Answering Questions

My Circle Time post generated a lot of questions, and a reader suggested that I answer the questions in a post...good idea! I have a feeling that my answers may be a little disappointing... I'm starting with the easy ones first :)

1) I was just wondering if anyone else joins you for story time.

It's just O and I for circle time, so it's not an actual circle :) Sometimes Gracie (our cat) will sit with us for a while and sometimes a baby doll or 2 will participate, but it works out well to just have the 2 of us. Little Kicker will help make our circle complete in August :)

2)Where do you get these songs from?

The vast majority of the songs we used for circle time come from cds that I've borrowed from the library. They are simple songs that are sung to the tune of songs such as London Bridge is Falling Down, etc. I also have a book of Spanish songs that are sung to familiar tunes. For example, we sing "Hola means hello" to the tune of London Bridge, and we sing "Uno, dos, tres, amigos, cuatro, cinco, seis, amigos, siete, ocho, nueve, amigos, diez amigos son" to the tune of 10 Little Indians.

3) How do you plan to continue homeschool with O when Little Kicker arrives?

I have no idea! I am planning on doing a lot with O this summer so that we can take a few weeks or a month off from any planned activities without me feeling guilty about it :) I'm hoping that Little Kicker will love the wrap that my mom recently made for us (like a Moby wrap), and that she spend a lot of time in it while O and I do our homeschooling activities. We'll see...

4) What Spanish lessons do you use?

Boca Beth sent us a dvd, cd, coloring book, and puppets, and we use all of these (excluding the dvd) during circle time. (I'm planning on writing a review of Boca Beth's products after we've used them for a while). We also use Teach Them Spanish. I have several children's books that are bilingual and a few that are just in Spanish, and she chooses one to read each morning. I have several sets of spanish flash cards that my sister bought us from Sam's Club last year. Lastly, a friend recently sent me Flip Flop Spanish, so we'll try this out, too. I'm especially excited about the calendar component of Flip Flop Spanish as I think she's a little too young for the workbook right now.

5) I wanted to find out when/how you do your planning/prep for your days. Do you plan out your week or prep the night before?

This is a tough one because I just really don't have a good answer. I write LOTS of list of things that I want to do. Often, I forget to ever look at my lists, but they do help when I remember. For circle time, I have a bin full of circle time activites on our hearth (which is where we do circle time). I just grab activities from the bin as we go, so there is very little planning involved. I let O have some choice in our activites, although we always do Spanish.

I star LOTS of activities from other blogs on my google reader (I have more than 700 starred items!), and I've recently started going back and making lists from the starred items. I'm hoping that will help me organize my thoughts...

I plan to print blank calendars for June, July, and August and write in a mommy directed art activity, a science project, and a book with story stretchers on the calendar for each week. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow...

Most of the story stretcher ideas and science project ideas will come from library books that I checked out and took notes on. I've made lists of the activities...now I just need to find the lists :)

So... you can tell that I'm not that organized. I strive for organization, but I'm not there yet. I'm not sure if I really answered the question. I guess I really just decide what we are going to do about 10 minutes or so before we actually do it :) Although, I like the idea of planning the week ahead, so maybe I'll try that...



There were also lots of questions on the embroidered t-shirts posts, so I'll answer those questions here, too.



1) Where did you learn how to do it (embroidery)?

I bought a Klutz book on embroidery about 6 years ago to teach myself. It's is super easy to do! I am a pretty lazy embroiderer (is that a word?), so I typically only do the back stitch. Here is a tutorial that is better than any I could ever do :)

2)I'm curious about the EC process. Is O completely potty-trained, if so, how long did it take using the EC process?
O wears diapers at night, so she's not completely potty-trained. She wore panties for a few weeks, but then she decided she'd rather wear diapers. I'm letting her choose because I want her to do what makes her comfortable.

