Self Centered and Selfish. Check!

This morning has already been a challenge.  I guess I should say that last night started the challenge;that dreaded battle of going to bed.  It is rather hard to convince a stubborn 3 1/2 year old that sleeping is not a waste of time...specially when he is the one to tell you that.  Even after a massage with essential lavender oil, it was a fight to get my child to sleep.

After a restless night of sleep, ups and downs, we finally started our morning at 7 am.  I had hope for the day.  After all, 7 is way later than the usual 5:30 am.  Surely this must mean the boys are rested.  Right?  Wrong.  It was not transparently going to be a bad day.  Pierce asked if he could do the dishes in the sink and make toast as soon as he woke up.  Yeah!  It was going to be a great day!  And then I served the breakfast he chose.  Toast with scrambled eggs.  Apparently, it was not what he wanted after all.  He ate his toast that he made.  That was not the problem.  The problem was that the minute I got up from the table to serve myself a cup of coffee, he threw his plate of eggs on the floor for the dog to eat.  And there is started.

I brushed it off.  After all, I am completely exhausted since I was the one up all night.  Plus, the world knows I do not do well on no sleep.  It is painfully obvious with the swollen eyes, lack of gallop in my step, etc.  I just explained to him that was his choice, and he would have no other food until lunch.  After a couple of tears, he understood.  Great!  Let's move on with making some Christmas gifts.  Yippee!

It started well again...both boys were so excited to be making a watercolor painting for Nana.  The main reason?  They were able to paint on a canvas.  That is a big treat in this house.  We taped off the N in the middle, and I made the water colors, and let them go to town.  I sat next to them as they mixed colors and were so excited to see what they would turn out to be.  When they were done, I gave them a piece of paper, and took the canvas downstairs to dry.  While I was down there, I switched laundry as well, and came right back upstairs.  I was shocked!  There were water colors EVERYWHERE!  I was gone for 2 minutes.  In that time frame, they managed to get water colors on every wall, window, couch, pillow, and each other.  Apparently, they learned that water colors splatter really well when you shake the brush.  It was partially my fault for leaving; but I trust that my children will make good choices.  And this time they didn't.  So I handed each one of them a Mr. Clean sponge, and told them to have at it.  There would be no more painting until they were done cleaning.

Did I raise my voice?  Yes.  Do I feel horrible about it?  Yes.  But I was shocked.  And I am human.  The final straw of the morning, was when I gave them a fun bath.  You see, I had them paint the jars for their cousins that we are going to put bath salts in for them.  Carter had a horrendous time following simple directions, but Pierce had a blast.  However, they both ended up covered in MORE paint, so I set up a fish tank bath.  I colored the water blue, put in their Toob fishes, and made an awesome bath for them to play in.  All was going well until Pierce bit Carter's back.  Yes, he bit his little brother.  Why may you ask?  Because Carter had Nemo and he wanted it.  He bit him so hard, he broke skin.  And then I yelled.  It was if I was a completely different person.  I threatened to call Santa.  I told them we were not putting up Christmas lights today.  And then I sent both to bed, since it is obvious they needed sleep.

I always read them a book before nap, and I brought out the book that they have been asking for; Winnie the Pooh's Thanksgiving.  I started reading it for them, since they stopped crying long enough to listen to me.  And I felt horrible for yelling at them.  I hate it.  That is not me...I don't think.  I think I am usually pretty darn forgiving.  Except for when it comes to hurting each other.  As soon as I started reading the book, they both got out of their beds, and started pushing and hitting each other over who was sitting in my lap.  And that was all it took.  I was done.  I yelled at them again, telling them this behavior is beyond unacceptable.  Children or not, hitting and fighting is a big no no in our house.  We use words.  Not fists.  Not our bodies.  Words.  I tucked them both back in, told them I loved them, and left.

