Emma's art class - Week 1 and 2

As I mentioned last night Emma is taking an art class at a studio here in town.

Some of Emma's art from week 1:

She was taught how to draw using common shapes and going from there.

A monster truck (drawn by looking at a toy truck):



A cow (drawn by looking at a drawing of a cow):




Some of Emma's art from week 2:

Worked more on drawing by picking out key shapes

SpongeBob (drawn by looking at a picture of him)


This was made by drawing one line with marker and using a paintbrush with water over the drawn line. Then Emma would make another line and repeat the process.



Playing around with water color paint and learning that it does not take much to make a picture

semi update

I think this is going to take a few attempts to get going on a regular basis. Things have been chaotic since the last time I posted since Dave has been home most of the time. We are hoping that the job he applied for last week pans out and he will be back at work soon. It has been wonderful having him home but at the same time, there have been many days that I am unsure what day of the week it is. Thankfully, that is one of the joys of homeschooling. There have been quite a few weekends that we have done quite a bit of schooling to make up for a day of fun and games during the week. Dave spent most of the last month helping a former co-worker with a side project and was gone during the day most of those weekends which allowed Emma and I to get a lot done.

Since my last post Emma has started with a new violin teacher that has been wonderful! We are only 3 weeks in with her so it is still too early to tell how progression will be but I think she will be moving a littl slower. It seems that this teacher is going to ask for more from Emma before she allows her to move forward to a new song.

Emma has also started taking art classes here in town. A new studio opened up this month and she has two classes just for homeschoolers! I was so happy to see that! Emma was her only student in the younger class the first week, and the second week, one of Emma's friends had joined. The teacher allows the parents to sit in and draw as well, and she (the teacher) has been very pleased with how it is going that she is considering lowering the max number of students and encouraging more from the parents. Both Emma and I have learned a lot so far and I will be scanning in what she has done so far.

As I type this, I am scanning in the suggested pagesfrom the appendix of her new math curriculum. It just came in the mail today and she is eager to get going so I want to make sure I have things ready. I am curious to see how this one goes. Glancing through, I see many areas where we will probably move quickly, but I see some sections that will give her some challenge. I think we are finally getting to where she should be and can slow down. We have been doing a lot of math using her hundreds board and dice and graphing lately while we waited for her new curriculum (I was stalling on ordering it for some reason). The activity she has loved the most lately was rolling two dice and adding the numbers. It was numbers 0-5 (covered up the 6 with a sticker) and she had to roll enough times to make the facts of 0-10 and then see how 1+2=3 but 2+1=3. She picked up on that real quick. I think the only one we just could not roll was 2 4's. We also rolled 1 die 100x and graphed out how many times each number 1-6 was rolled. The next night rolled 5 dice 20 times to see how the numbers compared. I want to do this a couple more times. I picked up a book of math games for young kids at the local used book store so I am hoping to find some more to play. The educator's book for her math also has lots of games to help make the concepts she is learning stick.

Hockey is going well. She is still one of the youngest (but no longer the youngest!) on her team. However, many of the new older kids are new to skating so she has an advantage there. She has had a couple shots on goal but nothing has gone in yet (at least not in the actual game).

We just re-bought our National Parks Pass so I am hoping for some trips up to the Colorado National Monument soon. We just did a trip to Arches National Park yesterday and spent the day hiking and looking at the arches. What an amazing place! Depending on weather, we are hoping to go back to the area. First, Emma needs to turn in her Jr Ranger book and get her pin. Second, the Canyonlands are in the same general area so we would like to see them too.

That's enough for now, will try to at least keep up the weekly updates with tidbits and pictures inbetween!

Fun at the Fruita Fall Festival!

We just got home from 3+ hours at the carnival here in town. Nothing to write home about but Emma is still young enough to enjoy the rides they had.

We met up with one of her best friends, her friend's mom and Grandma so the girls could ride the rides. We had run into them last year but this year we made sure we would be there at the same time. Of course as the girls were riding, the adults were remembering part of last year when while waiting in line, this other little girl came running up to them and just joined them! She was a very affectionate thing and at one time had all three of them flat on the ground with one of her hugs! Very humorous time.

This year we made it through a couple hours and on the last ride before Emma's friend left, they met another little girl. I leaned over to her friend's mom and grandma and commented that she reminded me of the girl from last year. Dave came back with a drink and I made the same comment to him and he took one look at her and said it was the same girl! Seemed so strange that with so many people we would run into her again! I only saw one other family I recognized all evening.

We did the wrist band for Emma and she went on everything but one ride that she was probably too small for. If she was tall enough we would have had to buy tickets for me or Dave since it went upside down and we are not sure how that would have turned out. She seemed to want to go though! She loved the coaster (which she would not go on last year) and the swings. Says those were her two favorite!

Pics coming tomorrow (I hope!)

Halloween costume part 1...

I finally finished the first part of her costume. For some reason I have not felt like sewing the last week or so. I need to go get more eyelet trim today since when I bought the trim in the photos below, there was not enough for the dress. I am going to see if Joann's has more in, if not try to match to something else there or see what Hobby Lobby has. It is not a coupon week at HL so I am not sure what I will do if they have it. Maybe wait for next week. Anyways, had one last step to do on the bonnet and that was finish sewing the top of the brim. Directions say to hand stitch but after my mentor said she would not handstitch but just do a finishing stitch, I figured that was the way to go. Was dreading hand stitching all that!

The dress is all cut out. I am hoping once I get going, I will be in the mood to sew so that it goes fast. I need the trim a few steps in so I figured I would wait until I had it in my hand to really start.

Eye opening experience with Emma's violin lessons...

Last week was a rough week for practices. Lots going on here and I have found if we do not do her practice first thing in the morning...well, it just does not get done. So she had no practice last week until the morning of her lesson. I decided to give her the final line for Long, Long Ago because I knew she could memorize it and she played through the song once before we left.

