This and That

It's been a momentous week in our home--Miss M has finally consented to start potty training!  I will admit, I was not pushing this milestone because I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing but when she told me she wanted to wear undies (a Christmas gift from Grammie) I decided to go along with it.  All in all, it's going okay.  Usually she decides she's done with the whole thing around nap time and ends up in a pull up for the rest of the day but we are making some progress.  It has meant that most of our time is spent going to the potty and playing with things we can put down quickly.  School hasn't been as formal as normal but we've still had some fun times with our Mother Goose Time activities.

The Matching Spots and Adding game was a fun one to play, both as written in the Teacher Guide and in a couple variations we came up with on our own.  One of the variations was to give one child the giraffes and one the ladybugs, then they took turns picking a number card and finding their corresponding animal card.  This greatly reduced arguing over who was touching the cards.  Another variation we did helped with addition.  They each picked one card, then drew a number card.  Using a dry erase crayon (you could use a marker), they added that number of dots to their animal and then counted them all.  You could use it as a memory game, too.  Use the giraffes and ladybugs or one of the animals and the number cards.


I altered the Grass unit's craft project to combine it with one that my mom did with my nephew.  Igave the girls the provided green paper and drew lines on it as a guide for cutting (Miss M will cut straight through a paper unless she has a visual reminder to stop).  Miss M did a great job of snipping her grass.  I had both girls trace a circle using one of our plastic stacking rings, which they then decorated as lions.  We glued the grass to the bottom of the page so it looked like the lion was hiding. Miss M added a tree to give the lion some shade and decorated it heavily with the included bug stickers.  She also added a blue sun, in case he got too chilly in the shade and needed to warm up.

Littlest finally let me help her a little with the scissors, although that ended when I tried to show her how to point her thumb up so they'd work better.  She was very engaged in the project, too, which is fun to see.  She liked tracing the circle and did a few on her own, then when I told her to draw a lion, her scribble actually resembled a mane pretty closely.  She loves stickers (one of my favorite fine motor tools) and enjoyed putting them all over her paper while roaring.

We liked the flamingo art project, which we coupled with a fun YouTube kids video on the birds and making bead necklaces with one of this month's manipulatives.

Finally, we played Bigger or Smaller and created a continuum of sizes using some of our toys and the ostrich and chicken egg cutouts.  Before we started, I let the girls gently play with some hard boiled eggs I happened to have in the fridge from the day before so they could actually feel the egg shell without me being nervous about them squeezing it too hard.  They collected objects and I held each one to the ostrich egg, asking bigger or smaller.  If it was bigger, it went to the left.  If it was smaller, we held it to the chicken egg and asked the same question, setting it to the left of the chicken egg if it was bigger and to the right if it was smaller.  They seemed to really understand this concept and enjoy this activity.

Next week we start our Food and Fitness theme, which is perfect timing because I am also starting a Biggest Loser competition in preparation for our family trip to Disneyland n March.  :)

Dancing on Safari

Miss M had playgroup today so Littlest and I had an hour of one on one time after we finished our errands and before we picked her up.  We spent about half of that time with our Dance N Beats curriculum.  The dance lessons are written for a little older children so I modified some of the activities to be more appropriate for a 19-month old.

We started with the warm-up dance, which is her favorite.  She can do the whole thing and gets very excited when someone joins her.  I really like this month's music, which is heavily influenced by tribal drums and chants, as well as the dance moves.  It's quite a good Zumba-esque workout if you do the whole DVD.  Littlest tends to watch or do her own dance moves to the other songs since she's not as familiar with them.

We listened to the Colored Beads song and then I modified the corresponding activity.  We took some play dough and I molded it into something of a porcupine/hedgehog shape.  I got some spaghetti noodles and broke them in half, then let Littlest poke them into the dough wherever she wanted to.  Speech therapist mommy took over and we practiced the concept of "in" and "out" as she moved them around the dough.  I gave her a handful of Fruity Cheerios and I counted them and named their color as she slipped them on the noodles.  Along with the counting and language concepts, this was a good fine motor activity that held her attention for a good seven minutes.

