Open School Night

Last night(Wednesday) Madison's school had Open School Night when the parents get to come to school and learn about things they do and the school rules, etc... All the kids played outside while we watched a video of what Montessori way of teaching is... It was really good, there were a lot of things that we were already doing with Madison that is classified as Montessori teaching methods like letting her water plants, measuring ingredients, brushing teeth, washing her own body, making sure Ellie's water and food bowl is stocked and refilling, etc... Unless it's dangerous we encourage her to do things herself and we were glad to know that those experiences are helping her development and her self esteem...:-) I don't know if you are familiar with Montessori Teaching but the lady in the video said by letting the children be part of everything we(parents) do they feel a sense of purpose and belonging... Which we think is really neat and everyday we are really thankful that God led us to this school...

After we were done all the kids came in and it was the children's turn to show their parents what they do at school, Yay!! Madison first grabbed the play dough set but she quickly moved on to show us how she washes the baby... which was what we wanted to see since we hear about her washing a baby all the time and how much she loves it... So here it is...:-) I love how she puts on the heavy duty apron on!

Then she showed us how she can pour...

Lastly she showed us how she can transfer liquids...

As you can see Madison LOVES playing with water!!

I forgot to take a picture of this but there is a job chart in the classroom where each child is assigned to a task every week like feeding the classroom fish, vacuuming the carpet, washing dishes, etc... Well this week she is in charge of vacuuming the carpet...but here are a couple pics of pics of her working on different tasks during her day.

Isn't she quite the little concentrator :-)

Odds and Ends from the end of Summer 2012

I just connected our big camera and realized we left off some things we did at the end of the summer... 

Our very last weekend(Labor Day weekend) we took our new rides to a really nice park about 3 miles from our house... Since we didn't want Dave's nice road bike to be used for our leisure travels Dave got a mountain bike and hooked up Madison's ride...:-) Ever since we've been taken them out every weekend except this weekend(which you will see why in a minute or so...)

On Saturday night Madison helped me make Cinnamon Rolls from scratch! If you are looking for a great dough recipe I have it:-)

 On Monday morning we rode our bike to the park about 5 miles from home where we had our Labor Day Church Picnic... Madison climbed a tree with her buddies Luke and Sabrina...:-)

 

Then later that evening Steve and Debbie Mason invited us over for a BBQ and Dave and Madison got to play in their pool with the Washburn boys...:-)

The next day(Tuesday) was her first day of school(please read our previous post "Montessori Greenhouse School" but this picture is actually from her second day since I totally forgot to take any pictures that day! She likes to carry her lunch bag by herself...:-)

This video was taken sometime last week, Madison reading her Hungry Hungry Caterpillar... I guess I need to create an account with Youtube so I download a video that's longer than a minute without having to chop it up... We love this video and hope you do too...

This weekend we invited our young kids group over for "Summer's Last Splash Pool Party"... Weather was just perfect and as usual the time goes at lightning speed and it was over so fast but we had a nice visit and kids had a blast!!

 

Who doesn't love the make your own ice cream sundae to end the party!

Well it didn't end for another two hours as parents got to chat about everything and anything while kids played with anything and everything... Some girls thought our walk in closet was a good place to play with dolls...:-) We are so blessed to have such a great group of kids at this congregation...

This group plus a few more families with a year or two older kids will gather again at our place for our Halloween Party so that will be a fun post...

Anna's Etsy Shop update1...

Just in time for the holiday season we have a new item in my shop...:-) 

"I did it!!" Sticker Chart - Halloween/Christmas Edition...:-)

I contemplated wether to do a specific holiday edition or just to keep it general holiday edition and decided to go with the two holidays that I love... Halloween and Christmas! I know I would be losing some customer groups for going with that theme but I thought about what Madison (ho is the biggest fan of the sticker chart) would enjoy more... :-) and I'm happy I did it this way!

Unlike the Summer edition where I kind of repeated same objects inside the squares I decided for the Halloween/Christmas I want each one to be different and special so that took me a lot longer to design... For the Halloween section I hand sketched everything with a pen then first I wanted to leave them with no color fill to go with the halloween feel of just black outline but then I thought about Madison and decided yeah she would enjoy some colors... As you can see for the Christmas section I went crazy with colors and went all out!! Literary!

I made sure this sticker chart has areas where a parent can write in the child's name to make it more special so in the Christmas section you can see I have two spots saved for Santa's Nice List and all the stockings have't claimed it's owner yet...:-) Total of 120 squares will last you about 4 months if you only use one square a day. Madison is finishing up her summer sticker chart right now but will be starting this on on October 1st and she can't wait! Every night she traces with her finger from the start to where she will be putting her sticker on and counts how many days left... 

I hope you like it and decide to get it for your child, your grand child or your special someone...:-)

Besides the sticker chart I have a few more things in my shop in case you didn't know... They are
Surprise Birthday Card $5
In the front you can write in the name of your birthday person to make each card more special...







Wall Prints $10 each
My original hand illustrated art to add to your wall decor...



I'm looking to promote my shop in local baby boutiques, shop or daycares, etc... If you know someone who can let me mail some marketing postcards to leave on a table or hand out... If you have a great marketing idea or know of a good place to leave some postcards at please feel free to let me know:-)
If you know a lot of parents with little kids that you can pass some cards to please let me know! I would really appreciate your help and support:-) Thank you Alyson Klein for blogging about my shop and Linda Klein for passing out my cards...:-)

Montessori Greenhouse School...Day 1!!

