Mother Goose Time - Week 1, Day 1 and 2

Weston and I started Mother Goose Time on Monday morning. The theme for this month is Cowboys, Dunes and Deserts.

Day 1 was a little challenging because Wes is not really used to the structure of a routine. But, he was very, very interested in our activities.

We started with Circle Time and we went over the days of the week. I used this opportunity to incorporate the curriculum into our Circle Time Chart we purchased from Lakeshore. We spent time speaking about what day it was (Monday) and the date (June 3). I used the calendar from Mother Goose Time and had Wes tape the date to the corresponding box.

This month's theme paired really well with our existing Circle Time Chart!

The next thing we did is talk about shapes. We went over each shape on the Mother Goose Time Mystery Shape poster. I showed Wes the Mystery Shape Envelope and told him I had a special, super secret shape inside. I then asked him what shape had four sides and he said, "Rectangle!". "Close, but what OTHER shape has four sides?" Keep in mind that Weston is almost three, so when I realized that he was tunnel visioned on "rectangle" I gave him hints between two shapes and asked, "Do one of THESE shapes have four of the same sides?" BINGO! He got it! I made such a big deal about him guessing my secret and asked him if he wanted to see if we had a cool square in my Top Secret Shape Envelope. You would have thought I had a snake in that envelope the way he cautiously looked inside. I let him attach it to the poster. "Wes, do you think that that square is the SAME as the one on the poster?"

I'm not sure if he was more excited about finding out my "secret shape" or standing on the table to tape it on the poster!

Next we sat and cut apart name tags. This activity was too difficult to photograph because Wes requires hand over hand assistance with cutting still. I simply had him decide which name tag he wanted to cut (since there were three) and I hand over hand helped him with holding the paper (in his left hand) and cutting (with his right). I used verbal prompting ("Open" and "Shut") to help him focus on the actual actions of cutting. I also helped him hand over hand to write his and my names and let him scribble on the third one. We also stomped out the syllables in our names and added a clap to place more emphasis on the syllables. I added in other family names and other words. He really liked this activity!

Next we moved on to painting cowboy boots with pokey balls. Wes picked out white paint to start with. I hand over hand demonstrated the motion of rolling the pokey ball like a tumbleweed. We sing-songed "Tum-ble-WEED" with the action and soon enough Wes was doing it by himself, singing "Tum-ble-WEED!".

A little hesitant about paint on his hands

Hubby and I asked Wes if he wanted to try another color to see if it would show up on the red boot. He picked yellow. Wes then rolled the "tumbleweed" again and then asked for purple. Wes is always a little hesitant with messy work but we kept encouraging him to continue. Wes wanted to paint "for Grandpa" so we got out a red piece of paper and let him continue to craft. We then asked him if he wanted to try and "SMOOSH" it on the page to see if it would look different. He thought this was great! Then we asked if he used a paint brush would it look any different? Of course, he had to try it to see! Although this was not how the activity was intended, we added on to it to keep it going and Wes interested. It was a great way to integrate big and small differentiation!

Exploring a little more with the paint

"Smooshing" the tumbleweed

Wes' masterpieces!

Lastly, I drew a huge square on the ground with chalk. We practiced dancing in and ON the square. He didn't quite get the concept of square dancing, but we had fun just being silly to the songs on the month's CD!

After doing some of the more structured activities, Daddy, Mommy and Wes took a trip to the Library. We got a few books off the recommended reading list and a few that weren't. I also ordered a few that I think would be valuable to our collection! I'll review those as we introduce them!

Also, after lunch we colored and spent time talking about Cowboy boots. I let him "wear" my cowboy boots and stomp around. 

Coloring the cover theme sheet

We had a lot of fun and were glad that Dad was a part of today! We will work more and more on making it a more natural transition from activity to activity but we are new to this routine! Wes really enjoyed the painting activity! 

Day 2 went a little bit smoother! First thing we did was go over what day of the week it was and what the month and date was. Wes was really jazzed to attach the date to the monthly themed calendar.

I asked Wes if he wanted to know another "secret". I told him I had a secret color in my pocket and wanted to see if he could guess what it was. I walked over to different things in the room that were brown and asked him what color each item was. I then asked him what color things like "chocolate", "Brady's horse" (which isn't his horse), and "dirt" was. Of course, he was able to guess it was brown. I made it a little too easy but I wanted him to really enjoy this game and not frustrate him too easily. I let him attach the "paint blob" on the color palette. We then put the brown paint brush in the Circle Time chart we have on the wall. We then talked about all the other things that were brown like tree trunks, graham crackers and our bread.

