Headed to the Vet ...

We started off our week in PreSchool by heading to the Veterinarian's Office. 

Okay. So we didn't literally go to the Veterinarian's Office, but we sure had a great time pretending that we did. 

Monday we started off our day by asking what it might be like when a baby animal has to visit the doctor's office. We talked about different reasons why they might need to go, what the doctor might say, what kinds of tools they would use. We picked out a few stuffed animals from the PlayRoom and grabbed Khloe's Doctor Kit. Kohen and Khloe had so much fun! Way more than I expected they would. This activity was so simple and yet they played and played and played. Mother Goose Time always gives us great ideas for activities that will use their imagination. 

After we closed up our Veterinarian's Office for the day, we immediately had to re-open our doors because an animal broke a bone. And of course, we had to make a cast for this poor baby animal. It was that puppy up there in particular. Imaginary broken bone leads to a cast leads to ...

PAPER MACHE! 

We were given a Recipe Card from MGT to mix up the ingredients needed to make our paste. I only had whole wheat flour on hand, ha! So it was a little brown, but oh boy!! This was ooey and gooey and messy and fun! I watched Khloe mush her fingers all around and just laugh! 

So in this activity we explored how a doctor would make a cast for a broken bone. And we made our own "casts". Besides the fact that I ended up having to wash this blanket, twice, this was tons of fun!

After we made our casts, we had to administer some medicine! 

Y'all, this activity was hysterical! We changed out the picture on our Mother Goose Time cube to piggies. Each side had a different number of piggies, we rolled the cube and whatever number we landed on was the number of piggies who needed medicine. In our bag for the day was included a dropper, so we filled a cup with water and after each roll we squirted that number of piggies with "medicine". 

I think this was Kohen's favorite activity. He has asked to play this game multiple times since Monday. He's learning. He's having fun!

I want to note how many skills we accomplished in just one day with Mother Goose Time. In just these few activities, we did science, mathematics, practiced fine motor skills and art. 

So many skills covered in just a few activities, another reason why I love doing MGT with my kiddos!

Please note: I received these materials and resources from Mother Goose Time free of charge in exchange for me telling all about our experiences using their materials.

You can check out their website here.

​www.mothergoosetime.com

Bringing Back Mother Goose Time ...

Hey Y'all! Remember Mother Goose Time? That adorable preschool curriculum we used a couple years ago? Well, we just started back up this month and we're a little excited about it. 

 

Kohen making his Owl.

Just in case you don' know about it, I'll fill you in. So we get this amazing box every month filled with 20 days of pre-bagged bliss for any preschool aged kid. And it is so organized for us Mamas, so it's bliss for us too. Each month there is a different theme and this month we are talking all about Winter In the Woods. 

There is so much included in each month's curriculum. Art activities, themed music, activities for number and letter recognition, manipulative toys, a planner and a scheduled month for us Mamas. There is also everything needed to learn about days of the week, months of the year and the weather.

Right now, we are homeschooling through 4th, 3rd and 1st grade - y'all know this Mama needs all the help I can get when it comes to making our mornings as easy and smooth as possible. MGT does just that for us. 

Kohen is obsessed with animals. 

All of them. All the kinds. Ocean animals. Woodland animals. Dogs, cats. Even beavers and turtles. So when I saw this month included days that were all about animals that lived in the woods, I got excited. 

The first week was all about different animals we would find if we took a stroll through the woods right now. We learned about deer, bears, hedgehogs and owls. 

There is always an opening question to start that morning off with and I may or may not have died when I asked Kohen what he knew about deer and his response was, "I know I just ate one at Poppie's house!"

 

 One of my favorite things about homeschooling is being able to watch my children use their imaginations, to watch them play, to watch their little minds go to work - so learning about bears this week was my favorite. We took a little walk in our wooded backyard and collected items that a bear would use to create their own den. Kohen and Khloe picked up leaves, pine straw, sticks and bark. Each of them were given a bowl as their den and they covered their bear's home with all of the items they collected. We had so much fun! Each of them had some of the Counting Bears (manipulative toys sent from Mother Goose Time this month) and used those as their bear families.

 So far December in our preschool world has been lots of fun! If you have a preschooler at home, I encourage you to take a look at Mother Goose Time. You'll be impressed at how much goodness can fit into one box ...

Please note: I received these materials and resources from Mother Goose Time free of charge in exchange for me telling all about our experiences using their materials.

You can check out their website here.

​www.mothergoosetime.com

A Week In Words - 03/23

Life This Week - 

It is Saturday night and I am in my pajamas and have been for a few hours. Good Lord, I love nights like this. I need nights like this. 

