Caterpillar on the Wall

We've started The Very Hungry Caterpillar again. This is one of my very favorite units to do, and I don't think we've ever done it with a group who's overall as young as this one. (Here's an old post with some of the things we do with older kids.) There's definitely a lot of modification and repetition, but they're enjoying it.

Sometimes I read them the actual book, but most of them are still at the super grabby stage.  Since the book has so many holes cut in it, I'm afraid it will get ripped during a group reading session.  More often, we use the pointer and the class set of pictures that I have on the wall.  (or off the wall, since my sticky stuff is dying and the stapler won't work on that kind of wall.)  Merida and Merryweather go running over there as soon as I pick up my pointer, and they can show me the moon and the egg.  Every time I say "he was STILL!  HUNGRY!" we make silly faces and they laugh.  It's fun.

So far the only things I've sent home are the little paintings, but we have done a couple other crafty items.  Here's the class caterpillar, who currently resides on our wall:





Each kiddo colored a body section and then we attached legs. They had a good time coloring!

Merryweather, taking the job very seriously.

Mufasa and Flynn were both a little shocked that I actually let them touch the crayons, I think.  Look how proud Flynn looks.  I had to sit right there and make sure they didn't taste them, of course, and their finished product doesn't have a lot of real coloring on it, but they really enjoyed the process!

Body Work

We're working on the Mother Goose Time's "My Amazing Body" this month. I have two weeks of curriculum left still because of all the sickness and nice weather. :) Either they're feeling bad, or it's too nice to stay in. But on days that we've been doing our MGT box, they're having a really good time. Tarzan is especially excited about it. He comes in every morning and asks me, "we do body work today? do circle time?"

The last few days have been about the senses. Yesterday we did smell, and we talked a lot about skunks. I really enjoyed the discussion. It's fun for me to try to explain things in a way that they really get. They wanted to know WHY the skunk smells so bad. And yeah, I could have used the phrase "defense mechanism" and left it at that. But I talk a lot. We looked at a photograph of a skunk and I asked them if he looked nice. "Yes! Like a kitty cat!" Tarzan tells me.

Okay, I say. So does he have sharp teeth? NO! Does he have sharp claws? NO! Does he have long legs for running fast? NO! So... what happens when another animal wants to fight him?

...crickets chirp while they ponder... and then O'Malley yells, "OH! He will get REALLY hurt!! And maybe DIE!!"

um, yes. Leave it to a four year old boy to make it about the murder death kill. So, I ask, "Do you think any fierce animals will want to come close to him if he smells REALLY bad?"

They were totally delighted. It made me laugh. OH! He can protect himself because he is so stinky! And he doesn't have to fight and die!

We're also working on the word "texture" this week, and talking about how different textures feel. Bumpy, sticky, stuff like that. Easy and fun to reinforce at home if you're so inclined. :)

Monthly Recap- May

Things have been pretty busy around here, as evidenced by my sad lack of posting lately. We had a new baby start this week and she's settling in nicely. So far she's very laid back and easy- just sleeps and eats and plays and smiles.

I love the way she sleeps with her arms flung out over her head. It doesn't look particularly comfy to me, but hey it works for her, and it's cute. :)

Mater and Lady are working hard on getting mobile- any day now I expect to see them crawling. They've both decided that they don't like hanging out in the living room much anymore and like to spend more time in the playroom watching the big kids.



We had a dinosaur day a couple weeks ago that everyone enjoyed. The kids helped me make stegosaurus sandwiches for lunch and we did lots of playing and learning about dinosaurs of all kinds.




Okay, so you really have to squint one eye and use your imagination- but this is our stegosaurus. Quesadilla body, chips for spikes, red pepper and cheerio for his face, and mandarin orange legs. Luckily the kids are young and easily forgiving when it comes to my artistic... lack. Plus when you're 2 1/2 and you make it yourself, you think it looks great regardless. :)

We're starting a unit called Island Explorer today- lots of ships and water and islands and pirates for the next month. Should be exciting. Duchess will be home for the summer, Stitch and Bianca will be away, and we've got a couple interviews scheduled. This seems to be a big time of year for change, right around the end of school and then again in August when it starts back up.

