Who Needs Preschool?

I first started homeschooling when Ian and Shane were preschool aged.  Back then, I was part of a club for stay-at-home moms and we all knew which preschool was the best and when you had to place your child on the waiting list to get in.  The list filled up within hours and I had to write a check as a deposit for the boys' spots.  Ian was in the four year old class, that met three times a week in the afternoon.  Shane was in the three year old class, that met twice a week in the mornings.  The total cost for both boys to attend preschool was $150 per month (I think. Maybe it was $150 each!).  I just felt sick to my stomach knowing that I would have to pack the three kids up in the van and drive across town ten times a week.  And I would pay someone $150 a month to teach them...colors, shapes, and maybe letters and numbers.  So I used one month's tuition and bought my own stuff...

One person's shot glass is another person's lentil scooper!

Preschool is my favorite age to teach.  I could teach preschool forever!  Come to think of it, I've been teaching preschool since I first began homeschooling...

Right now I have a bin filled with lentils on my table.  I've had Lentil Science since Ian was kindergarten aged, but I never officially set it up due to the never-ending supply of messy two year olds in my house.  Well, enough is enough!  I'll never get Ian's kindergarten days back and lentils can be swept up and replaced for only $12.50 for a 25 pound bag!  That's like one day of preschool! True to my children's natures, all I have to do is set something up and set them loose.  I was pleasantly surprised with what they came up with.  The gold-colored shot glasses were purchased at our local thrift store for $1.  I removed the gold chain they hung from (who wears a shot glass as a necklace?) and added the shamrock stickers.  The gold buttons were $.50 for six and make perfect gold coins.  My idea was to dig for the gold treasure using the scoopers.  Fiona added the counting bears and created her own one-to-one correspondence.

At some point I will pull out the other activities that go along with the lentil science, but for now I'm going to try to include a little more St. Patrick's Day themed activities for this week.  The great thing about getting activities set up for Daniel is that the older girls enjoy them as well.  And I don't feel like they missed out on preschool activities because I was so busy including them in Ian and Shane's school work.

I've started checking out some preschool blogs put together by moms who send their kids off to school everyday and have plenty of money and time and a fancy camera for nice photographs.  They have AWESOME activities for their Saturday Science.  I can only make a cheap imitation, but my kids enjoy what I've come up with (so far) and that's better than a super-fancy blog and public school and lotsa money.  Today I had Daniel search for those gold buttons in shaving cream.  Wow, that was a sensory experience!  We could only find one button!

Some ideas I came up with for this week are: paint chip (from the hardware store) memory with different shades of green, a green item scavenger hunt, a shamrock sticker puzzle, green playdoh with gold beads stuck in it (I don't get the stuff-stuck-in-playdoh thing, but I guess there is no harm in trying it out), and green finger jello! 

Spring Ahead!

Daylight savings is a good time to spring ahead into my favorite season of the year!  However, my kids are ready for summer already.  Then again, a Pacific Northwest Native can't really tell the difference between spring and summer with all the rain and all...

Really, all my kids need is a sunny afternoon and a couple of blankets and a body of water and they are set!

Even Lula was released from the house so she could enjoy the sun!

The chickens, sadly, have been sold, pending pickup.  I'll keep a few, but with half the family not eating eggs and me not having the desire to wash and sell eggs, they are just taking up valuable resources.  They sold themselves in just a few minutes from this picture I posted on the local Buy, Sell, Trade page:

Don't they look happy and healthy, free ranging on all that grass?  I'll get back in the chicken business when the babies are older.

Mina is getting old and gray, just like me.  You can see all her little gray hairs on her muzzle and its taking her longer to get up out of her dog bed.  She has been my constant shadow for the last eight years.  She has accepted Heidi into the pack and brings her toys to play with.  It's gross, but cute, to see Mina gently place her deflated ball on the tray of the baby swing while Heidi stares at her all bug-eyed.  In the picture above, Mina was making sure no chickens came too close to us.  If one came inside the invisible baby circle, Mina jumped up and chased it off.  But I don't think we will ever cure her of her binky addiction:

March 2006: A bad habit begins!

It is so hard to believe that we've had this Pathetic Doberman (the original blog title) for eight years!

