Can the next day begin at 11:37pm?

Mine did.

Lena arrived early - it's typically after 3am when she makes her way to cuddle in the comfort of Daddy's arms (mine are not made for comfort in the middle of the night).

She is still fighting a nasty sore throat &  some unknown virus which led to repeated requests for water every 15 minutes last night.  On Monday, we rushed to the doctor when a fever teamed up with her sore throat.  With six days until Christmas, I didn't want to be caught in a web of closed doctor's offices and late night trips to CVS to fill presciptions.  But, no strep...so we pressed on with our trusty friend - Advil.

After a night of broken sleep and a little girl still not feeling up to speed, we trudged downstairs for breakfast.  But, before we got there a watery mess of throw up hit my kitchen counter - thank goodness it was just water!

Poor Lena responded, "Oh no!  Why did I do that?"  I assumed it was just a hard cough that triggered her reflex to vomit and Lena bounced back asking for cereal.

Twenty minutes later...another cough, more watery stuff and another bounce back!  Hoping this is just the end of a nasty cold virus?!

Thank God for movies and couches!

With the girls each half dressed - Lena in her cardigan and pj pants and Lucy in her jeans and a princess dress...mid-day arrives and we are in the clear!  The grandparents are joining us a for festive feast tonight to celebrate family & Christmas.  So, I am where I love to be - in the kitchen.

Christmas Art Gallery

Feeling like the score on my Christmas to do list is about even, so the girls and I spent some time today making Christmas footprint art just for us...or so Lena decided!  My original plan was to have Lena decide who we could give each piece to, but she decisively declared that we would keep them for ourselves.  And I am selfishly glad she did, I just finished hanging them in the basement in a blank space I planned on filling with their artwork.  Now, I may do a seasonal rotation of new projects there - just add it to the list!


So, found the original ideas on pinterest.com


Here - Tree Footprints
AND
Here - Reindeer Footprints


AND...here are ours!

Mom's Craft Closet - Silhouette Paintings

I pulled this idea out of a Lowe's magazine - the ones mailed with project ideas (aka - reasons to go buy supplies at Lowe's).  This work of art is so simple and right up my alley for some basement wall art.  I finally captured some decent profile pics of the girls last month (after many failed attempts).  
The steps are basic...once you get a decent profile pic - which in my case proved the most difficult task.  I was painting the canvases today and explained to Lena that it would be a painting of her & Lucianna when I was done.  She was very excited about it and watched for a bit.  When I was finished and showed her the final product for her inspection, she was not so sure..."Mom, where are my eyes?"  hehehe!!  I had to explain the silhouette concept again. 


Final Note:  The competed silhouette of Lena looks exactly like my mother!  So crazy how much a minimalist profile painting can resemble her grandmother so much.  I can unabashedly say...Beautiful!

Step - by - Step

1.  Take a profile picture

2.  Print it out ( I just did mine on 8 1/2 x 11 paper, but you could have them enlarged for larger paintings)

3.  Cut out the profile

4.  Trace the profile (Lowe's suggested plywood but I picked up two cheap framed canvases at the craft store)

5.  Paint the outside black (I used acrylic paint and it turned out beautifully)

6.  Let dry & admire your work as an ar-teest.

So far behind....

Okay, I have been out of my blogging routine for quite some time now...so, to alleviate the guilty little space on my to do list - I am posting an update and calling it a day!  In the last few months, we finished our basement - part of which has become a craft and school area for the girls and myself.  But, in this transition, I lost time to prep for school, so our routine has been haphazard and nonexistent on some days.  But, Lena still requests school time almost every day!  Here are the highlights of the past month:

 

The Days of the Week, Letter S

What a great week, Halloween frenzy hasn't quite taken over our lives (YET!) and school time was super fun for the girls!  

Magetic Pom Poms...these are a gem, I think I need to break them out more often, but then again...maybe they fun would wear off?!?!

Free-form S!  Lena decided to make her own S...S spells Success!

Spider Maze...Lena just recently got "it" and know she loves to figure mazes...she has fun bumping into dead ends and trying a new route...just like a man driving a car!

Number Practice...Connect the Dots...S is for Scarecrow!

Yes....more numbers...we're getting there!

Writing her name...we really need to work on this more:)   I always intend to have her practice on every page we do, but I always forget and ask her to do it after she completes a page...but really, who wants to do it after it's done.  I think she has a "I'm finished with that" attitude once we complete a page, so I can't blame her.  Mama needs to remember to make it a habit at the beginning.

Lots of watercolor painting recently, the only difference is that Lena is starting to want to paint it within the lines instead of spreading as many colors on the page.  So, while she enjoys making the end result still look like what the original intent was...I know there is value in letting her have free self-expression in her art.   She still does lots of blank page painting to enjoy, too!

