Dirty Dash 2011

Aaron, Bennett, Lincoln, Ivan, and Jeremiah before the Piglet Plunge

We did the Dirty Dash again this year. Aaron's brother-in-law Rob ran the 10k, and then Aaron and Rob ran with the kids in the Piglet Plunge. It was a blast having the Bailey's stay with us for the weekend. My kids loved having two of there cousins to hang out with. Lincoln's been walking around all day saying, "Wanna hear what Bennett taught me to say? 'Zip it, lock it, put it in your pocket!' Haha! Isn't that kind of funny? Bennett taught me that."

Rob ran in the tuxedo from his wedding. Lincoln wore goggles and an old school life vest, Ivan wore a little golfer outfit, Bennett wore a ninja costume, Jeremiah had a snorkel mask and boots, and Aaron wore one of my maternity t-shirts and a safari hat (he looked gross).

Aaron's brother Ryan and Ryan's wife Melissa are the owners of Flo Foto, the photography company that takes all the pictures for the Dirty Dash. Aaron is the one who does their website flo-foto.com. If you go to the page, and watch the slide show that's in the middle on the bottom, you'll see a picture of Lincoln at last year's Dirty Dash, I think he's the 3rd or 4th picture in.

Lincoln was not a fan of the giant water slide. Melissa ran down to shoot pictures of the kiddos.

 Ivan, Aaron, and Lincoln after the slide on their way to the mud pit.

The mud pit. Lincoln said it was cold.

Some of my favorite shots of the day:

 Lincoln coming out of the mud pit.

 Ivan, Aaron and Lincoln coming out of the mud pit.

 I handed Adelia to Aaron at the very end, when they were in line for pictures. She wasn't very sure about being in on the mud action.

 Mud Monster!

 I told Ivan to say "Cheese!" but instead he yelled NOOOOO! At the top of his lungs. 

 Ryan is hard at work taking pictures in the studio.

 "Not happy Bob, not happy."

 Can you see the goggle lines?

 Ivan's golfer outfit just cracks me right up. I love it. Especially the hat.

 Jeremiah after the mud pit.

 Happy, muddy baby.

One more shot of the golfer out fit. Love it!

Sooner or later we'll get the professional pictures that Ryan and Melissa took. They'll be awesome. I'll post them when I get them. I think the kids had fun, even though not a one of them would admit it. Once the memory of the ice cold showers at the end wears off, I'm sure they'll want to do it again next year.

Book Review: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

by Amy Chua

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An awe-inspiring, often hilarious, and unerringly honest story of one mother's exercise in extreme parenting, revealing the rewards-and the costs-of raising her children the Chinese way.

All decent parents want to do what's best for their children. What Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother reveals is that the Chinese just have a totally different idea of how to do that. Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions and providing a nurturing environment. The Chinese believe that the best way to protect your children is by preparing them for the future and arming them with skills, strong work habits, and inner confidence. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother chronicles Chua's iron-willed decision to raise her daughters, Sophia and Lulu, her way-the Chinese way-and the remarkable results her choice inspires.

Here are some things Amy Chua would never allow her daughters to do:
-have a playdate
-be in a school play
-complain about not being in a school play
-not be the #1 student in every subject except gym and drama
-play any instrument other than the piano or violi
-not play the piano or violin

The truth is Lulu and Sophia would never have had time for a playdate. They were too busy practicing their instruments (two to three hours a day and double sessions on the weekend) and perfecting their Mandarin.

Of course no one is perfect, including Chua herself. Witness this scene:

"According to Sophia, here are three things I actually said to her at the piano as I supervised her practicing:

1. Oh my God, you're just getting worse and worse.
2. I'm going to count to three, then I want musicality.
3. If the next time's not PERFECT, I'm going to take all your stuffed animals and burn them!"

But Chua demands as much of herself as she does of her daughters. And in her sacrifices-the exacting attention spent studying her daughters' performances, the office hours lost shuttling the girls to lessons-the depth of her love for her children becomes clear. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is an eye-opening exploration of the differences in Eastern and Western parenting- and the lessons parents and children everywhere teach one another.

This book was a super fast read, like two sittings, for me. It's not that its suspenseful or anything, but just really interesting. I had no idea that parenting styles were so different in different parts of the world. And although to my western way of thinking, some of her techniques seem pretty harsh, I tried to keep in mind that her end goal and my end goal are the same thing in the long run. I tried not to judge, but instead put myself in Amy's mind set, and I'll admit, it was hard.

