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Thursday, April 30, 2009

Another Church Twilight funny


This one is even better than the visiting teaching one! You guys have to look at http://www.9thwardcartoons.com/. It is funny LDS stuff, makes me LOL!!!

Visiting Teaching, Twilight style


Angie showed me this...it's too funny!

Recital time!

Instead of a big recital this year, the kids' piano teacher told them that if they played their recital pieces for the family at FHE, she would get them each a treat of their choice. So, we invited Nana over and enjoyed the show. They each played a few songs, Jake played almost his whole book, lol. I only put video up of their actual "recital" songs. Oh, and of course, Rachel had to play for everyone also!

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

A trip to the zoo
















Yesterday, Rachie and I went to the zoo together, just the two of us! It was lots of fun to just do our own thing and look at whatever we wanted without worrying about hurrying along or keeping up with the big kids. I bought a zoo pass in February, and this was only the second time we have used it. I think we will go a lot more often now. I like it a lot. No rushing through, making sure we get to see everything so that we get out money's worth (adults are $9.75 and kids are $6.75). In fact, we didn't even go and see the "African" animals. Just played around wherever Rachie chose. She loved the sandbox, until some kid came over and dumped a shovel full of sand on her head. She was so excited to tell Daddy all about the "aminals" when he got home from work. She told him that the "pwenguins" are her favorite and she also liked the monkeys and playground. We got there a few minutes before it opened, so for the first couple of hours, it felt like we had the whole zoo to ourselves. Our hands got pretty cold, next time I will bring gloves to wear, but other than that, we had a blast!

Sunday, April 26, 2009

"Magic tricks!"

I was upstairs getting ready for church this morning, and I could hear Rachel and Jake laughing really hard downstairs. Rach started yelling, "Mom! Come see my magic trick!" I went downstairs and this is what I saw...she and Jake were having so much fun with the garbage can. I think they were cracking up and playing with it for at least half an hour. Who needs toys???

Catching up a bit!

Helping me clean the bathroomFrosting faced kids!




Smiley!



Rachie and Daddy planting seeds!

Just wanted to show off a few pictures of my cute family. I have been putting a lot of them on my 365 blog and my dropshots, but I feel like I should have some on here too!






Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Random thoughts floating in my head...

I have been tossing around the idea of doing a small preschool with Rachie and some friends this fall. I just can't decide. I know that I don't want my kids to go to preschool somewhere else (which isn't an issue anyway since we could never afford it), but at the same time I know that Rach would LOVE it!

I did an awesome preschool with several friends when Becka was 4, and then again with one other friend the year before Jake started Kindergarten. Jake's didn't seem as successful as Becka's, mostly because it was only with one other child, so it felt more like a playdate than actual "school." Plus, Jake just wasn't as interested in the academic part of it at all. He was more of a large motor skills, fun activity kind of guy. Once he got into Kindergarten, he took off. It was like he knew that this was "real" school and time to work. Maybe that is the difference between boys and girls?

I wonder how many other people would be interested in doing it with me? I feel really weird asking anyone, since everybody has their own strong ideas on their child's education. I know Rachie likes to do preschool stuff here with me, but I think she would be so excited if she had some friends here doing it with her. I see how much fun she has when she and Kylie are coloring and playing together, and think about the projects and things that we could do with more than just she and I, kwim?

I would be willing to do it all here for 2-3 other kids, probably twice a week if the other moms were willing to help me out with snacks and supplies and such. I just don't know. Writing it out here, I am wondering if just maybe scheduling time once or twice a month to do something planned and fun with a couple of her friends might be the way to go and then she and I can work on the other stuff together.

I really am qualified for teaching preschool, I did it for years. My main goals and ideas about preschool seem to be different than most other people's. I like to do things like getting in the dirt and digging for worms and bugs, coloring on blank paper instead of coloring pages, painting with our hands, going on nature walks and feeling flowers, tree bark, stuff like that. I do work on them with letters and letter sounds, but I am not one to push them into chanting letter rhymes and tracing letters/numbers. I think that I took the things I liked from all the different teaching methods I learned in college and sort of adapted them into my own kind of curriculum. I would worry that some other parent might not like me straying from a strict lesson plan every day. I would rather spend an hour talking about and looking at something "silly," like clouds, with kids who are excited about them than try and force them to sit at a table and write their name over and over again while they are bored to tears. I feel like they have to sit at a desk in regular school for 13 years and then onto college, so why force them to do it before then??

Anyway, sorry to just ramble on and on, I am just trying to get these random thoughts out of my head and onto "paper" where I can hopefully make some sort of sense out of them.