O Is For Outer Space

I've been pretty excited about our outer space week. The kids were really excited about using these flat marbles to practice counting.  We had little rockets with the numbers 1-20 on them.

 Next we covered the numbers 1-20 with goldfish crackers and the kids had to name each number as they snacked.  They loved this.  They can't recognize most of the numbers between 11 and 20 yet but they had fun trying to remember them.  Snacks are a big part of preschool.  They need about three to get through the two hours.
We read about space and looked at pictures of space.  We talked about planets, space shuttles, astronauts, stars and galaxies.  Buddy B informed me that "aliens are satanic."  These kids are hilarious.

 We learned about the letter O.  Our nursery rhyme was Polly Put The Kettle On.  We used do a dots to decorate our letters and then I let them use ziploc bags filled with paint to practice writing the letter O.  They used q-tips to write with.  They loved the paint bags. We will be using them frequently.  I hot glued and taped the tops of them closed.

 We talked a little bit about constellations and they did some threading cards based on the constellations.

 We built little rockets with the letters in their names.  I'm really trying to get New Fish to remember how to spell hers.

 We played Go Fish with planet cards.  The kids went crazy over it.  Go Fish is always a favorite at our house and trying to remember the names of the planets made it extra fun.  It became quite a competition.

We sang some adorable astronaut songs with puppets that the kids went wild over.  We did our calendar and played in the sensory bin. It was a very successful day of preschool and we plan to visit the planetarium tomorrow.  We didn't make a real art project but the girls have spent the afternoon making up for that fact.

 Red Fish got a refresher on her ordinal numbers with a little set of rocket cards.

She also went through all of our other activities as per usual.  It is going to be a fun week.

Book Of Mormon Read-a-thon

 This last weekend, our ward's youth read the entire Book of Mormon over two days.  It was a lot of long hours spent in a basement family room together.  There were a lot of snacks and a lot of sweet people who showed up to read. It was a pretty huge accomplishment for our youth. On Sunday we gathered to hear some testimonies and it was a pretty special experience.  I remember doing this as a Young Women.  Excuse the grainy cell phone pics.

Last Week's Ski Pictures

 Beautiful sunshine and snow out on the bunny hill.  Red Fish took her first ski lesson (non- Mommy lesson) and is edgie wedgie free.  Most of the pictures are of New Fish because I was willing myself to stay away from Red Fish's class.  It freaked me out when they sent her up the ski lift without an adult.  Terrifying for a mother.  She was fine and followed all of the rules I gave her ahead of time.

Red Fish on skiing in her class.

Exhausted by a day of skiing.

New Years Resolutions

I love the start of the new year.  It completely energizes me to accomplish things.  I feel the same about the start of summer and fall.  Not spring though unfortunately.  I'm obsessed with goal making.  It helps me run my life and try to balance everything.  Not very many of these are new goals.  Most of them are just things I am working on.

1. Go gluten free.  So far it's rough.  The food that I don't make from scratch tastes like dirt after a month straight of eating it.  It has already created noticeable differences in my body though so it's interesting.

2. Take supplements on a regular basis- After reading Daniel Amen MD's books I am convinced I need to try them.  So far my brain feels less foggy. 

3. Start working out- but not in January- too many lifestyle changes at once never works out for me.

4. Enroll Red Fish in kindergarten.  *PANIC

5. Finish up homeschool preschool year strong.  It's easy to get tired.  I have most of the rest of the year planned out though and I'm trying to keep it going.  Next September she will go to preschool someplace else but I still want fun things to do at home with her.

6. Make breakfast on a regular basis.

7. Continue my freezer meals.  They are really working out well for our family.

8. Up the marketing efforts at my company.  Up my game in general in my career.

9. Go skiing with my little family of four.

10. Go on more dates with my husband.

11.  Take my family to Disneyland.

12. Start saving to visit friends in Europe.

13. Wash my makeup off my face at night.

14. Do at least one art project with my kids every week.

15. Do speech therapy with Red Fish.  She is doing awesome and we are doing therapy with someone new and it is going really well.  It is mostly tiny articulation things now.  We mostly still go because it is important to Red Fish.

16. Practice reading with Red Fish.  She is so good at it but it's hard to carve out time to practice.

17. Help Red Fish through the rest of her math workbooks and reading lists.

18. Help New Fish remember all of her lowercase alphabet and recognizing the numbers 11-30.

19. Have family home evening every week.  We do pretty well on this but we can do better.

20. Help Red Fish start learning piano.

I'm sure my goals will be changing throughout the year but I like to get them written down even if I change them.

