Home school preschool spring week

Home school preschool this week was all about Spring!

I am so glad we are finally here!

I hate winter and even though it's still a little cold I am so excited that there is no more snow!

We read these books

the grouchy ladybug

The flower Prowler

Mr. Gloomingdale's downpour

the tiny seed

We painted a coffee filter and made a butterfly using a clothes pin and googly eyes.

 worked on her numbers with eggs in a nest. the ruler was to help her identify a number. I am trying to get her to be more independent in finding the answers herself.

 we made a puzzle of the parts of a flower

 Thursday was had plans to go the zoo but it rained :(

 Friday we got in our flower garden and planted some seeds and bulbs.

she finished up her alphabet work book with the letter Zz 

next week we will start flash cards. she really only knows about half of the letters by heart so from here on out I will be really trying to work with her on identifying letters better.

 then we worked in her math workbook on shapes. she's great at them but I just wanted to boost her confidence.

I was pretty bummed that we didn't get to go to the zoo so my husband said we will just do a family day this weekend and go together! that sounds better anyways :)

using and maybe abusing Roses

I got a new, fancy, big camera!

It's the Cannon 7D

I have been dreaming of upgrading for years but with new babies, buying a house, new cars, and life seemed to push my dream farther away. 

so I just made do with what I had and I am very proud of all the things my old camera taught me and all the pictures I took with it. 

It's a great camera.

But I want to grow and it had seen better days.

My cousin is taking a photography class in college and asked if he could barrow it. So I am glad that it wont be just collecting dust.

anyway

with an upgrade there are somethings I needed to relearn and a lot of new options!

I am so excited!!!!

so here is my new baby,

getting to know a new camera and posing little ones as models are not the best combinations.

so I started out with some still life 

I had won this bouquet of roses from my mommy meeting earlier this month.

I love those mommies, always brightening up days

These are all sooc. (straight out of camera) no editing. I am pretty proud of them!

then the roses died 

but I didn't want to just toss them. 

and right now I am loving Fine art.

I have been pinning tons of fine art photography (my pinterest) and dreaming of all kinds of concepts.

these last pictures are all done on my phone

 

and the the crafty side of me still didn't want to throw out the dead roses. so.....

eventually I will have to throw them out.

but I can confidently say I got a lot of use out of them.

be on the look out for lots of photography related post

 I have tons of things planned!!

home school preschool St. Patrick's week

Last week we celebrated St. Patrick's day during home school preschool

We learned all about the real St. Patrick

and his story is pretty amazing.

we watched a veggie tales video about him

Then we read a few other stories

St. Patrick's day

That's what Leprechauns do

we tried to wear green most of the week

and we worked on our numbers with a pot of gold

 The made a three leaf clover Trinity. check out her awesome writing skills

God, Son and Holy Spirit

 Then I thought we would do something a little different and paint the windows! 

her face when I told her she was allowed was like shock, scared but excited. I live for those moments when I throw my kids off in a fun way. 

and yes it will take some elbow grease to clean but I would do it all over again to capture this picture!

Home school preschool was cut short this week because I am a HUGE College basketball fan and March madness is my Superbowl! 

I did let her work in her workbook while I was watching the games. and yes I said let her.

she was very upset I didn't plan anything.

goof, it's March Madness what is she thinking?!

Go UK!

splinters and my DIY remedy

When we moved in there was ugly maroon color carpet in the girl's room

the entire rest of the house was hardwood, so I just ripped up the ugly carpet.

well when that ugly carpet was installed they glued it into the floor.

and the glue left black marks all over. 

it's not pretty but the worse part is the floors were not sanded down or smoothed. 

 Eventually we will refinish all the floors 

right now we just don't have it in the budget 

so after four nights in a row of holding a screaming Miss Belle down so Brian can use a needle and tweezers to dig out quite a few deep splinters in her toes. 

We had enough.

I went searching for a rug.

our bedrooms are huge!

the girl's room holds a bunk bed, a single bed, 2 long dressers, one tall dresser, a desk and a toy box!

so I knew we would need a giant rug and I knew I did not want to pay for a giant rug.

so I went shopping for 4 medium size rugs.

 I used fishing line and sewed them together.

it's not the prettiest.

but it only cost me $20 and a sore thumb, sewing through this material wasn't easy.

 it's actually really hard to get a good picture of their room.
 too many beds and dressers in the way.

but you get the idea

 yeah for saving money and no more splinters!!

Pink hair

I wanted to do something fun and different.

pink.

pink hair.

yep

well I kept going back and fourth about doing my whole head or just part of it.

so I went to my dear friend/long time hair stylist Angel (link to her salon) and she suggested I start with just the underpart and then next time go a little more if I want

I liked that.

So she did the first step

then I bought the box at the store and waited a little over a month and did the second step.

here is the before. 

be jealous of my selfies

they a beautiful :P

I typically dye my hair by myself but after many video tutorials I watched It was clear that this stuff is pretty messy and not to do it by yourself.

 while sister was applying it she said "opps!"

and I was scared to look.

luckily we got most of it out.

my neck however is taking a lot longer.......

 

the box includes bleach and the dye

we did both steps and then I had a special deep conditioner bottle that I used afterwards.

another selfie...

here is a video after it's dried

I like it but haven't had much time to actually curl it or fix it.

I am partly waiting till my neck clears up some more.....

This past weekend I took a bubble bath and this happened....

It's fun a different and why not?!?!

you only live once 

let loose and if anything it will be a funny memory my kids will talk about forever....

