First Dentist Visit

There has always been something that has prevented me from taking the kids to the dentist.  I know you’re supposed to start taking the kids to the dentist at a fairly young age (3-4) but we were always moving, changing insurances, bed rest, or a million other little things would pop up and I’d forget.  Well the kids came home from school on Wednesday with toothbrush kits from an assembly they had at school.  I realized that I had postponed, yet again, them going to the dentist because we were moving to Florida and we had different insurance while Jared was living over there.  FINALLY, I didn’t have to worry about that so I immediately called that dentist (which happened to be awesome) and made an appointment for today for Joseph and Jacob.  The two older kids had school ’til late so I had to make their appointment for a weekend.  At least the appointments were made and we were sticking to it!!!

       

Joseph and Jacob were a breeze!  They were extremely cooperative and listened religiously to what the dentist had to say.  I asked him to talk to Joseph a bit about his sucking his fingers.  You should have seen the look on Joseph’s face as the dentist told him the exact same thing that I’ve been telling him for years.  DON’T SUCK YOUR FINGERS!!!  We’ll see how he does! (NOTE: two months after this appointment he hasn’t sucked his fingers ONCE!)

Jacob had a BLAST with Mr. Slushie!  That’s what the dentist named the sucker machine that sucks out all the saliva from your mouth.  He played with that thing while the dentist worked.  It was great!

The boys each got their very own Star Wars light saber toothbrush!  Talk about cool dentist!!!  I’ll be interested to see how long the batteries last on those things 🙂 .

As I was checking out, I asked about an earlier time for Benjamin and Emma and they said they could fit them in as soon as they get home.  So, we ran home, had lunch, and when the big kids got home we took them to the dentist!

       

The second time around wasn’t as enjoyable.  Emma’s teeth looked wonderful, he didn’t even seem to think that her mouth was too crowded.  I had been a little nervous about that and thought she might have to have a couple of teeth pulled.  Phew!  Benjamin on the other hand had 4 cavities.  Now that might not seem like a lot to some of you but for someone who just celebrated their 30th birthday and has yet to have a single cavity I was SHOCKED!!!

After cleaning Emma’s teeth they prepped Benjamin to get his cavities fixed or filled or whatever it is they do to them.  We took up two observation rooms, one with Benjamin in it and the other with the three other kids watching cartoons.  I went back and forth between the two rooms checking on the kids and holding Benjamin’s hand.

 

I think Benjamin was scared silly when the dentist told him everything that he was going to do.  I’m pretty sure he realized that mommy and daddy weren’t kidding when we said the dentist would have to drill out his tooth if he didn’t brush his teeth properly, or at all!

       

An hour later we all walked out of the dentist’s office some with more things to write about in our journals than others.

Plan of Salvation YW

Tonight was a crazy one!  With the Blue and Gold Banquet on the same night as the Young Women activity where I was in charge so things just got a bit hectic.

I made over 100 sugar cookies of different sizes and shapes.  Since we’re learning about the plan of salvation we were trying to gear some of the weekly activities toward that topic.  Several years ago I did a FHE lesson on the plan of salvation but we used cookies.  What kid isn’t going to listen to you when there are cookies involved?!?  Well I took that same approach during our presidency meeting and offered this up as a possible activity.

I had been doing a lot of cooking in the kitchen with our birthdays and Valentine’s and I had some leftover cookie dough from the “Naughty Cookies“.  I added to it and made these for the girls to start off with.

With a butt-load of buttercream and practically all of my sprinkles I set off for the church.  I had Benjamin’s Blue and Gold dinner right before YW and there was actually a little bit of overlap time.  The girls got started on frosting all of their cookies and when I finally joined them I explained to them what each cookie was for.  They were forced to think about each stage of the plan of salvation as they were frosting and decorating and then again when labeling their cookie sheets.  They were challenged to go home and review the plan of salvation with their families!

Some of them got really creative!!!

  

  

  

  

Blue and Gold Banquet

Tonight promised to be a jam-packed night of activities.  We start it all off with Benjamin’s Blue and Gold Banquet for scouts.  It was a carnival theme and the committee did a wonderful job orchestrating everything.

It was a nacho buffet complete with cotton candy cupcakes!  How cute are they?  My friend Jamie did them and let me in on a little secret.  Don’t put the cotton candy on until right before because it will start to melt once it comes into contact with the frosting.  Just one of those things that you wouldn’t find out until you were in the process of making them 🙂 .

       

One of the main reasons for the Blue and Gold is to kind of kick of the new year in scouts and to also get the boys jazzed up for the Pinewood Derby.

Each of the boys was called up and given their Pinewood Derby kit and acknowledged for their accomplishments thus far.

