It's a Beautiful Day

The girls and I had a hard time resisting the beautiful air outside. So much of kindergarten was recess. We couldn't even wait until after lunch. We played in the leaves, on the baby swing, climbed the tree, jumped on the trampoline. So fun. Eliza found a few apples that somehow got on our side of the fence. (They aren't from our tree or even a tree that hangs over our fence.) We were also letting our paper mache balloon dry. (It's for Amy's helmet for her costume.)

We finally came in and did lunch and then opening routine. Today was a Spanish lesson day. Amy loves those way more than I thought she would. She's even patient as I look up unfamiliar words in the Spanish/ English dictionary. We got out puzzle books and colored and worked on puzzles next. Amy likes word searches and kid puzzles and coloring and writing quite a bit these days so little puzzle books are a good match for her. I love today!

Back to School

We are back to having school. Today we:

• looked at Amy's baby book and our blog about when she turned one.
• made a paper mache astronaut helmet for her Halloween costume. (She wasn't that interested for very long.
• had snack time.
• Amy and Noel got distracted from kindergarten and just started playing cheetah and frog. We're just having closing routine and calling it good. They'll probably just keep playing how they were.

Due to Some Medical Concerns...

It has been an interesting week for school. Monday we left Noel and Eliza with Aunt Melissa and had a service day at kindergarten. We went to a friend's house to help her. She has 5 small children and recently had surgery that makes it impossible for her to lift her twin babies. So she has had help from the Relief Society for every minute her husband has to be at work. We enjoyed our turn, cleaning, talking to Jehovah's Witnesses and playing with the kids - one is in Amy's class.

Amy also saw a doctor yesterday who put us on a pretty time-consuming regimen to help her overcome some long-standing, non serious or threatening personal difficulties she has had. Because of that, we had no school Wednesday.

Yesterday I wasn't sure if we could pull it off; when we finally started it was pretty late, and Amy was only halfway into it. So we did a couple games on the lds friend website and worked on her Halloween costume. She wasn't too interested in Mom Class or exercise though she had already done one hour of exercise, double the requirement in her regimen.

I just asked her if she wanted to do school today, and she was only half hearted. She just wants to work on her costume more and maybe color.

Depending on how next week goes - we got some tests done today that we'll find out results for Monday - we may or may not be ready to start back up.

Rest Time, Snack Time, Recess

Those were the activities today. I think Amy was feeling lazy. We made some charts that we needed for Mom Class. And that's all we have to report for ourselves today.

Tag Team

Today Matt came home early enough for me to go to an appointment. So Matt finished kindergarten for me. This is how it went:

Mommy
Mom class today was more work on organizing the Joy School project. Today was putting the lessons for the year two curriculum into the correct binders.

Our first activity was wrapping a present for Amy's cousin Lillie whose birthday party is tomorrow. Amy wrote "To: Lillie" and "From: Amy Noel Eliza" - copying them from the white board where I wrote them.

Daddy
I came home and we had snack time. I gave Amy an old fun-size crunch bar she had from who knows when (for the record, whoever named "fun-size" candy bars doesn't understand the word "fun" - those things should be like, twice the size of king-size! Now that's fun size!) Then we had nachos.

After that we came down stairs and she wanted to play Astronaut. She got on her Astronaut costume (Halloween costume in progress as I understand it) and we watched the original movie on youtube of Niel Armstrong landing on the moon. That was kind of boring for her because the quality wasn't that great. Then we watched one about how Astronaut's train, including the plane they go in that goes up high, then dives to create artificial zero gravity. They call it the "vomit comet." Awesome! Then came the time to act that out, so we pretended we were going up high, then floating as the plane dived down low, over and over. And we talked about why they would float and how there's gravity that makes it so we can't fly. We also talked about how air helps things like planes and birds fly.