Then I wrote a post on Facebook listing the morning events, and asking myself why did I choose to be a stay at home mom.  Now obviously, I will never regret it.  Obviously, it is just a tough day.  What I thought would happen would other moms saying, "I wonder that sometimes too" or "Don't we all get to that point?"  What I was not expecting was somebody telling me that I need to get MY priorities straight, and that I was completely selfish and self centered.  I may be immature at times.  I may be a stickler for rules, and sometimes a bit over bearing.  However, one thing I am not is self centered and selfish.  I don't know how many times I have written on here and on my personal page about how thankful I am for my husband and his family giving up so much for me to stay home with my boys.  I don't know how many times I have written that even when you are having one of these kinds of days, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.  But yet I am self centered.  Yet again, a mom cannot support another mom or understand that this Momma is overwhelmed and offer encouragement.  Instead, there seems to be this need to tear each other down.  Why?!  Why do we do this to each other?

If what this person defines self centered as giving up anything for my children's benefit, barely taking time for myself, and always making sure my family has food in their bellies, then I guess I am.  If this person defines self centered and selfish as not going out with my husband on a date, or going out with friends because I don't want to impose my children on anybody, then I guess I am.  We all have our moments of why.  We all ask ourselves would our lives be any better if we had chosen a different path.  However, I know at the end of the day that even with my children not acting like their typical selves, I would not trade this for the world.  I would sacrifice my career and financial independence again in a heart beat.  You have one shot to raise your children the way you would like them to be raised.  One chance to make the world a better place by teaching your children responsibility, compassion, and empathy.  One chance to make them understand why there are rules in society.  So to that person that decided to kick me while I am down, thank you.  You have made me realize that if I define self centered and selfish as I did above, that is exactly who I want to be.


And by the way, we are all human.  We cannot be perfect.  Yelling at my children is something I hate.  It happens.  I will choose not to dwell on it all day.  I will choose to explain to my children that yelling at them was wrong and apologize.  I will show my children that even grown ups make mistakes too.

2,190 days

As of this Sunday, October 13, 2013, my wonderful husband and I will have been married for 2,190 days, or 6 years.  It is hard to believe that 6 short years ago, I had the honor of marrying the man that is now the father of our two amazing children.  Am I going to say that it has been a bed of roses?  Oh heck no.  We have certainly had our ups and downs, but I can honestly say that our love has grown everyday.

I can also say that if you asked us the day of our wedding where we were going to be in 6 short years, I probably would have given you this answer.  I would probably have a 1 year old at this point.  We would own a huge house, beautiful cars, and I would be concerned about climbing the corporate ladder.  We would still be living in CT, but more in the middle of the state.  We would have a ton of friends, and love to throw big parties at least once a month.  In short, I pictured the life the complete opposite of what we have now.

What we have now, certainly does not add up to much on paper.  We have 2 cars (that are FINALLY paid off), a dog, a cat, and two amazing kids.  We have a crap ton of debt that we are working so hard to pay off, and we live with my in-laws.  However, the journey that Dan and I have taken together over the last 6 years, is one that could never be measured in terms of on paper.  We almost bought a house, but were victims of mortgage fraud and could not obtain a mortgage in the 30 day requirement that we had.  We made a lot of awesome friends, and had a grand old time hosting parties and events.  However, when I took a transfer to move across the country with my former company, we lost a lot of those awesome friends.  But, the journey did bring us our first bundle of joy; Mr. Pierce.  After losing one baby right before we moved, and trying for at least 8 months, we never thought it would happen.  However, I guess we were relaxed and happy enough for it to finally click.

After Pierce was born, my career no longer really mattered to me.  I never knew I could love something so small, so much.  And I never knew that Dan and I could love each other so much, yet be so annoyed with each other.  I would say, we learned that sleep is a necessity for our relationship to function.  And so is personal space.  To be honest, I think the biggest blessing of our 6 years of marriage came when I lost the job I had just taken 10 short days before they decided they didn't need me.  This left us without a place to live, a newborn baby, and a trip back across the country to move in with Dan's parents.  We must have been a sight on the road; 2 cars with over stuffed cargo bags on the roof, and the inside of the cars filled with everything we could fit that was important to us.

