How to Wave Goodbye in Hawaiian

5YO Pink's last words to me tonight at bedtime: "Mom, watch how I wave goodbye in Hawaiian" (waves hand slowly while rolling arm gently up and down)
She's so random sometimes, but hilarious!

Mom School Restart: Focus and Themes

With school starting back up last month, we now have a 2nd grader and a kindergartner.  I originally started my Mom School concept when Pink's preschool closed down halfway through the year.  It was difficult to find another preschool at that point, plus I thought that Pink already had the foundation she needed to be successful in kindergarten.  So we did what we called Mom School: reading a book and doing a related follow up activity.

With Pink now in kindergarten, Mom School is newly geared to 3YO Purple.  The two older children participate in Road to Success, a locally sponsored reading program that encourages 20 minutes of reading daily, so the four girls and I usually read several books together at bedtime.  Rather than making books the center of our Mom School activities as I did in the past, I chose to target the alphabet, numbers 1-20, shapes and colors.  My goal is to provide 3-5 activities weekly.

Each week we focus on a letter, a number, a shape and a color that are centered around a theme.  For example, for our first week of Mom School our activity outline was the following:


Theme: Apple
Letter: A
Number: 3
Shape: Circle
Color: Red

Initially I was going to run through the alphabet, A-Z, in that order.  But on the third week I decided it would be more fun to base our themes on what is going on around us, like holidays, seasons and events.  I also realized that I could tie in the Mom School themes with our new toy rotation system if I came up with a monthly focus that tied together the weekly themes.








We just completed the first full week of October.  Our outline was as follows:

Monthly Focus: Features of Halloween 
Weekly Theme: Spider
Letter: S
Number: 8
Shape: Octagon
Color: Black

For our second week the outline is 


Monthly Focus: Features of Halloween
Weekly Theme: Cat
Letter: C
Number: 4
Shape: Diamond
Color: Purple

I found that it is easier to plan the weekly themes in advance when I have a monthly focus.  I've tentatively planned through the end of the year, with other ideas buzzing in my head for the months beyond.

There are plenty of free online resources from which to draw ideas for themes, and corresponding activities.  One of the first that I found is aptly named First-School.  Another good resource is Pinterest.  You can do an online search for "top Pinterest for preschool" or similar, and find posts such as Imagination Soup's "The Best Pinterest Users for Parents."  By following these Pinners (follow me at Pinterest) I've found ideas that I will use outright, as is, and others that have been a jumping off point for my own activities.  Even then, often my children will take me in a different direction than I intended - I'm learning to let go and let their imagination guide us.

Wardrobe for a Week Organizer..On the Cheap

I need organization, neatness, cleanliness..but I also have kids.  Four of them.  We have to get a couple of them to school on time in the morning.  One of the widely recommended methods to streamline the morning routine is to have the next day's outfit picked out, set out, and ready to go.  A beautiful tool to achieve this is a days of the week closet organizer, such as the one hanging in the picture below.

However, our closets are half this size, and we have multiple children in a room, so we have a different set up to work with.  Our closet is compartmentalized in a fairly non-adjustable way, so the hanging days-of-the-week organizer likely would not fit in a space that our schoolchildren could reach, plus we would need to fit two such organizers in the closet.  The other hang up is that those wonderful organizers cost about $30 each.  $30 X 4 = $120

I began searching for a days-of-the-week organizer that could go on the closet door, but didn't find one.  BUT I did find something that I thought might work instead.  

It does!

These things of beauty are Over The Door Hanging Purse Racks, which I purchased for $9.50 for the set of two (Note: Amazon prices change frequently, up and down, and the price at the time of this post is $11.80).  Shown here are my two schoolchildren's outfits for the coming school week, including soccer practices and games.  The purse racks have adjustable hooks that easily slide along the band.  I've squished the outfits down lower to the floor to ensure that each child can reach their own.  Monday's clothes are hung on top, Tuesday's under those, and so forth.  We even attach the undies and socks by threading them through the hangers or using clothespins I bought at the dollar store.

Even with the bulk of the clothes on these racks, they stay firmly attached to the closet door, and we can easily open and shut the door.

I'm very happy with this purchase and the organized results.  Sahweet!

