Tea Time

It's a past time of many a girl through generations and from around the world :: tea time.

And for one little girl in our household, the tradition continues. Jordyn loves to play tea party. From the time she was a toddler with a little plastic set, then a picnic set of enamelware, and now to beautiful porcelain. She enjoys the process of setting up, choosing a treat and making the tea. At times, the sweet treats are not of the edible variety so that our visits to the dentist stay at check-ups only!

So far this summer, there have been tea parties in her room {no real tea allowed in there}, in the kitchen, the basement and outside under the shade of our maple trees. A collection of stuffed animal friends, or perhaps just a special one are the guests :: of course, Mom, siblings and even Dad in the evenings have been summoned as well to join in on the fun.

Realizing that this is such an enjoyable part of her playtime, we will be incorporating tea time into our schedule for school this year. Together, the girls and Mom will sit down several times a week for a short moment {probably 1/2 hr} to just catch our breath, together.

Maybe there will be a special story shared, poetry read, or a particular music CD to listen to. Or maybe simply a time to anticipate right after doing the hard work of phonics, language lessons or math. The primary agenda will be to enjoy one another and our tea. It's all in development stage right now, but will definitely be a part of our days. Besides, it should be mentioned that this little girl's Mama loves tea time as well!

Fine Motor Skills

In the last few weeks of school, Jordyn worked on strengthening the muscles in her hands. For her and at age 5, she is still a bit weak on the fine motor end. Knowing that these skills are very much needed for succesful writing in the future, we asked a friend who is an occupational therapist for a simple evaluation. Through just talking with her, it is good to know there is not a serious concern, but she gave several great tips on activities to do beyond what we've tried.

One of Jordyn's favorites has been the clothespins! For this activity, our OT friend told us it was important to hold and pinch the pin with the thumb on top & fingers in back. The string or clothesline should also be eye level. In our picture above, Jordyn is standing up, but was sitting down for this activity. She simply decided for the picture that 'everyone should see my dress and new bracelet'. That girl.

Another activity is transferring items such as cotton balls or cheerios from one bowl to another (or a plate, etc) with a set of tongs. Because Jordyn adores the flashy, the fancy and stays away from anything plain, our cotton balls are shimmery and glittery :: a great dollar store purchase!! And yes, please notice another new bracelet.

Other fine motor strengthening tips:

:: play with clay, it is harder than play-doh

:: cut a small hole in the top of a plastic container and have the child push beans or pasta through the top. the hole should be small enough that it takes a bit of effort to push the item in.

:: a hole punch! draw a simple shape on paper and have them punch around the shape. then use a piece of string to lace.

:: crumple newspaper into a ball using only one hand

:: spray bottles! let them spray plants with water or 'clean' an item using sponges, etc.

:: if you have a magna-doodle, turn it upside down so that the eraser is on top

:: obviously, if the child can use scissors, lots of cutting, cutting, cutting. Jordyn cuts out all of our coupons {later, the ones we don't use are thrown out}.

:: work at a vertical surface as much as possible~ painting or drawing w/chalk at an easel. If you don't have an easel, tape a piece of paper to the fridge. Working at a vertical surface helps to develop hand control at the shoulder, which is a pre-cursor to more refined motor control at the hand

:: and a last one...don't throw out those old broken-up crayon pieces! have the child work at coloring with a small piece of crayon (1 to 2"); this 'forces' them to use the tripod grasp needed for writing (2 fingers opposed to the thumb).

Jordyn, The Domestic Diva

I love to help Mom out and am often on the lookout for ways to get involved around the house. I especially enjoy cooking. Fortunately, Mama doesn't mind me slowing her down with my numerous questions--yeah!

More recently, I asked to learn embroidery. Mom is working slowly at teaching herself and it seems interesting to me. So off we went to get some sturdy burlap material and a tapestry needle (it's pretty blunt); I chose my thread from Mom's stash and voila! Lots of fun going on.

idea of how to teach children embroidery from The Creative Family

Psalm 27

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Early in their lives, we chose a few scriptures for each of our children that we felt would be a life verse or vision for them. For Jordyn, the verses come from Psalm 27; here she is reciting what we chose and proclaimed over her life before she was born. If you missed her memorization of Psalm 100, click here.

100 Days!

Well, plus a few more...about two weeks ago, I (Jordyn) celebrated the finishing of my number line to the 100th day of school! We celebrated with several activities including counting out 100 legos to build something and filling a hundred board with Fruity Cheerios. My brother happily ate while I worked.

