January: Week 4

Well, the second week of the letter B. That's all we did I think. We made it to play group, which was a lot of fun for me. Sometimes play group is me listening to the other moms, and sometimes I actually include myself in conversation. I really like this play group because the moms are so different from one another and I like to hear how we all do our "mom" thing in our own way. I guess we're not that different from each other, but I somehow feel like there is a lot to learn from this group. And it's nice that the kids get to run around and interact with each other.

Library time was fun. Abigail started to join in, although she remained seated in the chair next to me while she did some of the hand motions. Maybe in a month or so she'll be on the carpet next to Joshua - who at one point was right in the librarian's face because he couldn't get enough of the fun. She was a good sport. Thank you librarian - I guess you have plenty of experience with excited 3 year olds.

OK, here are our activities.

Wir haben Bananabrot gebacken - notice all those excellent Bs! (we baked banana bread) It was delicious. (unfortunately, after I put a bunch of walnuts in the bread I noticed Joshua's hands - all spotted, red, and puffy, quickly determined it was the walnuts as there is nothing else whatsoever that has changed in anything - diet, soap, detergent, etc. and he was quickly forbidden from eating anymore banana bread. He firmly declared, "If I can't eat walnuts, NOBODY can eat walnuts!" I don't like walnuts anyway.)

Wir haben ein B-Buch gebastelt. We made a B Book. We'd been working on this for a while. All the coloring pages in the book are of something that starts with B. I also included the B writing pages he was working on and as a last minute activity on Saturday, we brainstormed all the B words we could think of. Abigail even came up with "Ball" on her own (actually she was looking at a book and shouted out "ball" when she saw a ball in the picture, but we pretended she was helping along and congratulated her anyway.)  After brainstorming all the B words, I had Joshua circle all the Bs he could find (he would tell you he was capturing them so they couldn't escape). After a while he got bored of drawing circles so I circled all the Bs he pointed out to me. I think that was my favorite B activity.

We started early on our "Family" and "Love" themes by learning "Des Heilands Liebe" (I feel my Saviour's love) and playing a family memory card game that I made. So far I only have the Mock side of the family represented - but as soon as I get the Hatch photos in (hint hint) I can finish the Walker/Berwick Memory game.  I have included a photo of me so as to remind myself I was once, and not too long ago, 50 lbs lighter and thinner. oh the days. they will return. and hopefully very soon.

Also, I've been working on the "icons" for our calendar.  We continue to move our snowflake over every day to show how far we are through the month. Joshua doesn't get that every day has a number or even that every column is a specific day (monday, tuesday, etc.) And I dont' know that he understands that every row is a week per se, but he does understand that each square represents one day and we are slowly going through all the days in January.  When we run out of squares with numbers in the corner, that means we are in February. Considering we spend maybe 5 seconds each morning on the calendar, I figure thats a good start.

Sorry for the cruddy photo. in any case, you can probably tell we have icons to announce that a babysitter will be coming, a doctors visit, a trip to the park, a birthday, a library day - and I have a bunch more.

I had to return this book to the library already, but I liked it so much that I thought I'd share. It has a few fun ideas for valentines day crafts - some of which are presented here. we're not going to do hand puppets and I've modified the valentines tree idea quite a bit to suit our needs, but I thought the puzzles, heart animals, and necklaces (look carefully to see how they're made) were cute and would be fun for my age group.

 And just for fun - Here are some photos of a very short walk we took a few days ago, afterwhich we realized that I shouldn't be walking so much - especially up the huge hill next to our house, because it starts heavy contractions. It is so hard when the sun finally comes out, though, to stay inside for very long.

This is what happens when you don't strap your almost 2 year old into the stroller and she is ready for a nap.

I always like to see photos of my friends, and of course we never post photos of ourselves on our blogs, especially when pregnant, but I figured, this one isn't too bad. Here you go friends. Here is what I look like starting out the 9th month. and there is a ghost in the photo so that's kind of fun. jk.

