therese coloring sheet.



Popsicle Stick "T's"
Gemma painted some popsicle stick T's (pictured above with Therese) and used the extra paint to paint some big T's and little t's on paper.  She also colored a bunch more popsicle sticks to go along with the painted set I made, and formed some T's with those.  I like the letters that have straight lines.  :-D  Although for those that don't, this set looks pretty cool.

"T" is for Trinity
Here are a few great Trinity activities from Catholic Icing:
Shamrock Trinity (and even more ideas here)
Popsicle stick Trinity
We had done the popsicle stick triangle Trinity back with "G" is for God, so we did the shamrock this go around.  Gemma has been enjoying our lacing cards lately, so this was a great activity for her.

Our favorite "T" books

The Three Trees

"Thank you"

Tiny Tiger

Thunder and Lightning

Miss Spider's Tea Party

My "T" Sound Box

Mr. Murry and Thumbkin

"S" is for Sunflowers

As I mentioned, we've mostly been taking a hiatus from our letters during Lent, but I did decide to do letter "S" in conjunction with Spring/seeds, etc., since we were ready for "S" anyways.  So we've spent the past couple weeks doing various letter "S" activities.  One thing we ended up doing -- and it was one of those completely random, unplanned things that are sometimes the ones that turn out the best -- was "S" is for Sunflowers.  Gemma wanted to paint something, so I said, "how about some sunflowers since we're on letter 'S'," and showed her how and got her started.  At that point I remembered that I had checked out a copy of Camille and the Sunflowers -- a wonderful picture book that I would highly recommend about Vincent van Gogh -- so I ran and grabbed that and we read it (several times, Gemma really liked it) and it just ended up being a really cool activity that we both enjoyed.  My hubby has a reproduction of van Gogh's "Sunflowers" at his office that he got when he was in Vietnam, so that made it extra special since it was a painting with which Gemma was at least a little familiar.  This definitely made me excited to jump back in full-swing with our letters after Easter.

Homemade decade rosaries

One of our activities several weeks back during "R" week was making homemade decade Rosaries with pipe-cleaners and beads.  I found the directions for these in my Catholic Icing preschool curriculum book, they were very simple.  Gemma made one for each of her grandmas, and kept the sample one I made for herself.  We keep it in the car, as we've recently started praying a decade of the Rosary each time we go somewhere with our Holy Heroes Rosary CD.  The one I made (which is the one she has) has the 10 beads in color-wheel order, so it is very easy to help her follow along without having to turn around and look at where her fingers are.  For some time now I have wanted to start a "Rosary habit" with the kids and just haven't had the motivation to do it.  These little homemade Rosaries and the Holy Heroes Rosary CDs have been awesome tools.  As a side-note, the pictures below really crack me up, they are quite an insight into my children's individual personalities...Gemma with her beads all lined up neatly in a row, and Kolbe with a bent pipe-cleaner throwing beads across the kitchen and laughing when they bounce under the fridge.  AHHHH kids!

"P" week

"P" week was a week of "P" foods at our house.  We made pancakes TWICE.  And, I let Gemma help both times.  Which is big.  I'm, um, not a huge fan of help in the kitchen.  At least not help of the four-year-old variety.  But it's good for her and good for me so here's to pancakes and "P" week.  We also had homemade pizza for dinner one night, and daddy made a punkie (pumpkin) pie for a special treat!!  Like I said, lots of yummy "P" food!!

To the right is Gemma with our Museum ABC book.  We use this book at Circle Time on Friday mornings for our weekly "art study".  I keep this pretty simple.  Each letter has a theme (P was for peacock, for instance) and then four famous works of art centered around that theme.  We compare and contrast each of the pictures, talk about colors, shapes, lines and textures, similarities and differences, and Gemma chooses which picture is her favorite and explains why.  I bought this book at the recommendation of a homeschool mom friend, and am so glad I did.  It really is a great addition to our Letter of the Week library.

We did a religion craft/activity for "P" week that I'm really excited about.  We made a prayer cube.  I got the idea from our Catholic Icing Preschool Curriculum book.  Instead of using a styrofoam cube and construction paper though (as the CI book suggested), I got a small wooden cube from Hobby Lobby for $.99.  Gemma helped me think of the title of prayers to write on each side of the cube (and I came up with some new ones for her to learn).  We ended up with Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Heart of Jesus, St. Michael prayer and Memorare.  Then Gemma colored each side of the cube with non-washable markers, and there you have it.  Now, each morning when we pray for our sponsor child from CFCA we roll the cube to see which prayer to pray.  I am also looking forward to using this during Lent when we pray our family intention each night after dinner.  This should be a great way to introduce some new prayers, as Gemma doesn't yet know the St. Michael prayer or Memorare.  I am contemplating making another one sometime with prayers like the Apostle's Creed and Acts of Faith, Hope and Love.

Some of our favorite "P" books were:

If You Give a Pig a Party

Puppies are Like That

A Pocket for Corduroy

If You Were a Penguin

Curious George and the Pizza

Curious George at the Parade

The Poky Little Puppy

Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade  This book was so cool.  I think I could do an entire blog post just over it.  Suffice it to say if you are studying parades, or looking for a good book for Thanksgiving week, this is a gem.  It was informative enough that I'd recommend it for any preschool or grade school-age child.  Heck, I learned a lot.  The illustrations were fun and funky and it was just nice having something historical and true rather than just your run-of-the-mill picture book.