But what I really loved about this book was the end, where keeping her daughter close to the family was more important than any other belief in parenting, even though it meant giving up a lot on Amy's part. I like that one parenting style worked for one daughter. And I like that Lulu still benefited from aspects of her Chinese upbringing (like her work ethic in playing tennis), even though she needed to do it her own way. I think it would be interesting to see how Sophia and Lulu choose to raise their kids.

I guess my opinion at the end is that the world would benefit from throwing eastern parenting and western parenting in a bag and mixing them up a bit and seeing what happened :) 

This book would make an awesome book club discussion book. I loved it, and recommend it to everyone.

Little Boys Club

Our homeschool group does "clubs" every Wednesday. The kids are divided up into age groups, so Little Boys club is ages 4-6, and so on. Today we got to host, and it was nice, because I finally got to meet some of the boys in our group that are Lincoln's age.

I decided to do an apple theme in honor of fall. We made apple sun catchers, taste tested different kinds of apples, played pin the apple on the apple tree, and hot apple (potato), and of course the favorite, bobbing for apples. :) The kids had a great time, and it was a hoot watching them bob for apples.

Baby Steps!

Well, The Child finally decided to try taking a few steps! I'm thrilled! Actually, I kind of tricked her into it. I would hold onto the back of her shirt, so she felt nice and safe and balanced, and then once she started going (because she'll always walk if someone is holding on) I slowly let go. I think four steps is about the most she ever did, but hey, it's progress! She was pleased with herself too. Every time she'd make it to the couch without falling over she's laugh hysterically and clap her hands for herself.

We played with the toy cell phone today too. I got quite the kick out of Little Miss Chatterbox. I don't know where she gets her phone skills, but it's not from me. I hate being on the phone. But apparently she likes it.

Today she also said, "Cheese!" and gave me a big cheesy grin, when I pulled out the camera. And she signed "chicken" for me. So that puts her spoken words up to mom, dad, baby, ball, shoes, chicken (meaning the animal), and cheese (meaning smile). And her signed words at baby, milk, water, shoes, and chicken. She's getting so big so fast.

Letter Day: B is for Boat

Ivan launching his boat

We did letter B today, for boats. One of my kids' favorite thing to do when the weather is nice is float boats down the little man-made stream on campus. We haven't done it nearly enough this summer, so I decided that's what we'd do for B day. I made the boats out of some extra craft Styrofoam that I had in the craft cupboard, but you can buy craft Styrofoam at Walmart pretty cheap. I used a wooden shisk-kabob stick cut in half for two of the masts, and drinking straws for the other two (because I only had one kabob stick left). The sail is construction paper.  

We usually sail boats at the North campus duckpond, but they are doing a lot of construction over there at the moment. So we opted to check out the new south campus duck pond and stream that we haven't seen yet. They have wooden walk ways all around the duck pond, which make it MUCH nicer and more sanitary. The new stream is beautiful and has little waterfalls every few feet. We're going to have to take Aaron back there one of these days.

We sang all three verses of Row, Row, Row Your Boat which go like this:

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily merrily merrily
Life is but a dream.


Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
If you see a crocodile
Don't forget to scream! Ahhh!


Row, row, row your boat
Underneath the stream
Ha ha I fooled you
I'm a submarine.

Sometimes she sleeps...

...but not very often.

Bedtime for Frances Day 4 and 5

I decided to make a small change to our ordinary schedule. Originally, I thought we'd do our poem at the end of the lessons, but it hasn't been working and we've been skipping over the poem because we've been running out of time. So instead of doing the poem at the end, we've started doing it right after the Pledge. That's been working really well so far.

Day 4 Today after rereading BFF we talked about quilts. In our read aloud time we've been reading some books about quilts. Lincoln has a special quilt that his Gramma Tam made for him when he was a baby. It has little boys pretending to be pirates on it. Lincoln did a writing activity about his blanket. He told me the words he wanted to write, and then I called out which letters he needed to make the words. When he was done, he drew a picture of his blankets with three pirates on it. He did not want to use any colors, only pen. He told me that the pirates are sad because they are trapped in a net. They all three have hats and hooks.

This is what Lincoln wrote, "I love my blanket but I like it. Grandma made it for me. Blanket." We've been working on having him put a space in between hid words. I think he did pretty good this time.

When we were done with the writing, we did some patterning. I made this patterning sheet, that had three quilts with colored squares, and then three blank quilts. Lincoln's job was to color the blank quilts to match the patterned ones.

Other than the fact that he insisted that the color orange was brown, he did great. And at least he consistently said orange was brown.