We started EC when O was 10 months old. Although, I'd never heard of EC and had no idea that such a thing even existed. We were just doing what came naturally to us. My sister started putting her daughter on the potty at about 10 or 11 months, so we decided to give it a try, too. O pooped the first time she ever sat on a potty. She just instinctively knew what to do. After that I probably only changed 3 or 4 poopy diapers. It was easy to read her signals, and she quickly learned to sign potty while saying an approximation of "potty." After I learned about EC, I briefly read about it on the internet, but did no research because we decided to just do what worked for us. We kept O in cloth diapers until she was about 15 or 16 months old. Then she started wearing panties, which made EC much easier. She had a couple of potties around the room, and she would crawl or toddle to them when she needed to go. She continued to wear cloth diapers when we were out and about, but she mostly wore panties at home from then on. She has been completely day time potty trained since she was about 19 months old, I think. Although, we did still put a diaper on her when she was in the car seat just in case we couldn't stop in time (until after she was 2). It's no fun to clean a car seat!

3) Did it take long for O to get the concept of using the potty at 10 months?
She immediately understood that she should poop in the potty. It took a little longer for her to start peeing in the potty.

I recently read Diaper Free Baby, and it convinced me to try EC from the beginning. It's a great book that makes SO much sense :) I highly recommend it if you are considering doing EC.

Magical Mixtures- Library Activity Kit

This week's activity kit is called Magical Mixtures, and it's our favorite one so far!

We started by filling small plastic cups with water and dropping a fizzy color tablet into each one. Then we put a scoop of jelly crystals into the water and let it sit for an hour.




When we checked on the crystals after an hour, they had grown and absorbed most of the water. We examined them with a magnifying glass and compared their size to the size of the dry crystals.




Guh-guh and O mixed the crystals together to see if the colors would mix. They didn't :)


 

For our 2nd activity, we filled a ziploc bag halfway with water, and put 2 scoops of jelly crystals in the bag. After an hour, we checked on the crystals. They had grown trememendously, and O enjoyed exploring their texture.



The space sand in the kit is really cool! We poured a little bit into a bowl of water. We talked about the silvery layer between the sand and water. O enjoyed exploring the texture and seeing how the sand stays dry even while it's in the water :)

Circle Time

O and I started having Circle Time in the mornings a couple of weeks ago, and we are having SO much fun! During circle time we sing LOTS of songs (days of the week, months of the year, continents, My 5 Senses, and various Spanish songs). I have been amazed by how quickly and easily O learns through music. We do lots of rhythmn stick activities, and in this picture we are singing a Spanish counting song while tapping the Spanish beanbags with the rhythmn sticks. After we sing our songs and do a brief Spanish lesson, we usually do our library activity kit. Since this week is the last week that I'll have access to the library kits (until I go back to work in October), I'll start designating a book of the week, and we'll do story stretchers revolving around that book. I also plan to incorporate sign language activities and yoga into our circle time as well. We've spent so much time doing our circle time activities this week that I haven't even turned our Montessori shelf around at all :(

Hooray!!!

Today was my last day of work until after Little Kicker is born!!! It was a LONG day...we left our house at 6:20 am and just got home at 11 pm, but it was a good day. I love my job, but I'm glad to be done with it for a while :) I typically work one day per week, but for the past 6 weeks I've been working 2 days per week (since things are crazy in the public school system, especially special ed, at this time of year). I was surprised and dismayed by how totally wiped out I've been by working 2 days in a row. When I was pregnant with O, I was working 1 full time job and one part time job (about 60 hours per week) and commuting 2 hours a day. I was tired and sick all of the time, but I survived it. This time I had to spend a day recovering just from working 2 days :( I actually felt so bad on Saturday that I thought I was getting the flu. I'm sure that the fact that I'm still taking Unisom to control the nausea plays a big part in my overwhelming exhaustion. Hopefully, I can stop taking it soon.

I have LOTS of plans for a fun summer with my girl (and her daddy, of course!)...weekly science projects, weekly art projects, lots of circle time activities, weekly books with story stretcher activities, a few new Montessori activities, playing on the beach daily (weather permitting i.e. if I can stand the heat), daily gardening experiences, playing in her sweet pea teepee, building our sunflower house (once the sunflowers are tall enough), 3 weeks of FREE vacations, etc. So...stay tuned!

