Category: the Oldest

Our Matthew

Today’s Matt’s birthday!!! Happy Birthday, Love!

To celebrate, the girls made cards last night to give to him for his birthday today. Well after making the cards they couldn’t stand him not being a part of their little worlds and had to give it to him right then and there. So he had pre-birthday card enjoyment last night.

Rachael (40 months) wrote almost all the letters on her card, excluding those we have yet to learn (we’re on P right now as we head through the alphabet). I’m proud of her little 3 year old work.

 Only letters she didn’t write were T and Y.
Only letters she didn’t write were V, Y and U. 
(And obviously the date and age.)

Abi (22 months) clearly did not write the letters on her card, but she did add the commentary on the inside and tell me what to write:

Front & Back
[Abi’s words:] “Tell Daddy… ‘Here Daddy Birthday.”

Today Matt will be spoiled with his choice of cinnamon rolls for breakfast. We have a family tradition of getting to pick whatever you want to eat for one or two meals the day of your birthday. Matt has a lunch date at a local hospital today and his pick was red lobster for a nice date with Mommy and no kiddies tonight. So that left breakfast for the “I’ll ‘cook,’ dear” meal of the day. I’m grateful he picked something easy and tasty. 😉

I’m SUPER excited about giving Matt his gift today and I won’t tell you any more because I want it to be a surprise.

Last night Rachael came out to the store late after church with me to pick out Daddy’s “practical gift” and get his cupcake. It took everything within that preschooler to pick the blue cupcake for Daddy over the pink one she was sure he would enjoy as much as she desired. But she thought about Daddy and settled for the cupcake with the most sprinkles I have ever seen on it – well aware that our tradition is to get an over-sized cupcake and cut it into equal pieces to share amongst the family. So when our teeth and tongues are blue tomorrow, you’ll know why. 😉

So from me and the clan, I send out a huge  
HAPPY BIRTHDAY 
to our dear Matt. 

– We love you so much more than we can possibly express in one day.

0

Nipping Bad Habits

In evaluating the household (important thing to do periodically), I’ve come to the realization that we have fallen into a few bad habits.  Abi – screaming/crying/tantrumming more when things don’t go her way. Rachael – being quite bossy in play.  And me – not being more involved in discipleship. On the outside these are very normal things. Moms get tired, three year olds get bossy in an effort for “independence” and directing “more advanced role play”, and nearly two year olds become overcome with emotions and, thus, begin tantrumming. But could you imagine what we would be like if Jesus decided to stop discipling because “we were just acting normally” and thus left us to our own demise? Not a pretty picture.

So I was thinking of practical ways to nip these few bad habits in the butt, or at least try our best to work toward great self-control.

So for me – it means intentionality, greater listening and more calm responses.
Rachael – practicing hospitality and greater problem-solving in including Abi in play and interpreting Abi’s wants/needs.
Abi – using words to express her wants/needs and compromising.

And how do Rachael and Abi advance those skills? You got it, Mommy’s modeling (you didn’t know I was a model in my spare time did you?).

This may sound like technical mumbo-jumbo but the reality is that I need to show my children how to play, respect each other, and, in turn, love each other “right where they are.” This should be an intentional thing because, just like anyone, we all struggle with our sin nature that says, “MINE!”, “DO THIS!”, and “GO AWAY!” No one needed to teach me selfishness and I sure haven’t needed to teach my kids either. But the way I model respect and love in our household is their foundation for all their interactions outside of the home.

Please hear me clearly that I am not expecting perfection. Abi and Rachael have yet to give their lives to Christ, and therefore cannot live out the full hospitality, love and grace that the Holy Spirit within us fosters.But me, on the other hand, being in Christ, that’s a different story. I may be the voice of reason here for a good long while (and I think I should be) but I also desire for Rachael and Abi to have a clear picture of what treating other’s like “in Jesus” or “while thinking about Jesus” should look like as opposed to thinking only of self. Since primarily morality is a parent’s discipleship tool as we wait and pray for the Scriptures to stir up within our kids, it’s important to make clearly defined expectations. It goes beyond not wanting our kids to be fools in public (not the point), but it’s figuring out the reality of living with and truly enjoying the lifestyle of your kids. Putting up with behaviors only goes so far in a hands-off approach. Children never grow into moral maturity on their own. Heck, adults don’t even grow into moral maturity on their own. We need constant examples, grace and someone to come alongside us to love us into self-control in Christ.

We still will have our off days and off moments of “please, you just go play over there by yourself and you way over there by yourself.” But I have been encouraged by the small progresses just a morning’s worth of intentional training has produced: Rachael asking Abi with a please to play certain ways and respecting her “no” and alternative way of play despite not wanting to, Abi using more words quickly after her initial 2 second explosion or not even exploding twice, and me really focusing on discipleship and showing my kids more of Jesus in grace and practical love.

It sounds like simple things, and it is! But sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to build a consistent self-control when you look at the big picture of where you wish you could be. Step by step, situation by situation… I’m reminded of our encouragement to never grow tired of doing good (2 Timothy 3:13) and our responsibility as parents to train our children in the way they should go (Proverbs 22:6). Training takes time, extra effort, modeling and grace.

God teaches me best through open eyes to His example of parenting me. And I am so blessed that He lovingly, quietly and gently sits down beside me, guiding me into the way I should better treat  and teach others.  Teaching hospitality and kindness breeds hospitality and kindness in myself.

– Learning with my kids.

0

Our "Mat Man"

For homeschooling today we continued our focus on anatomy. We’ve been randomly talking about body features (rated G) throughout our routine. Cat anatomy is fun as we catch a run-by “volunteer” (who forgives easily with a few treats).