A few short months later, we got a nice surprise.  I thought I had the flu; it turns out that my flu was named Carter.  We were terrified.  One income, living with his parents, this was not the way our life was supposed to be.  We were supposed to be financially stable,independent adults.  I mean, isn't that where we are supposed to be at 26 years of age?  But that pregnancy came with a bomb shell.  At 5 months pregnant, we learned that my father had stage 4 liver cancer.  Without us ever knowing what we were getting ourselves into, we jumped feet first into spending as much time with my father that we could.  This meant putting a HUGE strain on our marriage, by me practically moving in with my mom and dad, and taking Pierce with me.  Dan was now left essentially on his own, while Pierce and I built as many memories with my parents as we could.  Then 9 short weeks after Carter was born, my dad slipped away into Heaven.  At the age of 27, I no longer had a dad. I had no idea how devastated I would be to lose my dad, until I lost him.  Dan had no idea how to deal with it either; and I think it truthfully took me about a good 6 months to realize my father was not coming back.

I was a train wreck.  Dan had no idea how to deal with me, and I had no idea how to tell him what I needed.  To be honest, I have no idea how our marriage survived.  Specially since that train wreck lasted a good year.  I had never been filled with so many emotions at once in my life.  Ever.

And now that leaves us as of today, and I look back on our life and compare it to what it "should" have been.  I can honestly say that I don't think I would have found true happiness with what we should have had.  Yes, we would have had a lot more in our bank account, and we would not have been shopping at thrift stores for our clothes.  But, we would not have had the family bond that we have now.  We certainly are never going to see eye to eye on everything.  There are no two people in the world that ever will.  But this I think we can both agree on;

We love each other forever and always.  We love our boys with all of our hearts and souls, and would stop the world for them if we could.  The bond that the 4 of us have can never be broken, and the appreciation for our families can never be more profound.  I am so excited to think of what the next 50 years brings to us.  Dan, thank you for everything.  Thank you for working crazy hours in crazy situations so that we can build our life over.  Thank you for supporting me and sticking by me through all of the emotional turmoil that I have been through and caused.  I love you, forever and always, always and forever.

And to my readers; I would say sorry for writing this mushy post, but one day this entire blog is going to be printed for my boys to read.  It is so important for them to know, when they are adults, that you don't give up on problems.  You work together to find solutions; and that includes not giving up on people.  If Dan had given up on me through all of my emotional issues, then we would not be the happy family we are now.  We are not perfect, we still squabble and annoy each other.  Nobody is perfect, and should not claim to be.  Thank you for allowing me to express this, and thank you for not judging me either.  Good night!

It's the Most, Wonderful Time, of the Year. :)

For those of you who only know me through here, I am in love with fall.  Our wedding anniversary is in fall, and I find more outside activities to do outside in the fall than I do in the summer...as if that were possible.  To me it is like a sense of renewal, which I know is the opposite of most people.  The bright colors awaken my soul, the cool air is amazing, and it is the perfect time for friends to come together around a nice relaxing fire sipping some cider.  Ah.  Fall.

So, of course I need to do an entire week on the season.  And I wish I had planned for longer already, but I know that the boys are not going to let it end after a week.  They are constantly noticing the leaves, the smells in the air, and they love the farms being open (hence next week's lesson).  I also think they are noticing more, since we are no longer running around doing various events and parties, vacations and get togethers.  We are FINALLY spending a lot of time at home and in the woods.  (I also love that a tank of gas lasts me a week now.  Woo hoo!)  We started off on Monday by an introduction to fall.  We had already discussed a lot of it through basic conversations and observations outside; leaves changing color, falling, and the cool air.  However, we are now diving into matching what type of leaves come from what tree, studying acorns, and learning that some trees give us food as well.  As I have learned with Carter, he is much more of a tear it apart and ask questions kind of kiddo.  So I made him a super simple sensory bin that he loves.  The base to this is straw, with artificial pumpkins, apples, etc.  I will certainly use real next time, since he tried to eat the fake fruit.  Oops!

We also had some leftover clay from dinosaur week.  Being as frugal as I am, I did not want to waste it, and I wanted to kids to have a chance exploring with all of their senses.  So I gave each of them 3 piles and 3 different fall spices to mix in.  We had allspice, cinnamon, and ginger, to give us some fantastic smelling play dough.  It also changed the color, and they loved watching that.  I then had found some really cute cookie cutters at Target (squirrel, leaf, pumpkin, and apple) so they were able to use them to make some pretty cool creations.  Carter added in his stuff from the sensory bin, but then quickly switched back over to his Duplo blocks.  

