Sticky tactile fun

Once again, I am trying to get the kids on a creative exploration. I saw this idea on the crafty crow. A little contact paper along with some geometric shapes makes for a lovely wall mosaic.

I was trying to get an idea where all three of the kids would enjoy playing with the same materials. It also helps that there is little clean up and no messes.

Jillian's work is on the far right, Sebastian's is in the middle, and Braedon's is on the left.

Jillian just placed pieces randomly but then began to set them on their edge for a 3D effect. Sebastian made Wheeljack, one of his favorite transformer characters. Braedon's was more elaborate and came with a story as well.

Braedon's piece is a bad man who has stolen all of the jewels and the police could not catch him because their guns were ineffective. That or he said the man was infected...I'm not sure. Then he said he robbed people's houses and stole all of their animals because he loved them. Then the man was never seen again because he burned up in the sun.

This project lasted a good 10-20 minutes which is a record thus far. I'm not sure how long it will remain on the wall, but I would like to try other materials.

At least I got their creative energy flowing.

Learning about Ireland

If anyone knows me well, you know I love homemade decorations. It brings back memories of making paper chains, hearts, snowflakes, and other miscellaneous holiday items. So now that I have kids, I can pass down the tradition to them. Except there is just one problem. My boys don't like doing crafts. I know sad. I'm hoping this will change as they get older, but in the meantime I will continue to present them with the options. Jillian is very eager to do the crafts. I try to gear any craft towards her age---2. Not an easy task but we are getting there. Mainly it involves stickers, markers, or paint.

March is a great month for our family. Both Rich and I celebrate our birthdays but more than that is St. Patrick's Day. Both of our families migrated from Ireland and its great to teach the kids about their heritage. Every moment I can, I try and teach them a bit of Ireland. They are still a bit young to really understand but I show them where it is in relation to America. I teach them about the religion, culture, and the green wonderful land. My poor city kids don't really understand that there is an abundance of land outside of the city. We look at pictures and videos.

Today, I stole a moment with the 2 youngest because they wanted to participate. We made shamrock window clingies--as I call them.

I traced shamrocks on green paper, cut them out, cut out their insides, purchased some "sprinkles", cut out some contact paper, and then attached more contact paper. Instant decorations and instant conversation. They were so busy trying to put on their Irish men and clovers, that I couldn't resist just talking to them. Ok, this lasted all of about 2 minutes, but heck every minute counts.

We are wishing everyone a early Happy St. Patrick's Day.

 

Christmas 2011

Christmas 2011

I can’t believe that Christmas has passed but we still have some gathering with family to come.

I try to have fun throughout the December period to make the winter/Christmas time go fun and fast.  We go to a museum 1x a week or something else. This year we went to the Nature Museum and Winter Wonderfest at Navy Pier. Winter Wonderfest is always fun and it gets better as you guys get older. This year you went on some of the bigger slides and were more interactive. Poor Sebastian who is a dare devil wanted to go on a slide that was for the older kids but he was too little. Soon enough he’ll be big enough to do it all. One attraction the boys really enjoyed was driving the dodge police car. I think we rode those about 3x this year. I’m hoping they don’t outgrow it by the time Jillian is big enough to enjoy everything as well.

We didn’t make it to the Museum of Science and Industry to see all of the trees they have on display from throughout the world. I’m hoping that maybe after our vacation in Indiana that we might be able to go.

Our first family celebration was with Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Durkee. We went to their house on a Saturday and had dinner with them.  We then exchanged gifts. Braedon received a Knex Sideswipe Transformer, Sebastian got a playdoh transformer set and Jillian got a fire truck. Sebastian did not like his gift and wanted Braedon’s. I told Grandma what the kids wanted and well…she did what I suggested. He was very very upset and she suggested we take it back to get what he wanted. Jilian got a firetruck because she isn’t into girly things just yet. She loved her truck.

We were planning to visit Rich’s family starting on Friday, but a dear friend and teacher of his died and he wanted to go to the funeral. We headed out on Thursday instead, just one day earlier. We stayed at Uncle Janssen and Aunt Nicole’s the first night. It was fun to hang out with their cousin Teagan.