I am very irritated, however, with the drawers of the armoire not being fully pushed in in the above pic.  Aaack, I can't stop looking at them.

Yellow's 8th Birthday Party Theme: Only 363 Days to Go

Birthdays are big at our house.  We are awash in toys, so instead of buying more for birthday presents, we focus instead on planning and anticipating the birthday party.

In her head she is figuring out which piece has the most frosting - that piece will be hers!

Eight days ago we held a "sweet celebration" of Yellow's 7th birthday with an M&M theme party.  And her actual birthday was all of two days ago.  So now it is time to look ahead.  This morning Yellow announced that her 8th birthday will be a Monster High party.  She even made sketches and a party plan.

Yellow's Frankencake design

Only 363 days to go!

Amazon Wish List as "Gimme!" Anecdote

A few months ago we changed our satellite TV programming to cut back on the bill, which eliminated a few beloved kid channels.  We discovered PBS Kids as a result.  Excellent!  

An unexpected but welcome result of this change was the elimination of kid-targeting commercials.  Well, almost.  I can always tell when it is Saturday morning because my girls start hawking the virtues of the Aluma Wallet.

What's worse is the unending barrage, with each Saturday morning network TV commercial, of the "Mom, I want that!  Can I have it?"  For five minutes at a time I cannot speak or think in complete sentences due to the interruptions.  And the cries of "gimme" really get me.

What to do, what to do.  Besides continually lecturing them on how "things" are not really so important.  I seem to be less persuasive than the commercials, but I will be more persistent.  And now I have devised a strategy.

Since my girls are computer savvy, I taught them how to use the Amazon "Add to Wishlist" function.  I have "Add to Wishlist" set up on our browser's bookmarks bar.  The girls simply navigate to a page that has the product on it that they want, click "Add to Wishlist", select their name from the list of wish lists (since there are six of us), and that's that.

Now when I hear "Mom, can I have that?" my response is simply "Add it to your wish list."  This works for requests sparked by TV commercials, mail catalogs, and in-store browsing.  The girls have 30 minutes of computer time daily, so whatever they remember to add during that time has to suffice.  Not that this has been an issue.  Yellow currently has 84 items on her list; Pink has 110.  

Now, just because something is on their wish list does not mean it will become theirs.  These are items that the girls can use their own money to buy, and ideas for relatives and even Santa.

What the wish list does buy is some peace and quiet for me.  And that is priceless!

What approach do you take when faced with chants of "I want, I want"?

Princess Crown Stand

Our eldest, Yellow, is pretty darn creative.  Yesterday her big idea was to set up a princess crown stand, in the manner of a lemonade stand.  I am generally against lemonade stands, as I think that the neighbors are guilted in to buying something, rather than genuinely wanting a drink prepared by a 7YO.

But this was different.  Yellow was making crowns so that "all the girls can be princesses," and she was giving them away for free.  <3

Yellow explains her plan

Yellow did almost all of it on her own: she made the crowns, found a big box to keep them in, created a sign for her stand and attached it to another big box, and then she handed out instruments to her sisters so they could make "beautiful music" to attract attention to the crown stand.  All I did was haul out a small table and snap pics.

Lots of crowns

"Come get a prinses hat fore free you can dekrat it", or in other words:
Come get a princess hat for free.  You can decorate it.

Making "beautiful music" to attract potential princesses

The girls, waiting to give away crowns

What is your experience with lemonade (or other) stands?

Unintentional Invitation to Play: Color Me a Rainbow

I admire and am inspired by The Imagination Tree's Invitations to Play.  I've been meaning to start these up.  Turns out I created an unintentional invitation to play, of sorts.  I'll explain.

I may have a touch of OCD.  Last night before bed I found myself sorting our crayon box into the different colors - I thought we were low on red crayons, and I wanted to verify it, that's all.  And we do have only one red and two pink crayons, in a sea of silver, pale flesh and white crayons.

After sorting the crayons I returned them to the crayon box, neatly, in almost rainbow order.  I couldn't help myself.  The thought of tossing them in willy nilly made me uncomfortable.

This is what the crayon box looked like even after the girls used it

This morning my two older girls pulled out the crayons to color (I think it was already 6:45 AM *yawn*).  They both drew forms of rainbows.  Too funny!