This was her second to last lesson (teacher is moving) and she passed off on Long, Long Ago like I figured. Being that there is only one week left, I figured that the teacher would just work on previous songs and give us some tips to polishing. Nope, she wanted to move onto Allegro. She played through it once for Emma and then wrote the fingers on the music. There are 4 lines but 1,2 and 4 are all the same so I felt a little better. She gave us both lines and Emma will have it memorized by next week.

Before I go into what happened next, she is learning with the Suzuki method. It allows really young children to learn and one of the most important parts of the method is the audio CD that the student is supposed to listen to at least 1x a week. We have dropped the ball on that but lately have been listening a lot. The idea is that they will pick the flow of the music up from having listened to it so much.

So, back to the lesson. Her teacher put the music up on the stand and had Emma play through it once. She does this so Emma can play once but also to check that she put the correct fingers in the correct places (instead of reading notes Emma reads either E, E1, E2, E3, A, A1, A2, A3, and D1 - E, A and D strings, open or finger 1, 2, or 3). So Emma starts playing and to me it sounded really close to how it should. Most of the other songs she gets the notes down but not how the song should REALLY sound. But, then I thought what do I know, music and me do not mix.

Her teacher picked up her violin and had Emma play again and told her to ignore what she (the teacher) was doing. Emma stumbles through it again, but her teacher played along but not exactly the same. When they were done I looked at the teacher and she explained that normally she has Emma follow what she was doing, but since Emma had it down so well, she (the teacher) played melody to Emma. She was really amazed to be able to do that. It is one of Emma's favorites to hum a long with, and I am sure that helped a lot!

As a going away gift to her students, she is taking video of them during the last two lessons and putting it on a DVD. I mentioned I wanted to get a video next week of the two of them playing together like they did during that lesson.

Of course, we need to get our act together this week. We aim for 5 practices (including her lesson) so even though we skipped today I am not too worried. Need to just do it before we start anything else.

Weekly Review Sept 13-19th 2009

Language Arts:

-Two lessons in Right Track Reading (RTR). Learned sight words "to" and "do." Added sounds ck and k.

-Visited the Library once.

-Recorded 3 books read as well as 4 chapters in Little House on the Prairie.

-Listened to a Mrs Piggle Wiggle audio book twice (just over 2 hours).

-Working to see where she is in her BOB books. Might be time to get the next set. She read through books 1-6 this week out of 12. I think she has a couple more she can do before we get to sounds we have not learned yet.



Math:

-Verbal: Counting backwards from 10. Worked on 0 and 1 addition facts.

-Singapore: Finished unit 13 - number bonds. 10 pages in text book, 9 pages in activity book.



Music:

-Lesson on Monday. Her teacher added the third line of Long, Long Ago and worked on the rhythm of first 4 notes of May Song. Violin will be interesting because she has two lessons left with this teacher (she is moving) and we have not found a new one yet. She will have third line memorized by Monday.



Science:

-Memorized all three versus to "Solar System in Motion"

-Magic School Bus video Creepy, Crawly Fun!

-Found and pointed out bugs on hike. Also saw blue heron, snake, dragon flies and lizards.



History:

-Little House on the Prairie



Art:

-Coloring

-Learned to crochet a chain



PE:

-Lots of bike riding!

-Hike



Extra:

-Co-op: Read books, sang songs, drew life size of themselves.

Glenwood Caverns

We ended up at Glenwood Caverns last weekend. With the weather looking like it might pour we started there and that took a good part of the day. More info about it here: http://glenwoodcaverns.com/

We have driven by it each time we have driven on I70 to and from Denver but have never stopped until Sat. Emma was thrilled and excited about the tram, and then about the cave, and the Canyon Flyer and about panning for fossils and arrowheads.

Loving the tram ride to the top



Looking out of the tram at Glenwood Springs



Any clue where she gets this from? I am stumped!

The cave tour was neat! It was 70 mins long and they save the best for last (as it usually is). The pictures posted below are all from the last bit of the tour.

Canyon Flyer (according to the website): Hop on the Canyon Flyer - the first alpine coaster in the United States! - with individual cars on tracks that race 3,400 feet through the trees and down the mountainside, high above Glenwood Springs. Ride alone or with a friend. You control your speed, which gives you a unique hands-on experience. Your ride is exciting and varied, with jumps and waves built into the track to add to the thrill. Unlike an alpine slide, the Canyon Flyer makes hairpin turns and can operate year-round due to its track system. At the end of the ride, you're pulled 1,000 feet up the track, through a forest dotted with wild flowers, to return to where your ride began.

Emma LOVED this (there is hope yet that she will be a roller coaster person)! I went twice and she and Dave went three times and I am sure she would have gone more if we had more tickets.

Looking up as I got pulled back to the top

Ready for her third and final trip!

Arms up ready to roll!

Away they go!

Huge smile coming in at the end! (Actually this was her first trip - just realized she and Dave still had sweatshirts on!)

It was so fun Mom!

That is what Emma told me as we were just out on our walk. Well I was running to keep up with her as she rode her bike for hte first time in the neighborhood! The plan was to go back to a parking lot at a park like yesterday but I figured she was ready for the neighborhood streets.

We were at the park yesterday for the first time in a while with her bike. When she had last been on it, she was almost there. Just a little fearful of falling therefore she was not willing to really pedal and because she did not pedal enough she would lose her balance which verfied her fear.

Yesterday my plan was to get her going and let her go, not run after her. After a few attempts of me trying to hold on while she pedaled and then her panicing, I told her I was going to go sit down for a while. I was curious to see what she would do. She tried many times to get going but could not balance long enough so I cued her into having one pedal at the top and pushing off with that foot. Many, many attempts later, she was pushing off by herself! By the end of the 2 hours there she was able to do a lap around the parking lot. This happened after I stopped taking video but she did great in the clip below!

