Go Team Wood

I’ll be honest, I have preschool themes mapped out on our calendar though the summer. But the last few weeks have been tough and we haven’t really been fitting it in. I have checked out books we’ve not read, our projects sort of fizzled out. The bulk of our days are spent going back and forth to the potty and cleaning up accidents (one kid is doing better than the other about constantly making it to the potty.) It’s been exhausting. Throw in a kid with two days of tummy bug, Mommy with the tummy bug, a Grandma visit, and a lot of cleaning/organizing projects, it’s been an exhausting few weeks. I am hoping to start up with our organized preschool activities again next month, but right now our efforts are half-hearted and no one is getting much out of it.

So for those who tune in regularly to see what amazing things we’re doing, sorry. We’re just not doing much. Just potty potty potty. Hopefully we will be back on track soon.

Continue Reading

Back in the swing of preschool this week, now that potty time is becoming more routine. We are going to explore the five senses, which should be lots of fun. We requested a handful of books from the library, as well as two different sensory literacy kits to further explore.

Continue Reading

Transportation week was ironically spent entirely at home, due to potty training. But we read tons of books, and especially enjoyed the Tony Mitton/Ant Parker Amazing Machines Truckload of Fun set we got last summer. These are great books about all modes of transportation, have cute drawings and really keep the boys’ attention. During our potty days when all we did was run back and forth to the bathroom, we read all of these, several times each. They are very cute and the box set was reasonably priced.

And while we didn’t actually go anywhere, we did set up our own railroad here at the house.

Not too bad considering the real theme of the week was learning to use the potty.

Continue Reading

Beep Beep! We’re a little truck (and train and bus and plane) crazy around here, so why not spend the week learning about all the types of transportation we can find? And, unlike the seasonably popular snow topic, the library is full of books on trucks and busses and trains. Hooray!

Continue Reading

Did we pick the right week to learn about snow! We got about 8 inches yesterday, and the temperatures this week have been crazy cold. The last couple days the boys have been on-and-off with low-grade fevers so we stayed inside and warm. Since we did get to go out and play in the snow last week, and since the “feels like” temperature is -2° we didn’t miss much.

We did put together snow globes. (sort of.)

• 2 Applesauce jars
• Pink and purple confetti I got for less than $1 on clearance,
• Plastic dinosaurs and sea creatures from the dollar store (which we used previously for sensory play.)
• Baby oil to add viscosity

I let the boys pick out which toys they wanted in their jars, then added the confetti and filled the jars up with baby oil. I did put plumbers teflon tape around the threads of the jar so baby oil wouldn’t leak out everywhere.

And since it’s FREEZING outside, I brought some snow inside. Similar to our water play last winter, I put our wagon in the kitchen with two bins of snow in it. I made a little snowman to show the boys how it’s done. Joshua wasn’t much interested in the snow, Justin had a good time for a while, but kept telling me his hands were messy whenever he’d get snow on them. Cleanup was easy, and this was an activity that was MUCH easier than bundling up to go outside, and which we can easily reproduce with our plentiful snow supply these days.

Continue Reading

I guess it’s lucky we had a big snow storm last week so we have actual snow to play with and in while we learn about snow. Perusing the online library catalog turned up almost no books about snow that are available for checkout. (Everyone had the same idea, I suppose.) So we’re going to wing it with some activities this week and not have the cache of library books to read. I am sure we will have fun anyway.

Continue Reading

What a day to wrap up a week dedicated to moods and feelings! Today was just about the crankiest the boys have been in a long time, from the moment they woke up. But that didn’t stop us from having a great week back to preschool. All week we read books from the library and used just about every mood-swing and tantrum to talk about not only what but why each kid was feeling that way.

Our main activity of the week was part of a literacy kit we checked out of the library. Our library is awesome. We have so many resources available to the boys to fortify their early education, including these literacy kits. They are essentially mesh backpacks containing a variety of items on a theme. (Perfect for our theme-based preschool.) This Moods and Feelings one contained four books, a CD and this bear puzzle activity. The boys loved the bears and did a great job identifying which bear had which feeling. I had them build bears with feet, arms and then asked for a specific mood face. “Find a bear who is laughing.” or, “Do you see a bear who looks sad.” They did great. For the most part they even worked together well and shared the pieces and took turns. However, we did see some first-hand feelings of jealousy when Joshua wanted something Justin had.

Continue Reading

After a couple weeks off, we’re starting up our preschool adventures again. This week’s theme is moods and feelings, something these 2-year-olds are quite apt to display, often several in a short span. Hopefully we can reign in some of the feelings that get out of hand and escalate into meltdowns.

Continue Reading

We made about a million cookies this week, this in addition to the 6 dozen I made and traded in the cookie exchange earlier in the month. There were 3 different recipes my mom and I made while the boys napped, the candy cane kiss cookies and the haystacks were good, the cherry-white-chocolate shortbread was sort of a disappointment (too bad since it was the hardest to make!) The majority of those went to work with Jeff to share with his coworkers on Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Eve we made sugar cookies with the help of our two little bakers. The boys helped cut out the shaped cookies, eagerly awaited their removal from the oven, and helped decorate them. Both kids were covered head-to-toe in colored sugar and required a bath. They left a sparkly trail from the table to the tub. They really enjoyed it, and they LOVED the cookies when they were done. In fact they have been so hopped up on sugar (and the grown-ups too) that we will all need a major sugar detox. Today when the timer for the oven went off for a meatloaf, Joshua excitedly said, “Cookies all done!”

Not the prettiest cookies you’ve ever seen, but they tasted good and were a lot of fun to make.

Continue Reading

Happy First Day of Winter!

We did two different snowman crafts last week for our Winter theme. The snow paint is equal parts shaving cream and white school glue, stirred together. The “paint’ dries sort of puffy and soft. The shaving cream we used was cheap dollar-store variety, and had a VERY strong musk smell, so the children smelled really manly after this project. We allowed the paint to dry overnight, the next day they applied the faces and hats. I cut out a bit of felt for the nose, a pipe-cleaner for the mouth and our trusty goggly-eyes. The scarf is a scrap of wrapping paper. All the facial features and accessories were placed by the children with very little direction. They are getting so much better at this paste-assembly art thing.

Our next project was more prep work on my part since I used hot glue to stick some of the stuff to the jars. I stuck the ribbon, the noses and the mouth bits to the jars, and felt to the lids. The boys filled the jars with cotton balls and stuck on the eyes.  I used stuff we had around the house – empty jars, scrap felt, scrap ribbon, cotton balls. Total cost – $0 and they are cute up on the shelf.

Continue Reading