New Year

I always love starting the new year. The holidays make me feel really rejuvenated and ready to get back to work. We're starting our new Read It Once Again curriculum today and I expect everyone to LOVE it. It's called The Letters Are Lost and it's about a set of alphabet blocks that get lost in various places. Tons of opportunities for extension and fun stuff to do. The F page is about the block falling in the fish tank and I think I actually might get a beta fish for them to check out.
Our new tiny pumpkin started this morning and is currently asleep in the living room. She got here sleeping so I haven't gotten my hands on her yet. Looking forward to that immensely. Another tiny one should be starting in the next couple weeks too. So I'll need a girl and a boy Disney name. Gotta get going on that- we're running out of popular ones. :)

Monthly Recap... A Little Late

Maybe it's more like a general catchup than a recap of a particular time. We've been busy, and yet not. Just as we were gearing up to start the huge work of our Thanksgiving feast, I did a head count and realized lots more people would be on vacation than there usually are. We ended up cancelling it and in fact we only had 2 kids here that day. I was both disappointed and relieved. The feast is always so much fun, but it's a LOT of work. And last year we had more older kids who could actually help. The Pink Ladies are just now getting to the point where they are an even amount of help and hindrance, and of course the little boys just get underfoot and try to climb up the stools. I think next year when all the girls are three, there will be some serious cooking though.

We took a bit of a break from Read It Once Again, and I've missed it. A new binder came today for The Letters Are Lost, so I'm going to spend the next few days copying and laminating and getting that one ready to go. We haven't decided if we're going to start it before Christmas or wait until January. I think I may wait, and in the meantime go to the library and check out ALL the books they have that are available through RIOA, and read them to the kids over the next few weeks to see which ones they like best for the spring ordering.

We've had a couple spaces open for the past few months, and babies are starting to be born! We have a new little boy starting next month who was born last week if he was on schedule. And we have this tiny princess starting soon too:

I cannot wait to get my hands on this greasy girlie and sniff her neck. Hercules and Tigger are getting SO BIG, SO FAST. Feels like a long time since we had such a tiny one.

Speaking of the boys, Hercules is full-on walking. All over the place. I just really don't see how it happened so fast. He still seems little to me. But he insists that he is in fact a Large Man and should be treated as such.


Tigger is pulling up on stuff and crawling lightning fast. He tortures his sister on a daily basis by pulling up on her tray and trying to eat her lunch. She is unimpressed by his skills.


And thanks to the both of them, my Christmas tree is in solitary confinement this season.

Big Red Barn

We just finished up five weeks of Big Red Barn curriculum. I think we all have the book memorized now and there's been lots of fun activities with animals and hay and playing outside. Everybody has their own favorite page- Aurora loves the tiger tomcat (yeow! yeow!) and Silvermist is all about the "golden weather vane, of course"... (horse don't fly! that not real! so silly!) I hear that Stitch is obsessed with the copy of the book that we gave her at the end of the unit and wants to carry it everywhere. That makes me happy. It also makes me happy that there are some hayfields around here and that the kids can all see cows and hay and point them out. Her mom came in a couple weeks ago and asked if there was hay in our barn book because Stitch freaks out now every time they drive by some. :) Love it.

We played a lot of games using various animal sounds and they've all acquired a few new ones. I think I talked in Roo's post about the confusion of the word "pig" sounding just like "moo" in Thai. That cracks me up. My other favorite is the rooster. Each kid has their own special way to cock-a-doodle-doo and they are all hilarious. One of the games we played was learning about how the rooster is the "alarm clock" of the barnyard, so they all pretended to be other animals sleeping and then I was the rooster and woke them all up by making loud rooster noises. Then they all wanted to have a turn being the rooster. I was actually kind of concerned afterwards that O'Malley would wake me up at 5 am by cock-a-doodling in my ear. Thankfully that hasn't happened. But I do have to say that his snoring sheep is the funniest thing ever.

They love to make headbands and this unit especially offered a lot of opportunities for that. We did a pig and a chicken. I don't think I remembered to get pictures of Hercules or Tigger wearing theirs, but it's fun that there are things even the littles can do with us.