Staying in Indiana…

We always try to find and interesting place to stay when we come down. Hotels are fine but they don’t accommodate us as well as we would like. Especially with little ones who love to drink milk. A refrigerator and microwave is always needed.  This year Rich found a River Cabin in Shoals for us to have our visit. It has 2 bedrooms, a living area, kitchen and 1 bathroom. Its located right across the street from the White River. The scenery is the best part. There are hardly any neighbors and just the forest. Very peaceful. On Friday, we arrived at the cabin and just hung out. We then went to Mamaw and Pappaw’s house on Saturday to have some fun with them. We then spent Christmas with Mamaw and Pappa and Aunt Michelle. Uncle Janssen, Aunt Nicole and Teagan were sick. Cousins Tyler and Darby were with their father. The kids got to open their gifts from Mamaw and Pappaw. Braedon got the trio joker set and trouble game, Sebastian got the trio batman set and war/match/old maid card games, and Jillian got a grocery cart with groceries.  We had a nice lunch and played for the day. We then retired back to our cabin to play more.

We did encounter a few issues with our cabin. The hot water heater wasn't working properly and they had to come and look at for 3 days. Overall we really like the place. 

Everyone gathered at Uncle Janssen’s and Aunt Nicole’s for another celebration. The kids opened tons of gifts from all the Aunt’s and Uncles. They got rumble cars, flying helicopters, Transformers (ranchet and ironhide), hello kitty purse/shirt, wuggle pets, horse cart with horses, books and some other misc items.  We hung out for a while and then came back down to our cabin.

On Tuesday, we just hung out watching videos, playing, reading stories and of course it snowed. Yup, snow hit today and it was fun to see their reaction. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring their snow boots. I brought all of their gear for ice skating but I didn’t think it was going to snow. Oh well, hopefully there will be more snow in our future.

Tomorrow is our last day and we are hoping to go ice skating with Uncle Janssen, Aunt Nicole and cousin Teagan in Bloomington. We’ll then head back to the cabin to get us prepared to leave for Chicago on Thursday. There is a lot to pack up. I have been trying to keep things in order and cleaned up as much as possible.

We still have a small celebration to look forward to at my sister’s house. The kids will be excited to get more presents.

Christmas was good to us this year and we can’t wait to see what 2012 will bring. 

Sebastain's 5th birthday

Dear Sebastian,

Five years have past and I certainly can not believe that you area big boy. Again, I remember when you were born and the state in which you arrived. You have always been a very strong child and continue to be. I am hoping this will carry with you throughout your life and into adulthood. I want you to have all the confidence in the world that you can do anything that you set your mind to do.

You are very good at story telling and often tell us of your imaginary Dad. I’m not sure how this person came into your imagination, but you seem to bring him up at certain moments. You say, that you played games or had toys at your Dad’s house.  We would ask you how your Dad is doing and you said he died. I’m guessing with the recent death’s in our family (Great-Grandpa Durkee, Great-Grandma Barber and my mother Cathy) that you have also included him as well. It  does make for a great laugh for all of us but you are so serious when you mention him. You have what I call the stone face, you can say something whether it is truthful or not with a straight stone face. You do no waiver. I’m thinking you might make a great lawyer or businessman.

You still have issues controlling yourself. You get upset when you haven’t eaten (low blood sugar) and we guess that it also has to do with your sugar intake as well. You definitely have a sweet tooth and love candy, chocolate, yogurt and well….Sugar. If you don’t seem to get your fix then you get very upset. You used to throw fits, but we don’t allow that any more. We either put you in your room until you can calm down or you go to you room yourself. Occasionally we will have to put your “ink” to sleep.  This is was a song that Braedon would sing saying something like rocking his ink to sleep.  And well your father just adapted that to putting your ink to sleep.  He basically holds you until you fall asleep but these days its really until you calm down.  You generally don’t take naps but every once and a while you need one –heck who doesn’t?

You are very smart when you want to be but very stubborn. I want you to tell me that you know things…letters, number and etc. but you don’t want to tell me when I want to know it. Typically you will tell me when you are talking about something else. So I keep trying to teach you things and hope that it will somehow sink in. I think we are in for an up hill battle as far as teacher-student is considered but we will see.

You sometimes get along well with your siblings but you tend to be the instigator of the fights.  You really know how to push their buttons and make them upset. At times you are so good at it that you don’t even have to say anything.

But to the opposite, you are the most loving and cuddly one. You always want to make forts and snuggle up…something I loved as a child and still love to do. So when you ask me, I try to accommodate you whenever I can.

You do like when we read books, right now you really like the little critter books but will listen to some of the stuff we read to Braedon and Jillian. I’m teaching you to read but it isn’t going as well as I would like for it to happen but I guess just continuing to read to you as much as possible that again it will sink in somehow.