Today she was very unsure about biking in the street and it makes me nervous as well since she is small and who knows if she can be seen by a backing car but I will be with her for a while yet. Might look into a flag for her bike too.

Once Emma got going today, there was very little stopping her. Unless she wanted to or she was about to run into a mailbox. Her speed is picking up she was bragging about how fast she can go now. Time to start working on bike safety and rules I think. I do not think it will be long before she can go on bike trails with me and Dave (paved ones at least). We might even try it with some geocaching thrown in this weekend. She has also been able to get going a lot quicker today. Usually only takes her a couple attempts compared to many yesterday. She is proud of that and can not wait until Dave gets home so she can show Daddy! (Another reason to get her riding in the neighborhood, Daddy can see quicker!)

Pics from today:

And away she goes!

sewing woes....

I am learning a lot about my sewing machine and am not totally pissed off about it. It is probably because it is not the day before Halloween (or what ever day she might need her costume for the first time). The first issue was a few days ago when the part that holds the needle flew off. Turns out Dave would have had that issue solved within minutes, but he was already asleep and he was gone before I got up so he had no issue I needed help. I solved it myselg with some help from Google. Felt accomplished with that!

Another issue pops up tonight when the machine decides it will only sew backwards... with and without me pushing the reverse button. Not much help for me. Some searching on Google and it is hopefully just that the machine needs to be oiled. I feel this is strongly a possibility because I have never oiled it since owning it. That being said, even though I have owned it for about 7 years, it was just this year that I really did anything with it, so I guess it was time. The good thing about this, is that I now know how to oil it. It has been oiled and put back together. Test fabric in... one to make sure there is not any excess oil, two to make sure all is fixed.... Press down on foot petal and.... fabric goes.... backwards still!!! ***bangs head on wall*** Back to google....

The part that really frustrates me is I have 2 steps left for sewing the first piece of her costume and it would have been done an hour or two ago.... Oh well.

ETA: I think we got it fixed... somehow. Took the entire front cover off and looked around. have no idea what that did, but it might have jarred something loose. Now it works on scraps so will get back to my project soon.

Weekly review Sept 6-12th 2009

Recap of this last week: (Need to play around with how I will record this because I am realizing this is not as smooth as I thought)

Language Arts:
-Three lessons in Right Track Reading (RTR). Learned sight word "the" previewed "to" and "do" which will be in next lesson. Added sounds h,v,sh,u,and b.
-Visited the Library twice. Once to check out books. Once for story time.
-Recorded 6 books read (started log mid way through week) as well as 6 chapters in Little House on the Prairie (again not logged until mid week).
-Listened to an Amelia Bedilia audio book twice (just over an hour each time).
-Emma read 3 of her BOB books to the neighbor while they were over for a BBQ. (not included in reading log)

Math:
-Lots of verbal stuff - for example: What temperature is it? (as we are in the car) and continuing as it drops from 103 down to the correct temp of 88.
-Once her curriculum came (Singapore Earlybird Kindergarten B) she did 25 pages (lesson 11.1 through 12.3) in her textbook and 15 pages in her activity book. We are still waiting on her review book (extra that she does each time she finishes a unit but it is back ordered).

Music:
-Lesson on Monday. Her teacher added the second line of Long, Long Ago and worked on the rhythm of first 4 notes of May Song.
-Practiced 3 days, memorized second line of Long Long Ago.
-Worked with Daddy on the keyboard. Learning the scale from C to A and where the notes on the keyboard were.

Science:
-Played with new telescope. Observed Jupiter and it moons and another night noted how the moons had changed. Watched the space station move across the sky.
-70 minute cave tour. Learned about stalagmites and stalagtites.
-"Panned" for fossils and arrowheads. We still need to sit down and sort and see what she got.

History:
-Little House on the Prairie book.
-Read and colored two pages in "Life of Buddha" with Daddy.

Art:
-Coloring
-Art at Library
-Latch hook
-Finger knitting
-Started life size Emma project

PE:
-Nothing structured this week.

Random

I just occured to me that Emma has no size 5 jeans. It became an issue today because where we are going for the day will be on the cool side. All her 4's are too short (they fit last winter so I never bought 5's) and her 6's that she got for Cmas last year are still too long. So my sewing machine was put to use quickly.

Speaking of which, a hex wrench was the solution and I drove around yesterday trying to find the right size in a set that would not put me back too much money. I plan to remove it from the set and keep it with my sewing machine. So I did not want to pay more that $5 for a set. Walmart to the rescue. Two sets (different standards) for $1. So my machine runs smoothly again and I am proud of myself that I worked through it, even though I relaized that if Dave had been awake he would have solved it within seconds. Oh well.

Emma's week review will be coming sometime this weekend. Rough form is typed out, just have not had time to write it here.

Today we are off to Glenwood Springs. That area is just amazing to drive through and we are going to take a tram up to the top where there is an adventure park (way to trap you and make money) as well as the caverns (which is why we are going up). After that, a short drive away, is a hike to Hanging Lake which is supposed to be amazing. Will get pics of course.

Pretty uneventful day...

I knew we were not going to get much done today. I am not getting up early enough. Still have just shy of a week's meds (will be 30 days by the time I am done) from a case of shingles that somehow I came down with a few weeks ago. Supposed to help not make the pain last for months or years but it sure messes me up. At least the 2 hour daily naps I was taking the first week are over!

Anywas, late start to the morning. I try to still get Emma to story time at the library on a certain Thursday. Her friend's Grandma does it and I figure she can go through this year at least. I might still take her after but she will be done participating unless enough kids do not show up. Connie does a storytime that incorporates poems/songs with objects she has in a "jacket" with many many pockets. She is known by story time kids as the Pocket Lady. They sign up before it starts for a chance to "pick her pocket" and then they match the object up with one of the poems/songs which are printed with a picture to match the objects. Afterwards a craft and small snack. Most of the kids are a good year younger but she still enjoys it. I figure if she was in afternoon K at the school she would still be free to come.