Since O'Malley has dropped his nap I try to do some big boy work with him in the afternoons. Most days it's fighting a losing battle. He really wants to play Wii and isn't nearly as interested in doing school the way his big sister Duchess was. I think homeschool may be out of the question for this one. But anyway. This activity was called Bats in the Barn and it had cards where you count how many bats there are, and then match them to the numeral. He had a good time and I was pleased to actually have a day where he got something done, even if he did make faces at me.

Miss Bianca, hard at work painting a muddy piggy. I think when we're not doing a Read It Once Again unit, the thing they all miss the most is the painting. (Well, except for Chip. He doesn't like to paint for some reason. Not sure why.) We're doing some Thanksgiving books and getting ready for our big feast the next few weeks, and they're always asking me when they can paint again. I'll have to find some turkeys for them to do. :)

Caterpillar Dayz

I can't decide if I'm having more fun, or if they are. Part of it is just the novelty of new routines and something exciting scheduled to do everyday. I'm finding that it's easier to stay on track with this program so far and I love that. It's really fun to have every activity connect back to the theme somehow. They even have a big list of snacks in the book that correspond, with recipes and ways to get the kids involved in the process. Yesterday we made Monday's Apple Smoothies with applesauce and juice concentrate in the blender. Super yummy. It puts everyone in a happy, huggy kind of mood. :)

We've been doing some butterfly work too. Here is a gluing collage we made of some butterfly wings, and also using scarves as butterfly wings to do some flying of our own.


We also did Muffin Tin Monday for lunch, choosing all foods that the caterpillar ate in the book. They were practically incoherent with glee to get a tiny piece of cone and bite of ice cream as part of their lunch. :) No seconds on that part though, just the healthy stuff.

Are you sure I don't get more of that green stuff?

Mint chocolate chip is my favorite!!

Back To School!

Yesterday I sent Duchess off to second grade. How did that happen? And Stitch is back, since her teacher mama is back at school too. That means it's time for a new semester around here! We still work on skills and do things over the summer, but it's much more relaxed and lazy and there's a lot of lying around and knocking over each other's block towers. We don't do official curriculum and schedule things by the clock.
We started our Very Hungry Caterpillar curriculum and so far we are all loving it. We'll be reading the book about 9 every morning for the next four weeks and then doing all our activities based around that. After just two days of reading it the girls are already saying "still HUNGRY!!" and looking in the kitchen area for apples and strawberries. I found a bulletin board set with all the pictures from the book and yesterday we all painted a section of huge caterpillar to put on the wall. I like the way our work area is looking so far.


Also new starting this week: Kanga and I went to the first half of a Love and Logic conference this past weekend. It's been really refreshing for both of us to have new strategies to deal with the little discipline issues that come up. The kids got it right away too. There's far less explaining with this program, which is a big change for me. I'm used to running commentary. "Okay, it's time to get off the sad wall. Do you remember why you were there? That's right, you were jumping on the couch, and that is not nice. We're not going to do that anymore, right?..." as their eyes glaze over....

With this, you sing the Uh Oh song. "UH OH! A little buckle chair time coming up for you now. How sad!" in this really sweet singsong-y voice. And that's it. You put them in the chair, on the wall, or whatever spot you have set up, and if they choose to be angry about that, it's fine. Once they're calm, they get two minutes of "recovery time" and you tell them, "you can get up and play with us as soon as you're ready to be sweet." When they get up, that's it. You don't talk about what the behavior was- the program says that kids have more sense than the family dog. :) They know good and well what they did.

We had some uh-oh time yesterday morning, and by the afternoon when we would sing UH OH, everybody would look around wide-eyed to see if who was the offending party. They're all smart. After about 30 seconds into her second time in the chair, Silvermist started saying, "I ready to be sweet!!" And she was.