The final big hit of the day (and I have a feeling the next couple of weeks) was the creating of a corn pit.  I went to Tractor Supply and purchased Deer Corn and Corn cobs for relatively cheap.  Just like I did with the sand, I cleaned out their old plastic pool and dumped about 60 pounds of corn in.  Pierce took it upon himself to put in his slide, and they have been almost impossible to get out of there.  They love talking about the texture, the colors, and just creating different scenarios.  Right now, they are having fun putting their match box trucks in there and pretending they are "muddin".  Yup, they take after their momma.  :)

Thus far, the rest of the "school" time has been using the fall pack I had created from various sources.  One of them has a pattern sheet, and Pierce is so happy that he was finally able to complete a pattern with NO help from mommy.  Carter has been having a blast matching his cards to various pictures.  I also started a month long project of creating this little alphabet apple and pumpkin book.  The apples are all the capital letters, and the pumpkins are all lower case letters.  They have to cut out the lower case letters and glue them under the upper case.  To my surprise, they actually liked it!  I precut a lot of it, just to make it more age appropriate.

We also created some rubbings with some simple patterns I purchased from Oriental Trading.  They had so much fun making these!  Pierce honestly spent an hour, and he made enough to cover the door in our school room.  :)

I have quite a bit more planned for the week, and I am so excited to share my favorite season with the boys.  Hopefully you all have a great week as well.  What are your favorite fall activities?

Dino Pictures

We did not get a new computer yet.  However, I did manage to get Dan's computer to cooperate long enough to download my pictures.  Yay!  So without further adieu, here are the pictures to go along with the last post.


Here the boys are making their dino eggs.  This was by far the most popular activity of the week, and they are still talking about it.  It was super simple, and with the coffee mixed in it did smell pretty fantastic!

I forgot to mention in my previous post about how the boys became paleontologists for the afternoon.  They made sure they told their Grandma all about what a paleontologist does, and reminded me they needed a brush to get in between the bones.  This will certainly be an activity repeated when we do dinosaurs in the spring again.

And here are some random pictures from the week.  It certainly was a lot of fun, and hopefully in the spring we can share our fun with some other kiddos too!

Doing the dinosaur dance.

Eating our alphabet eggs.

It's the end of the dinosaurs. :(

Recap of Dino Week

Sorry for the lack of updates this week. We are in the process of purchasing a new laptop, since mine has been almost dead for awhile, and Dan's computer keeps shutting down when we attempt to use it. Yes, I do have my phone, but until I cave in and get glasses, it REALLY hurts to see that little screen as I type. :) So with that being said, I need to wait for the new computer to come in so I can upload pictures.  Sorry about that...

Anyhow, Dino week went AMAZING. The boys had so much fun learning about dinosaurs, and had a blast being paleontologists in the sand box. Pierce even reminded me that we needed a brush to gently clean the fossils so we do not damage them. We ended the week with a field trip to Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill, accompanied by 2 other awesome homeschooled kiddos and their mom. I had never been to the park before, and I will certainly be taking the boys back. A lot of stuff is hands-on which is always a blessing when discussing a toddler and preschooler. They had some cool hiking trails with lots of tidbits along the way, and the discovery room was the best. Oh! And I couldn't forget the fossils, tracks, or dinosaur replicas that were all throughout the building either.

In regards to school activities for the week, we did a lot of the standard usual stuff. The boys worked on matching dinosaurs, putting together the heads and tails of dinosaurs, puzzles, pre-writing worksheets, and a TON of sensory play. However, their inside sensory table I created did not get as much use as I thought it would. They had way more fun burying the big fossils in the sand where it was more plain jane. What did make the list of repeat activities had to do with letters and making Dino eggs.

I had found some eggs online with letters printed on them. They were originally printed off for Easter, but why can't dino eggs have pastel colors and cool patterns? On a whim, I decided to take 6 of the letters at a time, and have Pierce's dinosaur “eat” the letter I called out. (He was playing with a tyrannosaurs at the time). He LOVED it! He also loved that I had him tell me what letter to land on. Not only did it reinforce his knowledge of letters, it also challenged him since the letters were all lower case. Carter briefly looked at it, but he was more concerned with playing outside. And I couldn't blame him. It was close to 85 degrees out.

