on Hiatus!

Wow go one day without blogging and it turns into a week or two:(  A lot has  happened..well, not too much..But I was feeling a bit tin the dumps the day of my blog hiatus.  Easter and spring break for my nephew (and myself too!) went by.  Beans and I have been taking it pretty lite. I would say the highlights have been Easter morning and activities and the discovery of a little green bug we found on my arm at Target.  Beans HAD to rescue it!  She kept telling everyone "Careful! Don't step on my buddy!". I remembered target carried these little bug houses in the dollar section and we ran to see if they had any left.  They had just one left!  So..I ripped off the wrapping, saved the barcode to use for checkout, and got the little green bug inside and the little rescuer was so thrilled and happy! She decided to name him Frankie (I have no idea where she's even heard that name) and she talked to him all the way home.

Easter consisted of a pretty lonely but still fun easter egg hunt, and a trip to the water park to meet with my friend Nicole and her 2 1/2 yr old son.  It was a pretty relaxing day and did a few montessori type activities which calmed her down and then she was out about an hour after that.

I've noticed Beans is really into numbers and can read quite a few words..I was thinking of looking into Kumon JR..but I still need to research the place to the bone.  She's been counting just about everything!
We started a new online program called 'abcmouse.com' and she really enjoys it. We'll see how that pans out:)

ohhh today..

  I had one of 'those moments' today.   The 'I'm so frustrated because you won't cooperate moments' and I am not proud of it.  I had planned to watercolor Earth coloring pages today, while talking about the continent we live in. Well, Beans started feeling real silly and decided she wanted to paint me..I should've just been silly too and gone with it and goofed off painting each other, but I got a bit irritated and then she tipped over our cup of water that was on the floor.  I got pretty mad.  I don't know if it's PMS time but I started to cry! I said mean things like 'I'm sending you to school!'.  She started to cry..Oh what a mess..and to make me feel even worse she was the first to say 'I'm so sorry mom!'.  Oh beancake, I'm more sorry!  Well, thankfully we're on very good terms now.  I just went for a walk with her after that.. what a moment.

"i'ma get the birds!"

   Beans and I visited the Montessori school. It was ok.  I'm having second thoughts.  They had 3 classrooms I believe, but I toured two.  What I noticed that wasn't very Montessori was the age groups; 3 and 4 yr olds together then 4 and 5 yr olds.  In traditional Montessori they have a 3 - 6 mixed age group this way the younger learn from the older and the older learn to teach the younger and sometimes vice versa.  I like that concept, Beans being an only child (for now) and all that jazz. They had their Language arts, Math and Science areas.  But the children seemed too grouped together.  Usually in true Montessori the children are shown demonstrations in small groups and then left to venture on their own with the specific material.  But from what I saw it seemed kinda "traditional schoolish".  So from my observations of the short tour I took I would say it was half montessori half traditional..So perhaps we'll stay home those mornings. Anywho! That was Tuesday. Tuesday we made an awwwwsome forest in a box! We've been studying Earth this month but focused on different types of Tundras and climates so when Beans is faced with the decision of making a forest or desert in a box of course it's a forest for her Tiger and dinosaurs!

And today's grand project was putting together a bird house and painting it and trying to "GET THE BIRDS!"

I must go now....this child is nuts

This mac must have a great immune system..

   Well never mind the 'virus'.  I shut down this thing expecting it blow up or something of the sort.  I kept getting warnings saying 'Are you SURE you want to shut down? Your computer is going to crash.' in a mocking 'haha' sort of way, as I began to sweat and panic. Thoughts of Brian coming home to find his beloved mac fritzing or seizing or smoking at the edges, then asking me in a slow motion type of way.."what  ha ppened  to my  com pu terrr!?' began to consume me.  After relieving my warrior cry (whimper really) I shut it down and turned it back on..waiting for it to do something scary..password - check; menu screen -check; click on safari...yay! It's all good! That was scary. I'll never look for suzuki lesson plans again.  It must be a sign that I just need to get certified one way or the other.
   Enough about that!  Scarlett and I tried this great new website called Kinderbach.
  http://www.kinderbach.com/Learn/Week01/Sesson04/wk1_ses4.html

