The week that was

We didn't make it to doing a weekly theme this week - me and the boys ended up getting a 24 hour tummy bug (with throwing up and all) but we did as a family head to the beach and it was amazingly awesome, the one time we do go though I had some morning sickness - can't believe it's still hanging around (the tummy bug business came a few days later). The day was soooo hot that the water was actually warm which is not very common - normally chilly even on the hottest of days.

So as a family we headed to the Sunshine Coast and spent the day at Alex Headlands - the boys were having the time of their lives with daddy in the surf, and man was it rough. Asher got tossed about but loved all of it. Jet stayed close by to me but did love the thrill of being in the waves when daddy took him out. The day ended with roaming through rock pools at Mooloolaba and ice-cream!

We got very burnt - but I was silly and didn't do the slip slop slap thing. The kids were covered well and had plenty sunscreen but still copped it. But hey this is summer!

Our family has for the past two years now done a "Summer Bucket List" - so much fun - and putting it all together is Asher's favourite thing. There are lots of cool things we still want to get around to doing before summer is officially over. The best part is most things either are free or cost very minimal, such a good way to spend time together as a family and the kids look forward to it all so much.

Overnight I've had some sad news regarding a family member who is probably not going to make it - with Johnny being away the week has been quite difficult as well - the boys were really a handful at church today and I have been feeling so tired with pregnancy in general. I plan to push through and keep my head up, otherwise what else am I going to do. School Time and following the Play School themes seems all too much hard work but in reality it has been a life saver to have some structure and fun in the house and has improved the little man's behaviour.

After a week like this and a day like today - I have realised that the time I have been given is for me to do good things, not lazy things and not selfish things (occassionally just not all the time). It is hard to always have a smile on your face when life is just plain hard. I plan to show up and do my best and just stick at it. I know then that I will not live with regret and I will see the fruit of my labours eventually in all areas of my life, my children, my personality and growth and in my relationships with loved ones.

Anyway - the end.

The Five Senses

It's our second week of giving following the Play School weekly themes and using them in our school time each day. It has been much better this week second time arund with keeping Asher focused on the activity at hand. I have really seen what a difference just adding these sessions into our day is making with this little boy. I can see his behaviour improve and his mood overall just being brighter. I know that it is to do with the fact that I am giving him more of me - and that is making a big difference. I know that each activity doesn't necessarily have to be all about learning to count or write or the alphabet in order for him to benefit from this learning. I am grateful for this as sometimes the things we do are just for fun!

Theme: The five senses

Each day of the week we focused on one of the five senses - Monday was sight, Tuesday was smell, Wednesday hearing, Thursday taste and Friday was touch. This was a lot of fun to do and because we followed the play school tv schedule as well - Asher's half hour of TV time re-iterated what we had just learnt for the day (a bit of Peppa Pig got thrown in there too...totally in love with that Pig!).

This is how I broke down the week -  

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Theme	see	hear	smell	taste	touch	Family outing
Table Time	Salt Tray	Work on magna doodle	Cooking with different spices	Blind fold taste test game: apple, sultanas, salt, lemon, oats, ice,	Mystery bag/blindfold Cotton ball, piece of fruit, toy car, teddy, pencil, wooden toy,
Craft	Animal masks	Play doh face	Make patty cake flowers, spray with perfume	Cut and paste magazine pictures of food on paper plates	Trace hands and feet and decorate with glitter glue and shape pieces
Game/Activity	Celophane window	Make animal sounds then act them out/blind fold game with instruments	Set up a picnic for toys, wooden food on plates	Make sweet and savoury pizzas: apple, cinnamon, honey - cheese, celery, tomato	Draw soccer players on our hands to tiny game of soccer
Outdoor	Magnify glass search for hidden toy animals	kindy	Go for a walk	kindy	soccer

Monday morning I started the week with a lot of enthusiasm and things went pretty well - I must have had some good sleep or something because I felt really in the zone with starting all this. We made animal masks to pretend like we were seeing through their eyes - so we did a cat mask and a bird mask...Jet just loves birds!

I also stuck some celophane on a window and had the boys look out into the garden - it was cool how they could see everything as the colour red.

Tuesday morning we began with Smell (accidently got tue and wed mixed up). I used a muffin tray and placed all different kinds of spices in there - cinnamon, salt, cummin, rosemary, thyme, sugar - an let asher go to town with what he wanted to do with them. I gave him a teaspoon, some paper plates and some glue. He said he was making a birthday cake - placed the different ingredients on the plate and mixed it around with the glue. I got him to smell each spice and see what he thought. This is an activity that he has actually been doing since he was about two wih a little cardboard kitchen I had made. It was great to see him smelling the difference fragrances from the spices...he loves sniffing like a puppy too!

Wednesday I had some more time as Asher doesn't go to Kindy that day and we were able to sit and do some table time with Playdoh - we made different animals and all the different ears they have - big ears for an elephant, floppy ears for a dog, tiny cat ears, and some bunny ears. Playdoh ended up being conversations with the different animals and then we made the different noises the animals make.

Later in the day I set up a blindfold game where Asher had to guess the musical instrument that I was playing - he loved this! Then he got me to have a turn and then pulled out the blender and the cake mixer and started making their noises and asked me to guess what he was doing - very clever.

We then listened to our favourite CD - the Rio soundtrack. Soooo many different sounds on that CD - we love dancing around to it up really loud in the kitchen, a tone of fun.

Thursday was fun with taste. I blindfolded him again and set up some different things for him to taste and he had to guess what they were: vegemite, sultanas, lemon, salt, sugar and cinnamon. This was a lot of fun for him - the blindfolding part is really what gets him going - with lots of giggles and excitement. I had plans to do some more things with taste but the day got away from us.