It was a FANTASTIC start to the evening.  I did have to dash out a few minutes early so that I could give directions to the other YW leaders about how to start the Plan of Salvation activity.

Looking forward to the Pinewood Derby!

Speech: 02/26/2013

During circle time students participated in identifying different transportation pictures using the iPad.  Students were given a field of 4 choices.

the class participated in the same car racing activity from last week to see if they were able to generalize the skills learned last week.  The class was divided into 4 different groups based on a color of a car.  Each student got to take turns representing their group in a car race.  4 students at a time got to line up and race cars (the type that you pull back on and let go).  We covered the concepts fastest and slowest.  Ms. H kept track of the winner of each race.  At the end of the 10 rounds we tallied up the scores using a bar graph and compared which color car won the most races.

Phonemic Awareness

Today was parent day at the preschool.  I LOVE these days!  Jacob’s teacher is so wonderful to put these together on a day when the kids aren’t in school (they only go Monday through Thursday) but so that the parents and families of these kids that have special needs can see what the kids are learning for the month and how the teacher is re enforcing those skills and ideas.  Even when you go and volunteer to help out you don’t get a really full idea of how things operate. Continuing those skills when the kids go home is key to them progressing at a faster rate.

The kids started off by showing us their color awareness!  I guess they run through these songs every day.  Repetition is a wonderful thing and putting basic things like this into a song format is even better.

My favorite song was “Black”.  Oh, and “Pinky the stinky pig” was pretty awesome too!  You can tell the kids loved it too and respond so well to that kind of stimulation.

From there we moved onto letter identification and rhyming using their names!  What kid doesn’t like hearing their name come up in a song?!?

Ms. H did another song with rhyming words!  I LOVE the little saying that she has the kids do… “Rhyming words sound the same at the end, wicka-wicka-wicka-wa”.

This just goes to show you how important repetition can be.  These kids are identifying rhyming words and doing some skills that kindergarteners are just now developing.  The small actions that she does as well just reinforce what she’s trying to teach them.  Now that the parents have seen how she does it we can now take that tool home and use it at home too.

This next song worked on letter identification.  The kids had to identify the first letter of their name and then the had to count out how many syllables are in her name.  It would be easy to stop there but she makes them double-check it with a “salt shaker”.

More letter identification by spelling out the kids’ names.  She makes it so fun by them acting like cheerleaders and that gets them interested and draws in their attention.

Nursery rhymes are another great way to reinforce rhyming words.  She uses Humpty Dumpty as an example in this clip.

Right as we were ending the school had a shelter in place drill.  We were all locked in the room for another 15 minutes.  So to kill the time Ms. H played her nursery rhyme songs and the kids danced to Jack and Jill 🙂 .

It was such a joy to go to school today with Jacob.  I’m excited to have more toys in my bag of tricks to use when we need it!

Snip! Snip! Snip!

I have been needing and wanting to get the boys’ hair cut for months now.  I think it was back in November sometime, but things got crazy and that wasn’t a priority so that was always the first thing to get pushed back.  When Joseph woke up from his nap the other day looking like this I knew I had waited too long and it had to happen NOW!

It was ridiculously funny to watch my friend cut their hair!  When she left one small section so that I could get a picture of how much hair we were actually cutting it looked like a small tail you’d see on an animal.

Joseph went first to show Jacob how it was done!  I think Jacob handled it better than Jacob did though.  The little hairs that were covering him made him itch like crazy.  Jacob just focused on his sucker which I had to clean off a couple of times because hair kept getting stuck to it.

They look so great now!  I was a little sad to see all that hair go away because they really do have lovely, thick locks!  But Joseph was being mistaken for a girl with his his long, thick lashes and sparkly eyes (jk).

I have also been feeling so distraught with my hair as well.  I really wanted to chop it all off again but I wanted to wait ’til closer to the summer months to do that.  So I ended up just getting three inches cut off, layers, and bangs!  It was exactly what I needed to fall back in love with my hair.

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We walked home a changed group!  I love this picture of Joseph peddling the bike after Jacob got tired.  They are best buds!

Naughty Cookies

I think the picture speaks for itself!!!  I wanted Jared to be able to take a Valentine to the people at his office this year.  I had this great idea that I have been wanting to do for a couple of years now but I’ve never had the time or known how to go about executing the idea.  This year was going to be the year.  So, while Jared was banned from the kitchen I pulled together 2 dozen of these bad boys!!!

