Tag Archives: Preschool

Summer Unschooling

As I mentioned before, I’m really interested in unschooling. Unschooling is how everyone naturally learns, so I guess you could say that we’ve been doing it from the get-go, but now we’re really focusing on it. While there are plenty of unschooling things we can do at home, I think a big part of unschooling is getting out  and actually doing. I want to give you experiences and summer is a great time of year to do that. I had a two-week break between summer and fall semester (online only still, but a little break in having homework to do), so we decided to take full advantage of it. Our house is a mess and we’ve spent almost no time at home, but we’ve had a load of fun.

The Living Planet Aquarium

We went to the Living Planet Aquarium for the first time in probably a year. We used to have a membership, but I decided it was too far away, so we didn’t renew it. I decided that while it is still far away, it’s worth the travel, so we renewed them. Our friend Shelby came with us (one of Peanut’s favorite people in the world). Peanut was so excited that she touched a baby shark!

Playing with her friend at the Treehouse Museum

The Treehouse Museum had a special carnival that we haven’t been to before, but it was a blast. We invited Peanut’s friend and they ran around playing with the moms chasing.

Davis County Fair

We went to the Davis County Fair (not actually our county, but the one next to us) with Daddy. We spent some time manning the booth for the Davis County Breastfeeding Coalition and walked around the fair. This was the first time Peanut had been to a petting zoo and she loved it. We talked about which animals were which and she had to pet one of each.

Twig thinks our adventures are grand, just riding on my back.

Boating with Mema and Pop Pop

Boating is tiring! We studied a baby fish that uncle was nice enough to catch for us in a cup, we talked about why the boat and inner tube float, and we had fun in the water!

Thanksgiving Pointe

Peanut loves dinosaurs, but decided that the dinosaur museum near our house is too scary. So we decided to take a drive (with Shelby) down to Thanksgiving Pointe to see their dinosaur museum, along with a cool exhibit they have on sound at the moment. It was a blast. Peanut particularly enjoyed the erosion circle, pictured above, with its sand and water. She also enjoyed the sand area where you could find fossils.

Ogden Farmers Market

We went with Daddy to the Ogden Farmers Market and then to Science Saturdays at the Ott Planetarium. At the farmers market, Peanut made a friend at the playground, which eventually turned into a little cliche of four girls. They literally just sat around and chatted. Whoever says that homeschoolers aren’t social should be shown my child. She walks into any place and finds a friend immediately. Afterwards at Science Saturday she particularly enjoyed an activity where you take a bowl of water and spin your finger in it, then take your finger out and wait until it looks calm and drop in a couple drops of food coloring. It’s not calm! It’s still spinning!

With Shelby at the Hogle Zoo

As our last hurrah before my semester started, we went to the Hogle Zoo yesterday with Daddy and Shelby. Peanut loved looking at all the animals and particularly enjoyed the seals. It took her a few times of not wanting to leave an animal to believe us that there were more coming up. She loved looking at all of them.

Throughout all of our adventures, the main purpose has been experiences. She’s seeing things she wouldn’t have otherwise. She’s playing with things at the places we go. I purposely haven’t been focusing heavily on the information at the museums and what not because I’m thinking she’ll get more interested in learning more about the animals and exhibits as she gets older. For now, she’s excited to see an elephant or fossil and just hear some basic information about it.

Also in the realm of unschooling, I’m teaching myself to do more with my camera. For so long I’ve been shooting on auto (gasp!) and even using flash (gasp!) because I’ve been too afraid of tarnishing memories with crappy photos. Going to a class at the Breastfeeding Cafe (taught by my friend Timbra) about photographing your child made me realize that I need to get out there and mess with my camera. Her lovely self helping me with some controls on my actual camera after the class was great too. So, I may not be taking the absolute best photos in the near future, but I’m working on it. Bear with me.

Newsletter – June 2012

Hey Girls!

This last month has been hectic and full of illness. Literally to the point where I feel like it all runs together. Now that it’s behind us though, we’re having a great time.

Peanut, you threw up for the first time this month. Yeah, you spit up about 20 times a day when you were a baby, but that doesn’t really count. This time, you literally blew chunks. It was so gross, but I was amazed that I handled it. I’ve never been good with puke, but when I was helping you and cleaning up, I didn’t even gag. I guess that’s just part of what’s changed in me with becoming a mother.

