Hey folks! We've been all over the
place with our school stuff lately. We've been doing apple crafts and
activities lately since 1) We're taking Myka to the orchard soon for
her birthday and 2) I wanted to wait until the leaves starting
turning more before we started our autumn theme stuff. However, there
was some major resistance (and still is) to a certain project that I
thought she would love, so we laid off the apples for a bit and moved
on to letter “M” because she always seems to like our letter
activities.
Lucky for her (and me), she got an
extra break over the weekend since she spent it with my parents. (Not
that we usually do “school stuff” on the weekends anyways.) Then
Monday my husband's cold finally caught up to her, so that put a
damper on things. I'm just glad she's feeling better before her
birthday! No one wants to feel like crap on their birthday!
Anywho, now that she's feeling better,
we've been having some learning fun. We finished up with letter M by
making a moose hat (which I made too big for Myka's head, so she
insisted I wore it) and coloring our do.a.dot page instead of using
the markers. Oh well. She's been very into us taking turns when
working on things lately, so it provided an interesting opportunity
to introduce her to what a pattern is. (Which, by the way, is harder
than hell to explain to a 3 year old, imo. Lol)
I'm trying to finish up with the apple
fun by tomorrow (writing this on Thursday, 10/8) so we can move on to
our fall stuff next week. I probably sound like I'm a lot more
structured with this stuff than I really am, for the record. I try to
stick to a theme for two weeks since we're doing some of the A
Child's World curriculum as well and that's how it's structured,
but other than that, I have learned two more valuable lessons this
week. 1) Crafts at the kitchen table are NOT a good idea. I didn't
even think about it until my husband brought it up: It doesn't matter
what craft we're doing, she probably doesn't stay interested in it
long there because it's harder for her to reach. Duh! 2) Setting a
few choices out on her short table in the living room seems to go
over well. She can pick what strikes her fancy the most at the time
and we still end up doing everything eventually.
As you can see, I may have went a
little overboard on the whole apple thing. We've got a “sewn”
apple (big hit), apple wreath, collage apple, and more. We even did a
“cut to find the picture” apple page and two science experiments
involving apples as well! O.o
Don't worry. I'm not totally OCD. She
has other fun, educational opportunities that aren't “theme”
related too. (Not like she still doesn't watch movies too. :P) She
actually wanted to revisit some activities from past themes in the
curriculum this week, so she played with the carrot color matching
game again (even though she totally cheats lol) and made more “tree
faces” with some weird modeling dough we got for half off a long
time ago. I actually let her play outside by herself (watching
closely the whole time, of course) for about 45 minutes while she did
that and other things. She did good about not wandering off! I also
remembered to get my felt boards back out this week and made a few
Halloween-themed pieces. Now I just need to work on making some story
or nursery rhyme-related pieces for fun!
So, while it may sound like we are
busy constantly, we really aren't. We'll usually do a few educational
activities a day (if that). Other than that we try to get outside at
least once a day and Myka likes to help me with most household
chores. And we do go to or host the occasional playdate. Ok. Maybe we
do like to stay busy. ;) Now if you'll excuse me, the beast slumbers
and I must start planning next week's fall activities. ;)