The second activity that was a huge hit was making our own dinosaur eggs. If you look up how to make treasure rocks online, you will end up with a ton of search results. I had found this activity a long time ago and had only written down the ingredients I would need, so unfortunately I cannot give the proper credit to my source. Essentially it was a combination of flour, salt, coffee, sand, and water that we molded around miniature dinosaurs. They did not look like eggs, but the boys did not care. They had fun mixing, measuring, and then playing. I planned on leaving them out to dry, but with the moisture in the air, I ended up having to put them in the oven the next morning. The boys were so excited to hatch their eggs, and I was pretty excited too. It was a great fine motor activity, which I did not plan on. It was really tough to break apart the dough! The smiles on their faces once they finally got the eggs opened, and the little dinosaurs out was awesome. They loved trying to figure out what type of dinosaur hatched, and then they started role playing with mommy dinosaurs.

I certainly do not feel like I covered everything I wanted to in regards to teaching about dinosaurs. However, it is time to move onto fall BEFORE all of our leaves fall. What I will do is reintroduce the topic again in the spring. I already asked the boys if they wanted to do dinosaurs again, and they both answered YES. That is the beauty of homeschooling; the flexibility of being able to venture back to what your children want to learn about. Do you have any favorite dinosaur activities?   

Why I do what I do...

Now that this blog has become a little bit more popular, I have received a couple of e-mails asking why I am so focused on my boys having so much sensory play, and not as much "school" work.  I don't feel like I have to explain myself, but maybe a little bit of background on our situation may be helpful to somebody else.  You never know.  So, here is our story of why we are so obsessed with sensory play in our house.

It started back in the spring of 2011 when we realized that something was not totally clicking with Pierce.  He would not let me leave his side, was extremely attached (to an unhealthy extent), did not like people coming in the house that he did not know, and absolutely detested being dirty.  I am talking a full blown melt down if he had dirt on his hands.  He loved baths, but hated any water going over his head.  Being in my 3rd trimester of pregnancy with Carter, I didn't really think anything of it; I just figured he was a stubborn child who knew what he wanted.  There were also a lot of changes going on in our lives.  My father was just diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer and given months to live.  On my own will, I packed up a bunch of my stuff and Pierce's stuff and started spending 4-5 days a week with my parents, and 2-3 days a week with Dan.  It was not the best situation, but I knew my time was valuable with my dad.

It was actually my dad that sat me down shortly after Carter was born and told me, "I love you, but there is just something not right.  He is not really speaking, he is more than attached, and the kid has a temper I have never seen in a toddler."  I remember those words so clearly as we sat at the edge of my dad's bed talking.  And it dawned on me, he was right.  Shortly after the passing of my dad (yet another life change for Pierce), I had to bring Pierce to the doctor for his 18 month well visit.  He started asking me questions about Pierce that were raising red flags to the doctor, but the final culmination was when the doctor went to lay Pierce back for the examination and Pierce actually kicked the scope out of his hand.  By the end of that visit, we had a referral in our hands for something called Birth to Three.

I was hesitant at first to even call them.  It is hard for any parent to hear that there may be something wrong with their child.  We all want the best for our kids, and all have visions of these perfect boys and girls going off to school and becoming successful adults.  Soon after I called them, there were a total of 3 people coming to the house to "assess" Pierce.  First we had a teacher and a speech pathologist that agreed he needed to have services.  They were so convinced that he needed help in more ways they could offer, they actually referred him to an autism specialist.  I still remember crying as I sat in the house by myself with these 2 complete strangers, holding my newborn and looking at my toddler.  This was not part of my plan.  Not at all.

The autism specialist came the following week, did her evaluation, and stated there were some concerns, but she did not believe it to be autism.  She believed it to be a sensory issue.  What?!  What is that?!  And starting January 2012, I became fully involved in learning all about so many more things that I never expected to learn about.  We had a completely wonderful teacher that became a part of our life.  Twice a week for an hour or more each time she would come to our house and make Pierce get dirty, in many different ways.  She had him touch things that were rough (he could not stand tags in his clothes, or anything rough near him), had him finger paint (this was met with EXTREME opposition at first), and had him play in salt (I never would have thought of that).  Twice a month we had a speech pathologist come in to help with him making shapes with his mouth and overcoming various food textural issues (he could not stand anything pureed or anything mushy).  It was finally meeting with the occupational therapist that helped me completely understand everything as well.  It was such a relief to finally understand my own child.  I had never felt more relieved.