The other part of the program is choices. Give as many as possible, as often as possible, and make sure you can live with whichever one they pick. Would you like Kix or Chex? In an orange bowl or a blue bowl? Big spoon or little spoon? Dry or with milk? Do you want to pour the milk or would you like me to do it? Ask questions and give them choices- let them figure out what is best without nagging or bossing all the time. Then when there's a safety issue or a big thing that you need, you can say, "hey, it's my turn to pick. I gave you so many choices today!" It's working well, but I think our husbands are having trouble with it- either that or they like to mock us. Or both. Kanga said her hubby passed Tigger off to her on Sunday and said, "Okay Tigger, are you going to puke on Mommy's shirt or Mommy's pants?" :) Ha.

Caterpillars, painting, choices, and UH OH. That pretty much makes up the next four weeks. I'm excited!!

New Curriculum!!

I've been using Mother Goose Time for the last several years and we've all really enjoyed it. I did some internet research this summer though, just to see what else is out there. I ended up ordering one month of something called Read It Once Again, which is a literature based curriculum similar to Five in a Row that I've used in the past. This one goes for a MONTH with over 100 activities for the same book. Considering that I have been reading Ten Apples Up on Top every day for about the past month, I was super excited to find curriculum that goes with a book for that LONG. At this age the kiddos are all about repetition.

Today in the mail I got the first unit: The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It is even better than I anticipated. It includes TONS of different kinds of things for the kids to do and will incorporate so many learning skills. It's going to be all caterpillar, all the time for the rest of August. I had been planning to continue ordering MGT for this school year, but depending on how well this month goes, I may be ordering new book study units instead.

I love new curriculum! This one does have more work for me to do ahead of time- I'm off to cut and laminate and get things ready. I can't wait!

March- Monthly Recap

Let's see...

Curriculum:
Not a complete fail, but partial. All on my part. They had a good time with the safari stuff that we got to do, but there is still half the month left. It took me something like ten days to find the curriculum book and by then we had gotten out of the habit of doing it. I don't feel like our time has been wasted though. We've completely rearranged the playroom and they are working on helping me figure out which toys they want down and which should be rotated out. Changing just a few things makes it a whole new room for them and it's nice to be able to SEE the toys in different places so you know what you want to play with.

And we're still doing lots of singing and coloring and talking about letters and learning. Teamwork, manners... our time is well spent. But the licensed teacher in me sometimes thinks I need more product to take home. I keep telling myself that clashes with my actual philosophy of the way small children learn. :) I confuse myself sometimes.

April is going to be devoted to finishing safari work, dinosaur and mammal recap, and pulling out some generic spring projects if we have time. We'll also probably pull out the water table, get more sand, and spend as much time as possible in the yard before it gets crazy hot. Oh, and maybe have a random egg hunt since I never got around to doing one. The weather was not cooperating the day I wanted to do it and then I got thrown off.

Comings and Goings:
Flik has moved on to his new place, although we still see him at t-ball practice. He's doing well, of course. And yesterday was Boo and Sully's last day here. It's very strange that O'Malley and Lilo are the only big kids by more than a year. Next in age is Silvermist and she's just 20 months. It's becoming a little kid place all of a sudden. Lilo will be leaving at the end of the school year and I'm actually thinking of sending O'Malley in the fall to one of my friends who does all older kids, at least part-time.

Kanga is on maternity leave with baby Tigger for the next couple weeks and Mrs. Potts (Chip and Belle's mama) is here filling in for her. It's sort of rocked Chip's world a bit. He's fine when she's not here, and he's fine when he's home and it's just them. However, he doesn't like to nap here when his mom is working, and likes to hang on her leg and cry when she's dealing with the babies. Sharing is hard work.

OH! And here is baby Tigger!


Are those cheeks not insane? I want to eat him with a spoon and sniff his neck folds. If I can find his neck... :) And we have official word- he does actually weigh more than Hercules at this point. It will be very interesting to see how the two of them compare as they get bigger.

I guess that's all I can think of for now. Happy spring!

Stall....

So. I lost the curriculum book somewhere. Horribly annoying. We are at a complete standstill with the safari work because I have all these cutesy pieces of paper and no instructions on what to do with them. This week is kid-driven and floor play and not so much themed until I find my silly book. Which is not a bad thing per se. I guess it's a good thing I had planned to carry it over to April anyway. Now we'll have lots of stuff to get done.