And Friday was touch - sadly we didn't get to this 'sense' with some different things that popped up - but have a look at the planner above for ideas if you ever wanted to give it a try. I think I may have briefly been able to get him to feel some different textures when we were out and about on the day if I remember correctly but it was no set activity like the ones I had wanted to do.

We also watched an episode of The Magic School bus all about the five senses ~ this is such a good show for kids this age. Asher loves it and knows it's a treat so gets very excited.

Thoughts: I have found that the timing of each activity needs some working on - but in reality I'm not putting too much pressure on myself, most days are pretty different but usually it's off to the gym at 9am so a couple of activities will happen between 7am and 9am. That actually is working well because the little guy wakes up in a cheerful mood as he knows he will get to do something different and fun with mummy.

Play at Home

After discovering the Play School weekly themes I wrote about last week - this week was our first go of our 'school time' at home for the year. There was a mixed feeling and I guess as the year goes on or at least in the time before this baby comes - I will be able to get a feel for how things are going. For now we are giving it a go rking on my expectations.

THEME: So this week was all about Building.

COGNITIVE SKILLS: Using the Play School info sheet to get ideas from we were able to talk about what buildings need in order to stand strong and what makes them not collapse. Asher spent time building towers with an old set of blocks I found one day at the op shop. There are some very odd shaped blocks in there so we worked on how to make it stand up by choosing the correct pieces. Of course knocking it down was the favourite part! He also loves pretending to be a dog, ALL THE TIME recently so we made a kennel out of the blocks too.

He did get frustrated with the blocks at times as they are a skill he needs to work on, he doesn't quite get why a small one won't hold up a big one but as the week went on he got there. Previous to this week he hasn't spent a great deal of time playing with blocks as he always goes straight for the cars. This has been a good change.

We spent a bit of time using Duplo and constructing many different combinations with the pieces. Asher's favourite thing to do is make a farm yard as that is one of the sets we have, we also have a circus that Jet got for Chriatmas but Asher still prefers the farm yard. He built it really high and we were talking about the different colours of the blocks and how many pieces were needed to construct his farm. Duplo has only recently become a favourite and I think I will be investing in it over the year. Grandma was the one who bought initially and I'm thankful she did!

CRAFT: I attempted a couple of crafts that we had done before that were previously successful but this week were not. A combination of fun daddy being home at the time and maybe the timing during the day of the activity didn't help. For the short period he did go with it, we made shapes of buildings from paddle pop sticks and glued them onto tin foil. We made a house and a crane. He like playing with the glue the most I think...

Then we used cut up pieces of foam to build a dinosaur. There were several different shapes that he could choose from to put the dinosaur together. He loves dinosaurs! Again I think we will try this while daddy is away as he just wanted to go play...which was fine.

LANGUAGE/RHYME A DAY: We started our rhyme a day unit from the webbing into literacy website - it was Jack and Jill. Little baby even got into it and started repeating the rhythm of the poem, that was cool! We clapped and worked on the pattern of the rhyme and will probably stick with the same rhyme for another week as we didn't go over it that often.

Asher also loves reading and books in general, so I sat a towel down one afternoon and let him go for it. I wanted to see how many books he would get through while encouraging him to stay in one place - on the towel. He did really well and I would say it ended up being about half an hour. This was interrupted by little Jet and did cause problems, baby wanted to sit on my lap and so did asher and then there were tears. I realised this is all part of the learning process.  But overall it was great to see Asher engaged in a pile of books for that long and could have gone on longer.

WRITING: We also tried salt tray letter writing one of the days ~ it was a hit but I would like to see him sit for a bit longer with this. I might need to incorporate other utensils. He made shapes and attempted a few letters, definitely writing is something I want to work on. He also enjoys the magna doodle board we have, I got a Disney Planes one which has shapes and the outline of different planes to copy from a book it comes with. Asher likes trying to make the shapes and draw the planes but does get frustrated when he can't. I think it's a great tool to practice writing and drawing though, especially since it is all about planes!

ACTIVITY: As a family we took the boys to a free animal park, the weather was cooler and the time together was lovely. I loved seeing how excited Jet got at seeing everything. He literally was looking at these creatures for the first time. The huge kangaroo bouncing straight for him made him scared but it was kinda cute too...there was a huge cow and a lamb in the barn yard section which Asher loved but Jet got scared again.

The best place of all after we visited the animals was a special exhibition at the art gallery ~ all about building and construction! It was incredible and incredibly busy...but such an awesome way to end our first week of 'school'. Asher was well behaved for most of the day also and that was fantastic. He really looked forward to what we were doing and it made him feel good we were praising him for his behaviour.  A happy toddler equals a happy mummy and daddy!

The construction site was fabulous with a section for play in kinetic sand, a make your own ball run area and then the huge construction zone upstairs. The kinetic sand was mesmerizing, the baby got Iinto it and Asher who normally would bounce onto another activity was able to sit and play for a good amount of time. He watched the older boys around him and decided he would do what they were doing and he was loving it. The construction site had hundreds of foam blocks and there were little people building everywhere! Daddy was the biggest kid of all and Asher's partner in crime...then we went onto the ball run. Here you could build your own path on a wall to see how long your ball would slide down for - it was great and such a good thing for kids. Before we left it was one more stop at the kinetic sand...overall such a fun visit, and both boys were learning the whole time - success!

THOUGHTS: After writing down everything we actually did and achieved i have realised we have gone through a lot. It is a process of trial and error but i am happy with how it turned out. I am continually evaluating my goals and expectations and realise it won't aleays come together how i think it should but that the boys are still learning and that is the main goal in all of this.