H is for Heart

This week being Valentines week, I decided to teach H is for Heart.  There are tons of craft ideas out there for hearts and valentines so it was actually a task to narrow down the ones I wanted to do. 

We started with a heart sticker H

Then we did this Heart memory matching game.  The girls had to match upper and lowercase numbers.  Faith LOVED it and Rebekah did really well but got bored after making about 2 or 3 matches.

I got a heart punch from Michael's and used it to make this pattern activity for Faith and a sorting activity for Rebekah (along with the heart mold from Dollar General).

I also used the heart punch to do this paint shake.  A little paint in the container, fill it with the paper hearts and then shake, shake, shake.  After the paint was sufficiently mixed I had the girls glue them on a separate sheet of paper in the shape of H h.  I found these and some of the other activities on NTFFC.

I filled some medicine droppers with paint and had them dot one half of a folded heart.  The concept was a great one but the medicine droppers were pretty hard for them to use.  They liked the symmetry of pressing the heart together to make the same design on another page though so it was a good craft. 

 

We ended the week with Musical Hearts.  I wrote some actions on these foam hearts and placed them in a circle.  I played the Sabre Dance while the girls ran around the circle.  When the music stopped they had to do the action written on the heart nearest them.  We did this about 3 times a day all weekend long and it was a great energy release!

 

Manna from Heaven

We read Exodus 16 for Bible story this week and made Manna from Heaven using this recipe and template :

10 Plagues

Update to my last attempt at this Bible story.

We sang The Plague Song and did one plague each day for 2 weeks.  I used visuals from 1+1+1=1 and I think the combination of the song, the pictures, and the crafts helped the girls remember each plague.  I was really amazed at how much they retained.

Plague #1, red food coloring into water using small medicine droppers:

#2, paper plate Frogs painted green using the girls' handprints as the legs

 #3, Lice (the singular is louse which I learned this week).  We used a brown paper bag and pipe cleaners to make these lice.

 

#6, Boils and sores to make you sick.  I used medical tape to put red playdough boils on the girls' skin.  We also made red milk for dinner.  

#7, Hail.  I was also planning on letting them throw ice outside but it was way too cold!

#8, Locusts.  We watched a BBC video on locusts and then made locusts legs.  Later that night I poured cereal on the floor for a sensory exercise on locusts.

 

#9, Darkness.  The girls did a simple light/dark paper craft and then I turned off all the lights and covered their heads with towels and we walked around in the dark for a while :)

Faith August - 3.75 years

The biggest change for Faith this quarter is that she became a big sister, again!  She loves her new sister, Grace.  It is actually a challange to keep her away from Grace sometimes.  We have strict rules about not touching the baby while she in the bouncy seat or in the play gym but I try to make sure that Faith gets opportunities to hold her and we take time every day to talk to Grace and love on her.  Faith will make a wonderful mama someday and I want to cultivate that nurturing side of her!

Sleeping:
We continue with rest time, starting at 2:30 and continuing to 4 if she hasn't slept and 4:30 if she does fall asleep, although towards the end of this period, I have been waking her at 4 so she can have snack with her sister while I feed the baby.  Nighttime sleep continues to go well, although Rebekah does wake her at 0700 most days.  However, they enjoy laughing together early in the morning and that is fine with me :)
Eating:
Faith still enjoys all things carb (as do I!).  She eats well and usually eats evertything I put in front of her.  She was not a big fan of the kale I fried up one day; however she ate it in order to enjoy the rum cake for dessert.  She loves helping me cook and relishes the end of the task as much as the cooking itself becasue that is what I allow sample bites to be had.  I think she enjoys the savory bites as much as the sweet, perhaps just because they are special things. 
Skills:
Faith has learned to jump without looking at the floor :)  That has saved her nose a bit.  She won't jump off anything too high, really nothing much higher than my nursing stool but I know she will gain confidence as she does it more.  She continues to excel in gymnastics (although I asked her if she wanted to do dance or gymnastics when we move to AL and she said "dance!")  I think ballet will suit her personality better anyway.  She works on jumping at gymnastics as well as balance and bar work.
Her grandparents have a little razor scooter and that took about 5 minutes for her to learn to love!  For Christmas from them she received a balance bike.  After seeing my good friends' sons love their balance bike I knew these would go over really well at our house.  It took Faith about 10 days to really get the hang of it.  We took away all the other outside toys and required at least 10 minutes on her balance bike a day.  Now, we can't pry her off of it!  Once she got her feet off the ground the first time it took about 2 days for everything to click and now she flies on that bike with her feet on the center bar, doing turns like a pro!  I know she'll be ready for a 2 wheeler with pledals in no time!
Play:
Enjoys playing dress-up, not necessarily to pretend she is someone else but just for the joy of dressing up :)
Very much feels like she is in charge of her sister.  She routinely reminds Rebekah of things that I say so I try to remember that she is just imitating me, in her exaggerated way.  There is some bossiness with this but there is also a protective aspect to it; which I see when there are lots of other kids around.  She is very concerned that her sister not be exposed to unpleasantness, perhaps by some unruly (or what she considers too rough) boys.
From their other grandparents the girls got a kitchen for Christmas and Faith adors playing there and making food.  By far her favorite solo play toys right now are food toys.  She likes her sorting pie and dish set together.
Education:
Ordinal numbers
Faith knows her entire alphabet (upper and lower case) and the sounds that the consonants make (q and x are the exceptions).  She does pretty well with the vowel sound but it isn't consistant.  I have added station time into our preschool hour and during this time I am working through the K4 cirriculum.  I am starting to work on sight words with her.  On January 19th she identified her first word, God, in the Bible.  I showed it to her in our Moses and the King book several times and then she saw it in the Bible, I was so proud!  We also work on handwriting and she really loves that as well. 
Her love of reading continues!

