First Day of Preschool

This was Emily's first day of school. We stuck with tradition and did the whole picture thing and everything else. I went with her this time and Nathan stayed home with Meredith. She just wanted to play with the toys at first, but after they started doing centers and she was coloring and gluing she LOVED it. They did a little chia pet out of a potato. We'll have to try that here and then post pictures for you. :)


Emily is really loving preschool. She loves going to "school", she won't let me call it "preschool". Part of that is she loved to watching the Signing Time School DVD. She loves to wear her backpack and she signs all of the time about school. They also do a lot of signing at preschool. (At least I think so since she comes home with a lot of signs, some of them new to her I think.)

Preschool and Playgroup and a Counting Game

Emily went to preschool today for the first time without me. They told me she was great! (When I was there she had a hard time at first because she wanted to play with all of the toys instead of doing the activities they had planned.) Emily LOVED preschool today. The first thing she told me was that she painted. Luckily for me the preschool sends home a little slip of paper that tells the parents what their kids did at school that day so I can carry on a conversation with Emily about it. The best part was that she was putting together 3-5 word sentences and speaking to me in one of the best conversations we have ever had. She's also very excited about the butterflies that they have in the classroom. She really loves butterflies!

While she was gone we had our playgroup for "H". I'm afraid I had to cut it short so I could go pick up Emily. (Sorry guys :( We had ham roll ups, horses and hay, honey bears and someone thought of donut "holes". We also colored our letter "H".

One of the things I'm trying to teach Emily is how to count meaningfully. She can count to 10 really well. We're working on counting higher. But we also have to work on meaningfully counting as well (this also happens to be one of the preschool's goals for Emily.) So today while I was babysitting, especially since the 4-year-old gets bored quickly, we played a clean up game. It lasted for...oh...about half the mess. That's pretty good though considering the amount of mess we had. We rolled a dice, I had them count the dots and they picked up the same number of toys as the dots. They really enjoyed the game. (Note to self, don't mention the words "clean up" though. :) So, I really think we're going to be able to pass the counting goal very soon.

"I Waked Up!"

I went to my meeting for preschool today. When I came home I told Emily that she gets to go to school tomorrow. "We're going to go to bed tonight, and then when you wake up, you get to go to school!" This I tell her with signs (bed, wake up, and school) and she really comprehends me quite well with them. So she runs into her room and finds her backpack and shows me and signs "school". Then she ran back into her room and comes back out and says, "Mom, I waked up. Go to school." SO CUTE! I also had to explain to her that we're not riding the bus tomorrow (this has been highly anticipated by the 3-year-old) and that Mommy is going to take her in the car. The bus paperwork will take a few days to get through. So, we'll have a first day to school and a first day on the bus. I'm excited for her, and then not so excited to have my little girl gone...but I'm not going to think about that part! :s

Easter Dress Pictures

We took pictures with the Easter Dresses a couple of weeks ago.

JCP pics mar09

Note to self...ask for a background besides WHITE! Blue would have been nice.

Easter Bunny

The Easter Bunny made it this year in spite of the colds (one more year with colds on Easter, what luck. I did try talking Nathan into delaying it a week.)

I couldn't get the girls to look at me. Emily's playing with the chalk, Meredith has her ducky (with bubbles) and Emily's wearing her candy bracelet.

Ok, so this little girl went STRAIGHT for the chocolate bunny. The girls didn't even care that there was anything else.

"Sporting a smile for the picture so maybe my parents will let me eat the CANDY!"

Happy Easter!

Musical Colors

Here is our version of "Musical Chairs" 3-year-old style. :) We LOVE this game. We tried it last night for FHE with letters (not all 26, more like, 8). Anyhow, this is a great way to learn letters, colors and numbers. BTW, did you know what the 7 things are that a child has to know BEFORE starting kindergarten.

