Saturday, August 28, 2010

Nonnie will be Proud

Notice Darton has caught on as well although he doesn't fully participate in the first letters. I'll get another video uploaded of D.

Abraham

This week we enjoyed learning about Abraham and continuing with the sounds of a, c, d, & f.
Adeline pretending to be Abraham and serving the 3 guests.
Reinforcing the letters a & c by driving cars on the masking tape. The key is to drive the car in the way you would write them.
Walking the shape of the letter
I have been reading through Creative Curriculm which is a preschool teacher guide on activities/classroom setup/etc. I'm taking from it what applies to us and since we don't have the large cardboard building blocks, I've been saving almost any box we have so the kids can construct as they please. Their choice, actually Darton's choice, is always to "make a house." Darton builds barriers out of ANYTHING, puts himself inside, and calls it his house.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Monday, August 23, 2010

Saturday Night on the Town

Typically we spend at least one weekend out of the month on a beach vacation. However, this month we've stayed her in the capital every weekend. The crowds and city life become draining for us, but we made the most of this last weekend by going to a kids play at a theater in the Colonial Zone. The performance was Maria Monito, El Lobo Y Los Cerditos (3 Little Pigs essentially). The kids had a blast and are still talking about it. Darton enjoys walking around the house saying he's the "woof" (wolf). It was amazing how much they (and us) understood since it was performed in Spanish.
After the performance D insisted on touching the piggies, so we went backstage to his delight! After the play we went to China Town (yes, we have one too!). We went on a search for a mosquito killer in the shape of a tennis racket. We found it and are finding true satisfaction in electricuting mosquitos! Update on our phonics work -
We started letter sounds and formations today. I was very pleased with A's work.
FYI Phonics: (because I assume most of you are like me and just aren't aware of what makes phonics different from what's being taught in mainstread ed)
I show the card with the letter a and the student responds with the sound(s) that letter makes.
A makes 3 sounds: a (as in can), a (paper), a (want). I then hold up the c card and Adeline responds with c (as in cat) & c (as in cent).
We will drill a, c, d, & f sounds this week and work on the formation of each as well. It's a lot of fun listening to Darton make the sounds too!
Last week we got ahead of ourselves and since we were working on letter C with Little Hands to Heaven, Adeline learned the two sounds of c as she was gluing cottonballs to paper to form c. We will do hands-on activities like this a lot and not just pen and paper.

Darton can swim SOLO!

Adeline Can Swim!

Thursday, August 19, 2010

6th Anniversary

Scott and I met the summer of 2002 and decided to stop trying the "let's just be friends" thing that Fall.
Dating Fall 2003 and he proposed Nov 2003 August 7, 2004 - we're just a little happy :)
A part of our ceremony I forget too often...
2005 6mth anniversary - Elko, NV
2005 We had an awesome 1st anniversary in Napa Valley, CA but I can't find the photos on the computer. Hoping for another wine anniversary trip to Europe or South America
2006 Adeline was born a week after our 2nd anniversary. December of 2006 2007 3rd Anniversary - camping Jarbridge, NV
2008 - 4th anniversary is lost somewhere between packing for the DR and visiting Jenny & Brad in Sandpoint, ID
Flight to Sandpoint. This was D's 3rd airplane ride and he was just under 4mths. Taken shortly after move to DRMan, they were sooo little!
5th Anniversary - Puerta Plata, DR....kidless!!
On August 7 Scott & I celebrated our 6th anniversary. It was a wonderful evening spent at an Italian restaurant with a garden setting (not the best idea in August being pregnant...aka heat brings on swollen feet). Ana came over Friday night to keep the kids and stayed Saturday morning so we could go for brunch at a French cafe. Marvelous! The morning date was my favorite!

Adeline's Tea Party

We had a lovely little tea party for A's 4th birthday this past week. The teabag hanging from the handle had the date, time, and place.
On her actual bday we celebrated as a family in a local ice cream shop. All ready for the guestsStrawberry muffins & star-shaped cucumber sandwiches with red leaf raspberry tea (that doesn't taste like raspberries, but's herbal) and limonada. I also made a broccoli salad for the moms and offered carrots and ceasar dressing. Adeline was the only one who didn't want to wear a hat. We gave the girls necklaces to wear as well. Their party favor included a small straw purse, notebook, pencil, and tea cup. I prepped two crafts to entertain our guests. Dressing paper dolls and decorating tea cups. A and her paper dolls. decorating tea cups with glitterMy dear friend Anastasia made an oversized cupcake for the bday cake. It was a hit!

