So, had the double birthday (decent haul for a "no presents please" party, oddly enough), fun AAQ at the park, lots of friends (even some for Alanna!), great food. Yum! Homeschooling is going well so far, and we'll get to open the giant art supply box this weekend. I'm printing coloring pages right now (a "B" in a butterfly),a nd we have a field trip about vegetables this week.
And cooelst news (really fast because the girls miss me), Alanna has been potty learning since last Tuesday, and was dry ALL NIGHT last night!!!!
Monday, September 29, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Gardening
So, Jeremy and I have been learning a lot with our first garden. Number 1, water is important. Number 2, Utah is slightly different from Ohio so things grow differently. Number 3, when you read "eat it before it goes to seed," they mean it.
So, the early crops that passed the gardening exam and will be invited back next year are sweet peas (bumper crop, climbing/pole style), butter lettuce, spinach, and carrots. Early flunkouts are bush beans (two handfuls from eighteen plants), broccoli, cauliflower, and a bunch of herbs. We got one herb to grow, a single basil plant. We're just admiring it for now, lol. Next year we will try more herbs in conjunction with the whole "watering" thing. Right now the fall crop is coming up, and we are getting some yellow and butternut squash, a late burst of extra peas, and an explosion of winter sweetmeat melon and cucumbers. Next year we are expanding and I want to try tomato and onion starters as well.
So, the early crops that passed the gardening exam and will be invited back next year are sweet peas (bumper crop, climbing/pole style), butter lettuce, spinach, and carrots. Early flunkouts are bush beans (two handfuls from eighteen plants), broccoli, cauliflower, and a bunch of herbs. We got one herb to grow, a single basil plant. We're just admiring it for now, lol. Next year we will try more herbs in conjunction with the whole "watering" thing. Right now the fall crop is coming up, and we are getting some yellow and butternut squash, a late burst of extra peas, and an explosion of winter sweetmeat melon and cucumbers. Next year we are expanding and I want to try tomato and onion starters as well.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Advanced Math
Here I thought Alanna and I would just be counting Honey Nut Cheerios, working up past 10 to 20. Well, come to find out not only is counting and addition fun, but her favorite part is SUBTRACTION. ;)
12 Cheerios, eat two, leaves 10! It quickly devolved into any Cheerio beyond 10 being eating with a vacuum sound, so I started adding them in twos and threes to change up the addition number before getting to chorus "and 12 minus 2 is 10" as she made more sucking noises and crammed them in her mouth grinning, lol.
Today was Mom's tired & grumpy day so most of the work has just been potty learning! We're going to color shapes now though.
12 Cheerios, eat two, leaves 10! It quickly devolved into any Cheerio beyond 10 being eating with a vacuum sound, so I started adding them in twos and threes to change up the addition number before getting to chorus "and 12 minus 2 is 10" as she made more sucking noises and crammed them in her mouth grinning, lol.
Today was Mom's tired & grumpy day so most of the work has just been potty learning! We're going to color shapes now though.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Home sort-of-schooling
Well, Alanna's almost three and I started some homeschooling preschool stuff this week. We're not "unschooling" but we're not using a set curriculum or sit-down-and-do-your-papers type, either. Somewhere in between. Right now I'm supplementing my ideas (and what I did before, just more of it now) with Letter of the Week and soon Sound of the Week. It's free online, sort of a general guide/ideas for teaching phonics and reading.
Over the weekend we used Play-doh and Alanna learned how to make snakes. We played outside and kicked a ball around, and talked about the garden. Yesterday we played with an alphabet puzzle set Alanna got last yearb ut wasn't ready for--a lot of lowercase letter pieces and some word puzzles with pictures. So we got to work on the lowercase letters and sounds, as well as puzzle work. And we talked about what sounds different animals make, and had Alanna pick her favorite animal and draw it (she picked a dragon, LOL, and said dragons go raaaaaaaaaaaawr rawr, and drew it with lots of pink and red). We also played outside a bit--Alanna had a long play at the playground by lil' bro's apartment, mastering the mini-cargo net. So far today we've talked about animals--what color turtles are, what do horses eat, talking about how turtles pull into their shells when they're scared, and we got to run around the house like horses or cheetahs, crawl around like turtles, and jump around like cats. Now I'm online for an alphabet coloring page. I think we'll read more this afternoon, and work on more counting/basic addition.
Over the weekend we used Play-doh and Alanna learned how to make snakes. We played outside and kicked a ball around, and talked about the garden. Yesterday we played with an alphabet puzzle set Alanna got last yearb ut wasn't ready for--a lot of lowercase letter pieces and some word puzzles with pictures. So we got to work on the lowercase letters and sounds, as well as puzzle work. And we talked about what sounds different animals make, and had Alanna pick her favorite animal and draw it (she picked a dragon, LOL, and said dragons go raaaaaaaaaaaawr rawr, and drew it with lots of pink and red). We also played outside a bit--Alanna had a long play at the playground by lil' bro's apartment, mastering the mini-cargo net. So far today we've talked about animals--what color turtles are, what do horses eat, talking about how turtles pull into their shells when they're scared, and we got to run around the house like horses or cheetahs, crawl around like turtles, and jump around like cats. Now I'm online for an alphabet coloring page. I think we'll read more this afternoon, and work on more counting/basic addition.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Survived Labor Day with my pesco-vegetarianism intact!
It wasn't hard, actually. I just brought Morningstar burgers to the BBQ. Now I need to figure out how to have veggie BBQ when eating out. If we ever eat out again, that is, lol. Not much until we're more caught up on bills, that's for sure.
This weekend I had a mini-sewing-marathon for making more of my personal design of cloth diapers, but I ran out of touchtape (super-velcro). So I have one completed, and three finished up until the first touchtape-sewing step. I'm hoping to make enough of mine to sell the commercial AIOs and fitteds that I have, and make some in the next size up eventually. I made these so they fit Chloe on the smallest setting, so they are like a M/L anyway. Alanna likes them too but she needs to pottytrain the rest of the way, dang it, lol, so I'm not making some for her. She has used the potty exclusively for several days in a row, and then decides it's easier to go back to diapers. Boo.
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