How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?

Audrey has been asking to watch The Sound of Music for a while now so last night, since it was just the 4 of us, I put it in for a few minutes before bed time. Just enough to get them interested so we can finish it over the weekend. We watched up to when Maria first meets the children as I knew seeing those kids would get them interested if they weren’t already! Audrey was totally into it from the get go, James however, ehhh. It took seeing those kids...

While Maria was on her way to the Von Trap’s and she was singing, James put his hands on his head and exclaims “Why won’t she stop singing?” I informed it him that "this is a musical" and he threw his head back with a big groan and said “I HATE musicals.” Ooops. Sorry, son. I’m trying to broaden your horizons. And you live with a bunch of girls.

Wisdom Wednesday

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, 

people will forget what you did, but people

will never forget how you made them feel -

                                                  Maya Angelou

School Days

I have a schedule that I TRY to map out a month in advance with Olivia’s pre-school lessons. My lesson plans are a hodge lodge of Pinterest sites and a Bible based curriculum for letter recognition. I’m not following in my husbands footsteps and I actually write my lesson plans down. Not store them in the old noggin :) Bahahaha!! Some of you will get that tasty little inside joke :)

I digress. I am kinda nervous that she might be a little behind when she goes to K in the fall (summer, who are we kidding here?) just because the others have had a whole year of strict learning time. But, we are going to do our best and say lots of prayers!! She catches on very, very quickly when I introduce new things. After we had mastered her name I decided we should buckle down on hand writing. So at the suggestion of a good friend, I ordered the book Handwriting Without Tears. Let me just say so far it’s been the absolute best thing I could of done for her! The way its presented in the book is sheer genius. Literally, hand writing without tears!! So far she can write on command F, E, D, P, B and R and thats only taken about 4 weeks! Tomorrow we will start with N. I found a great website for some work sheets for tracing when we work on fine motor skills and recently decided I would throw in some number and shape work sheets and kill 2 birds with 1 stone :) She’s gotta learn to write 1-10 before I send her off! And she can identify most of her shapes but can only draw circles.

I love my school days with her. As long as I keep things rolling along and don’t make her spend too much time on one thing she is perfectly content and happy to do her “work” and will have a semi-good attitude for about 3.5 hours :)


Below she was doing busy work by sorting all of her crayons by color :)

Sometimes we play UNO for our math lesson :)

Today I wrote all the letters she has learned thus far onto sheets of paper that I taped together to make one long sheet. I wrote each letter multiple times in a different color marker and she had to connect each letter with the color. She really liked this moving activity!! We will definitely be doing it again!

Here she is working hard at tracing those numbers. Those painted finger nails and that grip on her pencil...

Independence and Carousels

Last week Olivia and I spent Tuesday-Saturday in Birmingham helping Granddaddy and Nonie pack. Well, really I helped them purge and packed only a little! Olivia was a champ all week spending most of Tuesday, all of Wednesday and Friday entertaining her self among the boxes, playing the Nook or watching PBS. On Thursday though her sweet Grandaddy took her and spent the morning and part of the afternoon at the children’s museum there in Birmingham and Nelda and I got their kitchen and laundry room cleaned out and packed. Whew!!! And then we took her to the mall Friday evening to ride the carousel. We worked like maniacs for 4 days but had a blast doing it!!

I had to leave James and Audrey in the care of their father for the mornings and evenings and I prepared them as best I could. I bought all throw away dishes and utensils for breakfast and supper. Stocked them up on their favorite lunch and snack supplies along with zip lock bags to pack their lunches and snacks in. I even bought them an alarm clock. LOL!! They were beyond excited to get one and to use it and Jon said they were up and at ‘em every morning when it went off! They fixed their own breakfast (cereal of course) packed their lunches, got dressed and were ready to go by the time their daddy was. (I may or may not of scared them into submission by mentioning the fact that daddy wouldn’t mind making them go to school in their pajamas!) and I was so proud of them! Perhaps slightly wounded that they didn’t seem to miss me or anything but at the same time so proud that they are becoming so independent. It’s what we are striving for, right? :)

However, last night as I was putting them to bed I went to set their alarm clock and they both screamed “NO!!!!! Will you PLEASE come wake us up?!” James said “Yeah, that alarm clock is SO LOUD and made me jump every morning!” And Audrey said “Yeah and can you scratch our backs like you always do?” :) I will admit I was slightly relieved to know they aren’t completely independent of me yet! >>insert smiling heart eyes emoji here<<

I make no excuses

I will make absolutely no excuses or resolutions this time because that strategy NEVER GETS ME ANY WHERE. You know it and I know it.

Olivia and I have been hitting the books pretty hard lately trying to get her little self ready for the big K in August. 6 months from tomorrow (don’t even get me started on that pesky school calendar) our littlest one will strap on a book bag, grab a lunch box and walk the elementary hall for the first time as a student. Waaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.

We have been working on hand writing which includes learning first, middle and last name, and a few weeks ago we started learning our frog jump letters and she has mastered F, E, D and we are currently on P :) She knows all the names and sounds of A-H and days of the week and months of the year.

I try to incorporate lots of many different things into our school day because the child does not like to play by her self. Gee, I wonder why? Here are a few pictures of her working on her cutting skills and a little science lesson with dancing milk. Don’t ask me what the actual “science” is in the lesson. Pinterest doesn’t tell you all that.....bahahahaha!

The Best Part

One of the best things about James and Audrey’s daddy working at the same school they go to is that he is privy to some insider information about them that probably not all parents are privileged with. For example, Jon was walking down the hall one day last week and ran into (okay he didn’t actually run into him in a physical form but passed him in the hall) the music teacher/band director. The Music Man said “Hey I’ve got a funny story for you about James.” Imagine that, a funny story about our boy :)

On the first day of music for this school year, the Music Man asked if any of the kids did any thing exciting this summer?! James was the first to raise his hand (shocker I know) and proceeded to tell the Music Man “Yeah!! We went to our grandparents for a whole week this summer!” The Music Man said “Oh that sounds like a lot of fun James! How wonderful!” James replied with “Yeah it was. And the best part was that our parents weren’t even there.”

As Jon was telling me this, those words stung for about 3.5 seconds and then we both started laughing and I said “Yep he is right. That was THE BEST PART.” Muhahahahahaha!!!!!

2+1 is 80

Olivia loves to tell James and Audrey that she is smarter than them. Here are my favorites:

Olivia: Audrey I so am smarter than you
James: Yeah well whats 2+1?
Olivia: 80!!!!

Olivia: I so am smarter than you Audrey!
Audrey: Oh yeah well how many legs does a spider have?
Olivia: 8!!!
Audrey: Nope! They have 6!!!

Hahahahaha oh Audrey I guess she is smarter than you this time!!!