Next week will be kind of slow - preschool wise. At least if I have my way. (warning - I don't think I have any male readers, but if you do exist, you might not be interested/totally grossed out by the rest of the post. I suppose some women too for that matter, so just skip it if you feel you're getting too much information.)
Monday - tomorrow - I am going in for an amniocentesis to check the baby's lung maturity. If everything looks good (mature enough), which it is for about 60% of fetus' at 37 weeks, I get to go in on Tuesday and have my water broken. And I'm very happy about this. If breaking my water doesn't start labor, the docs will give me a tiny bit of pitocin. If that doesn't work, we'll have to move right over to the c-section. However, I am fairly confident, well, I'm extremely confident I will go into labor because at my 36 week check up I was 2 1/2 centimeters dilated and 70% effaced. I would say at 36 weeks that is pretty good. I haven't had any regular and/or really intense contractions since then, so it's hard to say if I've progressed any farther, but the doc said that looked very promising and I could "plan on" a vbac - you know, unless something goes wrong during the vbac, at which point I get to have an emergency c-section.  Having a c-section before, I'm not nervous or worried about having another. It was actually kind of nice in a way. but I would much more prefer a vaginal delivery, just to keep our options (number of children options) open. We're not going for 20 kids, we're just going for how many we get and I think I would be very very disapointed if I really wanted a fourth but the docs said after the 3rd I had to stop. It would be very difficult for me.

But, if the baby's lungs are not mature enough to be delivered on Tuesday, I will either have to wait 1 or 2 weeks, depending on how underdeveloped the lungs are. I kind of think I would probably go into labor on my own before then - as in before the 15th of February, seeing as I've already made it this far. Who knows. But we will know more tomorrow.

I'm so ready to not be pregnant anymore. I'm very much looking forward to sitting in my hospital bed doing nothing but holding my baby, nursing my baby, having people bring me food, help me with everything I need, and watching Fox News for 48 straight hours (we don't have TV anymore). Hopefully my next post will be an introduction to our new little baby.

Which at this point, we are naming Lukas Elijah Mock. That may change. We're just kind of like that.

January: Week 3

I don't feel like Ihave a lot to post about. Here are the highlights - or what we have photos of. We missed playgroup - Joshua was invited to a friends house and he stayed there for 6 hours!! We did make it to the library but I think it's a little advanced for Abigail, although Joshua loves it. We're all done with sharks (yea!) but we're diving in B with a vengeance this week and also beginning our "new baby" theme. Nice that baby is the same in German and English - I try to get as much mileage out of those Bs as I can.  This week is going to be super busy but hopefully we are succesful and get the most fun things done! (like baking bananabread!!!)

Ok. we made Hammerhai Hute (hammerhead shark hats). Abigail tore hers minutes after the first photos, and Joshua had a meltdown - he missed his nap that day, so we had to do another photo shoot, injured Hammerhai and all, the next day.

Here is our last shark snack. For some reason I thought shark and fish fruit snacks suspended in jello would taste good. I suppose only if you like soggy fruit snacks and blue jello, which I don't.

We made "B"s out of beans (Bohnen) which was a lot of fun. And then the kids took some cups (Becher) to use while playing with their Bohnen. It is so fun, it seems like everything starts with B.

Also, here are our favorite Shark books. The three little fish and the big bad shark is just a knock off of the three little pigs (but I don't think Joshua knows that story, which may be why he loved this book so much) of course, he identified most with the Shark.  Surprising Sharks was fun because it taught about sharks and all different kinds of sharks. Did you know the Dwarf Lantern Shark is the smallest shark, only the length of a chocolate bar, and his belly lights up in the dark. Very strange. Shark in the Park is meant to help children learn how to read which for me makes it so easy to translate into German. This was Abigail's favorite book by far.  The other one just had some cool photos.

Here are our new baby books. We haven't read the Mister Rogers book yet, but the big sister and the big brother books are the current favorites. I don't know why, though, every book about getting a new baby means that the other kid automatically feels angry, left out, and unloved, and his parents have to reassure him that they still love him too. It's like they are prepping my kids to be mad at their new brother. (The big brother and big sister books shown here aren't actually like that, by the way, but most other books I find are and that is kind of annoying).

Mostly we just identified a lot of B words. We sang our fish song - a lot. And I tried to get Joshua to write out some B's but he wasn't as excited about writing B as he was about writing A - I only got about 10 total out of him the entire week. I'm not stressed about it.

My favorite part about this weeks learning was that anytime Joshua started singing "B... faengt mit B an" (B... starts with B) Abigail would get totally mad and shout out "Nein! Abigail faengt mit A an!" apparently this little girl can only handle one letter and one word at a time. :)

*another cute note. We spent Friday up at my in-laws for some good ol' R&R. Joshua kept insisting, though, that he bring a second pair of underwear up, which he did. Finally I got it out of him that he was worried he would wet his pants because he would be having too much fun and not make it to the bathroom in time. Then he wouldn't have a dry pair of undies to change into. He was just trying to be prepared (He did wet his pants a little at Christmas because really, who wants to take the time to go to the bathroom when you are busy running in circles with your cousins screaming at the top of your lungs - apparently the wet underwear was more traumatic for him than I thought.) I like that he came up with a solution though. I suppose a better solution would be to just go to the bathroom.

