I still don't know how it happened so fast, but our little Evie Roo is ONE!!
I love to throw a big party, and her first little birthday was definitely a good reason to celebrate. I started putting together a Pinterest board when she was 3 months old (and later needed a second board that was more 1st birthday specific)! It paid off, as one friend put it on her arrival: "It looks like Pinterest exploded in your house!" I call that a success!
We did a brightly colored kangaroo theme party. Bright Pink, Turqoise, Green, and Yellow filled every corner of our house. I put up pictures of Evelyn on the mantle, and mixed in some subway art my cousin designed for me. Even the popcorn was dyed pink! (Tutorial here) We "tented" the play room with 99cent plastic tablecloths, and designed the food table with 99cent table cloths and colored candy.
I made her mini two tier smash cake by using my smallest cake pan and a ramiken to bake the top tier. She wasn't that much for the cake, played with it very little and then completely freaked out after!
It was a wonderful party, everyone had fun, even big brother didn't mind the attention being focused on her for the day :-) He'll get his turn for a party the second week of January...
After cake it was time for presents! Grandma was in town for her party, so needless to say, little girl got spoiled rotten, as she should!
So happy birthday Evie-Roo! We love you so so so much and can't believe what a big girl you are already!
I took the month of October off from blogging; because, we were BUSY! My mom came to visit for two weeks, we had Halloween, pumpkin patch visits, AND we had our little Roo Roo's first birthday party on November 2nd! Looking back, we really crammed a lot in!
Joe was and Elephant for Halloween, and Roo was Cinderella. They were DARLING (although my opinion is probably biased)! Joe actually understood Halloween this year, and was able to say the words "Trick or Treat" for the first time!
When it comes to school we have now covered up through the letter F, and start G this week. Joe has shown remarkable progress and we've started to add more depth to his three little sheets. Working on distinguishing between a "big letter" and a "little letter," starting to trace shapes, counting beads, and name recognition. He's starting to follow directions better too, which means craft time is going much more smoothly!
We have a little co-op that meets twice a month, it's nothing fancy, and sometimes meetings are small and irregular, but we're new and finding our groove, and it's perfect for where we're at right now.
So that's the overview of where we're at for now. More on little girls party in a different post, because it was just too dang much to throw in a general update.
I've been putting off writing for a couple of weeks as we've tried to get settled into our new school schedule. Things have been going really well! We're following a basic Letter of the Week style curriculum, as well as honing in on counting, shapes, primary colors (although he's picking up on those so fast we're moving on to mixing), and his speech skills. Here are some pictures of his first day, unfortunately, they're quite grainy. My camera STILL hadn't come in the mail!!
And in case you have chosen to think that I have a perfect child that is still for pictures, let me enlighten you... It took 30minutes to get 3 halfway decent pics!
We worked on the letter A our first week, and the letter B this week. I've been getting pretty much ALL of my printables and ideas from 1+1+1=1 If you home school young children you MUST visit this blog. As a matter of fact, I'm linking there today!
The current "set up" is to try and give Joe a full hour and 1/2 of undivided attention, 3 days a week, with intentioned play and learning opportunities. He has 3 worksheets that are done at a desk and those are spread out between sensory play, stories, speech and occupational therapy exercises, crafts, etc... For this post I'll focus on the actual sit down work we do (boring I know) and talk about some of our fun "brain breaks" in a future post.
The 3 worksheets focus on different skills. One is tracing, one is coloring, and the third is a "dot" page to work on recognition. I cannot stress enough how SMALL of a portion of our tot school this is. Joe only has to really sit and focus for a total of about 15 minutes, 3 days a week. The rest of the time he is on the go and learning through play. We spend 30 minutes outside or at a park burning energy before this "sit down time" otherwise, there are too many wiggles and it would never work. I have found even though it's a short period of time, his focus and skills are improving dramatically, and without burn out.
Right now tracing is mostly about any sort of basic control we can get to his "scribbles" Left to right, target to target. I ordered these amazing dry erase covers from Oriental Trading, they are WONDERFUL! We can do the same exercise 4 or 5 times without burning through paper!
Coloring is more "free" but he only gets one color at a time and then has to ask for new. So he starts with one marker and will then say something like "All done blue!" and hand it to me. Then he will say "Purple please!" or "Purple pen please!" This is helping him a lot with his speech and learning to express his desires.