Next we made the rainstick.  In the guide, it recommends using a plastic bottle with a screw top lid but  I didn't have one so we used an old puffs container since she hasn't had the finger strength to pry those lids off on her own.  We counted toothpicks as she put them in and she practiced scooping rice and split peas into the container.  We went into the living room to play with our new rhythm instrument during a song and that's where I learned that her fine motor skills have improved in the last couple of days as she decided to test the theory "What happens when I peel this lid off and hold the container upside down while Mommy runs across the room to get to me?"  After an impromptu vacuuming session, we finished listening to a couple songs while she practiced stomping like a rhino, roaring like a lion and bellowing like an elephant.

Safari Sampler

For school on Wednesday, we took a sampler approach, choosing an activity or two from the remaining four days for this week.  We didn't get to everything I had planned but overall our hour went really well and sparked a couple new ideas we used later in the week.

We introduced the letter E and the country of Egypt.  Living in Utah is a little, um, monochromatic, so it was a good opportunity to about diversity.  We checked out the monthy theme poster and I had them describe what they saw:  a little girl, a mommy, a house.  I mentioned that even though it looked different from where they live and who they live with, everyone was still the same.  Our beloved Daniel Tiger has also addressed the issue so I could refer to those episodes as another way to help them relate to what I was saying.

We spent some time dancing like elephants with big stomping feet, flapping ears and swinging trunks using the song of the day from the Elephant unit.  They had a blast; I sang the song and they came up with the movements on the fly.  I liked seeing their creativity come out so spontaneously. 

We went over the I Can Read book together.  I tried using the sight word arrows with them but it didn't really work.  It might work better for me to do in one on one reading time with Miss M; in a group, they tended to get distracted or fight over the arrows.

The Giraffe Spot Game was fun.  It was a little too easy for them to just count out the correct number of spots to after a couple turns, I started changing it up by having them leave the spots on and the next player would have to add or subtract spots and then we would count the total at the end.  It worked really well and gave them a good introduction to those mathematical functions.

The Teacher Guide recommended letting them draw their own giraffes but we didn't have a lot of time available and a giraffe is little more complicated than drawing a face, which is what they have the most experience with right now.  Instead, I found a free giraffe silhouette online, imported it into Photoshop and created an outline that I printed for them to fill in as they saw fit.  I cut up the left over foam from the giraffe spots so they could use them as stencil, if they wanted.

For the zebra craft, I left the cutouts in the paper until after they had drawn their stripes.  This worked really well and gave nice clean edges when I did punch them out.  They glued them to the background paper, we talked about what they eat and they drew grass and sun to finish the pictures.  Miss M was very proud of her picture and insisted it go up on the refrigerator, along with her sister's.  Whenever Littlest sees her zebra, she starts neighing.  

I also hid some of their Little People
animals for another safari variation.

The girls have really enjoyed the safari theme so far.  They found some binocular sets I got for free for listening to some spiel and have been going around the house "spying" things.  I took the daily topic posters from this week and put them around the downstairs for them to find.  This has been a very popular activity.  Miss M likes to take the lead, naming the animal and some descriptive quality about it (the rhino has a big horn, the giraffe has a long neck) and Littlest gleefully follows and makes the sounds.  Her elephant impersonation is simply adorable.  It is also fun to turn it into an "I Spy" game and have them run to the animal I describe. We will be playing this many more times this week.

Lions!

The girls really enjoyed our class today, it was quite refreshing after last week.  We did Circle Time as usual, then practiced our song of the day; well, I sang and they acted out the lovely, lazy lion sleeping and then waking to roar.  We did this several times because they couldn't get enough roaring.  Littlest got in on it the last couple of rounds.