Sunday, August 15, 2010

What a Fun week!

This past week was a success with the Little Hearts to Heaven and Phonics programs! Praise God. It is amazing what the purposeful activities and cleaning the house has down for me. I get up ready to start the day and am excited to take care of my home and children. I really needed to be taking care (cleaning, washing veg/fruit, ironing, etc) of my own home right now. I also needed a plan of action with my kids. Little Hearts to Heaven as definately been a blessing for us. This week's activities introduced the stories of Cain & Able & Noah and the flood. The song for the week is addorable and goes along t=with the wall art that you see in the above pciture. Adeline & Darton pick up on the songs on day one and can sing them almost solo by day two. We discussed emotions and sang Row, Row, Row Your Boat while having angry, sad, sleepy, and excited faces. This was their favorite activity of the week and continually ask me to sing it. We also acted as animals getting on Noah's boat and experimented with what sinks and floats. Here is our Sink/Float chart with the items placed accordingly.
Letter recognition activity: I painted upper and lower case Bs and the kids painted in the circles. Using blocks to make the letter B. The curriculum suggests using masking tape, but when you live in the tropics outside activities (in your underwear) are more fun ;)Adeline worked this week on making circles and lines. I didn't expect problems with this activity, but creating circles from the 2 point on the clock and working counterclockwise is NOT how she draws a normal circle. The first two days she didn't trace the circles and lines, but recreated them on her own (as what she was suppose to do). By the third day I wisened up and and she traced the filled-out teacher form to guide her. She was MUCH MORE willing to do this on days 3 & 4. As you can imagine, the work for a normal 5 or 6 year old who is starting this phonics program includes a lot more in day one than just writing circles and lines. I am adjusting the program accordingly and suspect that we are on the two year track since she is only 4. Yes, Gradmommie that is Barbie in the picture watching Adeline doing her work! We started celebrating Adeline's 4th birthday yesterday by constructing a sandbox for her birthday present. Darton has already proven to us that he will enjoy it more. It only took 4 hardware stores and three hours to get what we needed ;)...that's life in the DR. Scott was thrilled, as was I, that we didn't run into any unexpected problems and it was all constructed (minus gluing down padding) by last night. D is sitting on the foam that needs to be glued down to not only protect the tarp, but their hineys :)

We also entertained 3 different play times this week in our home and Scotty has tomorrow off for a Dominican holiday. We plan on going to the beach, getting A's tea party ready for Tuesday, and of course celebrating her actually bday!

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Knowledge gained from living in the DR

If we weren't living in the DR, then we wouldn't know that....
1. Sarah can jump her way up onto a 10ft doorway! It's where the neighborhood cat hangs out and it drives Sarah crazy!2. The best melon that I've ever put in my mouth is this beauty here. I don't know it's name, but it's ALWAYS sweet. It's orange on the inside like a cantelope.
3. Avocado season starts in August here. How do I know this, besides seeing more being sold on the street? There is an aguacate (avocado) tree in the empty lot behind us and it's branches hand over our back yard. Every day I have the kids gather aguacates before Sarah gets to them! We have so many (3 daily) that we can't eat them all. We made some awesome guacamole this past weekend.
4. Darton is thoroughly entertained by playing with the botellones and Daddy successfully stacked 4 empty ones! D now works hard most days stacking two on his own when Daddy isn't here. 5. Passion fruit is the exact opposite of what I associated it with in the States.
Chinola juice is our favorite and the pastry shops around make an awesome chinola cheesecake...ooooo and let's not forget chinola margaritas!
Notice the texture of the outside. The more wrinkles, the more juice. Wrinkles come with time. You buy them in the store more like the one on the right and wait for them to wrinkle. Scotty calls the inside "frog eyes" and he enjoyes scooping out the middle and swallowing the seeds whole (it's quite slimy). It's the tartest fruit I've ever put in my mouth. I've yet to perfect making the juice without having too many seeds, so I'll get back to you on the juice process.
6. Air movement around doorways helps minimize mosquitos in your home. Mosquitos are quite pesky here (as in TX too). They tend to gather around doorways in the night and slip into your house as soon as you open the door in the mornings. Mosquito coils are also a favorite way of ours to keep them away.