Attaching the paint blog to the palette  

Wes used the paint brush like a magic wand!

I asked Wes to take the brown "paint brush" and use it to show me things he saw that were brown in the room. He pointed out the work table, the floor tiles, a stuffed dog and my hair (with a little question prompt "Wes, is mommy's hair brown, too?").

We put the paint brush in our Circle Time chart

The next activity we did was color sorting. We took orange and brown squares and sorted them into two "cowboy bags". I had Wes identify each color by name and put in the corresponding bag. We attempted to carry them on our heads like cowboy hats, but that didn't go too well! Wes is just too bouncy when he walks! I put the bags in completely different areas so he had to walk to each area.

Wes on his way to the "brown" bag

Wes at the "orange" bag

When we were done "sorting colors", I let Wes look at the Mystery Shape poster and tell me what shape it was again. I then let him match his orange square to the mystery shape from day 1. He thinks its the coolest to stand on the table.

Matching to the mystery shape

We then took the orange squares and sorted by size (since there was small, medium and large squares in today's pack). 

Sorting by size

Wes' favorite part was the painting activity. Today we talked about Cowboys and why they wore cowboy hats. Wes donned his painting smock and we set out picking "ketchup" and "mustard" for painting the hats. I showed Wes how to "DRRAAA-GGGG" his rope through the paint and "DRRAAA-GGGG" it over the hat. 

Dipping it "like ketchup"

DRRRAAA-GGG it across the hat

Wes found a different way to drag the rope

I loved the way he explored different ways to use the rope

We also talked about how some people like hats that have lots of extra things like feathers, buttons and rope. So, naturally, Wes wanted to "add" a few things, too.

Wes asked to wear my boots again and we fashioned up our extra hat to wear while his masterpiece dried. 

Wes realized mommy's cowboy boots were "dirty", but "brown"! Haha! Love this kid!

My favorite part of today's bag was the book Life in a Desert. I really enjoyed the book because it had minimal language, but very vivid photos. It gave us the opportunity to converse about some of the things that we see around our house that you could also find in a desert. We talked about how not too far from our house, there are deserts and how there were deserts all over the world. Wes was especially excited because he's super into spotting cactus plants and I think that piqued his interests. We took the book with us in the car and I've caught him looking at it several times already!

Hard to take photos of us reading, but here's the book!

Wes is really enjoying the curriculum so far! What I am finding very useful is the structure and ease of using a themed box curriculum. Since the Lesson Plan book gives pointers and tips to expand each activity, I have found myself not as lost as I expected I would be! I didn't photograph EVERY detail of the days' activities because I didn't want to take away from the content of the material. If I had a camera in Wes' face the entire time, it wouldn't be a fulfilling experience to him, nor I. So, I just wanted to share with you some of the highlights from our days!

If you decide to give Mother Goose Time a try, I suggest that you glance and prepare any activities/materials you need the night before. This way you kind of have an idea in your head of what you want to do and any extras you can incorporate into your day. I found myself gathering some things I already had around the house to add to our activities. 

Again, I am really impressed with the quality of the materials included in the curriculum! And, the fact that everything is bagged according to day makes it really easy to keep organized and at your finger tips! 

To visit Mother Goose Time's web site, click HERE!

Controlled Chaos

I’m just going to write today. NO prompts. NO outlines. Just ramblin' my mouth off. I wanted to start this blog to really talk about things that most of us moms experience. So, this is going to be off the cuff and genuine. Maybe a tad bit disjointed, but just what's been on my mind. 

For me, being a mother is like managing controlled chaos. It’s nothing like what I imagined. I live in a daily state of chaos, but manage to keep that volcano from ever exploding. Yet, daily, the lava creeps dangerously close to eruption. It’s this state of controlled chaos that has me ever so uncomfortable. It doesn’t keep me on my toes, but walking on eggshells. I described to my friend one day that I felt like one of those Chinese Acrobats with spinning plates on sticks. At any given time, one of those plates were going to fall but I was bouncing around trying to prevent that from happening. While I had my eyes on those spinning plates, I was missing out on everything else that was happening. It's an awful feeling being stuck in this space.

So, I decided in the last year to take charge of this state of uneasiness. To do so, I had to take a real and honest look at my life and decide to make some changes. It hasn’t been hard to make these changes, but it was not easy to make the decision to do so. See, it's easy to stay in neutral. But, change requires being brave and taking risk. It has been EXTREMLEY hard to face and look at who I am. I’ve had to take time to really SEE why these chaotic feelings were happening.