This morning Madison was awoken by Daddy and Ellie at 6:30am, helped into the clothes we picked out together the night before, watched an episode of Octonauts while Daddy and I got ready for work, gave hugs and kisses as Daddy left for his first day back at school and shortly after Madison and I left house for school and work... Yup! the crazy schedule is back, but hopefully not too crazy...:-)

Madison was so excited to go to school and before I asked her to put on her shoes she put her brand new shoes we picked out yesterday and was ready to go! She asked where her bag was and I gave her one of the bags with her change of clothes and by the time I locked the door she was around the corner so excited to go to Cubberly(her K-8 future school:-) which she calls the bear school with cupcakes(we will show you why that is another time...:-) She said "I can run to bear school!" and she was off down the sidewalk thinking that's where she was going...

Watching that made me a lot less nervous about how she may react when I drop her off this morning, I was pretty sure she would do great today:-)

At 7:30 she was the first one there apparently all those snobby rich people only drop their kids off right before their 10:00 Pilates class...:-) Hopefully Madison will think that her private playtime with the morning shift teacher is pretty special...

We had a really successful good bye as she gave me a big hug and a kiss and went back to playing with her block puzzles which was just perfect and I took off to fight my 40 minute morning traffic...

This is where I come in (Daddy)...today was just meetings and classroom set-up time, so right at the 3pm bell I was off to get Madison leaving behind my less than set-up classroom :-)

I arrived at the school which is about ten minutes from our place at 3:30pm and Madison was there to greet me jumping up and down screaming Daddy with a big smile on her face...if you haven't tried it, it is a wonderful way to be greeted. She was playing outside and quickly took me to her cubby and grabbed her lunchbag and pillow. I convinced her to leave the pillow, but she kept asking where her strawberry bag was...finally we asked one of the teachers and it turned out to be her extra set of clothes bag that stays at school, but that girl is so good at remembering things it is really cute. Her teacher said she did great, not a tear was shed and she took her nap. Her lunch, which Anna has to make now, but I think we like because we can better regulate what she eats, was completely gone. After a quick look at the classroom's pet hamster we hit the road.

As Anna said, back to the routine...definitely less crazy this year however as I was thinking on a Tuesday night the past 18 months I would have been dropping Madison off at a friends and then heading to college...it is definitely nice to have that done...although when my basketball games start things could get crazy again so stay tuned :-)

What a summer we had...

Wow we had such a fun filled summer and so sad to know it's coming to a close... for Madison and Daddy of course since I didn't really have a summer... Anyhow I thought I would recap and write about somethings we might have missed...

At the beginning of Summer Madison was able to put her face in the water comfortably while wearing the arm floats but still totally relied on the floats so our goal for the summer was for her to learn to swim all by herself... She loves diving into the pool and is not afraid of water so I knew it was matter of practice. At the end of every pool time Madison would take off her floats and practice swimming to Dave and at the beginning she would just hold her breath until she got to Dave but eventually she would sink-swim a little then come up for air then sink-swim again... Her kicking got stronger and she started to sink less when she is swimming and now she is floats FREE!! She is jumping and diving all by herself! See it for yourself:-)

We were really hoping that Madison would pick up a lot of Japanese while my parents are visiting and she did but I'm more convinced that I MUST speak Japanese most of the time to her and Dave MUST stop translating for her... I would say a sentence to Madison then she would ask Dave "What Mama say?" and Dave would tell her what I said in English... Grr!! It's really funny and cute to watch but it's not...:-)

She started watching Octonauts and we enjoy it too:-) We decided our theme for Halloween... After a lot of family meetings I think we settled on Minnie Mouse for Madison, Mickey Mouse for Dave and a cast member for me...:-) For now...:-)

Since we spend quite bit of time tending to our plants and veggies Madison started to help us out by watering them which is sooo cute! It's so cute to watch her water each plant/tree until she thinks it got enough water(she does good). And she thinks all the baby veggies and fruits are "SO CUTE!!"

We made it to one of the concerts in the park right by us... Next year we hope to make it to more of the Friday night picnic'n concerts in the park... Here is a video of Madison dancing... It may be hard to ignore the big butts on the right but just try...

This summer Madison also picked up a few new catch phrases..."That's what I'm talking about!" when you successfully choose what she was asking for and "Where are we going after nap time?" whether it be afternoon nap, or bedtime...of course over the summer that question had many exciting answers now it will just have "school" :-(

Madison and Dave were able to put off going to the Dentist until the very last week of Summer, but Madison did awesome on her very first trip and we are happy to report has no "sugar monsters" as the doctor put it.

If my dentist office had blocks maybe I wouldn't be so scared of them...

Starting to figure out what is about to happen...

 But still not freaking out...

 After a moment of putting her hands over her mouth, she was an awesome helper!

 She chose the Zebra as her polisher over the Flamingo and Lion...

 Showing off her pearly whites...

 And now trying to console Daddy who was more anxious than she was...

Yesterday we visited Disneyland to celebrate our last weekend of Summer and Madison got to ride this ride for the first time and she loved it:-) Can you guess which one this is??

Lastly, starting Tuesday Madison will be attending a new pre-school called Montessori Greenhouse in Los Alamitos which is a lot closer to our house and we really like what they have to offer... Plus the person who runs this school goes to the Studebaker Road Church and was able to hold us a spot back in April which was amazing since two classes that they offer hardly ever have openings and those rare openings fill up very fast...  Also there will be one of Madison's friends from church(Jaida) in her class even though she is a year older... Their pre-school programs allow children of all ages to be in same classes so that the older children learn to take care of younger children and younger children will get to learn from older children which creates the cooperating/collaborating environment, etc... This past Thursday the school had an hour of "meet the teachers" event to Dave took Madison and she seemed to like Ms. Michelle and all the things/toys they had... Dave said Madison was busily playing with everything she could see...:-)

We are excited for what Madison will be able to learn and experience here with her new teachers and friends but we would appreciate your prayers for our smooth transition next week...:-)