After story time, home quickly to cut my fabric for the gathering in the afternoon. Not going to post what I am doing yet. Only that it is Emma's Halloween costume. Depending on how the evening goes, I might be done with part of it tonight or tomorrow night. Of course it is the smaller piece, and I have already seen someone struggle (I mean make lol) through it so I have a slight advantage knowing her hang ups. I had someone walk me through button holes (which were in step 1 and then I walked through the rest of this piece so I made sure I understood the directions. Did not get much accomplished but I feel I learned a lot.

We learned today that Emma has been "accepted" in a local co-op here that will meet Mondays. I am not 100% sure what they will be doing but it will be good for her to be around other kids (and she knows most of them) in a class like setting as well as taking directions from someone else than me. She is excited and looking forward to it! They met last year and the younger kids classed kind of evolved from the siblings of the older kids who were in the classes.

Ended the day with a few chapters in Little House on the Prairie. I am realizing that reading outloud for an hour at a time is starting to get easier!

Well, back to the sewing machine. What happens in the next hour or so will pretty much determine whether I have anything to show soon. There is something coming up that is making me a little nervous but it is only fabric so how bad can I mess up?

ETA: Just after posting, I managed to break my sewing machine so it is off to find someone who can talk me through fixing it, or can fix it for me. Hit a pin and the part that holds the needle flew off. I think I found all the pieces, however, I can not figure out how to make the piece that fell off stay on the post... therefore I must be missing something. Oh well.

Math today

We finally had a day where we did not fly through a complete unit of math. A lot of it was hands on as well as a new concept. She is working on numbers above ten as well as prepping for addition and subtraction. They are having her group items in groups of 10s and 1s. I did a lot more than the book called for in prep for one of the pages. Some pics from today:

She had 6 baggies full of Legos. Each baggie had 10 of 1 color, a random number of another. She had to seperate the 10 into a pile on her left and the other color in a pile on the right. Then she had to glue #'s into this "(empty box) and (empty box) makes (empty box)."







Prep working getting ready to move into placing 1 in the 10's and a certain number in the 1's.






Tomorrow is story time at the library and in the afternoon a playdate with lots of kids. Mom's are getting together 1x a month to work on crafts. I am going to attempt to get started on her Halloween costume. That is if I can get the pieces cut out tonight. Fabric is washed and in the dryer.

Back in the saddle again!

I hope to make this work this time. I realize I should utilize this blog as a way of tracking what we are doing with homeschooling so I have a record. I will have a record of our hours but not of what we accomplish when.

Emma is in K this year. We are technically enrolled with the school district here. The law for Colorado states that I must notify the school district that we are homeschooling when she reaches 7, which she clearly has not. The school district here offers a neat program for homeschoolers. I am still not 100% sure about it. I mean it is a great, and I mean great program but as a homeschooler it is that much more invasion and a foot in the door for tighter laws.

With the program we are assigned a resource consultant (RC) who helps us come up with a learning plan for each semester. This is part of what the school district requires. We have to list a course description, learning resources, learner's actions and assesment of results. I actually struggled with this because the goal is to keep things vague, just provide enough information and from my schooling, I am used to going into detail. The RC had to tell me to stop thinking too much! We then have to create a schedule of when we will do what subject which was a killer for me to actually plot out language arts at 9:30, math at 10:30. Again this is just for the auditors. One thing I love about homeschooling is the freedom that if she is having a great day with Math, we can skip LA that day. Another weird quirk with the system is that they would not put Sunday down as a day to log hours, Saturday was even tough for them, and I realized the Monday, I could not click on the hours to log her school time. It is still set as a typical school mentality.

There are positive reasons I chose this program. I have access to professionals if I have questions, her learning supplies are reimbursable up to a certain amount and it expanded our resources with homeschooling families.

Her RC's background is speech which has been wonderful with Emma. She acknowledged the slight delay I have been hearing and gave me tips on how to work with her. Honestly, the thing that has worked the best is her learning to read. It has given us PLENTLY of time to really focus on certain sounds and the delay is almost gone with the sounds we have covered. She still has to focus hard but I am hearing the improvement in her daily speech when she does not think about it. Today we were working really hard on the word "three" since it came up in math quite a bit.

For her subjects, my main focus this year is a strong foundation in reading, writing and math. She also has music because of violin and PE because of hockey. Both of those will be expanded as well. Science and social studies as she shows interest in different subjects. She also has mixed media for art and community service.

Learning to read is going well. Not her favorite subject but she is getting more excited about it as she is realizing how many words she can really read. She made it through one library book, only two words she did not know but figured out on her own based on the pictures (down and up - just today learned short u so up is now covered). Her eyes lit up today right after she realized she could read the word "fish"!

We are finding a few books that she can read about 1/2 off in the easy readers. As for being read to, we are making our way through Little House on the Prairie since we finally finished Little House in the Big Woods.

Math, she cracks me up with. I have to save this until last because it is the one she wants to do. She wakes up asking to do math. She was really bummed out when she finished the first semester's book and I had not ordered the next book. So we introduced the hundred's chart and she has been having a blast with that. Her new books came today so I cut reading short and let her go at it.

Overall the math is very simple for her but I wanted to make sure we did not skip anything important. She slowed down for a bit in the first book when we hit writing 6-10. She knew the numbers but we never really worked with what they looked like. Even now, she has to stop and think but she has them.

Violin is one we do first thing in the morning because if we don't it does not get done. She is not thrilled about starting but once we get going she loves it. It is going to be an interesting journey the next few months. Her current teacher is moving and I have learned a lot in the past year about what to look for. We have met with one teacher that I really like but cost wise is more than double, but her expertise allows for it.