Ooooooh!

I want this!!!

http://www.kindersuppe.de/

Questions

I also did post something "real" right before this, so don't forget to scroll down.

So... how do you teach letters and numbers at the same time? Or do you wait to teach them separately? How high can most 3 and 4 year olds count? As high as you let them?

And when you are teaching letters, do you start with just the basic sounds of each letter as I'm doing now, like A for Apple, B for Banana, E for Elephant, or do you do A for Apple and Mama and Ape. And when do you introduce things like SH and CH (cause there are a lot of those in German!), I suppose they're called letter combinations or something. Right now I figured we would just do the basic letter sounds and then in 2012 when Abigail is older and able to write/work on her letters more seriously I can do the basic for her and move on to the more complicated for Joshua. What do teachers in school do? (It's like I never went there or something? honestly, didn't I pay attention as a 5 year old!)

In my family we learned to read BEFORE we went to kindergarten. Is that normal and something I should shoot for? Or is it a kid specific thing? It just seems natural to me that after you learn your alphabet and your letter combinations, you should just move right on to reading.

January: Week 2

I'm kind of bored with Sharks. I'm also running out of Shark activities. What I have learned from this is that 4 weeks on a topic as broad/narrow as "Sharks" is way too long for me. At the end of this post I will outline my new idea as to be implimented in March.

So... what did we do? Here is our Shark snack... (credits to Rachel, except my husband ate all the Ritz so we had to use graham crackers, easy sacrifice)

Here are our Shark cards. We focused on the fastest, biggest, smallest, and weirdest or most noteworthy sharks, 7 in all. I also made cards of the parts of the shark that we had learned, just as review.

Here is what we ended up doing with all our shark coloring pages... both kids colored, Joshua "helped" with the cutting and Abigail "helped" with the glueing.

We also got Finding Nemo from the library - which has less to do with sharks and more with fish, but with a topic like sharks, you kind of have to stray a little bit (well, I do) in order to stay within a reasonable theme. There aren't a whole lot of kid friendly shark movies out there that I've seen.

We also learned a song IN GERMAN (Yea!) about Sharks (fish). Thank you Jessica. Actually, many of you might know the song "slippery fish" from pre-school but I had never heard it. Jessica speaks German to her little boy and she translated the song into German for him, so I snagged the words off her blog. My kids, however, skip the middle of the song and only sing about the kleiner Fisch and then the grosser Hai who eats him. good enough. They got the point. (Today Joshua took the tune and sang about Abigail and Joshua swimming in the bathtub after which the big shark came and ate them!)

With A we continuted our "chant" (Abigail faengt mit A an, etc.) and then Joshua found a bunch of A's in some old magazines I got from my Dr.s office (I did ask permission before stuffing them in the daiper bag) and we glued them on a blue piece of paper to hang up on the A door. I also had Joshua and Abby practice writing their A's on schreibpapier just one more time. Joshua's As are looking awesome, and Abby can make a really good point, hopefully someday she will want to put a cross on it and call it an A. All in good time.

And my kids took it upon themselves to study up on the letter A. You can't tell from these photos, but they are researching words that start with A in a German/English picture dictionary, a German/Polish picture dictionary, a Duden A-Z book, and a Duden shapes book.

(mostly I just think the photos are cute)

Other than that, we actually made it to playgroup this week AND found the local library and enjoyed Music and Movement time for 1-3 year olds. Very fun. I'm going to try and make that a weekly thing... you know, for 3 more weeks after which I might not leave my house for a while.

I think that's about it. I have one more Shark snack and one more Shark activity up my sleeve, but that's really all I've got on sharks. It's been kind of hard to spread things out so much, I could have finished all of my planned activities in 2 weeks, instead of four, which leads me to my new plan. Each month is going to have a theme, but each week is going to have a sub-theme. We can cover a lot more territory this way and always have a list of fun things to do. If I don't get to all my planned activities, who cares. I'm still going to use 2 weeks for each letter we learn, except ones like C and J. German doesn't give you a whole lot to work with there. Basicaly you've got Cowboy, Clown, and Joghurt, none of which are actually German words anyway.  Those letters only get 1 week.

