week 1- things mommy learned and bloopers

Not totally liking the feel of paint all over his hands. 

I mentioned in the last few post that even in a week a learned a few tips on teaching Bear. I also provided a few blooper type pictures to show a real look at what our days looked like. 

The first thing I learned was find the right time that works for both of you. Bear is a morning person and at first I thought that this was a perfect time to do school. But between breakfast, feeding Wolf and diaper changes not to mention coffee. Squeezing teaching in between was way too much. Plus in the morning he is pretty happy playing quietly by himself while I cook breakfast and take care of baby. Why mess that up?

I found that the time between his first and second nap works for us. We are all dressed and ready for the day and it's the longest span of time that he is awake. 

The next thing I learned was make sure he is fed! Even if I think "it's only 15 min then I can start lunch" WRONG!!! This boys belly needs to be full and content before anything else happens. 

Third thing is obvious but I still needed to constantly remember to be patient. This is new to both of us and we are giving ourselves a big learning curve. They won't always get it but they are not suppose to. Lessons might not go smoothly so try later or just think "better luck tomorrow" and move on. Which takes me to the last thing. This one is super important ready... Have a sense of humor and have fun. If you aren't having fun chances are neither is your little one. When things don't go as planned take time to soften your heart and look at what's happening chances are it's going to be funny with a toddler around. 

So good luck and I hope you have a blast. Below are a few photos of our laughable moments of the week.

notice the crinkles on the circles? Bear smashed them all together and ran off

during our circle counting activity he decided that looking out the window was more fun

then he moved on to dancing to the music on brothers bouncer (he never does this) HAHA!!

His lady bug wanted to bounce. Funny enough when he did this he was actually able to  follow the directions better. What ever works :)

Brother was not happy being on his tummy anymore. Pause "school" and flip him over. 

He wanted to call someone in the middle of gluing dots. What is it with kids and phones?

Ladybug week

We started our first week of "school" with a ladybug theme.
 Day 1 was a quick introduction. We sang the ladybug ladybug nursery rhyme and looked at some pictures online of ladybugs. I quick explanation of the fact that they are red with black circles. And that was that. Pretty easy. Throughout the day I would sing the nursery rhyme to both the boys so that they would become familiar with it.

Day 2. Repeat day one and in addition this was messy art day, and red finger panting was part of the agenda. It was a simple craft. All we did was paint a paper plate red. (Red like a ladybug is what we were focusing on) This surprisingly took a lot of time. Bear was really loving it. I let it run it's full course which lasted about 20 min. I assumed he was done when he attempted to through his plate on the floor. :)

Day 3.  Repeat day one.Now to put the finishing touches on our ladybug. I pre cut six black circles. Three for me and three for him. The main focus here was to learn 1 to 1 correspondence. Meaning the ability to match one item to one number. (1 black circle means 1, 2 black circles means 2 ect.) I would pick up a circle and tell him to put "one" circle on the ladybug. Then pick up two circles and say "put  TWO circles on" then I would have him take some away "take all THREE circles off" and so on. 

This did not go over super easy. At first he was not into it at all. He finally sat back down and followed the instructions but was really only able to grasp the numbers one and two well. Which was a really great start and now I knew where to put more focus from here on out. 

From there we moved on to gluing the same circles on the ladybug. I pre cut and glued on the head myself but let him glue down the rest.

At first I was pre gluing the circles (the one above) but he really liked the idea of putting the glue on himself

Don't forget to cut two antennas

Here is the  finished product. I really tried to be hands off as far as placement of dots and antennas although I did tell him they went on its head.

Once we were done he wanted to continue gluing so I quickly cut a red oval out of construction paper and some black circles to continue the activity

He did a pretty good job gluing if I do say so myself

Day 4 was pretty uneventful as far as the theme went due to this

 Day 5 Okay nature red hunt take two. I asked B if he wanted to go for a walk and he said "no". He always likes going for walks so we got ready anyways and he started getting excited. We walked out with W in the Moby, my camera in hand and his red wagon. We were going to look for red things if it killed me (remember that perfection thing I suffer from again. HA!) Well we made it about a 100ft from the house when B turned back around and headed up the stairs and towards the door. Ummm... I guess he really meant it when he said he wasn't in the mood. 

"mom are you coming? Because I'm going inside there are a ton of trucks I still need to slam into each other"

Well both days of our walks didn't work but we tried and that's what counts..... right? 

Day 5 (cont) after our quick walk to the front of the house it was time for our ladybug snack

I got the idea here and I think it turned out cute despite not having everything needed. 

Two slices of apples, a few raisins and a little almond butter to stick them together and you've got yourself a ladybug :)

B ate it up. The workout from earlier must have really fatigued him . :)

Well that's it our first week of "school" day by day. It was fun and overall pretty easy. I learned a few things along the way that I will be sharing in a later post. I am feeling a lot more confident about my ability to do this and am really looking forward to next weeks theme. Bees