You ended up throwing up 3-4 times and you absolutely hated it. The first time was a surprise to you, but after that, you knew what was coming when you had the feeling. You made a horrible face and would cover your little mouth, but of course that doesn’t stop it. After it was done and over with, you’d tell us how much you hated puking. You said “I don’t like this!” and “Puking isn’t fun!” I most definitely agree! It was the first time that I honestly wished I was the one sick rather than the person around me. When daddy is sick, I feel bad for him and take care of him, but I never wish it was me who was sick. When you were vomiting, I honestly wished I were vomiting instead. Daddy said he had the same feeling, so I guess that’s just another one of those things with being a parent.

On top of the vomiting, which luckily only lasted about 24 hours and it was on a weekend so daddy was home to help, you also were lucky enough to get what we think was whooping cough. I say “what we think was” because we never actually took you to the doctor, but your uncle did go to the doctor and was diagnosed (without a test) with whooping cough. You and daddy are still coughing (though not contagious) and you first started getting symptoms just about a month ago. It doesn’t help that you both seem to have gotten another small bug, which made the hacking coughs worse again. Ugh.

Other than being sick, you’re doing great. You love your new preschool and you love to tell me about the things you do there. You’re also delighted that little sister misses you when you’re gone. Oh boy does she miss you. I never realize how much easier you make taking care of her until you’re not there. She’s so entertained by you! When you’re gone, I can’t even leave the room that she’s in. When you come back though, she lights up like she hasn’t seen you in a million years. You love to give her hugs and kisses and she hugs you right back. One time, you signed “I love you” to her and she tried to grab your hand and stick it in her mouth, so now every time you hug her you talk about the time she “tried to eat the I love you” and giggle like crazy. You’re also obsessed with Mythbusters. Yeah, you’re pretty awesome.

Twig, you somehow avoided getting whooping cough at all. I find this incredibly ironic because big sister is vaccinated for it and you’re not. She was also coughing all over you the whole time, so it’s pretty miraculous too. You are coughing a teeny bit now, but I think it’s either the little bug that everyone has (even I got this one a bit) or I’m over-exaggerating normal baby coughs because I’m expecting you to get sick. Either way, breastfeeding is great! You’re a champ at it too. You’re super distractible, but that’s the first issue we’ve had. You just think the whole world is so interesting that you have to whip off out of nowhere. You’re also testing a bit to see what mama does when you bite down, but that one is more of a shock than a pain since you don’t have any teeth.

You’re still rolly-polly-ing around everywhere. I think you mostly roll to your right side. I wonder if babies start rolling to their dominant side first? Maybe I should take a survey or something. I honestly can’t remember which side big sis started rolling to first, though I do remember her doing it one way before catching on that she could go both ways. I can tell that you’re getting ready to crawl too. You’ve figured out that you can push with your toes on the ground and it’ll inch you towards whatever toy you’re trying to grab. You’re grabbing at everything now too. Especially the food on my plate, but I’m not letting you have it yet. I guess you could theoretically be ready for it if you’re able to grab it, get it to your mouth, and actually get a chunk off to swallow, but I’d prefer to wait a couple more weeks until you’re officially 6 months. I’m betting that you mostly just want to put it in your mouth because you put everything in your mouth and you see other people putting it in their mouths. Soon enough, young one.

Mostly we’re just having a ball with summer. It’s kind of hectic because mama has her online classes and Peanut has her preschool that we have to get her to 3 times a week at 9am, but we’re having a ton of fun. We’re spending a lot of time swimming in Mema’s pool and doing other fun summer stuff like going to the park, the movies, and just running around having fun. We’re using every opportunity possible to get outside after being quarantined for over 2 weeks with whooping cough. I hope everyone out in the blogging world is having a great summer too!

Love you both,

Mama

Homeschool Preschool

My plan all along since taking Peanut out of her preschool on my campus has been to continue with her preschool education at home. I’ve felt like we’ve been sorely lacking in not only learning at home, but also attention for Peanut. My husband and I were discussing the other day how our relationship has gotten more stresses, but not really suffered since the birth of either of our daughters. Sadly, after the birth of Twig, our relationships with Peanut have definitely suffered.

