Rainy Day Learning

Rain rain go away! It seems to be monsoon season here in the Midwest. With all the rain, we have been stuck in doors and I'm finding it harder and harder to come up with distractions for the kids to keep them from driving each other, and me, crazy. When it's not raining, it's crazy hot and humid, and we only last about an hour before we're all drenched in sweat and happy to return indoors to air conditioning.

With this weather we have been getting plenty of time to work on Babycake's learning to read. Babycake has been doing really well. She has already progressed to reading Book 7, Jig and Mag, in our Bob Books. Like I've said multiple times, she is a self driven learner. She gets so excited after reading a whole book and it's so fun to celebrate her accomplishment with her. The downside to this self determination however is that she is easily flustered and frustrated if she can't read a word on the first or second try. I have to remind her that she is learning and that means you don't know everything right away and that means practice which means you have to go over it again and again and that's OK. I let her know that I am not frustrated that she doesn't know everything and that we have to practice. I will admit that there are days when we sit down to read and she goofs off, doesn't read, and I get frustrated. We are not perfect by any means in our learning system.

For more indoor activities, we pulled out her workbooks which I had honestly forgotten about. Babycake flew through about 10 pages in her Letters workbook. It was so fun to see how well she knows her letters, can write them, and spout off the sound each makes.

To keep Buddyboy occupied while I assisted Babycake with her workbook, I got out a scrap paper and some old stickers. Only in the last month has Buddyboy not instantly put everything he touches into his mouth so I figured this would be safe to do now. It was a great way for him to work on some motor skills picking up the stickers, unsticking them from his fingers, and getting them onto the paper. What a hit! He really enjoyed it and was happily occupied for about 20 mins.

Another School Year, Another Learning Curve

Well, another school year has begun. Social media is being flooded with "First Day" pictures. I know next year we'll be doing the same. This year though, Babycake is four, old enough to head to preschool or pre-K, but, I'm not going to pay for my child's "pre-education" when I can sit down for 20 min a day with her and go over English, Maths, Music, and Art.

Last August I found a little calendar set and that was our big learning goal- learn the days of the week and how a calendar works, if we were really lucky we'd master months. Well one year later, Babycake can tell you the days of the week off the top of her head, look at a calendar and tell you what day it is, and what day tomorrow will be. She hasn't quite figured out "yesterday" but hey, she's four. ;-) She can pick out what the weather is today and what it will be tomorrow. She can also count all the numbers up to 31 without messing up and tell you the date. We have not mastered months. By the end of each month she can tell you what month it is, but she does not know what month comes next, or which month was previous. For example, being August, she recently said last month was May. This year I will try to make more of an effort to clarify the months and when they are.

This year our big learning goal is reading! Crazy!!! Babycake has been reading and writing her name for a year now. She has learned how to read and write Buddyboy's name, as well as Mom and Dad. She loves to go everywhere with a pencil and note pad taking "notes" on everything. The pages are filled with letters, and the occasional number. I credit this love of note taking to our reading of The Magic Tree House series. She loves to explore like Jack and Annie. Since she has shown such a love of writing and has initiated reading I figured I might as well go along with it.

When looking up different early reading books and plans, I came across LOTS of different ideas and opinions. I really didn't know what we would do. We have a lot of Dr. Suess books so I thought maybe we would just go through those. One day however, when our family took a little trip to Half Price Books I came across the First Collection Set of Bob Books. I had seen this mentioned many times in my search of beginning reading ideas. Some people Love them, some very much dislike them. I figured getting this set for 1/2 price couldn't be beaten and we might as well give it a try.

So far it's been great! Babycake is doing really well. In one week she has consistently read the first three books. We have tried the fourth book a couple times and it is much trickier for her. Babycake is a self driven learner, but also LOVES rewards. So the stickers she gets after completely reading a book really helps her to settle down and read through a book or two.

I'm so proud of her. She's so smart and driven. Updates with our progress will be shared.

    

   

Me and My Simple Life

(An updated version of an old-lost post)

If you look just over to the right of this post you'll see the very basic answer to who I am in the column "About Me." If we were to meet and start a conversation, that's about all you'd get out of me, maybe a bit more even. I'm not a big sharer. (Weird that I'm blogging right?) I moved a lot growing up and found that it was easier to have a lot of good acquaintances than a few good friends. Now when I say we moved a lot, I mean that by the time I was in 7th grade I had been to seven different schools. Granted some of the school changes were in the same city/town due to graduating to middle school, or quitting private school, but still.