For more my record keeping purposes than anything else (as in I don't think anybody will be interested in the following) here is my basic outlined lesson schedule through July. I have specific projects written down in my folders for each sub theme and I am really really excited!! A very good sign that I might actually go through with all of this.

Febraury - not following the subtheme formula, but we are working on love in our Family and love for and from Heavenly Father.
March - Transportation (thanks for all your ideas, this one came to me in the middle of the night while I couldn't sleep) with subthemes car, boat, plane, and train (other transportation inserted where appropriate.
April - Growing things. subthemes - plants, flowers, trees, and Easter
May - Farm. subthemes, horses, cows, chickens, and pigs (and I might throw in a sheep, they are kind of fun)
June - health. subthemes, germs and hygeine, nutrition, and sports and our bodies (we did our bodies in more depth, like anatomy 101 for 3 year olds last year, find the blog post it was really interesting, so this time instead of talking about the anatomy specifically, we will spend two weeks or so talking about different kinds of sports and outdoor/indoor activities that keep our bodies healthy, and what part of our bodies are getting healthier.
July (haven't picked a color yet) - Our Heritage. subthemes, United States (4th of July, duh) Switzerland (my kids are 1/4 Swiss), Norway (my kids are 1/8 Norwegian which is a big deal to me, although I admit that is kind of a small fraction), and I think Utah - to go with the 24th which is Pioneer Day here. On the Mock and Berwick side we have Pioneer stock and very recent/semi recent immigrant stock, so it might be kind of fun to learn about both. this is also a good month to talk more in depth about the temple.

One more thing, as if this post/all my posts weren't long enough already, how do you guys incorporate your littler ones into the learning activities for your bigger ones? I've got the color thing going on for Abigail, which I haven't done a whole lot with yet, because honestly she is kind of getting all her colors on her own anyway so why make up elaborate lessons for something she is already figuring out on her own? But she isn't really developed enough to write her letters, although she can recognize them when we learn about them. I involve her in everything and I know she likes being included, but half the time if we work on a project she stays with us for a few minutes, and then she is done. It's just too "old" for her. If you have any suggestions, let me know. I know she's benefiting, but I wonder if she is benefiting as much as Joshua.

need suggestions

I'm anticipating a busy February and March and am therefore trying to get all my planning and prep done (most of it anyway) for those months.  February is easy, but I'm a little torn on March.  Please comment if you have any ideas and/or suggestions. Like, when does it actually feel like spring in Utah? I thought April or May? And when do farm animals start having babies (or doing something interesting to look at and learn about)?  Anyway, I would really really appreciate any advice. I've looked online, and I get the following ideas from other websites.

Spring (Spring officially starts in March)
Nutrition (March is national nutrition month)
Farm
Insects (we did this last year and i dont' think I want to do it again until next year)
Plants and Flowers/Gardening (is it too early?)
Birds
Music (it's music in our schools month also, apparently)

or I could do something that has nothing to do with March, like...
Alligators
Space
Jungle
different green things (our March color is green) like turtles, trees, etc.
etc.

Joshua picked out Sharks on his own, but I don't think it would work super well to ask him what he wants to learn about in 2 months - especially when he doesn't get the concept of "next week" yet. i don't know, maybe i could just ask him.

Anyway, please help me out.

Sharks, A, and January 1st

My new idea for this year's curriculum, unlike last year's which was totally unstructered, is to plan things out with monthly and bi-weekly themes. I think I tried to do this last year, but what I really ended up doing was pick a topic, get a few books at the library, maybe get a coinciding movie, come up with a few activities, and go some place.  That was pretty good. And then I got pregnant, sick, busy, tired, worn out, we packed, moved, unpacked, still sick and tired, and then I did my best with Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas (I may have overdone Christmas :)

Anyway, even though I know I'm having a baby in 3 to 5 weeks (3 please!!) I've come up with a new strategy, which is only slightly different than the last, but I think will greatly ease my "planning time."  Here is how it is going... and I think you will get the idea of the "schedule" as I describe the first week of January and our upcoming events.

Calendar - so excited to start this. I know I could have bought a cute one, but I made this myself and I like it just as much. Every morning we move the snowflake to the next day. This month we don't have too much going on, eventwise, but in months following I will have other markers for birthdays, holidays, special events, vacations, etc. For instance, I am going to laminate a little photo of Grandma and Grandpa and stick it on the day in February when they are coming to visit. You get the idea. It's nothing new, just new to us.