Day 5 After reading BFF we talked about patience, and whether or not Frances's parents had patience with her. We also talked about our favorite parts of the story. After that, I pulled out a sheet of sequencing card that I got of off homeschoolshare.com and Lincoln cut them out and put them in the right order.

After that, we talked about morning, afternoon, evening, and night, and the activities that our family does at these different times of the day. Then we sorted the activities into their respective time of day using a little chart that I made. Linc had a little trouble distinguishing between evening and night, but I think we got it all worked out.

And that's the end of our Bedtime for Frances unit. Next up, The Gingerbread Boy by Paul Galdone

Book Review: The Help

by Kathryn Stockett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really liked this book. Historical fiction is probably my favorite genre, and American history is probably my favorite topic. I also typically like books that are character development based (as opposed to plot based). So this book was a win/win as far as that goes. I've read a lot of books about slavery, and a few on civil rights, but this is probably the first book I've read that addressed the civil rights movement through the daily life lens of ordinary women. This was an interesting take on it.

Ever since I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, I've loved the idea that progress, realistically, happens in small steps, a generation or so at a time. The Help, does a great job of expressing this idea. And I think that's one of the underlying themes: how change comes about in society. I did not think the book was trying to point out that things were bad in the South in the 1950s and 60s, in my mind that's already a given. The author was trying to talk about change, and picked a backdrop she understood as her medium to do it.

Speaking of the author, one of my favorite parts of the book was reading her few pages at the end. I like that her feelings about her upbringing in the South are mixed and complicated, instead of cut and dry. I like that she expressed this complication in her characters. Probably what I love most about the book is that the characters are so real and human.

My favorite character was Aibeleen. I felt taht she was the voice of change in the story. She was rock solid, and steady, and without her quiet, ongoing strength and courage, everything would have dead ended before it even started.

Great book. There is a lot of mild language, but it's the way people talked. I didn't feel like the language detracted from the book at all. I'd recommend this book, and I can't wait to see the movie.

Mammoth Sunflower

Not quite as mammoth-like as I would have thought...but the boys love it! :)

Bedtime For Frances Day 1, 2, and 3

We started a new unit, the book it's based off of is called Bedtime For Frances by Russell Hoban. The book is about a little badger named Frances who can't fall asleep. 

Day 1 was Tuesday, so we were a little bit pressed for time because we had Letter Day in the morning. After lunch and getting Ivan and Adelia down for naps, Lincoln and I did our first reading of the story. Lincoln was really into it, I think because it was right at his level. He's just started to say he's afraid of things in his room at night, and he's already a pro at stalling, and dragging bedtime out as long as possible. :) So I think he really identified with Frances. He asked a lot of questions. We talked a little bit about what badgers are, about how monsters and giants aren't real, and about how the wind moves things.

After that we build Frances's bedroom scene on the side of the fridge, using simple shapes. As we put the scene together, we talked about the different shapes we were using. These are the patterns I made for Frances's bedroom. If I were to do this again, I wouldn't trace the mattress onto white construction paper, I'd do it a color. Since our fridge is white, it's hard to see the white mattress against it.

And last, we read our poem for this unit, Wind on the Hill by A.A. Milne. I made this poster of our poem to put up on our preschool board.

Day 2 we got a little more done, and I was happy. After rereading the story we talked about the things Frances did before she went to bed and compared them to Lincoln's bedtime routine. We also talked about the song Frances sings to try and help herself go to sleep. We made a list of things we could give Frances that might help her sleep. Lincoln came up with a telescope, a baby, a teddy bear, shoes, a tree, and a cactus. He helped me write a letter to Frances explaining what we were giving her. Then he drew a picture of each thing labeled it, and he cut it out and put it on Frances's bed. (Lincoln also wanted to make a blanket for her, and to put the moth on the outside of her window.)

After that, we talked some more about the wind. In our read aloud time we've read a few books about the wind, so we brought those into our discussion. Then we made a wind vane. I found the basic pattern for that on pbs.org, but then I improvised a little based on things I had around here.

I made this pattern for the compass and the pointer. Then Lincoln cut out and glued the compass to a paper plate. Then we poked a hole in the bottom of a plastic cup, and stuck a pencil through. To hold the pencil in place we had a big round ball of play-doh inside the paper cup that we stuck the pencil in. Then we glued down the edges of the paper cup onto the plate. We cut slits in both ends of a drinking straw and inserted the pointer arrows, and then taped them down. Then we stuck a pin through the center of the straw into the eraser of the pencil. Ta-da! Wind vane. Then we took it outside to test it out. We talked about the points on the compass, and which way was north/south/east/west. We ended up drawing a little key on the driveway with sidewalk chalk. We drew a little house with an N under it for north, mountains with an E, a road with an S, and a tree with a W (because if you're sitting on our driveway, the house it to the north, the mountains east, the street to the south, and the tree in our yard to the west.) Then Lincoln could line up the letters on his compass with the letters in the key, and he would be able to tell me which direction the wind was blowing.

