Goodbye Floor Bed :(

O has slept on a floor bed since she was around 7 months old. After our trip to California, we moved her to the guest room bed since she slept so well on that trip. She has slept so much better, so we decided that its time for a real bed. My mom brought the bed tonight, and I hope we'll get it set up tomorrow. Its going to take up a lot more room than the floor bed, so I don't how we are going to arrange things. Hopefully, we'll be able to figure it out tomorrow.

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day! In honor of Earth Day O and I have decided that we will start picking up litter every time we take a walk. Elliott and I used to do this all of the time, but we've gotten slack since O was born, and its time we started again. O loved being the trash spotter. She pointed and called out "tash, tash" whenever she saw trash, and I picked it up and sorted it into either a trash bag or a recyclables bag. I am always astounded by the amount of litter on our road. We live about 15 minutes from the nearest town, and I guess people think its ok to litter on a country road. It's not!!! Its disgusting and despicable. We hope that if we keep the road clean, that people will stop littering. Maybe if they don't see the litter, they won't think its an ok thing to do. Its worth a try.
We have another Earth Day project planned for this afternoon after Elliott gets home...We are going to try to catch tadpoles! I'm very excited about this. I just hope that we can find some tadpoles. The frog population in our lake has decreased drastically in the last few years, so we are hoping that if we raise the tadpoles until they are frogs and then release them that it will help the population to grow. It will also be a fun learning experience for all of us.

Unplug Your Kids: Scissors

This week's unplugged theme is scissors. At first I thought O might be a little too young for scissors (21 months), but then I decided to give it a try. Elliott bought a pair of child safe scissors last night on his way home from work (Thanks, Elliott!), and O was very excited when she saw them this morning. I rolled out a playdoh snake and showed her how to cut it. She was excited and said "O, O,O" which is what she says when she's ready for her turn. We rolled a snake for her, and I handed her the scissors. She had a great time pressing them into the playdoh and trying to maneuver them. We have a LONG way to go before she is proficient with scissors, and I'm glad that we started now. We had a great time!

We Love Gorillas

I've always been fascinated with apes, and I think O might share my fascination. She loved watching the gorillas when we went to the zoo on Sunday. I could have watched them all day, and I think O could have, too. Elliott, however, was not that interested :)

O's Mini Museum

I got the idea to have a mini museum for O's treasures from one of my library books. The book suggested collecting small milk cartons and cutting the tops off then fitting the boxes into a shoebox. As I was reading I remembered these letter press boxes that Elliott gave me years ago to put my small shells again (obviously I never got around to it). We found the boxes in the garage, and they worked perfectly for O's mini museum. This is the bigger of the 2 boxes. O loved arranging her leaves, rocks, acorns, and gumballs on the small shelves. We are going to have lots of fun finding new objects for her museum each day!

What is your favorite Montessori material?

I'm thinking of buying a few more Montessori items, and I'm wondering what other mamas consider as "must haves." We love the knobbed cylinders, but O is a little young for a lot of the other things I've bought. I want to have sandpaper letters, but I can't decide whether to buy them or make them. I think I can make them fairly easily, but I don't know where to find the board to put them on. I also want the red rods, and I know they would be easy to make but I'm not sure if it would be cost effective to make them since I can buy them for $25. Any input is greatly appreciated!

Loving the Thrift Store

I bought 8 books, 1 shirt, 1 dress type outfit (both for O), and a basket for $3.72! Yay for thrift stores! I also dropped off a bag of stuff we don't need. I'm going to try to take a bag of stuff to donate each week. That way I won't feel so bad about buying things.

More Matching

Are you tired of reading matching posts yet? This is the last one for a while, I promise! I bought this set of Go Fish cards for O to match since its animal mamas and babies. O LOVES to label everything as mama and baby. She even calls our big tomato plant mama and the little one baby. She really loves these cards and was totally focused (despite the upside down sunglasses) on the activity. She looked closely at each card before matching it. After she finished she said "mama, baby, milk" and put the 2 cards together face to face so the baby could nurse. Then she swung them back and forth and said "rock, rock." She such a nurturer!