They looked so cute and they were incredibly tasty 🙂 but then I got worried that someone might call “sexual harassment”  or something like that.  We live in a crazy world where the slightest joke can be twisted into something darker.  I asked Jared if the people at his office could take a joke and then with his obvious confusion I showed him the cookies to make sure that they would be appropriate.  He laughed and said sure but he’ll just leave them in the break room and then no one will know they were from him 🙂 .

He ended up only taking a dozen so that left me with quite a few panties lying around.  I decided that my friends needed a little V-Day lovin’ so I wrapped them in paper bags so that no little eyes could see and dropped them off!  I had a few good texts later on but I think they were a hit.  I don’t know if I’d do them again, the royal icing isn’t the problem, it’s the intricately placed beads and jimmies that took the most time.  Maybe I’d do some simple Haynes briefs or whitie-tighties next year!  That could be fun!

Happy Valentine’s Day

Happy Day of Love to you all!  Our day started off with a big bang!  Preschool was full of sugar!  I was amazed at how much sugar these little tiny kids can put down.  I know it’s going to happen, even with the older kids, so I’m going to let them have at it today and then whatever is leftover we’re tossing.  It went really well this past Halloween when we bought the kids’ candy from them but I’m not sure if they’ll go for that right now.  They have to have a little fun sometimes but I think I’ll draw the line at today only.

    

The preschool kids had a pretty fun party and at one point swarmed Ms. H and gave her a big group hug!  It was super sweet!

They didn’t do much but the stuff they did do Ms H and Ms. Jamie managed to turn it around and use it as examples of speech and OT.  The big OT thing was having each child take their Valentines and pass them out one at a time into these little heart-shaped envelopes.  The speech part came into play when they repeated the names of the kids they were passing out to and saying their “pleases” and “thank yous”.

Some super fun songs and dances and it was time to take all the goodies home!

     

Joseph had a fun time in his class too!  I love that toothless smile!  He has such a great smile he can pull it off 🙂 .  He reminded me so much of Grandma Combs today.  He was sitting at the table and going through his Valentines and just rattling off names of kids that had given him things and how this kid was a really good jumper or that kid sat next to him and likes to talk and how he has to be courageous and not talk back or he’d get into trouble.  It was the fact that he was rattling off first and last names and some of those names were difficult.  He has such a great personality that he can be friends with anyone and he makes them feel like the most special person in the world.  I hope he never looses that personality trait.  It was such a wonderful trait of Grandma’s and everyone loved her all the more because of it.

     

To kind of top it all off we did Emma’s hair up real festive.  I wasn’t sure if it would stay in after a long day at school but she came home and still looked as beautiful as when she left.  She’s loving that her hair is getting longer because it offers a wider variety of up-dos.  I’d still like another year or so of cutting it shorter to give it time to all come in nice and thick (and she looks ridiculously cute with short hair) but it’s pretty good so far.

 

Such a crazy but fun holiday!

Speech: 02/14/2013

Today during circle time students were called up to reach into a bag to grab an object.  Objects in the bag were red, pink, or purple.  Students were asked to complete one of the following tasks:

• Label object, tell something about it, and sort into the correct color container
• ID an object from a field of 2 choices and sort into the correct color container
• Sort objects by colors

During small group centers students pulled heart shape beads from a bag and then sorted them by color.  Students practiced stringing the beads in an ABAB pattern.

Cute as a BUTTON!

I started Jacob’s Valentines much earlier in the week.  We made simple peanut butter cookies, but with a twist!

Start off with your basic peanut butter cookies recipe:

• 1 egg
• 1/2 c. brown sugar
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1/2 c. Jif peanut butter
• 1/2 c. shortening
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1-1/4 c. flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 3/4 tsp. baking soda

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.  Beat together egg, sugar, peanut butter, and shortening.  Sift dry ingredients together, then mix them in.

Roll into 1″ balls (should be no larger than to fit inside a bottle cap) and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet.  Usually right here you’d press with a fork but you’ll skip that part.  Bake for 8-10 minutes.  You’ll notice that they’re only about 85% cooked, that’s okay.  Right here you’ll take them out of the oven and take the bottle cap that you used to measure the size of your dough balls and squish it down on the middle.  Go far enough to make an indent but not too far that the cookie is too thin and breaks.

Image taken from Bakerella.com

Right after you’re done pressing down on the cookie you’ll take a straw and poke holes in the center.  I found that I liked the look of the two holes better than four holes but that’s all up to you 🙂 .  Have several straws on hand because I found that as the staw came into contact with the cookie sheet it melted a bit and I couldn’t get a clean hole.

Image taken from Bakerella.com

If I would have had more time or not had three other Valentines to create I would have loved to dip these in different colored chocolate.  Imagine getting a bag full of pink and red buttons 🙂 .  This would be an awesome idea for a baby shower treat too!