Faith August - 3.25 years

Faith is growing up!  She is 3 1/4 years old now :) 
Eating:
Forcing the use of the fork has gone well.  She cleans her place after every meal and is very eager to help set the table as well.  Continues to ask how everyone's day is going at the table and I love hearing her imitate conversations we have there and her telling us she loves all of us!  She is still required to eat 2 bites of everything on her plate and that is usually done without any heartache.  Carbohydrates continue to be her favorite food group (who can blame her!). 
Sleeping:
This has been our biggest adjustment during this quarter.  The week of VBS at our church in June, Faith didn't nap the entire week and to be honest it was a huge stresser for me!  After some prayer about it and talking with Frank, I decided that we would start moving to a sleep/rest time.  Basically, I put her down at 2:30 and for 45-1hr she has silent rest time, no lights, no toys, just her and her blankie.  If she falls asleep during this time, great but if not then I will go in and turn on her nightlight and give her some books and her doll and she can play in her room for the remaining time until 4.  If she does fall asleep I still wake her up at 4.  There seems to be no rhyme or reason why some days she sleeps and some days she doesn't but she is quiet and respects the silent part of rest time and I am super happy about that.  On days she doesn't nap she will usually fall asleep at night in about 30 seconds.  On days she does nap, it takes a lot longer than that (like an hour sometimes)!  I am sure she is getting herself to the point where she needs 12 hours of sleep total in a 24 hour period.
Play:
Preschool is her favorite playtime activity. I will usually find her at the end of solo play with several dolls sitting on her bed and her reading to them.  My in-laws found a Radio Flyer Trike at a garage sale and gave it to Faith.  She absolutely loves riding that thing around.  She'll put Dolly in the basket in the back and ride for our entire outside time; she loves riding it on walks.  It was a great $5!  Her other big play love this summer has been the pool.  After the first trip during which she was trepidatious at best, she quickly got over any concerns she had about swimming and jumping in by herself.  She is a regular water baby and relishes her time in the pool, even our little kiddie pool in the back yard.  We have brought the slide over and turned the sprinkler on to make that pool a little more exciting. 
Skills / Learning:
Did I mention that Faith loves pre-school.  Not only is it her favorite playtime activity, she really really loves doing it together during the day.  She knows all of her uppercase and lowercase letters and does really well matching them together. We are starting to work on the sounds each letter makes.  Family Fun Night has also been a great addition to our pre-school routine.  For the first 2 nights we used the Eeboo Matching Numbers game and not only did she love it, she did remarkably well.  Since then I have tried to be a little more creative with Family Fun Night but the games are always good!  She is learning her right from her left and that has been fun, especially when my mom taught her that her left hand makes an L! 
We are also in the Why? phase.  I read a statistic when we were at the Magic House in STL that the average 4 year old asks 437 questions per day.  So, the next day I counted and in a 20 minute time period Faith asked upwards of 80 questions.  I ask that she be specific with her Why? and not simply leave it has an open ended question.  I was kind of hoping that would decrease the number of questions but it hasn't; it has made her think more about her question but the number has not diminished.  I suppose that is a good thing.  I try very hard to answer the question honestly and not simply give the "just because" answer.  I want her to be inquisitive and be full of wonder about the world around her!
Her physical skills are also expanding in addition to her mental.  She is doing very well throwing and catching a ball (a large-ish rubber one).  She is also learning how to write all of her letters.  For her birthday she received the Kumon Write and Wipe uppercase letters and she LOVES working on these. 

Faith continues to be a little OCD.  She is a huge proponent of reading books based on their order in the stack :)  But, she loves to read and ultimatly, I love it!
Our Schedule:
0800 - Wake, breakfast, ready for the day
0900 - Outside
1030 - Preschool
1130 - Sister playtime
1200 - Lunch, chore, playtime with Mama, "work" time with Mama (this is anything I need to do that I normally would have done when she was napping, i.e., cooking, cutting fabric, additional chores)
1430 - Nap / Rest time
1600 - Snack, Training Time, Solo Play
1730 - Freeplay
1800 - Dinner, family time, bath, reading, Bible story, bedtime o/a 2001

Stuck in the Mud!

