Monday, October 24, 2011

I'll Tell You a Secret

I love love love Martha Stewart.  It's true. 

BUT, I am scared of her.  If we were friends, she would totally hurt my soft feelings so I hope I never meet her.  Unless it's in Heaven, then we'll both be whole and healthy and like Jesus so we should get along ;)

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Learning is Fun! Weekly post

Gosh, I can't believe I haven't been posting between these learning posts.  I guess I could try to do better ;-)


So, this is how we did this past week: (Age attempted was 18 months)


1.) Practice climbing down stairs: Check.  She did so good with this.  She kind of knew how to do it before, but not very well and now that I have purposefully taken time to practice with her, she does really well and I don't have to freak out when I am putting away clothes and she is running around :)
2.) Sidewalk Chalk: OMGosh she loves sidewalk chalk!!  She is obsessed now.  I don't love it since it gets ALL OVER her clothes, but she loves toddling around everywhere "chalking" everything and making her mark.  All the bricks and rocks and tree trunks now have chalk lines (or at least they will until it rains!). 
3.) Color again with Red, Blue, Yellow crayons: Mommy fail.
4.) Learn where her "bottom" is:  I think she knows.  Sometimes she points to her belly, but I think she mostly knows.
5.) Signs "dad" and "help":  Mommy fail with "dad" :(  With "help" she does pretty well mimicking me, but she doesn't do it on her own yet.  She did, however, for the first time ever sign "please" today totally umprompted!! 
6.) Drop clothespins in a bottle: check.  Proof:
She did very well with this.
7.) Pumpkin Patch:  Lots of fun!  
Love her :)

8.) Dance:  we did this a lot!  Mostly with me holding her (not for very long.  This preggo chick gets tired easily!).  I should give her more practice and encourage her to dance all by herself. 

Additional Activities:
9.) We rode on a train which was a fun learning experience.  I heard "choo choo" for several days afterwards :)
10.) Played with bubbles!!

Next week's activities:
1.) Play with hats (I don't really have any hats, but maybe I can scrounge some up)
2.) Bubbles again
3.) Color with red, yellow, blue (why am I such a slacker when it comes to this simple activity?!)
4.) Learn where her "thumb" is (should be easy since it's always in her mouth)
5.) Keep learning how to sign "dad" and "help"
6.) Go to Boo at the Zoo (yay! I'm so excited about this!)
7.) Crunch in some leaves if we can find any
8.) Play with a Hula Hoop if I can find one at the dollar store
9.) Featured Book (a book we read every day): "Elmo's First Book of Colors"


Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Learning is Fun! Weekly Post

I'm a day late!

Here is how last week went:
(By the way, age attempted is 18  months)

1.) Stacking Blocks:  I actually have misplaced them at the moment, but she did play with them several times and really liked them.  She can stack 3 blocks.  
2.) Sidewalk Chalk: Mommy fail
3.) Color with red, blue, and yellow crayons:  We only did this once and she kept eating them which was really driving me crazy!  She is sooo much better about putting stuff in her mouth when I say no.  I guess we better try this again.
4.) Learn to point to eyebrow: I thought she would have some trouble with this, but she learned it in about 10 minutes!  It's so unpredictable what she will understand and what she won't.  I have been trying to teach her "chin" for weeks and she still just looks at me or sometimes points to her mouth or nose!  But, eyebrow?  No problem! Maybe it's because she already knew "eye"?
5.) Learn how to sign the word "dad":  Mmmm, kind of.  She knows how to sign mom and dad is very similar so she sometimes signs mom instead of dad, but I think she will distinguish them easily if I keep working on it with her.
6.) Clothespins in a bottle:  Mommy fail :(  I have the bottle ready to go-I just have to cut a hole in the side of it.  We will definitely get to do this before next Monday!
7.) Pumpkin Patch: My friend's schedule didn't work out so we are supposed to go this Thursday.
8.) Stained glass leaves:  We made these, but unfortunately, Baby Girl couldn't do as much as I was hoping.  I wanted her to tear up the tissue paper and she did for about 2 minutes and then got bored.  She did help me stick the tissue paper on the glue...for about one minute :)  Oh well, maybe we'll try again next year!
9.) Read: of course, we do this every day.  I'm not even going to put it on the list anymore.

Additional Activities that we did:
10.) Made this:


11.) We painted pumpkins

So, we did 6 out of 9 activities.  67% success rate.  Not very good :(  Bummer.  However, if you add in the 2 additional activities we have a 88% success rate.  Ok, enough math.  We'll do better next week!  Speaking of next week, here's what we have planned:

1.) Practice climbing down stairs
2.) Sidewalk Chalk!!
3.) Color again with red, blue, yellow crayons
4.) Learn where her "bottom" is
5.) Keep practicing "dad" and learn how to sign "help"
6.) Drop clothespin in a 2-liter bottle
7.) Pumpkin Patch
8.) Dance to some music!

Sunday, October 02, 2011

Learning is Fun! Weekly post

One thing that I do with Autumn and love love love to do is to play constructively with her.  What I mean is I get ideas from other blogs about learning and education and then do something with her other than just reading or letting her entertain herself.  My goal is to do these activities several times a week, plus do one artsy/crafty thing a week with her.  She is young (17.5 months) so some of these things are very simple.  For example, one day we might work on "kicking" a ball (which she still can't do!) or taking a homemade streamer outside and talking about wind.  Some are more complicated such as transfering cereal with a spoon from one bowl to another.  I would also love to have a themed book focus for each week, but that's not happening yet. 

So, why am I writing about this?  Well, because some days (weeks) I do better than others and I thought it might help keep me accountable if I have a weekly post about our "goals".  I am thinking I can go over the previous's weeks activities and how they went and also write down the next week's planned activities.

SO, for the upcoming week our goals are to:
-Have lots of practice playing with and stacking blocks
-Experiment with sidewalk chalk
-Color with Red, Blue, Yellow Crayons
-Learn to point to the body part "eyebrow" :)  (hee hee she may not be able to get this one)
-Learn how to sign the word "dad"
-Drop clothespins into a 2 liter bottle (fine motor skill maybe?  I don't know, I just saw the idea somewhere)
 -Go to a Pumpkin Patch (this may or may not happen depending on my friend's availability)
-Make stained glass leaves, found here.
-Read, read, read (which is a given and we do every day whether I want to or not! (My child is a bookaholic!)

That's not too much, is it?  Some of those are really easy and will only take minutes to do.  Plus, I don't work and I only have one child (for now) so I have lots of time to play with her!

I need to figure out what to call these weekly postings.  Playtime with the beast?  No! Just kidding.  Ummm, learning is fun?  I feel like I've heard that somewhere before, but surely it's not copyrighted so we'll go with that for now I guess.  I guess I'll update on Mondays how the previous week went.   Who's excited?  Me!  :)