Things are going good. We officially started July 1st but between July and August, it was more of part time. Once the curriculum started coming, I got tired of the "Can we start yet? Can we start yet? Can we start yet?" that I just opened it up and started. Hour wise we are just ahead of schedule putting our start date as August first, but including hours from July, so it looks good. She is required to do 2 hours a day for a yearly total of 360 I believe. Math, LA and violin take care of that in a normal week!

My goal is to at least do a weekly update to keep track of what we have accomplished so I have a running history of this all. Might help even things out in the long run and see what really works and where I manage to drop the ball.

Getting ready to head to the post office...

Emma finished up her letter last night for Mairead Nesbitt, the fiddler of Celtic Woman. She became a little frustrated because it was so long but she wanted to say everything in it! So we broke it up over 3 days to write it. We are getting ready pack it up and take it to the post office. We have someone who will either hand deliver to Mairead on March 11 or will be able to get it to her through one of the other girls.

Here is what she wrote (dictated to me, I wrote it out and she copied it):

Dear Ms. Nesbitt, (my add in)

My name is Emma. I am five. I play the violin because of you playing. Why do you hold your bow above the frog? Why do you not use your pinky?

I like how fast you play and you are very good! I like to watch you move around when you play. I air fiddle and dance with you. I liked hearing your music in Tinkerbell! I want to see you fiddle on stage sometime.

Love, Emma

Her two questions are interesting because they go against what Emma is learning while learning how to play the violin. Will be interesting to see if she responds. I think it is a personal preference to be able to play the way she does.

Also adding the picture she drew and what she wrote beneath it (again dicatated and then copied).

Everyone is on the mend. Thankfully neither or Emma I came down with the flu and I think we are close to the end of the window where we could.

Emma has been busy the past couple days. She wanted to write a letter to the fiddler of Celtic Woman. She dictated to me what she wanted to say and then wanted to copy it in her own writing. The complaining started when she saw how long it was! So we are breaking it into 2-3 days. Will see how far she gets today. She also wanted t draw a picture of her playing the violin with the fiddler. The nice part is that I found someone who will deliver it for me. He has meet and greet tickets at a concert in March and just happens to be one of the people who started a forum for her fans. So he is trying to arrange for the fiddler to be at the meet and greet. So it might be a hand delivery!

Emma is still asking almost daily "When are we going to go see the fiddler on stage?!" Not sure if that is worse or if it would be if I actually told her in 2.5 months she would be.

She asked me the other day if she could have a dress like the fiddlers. She wants something for dress up and to pretend to be the fiddler when the concert is on. I looked around on ebay and the dresses are too poofy. So I am attempting something that I hope I can finish. I am going to try to sew her a dress that is similar. I am not promising anything, just an attempt. I talked with the fabric store today and they are going to help me through it. They are having me start with the top on a cheap fabric since I am not using a pattern.

Thanks to my sister, I have a good head start because we chatted back and forth today about the design and making it work. She is saving me hours of work! So we will see how it goes. Have something cut out and pinned together. Have not figured out the design for the bottom of the top because I am not 100% sure which dress we are attempting to recreate. I need to see what fabrics I can find.

I am really hoping that the fabric is what is going to make the top look right cause right now (and I have barely started) I am not thrilled, but it is a cheap white fabric. It is a corset top so once I do the back that might make a huge difference.

Start of a crummy weekend...

I guess it could be worse because right now only one of us is sick and according to the clinic it is the flu. And not one treatable with meds, so no preventable meds either. I finally found out at Emma's check up for her ear that the clinic we go to has an afterhours clinic 6 miles up the road at a huge fraction of the cost of the Urgent Care center just down the road. Guess where we will be going now?

Emma and I are doing ok but Dave is pretty miserable. Because the flu is hitting Colorado hard right now (according to the news), I made the decision to keep Emma home from hockey at least through tomorrow to make sure she (and me) are not on the way to being sick. Would hate to expose the other kids. The bad part of it all is she actually has two games tomorrow. One here at the rink and then the team was invited to Glenwood Springs (1.5 hours east on I-70) for a game.

We had planned on making a day of it. Go to the morning game, come home grab the dog and geocache our way to Glenwood Springs, but it is not going to happen.

Hopefully our luck will get better and one of these weekends will be good.

Music...

Emma LOVES music. It cracks me up when we are in the car and she is belting out Annie tunes (at times when the CD is not even in!). Dave just upgraded his MP3 player so I am using his old one to put music on for Emma. It is a tough choice what to load it up with since there is only 512mb of space...

So far on my computer to be chosen from - she keeps adding to daily:
- Her violin music she is supposed to be listening to so she knows that music. I am loading a few songs past where she is.
- Annie - will choose the songs she really gets into - Maybe, Hard Knock Life, Little Girls, Tomorrow, You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile (her favorite at this time)
-Celtic Woman - a few different cds
-Celtic Woman's Fiddler's solo album
-Jack Johnson (Curious George sound track)
-Johnny Cash
-Dixie Chicks
-Wizard of OZ
-Sugarland's All I Want to Do
-A bunch of old (taken from LPs) science/nature songs
-Les Miserables (she just asked for this as I was making this list)

So, I am thinking it is time to get more music from musicals for her to listen to. I am thankful that she is not into the norm for her age and older (at least not yet) like Hannah Montana, High School Musical, Jonas Brothers.... And I know Dave is VERY thankful for that!

We are working on the words for Do-Re-Mi right now.

Geocaching!

One of our Christmas gifts from my parents was a hand held GPS for hiking/geocaching. I have been wanting to try geocaching for a couple years at least now and now we can! It took almost 2 months but we finally went out yesterday. Had a list of about 10 caches we were going to look for since I really had no idea what to expect. I know they can be easy to find, others not so much.

Our first attempt took us into a neighborhood and we could not see an easy way to get to the area we needed to be without going through a yard so we gave up and filed that one to try again later. I think there was another street that we could have taken to get closer. We will learn more as we do more. It was only 5 miles from our house so easy to get back too.