After completing our lessons on M (we took Friday off), we jumped into our “Mat Man” activity. Now I totally robbed this idea from Handwriting Without Tears so don’t give me any of the credit for the idea. I didn’t think they’d mind since I already bought something from them and they post their lessons online for the taking. But instead of buying their “Mat Man” parts and books, I used two bottle caps (different sizes for distinguishing two different parts), cut outs of Rachael’s hands and feet (better than this, especially since they don’t include feet and we had fun tracing), and “hair” made from the scraps of cloth diaper fleece – Holler! It took me about 5 minutes on the sewing machine to make up my “hair” so that it’ll survive at least two more kids and now belong in the “Mat Man” bag of body parts. hehe. I also used my own $.29 (from Hobby Lobby) rubber foam rectangle (better than this price) for the body and used my previously cut out letter pieces for the outlines.  I also made eyes from leftover pieces of poster board foam after making the traced and cut out letter pieces that we use in our introduction to letters. (A cheaper version of this while still purchasing this from the company.)

Here’s our “Mat Man”:

I first started out by putting him together myself, as Rachael and I referenced to features that belong on a body. Then we took our magnifying glass and used it as a pointer/inspector of specific body parts, labeling them on ourselves as we labeled them on “Mat Man”.

 “the nose”

“the neck”

We also labeled them on Abi of course! And did you catch that from the above picture that Abi took the initiative of labeling herself amidst our lesson [byproduct of an engaged listener =) ].

Then I took “Matt Man” apart and had Rachael rebuild him, identifying all of his parts.

She had also traced/cut out her own hands and Abi’s feet (hard to keep your own feet flat while tracing, plus we like to include Abi wherever we can) on black paper and used them on her version of “Mat Man” before we pasted them to a paper and decorated them with leftover Easter stickers. =)

Abi made herself ready to join Rachael “at” school this morning. –>
 
Tongue helps for concentration. 😉

I chose, for the sake of Rachael’s previous anatomy knowledge, to divide the arm into two sections, highlighting the elbow (an open space on “Mat Man”) in between and showing how our arms could bend either direction due to the elbow. I did likewise with the legs and then had Rachael identify upper and lower arms and legs. She was just a bit ready for a slightly more detailed look at anatomy than a single representation of the arm or leg as one piece. To expand upon this lesson in the future, we will bring “Mat Man” back out and enjoy positioning “Mat Man” in various positions due to his elbows and knees providing motion. This way we can also talk about needing energy for motion (beginning science) and how food processed through the digestive track allows for the making of energy – thus enabling us to run and jump and move, etc. We’ve just barely introduced this topic at current, only emphasizing that many things inside help us to sleep, eat, drink, breathe and move.

Rachael has also begun to have casual conversation identifying what things are and are not “alive” and why/how we know that. We have identified eating, breathing, drinking, and sleeping as indicators of life at this point (we’re not into photosynthesis or bacterial life yet – wink,wink). It has been a fun game which also spurred on the unexpected thought from the three year old that “sometimes I pretend my dolls are alive, but they’re not really,” and how drawn objects and created things, like “Mat Man” are a symbol of being alive, but are not actually alive. She really kinda floored me with that line of analytical thought. So “Mat Man” has also been tied to using our imaginations and the distinction between real and pretend.

Rachael was very proud of her ability to create “Mat Man” (hense the initiative to “ta da!” in the picture) and clearly the wheels are turning about “alive” and “not alive” and how that relates to our daily life.

– Fun lesson indeed!

0

Teaching Responsibility

We had a great time time last Thursday having a little practical lesson on responsibility. After the girls woke up from their naps, we took advantage of that fresh recharging of energy to work on a house chore together. This is one house chore that usually gets overlooked because, quite honestly, I just don’t think actively about it.

So since utter delight can be found in nearly every activity when you are 3 and nearly 2 years old, we all dropped to our knees and enjoyed us some wonderful kitchen floor ice skating.

The girls primarily just played, slopping suds about. But they did have some very nice scrubbing moments  as well while I washed up the floor. They enjoyed the opportunity to “help Mommy” and take responsibility for caring for the house with me. We talked about how everyone uses the kitchen and enjoys eating the food that is in the kitchen, therefore it’s nice for everyone to help in keeping it clean. Such joy and delight came from the accomplishment of the shining floor with a united cheer and we all had a very fun time with some water/bubble play. Rachael provided a soundtrack to our cleaning (she’s quite the songwriter) and Abi even took on the liberty of washing her legs, my little over-achiever. 😉

So with a shine, thus ends another fun lesson in responsibility and being family helpers.

0

Anatomy

We took the opportunity to have some fun with our anatomy lesson yesterday. I got a few basic anatomy kid-friendly books from the library (one is a baby book identifying baby parts, but functional and the other two are more advanced anatomy). Not expecting Rachael to grasp the full knowledge of the respiratory and circulatory system, despite the nice pictures =), I just wanted her to be introduced to the fact that a bunch of different stuff inside of us helps us to move and function. I think she might have walked away from the lesson with that – and a billion questions. hehe.

So then I came up with the fun idea of cutting body parts out of a magazine to make our own people (not as gruesome as it just sounded in that sentence). It was a fun project to prepare, wondering what creations would come out of the pieces. We worked together scaling through features of the face or body and talking about where they were placed (me primarily helping with spacial positioning to allow for additional features on the page since Rachael doesn’t really have any spacial concept yet). And this is what we created:

Since we picked each feature independent of the others I found the varying leg sizes fun as well as the large mismatched ears and small hair. =)
 Rachael identified the child on the left to be a “boy face” (actually a girl’s) and “girlie short hair” (actually a boy’s) which I found quite entertaining between the boy shirt and big girlie skirt. =)

We had a heck of a lot of fun. =)

0

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.

Up ↑