Dot recognition helps him find numbers from a field of 10, letters in a picture, or items in a field of 10. Eventually (in the next couple of years) I'm REALLY hoping this will lay the foundation for sight words.
It has been a buzz of activity for the last 10 days in this house!! Little did I know as I wrote my last post that we would go all the way to Kentucky the very next morning! We had been waiting for the right situation to replace my husbands truck to come along, and when it did, we jumped. After our return I spent 3 days, essentially, hung over. Then I had to scramble to finish what I had started with my new school room!
The pictures are a little grainy, as I took them on my iPad. I did order a new camera, but it hasn't come yet *sigh* so for now, this will have to do.
Here you can see our reading bench tucked away in a cozy corner. It's just big enough for two and it will soon grow cozier, with more pillows, an awning, blankets etc... It's near the window for better light. On the other side of the window is our new easel from Ikea. I LOVE it! It was so easy to put together, and only $15+shipping. Definitely the best deal you'll find on an easel anywhere!
This is what was formerly my china cabinet. My china is no longer decoratively displayed, instead it is banished to the tight space of the top shelf. The rest is now supplies and toys. My son no longer has open access to his toys, instead we now do a check out system (like a toy library). He gets one item or basket at a time, and nothing else until what is currently out is checked back in. I got this idea somewhere in the blog/Pinterest world and love it! We have much more purposeful play, Joe always picks up after himself, and no more "dump it and run" style playing.
Moving on to the actual study corner. His little table with a bench for me to sit with him (or it's also the perfect height against his desk when he needs to spread out), hooks to help display all his hard work, and the mirror for his speech and occupational therapy exercises.
I'm extremely happy with how it is all turning out! We have a much more functional space now, and am excited to watch as it continues to grow with us. I have plans for a bulletin board and a pocket calender in the not too distant future.
Well today, I am physically spent by 10am! My husband is on the graveyard shift for the month, so all the strong armed, man handling, type of projects are pretty much on me. Today that involved completely disassembling the breakfast nook, loading it into the truck, and going to the dump. (With a toddler and a baby having a screaming contest...) Then moving my very heavy, oak, dining table through a very narrow kitchen doorway. I've also had to forgo all the "prettiness" of my china cabinet and relegate all of my crystal and serving dishes to the top shelf, so I can use the bottom two for storage of the types of school things I won't want the kids constantly getting into without supervision. Now I'm working on repurposing some items and as soon as hubby and I share 2 waking hours, there's a huge, heavy, broken, cabinet that has to go.
My back hurts, and I'm on my 3rd cup of coffee, FYI. I just REALLY needed to get this stuff done, and assess my current supplies and storage, before I start buying things this week.
It's fun to get it done too! I'm really excited about this latest venture, so anything I can do over the next few days to get the ball rolling I'm doing! I'm also planning on taking the quiet time during the kids naps today to inventory everything we have. Every book, every toy, every art supply so I know exactly where we stand.
Last night I made two of our good old fashioned family stand bys. Between the two recipes, lunch and dinner is taken care of for 3 days! It's cheap too, our favorite part! The first is a Greek marinated chicken that we grill, we love using our grill! It could be 40 degrees out and as long as it's dry, grilling is an option. Here is my very happy husband with said grill... I'm pretty sure he intends to grill our Thanksgiving turkey
Anyway, the original recipe can be found HERE. I do make a couple of changes, not much different... but I'm a big fan of freshness. Fresh herbs, are always better than dried, always. The phrase "garlic (or onion) POWDER" is pretty much a swear word in this house, and dried herbs are for emergencies only. They are economical... but so is growing your own stuff, or going to a friends herb garden. Anybody who keeps an herb garden can tell you they constantly have more than they can use!
I used a whole cut up fryer for my chicken, juice from the whole lemon because I like things extra lemony and then fresh oregano. Also, I sometimes use "European Yogurt" from Trader Joes, because it's cheaper than Greek Yogurt. I would be lying if I said I knew the difference between the two.... the European seems a little more runny, but that's about all I've noticed. I never marinate anything for only 30 minutes, this stuff sat for two hours and was delicious.
I also made a dish of lasagna roll ups. Easy, and a crowd pleaser, with these I don't change a thing :-)
Here are two pictures of what this stuff looks like when it's done, if you click them they will take you to the original recipes. I can't snap my own pictures for another week, due to the Toddler Pool Meets Nikon Incident of 2013
Linking up to Foodie Friday Pop on over for tons more (and I'm sure far superior) recipes!