"remember that time Mom wanted pink hair and ended up dying the dinning room floor, chair, her neck, hands, shirt, kitchen sink, counters, and ruined about 4 bath towels?"

yep I am THAT mom.

p.s. A lot of people ask if my husband likes it.

I don't really know or care lol

It's my hair and he's used to me changing it all the time and sometimes it's drastic changes. I have suggested him doing different things with his hair but he wont so why should I do what he wants lol

he loves me

pink hair and all :)

Home school preschool Bee week

Thank you all for the well wishes and words of encouragement on Monday! 

 Miss Belle had her kindergarten screening.

 I don't know too much because we should be getting a letter about what the teachers recommendations are to help her prepare, soon.

but I am confident she did great. 

 Our topic this week is BEE'S!
Last year Miss Belle was traumatized when she was stung for the first time by a bee on a innocent little walk we took one sunny afternoon.

She is now deathly scared of them!

So I wanted to take this opportunity to teach her a little more about Bee's in hopes to ease her anxieties.

We read a few books

a very greedy bee

The bumble bee queen 

We learned a new song

 

Then practiced our numbers by adding the stripes on the bee that match the number written. p.s. i was writing the numbers upside down not realizing they were backwards. oops!

next we did a little game where she had to toss her bees (cotton balls) to the flower bucket to collect nectar then she tossed them back to the hive bucket to make honey.

we created a bee hive with paper and on each side we drew out the different types of bee's and it's job.

example: Queen bee is the mommy and has lots of babies.

we hung this up in our dinning room for everyone to see and had a little bee flying around the bottom.

lastly we made a honey nut cheerio treat. (rice crispys but with cheerios.)

I let her have a spoon full of honey and she made this face after trying it.

We continued to work on numbers and focused more on 6-10 because she still had trouble writing them and identifying which is which.

Then we did letters Vv and Ww

we talked a lot about bee keepers. after showing her pictures of what they wear and how they help keep the bees safe and assist in making and collecting the honey, she still has no desire to be near a bee. so my hope of helping with her fear didn't really work but at least she knows more about what she's afraid of.

home school preschool weather week

living in Cincinnati has it's perks.

our weather can be a perk

and sometimes be a big pain!

We get to experience almost all of the different weather types throughout the year and sometimes even in one week!

This past week we had blizzard like  snow, freezing rain, flooding and then sunshine!

The forecast is calling for Temps in the 50's!! I am so excited to see grass again soon!

We studied weather this week in home school preschool.

we read these books

Maisy's wonderful weather book

cloudy with a chance of meatballs

and the bible story of Jesus calming the storm

And made a weather map to hang on the wall. It's now part of our daily routine to describe the weather and turn the arrow to the weather we are having on that day.

We then made a rainy day number page with raindrops to match the numbers listed.

We used this tutorial to create a Tornado in a bottle.

The last day we wanted to create a sun catcher with beads we have on hand. I found the info here

but we didn't have luck in ours actually melting together or easy removal from the pan

so add that to my pinterest fails...

She reviewed all her numbers 1-10 and then we worked on the letters Tt and Uu

not much else to say about weather week except it was a fun topic to learn with tons of ideas to incorporate. 

I am nervous because she has her kindergarten screening today.

there is no denying how smart she is. i just worry she will be too shy to show it off to the teacher. I know the screening doesn't mean a whole lot but what can I say she is my little girl and I can't help but worry about every little thing. 

Hazel is four months

She's really starting to show off her personality more and it's perfect.

she's still laid back and calm most of the time

but she has a pair of lungs on her. It might be because she feels she has to be louder than her 3 big sisters in order to be heard. She also is getting bigger by the minute!

She's a whopping  15 pounds!

That's giant for one of my girls.

my nickname is Chachi.
there are members of my family that only use this name.
 Seriously.
I can't even remember my Dad calling me Kassondra.
My brother started the nickname back when we were toddlers and it's stuck to this day.

My husband started calling Hazel, Winnie a few months ago. And now that's all he calls her. He says she is his Winnie bear. I love it. And in his honor I did a little Winnie the pooh theme set up for this month's pictures. And wouldn't you know the only picture I have ever caught with her big blue eyes lite up and that toothless grin is the Winnie pucture!

she's starting to get too big. If she is not sitting up by next month I am not sure she will fit in the booster chair!

4 months! Gosh too fast!

Cincinnati Museum

Like I said in this post 

we visited the Cincinnati Museum

It's a great place.

so beautiful!

I could seriously sit at a table in the front lobby area for hours!

the paintings on the walls, the windows and just overall atmosphere is heaven to me.

that might sound weird but I love people watching at a really busy place.

But my family doesn't really like people watching.

so off we went to explore.

The Cincinnati History part of the museum is my favorite. I have always been fascinated with the 1940-1960 time periods. They have some great displays but lil Stella likes to make a break for it when mom is busy taking pictures and explore the displays herself!

she kept knocking on this door saying "let me in!!" 

if joining the Army is what she really wants to do I will support her 100% 

I just think she needs to wait a bit longer :P

Someday I will get to visit places like the park, zoo, museum, and I will actually get to take my time, take lots of pictures and read the information. 

but for now I will enjoy watching my children doing what they do best.

 run around and have a blast getting into places they shouldn't.

and if you are wondering why The Julia isn't pictured. well sometimes we as parents have to make hard decisions. When a fun day on the calender and a day of being grounded just happened to fall together, We needed to keep our foot down and hopefully make her see that we mean business. 

this was really hard for me and I had so much guilt all day but Julia survived and she says she learned her lesson.....only time will tell 

but I sure hope so