Fall Part 3 in Review

Aren't time changes fun at this age?  Our sleep patterns have been pretty irregular this week.  Kids napping at 10ish some days, not napping other days.  Falling asleep for the night super early and then late.  Consequently moods have been affected for both boys and Mama.   Despite the disruption, we did have a pretty good week.  This was mostly because of all the help that Daddy gave in supporting Mama.  I'm hoping that life will get into more routine again next week.

Monday was one of those perfectly imperfect preschool days.  Mama felt like there was learning happening and lots of fun was had by all but not in the way that was expected.  I think the best way to give you an idea of our adventures on Monday is to give a play-by-play of our first activity.  I hope all you mothers of preschoolers can appreciate the humor in this:

• Mama gives Noah and Zach the leaf outline.
• Noah is then given a bunch of torn colored pieces of paper to make his leaf mosaic while Zach is given washable markers.
• Noah is flustered by the torn paper, and doesn't want to put anything "broken" on his beloved leaf.
• Meanwhile, Zach eats the markers.
• Out comes playdough to distract Zach.
• Noah wants playdough now instead of the "broken" paper.
• Mama gives up the craft as a lost cause and gives Noah playdough.
• Meanwhile, Zach eats the playdough.  Thankfully, it's homemade!
• Mama quickly whips up a batch of edible playdough and gives it to Zach.
• Meanwhile, Noah begins to place his playdough on his leaf mosaic, and it looks really cool.

So proud of his creation!

After our leaf "craft", we went to the library to pick up some books.  The King County Library System has an incredible rescource called "Books To Grow On" Kits.  We picked up the Alphabet 2 Kit that I had put on hold.  It came with 14 alphabet books, 3 music CDs, 2 DVDs, a curriculum guide, and 2 felt sets that were all related to the alphabet theme.  This was our first time getting a kit, and it was amazing and free!  One of the felt sets was an upper and lower case matching game that we played in the afternoon instead of printing out our matching puzzle that I had originally planned to do.  Noah really enjoyed it, but it was much too advanced for him.  It was good exposure though.  He also enjoyed reading his alphabet books.

Getting ready to do some matching

Reading Alphabeep

Tuesday we enjoyed going to MOPS.  It was a rainy day, so in the afternoon we pulled out the alphabet DVDs we had gotten in our kit.  Did you know that Scholastic has made many of it's popular books into "movies"?  We've enjoyed Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom many times this week.  The movies are just someone reading the book and showing the pictures of the books on the screen.  Sometimes the characters on the pages move, but it still gives you the feel of reading a story.

Wednesday was an odd day.  I think the time change finally hit Noah hard, and he took a 3 hour nap beginning at 10AM.  And this is the child that rarely naps!  He was in a much better mood when he woke up, but it threw off our groove for the day.  We succeeded in getting errands done in the afternoon, and that was about it.

Veteran's Day was fun.  In the morning, we watched the national anthem.  Then, we invited all the preschool-aged neighbors over since everyone was out of school for the holiday.   My plan was to make American flags out of graham crackers with them that looked something like this:

Not surprisingly, the kids had fun with their frostings and enjoyed their snack, but they looked nothing like flags.  =)

They also did a little coloring with the coloring pages I'd found, but that didn't last too long before they just wanted to go and play.  After everyone left, Noah and I read The Wall by Eve Bunting.  I tried to talk to him about what the book was about, but most of the concepts were a bit much for him to understand.  In most ways I'm glad about this.  Because of our veterans and the people that currently serve in our military, my son feels safe and doesn't live in fear of being harmed. Thank you to those who serve our country!

I think I'm going to have to move Math up earlier in the week.  This is the second week in a row that we didn't get to our math activity.  I don't really remember Friday.  I was pretty tired by the end of the week.  We did make our pumpkin cookies that we meant to make on Wednesday which was fun to do with Noah.  In some ways, it's nice to do a recipe that we don't have to do any measuring for.  I wouldn't want to do it all the time, but it made the baking easier which is what Mama needed this week.

Noah and Daddy didn't make it to the concert.  It didn't start until 7:30 at night so it wasn't going to be an option unless he napped.  Since he didn't, he was asleep by that time.  Instead, we found out about a fun kids concert by Beach 3 Fiddlers on Saturday morning.  This band is a group of three 12-year olds that can play the fiddle and guitar.  They were amazing.  You should check them out on YouTube.  They remind me of when Nickel Creek would come play at my elementary school when they were kids.

Daddy and Noah also got a chance to do their science experiment from Mudpies to Magnets.  They made raisins "bounce" in water.  Taking a jar full of water, they added a couple of tablespoons of vinegar to the mix.  They put a few raisins in and finally added a teaspoon or so of baking soda.  The baking soda and vinegar caused a base/acid reaction causing bubbles to form.  These bubbles latched on to the raisins causing them to float to the top.  Then the bubbles would pop at the top causing the raisins to sink again.  The raisins continued to "bounce" for well over an hour.  Noah thought it was fantastic!

Well, that pretty much wraps up our week!