Wordless Wednesday

Our Little Vacation

While my parents and siblings were here, we had a low-key week with a lot of playing outside {thank you, beautiful weather!}, pool time, and family meals.  I didn't take a ton of pictures, but wanted to share some that we did get.  Gavin had a lot of fun playing with Mimi, Beepa, Aunt Bri, and Uncle Tyler.  Riley took some time to warm up, but did eventually have fun, too.  :)

Fun with the iPad

Mom and Sis #2

 

More to come....

Vacation is Over

It's official.  Vacation is over.  We had a great 6 days with my family, but we're all 'back to work' now and it's time for me to get back to my routine.  I'm working on getting photos from the week organized, and my to-do list for the week is already incredibly long.  I think I'll be drinking a lot of coffee today.  We have storms rolling in, but if I can dodge them, I have errands to run in between swim lessons for both kiddos (Riley's is indoors, so those are for sure on; Gavin's might get cancelled if the rain does come in...), plus I have a lot of Fun School ideas to work on and of course, cleaning...  

But for now, I wanted to share some pics of my new mantle.  I actually finished them a couple weeks ago, but I wanted I didn't want to post the pics until my parents saw them in person.  A while back, I saw this idea from Etsy that someone pinned on Pinterest.   I loved the look, so I wanted to recreate them a bit.  I had Jarrod buy a piece of unfinished wood for me from Lowes (it was about 11x48) and cut it into thirds.  I imagined a beat-up, distressed look, so I took a hammer to the pieces prior to painting them, but aside from around the edges, you can't really tell.  Then, I painted them a light green color to go with our new green theme in the living room.  It took me a little while to decide on what I wanted the next step to be, but I ended up using an old dish cloth to 'scuff up' the wood a bit with some black shoe polish.  I used some rub-on words from my scrapbook supplies, added some felt flowers from Hobby Lobby, and nailed $0.97 frames from Walmart onto them, and voila! 

  

From a Happy Heart to a Heavy Heart

Gavin loves to play in the bath and in the pool.  Gavin HATES to get his face and head wet.  He hates getting his hair washed and he completely freaks out if he gets splashed in the face.  We took swimming lessons when he was a baby, but once he got old enough that he had to do them without us, we didn't sign him up because I really think that being in the group setting and being forced to do things would have totally turned him against swimming.  So we took a break last year, and then contact Jo about doing semi-private lessons this summer.  Yesterday was our first lesson. 

It started out great.  Gavin's in a lesson with one other little girl who happens to love the water.  She had no fear at all and couldn't wait for her turn.  Luckily, Jo started each new technique with Gavin....because if he had seen the little girl go under I don't think he would have done any of the things she asked.  I was so proud of him when she asked him to blow bubbles and helped him under water.  I know I was smiling ear to ear on the side of the pool.  

I really couldn't believe how little he was fussing after coming back up from the water.  Serious proud mama moment right there!  Then came the low...  After a few times, he'd just had enough and after coming up once, he was coughing and spitting like he usually does if he gets his face wet and started crying to Miss Jo, asking her to not let him go under again. 

I was so glad that I was wearing my dark sunglasses because it brought tears to my eyes.  It made me think about that first day of preschool, when I picked him up to find him in tears after he had been pushed down on the playground and had an accident.  I'll never forget him telling me in between sobs in the car that he wanted me when he was sad.  That's all I kept thinking about when he was in the pool crying.  I wanted to protect him and help him, but I knew that him being in the water with her was the best choice.  It seems so silly...for me to be sitting there crying during a swim lesson, but I couldn't help it.  I hate seeing him scared and upset.  

Miss Jo was great and didn't let him go under anymore.  She praised him, as did I in the car and everyone at home when we got back.  This morning we went to the pool and I did all I could to encourage him to get in the big pool with me, which he did, but getting his face wet wasn't happening.  I'm really curious to see how far he comes in the five weeks of swim lessons.  I hope we have more proud moments at the lessons than moments that leave me fighting back tears.  
 
 

Fun School

We've started Fun School around here.  A couple weeks ago, Gavin and I got started on some little things just to keep some skills fresh over the summer.  We're not doing it every single day, and I'm not making him sit for hours doing 'school' stuff.  The main reason I wanted to do this is because I saw how far his writing (in particular) came through the school year, and I wanted to be sure to keep practicing it so that he wouldn't lose those skills.  

I made him a calendar folder and we are doing a pattern each month, tracking the weather, and doing a quick number activity using the 100s chart.  We don't do the calendar every morning, so we just play catch up on the days that we do.

I'm not a huge workbook fan, but Gavin loved these when we saw them at Sam's, so I grabbed them and he loves to trace the different shapes, etc.  It's helping him with his pencil grip and his tension, both things that Miss Linda wanted him to work on this summer.

I took him to the store and let him pick out a notebook to use this summer {he picked Spiderman} and we're just doing some little things in it to practice his writing.  Below he picked a food he liked and drew a picture of it (not seen here) and we wrote a sentence together.

I'm not planning to create every 'lesson' we do on my own...there are way too many wonderful resources out there for that.  One of which is a homeschool blog that I love - Counting Coconuts.  She uploaded an entire Angry Birds mini-unit and I had to use some of her ideas.  Yesterday, we spent an hour launching Angry Birds across the living room, measuring how far they went, and writing the numbers.  He cut the pictures out himself (another skill he needs practice with) and glued them into notebook before adding the correct number next to the bird.  We did 8 different ones (and if it were up to him, we probably would have launched all 38 Angry Birds that he has).

The last thing we've done over the past couple of weeks is make a word wall (or as Gavin calls it, our Word Doors, since the words aren't on a wall at all).  He's showing signs of wanting to read and I'm taking advantage of it.  He LOVES reading these words and is so proud of himself when he does.  We started with the names of our family and are adding words slowly from books that we're reading together.  I'm excited to see the wall grow this summer.