On Day 3 we started a lot of projects we didn't have time to finish. But that's ok, because they can go in Lincoln's projects folder, and he can pull them out to work on when he's bored, or when I need a minute to prep something. After reading the story, we talked about jobs (in the story Frances's dad tells Frances the wind's job is to blow the curtains), the wind's job, the job Frances gives to her teddy bear, what Lincoln's dad does for a job, etc. Then we got started with out activities for the day. We started making an alphabet book similar to the song Frances sings to put herself to sleep. We folded 7 sheets of paper in half and stapled the middle together to make a book with 28 pages. Then on each page, in the top left corner, Lincoln wrote a capital and lower case letter, until he'd done the whole alphabet. We will go back and make a simple sentence for each one (A is for apple, B is for bear, etc.) and draw pictures, or cut pictures out of magazines for each one. We will probably work on this project here and there, and it will take longer to finish than we will be spending on this particular unit, but that's ok. Next we talked more about badgers, and how they are omnivores, and that omnivores eat meat and plants. I found this activity online at homeschoolshare.com for free and printed it out. All we had time to do today was cut out the picture and glue them to the right words (and I made Lincoln figure the words out all by himself by going off of the starting letter, he did great!). After they dry we'll staple them together to make another book.

*Something weird is going on with the color/underlining of my links, sorry the look so dumb! I can't figure it out at the moment.

Soccer Boy

This is Lincoln's first year playing soccer. You have to be 4 to play, and he barely squeezed past the deadline this year. To say he LOVES it, would be an understatement. Every morning he wakes up and asks if today is a soccer day. He calls himself Soccer Boy. "I can run fast mom, because I'm a soccer boy." For all his talk, when he's on the field, he mostly just runs aimlessly around with a big grin on his face. It's pretty hilarious.

Letter Day: A is for Ants

We kicked off the start of another round of Letter Days today at Suzy's house. She taught Ivan and Kaitlyn about ants. They read about ants, and got to look at a few ants Suzy and in a baby food jar. The kids used their fingers to make little ant bodies, and then drew on the legs (I helped with some of Ivan's). Then we went outside to hunt for ants, and watched them for a little while. For a snack we ate ants on a log (celery with peanut butter and raisins.)

I think the kids enjoyed their time. I also think it's going to be really good for Ivan to have a "special" time once a week that's just for him, while Lincoln has time each week to just play one on one with Nathan (which will also be really good for Linc.) So it's a win-win situation. Hooray for Letter Day!

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Day 5

 Happy Memorial Day! Aaron gave me the day off today to get some things done around the house that I've been wanting to do, but not having the time for (like canning raspberry jam!). So he took over for me and did preschool and everything else with the kids. It was a wonderful day, and I think we all enjoyed changing things up a bit. Here's what they did for preschool.

They made Chicka Trees using 1 Pepperridge Farm Pirouette stick, 4 apple slices, 3 Cocoa Puffs, and a handful of Alphabet Cereal. I thought they turned out cute.

They also made a "web of words", which was the last activity I had planned for yesterday. Basically, Lincoln picked 5 letters of the alphabet, and then for each letter they had to come up with 5 words that started with that letter. For this activity, I made this template. Lincoln picked P, O, G, D, and A. And they just stuck the list of five words up on the fridge using the magnets. Aaron had to help Lincoln think of some of the words by giving him clues, but I still thought that was fair.

For the last activity, Lincoln did some counting coconut sheets. Basically, it's pictures of a coconut tree with a number at the top, and Lincoln has to cut out and glue on the correct number of coconuts. (He really likes cutting and pasting, so we do a lot of this type of thing instead of coloring, which he doesn't like as much.) He did about five cards, and then he as tired of it, so we tucked the rest away in his project folder which he can get out to work on later when he needs something to do.

And that's the end of our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom unit. Next we'll be doing Bedtime for Frances. Should be fun.

Scout Camp Out

Aaron was supposed to take the teachers quorum camping on Friday night....but one by one they all called and canceled on him. We sat on the front lawn debating whether our family should just go, since most everything was already packed. Our neighbor (who was also supposed to have been going on the camp out) came over and said their family would be up for going up to the camp site for dinner, or that just he and his boys would go with Aaron and our boys on a mini father and sons over nighter. I didn't want to stay home alone, so we opted that our family would camp, and their family would come up for dinner. We also invited the family of the other leader who had planned to go on the camp out, and that family decided to join us for dinner as well. So up to Bennion Creek we went.