Down On The Southern Bayou

A truly American collection of acoustica straight from the Swamp. Sit a spell and capture the Southern Bayou charm with some front porch country blues or tap into your inner cowboy with growling alt. country swamp-rock and searing guitar solos.

More Snowmen

We made printed snowmen today.  We started with white paint, ink brayers, circles cut from cardboard and bubble wrap, and a paper doily.  The girls rolled the paint over the circles and used them to print a snowman.  The doily was the hardest to use.  New Fish decided to use the smooth side of the bubble wrap for her head and then added some bubbles to her doily at the bottom.  She is very opposed to any art project that involves much instruction and usually insists on giving it her own twist in some way (which I love.)
 

Next they added faces, hats, buttons and stick arms and finger painted on mouths with black paint.

 

Red Fish

I think they turned out really fun!  I wish I had a higher contrast paper in this size but I didn't have anything on hand that was big enough.

New Fish

Freezing

Red Fish has been doing some science experiments and learning about freezing.  We filled an ice cube tray full of different things from our kitchen to see if they would freeze in our freezer.  My little scientists decided that tasting everything was a very important part of the process.

Seasons

New Fish's four seasons that she made in preschool today (at Buddy's house.)  I love it.

The Mascara Hunt

For the last two years I have been on the hunt for a fantastic mascara.  I have tested cheap grocery store brands and expensive brands and my Mom has tried dozens more of the past few years.  I finally found the one I love- Benefit, They're Real Mascara.  It doesn't flake, it comes off with soap and water, it doesn't sting or bother my eyes, it layers easily and covers easily.  Buy yourself a tube. 

Books & The Things My Kids Say

 I haven't been blogging about all of the books I read anymore because I've run out of time and energy most days.  I thought I would do one big post with some of the highlights and lowlights of what I've read over the past few months either by myself or with my kids.  The girls are getting very into chapter books now.  It is fun to hear what they get out of these books.  We are currently reading The Little House In The Big Woods.  It has been all about slaughtering animals and getting ready for winter so far and has sparked some seriously funny conversations.  Red Fish was shocked to learn that the bacon we ate for breakfast had come from a pig and said: "Are you kidding me?  You are telling me we ate a PIG for breakfast?"  Later she asked me if people eat dogs and I told her they do in some countries and she suggested we order one from Asia and see how it tastes.  The kid will eat anything.  No thanks.

We recently read My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett and Red Fish LOVED it.  We read it in one weekend and I'm pretty sure it is her favorite book we have read.  She loved Wild Island and all of the adventures in the story.  Red Fish has decided that next year she is going to ask Santa for baby dragon because even though he failed to secure her a "real unicorn" this year, "Surely he can bring a baby dragon."  This also lead Red Fish to ask me if she was EVER going to get a unicorn.  I reminded her that Santa said unicorns have to stay in their magical environment or they die.  She replied: "Sometimes when a unicorn gets old, just before it dies, it has always dreamed of living with a redhead."  Hysterical I don't know where she comes up with these things. 

I read Making A Good Brain Great by Daniel G. Amen MD a few months ago and it was fascinating.  It would be a dreadfully boring book if it was written by just about anyone else.  It is interestingly written. It has a lot of great information and ideas. I loved the information about how music affects your brain.  The section on supplements has caused me to make a serious change in lifestyle that I am currently testing.  I really enjoyed reading it and plan to try and implement many of the ideas into my life.

I read The Apple And The Arrow by Mary and Conrad Buff with my kids because it was part of the Sonlight curriculum for kindergarteners.  It was a total flop.  They hated it and it wasn't age appropriate. 

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morten was something I read for book club. 
The mystery was captivating. I enjoyed the organization of the book and reading from the different viewpoints. I thought the love story was extraneous (as I usually do) and amoral but it didn't detract too much from the main story line.  I liked the idea of a mystery spanning three generations and the stories melded together nicely for the most part.  I absolutely hated the view on adoption.  It almost made me stop reading the book in the beginning.  It was extremely negative and ridiculous.  Otherwise, it is an easy light read.

Heaven is Here by Stephanie Nielson was exactly what I thought it would be.  It was a fast, easy read, sad and uplifting at the same time.  I have read some of Stephanie's blog so I knew what to expect and had heard much of the story ahead of time.  It is a nice story of one mother's journey to reclaim her life and her children.  I appreciated that it felt very genuine and honest.  

 To Kill A Mocking Bird by Harper Lee was absolutely incredible. My brother gave it to me for my birthday because I've always meant to get around to reading it. There are not words for how much I loved it.  I can't believe I had never read it before and really had no idea what it was about.   I absolutely adored this book in every way. The characters are so sharply drawn and the story completely absorbed me. This will absolutely go on my shelf of favorites. 
 