For the story of Deborah this week from Judges 4 we used my favorite kid friendly interpretation of disomfited in vs. 15, of having the chariots getting stuck in the mud.  Frank picked up some dirt from the new construction area and we made a mud bucket.  Rebekah wanted none of it but Faith really enjoyed playing in the mud and getting her feet burried in it!

We also made a paper towel palm tree and a play-dough Deborah to sit under it and judge Israel.

 

Letter of the Week - Z

Here we are at the end of the alphabet!  I didn't start participating in the LOW curriculum until I and I didn't start blogging about it until L I think.  Plus, as Faith moves into a Pre-K program, I will just add it to what we are already doing and I think I'll just update each letter post with new ideas and pictures.  Anyway, back to Z...
We made Zebra striped Zs

Faith wrote her entire name here all by herself!  I was so proud :)  We also played Zebra dominos in addition to our LOW paper curriculum.  While making our play-dough Deborah for our Bible story, we finished that craft with using our animal cookie cutters and the play-dough.

For our family day we went to the Zoo of course!  It was rainy but cool for most of our time there which was actually really nice because most of the animals who'd been in hiding during the heat of the summer were out for us to see.  There were also fewer people there which always makes a visit like this more enjoyable :)

We ate zucchini and baked ziti this week for our Z foods.  For our Z books we read Zebras and Inside a Zoo in the City, the latter being the most enjoyed by the girls.  

Left-handed Ehud

In Judges 3:15-30 you will find the story of Ehud, the left-handed Benjamite who is the first in our series of Judges for Bible story.  I know I am back tracking but I am trying to figure out how to stay in the Old Testament until December :)  My dad is left-handed so that was a fun thing to talk about during this week as well, whether people were right or left handed.
First we made a King Eglon craft adapted from this humpty dumpty craft and then later we made a dagger out of cardboard, aluminum foil, and some jewels that the girls glued onto the hilt.

The most instructive part of the craft was the reenactment of the judgement of Eglon.  The girls had a good time with this part :)



Letter of the Week - Y

For Y we started off with a Yellow day ... where we all wore yellow, had a yellow scavenger hunt, and ate yellow squash with dinner.

I had 2 bags leftover from Rebekah's 1st birthday party favors and they were both yellow, how fortuitous!  The girls love their color scavenger hunts!  I bought some yellow yarn to use for our letter activity in addition to our LOW paper excercises.

For our family fun night we made yo-yos out of water balloons which really was a huge hit although the yo-yo concept was probably too old for Faith at this age but she really loved throwing the water balloons :)

We ate yogurt and yams this week and our Y books were Yellow Everywhere and Extra Yarn both of which the girls enjoyed.  

Rebekah Joy - 21 Months

Rebekah is on her way to be a real toddler!  She is such a cutie and we just love her!  "No, no" is her favorite answer, even to a non-yes or no question. She does answer "no, ma'am" which I only had to tell her once and she picked up on it.  Here she is carrying her "bear bear" around like a baby in her sister's baby carrier!  She loves her baby dolls but I think if given the choice she will pick a stuffed animal every time :)