This week has been great! Although, I think any week following a week like the one before this past one, would be great. Know what I'm sayin'? 

For the most part, life was pretty low key. We did have a play date on Wednesday at the park and (swoon) it was wonderful. It was wonderful to see our friend Livi, it was wonderful to get to know a new friend, it was wonderful to sit and chat to another Momma of five about struggles and such. It was, just, wonderful. 

Here is Khloe and her newest friend and possible future husband. You can check out their family blog over at House Of Kent. 

We did StoryTime for the third time in a row this month. And I can see Kohen start to come out of his shell more and more. He's actually dancing to the 'get your wiggles out' song before the story and this week he pulled his own carpet square and sat with his brothers, without me. Huge step for him! 

This week I took Kruz out on a date, just the two of us. This child. Oh this child. 

He opened the door for me, without me saying anything. He picked O'Charley's for dinner and somehow landed both me and my Momma for dinner. And loved every second of it. After dinner, he insisted on "the place with the big brown cones" aka Dairy Queen. So we hit up the drive thru and ended up with this ginormous-dipped in chocolate-filled with M&M blizzard cone.

I should've known it would've been a dripping mess. We pulled over into a grassy spot and enjoyed our ice cream there.

Kruz: So this is what a date looks like?

Me: Well, yea. Sometimes dinner, but always something sweet. And I normally just talk to Kollin and Kolt.

Kruz: Talk?

Me: Yea, talk.

Kruz: Hi.

He ate about 10 bites (none of the actual cone) and was done. Go figure. 

Here are a few more random moments from the week.

Khloe (and Mommy) are loving her BowBands from Lindzee's Bowtique. And who knew how great Kruz would be at folding socks? Kohen plays in the walker more than Khloe does. And sometimes a baby girl just needs her Daddy to fall asleep with. And yes, I let Kollin drive across the church parking lot. 

I survived. 

School This Week - 

Kollin and Kolt finished up another PACES Math Book this week and have started to learn how to carry in addition problems. It has been fun seeing them faced with a challenge, something different. They both took to it easily though! They are both doing really well in Math this year, they must take after their Daddy in this department.

In Mother Goose Time we are continuing to blast through space. 

One thing we learned about this week was galaxies! We talked about what they're made up of, Earth's Milky Way (the study complete with a Milky Way bar of course) and made our own galaxies! Oh glitter, how I loathe thee.

I always make it a point to do Math with Kruz (and Kohen when he is in the mood to sit still) while Kollin and Kolt work in their PACES books. Every month MGT provides Math Cards with each box of curriculum. 

We love these cards! Love them! And I use them as a building block for more. I'll start with the easier ones and just continue to give him different addition and subtraction problems. We work through the advanced cards together. And those aluminum foil balls are our very own moon rocks. Ha! 

MGT also provides Folder Games each month. This month the game gives us practice on shapes. 

Outings - 

Friday was Family Day and we headed out to see Paddington at the Dollar Theater. It was cute. I mean what I saw of the darn thing. By the time I dished out popcorn, passed the drink around 387 times, nursed Khloe, fed her sweet potatoes and took Kohen potty - I might have seen about 10 minutes of it. But it was cute. 

Who am I kidding? I'll end of renting it to watch it because I didn't see a lick of it. 

Conversation of the Week - 

On our date, we stopped by TJ Maxx and Kruz picked out some new undies. Avengers undies. 

Me: Kruz, why did you pick out Avengers underwear? 

Do you even know what Avengers are?

Kruz: What's Avengers? That "A" - that "A" is for AdvoCare!

These are AdvoCare underwear! 

Favorite Snap -

Mother Goose Time: Swirling Storms, Swirling Rings ...

It is only Tuesday and we have had so much fun already this week in Mother Goose Time. 

We are learning about the planets!

This morning we learned about Neptune and Saturn. 

MGT provided us with two fun art projects to learn about these two planets: 

For our Neptune project, the boys used a bouncy ball and a container to paint their own Neptune. I dabbled some paint in their container and they used the ball to swirl the paint around. At first I used a box lid, then I got smart and used a wipe container with a lid so the ball would stop flying out. They really got crazy (and not too messy to my surprise) and had a blast doing their projects.

After their paper was painted to their liking, they cut a circle out for their planet and glued them onto black paper. Then we added white circle stickers around their planet to represent the 14 moons of Neptune.

As the boys worked through their art projects we talked about how far away from the sun Neptune is, who his "neighbors" are, how many moons Neptune has and all about the storms in it's atmosphere. 