The next one was just over a mile from our house. This time we made it to the spot but could not find the cache. I am guessing a micro or nano cache (think tiny) is not the best to start with. We also filed it for later since it is so close to home.

Our third attempt was just down the street from the second. They are both themed benches. You would think that the third time is a charm but we again gave up. Partly because we had no clue what we were looking for, partly because they are so close to home we can go back.

I was getting a little disappointed by this time. We headed west to our next stop and finally had luck!


There it is!





Uncovering it and seeing our first found geocache!




Emma was pretty excited to see the treasures inside!




She ended up taking a sticker and leaving a plastic spider!

So we were pretty excited to move on. I plugged in for the next geocache and it took us to an area we wanted to explore anyways. The goal was to stick with geocaches that did not need too much walking but that did not happen with this one. We were able to get within just shy of 1/2 mile of the cache... 1/2 as the bird flies lol. This area was created for trail bikers so the path to where the cache was had a lot of switchbacks. There was not that much elevation change once we got to the top and the top was where the switch backs started to give more trail length to the bikers. So we kept going and finally made it!


On the way there.




Is it here?




Here it is!




Emma is again thrilled with the what she finds! She took an egg of silly putty and left a baggie with the makings for a macaroni necklace!





Looking through the log book.



The view from near the cache. Looking down on the Colorado River.




We did not get back to the car until 5 pm but decided to go try one more that was supposed to be a quick one. It was at a park only a mile or so from where we were at the time. It was another nano cache so I had no idea what to expect.

Can you see it? Dave found this one, it looked like one of the screws. Very small magnetic case just big enough for 1/4 inch piece of paper rolled up.

updates....

First of all, there was not Friday update because we did nothing last week for school. By Thursday I was finally to the point I could walk around with out being exhausted. So we went to the mall to the safety fair. It was neat and she did pick some stuff up. It was aimed for elementary kids and I did notice some booths pretty much not talking to her or giving her a very watered down version compared to the school kids. Not sure if they thought she was younger than she is or if the fact she was not with a group, they felt they did not have to really talk with her. The fact I was still feeling yucky probably has a lot to do with my opinion too lol.

This week is going to be playing catch up. She was supposed to go back to the doctor today for a followup to make sure her ear has cleared up but it was canceled because they were behind. So they tried to reschedule for the same time tomorrow but I was able to get it moved up to right after her violin lesson which is a lot nicer to me than 3:15.

Meet Dorje

I had mentioned quite a few posts back that even though the two cats we were fostering had been adopted, that we were not petless...


Just over 4 weeks ago we adopted Dorje, a bull mastiff, golden retriver mix puppy. He was just over 6 weeks when we got him. Our best guess was at that time he was 15 lbs. He is close to 30 now. He is going to be a big dog (which we were aware of when we got him).


His name is Tibetian for thunderbolt. We are pronouncing it like Georgia but with a D


So far, everything is going VERY smoothly. He was house trained in a couple weeks. Even then, we only had a few accidents inside. When I say house trained, he was the one telling us when he needed to go out. I talked with the woman we will most likely use to help train him and asked what we should be working on until the first class (he needs one more round of shots). She said house training (done), crate training (he puts himself to sleep at night in his crate - done). Other stuff she mentioned is getting him on a feeding schedule. I need to do this instead of offering food whenever he wants.


Photos:


Shortly after we got him:


6.5 weeks old (He was a Thanksgiving baby - easy to remember!)





Emma and pup - 7.5 weeks old







Emma and pup - 10.5 weeks old (today)

What a start to the weekend...

Our weekend plans should have been as follows... Park day Friday afternoon, party for Emma's friend at Chuck E Cheese at 6 on Friday, hockey game Sat, hockey game Sun...

The way the weekend has gone so far... I woke up feeling very cruddy Friday morning, Emma came in saying she had a sore throat. So in a way I was thankful she was content to just lay around with me and watch TV. That thankfulness changed when she started running a fever. Called to let friends know we were not going to make park day and I asked if they could pick meds for Emma. They saved the day and allowed me not to have to run out.

Let Emma know park day, the party and at least one day of hockey was canceled and I could tell she did not feel well when she did not even really care.

This morning after her temp reaching 103-104 when the meds wore off Dave and I took her into Urgent Care. I debated waiting until Monday but I figur if she could be put on meds, the sooner the better. Turns out we were right, she has an ear infection.

Ok, Emma is asking to go watch videos on You Tube. She is asking for Charlie Bit My Finger. Funny if you have not seen it!

Friday review

Going to start this so I can keep track of what Emma and I are doing for school. It will most likely vary quite a bit depending on weather, how we feel and how her attitude is. At least until I have to have a set # of hours in each day.

Reading: We are using Right Track Reading as well as taking ideas/suggestions from All About Spelling and Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We made it through 2 lessons this week. Letters: M,A,T,S,D. So she is actually reading words like mat, sad, dad, at, am, tad. We hit a bump mid week with the blending but I found an exercise in 100 EZ lessons that pushed us over that bump!

Math: Still testing out where she is and what she is capable of understanding. I grabbed her number cards last night and a hand ful of pennies and had her count out (only up to 10) the correct amount when I held up a number. So I tried to challenge her. Introduced the nickel and let her know it was worth 5 cents to the pennies 1 cent. Held up an 8 and showed her how the nickel was worth 5 and that she still needed 3 pennies. She caught on right away. So I held up a 10 curious of what she would do. She quickly grabbed a nickel and counted out five pennies. I asked her how many pennies she had. "5" she answered. So I asked if she could make 10 a different way? "Of course" as she slid the pennies back and grabbed another nickel. Quicker than I thought she would catch on.

Social Studies: A mom at hockey (who had previously home schooled) brought me some stuff that her kids no longer could use. One of them being 100 EZ lessons, the other a manuel/activity book for map work for 1st grade. (Map Essentials by National Geographic) It starts out teaching left right, description words like near/far. Starts teaching about maps and directions.

