I a super hero!!!

Hello people. I'm here to announce my new career path. I am a super hero! Check out this stance... I mean business.
I've so cleverly named myself Super Reese.

I'm not quite sure where I learned these super hero moves, but don't I look like I know what I'm talking about?

Just look at how fancy my cape is... (Rachel here... I think I know two little girls who will be getting super hero capes handmade a la Mommy for Christmas!)

I just took a fancy yet serious leap off of the couch. Watch out evil doers... watch out.

Montessori???

Rachel here. Here's a practical life experience for you. :) Here is a step by step lesson on how to change your baby sister's diaper.

1. Corral said baby sister.
2. Attempt to take off said baby sister's diaper. Not an easy feat my friends... not an easy feat.

3. Re-corral said baby sister after she escapes upon diaper removal.

4. Clean said baby sister's bum.

4. Give up and allow a "responsible" adult to take over.

Disclaimer... there really is nothing to disclaim. This is shameful, but how could we NOT take pictures???? :)

Monday/Tuesday... Reese

Rachel here. Preschool the last two days has gone GREAT! A Monday - Thursday schedule is definitely best for Reese... hopefully no one will get sick for the rest of the "school year", and we'll be good to go. ;) These activities aren't in the order we did them in, they are just in the order they happened to fall in while organizing before and after photos. (Just in case you were dieing to know.) Last week I bought Reese a computer game from Target in hopes to re-spark her interest in working on the computer. It's a PBS program and has a lot of characters that Reese knows, so she was super excited about it. She was willing to give it another go and played it until she got frustrated. She was able to answer a lot of what they were asking her, but she's still working on mouse control and having a hard time with it.
This is a cute little number matching game I made while student teaching Kindergarten. I still had it! You have to match the head with a certain number of stickers on it to the tail with the identical number of stickers. Reese did really well when I told her to slow down and count each sticker one at a time. She has a hard time slowing down.

I set out some of her wooden puzzles. I was telling Bryan the other day that if we have any more children, they can't have double identical letters in their names. Reese can spell her name but does so like this "R-E-E-E-E-E-S-E." Poor E-M-M-M-M-M-A will have the same problem I presume.

I found this old school Memory game at the thrift store a while back. While we didn't play according the rules, Reese did REALLY well with matching each card from the left bowl with a card in the right bowl.

I laid one set out for her in the box and lid, so that she could see them better.

Color sorting with buttons.

Monday and Tuesday's letter was /b/. Reese did awesome. She made a bumblebee, a butterfly, and she decorated her /b/ with band aids.

Reese put globs of paint on one piece of paper, put another sheet on top, and smoothed it out in order to make her butterfly wings.

We even had time for a play date. A and L came over to play... we'll be picking those dates back up every Friday this Fall. While A and Reese tend to be two ships passing in the night, L and Emma Grace play well, and the adult conversation with M is always nice. :)

I attempted to have Reese work on the new and improved alphabet. She did MUCH better this time, and I didn't want to pull my hair out. I made sure all the letters were the same color as they were on the sheet, and there are guidelines for where she was supposed to put the letters. She did still ask "what's next Mommy?" after every single letter, but I'll take what I can get.

Reese loved pouring Cheerios into each of the different containers.

This is one of those puzzles where you have to match all four sides with the neighboring pieces. Obviously Reese wasn't going to be able to do that, but she did really great with it and had a blast.

She was even able to do all the nuts and bolts on her own this time. VERY EXCITING!

I read "Brown Bear Brown Bear" to Reese, while she found the pieces of her wooden puzzle and put them together. It was really cute.

When we got to the last page that lists all the colored animals, she had to put them back into the box in that order. She then took the puzzle to the table and did it about 3 more times.

I wasn't sure if Reese would be able to do this activity as I've noticed she's forgetting her /a/ and /f/ sounds. Each picture on the left matches with a word on the right. Obviously she can't read the words yet, but I picked out all the sounds we've covered so far. She did so amazing with this. I would say "Can you find your /b/ for the baby?", and she'd find it right away and put them together.

We had snack, and the girls decided it would be so funny to dust all the Cheerios around on the table and knock them on the floor.

I made Reese clean them up. Her technique was pretty entertaining, and I of course had to finish cleaning up. :)

More with practicing the letter sounds. I took the sandpaper letters and used them as the letter headers for this sort. I have about 8 cards for each sound but only did 4 for each. Once she figured out that each letter sound could have more than one card underneath it, we were money. I would say "Reese, can you find the /f/ for the fan?" She'd put it right under the /f/ well over half the time, so that was encouraging.

Reese also worked on her color matching with her animal hospital. Each door color matches a key color... Emma Grace plays with this toy more, but Reese was into this afternoon.