Safari Video

My one complaint about our mammals theme last month was that they didn't include any photographs of the animals and we were always having to look for suitable videos on youtube. That can be chancy when you don't know if Mr. Lion will all of a sudden begin to love on Mrs. Lion or something. So. I was really pleased to get a notification that for safari month, Mother Goose Time created their own youtube video! It's got some of the songs from our soundtrack and pictures of a lot of the things we're discussing this month.



I'm so excited! The kids have watched it several times already and I'm sure we'll be coming back to it often.

February Recap

Mammal month is now over. :) I think this one was the most interesting and successful theme we've had in awhile. Sometimes by about halfway through the month, either I'm tired of it or they are. We were able to stick to it and there are only about 3 or 4 animals we didn't do. I think we're going to take the leftovers from the past three months at the end of March and do a review of each one during April. Saves a bit of curriculum money and keeps it fresh in their minds, not to mention cleaning out the clutter in my art box.

Today starts Going On A Safari. We'll be studying African animals, culture, weather, and landscape. Looks like fun and should give us a chance to practice our new mammal identification skills as well.

Roo has been doing awesome in her physical therapy lately and her new stander was delivered last week. It's really bittersweet to watch her work with it. It's absolutely awesome that it's available, and that now she's able to stand up on a level with the other kids her age and have both hands free to color or play. I'm so thankful that we live in a time where we have so many opportunities to meet kids' needs in so many different ways. On the other hand, I hate so much that she even needs it in the first place. She's a magical kid. So much fun, with worlds of depth to her that a picture of her in a chair doesn't begin to cover. But, one step at a time. It's Kanga's fervent hope that working in the stander will give Roo the strength and balance she needs to be able to get up and walk away on her own. In the meantime, she really loves being in it and it's so much fun to get her involved in big kid stuff.


Bianca has joined the ranks of the big kids as well. Her schedule for a long time had been that she took a long morning nap and woke up for a late lunch while the big kids napped, and then many times was ready to go back down when they woke up. So she never got to interact with them much, and I didn't have very many pictures of her in the group. She's been enjoying the past few weeks running with the crowd now that she doesn't sleep quite as much.


Chip and Tinkerbell coordinated wearing their UT clothes the other day. It cracked me up that I COULD NOT get a picture of either of them smiling while wearing it. It was more like, see, my parents like this school and made me wear these clothes but I am so not excited about it... so cute though.


Silvermist has decided that she loves Aurora, and also Aurora's mom. She always wants to hang out for a few minutes when Aurora gets picked up. The girls are ten days apart and talk about each other all the time. Love it.


And in other news, Flik and O'Malley play games on their "iPhones" all day long. These are my old cell phones from several generations of electronics ago, with zero charge, nothing working at ALL. But they play skeeball and the alien game and text their families and talk to each other constantly about what new content might be downloaded. It's hilarious. Boys of the technology era, for sure. It's nice that they can blend it all in with their imagination so well.


I would imagine that our March recap will include Kanga delivering Tigger! The time is getting close on that. Chip's mom is going to be our backup and will be here while things get settled in the Hundred Acre Woods. :)

Day to Day Life

Lots of fun and interesting things going on around here lately. Mammal study continues through the end of the month and we're all having a really good time with it. Today is beaver day. Some tiny part of my 12-year-old brain giggles internally every time one of the kids yells, "DAM!" But we watched some beavers on youtube build one. :) We also got into a spirited discussion during breakfast about which of the Backyardigans were mammals. I love that the older ones are really starting to think about it and reason it out. "Austin kangaroo. He have fur. He have backbone. Him MAMMAL!!!" "Pablo... penguin... bird? Not mammal?" Tyrone and Tasha they couldn't place, but once I said moose and hippo they identified them as mammals as well. And then there's Uniqua. No clue on that girl. I guess it doesn't really matter.


I've decided to call my new girlie and her big sister after some of the fairies in the Tinkerbell movie. I'm running out of movies, but I figure I can get around my own rules if I say that Tinkerbell is from Peter Pan, and these new fairies are from Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure. So. Now we have Clarion and Silvermist, for no other reason than I think those names are the prettiest from the movie. I don't have any pictures of Clarion~ she isn't around much but I wanted to have a name for her just in case I need it this summer. Silvermist had her best day ever today. It's taken her a little bit longer to get used to the semi-chaos of group care since she didn't start as an infant. Now she's smiling and talking up a storm and having a good time.

