Week Nine Recap

I can't believe it is the ninth week of doing these lessons! It has been a fun experience and I overheard Lily tell Tristan while they were playing in her room "Ok now we do a project" and I watched Tristan pretend to paint Lily's feet and stamp them on a pretend piece of paper!!

Monday:

Whew today was a rough one. I am not sure if it was the weekend apart from each other, or the impending time change or the barometric pressure or an alien takeover, but wow did we have a rocky morning. There was about fifteen minute total where no one whined, cried, hit, bit, screamed, or threw a fit. I would say about seven of those peaceful non-consecutive minutes were spent doing some projects. We painted our letter of the week which was an Iguana I, and glued a witch together out of triangles. We took a lot of deep breaths today and had a few time outs given. Luckily, after nap and lunch we became our normal selves again and kept the aforementioned bad behavior to our usual minimum.

Tuesday:

Things were a lot better today. We had a few time outs and deep breathing exercises, but it was nothing compared to the meltdown chaos that yesterday provided. After our breakfasts, we helped each other get out of our PJs and put our clothes for the day on. The focus skill for this week is putting our pants on and pulling them up with little to no help. I am making a conscious effort to not put Lily in skinny jeans this week so we can master this skill. Once we were dressed and ready to go, we had some free play time so I could get some laundry started. This is usually when things get a little hairy, so once they did, we switched back to a more structured day and climbed into our seats for project time. We made a skeleton by gluing Q-tips to a piece of black paper. I made the outline of a body and handed them each a handful of Q-tips. At first, Tristan started dotting his Q-tip in the glue like we were painting and Lily started placing hers horizontally, which looked like ribs. Chances are, this project will not be staying glued on very long, but as usual, it is fun to see how they tackled a project when given little instructions. We zipped through that project so we practiced some more fine motor skills and peeled stickers to decorate premade monster faces.

Wednesday:

It was quite warm out today, so we started the morning off after breakfast with a nice looooong walk. I found more sidewalk chalk at Walmart last night finally so when we got back, we spent some time coloring with the new full sized pieces. Lily and Tristan also helped me to get some of the leaves out of our play area, and since it was warm enough, we took off our shoes and played in the sandbox for a little bit. We came inside to wash hands, use the potty, and get ready for snack, and they started fighting about who was standing where. Yes, toddler problems. Before I could sprint down the hall, they bit each other. I have been trying to keep them as busy and as active as I can, but sometimes I need to minute to grab snack, refill cups, straighten up. I know it’s the age and they are together all the time, but man, this week has been quite a patience tester! I have tried the calm, “use your words” approach, the scary “I am raising my voice sternly at you so please stop” approach, straight up ignoring them, time outs, and everything in between. I just keep telling myself to belly breathe, and if I am calm, they will be calm. Calm but stern? This is totally karma for the seven years of almost constant physical fighting my brother and I did which was pure torture to my mom. For that I am sorry!

After nap and lunch, we were refreshed and regrouped. During nap, I put together a few possible projects we could do, depending on the mood of the afternoon. We ‘painted’ a piece of paper candy corn with orange, yellow, and white rice and then we built a foam scarecrow face using googlely eyes, shredded paper for straw hair, and a foam hat. I was using cheap glue, though, and ended up with a nice clump of sticky rice in my hair from shaking off the excess that I did not find until later. These are the days!

Thursday:

It was back to being quite chilly this morning and the kids were back to being noticeably more behaved, so we did some fun things inside to make the morning go faster (and smoother). While I got my stuff organized, Lily and Tristan spread out a blanket and had a picnic with the fake food. They ended up bundled and snuggled and giggling which was music to my ears. After we cleaned up, we started our projects for the day. I have some odds and ends that need to be completed from previous projects (like the color of the week), so we did some gluing. We painted some paper plates black for spider bodies. While they were painting their plates, I began painting their piggies! I used green on the base of their foot and black up around their toes to make a Franken-foot picture. We took a break to go potty and try out a new game. Using a hula hoop and some packaging tape, I made a spider web that we tossed pompoms at to see if they would stick like bugs. They did not quite stick like I had planned unless you smushed them to the tape, but we still had fun tossing the bugs at the web. I might try this again with different tape and maybe some lighter pompoms or some crumbled up paper. When they started sticking their faces to the tape, we cleaned up and moved on to the next thing---snack. After our snack, we glued on some googlely eyes to both our spiders and our monsters. Then it was time for nap and lunch. After lunch we took a nice long stroller walk but since it was still a little chilly, we came back inside and played with the chalkboard in Lily’s room instead.

Friday:

Happy Halloween! We finished up all of our Halloween themed projects today with a secret spider web watercolor and making an Olaf inspired pumpkin statue! For the spider web, I drew webs on two sheets of white paper with a white crayon and had Lily and Tristan paint over the drawing with water colors! Thank you to Nicole for the idea! The kids went nuts when the web started to show! Lily and Tristan played upstairs in Lily’s room with the dress up clothes and blocks for a little bit while I organized all the junk that has been piling up around my bed. It is so nice to be able to let them play freely in there for short spurts of time while I straighten up. After nap and lunch, I have a few more simple projects up my sleeve, like making a ghost out of cotton balls and gluing to tie up some more loose ends. I am making a taco dip tonight and I might also let them help out! 

Hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween! I tried to train Lily and Tristan to go for the good candy this year since last year Lily seemed to be attracted to the shiny silver wrapper of the Three Musketeer Bar where as I am more of a Reeses or Twix girl. Here's to gaining a few pounds and making a few memories this weekend!