I find it hard to be intimate with people. I don't like to get too close b/c in the back of my mind "I'm moving in a few months so don't bother and don't get hurt." As weird as this sounds I love conversing with people. I'll ask you all about your life and adventures and I'll really listen b/c I'm actually interested- why ask if you don't care right? However, I won't share anything of myself in our conversation. I remember one of my Psych professors discussing how conversations need to be a two-way street. People like to talk about themselves, so when you talk with someone don't just talk about yourself, ask them some questions and really listen. I was like "done! I got that!" My version probably isn't really what he was looking for. Oh well.

So here I am... sharing. This is a lot easier b/c it's like a journal. I'm just writing this out, not talking to anyone, and you're just reading it after I've put it out there.

Me. I am 29 years old. I am the first born of three girls; my family likes to say my dad is blessed. I am stubborn as a mule. My favorite season is spring.I married my high school sweetheart; how he stuck around is beyond me. I am the only daughter-in-law. I have a brown speckle in my right eye; my father-in-law, an optometrist, once told me what it's called but I forgot so I still call it a speckle. My favorite color is green. I graduated from Purdue University in four years, which is a rare feat these days. I have a 4 year old little girl (I'll call her Babycake in the blog) and 14 month baby boy (who we call Buddyboy), they are the light of my life. Finally, I am continually learning how to be a better person in all my relationships be it with a friend, child, spouse, parent, or sibling.

My Simple Life is just that, simple. We're a small lower-middle class family in the Midwest. Not many sentences could describe a more simple setting. My days typically consist of waking up to my own personal alarm clock "Momma!.. Momma!.. Mom!.. Mom! Mom!" This is followed by a day set by the kids' moods and naps. At the moment we'll usually get out of the house at some point in the day; either to run errands (exciting right?), hang at the library at story time, or we go to the child watch of our local YMCA for me to work. I'm looking forward to when our family schedule will sync up with the workout classes so we can go to the Y other than to work.

Yep. I think that about sums it up. We don't usually have anything exciting happening in our lives, but when we do, it's pretty exciting.

So, why would I bother blogging about this simple life? Well for the last 10 years (uhlg I feel old!) I've been on Facebook and I've found that when I have an opinion about something, and I'm willing to share that opinion, I write a nice long post that takes up all of my friend's homepages. With this blog I'll be able to share my rantings, ravings, and ramblings without intruding on anyone's space. I simply assume that if you're reading this you want to hear what I've got to say. So thanks for reading and I'd love to hear about you and your life!

The Best DIY Dishwasher Detergant

Like many families, we are on a tight budget. When we first came to this life style, we had to look at what we could keep doing, and what had to go. In attempts to save as much money as possible, I began looking up DYIs. I tried many different DIY laundry detergents, some worked, some didn't. To be honest brand name laundry detergents have worked the best for us. We live in a VERY hard water area and don't have a water softener, so unless I used a ton of the homemade detergent, it didn't really clean our kids clothes.

Laundry detergent wasn't the only thing I tried doing myself. I tried making a couple dishwasher detergents too. The one that I found and liked the best can be found on the Eco-Friendly Family blog. I used this recipe for years. However, it wasn't quit perfect. Being the hard water area we live in, I had to do a vinegar rinse after every wash to rid the calcium clouds left behind. A vinegar rinse takes a while to dry. So, I had a clean and safe wash, but not perfect.

About two years ago I was in the grocery buying more Lemi Shine for my dishwasher detergent; I saw that Oxi Clean made a dish detergent too. I liked what Oxi Clean had done for my laundry, so I wanted to see what it could do for my dishes. Wow! What a difference! I no longer need to do a rinse after every load. I might need to do a rinse once a week, or every other week. The Oxi Clean detergent is made to be a detergent on its own, but with my recipe the number of washes you get TRIPLES and cleans just as well. (hooray for tight budgets!)

I like to keep my Super Washing Soda in an air tight zip lock
to keep it from clumping and hardening.

Dishwasher Detergent Recipe

1 12.7 oz container Oxi Clean Dishwasher Detergent

1 1/2  Cups Super Washing Soda

1/2  Cup Pure Baking Soda (cleaning, not baking kind)

1/2  Cup Sea Salt (any brand should do)

Positively Past Pirates

As you know we've been reading the Magic Tree House series. The fourth book is Pirates Past Noon. Babycake did not want to finish the book once we were about half way. She did not like how mean the pirates were to Jack and Annie. She has such a gental heart she can't handle the pirates that would be considered "light" in conparison to most any other chapter book with pirates. I love her so much.

Anyway, Babycake was past pirates before we were done, but I managed to convince her to finish the book, that Jack and Annie would make it home safe, and once we were done we could move on the the next story. So I didn't put too much effort into coming up with crafts and activities for this theme.