Sleeping:
Rebekah continues to sleep incredibly well.  She does better going down for her nap about 1:15 and then is up by 4.  Bedtime is consistent at 8 and she usually sleeps until 7 or 7:30.  Soon she and her sister will be sharing a room so I am sure there will be some adjustments there but they love each other and ultimately they will work it out!
Eating:
I always hoped that the dislike of meat would be something she would grow out of but it has yet to happen.  She always eats her required bite and will stuff her mouth full of meat if there is the bribe of bread or mac and cheese when it is all gone but for the most part meat is the last thing on her plate.  If the meat is part of a casserole or has some kind of sauce it is more likely to be eaten but just pieces of chicken or meat or fish are just going to sit there until the bitter end when everything else on her plate has been cleaned up.  She is enjoying kefir a little more and it helps a great deal when I dilute it with a tiny bit of water.
Play:
We had VBS at church during this month and she was in the 18 month old room because I was working and they had a rocking horse which she apparently loved and was rather possessive of, luckily we got there earlier than most people!  She also greatly loved the wagon rides.  We were so blessed to receive a red radio flyer wagon from our friend Jenna whose children are growing too old for it and both the girls have loved taking rides in that wagon.  It is way more work for me but they really do love it.  We took 2 trips to the fireworks stand this month to procure some 4th of July entertainment and the wagon ride was certainly the best part for Rebekah!  She has taken a real love towards pull toys as well.  She enjoys the push toys also but I am excited to get her a little pull toy for her birthday. 
Skills:
Recognizing her numbers and for a while declared them all to be either 6 or 8 but she correctly identifies 5 and 1 as well.  There were multiple Motel 8s on our drive to and from St Louis this month and she proudly called out "eight" at every opportunity!  Rebekah displays a real desire to do it herself.  She wants to use the big girl spoon herself, buckle herself in, etc., basically if she can knows she can do it she doesn't want any help with it!  She is working on putting her own shoes on and can take them off herself.  She is so good at always putting them into the shoe bin at the house!  She continues to enjoy puzzles and they have helped a good deal in her learning her shapes.  Oval is the shape she knows the best and will also identify circle, star, and heart.  Her colors have taken a back seat to numbers and shapes.  Right now she gets pink correct every time and we are still working on the others; however, she always knows something is a color when she calls it out - she doesn't look at a red shirt and say "eight!"
Our Schedule:
0800 - Wake, dress, breakfast
0900 - Outside (front or back yard, walk, park, etc.)
1015 - Snack
1030 - Preschool
1130 - Sister Playtime
1200 - Lunch, chore
1315 - Nap
1600 - Snack, training time
1630 - Rebekah and Mommy time for 15 minutes, then solo play
1730 - Freeplay
1800 - Dinner, family time, bath, reading and Bible story, bedtime o/a 2001

Letter of the Week - X

X is really hard and I love the Internet and all the work that other mommies have done before me!  Our first X craft was using painters' tape on easel paper for the girls to paint.  I reinforced the back of the paper with packing tape and that made it much easier to come off.  After naps when the paint was dry we removed the painters' tape for the girls to see their creations.

We played Tic-Tac-Toe on the blackboard and did our Letter of the Week activities, including a letter search.  I was so proud of Faith.  In addition to finding all the Xs within the sentence, she also found the one that the xylophone mallets make!

Outside I traced a giant X on the driveway and the girls colored it and then ran around on it, making sure not to go outside the lines.



Our last X craft was painting some cardboard Xs.  The girls had fun with this and I used it to help Faith see the different ways that X is used in words.

I found this Exciting X Poem and cut out a cardboard E and X and glued them to craft sticks to use as my visual and incorporated this into reading time.  The girls thought it was great!  Our other books were Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin which has nothing to do with X but since we were using the Xylophone during worship and as our family fun night (which was playing the Roll a Xylophone game from Confessions) I decided that an orchestra introduction would be good.  Frank dusted off his trombone and I got out my flute and piccolo.  The girls loved this night and Rebekah mentioned it every time we read the Zin book.  An actual X book was My X, Y, Z Sound Box which I read only the X portion. 

Nehemiah Prayed to God for Help

For Bible story this week we read a portion of Nehemiah rebuilding the walls around Jerusalem.  I slightly modified this song and the girls, as with all songs, loved it. 
Our first craft was to build some Jerusalem houses.  I found that craft here and had the girls paint the OJ containers and then color the paper to glue to them. 

We used this craft again later in the week along with some construction hats that they decorated with stickers and mega block to build the walls around the houses.

For our final Nehemiah craft, I modified this craft and traced the girls' hands onto some paper that they painted brown.  The crumpling up to make the paper appear older was a little lost on them but they liked the strengthen my hands part and we sang our Nehemiah song together!