Toddler Toys

Why would I buy toys for Lula when she is perfectly content to create her own?

Stacking Cups

Egg shakers

This is quite possibly the best Toddler Disaster in Downen Family History:

The Shape Sorter

Why would we buy a shape sorting toy when Lula can stuff a hot dog in a bottle of vegetable oil?  The hot dog is round, the bottle opening is round.  Oh, I know why.  Because when she tries to get the hot dog back out of the oil bottle, she dumps oil all over the kitchen floor...

The oil spill of 2014 was the straw that broke the camel's back.  Now all chairs are tied together in one long chain.  Lula was so upset about not being able to push the chairs around that she ran off, crawled into Evie's bed, and:

We Made It!

We made it through another winter! Hooray!  It is 10:30 at night and can you guess what I can hear?  Besides the dryer and the fish tank and the fan on the woodstove and Ian and Shane talking in their room way past their bedtime?  FROGS!

Oh, my kids are so funny.  Today I heard one of them joke, "Wow, that duck looks just like a chicken! And that other duck looks just like a guinea!"  All the birds are loving that crazy rain we've had.  The pasture is flooded and all the worms and grass are being gobbled up by the chickens and guineas.  They're only eating the worms and grass because we are out of chicken food and have been for three days.  And we're not buying any chicken food because they are out eating the worms and grass.  Everything works out so nicely sometimes.

The pictures on this blog post were taken by Evie

Where's Lula?

Yesterday, Lula left the play area at the YMCA.  She took Fiona's shoes out of the shoe holder in the play area, put them on, and walked out.  She did this two seconds after I hollered for everyone else to come get their shoes, it was time to leave.  She was there one second, gone the next.  I looked up and down the hallway at the Y and didn't see her.  I hollered at Shane to look up in the play structure while I went down the hall...I didn't see her in the squash courts or in the gyms...and I sure hoped she didn't wander in the men's room!  She wasn't gone long enough to go any farther.  Within a few minutes another mom found her-she had gone up the stairs to walk the track in Fiona's shoes.

Today Lula disappeared again.  But this time it was easy to find her.  Can you?

Mardi Gras (partial fail)

Ian really wanted to recapture the fun we had two years ago when we did a mini-unit/celebration for Mardi Gras.  I did my best...and cut a few corners...

Everyone in the world is quoting the Frozen movie, but I'm still lost in The Princess and the Frog.  "Hey everybody! I made gumbo!"  And yes, yes, I did make gumbo.  With octopus! And okra! And imitation crab meat!  I was a little sad to use these ingredients; they are leftovers from Grandad's supply of strange and interesting things to eat...

 Everyone who finished their gumbo got:

...King's Cake!  Only instead of making a cake from scratch, I bought "exploding" cinnamon rolls and topped them with sprinkles.  Unfortunetly I followed the instructions for cooking them flat and the inside of my King Cake was gooey.  My kids are so desperate for sweet things they ate it anyway.

Maybe next year things will work out!

Daily Daniel and A Better Mousetrap

Today's Daily Daniel was brought to you by...a few scratches on Daniel's tummy.  I asked where he got them, he told me Ian did it.  He then went on to say, "And I'm gonna eat more meat than him and grow big and strong and then I'm gonna punch him and kick him and teach him a lesson!"

Daniel made pizzas all by himself!

I said, "Wow! You know, Ian likes being punched and kicked.  If you want to teach him a lesson, you'd better hug him and kiss him instead.  He really hates hugs and kisses."  Without even thinking on it, Daniel says, "Then YOU need to teach him a lesson!"

 It doesn't take long for a mouse to chew through the box it comes home in...

...my menfolk managed to catch it in less time than it took to chew the hole.  Shane was the first to see it run across the floor.  Ian caught it.  Mark fed it to the snake.  Either Steve needs to eat faster (he eats two mice in one feeding), or Petco needs a better lunchbox!  I'm so thankful that Shane discovered the mouse before it made a home in the couch...because that's my bed until we have our nights figured out (and Mark is past his crazy time of year).  I don't mind sleeping in the same room as Jack the dog, Steve the snake, Sheldon the tortoise, and various wood-dwelling insects, but I draw the line at rodents.  Bleh!