How to Make Thrift Store Shirts Super Cute...

Embroidery, of course! Can you tell that I'm on an embroidery kick lately???
Since we are planning on starting EC from the beginning with Little Kicker (as opposed to 10 months old which is when we started with O), I realized that we need more t-shirts to make the process a little easier. I found 3 t-shirts at the thrift store for about 50 cents each. The embroidery patterns are from Wee Wonderfuls.















These t-shirts were SO quick to embroider. I completed 2 of them in the car on our way to our Memorial Weekend destinations :)

Around the World- Library Activity Kit

Last week's library activity kit was called "Around the World." It came with 5 books about children from different countries. Each book focuses on a different aspect of their lives- housing, eating, travel, etc. The books were great, and O really enjoyed them. She also loved this puzzle with different children in their various outfits. In addition to the books and puzzles, we studied a globe and completed the contintents map while singing the continents song. I told O that we live in North America, and she said that when I was in her tummy we lived in South America (she's ALWAYS telling me stories about when she was the mama and I was the baby in her tummy).









She was intrigued by this map from Let's Explore. (Ours is the mini-version, but I REALLY wish I'd bought the larger version as it would be much easier to work with.)

 



We also read A Ride on Mother's Back and talked about the different countries in the book:)

Learning About Herbs

My mom has taught O all about herbs this spring. She can identify more herbs than I can! Yesterday they planted dill...yummy! Today they planted basil...I can't wait to make fresh pesto! In the background of this picture you can see Gracie's (our cat) container of grass that was briefly our Spring centerpiece. I can't believe that the grass is still alive!!!

Baby's 1st Rattles

I'm on a handmade gift roll! These are Little Kicker's first rattles. I used the free bunny and bear patterns from Wee Wonderfuls, and I'm happy with how they turned out. I put a bell in each animal so they make a sweet sound when shaken. O is VERY excited about showing her baby sister how to shake a rattle :)

Homemade Sidewalk Chalk

It is SO easy to make homemade sidewalk chalk! You need 1 cup of plaster of paris, 1 cup of water, and powdered tempera paint.


 
Mix the ingredients together.



Pour the mixture into a mold. We used our insect molds, the plastic container that Buddy came in, and the flower mold that we used to make chocolate flowers. The molds don't lay flat (I guess I should have realized that), so we spilled a lot of the mixture during this process :)
Let your chalk dry for at least 24 hours, pop it out of the mold, and have fun!!! O loved drawing on her gigantic outdoor chalkboard :)


 

When I Make Silence

I bought this beautiful little book from Montessori Mama for O's Easter basket. We've read it several times, and I've planned to incorporate it into our daily activities. Today was the day that I finally was organized enough to do it. We read the book and "made silence" right before we went downstairs for naptime. O LOVED the book AND making silence. After I read the book, she insisted on having a turn reading it. I was so glad to have this book as it is the perfect way to introduce "making silence." I'm looking forward to making it a part of our daily routine. Thanks to Montessori Mama for writing this sweet and beautiful little book!

The Magic Egg- Library Activity Kit

Last week's library activity kit was all about eggs and animals that hatch from eggs. It included The Very Hungry Caterpillar book as well as sequencing cards for butterfly and frog lifecycles. After reading the book, we reinacted it using this colorforms set (I bought it at TJ Maxx a couple of years ago). O loved the colorforms set, which made me happy since I'd regretted buying it :)








After O's nap we made fruit salad so we could eat like the caterpillar in the book. We were both especially excited about the watermelon in our fruit salad! We LOVE watermelon :)




Other activities that we did to go along with the activity kit (but didn't take pictures of) were going on a caterpillar hunt with a magnifying glass (we didn't find any caterpillars), looking at insect and butterfly Viewmaster slides, making plaster of paris insects, and going to the butterfly room at the Children's museum.