Swiss Family Robinson

Our latest chapter book has been Swiss Family Robinson.  I found a children's version at the dollar store. Score!  There are still some bits I need to edit for L as I think there is too much talk of guns and killing but she loves the rest of it.

I told her teacher we are reading it and she has introduced L to the land and water forms so she can see what an island is.  L is totally stoked!

We also got a coconut from the grocery store to try.  Daddy drilled a hole and L drank the milk with a straw.

 He then broke it apart and we enjoyed the yummy coconut just like in Swiss Family Robinson.

 When we got to the part about them using a pulley to bring up all of their provisions into the tree I told L we would give it a try.   Not having any rope we tied some long scarves together.  L stood at the top of the landing and I tied on our provisions one by one as she pulled them up.  It was a good idea to start but after what seemed like the 100th time I was second guessing myself. LOL

 We then made our tree house at the top of the stairs.  L was the mommy and I was one of the sons along with the other stuffed animals.  She made us dinner and then put us to bed.

We have really enjoyed this book and doing activities to go along with it.  I think it is especially good as it has a drawing of what is happening on every second page so L can follow along.  There are a lot of new concepts for her to try to get her head around.

Next up is getting Daddy to show her how to make a bow and arrow!

Last 21 month post (Practical life)

At the beginning I was all gung ho with the practical life monthly update posts. I still am but don't have as much to tell as I listed most of the things L does in the first couple of posts. This has been a hard month for me for a number of reasons so it feels like I've let some practical life things slip. Sometimes I just think it's not worth the energy if she isn't into it. One of those things is clearing her table. She still sets it but as there is not incentive to clear it she just wants to get on with other things(don't we all!).

Some things that she has been doing are:

Practising putting lids on and off of jars. She's had this activity for months and always comes back to it. She loves getting the treasures out and always remembers which jar they go back into.
As I mentioned in a previous post she's also been cutting some of her own food. I'm hoping to get around to showing her how to spread soon as well.
We are also working on getting her own toilet paper and pulling up her own pants which is difficult because they keep getting stuck on her bum!

She also puts her shoes away. Sensitive period for order anyone? : )

Some potty anecdotes: (don't worry not too gross!)

For Christmas we got L a doll that came with a small potty and sink thinking it would come in really handy when potty training. It turns out we didn't use it for that purpose but now that she is potty trained she loves to have all of her dolls and babies sit on the potty and then flush it (it makes a really satisfying flushing sound). A few weeks ago I was in another room and L was playing "potty" with her dolls. I could hear her saying "now doll do a pee", "now L do a pee" but didn't think much of it until she came to me with the tiny doll potty full of pee!! She was so proud of herself and of course there was pee everywhere. One of those times when you don't know whether to laugh hysterically or cry. Anyway we had a conversation about where L does her pees and where dolls do their pees and haven't had a repeat thank goodness!

It seems like since she's been potty trained L's favorite pastime is having all of her dolls, animals and everything else go to the bathroom. Everything that is dirty seems to have poo on it and if she is convinced that any of her clothes have poo or pee on them (which they don't) there is no way she will wear them until they are washed.

Yesterday when I was out I got L a package of 12 little tropical frogs. She was having a blast playing with them and I wasn't paying much attention when I heard "go pee". Turns out all of the frogs were having a turn doing a pee on her caterpillar pattern block frame and then getting pretend toilet paper to wipe and wash their hands!!! Don't ask my why that was their toilet. Too funny!

What we did with the cutouts

This is what we did with the cardboard cutouts from the pattern block frames I made. Glued pom poms to them! L was a lot more interested in putting the glue on than the pom poms.

We used the rest of them to reenact The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

We inserted some healthier vegetarian options for some of the food and were having great fun until L decided to pull all of the pom poms off of the butterfly. I have to say I got quite frustrated and had to step back and remind myself that this was supposed to be for her and not me! : ) We can always glue them back on (I'm sure she'll love that!)