Making It Through

This has been a bit of a rough week. Miss M has not been her normal self for no reason I can come up with yet (other than she's 2 1/2 and maybe mood swings are normal for this age) and Littlest is cutting five teeth all at the same time. Naps have been off, the weather has been gloomy and I can't seem to get enough sleep to feel like I'm ever truly awake. Thank goodness for preschool and some fun activities to distract from our Eeyore moods.

 On Wednesday we had class with friends and learned about rabbits and bees. The kids had fun hopping around the letter R on the floor, which evolved into Ring Around the Rosie (I pointed out the sounds in Ring and Rosie so it was still "on topic" :). We pretended to be bees and they pollinated the flowers on my rug with the pattern blocks. We also practiced counting with the rabbit counters. We used the word problems provided and then worked on dividing them into groups by size and/or color and counting how many members in each of those.

 I loved the poppy art project, I think it turned out really cute. It was also interesting to note that Miss M doesn't really know how to tear on purpose so that's a fine motor skill we need to work on. She was able to do it if I started the tear for her. Thinner paper would probably have been easier for her, too. We finished up outside on the one really nice morning we've had this week.

 The kids buzzed around the yard looking for bees and then we had snack before the rain clouds rolled back in. Miss M had a few meltdowns and needed to take some time away from the group but I think it is important for her to recognize when she is feeling kind of cloudy and that it is okay to be by yourself for a bit.

 This morning we tried to have school with just Littlest, Miss M and Mommy. It didn't go super well but I did find a few activities that got through her tantrumming. Dance N Beats was a great way to distract her from being upset about something I couldn't quite decipher and gave me time to assemble my materials. She melted down again during calendar but Littlest had a great time adding our numbers (and then tearing the calendar and everything else off the wall).

 She calmed down again when I sang the song of the day, "Do You Know a Bumpy Toad", set to the tune of "Do You Know the Muffin Man?" I write numbers on a slip of paper and she and Littlest took turns choosing a number to use in the last of line of the song "Who eats __ garden peas?" It was a good way to review our numbers and music always seems to help with her mood.


I thought for sure she'd be super into the toad craft but it took her a while (and seeing her sister playing with the craft materials) to get into it. Once she got past the frustration of the googly eyes falling off (because she kept pulling them off so the sticky pads lost their stick), she had a great time painting it with the paint/glue/split pea mixture. I'm pretty sure that's it for today, though, and that's ok.

 I thought I'd say a few words about how I organize my craft materials. Since we only do school two days a week with friends but will often do activities on our own on other days, I end up with lots of left of craft materials to use later. Storage is not something our home has in abundance so I needed to get a little creative. I also didn't want to buy a bunch of new organizing bins (because I can go overboard so it's better not to even go close to the railing). I found a large plastic suitcase style bin that I bought years ago for my speech materials and decided to use it instead of the empty cardboard Amazon box I started with. Since we are still in the baby stage of life, I also have lots (and lots and lots) of glass and plastic baby food containers that are great sizes for leftover glitter, googly eyes and pompoms. The plastic ones are nice for putting paint in (I also use them as snack containers in the diaper bag). I'm an Amazon Mom and get a monthly shipment of wipes that always includes a new container (why, I'm not sure); needless to say we've got about 20 floating around the house. For craft materials, they're great for holding my crayons, markers, scissors, glue, etc...I also use them for storing some of the manipulative we've gotten (like the seashells) and other other toys in the toy area. They all fit nicely in my large plastic bin that I can slide into the pit closet we had created under the stairs just before Miss M was born. And that's how I do that.