Here are the 7 things kids will be tested on in their first Kindergarten assessment test:

1. Know the uppercase alphabet and name the letters out of sequence or mixed up, such as: B, D, X, K, J, M, O, etc.
2. Know the numbers to 0-10 and identify the numbers out of sequence or mixed up, such as: 2, 5, 9, 8, 1, 3, 4, etc.
3. Identify basic colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
4. Identify basic shapes: circle, diamond, rectangle, triangle, oval, and square.
5. Identify basic coins: penny, nickel, and dime.
6. Count objects to 10.
7. Show how far they can count toward 100.

Got a free, new book with that one. "Let's Get Ready for Kindergarten" We love that one. Here's the link to the publisher's blog.

Oh, and we took this little video on a Sunday afternoon, so that explains the music. :) (It was that or Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Needless to say, I really never listen to this CD. Not a fave of mine.)

From Musical Colors

Playgroup Easter Egg Hunt

I am finally getting around to blogging last weeks playdates. Last week we did the letter "E" for Easter, Egg Hunt, Eggs and eyeglasses (Margaret, you are so smart!). I was also babysitting a couple of kids that are typically in our playgroup and brought them along. There are some pictures of them in the car. They were SO excited for the new seating arrangements. I had one backup car seat I put in the back and the other backup car seat came from their Mom. I haven't even taken mine out of the back seat yet, so Emily asks to go sit back there.

Roses are Red

My sweet husband brought this home to me last week. No occasion, just brought me a flower. I like having flowers in my house. Thanks, Nathan. I love you.

Scared of the Dark

This weekend was...adventurous. Emily started it out with a runny nose and by Saturday morning the poor girl was having a hard time breathing and I just tucked her in bed (she never really left it) and put a tv in there so she'd relax and not move. Eventually she couldn't even hold up her head and I called my mom. (Mom's are the greatest. Even better when they just so happen to be an RN. :)) So, after talking to her I decided to call my doctor, they were busy, so I went to Urgent Care. We got in fast and they gave Emily a breathing treatment, steroids, and xrays. Emily was scared of the breathing machine, but I sang the whole time to her and we only had difficulties at the very end of the treatment. Then I wrapped her up in her blanket to take her to the x-ray room. It was dimly lighted and when we walked in Emily said "scared, it's scary." :( I tried to point out all of the "cool" equipment but she remained fairly scared the whole time, but she did really well. She held still for the x-rays and we were out fairly quickly. Now when I put her to bed though she asks me to keep the light on. We turn it out anyway hoping she'll pop out of this phase soon and try to sing to her for a little while. She's asking less and less for the light to be on, so that's positive.

Easter's True Meaning

I saw this on another blog and thought I'd share it. It's on the true meaning of Easter.

Enjoy!

Old Tucson Studios

Last week my family came to visit and we went to Old Tucson Studios. My girls LOVED it. They had a carousel, some antique car bumper cars, a train and a log ride. We also saw a few of the shows they put on, but the girls were scared of all the noise (fighting, gun fighting, etc.). It was so much fun that I bought a membership. Later, I told myself that if I could get to a certain point in my class that I would take the girls back to Old Tucson. We went today. I asked Emily "do you want to go on the choo-choo train and the log ride and the horses?" And both of the girls said, "Yah! Grandma!" "Oh," I said, :( "Grandma can't come this time." So, in spite of that bad news, the girls still had a fun time and I think we rode at least half the horses on the Carousel today. :) Meredith had her first driving lesson today and tried riding her horse with no hands. She was teasing me because she would go between clinging to me (my neck) and holding on to the horse and loving it. So, every time she would cling to my neck I told her to hold on to her horse. She started teasing me by holding on to her horse and then letting go, and going back and forth between the two. Emily was NOT happy when we left. I'm amazed at how good her memory is.

Letter "P"

We did the letter "P" for our playgroup on Tuesday. We played in our pool, which was fun and thankfully uneventful. We had pretzels, pop tarts, peaches, and pineapple and colored our letter "P". Next week we're doing the letter "E" for Easter and an Egg hunt.