Hopefully the rest of the week goes as smoothly as yesterday and today went. :)

The Perfect Mom?

Rachel here. I woke up this morning with this video posted to my Facebook. Bryan had a similar one for people who work in public accounting, and I remember how funny and TRUE it was. Do I understand the first thing about accounting? Absolutely not, but I understood the personal family issues that the characters were implying. When I watched "my" version of the video, I thought it was perfect, and I couldn't have done it better myself. It's funny because I started off just like "Barbie" ... wanting to be the perfect little mommy. Do I still feed my children organic food... as much as we can afford. Do I think breast is best... yep... but only if it's best for you... Reese was breastfed for 2 months, and I nearly died. Did I consider not vaccinating because of the fear of autism... because the internet told me... not completely... I desperately wanted to change our schedule but instead took a leap of faith and trusted our AMAZING pediatrician. Am I the perfect mom? No chance in hell. Do I always do what's best for my children? No chance in hell... they love goldfish too much. But I do spend every waking moment with them each and every day, and we do the best that we can. I think everyone will find the humor in this video whether you're like "Barbie" or "All American Mommy".

Shake it Like a Polaroid Picture

For your viewing enjoyment.

Reese... Thursday/Friday

Rachel here. This week I've started to introduced Reese to numbers. This is a cute puzzle that matches the number of objects with the numeral. We worked on it together, but Reese was being SUPER SILLY and skipping numbers and starting with random ones. It was really frustrating. Fridays are horrible teaching days around here. We did manage to finish, but this was definitely not the only activity where Reese really tested my patience.
Yesterday all she did was learn the /f/ sound, paint, and play with playdoh... ALL DAY. Not once was she ill behaved either... that made for a long day today though to get things done.

I love putting different things in her play doh container to see what she does with them. This go 'round I used marbles... she loved it.

I found this puzzle (along with a couple other really great things) at Once Upon a Child. I originally had a similar one on the girls' Amazon Wish List, but this was only $5.50, so I couldn't resist. I had it on Emma Grace's shelf, but Reese really seemed to enjoy it.

For the second part of the week we worked on the /f/ sound. Reese painted a BEAUTIFUL fish with water color paint and added some pom poms for a lovely glittery effect. ;)

Along with her fish, we painted her hand prints and made a flower for her /f/ wall. Her letters are covered in goldfish. My dining room is quickly becoming covered in awesome artwork... I LOVE IT!

I was hoping this activity would get Reese counting out loud and realizing the number of objects to numeral relationship. (I used a bingo blotter for the dots.) This was another activity that we had to do together. I would say the number, count the dot, and then Reese would count the button as she placed it over the dot. It worked well but not how I originally envisioned it. I thought she would be able to do more of it on her own, but with practice we'll get there.

More math. Patterns. I don't think Reese really grasped the concept. She kept putting the frogs on the color willy nilly... out of order. Once she got to the last strip though and saw there were only two colors, she had a smile on her face and put them in place in order. Maybe a light bulb was going off????

This was an adaptation to an activity I tried to do with Reese earlier on with transferring spring loaded clothes pins to the rim of a glass. She wasn't able to squeeze the pin hard enough, so I found these non loaded ones in a crafting box. She must have done this activity a dozen times just today.

This activity nearly caused me to have a heart attack. Look at the letter on the paper, find it in the bucket, put it on the tray. You would think it would have been that easy wouldn't you? OMG.

"Reese, can you find the /a/?" "Yes... right here. What do I do with it?" "Put it on your tray, then cover the letter up on your paper with a button." "Oh okay. Now what I do next Mommy?" She did this for every single solitary letter. And then she wanted to start putting the letters wherever she wanted to on the tray. And then she was all kinds of worried because the magnetic letters were NOT the same color as the ones on the sheet. And then she was worked up because Emma Grace was waking up and she would eat the buttons. Needless to say I've found foam letters that match the correct colors, and I've taped lines onto the cookie sheet. She will do this on her own... oh yes she will. ;)

Look how bored she looks. "Mommy... what's wrong with tv?" This was about the time I threw in the towel and turned on "Word World" from the DVR and fixed dinner.

Today was our first Literature Friday. I know soon the weather will be too cold to really go out and enjoy a "Fun Friday," so I thought we would read a super fun book and do an activity with it. Today we read "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." I loved it, Reese could have lived without it but was very concerned when I said we would just stop because I didn't think she was paying attention. Turns out she was and DEFINITELY wanted to finish. Earlier in the week Reese did a cutting exercise, and I saved the red and brown paper she cut to use for our spaghetti and meatball art.

CUTE RIGHT???? We may have gotten a little glue happy, but it's sweet nonetheless.

THANK GOD IT'S THE WEEKEND. :)