This whole process lasted for about 18 months.  That was a solid 18 months of therapy to have him developmentally "catch up" to his peers.  When they first tested his speech, he was at the cognition level (meaning he understood) of a four year old, but an expression level of a 9 month old (meaning he could only babble as well as a 9 month old at the age of 20 months).  That massive gap was causing a lot of our issues, and closing that gap was my priority.  Once we got the sensory issues under check, it was even more relieving.  I learned so much through the services we received that I guess it sort of became my passion.

So, why do I still do all of this sensory stuff if the gap has been closed?  Simple.  It will forever be a process in our house.  Even when we are crafting now, if he has glue on his hands, or paint, he will ask over and over to go wash his hands and come back.  My answer is always, "No thank you.  You may wash your hands when you are done.  It is fun to be messy."  It is a reminder to him that it is alright to be dirty, and eventually it will clean off.  Just this summer we are finally to the point that when he falls he doesn't need a napkin right away to clean his hands.  He uses his pants.  All of this stuff that a lot of people take for granted is a work of progress here.  So every time I get him to play in sand, play in shaving cream, salt, etc., it is a small victory and reinforcing that it's fun.  Plus, I have noticed that both of my boys learn way more when their bodies are completely involved in something.  That is just how a lot of toddlers and preschoolers learn.

Hopefully this may help somebody else that has been going through a similar situation.  Hopefully it makes a little more sense why we have sensory play every day.  But in any case, every child is different.  What may work for my boys may not work for others.  And we are slowly getting there with introducing writing pages and such.  Pierce certainly has a love/hate relationship with them.  But every day is a new journey and I have learned to embrace it.  I have learned to love every challenge that we face together.  And the most important lesson I learned a LONG time ago?  Forget having a plan.  Your children will never follow the same plan as you.  :)

Have a great day everyone!

ROAR! Dinosaur!

Yes, I have two very happy little boys tonight.  It is finally dinosaur week in our house.  The reason why I say finally, is because they have asked since before school officially started to study dinosaurs.  My logic for not starting them right away?  I did not want school to be a flop and ruin their love for dinosaurs.  So, 3 weeks into our school calendar, they are roaring throughout the house happy as, well, maybe a brontosaurus?

To start off the week, I made them an inside sensory bin.  Luckily I have a table that is split in 2, so they each have their own side to manipulate and destroy.  The base of the table this week was sand - I had 80 pounds of it in our outside sandbox, so I borrowed about 2 cups from their.  In addition to the sand they had one plastic tree each, smooth glass beads for water, rocks, floral moss, kidney beans, and Toob Dinosaurs.  I think I have officially fallen in love with the Toob figures; they are the perfect size for play worlds, are so real to life, and are just awesome.  I found mine in Michaels, and then I have just grown our collection from Amazon (yes, they have revolutionary war figures.  Yippee!).

Anyhow, Pierce woke up this morning and was ready for school at 5:15 am.  To preoccupy him and to keep him out of his sensory table (it was a complete surprise to them), we played connect the dots on the white board.  Even Daddy joined in before work and was all sorts of complicated with his connect the dots.  I was just focusing on shapes.  :)

After our usual morning ritual of a song and doing some finger plays, we read Dinosaur Dinosaur by Kevin Lewis.  It was the perfect length book, and I have to admit it was very cute.  From there I pulled out the dinosaur fossils that I had purchased from Amazon.  (I think I am a bit addicted to Amazon).  Pierce has been in love with this one game from www.sesamestreet.org that has Grover being a paleontologist.  This has spurred a massive curiosity about paleontology, so I figured making fossil imprints would be the perfect way to tie that together.  And it was a home run.  Not only did both boys love making the imprints in the clay, Pierce turned it into a game of what letter the dinosaurs were eating.  They concentrated really hard on it, and I am hoping their imprints dry out by Friday so I can bury them in the sand.  If not, the fossils will work just fine.  :)   In any case, I was so very happy to witness Pierce showing Carter the different letters of the alphabet, and helping him find the ones I was asking him to find.  The teamwork component of what I am trying to teach them is really coming together.  Pierce also decided to try to match up the fossils to our Montessori dinosaur cards and figure out whose bones he had in his hand.  He really took what I planned to be a simple activity and made it grow.  *proud mommy moment*

Our imprints that we made.  :)

Helping Carter figure out his letters.