I think that a lot of mothers live in this state of controlled chaos. With the increasing demands that are placed upon us, it’s impossible to feel like we can handle it all without stress. We are expected to raise perfectly behaved children who eat wholesome, organic meals that are well-balanced and presented in a fun way like suns and panda bears with balloons made out of cherry tomatoes.  Us and our well behaved children are to be worldly and wear neatly pressed clothes and fedoras. We give the best gift favors at perfectly themed birthday parties. We are expected to have immaculate houses, equal to that of a model home. We must highlight and contour or faces, blow out our split-end free hair and drive the best of the best SUVS. Our husbands come home to a wife who is glad to see him and we are expected to listen to them, our friends, our kids all complain about how HARD they have it. We give our "uh-hums" and "It'll get betters" and smile our little fake smiles.

But, these things are rarely true, even when we construct facades that indicate that we ARE all of these things. Houses that are too immaculate lack life. Kids rarely eat anything you give them and moms are just so tired to cook. Women barely shlep on mascara on busy days and often steal ideas for gift favors off of Pinterest. Heck, do most of us find that we resort to shaving just our lower legs most of the time? Listening to our friends complaints? Is that on my calendar??? Oh, wait, you posted it on Facebook. Oh poor you...Wait!? Did I forget I'm in charge of snacks for today's play date?

Who has enough time for it all?

My house has toys scattered about. There is probably dustings of crumbs in the nooks under my cabinets. My stainless steel appliances probably have hand prints and smudges from the impatient hands of my children. You could probably find a fruit snack wrapper in the toy bin. My car is full of dog hair, Goldfish and crayons. WHY? Because I don't have a housekeeper. My kids drink juice, and YES it’s not made by me. And, dinner? Well, on any given night we MAY be eating breakfast for dinner and it isn’t in the shape of anything but scrambled eggs.

And, the glorification of busy….that’s another thing that bugs me! It’s like we have decided to equate the amount of “busy” to how “important” we are. What the heck is that about? Since when is having free time such an oddity and looked down upon? You ask someone, “So, how have you been?” and you automatically get, “Oh gosh! I’m so damn busy”. When did we stop saying, “I’m doing great. How about YOU?”

Believe me, I get how busy we are. We really create that for ourselves. And, we take pride in how busy we are. I found that I met each invitation with a laundry list of tasks I was busy with which prevented me from doing anything. I did not like it. I didn’t like BEING that person.

Really, I don’t LIKE being busy. I find that it makes me feel out of control. I know some of the busy things I have I cannot CHANGE and have to do. Like the kids’ school and therapies and activities, blah blah blah. But, I don’t like not being in control. When and why did this happen? This happened for a number of reasons. I like to be able to accomplish things. And being busy prevented me from accomplishing a lot of things I wanted to. I had a growing list of to-do’s and less time to do them. This in turn contributed to my feeling of not being ENOUGH.

So, back to the changes I wanted and NEEDED to make. My horseback riding instructor pointed out to me that I wasn’t really taking care of myself. She gave me this great analogy – It’s like being in an airplane emergency. You put your oxygen mask on first before you put on your children’s masks. And, it’s when she told me this that I realized that I wasn’t even taking care of my needs and happiness which was directly affecting the quality of “MOMNESS” and “WIFENESS” my family was getting. I love her. She’s made me see more about myself than any other person lately…but more about her some other day (really soon actually!).

Taking care of myself…why was this so HARD? I mean, I had food, shelter and sleep. But, I needed more than that. This didn’t mean that I needed to spa it up or just spend every free second on myself. But, it meant, for me, that I needed to schedule things just for me and not cancel it for anything. Something that didn't revolve, involve and include my kids. It meant I needed more time ALONE, more time with FRIENDS, more date nights with HUBBY, and more time to just RELAX. It meant that I had to grow some balls and say NO once in a while. It meant that I had to stop being so damn busy that we didn’t have time to just lounge around and do nothing. Because doing nothing is not a bad thing.

I’m going to write a little bit more later about the changes I’ve made which I believe made me a better woman, mother, wife and friend. I believe that some of these simple changes gave me some breathing room. I have never felt so relaxed, less pressured or happy and fulfilled in my life. I’m no zen master and I'm dangerously close to the cray-cray on some days, but I am not running around with my head cut off anymore. I enjoy the company of my family and take pride in knowing I have time for people and things I need to do.

I hope you will share with me along this journey. I think we all need to cut ourselves some slack and stop trying to be so perfect. It’s really a path of destruction!

Share with me if you have time if you agree with me! Can I get an AMEN?! What do you do to CONTROL your chaos?