She decided peas were beneath her but she had a great time squishing them during lunch today.

I'm having a wonderful time with the 8 week old. We haven't had one start that young since Aurora last year. My husband laughs at me. He'll call and he can tell by my voice that I'm holding the tiny one. There's nothing like that newborn smell. I get all sappy. And just because he's so tiny and it makes me laugh, he's Hercules.

Behold.

I know he won't always be so small, but he is definitely Hercules the mighty, regardless.

It Is Possum Day

Really? Possums? All the land mammals in the world and the curriculum people choose the lowly possum? Oh well. I suppose even possums deserve a special day. I'm having a hard time keeping the positive spin on it though. Look, kids! It's an ugly, nasty, ratty looking thing. And also MEAN! So I looked up some cute little possumy clips on youtube to get in a better mood about the silly rodents. The kids and I crowded around the laptop and watched baby possums do cute things for about half an hour. I especially liked the examples of the one playing dead in the yard. :)

Possum eating strawberries

Possum playing dead in the yard

Pet possum after his bath

Once you see the cuteness and carefully avoid any teeth-baring activities, they're not too bad. I do think it's giving the kids a pretty inaccurate view of what possums are really like though. :)

Other facts we learned today:
Possums are marsupials and carry their babies in a pocket like a kangaroo
They play dead when bad guys come
They hang upside down by their tails

And we made a cute art project with a bendy straw for a tail. :)

January Recap

Seems like I just never get to all the blogging I want to do. I'm going to try a once monthly recap to go back and cover anything I didn't get a chance to make its own post. :) Maybe this will be the only month it happens, who knows, but I'll try.

Comings and Goings:

We've had quite a bit more turnover this month than we usually do- many of our bigger kids are ready to graduate and move on to an older program, especially since the new ones we've been getting are tiny.

Ariel and Sebastian have found a new school and are doing well, of course. :) It's very different not to have them around, since they've been with us for almost four years. We got them when Sebastian was just past six weeks old and Ariel was around sixteen months.


I can't believe they were that small! I've basically known them their whole lives. Ariel will be going off to kindergarten this fall. Sniff....

Mulan has moved on as well. She was originally a drop in for the month of September and ended up staying through January, which has been lots of fun. She and O'Malley are very close in age and she gets along well with everyone. Hopefully she'll be back to drop in again from time to time and stay in touch with everyone.

I have had trouble lately getting a good picture of her. She's about to blink. Oh well. Imagine a big smile, because she's got a great one. :)

Esmeralda started at the beginning of January. She is nine days younger than Tinkerbell and it's been really fun to watch the two of them eye each other suspiciously.

Last week we got an unexpected new addition- cutie blonde 18 month old whose big sister is in Duchess's class at school. I'm still trying to come up with a pair of names that will work for them, since I'm sure big sister will pop up too on days off and random summertime afternoons. Little sis still isn't quite sure what to think of us, but she's beginning to settle in quite nicely.


This month we are scheduled to receive a six week old little boy, who dropped in for the day. I cannot remember when my kids were this tiny. I know for sure O'Malley NEVER was.


and before too long I'm going to have to graduate Boo. She's ready for more structured education and field trips and all the fun stuff big kids do. That means probably Sully too since I'm figuring they will want to stay together. So more changes are in the works. It's just the nature of the business...

Curriculum Activities:

January's theme was called Dinosaur Dig and the kids really loved it. The music was incredibly catchy this month and I still find myself singing "Flying Pterodactyl" at random times. We had lots of cool discussions and talked a LOT about herbivores vs. carnivores and what kind of teeth they had. Lilo kept trying to poke in my mouth to find my "meat" teeth and "plant" teeth. We had a couple of fossil digs in the sandbox and even built a volcano.







It was hard to get good pictures of their faces, but they all really enjoyed this.

February's curriculum is called Furry Friends and it's all about mammals. We have a week each to study Land, Endangered, Aquatic, and Nocturnal animals. Should be lots of fun too.