Then it was time to go play on the swing set. Then we came back in and had "free play time" in which we started with a "toe war." Amy was on the love seat and I was on the floor and we would play hitting the bottom of our feet (soled shoes) together. Somehow in the midst of that, I became a horse and had a cowboy on my back. We played all sorts of horse game. She would tell me all sorts of things to do. Sometimes I would obey, sometimes not. Then she would say "Dad, pretend that you are a horse that always obeys!" Loved that! "Pretend you are a kid that always obeys!" - I'll have to try that one next time!

I was about to try putting Eliza down (she was with us the whole time and not the happiest of babes), then Mom came home and we are now doing closing routine!

Kindergarten with a Substitute

Today we:

• got ready for tomorrow's Joy School lesson for Mom Class
• colored (Amy gets carried away with coloring easily right now. She says it's her favorite play.)
• played with babies. That was fun. :)
• did a word search. I found the words; Amy circled them and crossed out the matching ones.
• listened to books read by Grandma Kathy - Vidalia's grandma. (This is what I meant by a substitute. It was just a few minutes, but the kids were totally engrossed. I took advantage and changed the laundry.
• played outside.

Reading Marathon

Today I felt tired and overstimulated after a late night and then a morning teaching Joy School. So I requested of Amy that we do a reading marathon day.

We did opening routine with Spanish Smurfs comic book for Mom Class. Then we sat on the couch eating popcorn and reading books. That was the whole thing. We started a chapter book and read a couple chapters, read some picture books, and even read a Winnie-the-Pooh story from a large collection of children's stories. It was a lovely kindergarten day.

Pick Yourself Back Up and Try Again

Today after a family history mom class that Amy not-so-patiently endured, we were off on a walk to the park for her choice. (She usually has a great attitude about mom class but not today.)

She rode the scooter, and Eliza rode in the stroller. Noel was asleep and stayed home with Aunt Melissa. It was a beautiful day, and we had a good ride. Amy got confused about why it is October and Fall/ Autumn at the same time. I tried to tell her about months and seasons, but she didn't really want to listen. So I dropped it. We smelled some beautiful flowers on the way to the park.

On the way she kept telling me that her thigh was bored. (Haha!) I think she meant that it was getting sore and tired from riding her scooter. Every now and then we would take a break, and she recommended we practice our lazy 8 exercise we've been doing during our opening routine at each break.

I was so proud of Amy at the park, and she was proud of herself too! And she said some funny things like:
A: Brave and scared rhyme.
M: They rhyme?
A: They match. Sometimes you are afraid and not afraid at the same time.
That was when she went down and then back up the little climbing wall. She did great. Then she told me to do it and volunteered to be my spotter.

We rode down a slide together that was dumb. It had curves that were kind of sudden, and both of us rubbed our elbows on the side and got little burns. Afterwards, we were comparing what hurt and Amy said, "That slide was terrible!"

The theme of the park was picking yourself up and trying again. She climbed a few things she hadn't climbed before (which fact she told me proudly). She decided she was too scared to slide down the firemen bar and would wait until she was six. A little later, she decided to try it after seeing how I do it. I spotted her, and she got on the bar and clung to it. She didn't want to slide down. Eventually she made it to me, and I helped her off. The great part was she decided to try it again after that! She did it quite a few times although she was never totally not scared.

She tired the monkey bars quite a few times, always having me catch her. She could hold on a long time though and move through a few bars. She would even do it when I wasn't right there to spot her (and the yell for me to hurry and get her.)

We did some underdogs and some pumping on the swing. Eliza LOVES the swing.

Eliza climbed the playground thing and then slid down with me a few times. She would go on her tummy. I let her go right behind me, but she cried after a while. I realized that part was too hot.
so proud of herself for doing things she never did before.

On the way home, we talked about dandelions and why we don't like them and why other people do. I informed Amy that other people don't. We also talked about more pretty flowers and how we like pretty things. Amy said, "Everything is pretty but not boys." It took me a minute to understand what she had said, and then I laughed.

She remembered that the Calls (our previous next-door neighbors) had their going away party at the bishop's house which she pointed out (though she picked the wrong house.) Her memory impresses me.