I read The Boxcar Children to my kids recently.  It was a quick read and they enjoyed it.  It brought back great memories of reading the series as a child.  I'm sure we will read more of the books over the next few years.   

Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls was great.  It filled in some lingering questions I had about her other memoir, The Glass Castle.  I loved Lily Casey's character and reading about ranch life.  Walls has an amazing ability to capture her character's voice.  This story made me want to rope steers, homestead, drive airplanes and become braver in general.  Loved it.

I am Half Sick of Shadows by ALan Bradley was a complete let down.  I love Flavia but the murder mystery in this book was boring and not as well thought out as the others. I liked the plot to trap Father Christmas and I did enjoy the showdown scene. I hope that Alan Bradley kind rediscover his writing mojo in future books.

The D'Artangnan Romances or Ten Years Later- I've been reading all of the Three Musketeers series by Alexandre Dumas but I will be taking a lengthy break after reading the 4th in the series.  It was all court intrigue instead of action and I would recommend skipping over it.  It is way to lengthy and boring to bother with. 

I read Charlie And The Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl with the girls.  It is a fun story but they didn't get into the story as much as I thought they would.  They seem to prefer animal adventures to anything else.

She Got Up Off The Couch by Haven Kimmel  is laugh out loud funny but not quite as humorous as A Girl Named Zippy. I appreciated the evolution of her mother and her mother's quest to better herself and change her life. The story is very real, honest and fun to read. It shows some of the dysfunction and trouble in Kimmel's family as she begins to mature and recognize the underlying family problems. Kimmel also writes about her generally good life and happy outlook no matter what forces seem to conspire against her. I love that she portrays her parents as generally loveable people and forces for good in her life despite their obvious flaws. It is definitely a reminder to look at the good side of life and learn to laugh at yourself.

I read A Discovery Of Witches by Deborah Harkness for book club in October.  I hate romance books, I'm not into vampires and some of the scenes were downright gross. The heroine is insipid and I couldn't her increasing need to be pathetically dependent and stupid. I do enjoy reading books that other people love and it is the main attraction of my book club other than the social aspect. It definitely drags me outside of what I would normally read.

The Nutcracker by E.T.A Hoffmann was a fun holiday read.  Red Fish and I read it together throughout December.  The illustrations are fantastic and the story is completely captivating.  Maurice Sendak's illustrations are fabulous and it was so fun to share with my little girl.
  
So these are a sampling of what I have been reading.  I can't think of a complete list right now but I should at least make an effort to keep track of what I have been reading with my kids! 

Winter Wonderland Preschool Day

This week we talked about seasons (focusing on winter) and reviewed the letters we have covered so far this year.  We started with our calendar as always.  We always sing the days of the week and the months of the year as we are talking about the calendar.  I don't expect them to remember them yet but hopefully they will stick in their little brains eventually.  We sang Once There Was A Snowman, Popcorn Popping On The Apricot Tree, a song about Fall leaves and one about Summer.  We read a few books on seasons.  We looked at pictures of a tree during all four seasons and talked about the differences.

 We did some prewriting activities like simple mazes and tracing activities to help them work on their fine motor skills.  They were all winter themed and downloaded from here and here.

We practiced spelling their names with a "snowball fight".  The letters were all mixed up and they had to unscramble the snowballs and glue them down on their papers.

 We did a lot of matching games with the letters we have already covered this year.  I pulled out a bunch of folders from my file folder collection.

 We did counting games with clothes pins on cards.  It was a good fine motor skill builder as well.  We are starting to work on our numbers 11-20.

 We have been learning about graphs.  The kids are still working on a weather tracking graph from last week.  We played a game with a paper dice showing pictures of winter clothing and they had to make a graph of their results.  It was fun to watch them working so hard.

We played some games and practiced copying patterns with little pictures of sledders, skiiers etc,  Then we practiced letter recognition by matching the letters on cards with letter tiles to spell out winter words.  They really enjoyed digging through the letter tiles and finding the matches and shouting out which letter they needed next.  I never know what activities they will go crazy over.

Last night, I made sparkly white salt dough and little snowman making kits for the kids.  I made one for Red Fish as well and they turned out darling.  I saw one of these kits online but the page doesn't exist anymore.  I used felt to make mittens (on toothpicks) and scarves.  I used foam to construct little top hats and carrot noses.  Then there were google eyes, buttons, beads and rocks for constructing faces etc.