GLE Week 3 "A is for Apple"

You can find the amazing curriculum we are using here. A is for apples!  Plus the story of sin entering the garden.  Autumn loved reading her bible each day because there is a picture of a big snake.  This girl loves snakes...not in real life, but she loves stuffed ones and pictures of them.  Crazy child! 

Our verse for the week on apples we printed.  I saved these in a plastic bag for review. 

More fun with printed apples!  I labeled them 1-10 and we practiced putting them in order.   I laminated these for future practice.   The bottom picture is a few of the crafts we did throughout the week.

Apple pie playdough :)
We also tried to make stars with paint and an apple core (kind of like a stamp), but it totally did not work at all for us!  Even I couldn't get them to look like stars.  So they just smeared some paint around.   

We had an apple taste test (top right picture) and then we took our apples and made applesauce.  Another day we made mini apple pies.  I tried to review the letters we've learned so far with the pie topping.

Last, we ended our week with an apple tree bath.  This was because my son doesn't know his colors yet and I am trying to teach them in fun ways and also because they both love fun baths!  They absolutely LOVE them!!

This was a super fun week for me.  Maybe my favorite so far!

GLE-Week 2 "G is for Garden"

Ok, week two of God's Little Explorers.  G is for garden!  Highlights were...

Soda pop flowers.  She dipped the end of a 2 liter into paint to make the petals, then painted the insides yellow.  I added the stems and leaves.  We made enough to send some to a few family members.

We printed and laminated these cute flowers and bugs and made some homemade play dough and dyed it green and brown for grass and soil (at the expense of my hand!).  Then we played "flower garden" for a long time. 

 

2 different sensory bins.  The top one was soil, glass gems (pretend seeds), and fake flowers. Then my parents actually sent a nature box from their back yard in Tennessee this week so it was perfect! There were pine cones, acorns, and lots of other seed pods from their yard. 

2 fun snacks: dirt cups, found here. Plus yogurt with orange slices around it to create a flower. 

We also do some tracing pages, puzzles, letter workbooks that I don't take pictures of (kind of boring!).  I normally print off lots of options from Confessions of a Homeschooler Letter of The Week series or Carissa from 1+1+1=1 and then let Autumn choose what she wants to do each day.  She loves to cut right now so we cut A LOT!

I am LOVING this curriculum as it is centered around the bible! Every day we do "bible study" and she doesn't even realize she is learning letters, sounds, and math while we are doing it.  She is getting more familiar with her bible and is starting to take ownership over it.  These times together with her are truly the highlight of my entire day.  

GLE-Week 1 "X Marks The Spot"

This week for preschool we talked about the letter x!  We learned that God's word is treasure and we became explorers/pirate princesses for the week and went on treasure hunts and explored a little bit of God's world.  Preschool curriculum found here: God's Little Explorers.

Here are some pictures from the week:

Some of our x snacks

We went on a treasure hunt to find new school supplies, decorated an explorer's kit (from a Chick-fil-a drink carrier) and made binoculars!

This was her sensory bin for the week.  It was supposed to be sand, but the bag got left outside and so it ended up being very wet sand!  The mess was more than I anticipated, but she loved it.  We looked for pirate coins, necklaces, and jewels.  We also practiced drawing x's in the wet sand.

We also made treasure boxes out of an egg carton from Red Ted Art's blog but I didn't get a picture!

I thought I might also mention what Mr. Man and I did this week.  We did a blue week inspired by Play Create Explore's color of the week series.  I didn't get very many pictures of him since he is MUCH  more hands on than his sister, but here are a couple.  I painted a box blue and we (read: mommy) filled it up with blue items from our toy bins. 

This is the aftermath.  I wanted to show a real life experience. Caleb looked at his blue stuff for about 15 seconds and then threw it all over the floor.  But, hey, he is still interacting with blue :)

Another one of my "brilliant" ideas to do with him was to read a bible story out of his toddler rhyming bible (which I LOVE) and then color a picture of the story.  He read the story with me and then these crayons and picture sat out literally all day long.  Haha! Actually, when his big sister came home she wanted to color it so I printed off another one and they both colored :)

We also took a blue bath!

This was a lot of fun, but next time I am going to do a bath like this, I am going to make sure my husband is there to help me! They had blue shaving cream, a spray bottle filled with blue water, blue shapes, blue jewels in the bottom, and blue sponges.  Also, blue circles and squares cut out of foam and stuck on the walls.  

We also played with blue rice and had a blue water bead fight in the backyard, but no pics!  I think he might know the color blue, but I haven't "quizzed" him or anything, so I'm not sure.  It's all just for fun!

Ladybug 6 Months

Half a year already! Make it stop!  I can't keep up!