Inspirational Quotes Silent Sunday - 6.2.13

Fave Five of the Month - June

When did May happen? Gosh darn it, time really flew by last month. Before I knew it, it was the first of June! HELLO! My husband will be glad he won't be getting texts with this in them...

Love me some Timberlake...

I thought I'd share my five favorite things of the moment, just like May! Just little things that make me a happy girl (If you click on the text of the photo's caption, it'll take you to Amazon).

Gelous Nail Base Coat
I'm in love with this base coat. I used to NEVER paint my nails with colored polish because it just didn't last past a day without a chip. Now I can paint my nails and most times it lasts without a chip for 5-7 days. The way I use it is I apply a thin coat on clean, dry nails and let it dry. Then I paint a coat of colored polish and let it dry. Then, again, I paint a coat of Gelous base coat and repeat with another coat of colored polish. Last I seal with a glossy top coat (I like Essie). It's hard for me to paint my nails with the boys around and I NEVER have enough time to do it all at once. So, I kind of do it throughout the day, which is why I let each coat dry. I don't know if THAT'S why my polish lasts so long, but it does! If I see a chip starting to develop, I slap a seal of Gelous on the ends of my nails and it prolongs the polish! I'm not gentle on my hands and I'm amazed this stuff works. About $5 to boot! I found my bottle at my local Sally's Beauty Supply.

American Classic Gelous Nail Gel Base Coat Nail Polish

Sofia Champagne - Francis Coppola

I picked up a bottle of this champagne a few years ago and really took a liking to it. But, what's made me love it more is that I found it in a four-pack of cans with straws! WHAT!?! So, extremely cute and portable (and discreet, haha!). How can you NOT love this!?! It's a perfect little addition to a girls night out, a bridal shower or a night at the fire pit! I try to keep a couple cans in the fridge for good days (ANY good day!). With summer here, I will find any reason to crack open a can of bubbly! "We made it through the day? Where's the champagne!?" I find it at Target and it's about $11! BAR-GAIN! SCHWING!

Francis Ford Coppola Sofia Mini Blanc de Blancs 4-Pack

Le Mystere Lolita Convertible Bra

Summer is finally here and for me that means the torture of putting my lady lumps in a strapless bra. Man, why is it that strapless bras don't do anything they are supposed to? I spend most of my time hiking my bra up! I know! CLASSY! I've been eyeing the Le Mystere Lolita Convertible Bra for a while. But, at $78, I was not rushing to Nordstroms to buy it. I keep seeing it pop up on Zulily for about $30, so I took the plunge. I was pretty hesitant because you can't return to Zulily, but I heeded the advice of many reviewers and ordered a cup size larger and band size smaller. It is a little tight, but maybe that's the last few days of Sonic and milk shakes. 

What I WILL tell you is that this thing perks those suckers up (which is impressive in itself) and does not budge. I'm not tugging up on my dress and it probably is worth $78 but heck, wait until you see it on Zulily and snap one up for yourself! My regular bras are mostly all le Mystere, so I really love the brand, but I've NEVER paid full price for one. You can often find them on sale on Zulily, Amazon and Nordstroms.

Le Mystere Women's Lolita Strapless Bra #7759

Redken Rewind

My hairstylist is one fantastic gal! She's really helped me understand my hair! She's the one that introduced me to Redken Rewind. One thing I've ALWAYS had a problem with is fly away hairs. That paired with the fact that I have two cowlicks at the nape of my neck, my hair has driven me bonkers whenever I've tried to do anything fun like chignons. I used to try and hairspray and gel everything into place and I ended up with super shiny, super rock hard helmet hair. 

I use a tiny, tiny bit of Rewind on my hair most days to smooth out my fly aways. When I put my hair up, I use it on the unruly hairs that don't want to cooperate, like those pesky nape cowlicks. It doesn't make my hair flat or hard. It's consistency is between a gel and pomade. Use it sparingly, like a half a pea size and use more if needed. The jar is huge, so even though it about $20, it lasts a gazillion years! 

Redken Rewind Pliable Styling Paste, 5-Ounces Bottle

Silicone Ice Cream Cones

I bought these for a sensory play activity I wanted to do over the summer months (more on that this week!). But, I've used these cones in so many ways. I use them to do sorting and a memory game we've created. We also use it for pretend play and just for being silly. These cones have even made their way into bath time, too! The set I purchased was about $12 and it came with cupcake mix and a ton of sprinkles. I used the cake and frosting mix in one of our faux ice cream sensory activities and the sprinkles have been used in several different activities, including over applesauce at lunch (by Wes' request). 

Brand Castle Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes Kit, 6-Count

What are some of YOUR faves this month?