Reading out loud: Little House in the Big Woods. Two chapters this week. Lots of reading from library books, having Emma read the words she now knows.

violin video

Wanted to add a video of where she is now. Her practice is going to start building her up to play all the Twinkle variations in a row without stopping, while adding in new songs.

The video has her playing "Mississippi Hot Dog" and "1,2, shush 3". She then plays Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (which we are also working on) and then the first line of her new song "Lightly Row." She has taken to the new song better than I thought after playing the same notes for the past 4-5 months. After she starts (and stops) during the new song, you will see her glance over her shoulder at a white board where I wrote down the notes/fingers for the first line. After playing twice today she had it down! I think she got confused in the video since she had played the other songs first.

(Ignore the split second of hockey in the beginning!)

Emma the artist...

Here are a few snapshots of paintings or drawing she has done recently. All her own ideas.

Her dinosaur...

Sabertooth



Baseball field with the fans watching



ice cream cone with cherry on top. What I love about this one is she told me it start out to be an airplne but by the time she got to the second wing (the cherry) she ran out of room so it became an ice cream cone!

Here is some video from Emma's hockey game Friday... And btw.. she is now Blue #4 (the smaller of the two blue #4's - although the other #4 has switched to a new number). Starts out with a wave to her fans and then the action... :)

Hockey game update...

The coaches seperated the kids again tonight and the consenus is that it is a wonderful thing. There are a couple kids that are a lot better but iffy when it would come to being put up with the other group. One of the boy's mom said the coach emailed her and asked which to place him on and she told the coach to decide. I am guessing they will try to move him up soon because there is not much competition for him.

Emma did great. You can see the difference. There was one segment where she was touching the puck off and on 10-15 times in a short period. You can see things coming together for her. She automatically heads to the opposite side of the net when the puck is coming around. She is starting to use the backside of her stick when needed.

Biggest news of the night?!?! She scored her first goal!!! She was so excited and was looking around for us with a huge grin. My bummer is that it was one of the few moments that I was not taping the game! Oh well, now that she has had that experience it will happen again soon. You could see a change in her after that goal!

Structure...

I have been saying for a while that this spring is going to be the trial run to see if Emma and I can co-exist while homeschooling. The more I learn, and see what is happening to the economy and what that is doing to the schools, I am more determined to keep her home with me and teach her.

We are slowly working into a structured day. Before we were constantly learning but it was more out in the car or whereever we are. I am having to do some back tracking with her on numbers/letter. I mean she can do basic arithmatic in her head but did not recognize a nine. Oops, dropped the ball there.

The last week or so, we have been doing a lot of writing. She loves to write, and in my opinion, she has really nice writing for her age. She wanted to write all her thank you notes. So I wrote them out based on what she told me, and then she copied them. Awesome, leading into copy work already! We finished our last one this morning.

We have also been working on the basic phonograms so we can bridge into reading. We tried this last fall and it did not go well. She is doing better now. We are working on 3-5 a week and I plan to work new ones in as she masters the ones she has and then place those into review. Of course getting her writing in as well here since she keeps asking.

Going to start working in a structured time for math in a week or so once we get used to the things we are doing now. According to the things I have been reading I will be required to school for 2 hours for K which I do not think will be a problem.

The other thing we started today was reading Little House in the Big Woods. She is just loving it and we have just read chapter one. We tried last summer and her attention span was not quite there yet.

hockey...

The coaches changed something today at hockey and it was a good thing. We have kids 5 years old playing against 9 year olds. One mom came up to me today (her kid played last season) and mentioned Emma is playing against 3rd graders!

Anyways... They serparated the kids based on age/experience. Basically the REAL young ones (Emma and a couple others) were put in a group with the kids with very little experience. There are about 30 total playing this season and I think Emma's group had 10 kids. They played them 3 on 3 for the first part and then added in a 4th for goalie. It was a great experience for the kids since they did not have the older/more experienced kids screaming in when they were trying to get the puck. Notice I did not say larger since 6 of the kids are still a lot bigger than Emma and a few of the others. I guess they are going to continue to do this for a while which I think is great!

modgepodge of updates....

Lots going on...
1. 2nd cat is now adopted! Dave's coworker who cat sat over Thanksgiving, decided to adopt Juliet (who I guess is now Tabitha)! As a side not and for another update... we are not petless though...

2. We finally had luck installing a dining room light. It took 3 different companies to get it right. The first attempt, the finish started peeling off just by touching it. That light went back. The second attempt, felt a lot nicer and once it was up we stood back and just groaned. The sconces that should have been parallel to the ground were anything but. We kept that light up for a week until we double checked with the company and the store we bought it at, that it was indeed not supposed to be that way. That light went back. We tried a third company (all the exact same style of light) and we finally lucked out. Should be no surprise I guess that the cost of each light went up as we returned and rebought.

3. Decided we would paint. The colors in the front half of the house are mauve and blue. And with only one set of windows, it is too dark in here. Started to get ready to prime and realized we really need to mud/texture the walls to help fix/cover up what previous owners have done to the walls (paint over hangers in the concrete wall instead of removing/patching - that is just a start).

4. Emma is progressing with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star nicely. She gets hung up at one part since it is so similar to the previous line she just played. But we are working through it and she might be able to pass off on it by Tuesday.

5. That is all for now. Dave is going to start mudding the walls so I am going to get busy on something else.

Emma's violin progress...

I can not remember if I explain what Emma is working on (has been working on since she started). The notes she plays are from Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star but there are 5 variations (rhythms) she has to learn before getting to actually play TTLS.

We have been struggling with one variation she has been working on. Her teacher says it is pretty new to the book and she is still trying to figure out the best way to teach it. Last week, we talked more about it and decided to take out the accent on two of the notes for now and just get the variation down. Since she was close, the teacher also introduced a new variation to start working with on open strings.