S is for Snowman

Rebekah really loves snowmen so I decided to start our Letter of the Week back up with S.

We started with Snowmen at Night (also the title of a book for the week):

We focused on circles this week for our shape.  Here is Rebekah doing a sorting exercise with them and Faith is cutting circles out.

This mini-marshmallow snowman was by far their favorite :)

Rebekah Joy - 27 Months

I have missed a few months due to having a newborn but I am trying to get back on track :) 

Rebekah is such a big girl.  She speaks incredibly well, sometimes I forget how young she is.  She loves her little sister and it is so adorable to hear her say "hello, little one."  Recently she has renamed her teddy bear lovey Baby Jesus, it is really cute. 

SleepingShe had an ear infection this month and that made for some horrible nighttime sleep.  As soon as we started the augmenten it cleared up and she went back to sleeping well.  I also tried adjusting her nap to start closer to 2pm but she was so tired around 1:45 that it just wasn't making sense to keep her up.  So, now she goes down between 1:30 and 1:45 and sleeps until 3:30 or 4. 
Eating
Her milk intake has dropped a little bit and it is usually the thing we have to remind her to consume before she gets seconds of anything else.  Loves raisins as a snack :)
Skills
She got a balance bike for Christmas and has been working on getting on and off of that by herself.  At this posting she has done each of those several times.  She can get her panties and pants on by herself most of the time.  Some easy shoes she can get on herself, with winter and the sturdier shoes it is a bit harder.  She knows several letters by sight, R, F, G, M, D, S, and B.  She occasionally will also get K and T.  Pouring water in and out of cups has become a perfected skill as well when we do the dishes. 
Play
The girls got a kitchen for Christmas and that has been a continuing source of fun for all of them.  Rebekah loves to mimick her sister in whatever meal they are making together or shopping trip they are on with their baskets.  The shopping trip is usually taken in Grace's play gym which has become their car.  The girls received a twins babydoll set for Christmas, complete with rocking horses, and Rebekah just loves playing with her baby and taking her to gymnastics class.  Reading remains among her favorite activities to do during Mommy/Daddy time, a part of her day which of which she is quite protective. 

Grace AnneMarie - 1 Month

We've survived our first month with a newborn :) 

Sleeping:
Grace slept really well for this first month.  I was surprised how much waketime she was capable of, even when still at the hospital.  She was alert and looking around but went to sleep really well.  There were naps that didn't go well but she would always make up for it on the next nap.  She will take a paci but tends to yawn and it falls out of her mouth.  The bouncy seat has helped during some naps and the swing as well.  Bedtime started to get rough about week 3 where that hour after her last feed was filled with a lot of crying and going in with the paci.  We are still in the throws of that right now.  After an hour of off and on sleep we let her CIO and it took 7 minutes for her to fall asleep.  Nighttime sleep has been great, for a newborn :)  We've yet to have a bad night other than one where she apparently didn't get enough waketime that day and daddy just kept her up for about 30 minutes around 1am and she slept until I woke her for her next feeding.  She goes right back to sleep after MOTN feedings.

Eating:
Grace was 6lbs 8oz when we left the hospital on Monday.  I fed her every 2 1/2 hours during the day and 3 hours at night giving her 9 feedings in a 24 hour period.  I had to wake her for every feeding.  At her first check-up that Friday she was back to her birth weight at 7lbs 1oz.  I was pretty happy.  A week later she had only gone up 3oz and the doctor was a little concerned.  She wasn't my regular pediatrician and didn't really give me much to go on other than come back in a few days.  Luckily I saw my regular ped the following Tuesday and she was 7lbs 10oz, he was happy and so was I.  He said I could let her go longer at night so I started letting her sleep and I set my alarm for 5 hours between feedings.  There were several times when I had to wake her for that feeding!  This past Tuesday she weighed in at 8lbs 8oz so I switched her to a 3 hour schedule during the day with 2 cluster feeds in the evening and she is still only waking once at night and sometimes it is me waking her at the 5 hour mark! 
I have been feeding her the same way I did with Faith, 5 minutes in the football hold, 5 minutes across on each side, and then 5 minutes football hold again.  If she goes longer in each position, fine, but 5 minutes is my goal. 
I downloaded Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow, a 41 hour audio book, onto my ipod and have been listening to that during my MOTN feeds and any others where I don't have the bigger girls around and it has made the feeding time go by faster and I feel like I am getting even more done, not that keeping Grace alive is a waste of time but it is nice to be entertained while doing it!
Her first bottle was on Wednesday morning and she only took 2oz.  I pumped out 5oz so I was pretty discouraged.  She did fine that day though so it didn't seem to affect her too much.  We practiced with a half ounce after several feedings the next day and then re-attacked with a nighttime bottle from which she took 2oz and has been doing that for this week.

Skills:
She really enjoys tummy time and is something of a cheater in that she just stretches out and falls asleep there.  She is lifting her head up and at the end of the month has started gripping fingers and clothing.

Our Schedule:
0700 - Wake, eat
0815 - Nap
1000 - Eat
1100 - Nap
1300 - Eat
1400 - Nap
1600 - Eat
1700 - Nap
1800 - Eat, Watch us have dinner, Bath, Bible story,
2000 - Bottle, Bed
2230 - Dreamfeed
0330 - I wake her for MOTN feed if she hasn't already woken up