Sharks - Joshua picked out this topic last month, but there was so much to do with Christmas, that we didn't do a whole lot but pick out books at the library, some of which we read. Now we have actually read the books, watched the movies, colored the coloring pages, and dressed up as sharks and hunted for little fishies to eat. We have also identified the parts of a shark, and practiced drawing and labeling them on our shark papers. Joshua is a self proclaimed Weiser Hai (great white shark) and he has determined Abigail is a Blauhai (blue shark).

 (Joshua's sharks always have EXTRA breathing capacity, as indicated by the gills running all down it's body)

(this one is Abby's, can you tell?)

We already know a lot about sharks, but we do have more activities planned. We are going to make Hammerhai Hute - Hammerhead shark hats (pretend there's an umlaut on that "u") and swim around with our Ruckenflossen (another imaginary "u" umlaut), we have two more shark snacks - blue jello with suspended fruit snack shark and fish, and crackers with blue cream cheese and fishy crackers on top (idea from my friend Rachel about a year ago!).  We've got more coloring sheets, and we still have our books - I'll post our favorite books next time. I might come up with a few more activities, but for now this seems adequate. If anybody knows a song about sharks in German, let me know! If I can get it, we'll watch "Finding Nemo" because I really like Bruce the Shark.

Ok, the letter "A." We have a couple of picture dictionarys in German that I used to introduce A, and then we went around thinking of words that start with A. We made up a little chant that goes "Ananas fangt mit A an" "Apfel fangt mit A an" "Arbeit fangt mit A an," and so forth (Pineapple starts with A, Apple starts with A, work starts with A) wherein we accentuate the A so it sounds more like AAAAAHHHHHH. I bought writing paper and Joshua (and Abigail) have started practicing writing their As. (Nach oben, nach unten, Strich in der Mitte) I even have little apple stickers to praise their very best As. They love love loved this activity and continue to write As everwhere.  They look for As everywhere also, which is exactly what I wanted to accomplish. Joshua is 3 and he's a boy - I don't care if his A looks weird when he writes it, but he knows what it is, he gets the idea, and he can find and recognize it. We have had Apples and Ananas (pineapple) for our A snacks. And Joshua drew 2 Apatosaurus and 2 Allosaurus to hang on our A door. Goodness, has it really only been one week?

Our color for the month was supposed to be blue, however I have yet to really do a whole lot with that. This was to include Abigail a little more so she would be learning something more at her level - I don't see her booming enthusiam when we draw all the fins on a shark like I do with Joshua. But I do have a few ideas that we'll hopefully get to later.

For the future - I already mentioned our calendar and how we will keep that updated and in future months have more to show. For February the color is red, so Februar is spelled out in red and the marker is a heart. March is green and the marker is a shamrock. B will be introduced after this week. Our big B activity will be baking banana bread (which wonderfully has all the same Bs in English as it does in German - Bananabrot backen.) I had some other German B foods picked out but can't remember them at the moment. I think C will only take one week since there aren't many German words in C and it's not that hard to write anyway. Basically you've got Cowboy and Clown, which aren't really German anyway. I think we'll focus on the Cowboy. And not that I don't just adore Dinosaurs as much as Joshua, but don't blame me if I do NOT focuse entirely on Dinosuars when we move on to D - despite the fact that Joshua is now drawing Dromeosaurus. I don't even know which one that is, but undoubtedly he is a meat eater. Next Month's theme will be Love and Family, which fits perfectly as we will get to celebrate Valentines Day, introduce a new baby into the family, and my parents will come to visit - they are family we don't see as often. A lot of the activities will be hands on with the new baby. We'll do our usual books, maybe a video, and coloring sheets. My kids always like that. Febraury wont be as intense, but I'm going to keep things going as much as possible.  I was thinking for March we would start on plants, but now I'm thinking that is too early. We'll see. I've got time to think about it. Maybe we'll do Farms or something like that.

And that is how I'm going to do homeschool preschool this year. Eventually we will add in more field trips, but I've wisely decided I can't take all that on right now. Hopefully we'll get to story time at the library and play group before the new baby comes.

I'm excited for this year. I feel like it has taken me 8 months to figure out how I want to do preschool. And i'm sure it will keep changing. I'll keep you posted.