Well, she went in today and played both variations completly through the song and passed both! To pass she has to be able to play the variation all the way through. So now she is working on TTLS! She still has A LOT of work to do on the variations, she knows them but does not have the correct timing or speed down yet. That will come with time.

Emma has been full of questions today...

We have had the inaguration on the tv for most of the morning. The only time we had it off was when I had to take her to her violin lesson. The timing of that could not be worse since that was right when the President was being sworn in and gave his speech so we missed all of that.

I have been preparing her and talking to her about this for a couple days and her first question came last night "How do we pick a president?" We had talked to her back this fall about the different candidates and who was running for what and she went with me when I voted. She knew who John McCain was and who Barack Obama was. But that was a couple months ago.

So this morning she asked again, "How do we choose a president?" I talked with her a bit and had a hard time putting it into words how we weigh what they tell us against what we believe and what we feel will be best for the country. Then an idea popped in my head... I asked if "If Big Bird and Cookie Monster were running for President and BB offered violin lessons for everyone and CM said that there would be no more violin allowed who would you choose?" She quickly said BB. So I explained it is not that simple but basically that is what happens.

And then there was one...

We did not get to say goodbye to one of our pets today. (not a sad ending but a happy one).

Back in September, there was a lot of feral cats in the subdivision. We had our own litter of a mama cat and 4 kittens in our backyard. One day Dave went into the shed and accidently cornered two of them. He was able to snatch one. Our thinking was that she was young enough to tame and get to someone who could find a home for her.

That was where our thinking was wrong. Yes, she was easy to tame and a sweet kitten. The problem was the organization what helps with cats had all their foster homes full. They would help us with testing and fixing the cat but we had to foster her. Since other than rereleasing her, that was our only option we did it. I guess thinking back we could have gone and sat outside the market as well and given her away but that may not have been the best option.

Anyways, we agreed to have them help us and next thing I knew they talked us into fostering a playmate for the kitten we rescued. So we went from one kitty to two.

Once fixed, they are able to go up for adoption and it took a few months for that to happen since the vet they use only comes once a month. Since they could not go up for adoption in October (they are both black) the fixing was put off yet another month. So early Dec they went in and came home all fixed. Then there were no adoption fairs because of the holidays...

Anyways, this was the first time we could take them in for the adoption fair, so we took them yesterday. When we went today, we were only able to locate one of them! One had been adopted! The "funny" part? It was the feral kitty who was adopted and we still have the playmate. I am really hoping she gets adopted soon as well. We talked about keeping one or both but over the last 4 months have realized we are not cat people. We tried hard.

But as we were leaving, Emma got a little sad and said "I never got to say goodbye to Cassie." And I realized it was true. I honestly went in figuring we would be bringing both of them home today. I mean the organization has said they have the hardest time getting people to adopt black cats.

Time to buy a lottery ticket?

So Dave and I went to his work Christmas Party two weekends before Christmas. They were having a raffle for the employees that had RSVPed that they would be there. If you were not there and your name was drawn, you did not win. They just drew another name. They had some good stuff. Drawing for IPOD shuffles, $100, paid days off. They raffled off a tool box and when they announced the name the crowd just started laughing. The guy who won was semi retired and only works a couple days a week. They get down to the big prizes and the final prize was a 42" LCD TV. Guess who won, Dave! His boss comes up and complains that he has been coming for 11 years and has not won one thing!

We were sitting there trying to absorb the fact that we own yet another 42" (yep, we are still paying off the one we bought - no interest for 3 years deal when the Rockies was in the world series). He got a tap on his shoulder and the guy who won the 32" was saying he really was interested in the 42" and would we be interested in trading plus $100.... Sure why not, we walked in with nothing and will walk out with a 32" and $100... the 42" was too big since we already had one. So it is set up now and our "ancient" tv is now in the garage.

So... fast forward to today.... Dave gave me a quick call to say he was off work and asked if I wanted to hear something funny. Sure why not. They have a couple tool trucks that come around every week. One of them was having a raffle in December. For every $50 you bought in tools, you got a raflle ticket. Dave bought $150 because he needed the tools. Some guys were paying off their balance just to get raffle tickets. The raffle was for a 26" LCD tv and it included all the businesses in the valley.... Guess who won? Yep, Dave.

Guys at work were just glaring at him over this. A couple guys suggested he ought to go play the lottery given his luck.

learning her phone number... that was easy...

I have never taught Emma our phone number because we were never sure whether we were going to keep the cell phones once the contract was up. Therefore I was not sure whether we were going to keep the home phone if we kept the cell phones.

Tonight she is stilling on one of the stools with her calculator and I hear her spout out a 4 didgit number. I ask her to repeat it and she says the same number. So I ask her what that number was and she replies it is part of her phone number (it was) so I ask her what the rest of it was and she knew her phone number minus the area code. I was shocked. However, we had been at Sears today getting the Jeep looked at and I had to give it twice wthinin a 5 in period which might be where she picked it up at. So I taught her the area code (seeing it is a cell phone and the area code is not the same as the local one) and she has retained it so far.

Happy New Year!!

We stayed up last night for the first time in years. I figured Emma is getting old enough to start traditions on New Years. I am sure they will develop over time. I was throwing around the idea of starting to either go bowling or see a movie on New Year's Eve eventually. We had not planned that this year so we ran to the local Red Box (love those things!) and grabbed Prince Caspian. It was the only movie that was not too adult and not too childish... Well, that and Kung Fu Panda. Emma did really well through it and was intrigued at parts. Too many questions though! We are going to rent the first movie this weekend for her to see.

That movie ended around 11 so it was not too long to stay up until midnight, but at the same time, it was a long time for Emma. We channel flipped between various programs switiching when all the popular music would come on (thankfully she is not into any of that yet). She made it to 12:07 and crashed just before Robbie Knievil made his jump in Vegas. She kept asking to
stay up long enough to see it and crashed just before!