Wife, Then Mama

My oldest daughter is 11 years old.  Everywhere she goes she asks people if they have to do math to do their job.  She abhors math.  She is trying really hard to figure out what sort of job she can do that doesn't require any math.  Sadly for her, she probably won't find a single job that doesn't involve some sort of simple arithmetic. Math is used so much, everyday without even thinking about it.  For instance I used (very basic) math today when I made lunch.  I had to count how many carrots I was giving everyone.  I am not a huge stickler for "fair" and often intentionally give one child a noticeably larger or smaller serving of something just to give them an object lesson in "life's not fair".  They inevitably point out the inequity and I take the opportunity to remind them that there are people that are sick and dying, people that are homeless, people that starve to death, and people that are rich beyond words.  I think I will also ad...

To start off our second week of Sights and Sounds of Winter, we moved on from Orchestra to Sights and Sounds Outdoors.  Instead of doing daily posts I am going to try to do weekly posts, plus some extras.  Some weeks I might do more when we did really well at doing all the activities, but we have been doing pretty bad the last couple weeks because...  WE HAVE A NEW BABY!  Which means that I am getting up a few times a night and feeding the baby a zillion times a day, plus I really like to snuggle the baby all the time, so school time IS being done, but not nearly as well as we did the first week. Day One: Animal Tracks  - We had a weird day, because we had to drive down to Michael's school to drop off some paperwork (we also went to Target where he got the Pikachu hat he wore all day), so we did half of school time in the afternoon and the other half in the evening after the girls got home.  The circle time activity was making tracks in the "snow" with ...

Let me start with an embarrassing/adorable story.  For our first week of school we were learning about Orchestra.  When we went to church the next time, he QUITE LOUDLY announced "HE HAVE GUITAR!" at the end of the first song.  Then a man next to us put his violin away, and although he managed to contain himself a bit better since I reminded him church was not a good place to be yelling, he was pretty excited to see the violin. Another fun day of school with Little Guy courtesy of Mother Goose Time!  Thanks to Michael's mom we have an adorable mini piano, which was perfect for today. There were a lot of interesting things to do today, and all of them held Little Guy's attention really well.  To start with we used some glow in the dark stars that came in our MGT box to make a path on the floor and then tapped them while we counted.  I loved that he made a connection between the stars on the floor and the Christmas book "Little Star" that we read a we...

Learning about stringed instruments with Mother Goose Time was really fun for Little Guy.  He loves guitars for whatever reason, and was pretty stoked when I brought out his ukulele to mess with during circle time. First we made a violin prop.  It is a cardboard violin and bow.  First he decorated it with markers, because markers are less messy than paint and more fun than crayons.  Then he laced the first part and I finished the lacing because I didn't want to cut the yarn since I couldn't find any scissors.  It doesn't look quite like the picture, but he liked it.  I showed him how to hold it, and then showed him a picture of a man playing a violin and he copied him and played along. Decorating the violin Now Little Guy might not have a lot of crafting or dancing experience, and he might not do well with controlling his breath, but he knows his alphabet really, really well.  So V is for Violin was cake.  He didn't do very well with ma...

Today we continued our week of learning about orchestra instruments.  This was my favorite day so far, but that might be because it was also the day that Little Guy did the best! Our day's activity didn't start off the best.  First up was working on his My Little Journal and decorating the front of it.  He started by using paints to make dots (his first time painting- we are not a very artsy craftsy family, mostly just crayons around here), which he really enjoyed.  We also looked at which of his dots were big and which were small, so we added some math in there.  Then he was supposed to draw a picture of himself playing an instrument.  He can't draw anything.  Not only can he not draw anything, but he doesn't really want to try.  Mostly he wants to "write" letters, and when I ask him to do something, he asks me for help.  Time to encourage a LOT more independence I guess. Next we played Guess the Sound.  We listened to clips o...

I have to say that I LOVE the fact that the pre-school curriculum from Mother Goose Time is going over orchestra instruments this week.  It is something I NEVER would have thought to do myself, and so much fun! Today at Circle Time, Little Guy was a lot better at doing the weather, rather than just saying yes for everything,   I also hid Mother Goose, and he had to find her, which he thought was a lot of fun.  I had him find which day of the week it was based on the first sound, and we listened to the Days of the Week song.   Everything we needed for two hours of learning activities! Our activities went better today.  The first thing we did was Find the Flute.  We used "magnifying glasses" to look at our theme poster.  It took him a minute to figure out what we were doing, but once he figured out we were matching things, he did it like a pro.  When we had the open one where you can put anything in the window you want, he found EVERYTH...