Beginning letter sounds - this is fun and she getting much better at figuring them out the first time.

S workbook page, Lena's tracing skills are pretty darn good, but writing letters on her own is a struggle.

This princess loves the scissors - cutting out her vocab page for letter S.

Another workbook that she enjoys...

S vocab cards to put in our pockets for the binder.

Revisiting numbers...EUREKA!  She got them all correct by herself:)

Starfall.com

Reading her an words from Starfall!!  What fun!!

The Days of the Week, Letter C

Good Morning!  It's school time in the Virga house...

Shape Cards and Tracers...Lucy's does not have enough control over a marker to do the tracing cards but she loves identifying the shapes and colors with these cards!

Lena is working on her case matching cards, she can do the whole set with very little help now.  She needs more assistance getting the clip on than matching the letters:)

C is for coloring cats!

Case ID!

Starfall.com

The Days of the Week, Letter W

Blog-slacking...I am a bit behind on posting our weekly school time and that makes it even harder for me to post because I start to get overwhelmed with the amount that I want to add to this school journal!  But, alas...I am here - trying to catch up:)

Once October hit, we strayed a bit from our letter of the week focus and got more involved in fall crafts and activities, so you will see less alphabet work until after Christmas...when I plan to begin a pre-reading and sight word program with Lena.   Until then, we are lightening the school load while still continuing to focus on letter sounds and introducing some blends via starfall.com and our magnet board.  This works well right now because Lena is keen on figuring out the first letter of a word and is into rhyming words...which makes for fun car trips.

So, we start the week with Montessori at home...

Pouring salt from large pitcher to a small one

Lucianna's turn

Giving it a go with water!

Transferring, we used jelly dinosaurs (a huge hit) and egg tongs.

Who's this?  Lucy loves to name the color and type of dino (when this girl mamma knows it:)

Never fail BEAN TRAY FUN!  I picked up these trays in Target's dollar section and wish I had a few more.

W dotting!

Candy Corn Puzzles (see link to original idea) - both Lena & Lucianna enjoyed this, it's the closest we had to candy corn in our house this year:)   But, it was a great activity for putting the pieces in size order and had minimal prep.  I just cut the strips as we went!

Leaf Hunt = Leaf Book!  We took a walk with a big basket and collected tons of leaves; we didn't get very far because the girls picked up every leaf.  But, they had fun!  After letting the leaves dry a little bit (a day or two), we pressed them in contact paper and put together a leaf book.

W is for watermelon, Lucy loves using the pocket chart, it is one of the few school activities that holds her attention, probably we aren't sitting!  This time we were doing a coloring matching "game."

She did the whole set of colors...AND...

stayed to completed a set of shape matching, too!  Mommy was super excited.

Lena is really coming along with her numbers...she worked on her Watermelon seed counting and loved it.

W workbook page -  Lena can complete this with a fair amount of independence and shows pride when she's done, it always make me happy when she enjoys an activity & has a sense of accomplishment.

Cooking with Mom!

Making cards and spelling out family member's names....we have five family birthdays in the first two weeks of October!

The Days of the Week, Letter A

A is for apple!  We had a great week packed with lots of crafts and learning.  Lucy participated in many activities this week and is starting to show more patience for school time...this week.

Letter A watercolor paintings - a very cool idea I found on Pinterest that the girls met with huge Approval!

Sound Off...the A says "aahh" and "A"

Though she was once a breastfed baby, Lucy is a sucker for the glue bottle.  She is working hard on our A is for Apple craft.  Moms all know that pom poms require a lot of glue...so squeeze baby squeeze!

 

Playdough mats and glass beads...Lena gave the mat to Lucy and made her capital and lowercase A freeform (with a wee bit of help).

  

Our work wall!
   

 Lena loved working on this cut & paste page.  It was one of those show Daddy the second he steps in the door items - Look at my toy soldiers DAD!

Finally added our pocket pages to Lena's binder so she can slip her vocab cards into the pockets when we are done reviewing them.

I downloaded a new Letter of the Week program  to add some variety to our routine.  This is a case matching set from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Another set from the new download, a counting activity with number cards.  Lena really liked this and starting to pick up more and more numbers.

Lucy loved peeling apart our  set of color cards and identifying each object.

Another new activity from Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter of the Week program...a simple pattern activity.

Lena and I loved completing this RRSP activity together - it was quite simply a list of the ways to act like Jesus contrasting with actions that are nice. We spent a lot of time talking about each word as she figured out which side of her chart to glue it.

RRSP - handwriting practice - Lena has mastered tracing the strokes of most letters but she is still developing the fine motor control to write her name independently.  She does attempt to write it but she likes to get a little goofy with the letters as soon as she loses control without the guidance of letters to trace.