Your favorite things:

Color: green, froggy blanket, transformers video game—which you are very very good at and I can tell that you will be a very good video gamer like your father, you love butter—forget what its on—you’ll eat it right off of it, you like transformers, legos, cars 2 cars/things related, and love to be naked just like your brother.

For your birthday we got you 18 matchbox army vehicles because you play army video games. You wanted to see the vehicles and play with them yourself. You asked for a dinosaur cake this year and I did my best. :) 

There are times when you wake up at the crack of dawn again but sometimes your sister beats you to that….it must be an age thing.

You are still learning how to put your clothes on..you give us such a hard time but you can certainly do it when you want to. Your shoes, we got you Velcro shoes so you can easily do that but you “seem” to not want to do it. One day you will.

You used to never want to pick up your toys but now you seem to be a leader. You are still a fundy bundy (another adaptation from the silly symphonies funny little bunnies cartoon). This means you still do and say things that make us laugh.

Overall you are a very smart, loved and smart boy…we can’t wait to see what the next year will bring to us.

We love you very much,

Mom and Dad

Thanksgiving and The Mayflower

In an effort to teach the kids about Thanksgiving and what it means, we have been doing a lot of reading and talking.

My first thought was to try an educational video on YouTube. It was alright but a lot of talk and well not much action. They were quickly bored.

I found a cartoon about the Mayflower and the pilgrims but it wasn't very long. I then began to read them a book and that seemed to get their attention. Then Sebastian found the cartoon from Charlie Brown about The Pilgrims. This certainly hit home to him.

So we made some Mayflower boats and I explained how the Pilgrims came to America

We used some construction paper and popsicle sticks. 

This is Sebastian's:

This is Braedon's:

Well this is Jillian's, I finished hers for her...

We will continue our study about The Mayflower and The Pilgrims with more books and activities.

Books, baking, and experiments

Monday's are my cleaning days, so we tend to stay home on these days and do whatever I can drum up.

I was thrilled when my friend, Deanne, read a book to our coop's nursery group. Its called Go Away Big Green Monster by Ed Emberley. She first introduced the book, showed them a felt monster the kids could create, and then they could make their own with pre-cut construction paper.

I loved her idea and borrowed it for my boys. Come on boys and monsters--its sure to be a hit.

Here is Braedon's creation:

Here is Sebastian's:

Do you see the resemblance? Me neither but they certainly loved the idea and wanted to post their creations on our art wall (really the sliding glass door).

Where is Jillian's you ask? Well she did not complete hers at coop and did not complete hers here either. Instead she decided to crumple up her pieces.

In between dishes, lunch, cleaning the bathroom, and laundry; next on the list was baking chocolate pumpkin bread.  I always think my kids will join in and be thrilled to help. I get them to help with the 1st few ingredients and then they ditch me. Of course then they sit there and whine, "Is it done yet?"

Sometime last year I had found the Mind Blowing Experiments for kids.  I thought this would be an easy way to introduce science into our days. All of the materials are there and when the kids give me more than 2 seconds to read the directions, I can create something cool.

Today was a very simple experiment about color. Each child had a test tube with a color in it. We then held it up to the light because the sun was not present today. Of course when you put the yellow to blue: green, yellow to red: orange and blue to red: purple. They all had a good time holding on to their tubes and I was glad that I could incorporate Jillian.

After the laundry was completed, I read the kids 1001 Things to Spot in the Sea to get them excited about our trip to the Aquarium tomorrow.

Falling leaves

Ah...homeschooling. It presents its challenges for me and my children. Each child learns in their own way. I am always searching for ideas to educate my kids in different ways.

I came across this method and felt it served many purposes. It's the falling leaves calendar.

Its very easy to make and put together.

1st: you make the leaves by using coffee filters. Color them with water markers in many colors.



2nd: you then use a wet paint brush with water to make your colors run.



3rd: dry your coffee filter.

4th: once it is dry, then you laminate the coffee filter.

5th: after the coffee filter is laminated, you then cut out the leaves. Whatever you think will work.

6th: you draw your tree on any paper and laminate it as well.

Finally: you add your leaves to your tree and put the corresponding number on your leaves.

This calendar works in many ways.
-It will teach your child to look for a particular number and get them to count up to 30.
-You could also do it in reverse and have them add to the tree.
-It also teaches them the season. (Fall the leaves come off--Spring the leaves return)

I really liked this idea and I am going to make one for Christmas as well. A take off of the advent calendar--except they won't be getting chocolate everyday (or whatever your calender promotes).

I'm very excited to teach my two younger kids with this method.