  It's very engaging for a preschooler ( well, mine at least, but it seems hard to get her involved in much lately) and they give you two free weeks without having to sign up for the program:)  It's starts with a listening program of high - low sounds and then the story of poor poor Dodi the donkey, whose new house is built on the two black keys.  So then Beans actually started to play the two black keys simultaneously calling for dodi and on tempo! Yay Beanpie! We will continue the program and sign up soon. I've had a hard time teaching Beans guitar..She's learned to play a variation of the first part of 'Twinkle' 1/4 of the way, but she doesn't seem to enjoy it much so we won't be trying again until she asks.  She says she really wants to go to violin school.  If she hears a violin in a piece of music or a song she'll ask if I hear it too ( like she thinks she's losing her mind or something ha!) Violin school would be $100/mo for private and for lessons at the patel conservatory $220/mo for private and group (ugh).  We may have to wait a bit. Today I have planned more pipe cleaner sculptures. Here are some we made at the art class!

I also want to do an Earth day project..maybe a terrarrium..agh she wakes!

It's April!

I might try my hand at this blogging thing again. It's 7 am sharp and I've been up since 2 a.m, my brain like a nonstop motorized pest that won't stop torturing me.  So far I've thought up of a few grand ideas for my little preschool homeschool co-op this week.  It's letter D week and I'm thinking dinos,drums and doomsday ( because we all know that's upon us....At least those of us raised catholic).  I'm in love with montessori method so I'm going to try introducing command cards with the chilruns.  A big round sign with red on one side and green on the other. I'm planning on adhering velcro pieces to it and the letters so the letters can be interchanged (stop, go, jump, run, etc.) and playing red light green light! wee!  Since my mornings venture, and this may seem almost very unlike me, but I looked up the VPK program here and it looks surprisingly easy to register and I found a very good Montessori school which is a VPK provider! Montessori for free!??!  I really started having panic episodes here. I didn't think a montessori school would be optional for us. We are kinda poor to be honest.  I'm starting school again and becoming certified in Kindermusik so I'm especially poor for now. Anywho, I am seriously considering Beans try it, at least. I would see it as a supplement to our homeschooling not a trade off..it's only for maybe 3 hours. Plus it's flippin' free!  But that's a ways away. Beans just turned 3.  It's been pretty challenging to get her to focus and seem interested in activities. I know this is my fault.  I'm not introducing it right.  She's also a bit more crazy due to turning 3.  She's goes into denial about knowing things that I know she knows, I'm about to chuck out the T.V because suddenly now she wants to watch it. Lots of it. A leapfrog or animal show here and there.. cool.  But constant disney channel and spongebob..makes me a bit ill.  I'm hoping to get more structured this month with earth day activities and the such..agghhh!!! she's waking! brb

3:00 pm
She's napping finally.  Easy Sunday, I guess. My lack of sleep really started to hit around 10:30am, so I caved and had beans watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with bribery involved of course..(if you let me nap you can watch this for the 107th time k? "squeelzz!')  she kinda let me nap. Then she wanted to watch Miffy. Hell to the no.  She about threw a fit, then I did what I promised myself I would NEVER do inside our home. Bust out the Moonsand. She was happy again. There was weird,sticky synthetic sand everywhere but alas we were happy making moonsand sculptures and making up stories about our moonsand kingdom dominated by an evil witch that eats princes for snacktime and is trying to steal the key to the kingdom. The princess saves the day.  After that she decides to play with the umbrella inside the place for a bit and takes a bath ( because it was a bit dirty..in her words) lunch, Pbskids website and nap.  I hop on the trusty mac computer that really belongs to Bribri, looking for suzuki lessonplans to use with my students when something really terrible happened..and I still am trying to figure it out.  Our $2,000 laptop may be infected with a virus...why me?