From our expanded fossil project, we moved on to making the other craft I had planned for today; ripping up tissue paper and gluing it on to a dinosaur cut out.  Never in a million years, did I expect my children to enjoy ripping up tissue paper circles as much as they did.  They have always shied away from tissue paper in the past, but I am thinking since it had to do with dinosaurs that is why there was a difference in their tune. They not only ferociously ripped up the tissue paper, they had fun making it "rain" and trying to catch certain colors of tissue paper.  To make the dinosaurs, I watered down some simple white glue so that they could paint the dinosaur with glue and then stick the little pieces on (yay for fine motor skills).  Pierce realized that if you glue over the pieces you stuck down, you could layer more colors of paper, and it looked really cool.  Carter lost interest in the gluing part rather quickly, so he went back to throwing the tissue paper in the air.

Ripping up tissue paper.

Making our dinosaurs

Layering his tissue paper.  :)

The final planned lesson of today was open play with the sensory table.  I took one last picture of it, since I knew it would never look the same again.  :)  I gave each boys a set of tweezers, a scoop, and complete free reign to create and play however they wanted.  Pierce brought out the sheets to match up his Toob dinosaurs to our sheets, and did that for a little bit.  When Carter realized that he could make the beans "pop high in air," both boys fell in love with the tweezers and made beans pop everywhere.  It was hilarious!  And I know they were learning, and eventually they went back to the dinosaurs.  They absolutely loved the table, and have already asked if they could play with it again in the morning.  Am I surprised by this?  No.  They love their sensory stuff.  There is no denying that.

Today was such an awesome learning day with the boys.  In all, we ended up having school for 3 hours.  I love it!  They were actually upset with me for having them stop to eat lunch.  And of course, after lunch came nap, and neither was a fan of that.  However, I am not a fan of my children without naps.  ;)  Hope everyone has a great rest of their week, and coming up on tap for us on Wednesday is making treasure rocks.  Yay!

All About Me Week; recap of our favorite activities

Sorry for the delay of not writing any posts recently.  Once the boys recovered from being sick, guess who was next in line?  If you guessed me, you would be correct.  I went back and forth all day yesterday between being burning hot and freezing cold.  Now I completely understand why the boys were so miserable when they had this dreaded cold.  However, we did continue on with school this week after we revamped our set up, and I have to say it is going MUCH better.  Carter is way more willing to participate, and it is nice to have zero distractions.  Well, except for the 90 pound golden retriever that gets super excited when I say school time now.  That is hilarious.  Here are a few recaps on our 5 favorite activities of the week.

Texture Painting:

 Tuesday night I decided to take the boys for a nice evening walk at Thomaston Dam.  They were full of energy since they had slept until 5 pm, so it was time for them to run, and for mommy to get her workout in as well.  The boys requested that we stop and take a look at all the pretty leaves that had fallen on the ground, and how could I say no?  Pierce was amazed that the leaves were different shapes, and Carter went NUTS over the colors.  Our dog then pointed out that there were acorns everywhere (she was chasing one that fell on the ground), which lead to comparing big ones vs small ones.  We gathered a bunch of materials to bring home for school the next day.  Since we were focusing on hands and feet, as well as touch and taste, we decided to paint using the objects to see what the various textures would make.  We also had a competition to see who could pick the most acorns up with their feet as well.  They absolutely loved painting with their nature finds, and did not stop talking about all of the different colors and textures the entire time.  It was great!

Fresh Squeezed Lemonade:

I honestly had never made fresh squeezed lemonade before.  It was something that was on my list, and thanks to Yo Gabba Gabba (feel free to start singing the song in your head now), it is something that the boys have been wanting to do.  So, what better way to teach about taste and sweet vs sour than making lemonade?  Before I cut the lemons in half, I had the boys describe to me what they felt like.  Words such as cold, bumpy, and wet were coming out of the boys.  Once I cut them in half, I had them each lick a lemon and then describe it.  So of course sour was the first thing that was said; but then I could not get Carter to stop licking the lemons!  He loved it!!!!  Pierce thoroughly enjoyed using the juicer to separate the juice from pulp.  He then noticed that the lemons felt different after they were juiced.  I absolutely love when my boys make their own observations without being prompted.  In the end, we all enjoyed a fresh glass of lemonade with not a lot of sugar in it.  For that day, they decided they did not like sweet.