We roasted chickens on a spit, and had dutch oven potatoes for dinner. YUM!

 

Dinner was delicious, but it took a lot longer to make than we thought it would. We didn't eat until after dark. But we had a good time talking to our friends, and the kids liked running around together and throwing rocks in the stream.

And I bet you'll never guess who stayed up all night. Yup. It was Adelia. Maybe she was cold, I don't know. But it was freezing during the night. Literally. When we woke up in the morning the windshield on our van was covered in a sheet of ice. Which makes me think we just took our last camping trip of the year.

And guess who fell asleep on the car ride home? Yes again...Adelia. Little stinker.

Here's Lincoln and Adelia sitting int he driveway while Aaron unpacks the van. I guess they're pretty cute.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Day 4

Today we split preschool in half, so that we could attend Friday Fun with our home school group. This will be a regular Friday occurrence, so I'm going to have to learn how to schedule what we're doing on Friday so that it will split in half more easily. Although today worked out pretty well, as far as that went, even though I didn't plan it out that way.

It was a beautiful day at the park, and I was glad for the outside time with our friends. 

We started off with all our regular stuff. Chores, read aloud, calendar, Pledge.

Then we read CCBB and afterward talked about the letters. We talked about how we could tell that D, E, and F were hurt when they fell out of the tree, and what looked different about M, N, and O after the fall. We also talked about why the capital letters Z, R, J, and N wrapped themselves around the lowercase ones after they fell out of the tree. Then I asked the boys which letter of the alphabet they would like to be. Lincoln said L and Ivan said I. No surprises there.

I had a different activity planned for today, but Lincoln has been so interested in which letters rhyme, that I made up this chart for him last night, and we did it today instead of what I had originally planned. The book is written around the letters that rhyme with tree. So I thought we'd do the same thing. You can print out the chart I made here. Lincoln really liked doing this. He got a little hung up sometimes, because he wanted to rhyme the sound the letter made with tree, rather than the name of the letter, but overall I think it was a good exercise for him. He cut out and glued the letters all by himself, so we got our fine motor skills practice in for the day too. :)

I had something else planned too, but we didn't get to it, so we'll do it tomorrow.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Day 3

We got started late today because I went to WalMart after we dropped off Aaron, instead of going straight home and getting started. I think I'll try to avoid doing that again in the future if possible. The kids really do a lot better if we start school first thing. Today wasn't horrible or anything, but we just went long and ran into lunch time. But now I know, so that's good.

We did the regular routine. Calendar took us a little bit longer today because it was the first day of September, so we had to move all the numbers around, and explain why we were switching the month.

During our reading of CCBB today we watched closely to see when the coconut tree starts to bend from the weight of the letters. We also watched to see when the coconuts fall off the tree, and tried to guess what made them fall. Lincoln decided it was either because the tree was too heavy, or because the letters pushed the coconuts out to make room for them. :) I love his responses to the questions. (By the way, in case you're curious, I get the questions out of the text book. I don't make them up myself. I'm not that cool.)

Next we did a dramatization of the book. Lincoln and Ivan took turns being the coconut tree (complete with sign that said, "I am a coconut tree.") Then we reread the first part of the book and every time a letter was called the one who wasn't the tree would find the letters and put them up in the tree. Then at the end, the tree got to collapse, that was the boys' favorite part.

After that we did a writing activity. We talked about the coconuts in the book, and how they must have felt when all the letters started invading their space in the coconut tree. Then we wrote a letter to the coconuts. I wrote down the ideas that Lincoln and Ivan told me, and modeled a letter for them. Then they got to write their own letters. Ivan colored a picture of him and Lincoln and Uncle Ryan on a rocket ship, and Lincoln and I shortened down the letter I had written and then I told him out loud how to spell the words, and he wrote them down and then colored a picture to go with. It turned out cute.

This letter says, "Dear coconut, I'm climbing up the coconut tree. Did you know coconut starts with C? From Lincoln Aaron Swan." The dark black coconut in the picture is the one falling out of the tree. Lincoln wanted me to write "sorry" to that coconut.

Like I mentioned earlier, we got started late, and so we ran into lunch time. So I made rice while the kids worked on their writing activities, and then while the were eating I played their fun song of the day for them. Today it was "A Spelling Medley" by Sharon, Louis, and Bram. It reminded me of something you'd sing around the campfire at girls camp. We're going to have to save our poem for after nap time.