Once our Neptune were done and drying, we moved along to Saturn! This project allowed the boys to get up and move, so we did this in the middle of our homeschooling morning to let them get some energy out! 

Each boy made their own Saturn Ring by using a craft stick (decorated by themselves) with a long piece of satin blue ribbon attached to the end of it. 

Each month MGT provides us with a CD of fun tracks that relate to our theme! We danced to Swirling Saturn over and over and over again. The song talks about the rings around Saturn being made of ice and rocks - another fun tidbit they took in about this planet! We also played freeze with turning the song on and off and Kohen (2) loved it!

We had such a fun morning with Mother Goose Time today! 

A Week In Words - 03/16

Life This Week - 

Hi there! And Happy Saturday Night to you. And me. Because I'm pretty sure this week tried to kill me. I just giggled out loud here people. Like I really think this week tried to kill me. 

Monday I had a bird fly into my house. And proceed to fly up and down the stairs over and over again, ramming itself into the window. In the middle of nap time. Please, close your eyes and imagine me chasing a bird around my house, tip toeing oh so quietly trying to not wake up my children in the capturing process. With a hamper. Yes. Yes, I was trying to catch a bird in a hamper. Somehow the dumb thing finally flew out. 

After nap on Monday Kollin spilled a jug of fabric softener on the kitchen floor. That was fun to clean up, said no one ever. And immediately following the clean up of that slippery mess, Kolt knocked over a bottle of olive oil while I was cooking dinner. In the same spot. And that was just Monday afternoon. 

Somehow, I broke away and spent the morning with some amazing ladies Tuesday morning! I'm learning that with AdvoCare comes a new family to love on and to be loved by, and well, I love that! Lets just say Tuesday morning was needed.

One afternoon this week was spent hanging out with my Momma. On the side of the road that is, waiting for a wrecker to pick up her broken down car. For three hours. Best thing out of that was the ginormous amount of laughs that were had because, we were exhausted, the kids were exhausted and thats what you do when you're exhausted and waiting on a wrecker for three hours: laugh.

Wednesday was StoryTime at the library and we had just as much fun this week as we did last. Other than Khloe tipping over in Kollin's lap and banging her head on the floor that has NO padding. Yea, you should've heard all of the lovely gasps in the room from the other mothers, followed by Khloe screaming and Kohen asking over and over as I am trying to slip out the door "Mommy. Khloe hit head? Mommy. Mommy. Khloe cry Mommy. Mommy ..." I'm telling you: this week tried to kill me. 

Thursday was mine and Kolt's night to slip away for a couple hours, just the two of us. The goal of these One-On-One nights are not to do anything fancy or long winded, but really just to talk and spend some quiet time together. We used to make our date nights with the kids these extravaganzas and it got to be too expensive, so we quit doing them. We've made it now to where these nights are just doing something small, like Kolt and I going to have yogurt. 

This kid is so grateful for these nights. His little face lit up when we headed out the door Thursday night and that just means the world to me. And it made changing out of those yoga pants that I wanted to stay in for forever, a little easier. 

School This Week - 

Thank the Lord, we are back on track with it all. I'm telling you what, something in February threw us off completely! This week I feel like we found our footing again and are headed back to our good ole' normal homeschooling days! Whatever that is! 

Mother Goose Time brought us some gems this week! I've been such a slacker about sharing what we are learning with MGT lately. Trust me though, we are doing lots, learning lots and having lots of fun doing and learning! This week we learned about some of the planets! Kollin and Kolt still do the art projects with us and I have added them to Science4Us.com to learn more on their level about the history of Earth and our Solar System. 

Monday we learned about what makes Earth different from all of the other planets and imagined ourselves as aliens from another planet. We made these awesome alien headbands and played outside in them! 

 On another day we learned about Mercury! Um, I actually learned something too! Did you know Mercury is 875 degrees during the day and -300 degrees at night? Crazy! We had fun making our own Planet Mercurys - the boys colored one side red and one side blue to represent the temperature differences. Kollin and Kolt wrote a few facts about Mercury, like that it has zero moons, and added them to the planets they made. 

Kohen has been having fun with the foam stars we received as one of the manipulatives for this month. We have been practicing sorting, patterns and counting forward and backwards with these stars. I love having math to do with Kohen, even though he is just two. For me, patterns are one of my favorite mathematical activities to do with the two of them. I can make it easy for Kohen, like just doing every other color as the pattern. For Kruz, I have him make his own patterns up and he loves doing this! 

Favorite Snap - 

Who knew Khloe Ruth would like Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles? Oh wait. 

She has four big brothers.