Preschool week of 1/14

I'm sorry about what a mess this post is. I placed the pictures in a different place this time, and it has thrown the text off completely. But I'm too lazy to fix it...

After the trials at the beginning of the week, things went fairly well here. We managed to get a lot of school done, without Crumpet really knowing :).

Phonics:We worked a bit more with Progressive Phonics, but Crumpet has figured out that he only needs to know a few words for each story. When I pause for him to read his word, he just cycles through the options without even looking at the page, until he guesses the right one. We also worked on the sounds of letters some more, and he's doing great with this. Periodically throughout the day, he'll be talking and stop at a word. He'll shout "Hey, that starts with __!" He points out objects everywhere and tells me what letter they start with. We started working on sounding out some 3 letter words with fridge magnets.

We played a game where I set out a bunch of toys and told him to give me the ones that start with a specific letter. He did well with this.

Literature: We used Katy No Pocket for our Before Five in a Row unit. This is one of my favorite stories of all time, and Crumpet loves it too. It's about a kangaroo who has no pocket, so she can't carry her joey. She's goes around asking other animals how they carry their babies, and in the end, she gets a tool apron from a workman so she can carry lots of babies. We did some memory work, trying to remember all of the animals Katy meets, and also all of the tools from the tool belt.I printed pictures of many of the animals in the book, and we played a classification game, sorting the animals into groups with fur, feathers, scales, and also bugs.

I made an apron like Katy's for Crumpet to carry his animals around in. He loves this!

Science: Lots of other blogging mamas are doing units on the human body, so I decided to jump on board while the links and book recommendations were easy to find. We read a LOT of books on the subject. Our favorites were:

My Amazing Body by Rachel Wright. This has good simple explanations of the parts of the body, as well as discussion about treating your body well, and it covers the senses.

The Human Body by Scholastic. This has great plastic overlays, so you can look into the body, system by system, and slowly put the body together to form a whole. Crumpet liked this one best, as long as we flipped right past the skull page, because this looked scary.

The Usborne Flip-Flap Body Book: We own this one and Crumpet has always loved it. I thought he's be more interested in the study of the body because of it, but he really wasn't that interested. Oh well. We did do some fun little experiments:

We blew up a balloon to demonstrate the inflation and deflation of lungs. I love that he was dressed as a pirate for this, and we chased the balloon around afterward for exercise. Homeschooling rocks!

We squeezed a ball through a pair of nylons to show how intestines squeeze food through. I saw this idea here.

We read a little book about cleanliness and then we did this experiment to show how to remove germs from our hands.

I put glitter glue on Crumpet's hands and he rubbed it all over. Then we tried to wipe it off with a paper towel. That doesn't work. We tried rinsing with water, but most of the "germs" stayed put. So we used soap and water, and it washed all the germs off! Crumpet loved this and did it 3 times.

I saw this idea here.

Other: We did a few Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready projects. I hid objects in our Find and Seek bag and had him retrieve specific ones without looking but only feeling. He thought this was great fun, and then he got silly and started handing me the wrong things on purpose. We got 2 new games from the consignment store: Blues Clues, which is really cute and clever, and Chutes and Ladders which I always loved, but Crumpet can't stand it...

Socialization: We went to karate, which is getting better. Also, I've started watching a little boy once a week. I used to babysit for him, but it's been about a year since I stopped. I have missed him, and the money will be nice to help feed my curriculum habit! And practicing sharing his toys is good for Crumpet. Here they are, cooperating on putting together a puzzle.

And in other news, potty training is going great!! Every morning, there is a huge battle about underwear, but once that's over with, he uses the potty all day! We're spending a fortune on Matchbox cars, since that's his pooping reward, but it's worth it. Bribes never worked before, but for now, he's excited about new cars. Here's hoping this lasts. With Crumpet, you never know...

A Funny Story and a Plea for Help!

Crumpet keeps me on my toes, that's all I can say...
The potty training is coming along better than I thought it would. Phew. Crumpet will now pee on the potty, no problem, and even goes by himself without telling me. Ah, self-sufficiency. I never thought I'd see it. (Yes, my bathroom is gross right now...) But he still has issues with pooping. (Isn't it amazing what moms feel is okay to talk about and publish? Yuck.) Today we had a little friend of his visiting, and they were having some trouble playing well together. At one point, I went into Crumpet's room, and he was huddled in the corner. I asked what he was doing, and he told me he was hiding from his friend for a while. I asked if he was really going to the bathroom, and he said no. So I left him to be alone for a little while. Eventually, he came out of the room and told me "That was a really bad poop, Mom." I said, "AACK, in your underwear???!!!" But no. He had put on a pull-up and put his pants back on (backwards!) so he could hide in the corner and fill his pants! How he reached the pull-ups, I don't know. I didn't even know he could put on his own pants because he always tells me it's impossible. So obviously, he is capable of many more things than I realize (I did suspect this...). He is very sneaky and clever, and thank goodness he put on that pull-up!
Here's my trouble, though. The little fib about the fact that he wasn't going to the bathroom, when in fact he was. He has done this many times in the last few days, always as a way to get what he wants when he's afraid I'll say no. It's always pretty entertaining and clever. But how do I stop it before it is no longer funny, but a full blown problem with lying? We've talked about telling the truth, and I try to make most of the things he wants to do possible, so he won't feel the need to hide from me, but it's not working. Any ideas?

Preschool Week of 1/6

This was a, um, "challenging" week... We started off great. We went to a cabin in the mountains for the New Year. Crumpet had a phenomenal time playing with tons of cousins. We accomplished lots of school work. There are no real pictures, except this one:
One of our carrot tops from last week's plant experiments grew! Pretty amazing...

Most of what we did was review. We completed quite a few Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready projects. We checked out 23 books from the library, read and re-enacted several of them. Crumpet memorizes stories word for word, chooses a character, and then we act out the book. He has always done this, and it's pretty neat to watch. We played a lot of games involving letter sounds, and the concept has really clicked with him. Crumpet officially started karate in the big classroom with all of the 3 and 4 year olds. I cannot tell you how badly this started, but by the end of class, the instructors managed to get him out on the floor, and he enjoyed at least some of it.

The 3 things that have made me consider heading off to live in a cave this week are:
1) Crumpet keeps waking up at 3 or 4 am. I am not a pleasant person when I get up at this hour, and by the end of the day, either is Crumpet.

2) He has conjunctivitis, and he screams and gets hysterical about getting drops in his eyes. 3 joyous times a day... It's a good thing I have experience working with animals because I know some good restraint techniques, and I know how to avoid getting bitten by wild things...

3) We are finally potty training. For the second time. Crumpet was potty trained last year at this time. And then he decided he didn't like it, and refused to use the toilet anymore. He screams and gets hysterical (lots of that around here right now...) when he gets near a toilet. This week, I announced that he would no longer wear diapers. For 2 days, he did great. Then, he fell apart again, and it has been a battle to continue. I know that a battle of the wills is a bad way to accomplish this, but clearly he is capable of being potty trained, and it is just stubborness on his part. I can be stubborn too, though, and I refuse to spend 3 months traveling and changing a 4 year old's dirty diapers in a tiny airplane bathroom. So he will be potty trained by April. Or he will break me. I really don't know which way this will end up... Sigh.
Poor Crumpet - boogery eyes and attacked by a coffee table... Bad week.

But still we had some fun...