Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Emily: 8 Months


My little jellybean is 8 months old today. According to our home scale she's 17 lbs. If that's true, she's no longer following Sean's lead and has jumped percentiles. She's growing by leaps and bounds. Her first word is "mama". You have no idea how happy I am to have a baby that says mama first! The only problem is she only says it when she's upset. So while I love hearing her say it, I don't want her to because I don't want her to be upset. Her favorite food right now is plums. Oh my does she love them!




She has gotten better and better at sitting (even while reaching). She has learned to get on her hands and knees and back to sitting. She has learned to sit on her knees. She has even gotten very good at getting around the room by scooting on her butt or reaching and sitting back down...who needs crawling!? Then finally, just last night, she half crawled! She got on her hands and knees and used her hands to pull herself forward. She just has to learn that she can use her legs too and there will be no stopping her. Her biggest obstacle right now is when her legs slide out from under her. She can't figure out what to do so she cries "mama! mama!".

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Saturday, August 18, 2012

2012-2013 School Year Plans: Kindergarten and Pre-k3

Here it is mid August and Sean will be 5 this fall. The public schools say that he is just barely too young for kindergarten. Regardless of when his birthday is, he is very ready. That's the beauty of homeschooling; it's all based on what he's ready for. Even though we don't have to turn in our notice of intent this year, Sean will be a kindergartner. You know, that really feels weird to type. Anyway, I've been doing a lot of planning lately. Trying to get everything ready  for Sean's kindergarten year. There's a attachment parenting group for our area on facebook and recently we had a moms night out to get together and talk about homeschooling. It was wonderful to listen to some veteran homeschool moms. We then made a break off group for attachment parenting homeshoolers. Through this I found out about What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know (Core Knowledge Series) and decided that it will be the foundation of our lessons this year. Every curriculum we've tried has eventually failed so I'll make our own.

Maddy is still a young 3 but is showing a strong interest to learn...and doing whatever her big brother is doing. Therefore, I'm also planning her first pre-k year.



Here are my plans for this school year:

Literature: The literature in What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know will be our starting point. There are the typical nursery rhymes, Aesop's Fables and stories such as The Three Billy Goats Gruff. We'll supplement this with trips to the library, especially with short chapter books.

Pre-k: Maddy will follow along with us on this, minus the chapter books because she can't sit still that long.

Reading: We will start with phonics. Sean already has and loves the Tag reading system from Leap Frog. He also has the first set from the Tag learn to read phonics book series. The plan is to work through the whole series. From there, we'll find more beginner readers. Once Sean has a good foundation in phonics, then we'll bring in sight words.

Pre-k: Maddy will work on recognizing all the letters.

Writing: I'm really excited about writing and so is Sean. He loves to write. What he will mostly work on is bettering his handwriting and learning to sound out words. He will do this by writing in a journal, along with other writing that will be done as part of the other subjects.

Pre-k: Maddy will work on holding a pencil correctly, and drawing different kinds of lines (straight, curved, slanted).

Math: Sean can recognize numbers pretty well. Not long ago he surprised me by telling me that the speed limit sign said we could go 55. Sean's math lessons will include learning addition/subtraction, about money, about measurements, how to tell time, and more shapes (such as octagons and trapezoids).

Pre-k: Maddy will learn to recognize numbers 0-10. She will also learn basic shapes.

History: History was my least favorite subject in school. It is my hope that I can make it more interesting for Sean. We will start with geography. Our main tool for that will be the Tag world map. From there he will learn about Native Americans, the early settlers, and so forth with American history. One thing I'm looking forward to is working trips to Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg into our schedule.

Pre-k: This is another topic that Maddy will just follow along with us.

Science: We have gone over many of the topics under science in What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know. A lot of it has just been through living our every day life. So, this is where we'll change things up. We have a membership to the local aquarium. I can't think of a better starting point than seeing and doing first hand! Marine and marsh biology and ecology will come from there. They even have programs geared to young children that we may take advantage of. In addition to that, we'll add some basic anatomy from First Human Body Encyclopedia (from the Dk Series) and then whatever else sparks his interest. We already have most of the Dk series and I hear Santa will be bringing the rest for Christmas. I would also like to find some science experiments to add.

Pre-k: Once again, Maddy will just follow along with us.

Art: I don't know much about art but I do believe I've found a great way to add it into the curriculum. Our local art museum is free and by the sounds of it, also family friendly. Just looking at their website I see they offer free activity sheets and treasure hunts for kids, and have sketching stations with supplies. We will make frequent trips.

Pre-k: Again, Maddy will just follow along with us. Though, I think that I will take Sean alone some of the time. Sean gets time alone with daddy on Mondays when I take Maddy to dance so this would be the perfect chance for Maddy to get that time with daddy.

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Monday, August 6, 2012

Fitness Goals Revisited

Back in February I wrote about my fitness goals. I was happy with the numbers on the scale then. They really weren't bad for just having my third baby! My goal was to get healthier and fitter just by eating good and exercising. It went well...for a week or two. The exercising was a huge fail. It just stopped happening. I felt I was eating ok when in reality, I wasn't. I would forget about the little bite here, or finishing the last little bit of the kids' sandwiches so they wouldn't go to waste, etc. It all added up and the number on the scale started to go up! I had to come up with a better plan. After talking to hubby, we decided to sign up for Weight Watchers. I had done WW before and knew it was easy to follow and it worked. We did our initial weigh in on July 7th. I weighed in at 156.2; about a pound heavier than I was the day before Emily was born. Not good! We signed up under a promotional offer and paid for 3 months. Maybe the money will make us stick with it! So far so good. We've had 4 weigh ins since then and I've lost 10.2 lbs putting me at 146. My ultimate goal is to get down to 130-135. I have not taken measurements but my jeans that I use to have to suck in to get them on, fit comfortably. I hope that they are too big by the time I need to start wearing them again. I want to go jean shopping this fall! If the summer wasn't already half over, I'd go shorts shopping. My shorts that I bought at the beginning of the summer use to fit perfectly. Now I need a belt.


I now have the eating right down and it's working. The next thing is I need to make exercise a habit. This will be the difficult part; finding the time, forgetting the excuses and finding something I love. I will update again.

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Sunday, August 5, 2012

Allergy Testing

Maddy was not suppose to see the allergist until October but last Thursday they called me saying that they had a last minute cancellation and wanted to know if I wanted to move Maddy's appointment to first thing the following morning. I jumped at the chance. I need to back up just a minute. When we found out that Maddy was indeed going to have testing done, we added dairy back. Most days it wasn't much but sometimes she'd get a lot. An odd thing started happening. When she had a lot of dairy like the day she had ice cream or the night we had alfredo, she had very loose stools. Some of those times, she complained her tummy hurt. Needless to say, I was very happy at the chance to move her appointment up by 2 1/2 months. The doctor asked me questions and then said that she was going to do a skin test. Maddy was such a big girl! She didn't even flinch with any of the pokes. A lolly pop then helped keep her mind off the fact that her back itched. Finally time was up and they shared the results. Maddy is not allergic to milk. However, the doctor believes that she may be lactose intolerant. She is now on lactaid milk and lactase supplements. Yesterday, Maddy surprised me. I had some lactase supplements for myself but they weren't they chewable kind. Maddy wanted some cheese so I thought I'd let her try swallowing a pill. Wouldn't you know, she swallowed it without a problem!?



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