"O" week

 "O" is for octopus, owl, ox and ostrich!  We learned about several different animals during "O" week.  I picked up a set of flashcards at a consignment sale last summer (I think) that has fairly realistic pictures of animals on the front and a paragraph or two (geared toward probably a 5 year old) about the animal on the back.  They are very informative.  I just have them filed out in our letter folders, and am always happy to run across them.  

Gemma colored an octopus picture with her new twist crayons she got for Christmas, and we counted and numbered the legs together.  As good as her letter recognition is, I am finding that we probably need to work a little more on numbers. She can count and such quite well, but isn't great at recognizing numbers if they're not written in order.

We painted letter "O"s as well.  I have a file I made in Word with all the alphabet letters in a large font (one per page) and they can be colored or painted or whatever.  Leave your email address in the comments and I'd be happy to share if you're interested.  

Some of our favorite "O" books were:

On the Night you were Born (She got this for her birthday.  It is SUCH a beautiful story.)

Oh the Thinks you can Think  (The best Seuss book of all time - in my opinion of course.)

Over in the Meadow (We love this song around here.  We've checked out several versions of this, and this is the one we own illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats.)

My "O" Soundbox

A Garden of Opposites

Octopus Opposites (This gave us an opportunity to talk some about opposites this week as well.)

Wow said the Owl(A book about colors.) 

Otis and Sydney and the Best Birthday Ever (This one was leftover from birthday week - which I still need to blog about.  We found some great birthday books at the library though!!)

Little Owl's Night

Owl Babies  (A very sweet story that addresses separation anxiety.)

"N" week

We jumped back into our Letter of the Week activities after the new year.  I've scaled things back a little bit.  We still have our circle time every morning, and I'm going to try to have one craft-type activity and/or one religious craft or activity for each week.  Plus maybe a little enrichment stuff here and there.  I'm just going to be a little more relaxed about the day we do things and such though, whereas the first half of the alpha I kept things pretty structured with a planned activity each day.  Just trying to keep things realistic, fun and educational.  I also like the idea of trying to incorporate some foods and snacks into our weekly themes here and there, and definitely getting outdoors for more nature activities once spring comes (come on, come on, come on...) 

For "N" week our main activity was this Holy Name of Jesus poster we made for our kitchen (January is the month of the Holy Name).  Gemma had fun gluing the buttons and beads.

Some "N" books we enjoyed were: 

My "N" Book

A Stormy Ride on Noah's Ark (while not incredibly Biblical per se, this was very cute I thought)

A Nest Full of Eggs (This book was so educational, I would highly recommend it and hope to check more out from this series in the future.  Gemma really liked it as well, I think we read it every day.)

Night in the Country

"M" week

Ahhhhh, "M" week was one of those projects that totally and completely fell flat on its face.  Wow.  I was so excited about making homemade finger paints for the kids.  I knew they'd love it.  Actually, in the back of my head was a little inkling that they might hate it, but I ignored that.  Next time I need to not ignore my inklings.  I do know my children quite well, after all.  They hated it.  They wouldn't touch it.  Gemma flipped out the minute she put her fingers in it and begged for a rag to wipe her hands and then wouldn't touch it.  Kolbe just got mad.  I gave them paintbrushes, but brushes didn't work very well with the consistency of the paint and I ended up doing most of the painting while the kids whined and complained.  And cried.  And were generally obnoxious.  It was good times folks, let me tell you what.  We had read Mouse Paint before starting the project, and it was supposed to be a super-great hands-on learning experience about mixing colors.  Well, it wasn't.  It was pretty much terrible, did I mention that?  I may have even cried.  But we won't talk about that.  Luckily I was able to semi-resurrect the afternoon by printing out this mouse coloring sheet and just getting out our regular paints (with brushes of course) and we mixed colors that way.  They turned out really cute, and it was a nice learning activity, but prefaced by the nightmare of the finger paint it just kind of cast a shadow on the rest of the afternoon.  Ah, such is life.  Here are the fruits of our, um, labors.

The "finger" painting fiasco.  Notice the angry look on Gemma's face and the rag clutched in her left hand.

Mouse painting did go a bit better.

 And the end result.

Some of our favorite stories for "M" week were:

Millie in the Snow

William Wegman's Mother Goose  (we own a weimaraner, so this was particularly entertaining)

The Weight of a Mass  (Gemma's gift from St. Nicholas)

Follow the Monsters!

Tomie dePaola's Mother Goose

If You Give a Moose a Muffin

Wait Till the Moon is Full

I had several other "M" activities planned, but with Advent activities and the Holy Day and a funeral we attended last week they just weren't happening.  The way the next few weeks are looking, I think we are going to take a hiatus from "letter of the week" until after the holidays.  That will give us time to work on some Advent and Christmas activities and review our letters A thru M.  Plus the break will help us stretch things a bit further through the year, as we have hit the halfway point in the alphabet.  CHEERS, everyone!