We also reviewed the shapes we've learned so far this year.  Rather than cutting out new shapes, I used the ones that I've been posting on the wall each month.  I had three stuffed lions so I gave one to each girl, scattered the shapes around the floor and then told them which shape their lion wanted to eat.  This would be a fun game to make a spinner, cards or cube for so they can choose their "food" shapes themselves.  The older two didn't have much difficulty (after a reminder about what a rectangle was) and I was shocked that Littlest identified circle, star and triangle completely on her own.  I can see us playing this one with other stuffed animals and when Miss M is at playgroup.

The lion masks were fun but took quite a long time for the girls to put together.  We talked about emotions and they had fun making appropriate faces for me to photograph.  They chose not to cut a circle out of their plates and instead settled on an emotion to draw on their lion's face.  Miss M chose happy, our friend wanted to draw sad and they decided that Littlest's lion was surprised.  Miss M's cutting skills have come a huge way since we started using the Mother Goose Time curriculum in March 2015.  Littlest was determined to cut like the big girls but flatly (and loudly) refused to let me help her position the scissors on her hand, which led to further frustration because her way wasn't working.  She's a very independent and stubborn child but also very observant; I would point out how the others were holding their scissors and she did a decent job trying to imitate.  I'm sure in time she'll pick up this skill (or maybe decide to let me help).

I liked the interactive nature of the story retelling of the meerkat Mo and the discussion questions at the end.  The girls all paid attention and could answer the questions when I asked them.  I also liked the story because it was a good segue into a conversation about liking ourselves just the way we are instead of looking at other people and lamenting our differences.

I changed up the Bee Patient/number game because we were running out of time and they wanted to eat snack, too.  I laid out all the zebra cards, numbers down, and handed each child a lion card.  They took one turn looking for the matching number on a zebra card and then had to practice waiting patiently for their next turn.  When they got a match, I gave them a new card.  It actually worked pretty well; I think having a snack to distract them between turns helped.

That was our morning; all in all, I am pleased with how it went and looking forward to another day with MGT.

An InLinkz Link-up

Best Laid Plans

So, we had school yesterday.  Or at least I tried to have school yesterday.  We barely made it through circle time and as soon as I brought out the safari counters from our monthly materials bag, school was over.  All they wanted to do was play with the animals.  I did manage to show them some pictures from our trip to San Diego's Safari Park in June so they could get a little bit of an idea of what I was trying to talk about with them.  We taped off our park and I did get them use the safari bucks to pay me for their tickets.  Then it was a race to collect as many animals as possible so I made the girls "buy" them from me for $2 each.  They grabbed up the ones they wanted, we lined them up and counted out $2 for each, then counted all of them together.  That was pretty much the academic extent of the day.

A little later on I was able to cajole them, one at a time, to come into the kitchen for a little art project I put together.  I searched for free "savanna coloring pages" and printed the first one that came up without any animals.  I had a couple pages of zoo animal stickers and designed a quick following directions activity.  I had them color specific items, draw a sun, pond and birds and place stickers different places on the sheet using positional words (under, over, next to and in).  They liked it and did well with the simple 1-2 step directions.  I used to work on this skill a lot as a speech therapist, using activities like this.

Making her elephants "hug"

We didn't even get to snack.  As soon as they finished the coloring/sticker page, they were back to playing with those animals.  Some days are like that.  I was frustrated and a little upset until I took a moment to listen to them.  They were dialoguing with each other, describing their animals' actions and emotions, taking turns driving around the park we'd outlined earlier.  Miss M asked for a chimpanzee.  Her request was denied and a teaching moment ensued.  Some times we don't get what we want, even if we ask nicely and we have to find a way to be ok with that.  I needed to learn that lesson as much as she did that morning.

Passport to Fun

We started our Going On Safari unit this week!  Yay, I think this is going to be a fun theme.

Circle time took quite a bit longer because I wanted to talk to the girls about the it being a new year as well as a new month.  We talked about how they were born in 2012, both had siblings born in 2014, they were 3 in 2015 and now it is 2016.  We practiced singing the Months of the Year song on the Circle Time album a few times and I'm coming up with a couple of game ideas to practice this concept with them.  I'll share when I get them done.