Babycake has been facinated with maps for over a year now, so she did enjoy learning that pirates use maps to find treasure. We made our own maps of the backyard and pretended to hunt for treasures like wild strawberries, pinecones, and acorns. We also made a little treasure chest by painting a strawberry container. Then I drew some amazing pictures of places around our house and hid them around the house. I gave her the first picture leading her to a location where she would find the nect picture clue. Once she found all the places she would discover the treasure chest with either a snack inside, or one of her toys. Buddyboy has a stacking tower that looks like a telescope so Babycake also had fun playing with that while "sailing" in a large delivery box we had gotten earlier that week.

Though Babycake did not enjoy Pirates Past Noon, nor was she really that interested in the Fact Tracker Magic Tree House companion book, she did enjoy all the other pirate books we read. These were much more tame stories that make pirates seem friendly. I've included images of some of her favorites. I have nothing against fun and friendly stories about pirates, but I think it was a bit disapointing for her to read these stories after having learned that pirates were/are not nice, that they are thieves who steal people's belongings, or even kidnap people.

Although I think it's important that Babycake learn the truth about all things, I want to protect her gental heart and keep her innocent as long as possible. Having always worked with children I knew there was a balance to this task, however I guess I didn't realize this tricky balance would be expanding so quickly.

Ancient Egypt, Mummies, & Pyramids

Well we've moved from dinosaurs, knights, and castles to ancient Egypt. I wasn't sure how Babycake would do with learning about mummies. So I decided to start our hands-on learning with some fun.

The other week we had a lot of fun excavating a dinosaur, so I went ahead and got more excavation kits that went with our ancient Egypt theme. This was again a great hit. Our first excavation was on a pyramid and the second was a mummy case. 

Again I tried to make a point that we were like explorers looking for treasure. We were like archaeologists excavating ancient pyramids hoping to find something new to learn about. Babycake thought it was great pretending to be these people. I doubt she could tell you what archaeologists and excavating means. 

The jewel that was discovered in our pyramid was later displayed on Babycake's Egyptian necklace we created. Sadly her bird that was excavated from the mummy case was "lost" before also being added to the masterpiece of jewelry. 

                                                                               

  From the books we've read, Egyptians had a good view of death and after life. The funeral procession and burial of the mummy (dead person) in the tombs or pyramids were both fascinating and a bit unnerving for Babycake.

Since she started making it clear she didn't want any of us in the family to die (a perfectly understandable statement when faced with death) I tried to quickly turn our lessons and discussions from death, to the lives of Egyptians and what they did and built.

For example, many Egyptians were farmers which was amazing since most of Egypt is desert, but thanks to the flood seasons of the Nile the soil of the banks were rich and plentiful. It was during the off seasons that the farmers would assist building the pyramids. (which were for anyone who could afford building one) The farmers were paid for their labor but also did this for spiritual security in the after life. I found this to be so interesting since I had been one of the many people who believed the pyramids were built by slaves for the pharaohs.










We had fun building pyramids out of legos. We made our pyramids to look like the step pyramids  we learned about in one of our books. (smooth sided pyramids were just not going to happen) Then of course Babycake remembered that the mummies were inside the pyramids, so we made some mummies out of paper people and strips of toilet paper. (sometimes I just can't fool miss smarty pants)

Diggin' more Dinosaurs!

Although we've moved past rereading Dinosaurs at Dawn for the 300th time, Babycake is still interested in anything dinosaur related she might come across. As I mentioned in my original post on dinosaurs, our children's museum has an AMAZING dinosaur exhibit. We recently went to the museum with the whole family and made sure to attend two events focused on dinosaurs. The first was "Dinosaurs Upclose." Here kids got to touch fossil casts of a Duckbill Dinosaur and learn about one of the Duckbill Dinos on exhibit. When it the Duckbill Dinosaur session was over Babycake enjoyed the dino dig site. A little later we went to the Tyrannosaurus Rex Talk. Again there was a speaker on the T-Rex and more fossils to touch while learning about the dinosaur and pretending to be a T-Rex.

 The next day we had our own dig for dinosaurs. Earlier in the week I'd found a great little excavation kit in the Target $1 section. Inside the clay dino skull was a dinosaur Babycake would get to dig out.

Babycake had a great time with this. We first started out simply using the little tools provided, but we quickly discovered we were getting no where, so we broke out the hammer. This was exciting (and terrifying).


We repeatedly discussed how we were explorers looking for a fossil. To find this treasure we needed to excavate. To excavate our fossil we needed to chip, scrape, and brush away the clay.

After chipping away at the clay Babycake exclaimed with so much excitement that she saw something. We paused from picking at the clay to brush off the exposed part of our little discovery.

We continued to chip away and soon a little green dinosaur fell out. Babycake was so excited and loved brushing off the dinosaur. Although she had a great time excavating her dinosaur I'm not sure if she will remember the terms we used. Oh well. It was fun.