It's been a while since I've mentioned much about little man, JoeJoe. We set up his homeschool corner back in January, and developed some goals for him. It was nothing to grand (he was BARELY 2) just a spot to sit and focus.
As time went on I added a cheap set of tupperware drawers next to the desk, and they started to fill, then over flow. Then it got impossible to find what I was looking for or to even stay organized due to a complete inability to cram it all in there. Then we shoved an empty diaper box under the desk, and it overflowed too! Even the calender above it seemed to be taking a hit. Fast forward 9 months and poor little man doesn't even really like to sit at his desk anymore... it stings of abandonment and my first major homeschool failure.
Another hurdle has been little guy's speech delays. Therapy 2-3 times per week pretty much kills whatever "sit still capacity" a 2 year old boy has in him. As I watched the school buses drive by my house this week I got this nagging feeling that I could do better, but didn't know how to proceed. So I started by re-assessing his goals. These are his goals from last January:
Be able to sing the Alphabet
Be able to count to 10
Increase attention span to 15 minute tasks or projects
Be able to follow 2 step directions
Be able to identify actions from pictures (ie. show me who is happy, who is sad?)
Be able to put two words together to express desires and emotions (i.e Drink Mommy or Go Byebye or I hurt)
Finally! A spark!
He can't sing the alphabet song, but I'll tell you what he knows the name of every letter!
He can count to 5, and can identify the numbers 0-9!
He can easily sit with me for 20-30 minutes
Two step directions, are hit or miss... but there is definite progress
He's not identifying actions yet
He can express desires with 2 word "catch phrases" with a little prompting
It was marked improvement, but I was still feeling a bit insecure in my abilities... not to mention overwhelmed. Remember me saying I have a love/hate relationship with Pinterest? When it comes to homeschooling, more often than not I hate Pinterest. There was so much! How do these women do it all? On top of that, they all seemed to have space, and it was very apparent we had grown out of Joe's little space. I felt a tug at my heart, something had to give.
Have I mentioned that growing up my mother and grandmother always set a beautiful table? (stay with me here) Especially on holidays! Behold:
Those are old fashioned icers for the shrimp cocktail (you can hardly even find them any more!), sitting on fine china, with real crystal, and a striking centerpiece, all ready for a candle lit Christmas Eve dinner.
My grandmother always lamented simply having an eat in kitchen. Her dream has always been to have a formal dining room. I've learned to set beautiful tables for the holidays in my formal dining room. It's been an important point of pride for me, carrying on the tradition of beautiful tables and centerpieces, and never taking for granted that I have something my grandmother always wanted. Here's a recent Easter for example.
The thing is though, 99% of the time we eat in our breakfast nook, in the kitchen. My dining room is used for company and pretty centerpieces and holidays. Day to day life though, we eat at the kitchen table or even (gasp!) in front of the TV.
I have two tables, and no room for school y'all. All of those lovely childhood memories of Christmas Eve, Easter, and Thanksgiving, with my Grandma were at the kitchen table, and you know what... I never cared. As a matter of fact, I often wondered why it bothered my grandmother so much that she didn't have a "dining room," and while as an adult I can appreciate the desire, I can also appreciate the many memories made in her kitchen. Those were wonderful.
So here I sit, at a crossroads, and I'm choosing my kids. I will set beautiful tables in our kitchen, maybe even make more of an effort to do it with more regularity, and in about 10 days I'm going to have an amazing school room!
My other hurdle has been curriculum. I just haven't felt that JoeJoe is totally READY for preschool. His birthday says we could, but the delay in speech and personality both give a resounding no. It's amazing; however, once you get the ball rolling the answers just come.
No sooner had I made the decision to convert our dining room to a school room, than a friend pinned (love/hate) a link to something called "Tot School." What the What?! How, in hours of pinning, research, blog reading, forum participation, and networking had I not fallen into this?
I feel this overwhelming relief tonight. Don't get me wrong, I'm still terrified, but at least now I'm terrified with a purpose.
Military wife, homeschooling mommy to Little Man Joe and Baby Girl Evelyn. I collect coupons (but not obsessively), Sew(or at least try to), and have an unhealthy Pinterest addiction that has absolutely ruined Pottery Barn for me.
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