I Spy Matching Game

I bought this I Spy Preschool Game for my 3 year old niece for Christmas, and she really enjoyed it for about a week. By then she had it memorized, and it no longer offered a challenge. Since O loves to match, I thought I'd try it with her. I suspected that she was too young to do the game since its for ages 3 to 6 years, but I decided that it wouldn't hurt to try. I put out 3 cards and handed her a matching card one at a time. The first time we did it she got all of them right, and I was very surprised. Today we did the game again, and she barely looked at the cards and she didn't match any of them correctly. She obviously wasn't into it. Then she decided that Niney (Tiny) wanted to match. She held Niney's hand and had her match the cards. Niney matched them all correctly! It was so funny. O LOVES Niney, and she goes with us everywhere!

Unplug Your Kids: Food

I'm a little late posting this I think, but the unplugged theme this week is food. We weren't very creative, but we had fun! We made peanut butter cookies while we were at my mom's house this weekend. O had fun learning how to make criss crosses on the cookies with a fork, and the cookies were delicious. It was a special treat for O since her mommy and daddy typically do not let her eat sweets.

Feeding O's Matching Obsession

Since O loves to match, I'm always looking for matching cards. This weekend I found Brainy Baby Wild Animal cards at Fred's for $1.50. I bought 2 sets so she could match them, and she's really enjoyed it. The cards are super sturdy, and I hope they'll last a while. I'm also going to try to find some small animal figurines for her to match to the cards.
I also bought these puzzle cards by School Zone. There are 3 cards that the child puts together to make a picture. I put the 1st 2 together and handed O the 3rd card for her to match. (she was sitting directly across from me, but moved to the side while we were working)

Playing the Harmonica

O loves to play the harmonica!

The Great Puppy Rescue and other Fun Stuff

Blogging and homeschool activities have been put on hold this week while we tried to tame and catch 8 puppies that have shown up in our yard. We think that the mama dog was abandoned by her owners before the puppies were born, and they have been living wild on our street since they were born. My siser and niece came to visit, and they were determined to see the elusive puppies, so we found them and started coaxing them over to us. They gradually lost some of their fear, and we caught 2 of them and sent them home with my sister. O and I spent hours on Friday talking softly and sweetly to them while shaking food bowls and gradually moving the food bowls closer to us. They wouldn't get closer than about 10 feet to us, but that was progress. Today Elliott managed to catch 4 more puppies, and he brought them to my sister's house (she has a fenced in yard, and we do not. She also has several friends who may be interested in adopting the puppies). O has gone from being scared to walk in the yard (she's afraid of the dogs and she's very afraid of stepping in "doggie boop") to shaking the food bowl while calling "doggie eat food!" We plan on spending most of the next 2 days hanging out in my sister's backyard trying to tame the dogs before going home on Monday or Tuesday.
While we waited on Elliott to bring the 4 dogs, we walked down to a children's festival near my sister's house. O was tempted to try out the jumping thing, but she decided not to at the last minute. There were too many wild children running around! O and my niece, Marg, enjoyed a snow cone with no flavoring! It was just plain ice, but they thought it was DELICIOUS!
We ended our day with a bike ride around the block. My dad planned on buying O a tricycle for her 2nd birthday, but when I told my sister that plan she said that we could just borrow Marg's tricycle since Marg has almost outgrown it. O was super excited, and I love the handlebars. Its great to be able to push her comfortably on the tricycle. We are going to have LOTS of fun with this tricycle. Thanks, Marg and Mem! (and thanks to Grandaddy for buying Marg this great tricycle for her birthday years ago!)

My Reader

I heard O reading to herself and this is what I found when I came into the room. Can you see what she is reading? Its Teaching Montessori in the Home by Elizabeth G. Hainstock. I guess she wanted to find out what we'll be working on next :)

Planting Seeds

After we finished making our terrarium, O and I planted seeds in our egg carton. We got the idea from here. Hopefully, we'll have some tiny basil and lavender sprouts in a few weeks!