Also on the way home, she tried to catch an ant to bring home and keep as a pet in our yard. The problem was she saw the ant walking and got excited, but by the time she got down to the ground to pick it up, I had ridden over it with the stroller. I don't think she realized it was dead. Whoops.

While we are talking about funny things kids say, earlier Noel requested I sing "Prophets Day-Latter" instead of "Latter-day Prophets" haha.

And one more. Yesterday, after the primary talk given by 5-year-old Gavin, the primary president was talking about priesthood. She said, "And did Gavin talk about priesthood in his talk?" Gavin looked up at her and said, "Probably." I loved it.

Anyway, back to kindergarten. At home, Amy had a candy bar for snack time and then Noel chose "Babies" for activity. We watched a video of babies playing (just because the kids wanted to, not because they didn't know what babies do.) Then they napped, had songs, read stories, and ate pretend baby food in pretend high chairs.

It was such a wonderful day of kindergarten!

Noel got to come to Kindergarten (she wants to every day.)

After - was it Elder Scott's? - conference talk about finding our family names, I decided that I wanted to incorporate that into some of our Mom Classes. Today was a freebie Mom Class day (meaning we already did a family history story day, a spanish lesson day, and a project day) so we played the Ancestor Game. My mom made up this game and gave her children copies. Pretty much, the board is a bunch of pieces of cardstock making a big pedigree chart. Then the ancestor's names are printed on pink and blue papers. The game is putting the papers where they go. Mine was incomplete, so we were adding some of the missing names today. Pretty fun. My brother rocks at it.

Then we had snack time - gummy bears. Awesome.

Then was recess. Noel was awake by this point and joined us. We played on the swing set. I think that baseball has moved down a notch in interest since buying a swing set. They worked on hanging on the rings, and Amy learned how to do a back flip.

Noel chose the next activity - play Mickey Mouse. We watched a little youtube movie about Mickey Mouse and acted it out.

We finished with rest time, and did our scripture story part of our closing routine snuggling together on the couch.

A is for Amy

Today's Mom Class was organizing the office closet. That involved pulling things out, boxing some things up, labeling boxes, and taking them to the garage. Amy wrote "Matt" a bunch of times on boxes after I wrote it once on the whiteboard for her to copy. She also helped me carry the lighter things up the stairs. I am always amazed at how helpful Amy is during Mom Class projects. Sometimes I think that if we were doing the same activity or job not during Mom Class she would not be interested in helping.

For our first activity - and the one main, really long one - Amy colored in a book she got from Grandma and Grandpa. It's an activity book with activities to help letter recognition. It's very doable and very interesting for Amy right now. She did great and seemed to love it. She didn't want me to watch her although she would show me her pictures and ask questions occasionally. She told me I could do my own book, so I worked on a number puzzle. (Awesome - that's one of my favorite things to do anyway.)

Then we had a clarinet lesson. She likes to play my clarinet from time to time. We talked about breaking and discarding old, chipped reads, and I let her do it. She played for a while, mostly squeaking. She thought that was hilarious. Then we realized that Eliza was terrified of the squeaking. I told her the rest of the lesson was without a reed. She kept arguing and begging to try again, insisting that now she wouldn't squeak. I finally had to just put it away. So that ended sad.

And We're Back

Last week Matt and I were in California for a business trip so Amy had - I guess you could say Fall Break from kindergarten. She and Noel spent the week at their grandparents' house and had a blast. The Thursday before that we spent our kindergarten day at Grandma Anne's (my mom's sister) making homemade laundry detergent, toothpaste, all purpose cleaner, and rash cream.

So today we are back home and back onto kindergarten. Today we:

• read a life story I wrote about myself when I was in college for Mom Class
• took Amy to the doctor for a urine sample - not the most fun, but we needed to do it
• made cookies for FHE treat and for my neighbor whose birthday it is today

Amy and Noel were good fun helpers with the cookies. They played on the swing set while the cookies were baking. 

We've been brainstorming some other ideas for kindergarten that we may do later this week. Should be fun.