Mommy asked me what I would buy with $100.00 and I answered: "If I had 100.00, I would have it. Then I would buy 15 plates. Then I would put the rest of the money in my purse to keep." Sounds like a good plan, right?

Then Mommy asked if I could have 100 of anything, what would I like. I answered: "I would like 100 cards so I could write to Nana and Grandad and Mimi and Popi."

Finally!

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The girls finally had enough good weather to pull out the goodies from the garage! Come on Spring!

Pinkalicious!

Another birthday in our household~~Jordyn is FIVE! Since her favorite color is pink and she likes cakes and sweets (much to Mama's dismay), we decided to focus the theme on the book Pinkalicious. A sweet story of a girl who eats too many pink cupcakes and finally figures out the remedy to turning herself pink. See the website for pink party ideas!

We got away with another 'family only' party, most likely the last one. Jordyn had fun making cupcakes with Nana, shopping for a new bicycle with Mimi and Popi, playing with siblings and her cousin, and enjoying the pink festivities, especially the cupcakes! Happy Birthday little girl!

The Value of a Number Line

No pun intended in the title!

Jordyn has been working on building a number line since the first day of school and she is approaching the 100th day in the month of February! A BIG celebration that we will blog about later. Anyway, each month has its own figure which usually matches the seasonal theme of that particular month.

The number line has been an excellent tool in learning a great deal of math concepts. Here are a few that we review often:

:: Number Recognition

:: Counting forwards and backwards

:: Skip Counting (22, 24, 26,....)

:: Number 'Families' (the 10s family, the 20s family, the 30s, etc.)

:: Directional Cues--RIGHT and LEFT

:: The concept of MORE and LESS--when we move to the right, the numbers get bigger, to the left the numbers get smaller; so 65 is more than 41 and 12 is less than 28. Over time, Jordyn has learned to explain this concept on her own.

:: Addition and Subtraction--slowly we have built up to doing simple word problems, verbally of course; example-"find number 45. If you had 45 pieces of candy and Grandaddy sent you two more, how many would you have now?" She now knows to move two spaces to the right and get the answer; or to the left if Mom uses the words 'less or take away'.

:: Understanding that Time is Passing--along with marking a daily calendar, the number line helps to give a visual and more concrete example for understanding the abstract concept of time. Because each month has a different figure, Jordyn is able to to 'see' that September, October, etc. are over and in the past. We can also count how many days of school we had in a particular month by simply counting the Christmas trees, leaves, or whatever.

All of this has been done without pencil and paper. Because Jordyn learns well visually and with hands-on activities, she is having fun and learning so much without feeling overly stressed. Then next year we can begin with some math worksheets and such...but she'll have a HUGE bank of concepts and framework in her mind to 'attach' all of that to!

Next year we may count the school days in the shape of a hundred board. We'll see.

Enjoying Christmas Presents...

It's all about blocks and books these days for Josiah and Jordyn.

Psalm 100

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We're moving along....

It's day number 46! Janelle has a few more days logged than that since she began over the summer, but Jordyn is excited that her number line is growing l-o-n-g-e-r!

An Apple a Day...by Jordyn and Josiah

It's Friday!

This is Jordyn reporting: It's the end of another week of school. Yes, I know, I know. We haven't had that many. We've all been very busy this week as Janelle began adding more subjects to her schedule and I picked up my routine as well. Mom did say we were going to get more organized. Anyway, the way I see it, Janelle can give you her own report...so here's mine:

First, let me tell you more about my daily activities. Each morning we come together (we being Mom, Janelle, Josiah and me) to review our scripture of the week, some songs, and to pray. I usually offer to pray. I think it's cool to pray about random things that may not have to do with school at all and Mom once had to cut me a little short. Oh, well. Then Janelle goes off to her independent activities, Josiah goes to play and I work with Mom. We do the calendar, our number line and read, read, read. I really like our number line because we are counting up to the 100th day of school. Today was day 13. And, I love Mom reading to me! I also work on writing my first and last name and reviewing my letter sounds. Eventually I hear they are supposed to combine and make words! Yeah! I cannot wait.

Hmmm...what else? This week we did a science unit on apples, airplanes and archeology. Yes, a-r-c-h-e-o-l-o-g-y. Mom strongly believes in deviating from solely the apples, bears and cat mode of ABCs. Something about children being able to learn so much more if we only offer it to them. She turned out to be right because I enjoyed everything we did. We wrap it up next week, so I'll post pictures then.

Well, I should go to bed. Tonight we went out as a family to play mini golf and I'm pooped. Have a great weekend everyone!