This is the sweetest, snuggliest, most kissable, most huggable bundle of baby perfectness that you ever will meet.

We took a 2 week vacation back East.  She did stellar.  However, before we left she was sleeping 8-12 hours most nights. Now?  Up every 3.  Also, she is having a heckuva time going to sleep at night (not in the middle of the night, but at the beginning bedtime period).  It is wearing me out.  If I don't feed her, she screams and I cannot handle that.  So, that is no bueno.  Not sure what to do about that...

I finally started feeding her rice cereal and bananas this week.  I thought about trying baby led weaning, but decided against it for 2 reasons.  1.) My older two were fed on home made purees and eat just fine.  2.)  My son still smears food in his hair and I didn't want to deal with 2 insanely messy faces 3 times a day.  I am hoping that by the time Eliza is feeding herself, Caleb won't be quite so messy.  This girl child LOVES to eat!  She hosses it down! You know how most babies when first eating pureed kind of let it drip out of their mouth?  This girl sucks her spoon so she doesn't miss a drop.  I'm so happy :)  

She is still nursing (no bottle, no formula).  I wish she would take a bottle, but no such luck as of yet.  She does this thing when she nurses that is so funny.  I will try to explain it.  She flips on her belly and kind of sits up so she is practically sitting up facing me while she nurses!  It is so random and totally her own move.  I've never seen another baby do that before!

But no, she can not sit up on her own yet which makes the nursing thing even more funny :)

She still rarely laughs, but smiles alllll the time.  She has two smiles.  One is pictured above.  It is the sweetest smile of all time and everyone absolutely loves it.  Then she has her big smile.  Where she opens her mouth really big and shows all her teethless gums.  Gorgeous!  The right side of her mouth has always quirked up when she shows her big smile.  I am interested to see how that develops as she ages. 

We missed our 6 month appointment (ok, I never called to make it) so I won't have stats on her until she is almost 7 months.  Shame on mommy.  (But, not really, because who really cares?).    

She now loves baby toys.  Rattles, chewy things, musical toys, you name it.  She is taken with it all :)  She is such a fun little baby! So easy going (except at night!) and so wonderful to be around.  I wish I could inject a little Eliza into everyone's circle.  This world would be a better place if I could. 

God's Little Explorers

SO, I guess I might start blogging again.  But, I don't know.  I am starting some preschool curriculum with Autumn on Monday and some other women going through the curriculum are documenting their journey so I'm thinking about it. The curriculum is called "God's Little Explorers" and it is bible based and even though we haven't officially started yet, I'm pretty sure it's going to be fabulous and fun.

And, just in case anyone is wondering, yes, Autumn is still attending preschool.  Funny thing that.  She goes for a couple hours daily.  I don't even know how to explain what has been happening in my heart lately.  I will say that I am now 100% convinced to give home schooling a try and wish I could pull her out of school.  Of course, the option to pull her out is there.  We are contracted to pay every month until December but that doesn't mean she has to go.  However, I really want to give it a fair shot...although, for unknown reasons to me, I pretty much have no good feelings about it.  Nothing bad has happened.  I just don't like it.  She is kind of apathetic about it. She is such a flexible kid that she will go because we tell her to, but it's hard to say how she really feels about it.  She definitely doesn't love it...but nor does she hate it.  Overall, I'm pretty sure she would rather stay home, but I can't tell how much she would rather stay home.  If that makes sense.

Anyway, the hubs is on board to start homeschooling next year (as in 2014) so there ya go.  It will be a trial run.  However, I can't stand to wait that long so we are starting God's Little Explorers (henceforth known as GLE) on Monday.  If it seems like it is too much for Autumn going to school and doing GLE, we will stop.  Or we will pull her out of school ;)  She LOVES doing one on one things with me so I think she'll be fine, but we are playing it by ear.  She is pretty much the ideal student.  Her brother, however...Autumn and I will be doing "school" during his nap because that boy...well, he is a wild man.  A wild, passionate, energetic tornado.  I adore his spirit but do not look forward to trying to teach him anything where he has to sit still.  He's only 21 months so maybe he'll chill out a bit before he turns 3?  We'll figure that out when we get there, right? :)

It's funny how things work out because I was so determined to give private preschool a shot and now thinking about it just makes my stomach ache.  I wonder if that is what it took for God to convince me that this is what he wants for me and my children.  I still have worries about home schooling, but my kids are so young this really is the best time to give it a shot, right?  Start now with one and then just add two and three to the mix later on.  Ah, we'll see.  My heart is all aflutter and I wish God would just use an audible voice to tell me exactly what I should do!

So, onward and upward.  Hopefully, next week I will have my very first GLE post up and documented!