A Stuffy Nose

 First a little background.  Around Valentine's Day, Johanna broke one of her Valentine's Day bracelets, which had heart beads on it.  A few of those have been laying around in the cupholder of her seat in the car since then.  Occasionally she likes to hold them, and being that she is 3 1/2 years old, and knows not to put small things in her mouth, these would seem harmless, right?  Well, this past Saturday, Johanna, Julia and I were in the car on our way to eat dinner with my parents. Everyone else was in separate cars. As we are driving to the restaraunt, I hear a few deep sniffs come from Johanna.  The Mom in me thought, "Hhm, I wonder why she's sniffing like that?  She didn't have a stuffy nose or anything."  The thought flashed out of my mind as quickly as it had come.  Then I hear, "Mom, my heart is in my nose."  What!?  I turn around (at a stop light) and sure enough, there is no sign of the thing.  I can't even see it.  I say, "Okay Johanna, just sit still, don't sniff, and we will get it out when we stop (luckily the restaraunt was right around the corner).  I called Cory, who was driving the truck that day, on his cell phone and told him to come over to the van AS SOON AS he got out because he had to get a bead out of Johanna's nose.  What!?
All I can say is, thank you to the little mini first aid kit I keep in the diaper bag "just because" that had the little mini set of tweezers that allowed for Cory to perform the extraction of the bead from Johanna's nose. It took him a few tries, and a few tears from Johanna, but he got it out.  Way to go Dad!  There was no trip to the ER for us that day!
 I mean, take a look at these suckers, they are not small!

By the way, it was the pretty pink sparkly one that was up her nose, of course.

Back to Math

It was hard to get into our lessons the first couple days of this week after Mel died.  I wasn't in a very jovial mood, but we got through it and Grant learned more about number qualities, how to spell out the words for the numbers, skip counting, and he reviewed the Roman Numerals.

We continue to do penny whistle lessons every day.  Grant is enjoying it more as he gets better at playing.  Paco also introduced them to a new Spanish song.  This one was also about numbers.  I added some fun St. Patrick's Day songs and verses to circle time, and the kids really enjoy hearing about shamrock's and Leprachauns.  Grant is learning to skip count, and every day we are drawing fun "charts" to help him remember.

I have a chalkboard drawing on the board that Grant has to find which numbers make up which shapes.

On Monday, we talked about the quality of numbers 1 and 2, and how to write them out.  We reviewed the story of the Old Turtle and talked about how there is one world and one God.  We drew out a chart to help him remember how to count by two's.

On Tuesday, we talked about 3, the triangle, and I read Grant the Grimm's tale, The Three Sons of Fortune.  

On Wednesday, we talked about 4 and how it can make a square or a rectangle.  After that Grant looked around the school room to see how many things he could find with four sides.  There was certainly no shortage.
The following is our "silly potato" 4 counting chart.  It's hard to see, but there are numbers in the eyes, noses and mouths:

On Thursday, Grant and Dad put together Johanna's Tinkerbelle scooter, and she tried it out before we went on our morning walk.

 
Once in school, we talked about the number five and pentagons.  Grant practiced writing 5's, V's, FIVE, petagons, and stars with five points.  I read him the story of Star Money, and we drew a picture from it in our lesson books.

This is supposed to be a peacock with diamond shaped feathers for our 5 counting chart:

We had Friday morning off, and enjoyed playing outside in the beautiful weather.

The Rainbow Princess

Grant says, "Can I see that picture you took of Johanna?" 

"Oh, you will have to crop her hair out."

Mom says, "No way.  That's the funny part!"

Little Penny Whistle Player

I'm telling you, this girl makes me laugh!

The Loss of A Friend

It was a sad day today.  Our cat, Colonel Melrose, died unexpectedly this morning.  He died laying in his favorite, comfy cat bed.  Cory and I were with him when it happened.  We take comfort in knowing that he did not suffer, but it will always remain a mystery what happened.  He was literally fine one minute, and gone the next.

Mel was with us for ten years.  He was the nicest, most laid back cat you could ever meet.  He was truly a gentle giant. 

We love him, and we will miss our dear friend and family member.

Grant wanted to draw this picture for him:

He is now romping around in heaven with his old buddy Sammer, or they may just be taking a nap together.

Precious Peanut

O is For Olympics

On Monday morning, the kids played outside for awhile, enjoying the cold, but sunny day.  Grant and Johanna drew a nice picture on the driveway with some new sidewalk chalk, Grant raced around on his hot wheel and bike, and the girls found the big puddle in the driveway and spent most of their time there.

We also had some visitors on the pond.

Once we made it into the school room, the kids were introduced to Paco the Parrot.  He is going to help me teach Grant (and Johanna, too) Spanish.  The kids really like him and everyone wanted to play with him.  All at the same time of course.  We will start introducing Spanish songs into our circle time during school, and a few Spanish words into our day.  We will keep it very simple to start with.

I read Grant the story Old Turtle and we talked about the letter O and the sounds it makes.  He practiced writing it and we drew a picture from the story.  He also read another simple book.

We drew our turtles under an Olive tree.  Grant's turtle is eating an olive.

We have been watching a lot of the winter olympics, and in the afternoon we watched Apollo Anton Ohno in a speed skating race.  I started making dinner soon afterward, and the next thing I know, I turn around and Grant is wearing a white t-shirt on which he wrote USA, and his bike helmet.  He is now a speed skater and begins "skating" in his socks around the kitchen. He won lots of gold medals that evening!

On Tuesday, we reviewed the story of the Old Turtle, wrote down a list of O words, and made up this silly sentence: A dog and a fox in socks were hot.

There was also plenty of speed skating going on in the school room as Grant got Johanna in on the action.  Grant was Apollo, Johanna was "Goergle" (a woman downhill skier) and the little rubby ducky was J.R. Selsky.  Grant was kind enough to let Johanna "win" at least one gold medal.  Unfortunately, J.R. was shut out of the medals.

 Julia enjoyed playing tea party while all this was going on.

In fact, as I am typing this Grant is skating in an imaginary race in the kitchen.  He is also his own announcer.  It sounds like someone has been disqualified.....
Before the night was over he had won 13 gold medals.

On Wednesday, we woke up to a very cold, but sunny day.  We all suited up and went outside to play and take our walk.  As we were walking across our front yard, we saw a robin hopping around on the ground.  I was surprised to see it since it was so cold, but it is a sure sign of Spring, warmer weather, and less outerwear!

In school, Grant learned about the letter U.  I told him the story The Wonderful Musician. 
He wrote the letter U and we drew a picture from a different short verse in our lesson book. 

U is a gnome's UMBRELLA
UNDER a mushroom he hids
UP on top the rain comes down
But it's dry UNDER "U" inside

Our mushrooms are upside down U's.

Julia didn't do any speedskating, but thought it was fun to wear the helmet for a few minutes.

The rocking horse in the room also got a chance to try on a helmet.

On Thursday, Grant re-told me the story, wrote the letter U in his lesson book, read a little bit, and helped me make up two silly "U" sentences:
A puppy runs up a hill under the sun for fun.
A hunter put gum in his fake gun and fired for fun.

Then I finished telling the container story with Katie who has now received the "gift of knowledge", and that ended our alphabet "block".  Grant has now learned all the letters, and we will be doing a lot of reading practice.

On Friday we had co-op.  I taught the circulatory system this time.  We also had some very special visitors come to stay with us from Iowa.  Cory's brother, his wife, and their two kids.  The weekend was really busy, and went by fast, but the kids had a great time.