Since the daily theme was Passports, I brought done (my sadly underused) passport for them to see.  I showed them some pictures from trips I had taken to Europe and Mexico, talked about how long it took me to get to those place and what kind of vehicles I used to get there.  We introduced the color of the month (yellow) and they took turns "traveling" to items in the room that matched.

I took down our world map and each girl selected a Lego "traveler" to play the map game.  After each roll, before they moved to the next continent, we talked about how they could get there (boat or airplane).  I also described locations on their current continent and had them guess what I was talking about, then decide if they wanted to drive a car, take a train or fly to it.  We talked about how some modes of transportation take longer than others but might be less expensive or let them bring more of their favorite toys with them.

I got out a big sheet of paper and let them draw roads on it with markers, then we used the spools to stamp designs on it like a map.  They weren't too enthusiastic about this project and finished pretty quickly.

We moved on to coloring and stamping our passports.  First I had them write their name (or first initial in Miss M's case) and draw a picture of themselves in the front.  I was pretty impressed.  Miss M even included her ears and belly button (although right now, her entire body consists of her head with facial features and arms and legs sticking directly out of it).   They took turns rolling the continent cube, chose a stamp from my itty bitty collection and then colored the continent to match the cube.  We only did a couple since it takes a good deal of coloring to fill the whole thing in and I think we will continue to work on it just prior to snack over the next few days.  My thought is to have them color the continent while watching a short, kid-friendly YouTube video about the continent or a specific country within that continent.  If I'm really on the ball, maybe I'll try to coordinate our snack but honestly, that probably won't happen.

That was it for the first day, they both wanted to go back and play with map and pretend to travel so they did that for a while before snack.  Littlest was under the weather and spent the majority of class resting in her room with books and her iPad.

The Routine of Things

Every month we get emailed a focus topic for the month to keep in mind as we do our preschool lessons.  This month the topic is Routines and I got a little excited.  Routine and schedule is something I have struggled with in the past but when Miss M came along, I quickly learned how much easier life can be if you have a routine.

I have been doing a lot of reading on homeschooling lately and finally learned the difference between a routine and a schedule.  A routine means you do the same things in the same order, a schedule is when you assign specific times and durations to those activities.  Schedules are harder for me, especially with little children who can't tell time and don't really care that I've allotted only 15 minutes for play dough.  Routines are a much better way for us organize our days because they leave room to be flexible when necessary but are still predictable enough that the girls know what is coming next.  When I worked with children in special education preschools, this predictability was very important; it gave them a sense of safety and control over their environment and helped promote more positive behaviors.  I have definitely noticed that with my girls; they can handle a day or two when we are quite off our routine but after a little while I notice they start having more tantrums and fight with each other more frequently.  As much as possible, we try to keep the same basic routines even when we are on vacation (breakfast/getting dressed, nap time and bedtime).

I thought I'd share our daily routine and how I help them transition from activity to activity throughout the day.

Morning Routine
Thanks to Daniel Tiger, we have a little song we sing to help us get going in the mornings.
1.  Clothes On:  I usually pick Miss M's pants but give her a choice of tops that are weather appropriate (and go with the pants...).
2.  Eat Breakfast:  I generally give them a choice between two menus; they are both in the unpredictably picky toddler stage and I find it less frustrating if I give them some control so they actually eat what I give them rather than have them reject what I have prepared because all of sudden it is "yucky".
3.  Brush Teeth:  This is Littlest's favorite part of our morning routine.  I use Tom's of Maine toothpaste so it doesn't matter if they swallow it.  We do fluoride tablets in the evening.
4.  Put On [Slippers]:  The song has you putting on shoes but we don't wear shoes in the house so we substitute slippers, especially since my kitchen floor is slick and cold.
5.  And Off to School!:  For us, this means getting our chairs set up in the living room and waiting for our friend to join us for circle time.