Homemade Sensory Bags:

I know these are all over Pinterest, and it is certainly not an original idea.  I even bought the hair gel to make them about a month ago, but had decided not to since I thought the boys were too old for them.  However, since my children decided not to nap at all on Wednesday, and asked for more school, I decided to finally make them.  And I am glad I did.  Not only do they love the squishyness (is that a word?) of them, but they loved holding it up to the sun and looking at the different colors.  That was a realization they made all on their own as well.  Both boys also loved that they could move the beads around the gel, and making letters in the gel.  This was a project on Wednesday, and even now they are still using them.  Lesson to myself?  Never assume the boys are too old or too young for a sensory project.  Let them decide on their own.

Nature Walk and Play Dough Prints:

To continue on with the theme of the week, we took a nature walk to find things that would make prints in the raspberry play dough that we made (oh it smelled so good!).  I had the boys pick out ANYTHING they wanted to make prints with, and they learned that some things (like the chestnuts) work better than others (like leaves).  They had so much fun picking things up with their toes (I swear they are part monkey), and then had so much fun playing with everything.  Both boys have asked to this activity again.  Next time, since we are using items from nature, I want to make a play dough out of natural spices to complete the theme.  It did look odd making prints of nature in raspberry jello play dough.

Spice Painting:  Or is it?

It started out as a nice simple project.  I handed the boys some containers of cheap spices and had them shake them to see if they could hear the difference in the spices.  Then we had glue sticks to "paint" on the paper with, followed by "sprinkling" on spices.  HA!  Who was I kidding thinking my boys would do a simple and neat project?  After all, learning is messy, and that is what I keep telling them, right?!  They used all 5 senses of their body for this project, and I loved it.  It did kind of start out as planned, minus the sprinkling of the spices.  Oh no, we were dumping spices out in the tray and having a blast.  They also enjoyed tasting each one (Carter has decided he does NOT like Dill.  Pierce loves Ginger).  I then had the idea to turn all of these extra spices in their trays into play dough.  However, I did not want to pry them away from their beautiful creations, so I gave each of the boys shaving cream and cornstarch to make their own dough with.  Carter (who usually does not like a big mess) loved being a part of this experiment.  He loved clapping his hands and watching the shaving cream go everywhere.  Pierce loved it as well, and I have to admit the school room smelled fantastic!  Clean up was honestly easy since the shaving cream had cornstarch in it.  There was also minimal staining to the carpet, and I am sure it will come out when I wash it again (I will never buy a rug again that I cannot put in a washer.  I love washing it!)

So there are our 5 favorite school activities of the week.  Hopefully it is some inspiration to our readers to try something new, or to expand on something they may already do.  I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend, and next week we are doing Dinosaurs.  ROAR!!!!!

Moon Dough Explosion!

A few weeks back, I was looking for something to occupy the kiddos for that gap between dinner time being finished and bath time to begin.  In the past I had made moon dough, but the boys were MUCH younger, and I don't recall them playing with it for that long of a time.  Actually, I don't think Carter was old enough to play with it at all.  So, here was my latest moon dough creation;  Lavender Moon Dough

I made the "dough" the same way you normally would; 8 cups of flour to 1 cup of baby oil.  I used the cheap stuff from Dollar Tree, but I am sure that any type of baby oil would work.  Then I added 3 drops of lavender essence.  It smelled awesome!  And the boys loved the aroma as well.  We had so much fun scooping, dumping, making dough castles, and the best part was that it lasted a few days!  That was before we forgot it outside and it was rained on.  Oops!

We were having so much fun downstairs, even Daddy had to come down and see what we were doing (hence the pictures.  Thanks Dan!).  Super easy to make and tons of fun.  Hope you all enjoy it as well!

P.S.  It is not the easiest to clean up and will make the floor slippery.  However, as I am sure you know by now, I am not a mom who worries about a mess.  Mess = play.  Play = learning.  The End.  :)