So in an effort to be a better mother to Peanut and to help her learn, we decided to do a homeschool preschool. I’m not following any curriculum and a lot of it is going to be learning through life, but I wanted a way to put goals for our days. If I don’t set a goal to do something, it won’t happen. Likewise, with the hectic life of having two children, if I don’t write something down, it doesn’t happen. So, here enters our daily preschool goals chart.

This isn’t a set schedule. There isn’t a curriculum. It’s just what we want to do for the day with an emphasis on learning. We’re still in the very beginning stages on this idea, so it may change at any time. We did it the day before too (and accomplished studying bugs, playing with the sensory box, and practiced writing letters). It’s goals, so if we don’t accomplish them, it’s just fine. I also plan on not doing a chart on the weekends, since we’re not home for much of it (with music class on Saturday and family’s houses on Sunday) and traditionally school takes a break on weekends too. Obviously, we’ll still learn as we go through life on weekends, but just not as structured.

So here’s what we did Friday as part of Peanut’s preschool goals.

We started the morning with sorting socks. It’s an activity we’ve done many times before, but we switched it up by not only sorting socks, but using the socks to demonstrate same and different. When she found a match, I’d ask her what as the same about them. When she was waiting for me to find more socks in the pile, I’d ask her what was different about two socks she already had. I decided on this activity purely for the fact that I had two baskets of laundry to fold from the day before. Life is learning for preschoolers. There’s always way to find learning within your day to day activities.

After Twig woke up from her sleep-in-all-morning-ness (I know, why wasn’t she my first child!??!), we went for our walk. I gave Peanut a bag that she got at a birthday party last week and told her she could bring home anything she wanted in it. I also let her decide what direction we were going when we had the option to go one way or the other.

Twig rode on my back and was happy for the first little while, but started getting grumpy, so I suggested to Peanut that we head in the direction of home when we had another option to turn. I haven’t mastered getting Twig off of my back without sitting on the couch, so we had to hurry up our street when she started crying because she wanted to nurse.

Peanut makes the most silly faces for photos sometimes.

After we got home, we took all of the stuff you picked out and you made a picture. You also wrote your name on the picture all by yourself! I didn’t even have to tell you what shapes the letters were! You’re still learning how to hold a pen so that it’s easier for you to write letters so it’s not super easy to read what you write, but it’s a step in the right direction. Maybe I’ll look into some sort of special pen for you to learn with if such a thing exists.

After your nap, we planted the lettuce. It didn’t work so well because Twig was crying for part of it and you got bored easily, but you did help me set the plants out and then dig the holes for the plants. Hopefully things will go better with planting veggies if we do it in the morning in the future.

So that’s our preschool for now. I’m constantly trying to come up with new ideas for the preschool and I’m trying to incorporate our regular life, and therefore life lessons from our lives, into our lesson plan. For today (Monday the 23rd), our plans are: play with bubbles (you requested it), practice writing, feed Heidi’s horse an apple (since we have to go get eggs), go grocery shopping (I plan on giving you the list and you can help me “find” what’s on it and then cross it off), and get books from the library (which will obviously involve a lot of reading).

Does anyone else specifically set out to do a preschool at home? Do you do lesson plans or goals? Any helpful information on a homeschool preschool? 

My Week in Pictures

I know that posts are few and far between around here lately, but I figured that I’d do a Wordless Wednesday showing what we’re up to around these parts. I have another post for breastfeeding misconceptions jumping around in my head begging to be typed out and I am determined to write a newsletter for this month (especially since Peanut started preschool!), so I am certain that you will see more of me soon. Probably not until the weekend though because we have an oral food challenge for Peanut on Thursday (hopefully with good news!) and I have a test Friday.

Way too much of Mama watching Peanut in her preschool through the one-way window when she should be studying.

Little Miss developing her picture taking skills while Daddy sleeps.

Fat (though progressively less-so) cat sleeping on me while I do homework.

A booth that the club I started last year made for a back to school event (talk about biting off more than I could chew).

20 weeks and looking pretty obviously pregnant. Also a lot of Twig kicking me while I'm trying to study.

More watching Peanut at her preschool. I'm fairly sure it's developing into an obsession.

 

Mama and Peanut having fun after we get home from school.