School Routine
1.  Circle Time:  Lately I have been playing the Circle Time song from the CD to get the girls to come sit down since they generally get pretty excited and start running around when our friend comes.  Then we talk about the weather, do calendar time, introduce or review our concept of the day and sing the daily song from the song cards.  When we sing the song, it is a cue for them that we will be moving to a new activity when it is over.  Great, built-in transition.
2.  Art Activity:  I like to do the art projects near the beginning of the time in case it is something that requires drying time.
3.  Active Game:  After sitting for a few minutes, we do the most active, movement oriented activity in the manual next to get the wiggles out.
4.  Other Activities:  We do 1-2 more of the activities in the most appropriate setting (living room rug or sitting at their table in the kitchen) given the instructions.
5.  Free play:  I let them have free rein for a few minutes in the play area while I prepare snack.
6.  Snack time:  They love snack and I will often find a program on YouTube that goes along with our subject of the day.
7.  Say Goodbye:  Our friend comes for an hour and then we say goodbye until next time.  It's not elaborate but I do like make sure Miss M acknowledges that she is leaving.

After school is over, they have free time for an hour.  I will often leave out some of the favorite games of the month for them to use on their own, they will color, play with play dough or just play with their toys.  I use this time to clean up after class and work on household chores.  Then we have lunch and they go down for naps from 1:30-4.  When they wake up we will Skype with our out-of-state family a couple times a week or I sit and play with them for 30-45 minutes.  Then it is time for free play while I work on dinner.  After dinner, it's time for the bedtime routine.

Bedtime Routine
1.  Wash Up:  This could mean a bath or just a general wipe down.  It's very dry here and they don't get that dirty most of the time so we keep baths down to 2-3 times a week or as needed.
2.  Story Time:  We read a few books together as a family every night while the girls drink their nighttime milk (they are both on the skinny side and I like to send them to sleep full).
3.  Brush Teeth:  Pretty self-explanatory.  I let them do it on their own for a minute and then they know it's my turn and have gotten quite good about laying down and letting me brush.
4.  Prayers:  We say prayers together every night, give hugs and kisses and one parent takes a girl in their individual room.  Miss M has wanted to look at books for 10-15 minutes in her bed and Littlest still enjoys being cuddled in her chair with a book or two on her own.
5.  Bedtime:  Lights out, hopefully by 8 so my husband and I have a little time on together before collapsing into bed and starting all over again.

Transitions
For activities that don't have a natural transition built in to them, I use verbal cues that start more general and then get more specific as we get closer to the actual transition.  For example, if we are at the library and I want to prepare them for the transition of leaving, it would look like this:

"Ok, we have about ten minutes to play before we have to go home and get ready for lunch."
I know they don't have a clear idea of how long ten minutes is but it lets them know that this activity will end at some point so we can do something else.

"You have five more minutes to play before we have to go home and get ready for lunch."
I like to do a midway warning to remind them and I try to use the same wording so they don't have to process a different message and determine if it meant the same thing as what I told them at first.

"You have three more minutes to play before we have to go home and get ready for lunch."  At this point I also start helping them put away toys they got out and are not actively using.

"I'm setting my phone, when it beeps it is time to go home and get ready for lunch."  I will give this warning 1-2 minutes before I want to leave.  Using my phone alarm has been very effective.  As soon as Miss M hears it, she will generally end her activity without argument (I'd say 8 out of 10 times).  Littlest is getting better at this as well; it also helps that she tends to copy what Miss M is doing so she follows her cues.

To sum up, I like to set an expectation at the beginning of the activity, give a midway warning and then an imminent warning accompanied by setting my phone alarm, which acts as the actual signal that the activity is over.  Sometimes I will use a cue from Daniel Tiger during the imminent warning--"Choose one more thing to do, and then it's time to go."  This also works pretty well, especially for Miss M.

We do school Mondays and Wednesdays and sometimes on Thursday or Friday.  I tend to run errands on Tuesdays so we skip the school routine and usually get back in time for some free play before lunch.  It isn't perfect but for the most part it works and makes my life much easier.