Archive for the ‘Parenting’ Category

Pregnancy Update Week #16

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2013

A few weeks ago we announced that we were expecting Baby Kickert #2, you can read about it here.  Almost a month has gone by and I have been to tired and/or sick and/or busy with life to give a blog update.  I decided I needed a format to follow each week so I would be able to update all our friends and family about this baby.

When my friend Catherine was pregnant, she did a weekly update following a specific questionnaire.  I thought it was really fun, but had forgotten about it until just recently.  So, better late than never, I am going to attempt to start a weekly update about my pregnancy.

How far along? I am currently 16 weeks

Total weight gain/loss? So far I have not gained any weight.  I was really sick for the first trimester and am still feeling the effects of it (getting sick at least once a day still).  Unfortunately/fortunately our scale is in kilograms, so it makes weight gain seem even less!

Stretch marks? No stretch marks yet, but I am diligently applying cocoa butter lotion daily.  I was fortunate with Mikayla to not have any stretch marks so we are hoping for the same this go around.

Best Moment this week? Mikayla laying on the bed next to me and asking to look at the baby.  She leaned over and kissed my belly and started talking to it.  So sweet!

Movement? No real movement yet.  I have felt some stirrings that could be "quickening", but might be nothing!

Food Cravings:  I have had definite aversions to sweet things (so sad!).  I have however, had huge cravings for salty things.  Specifically, Lay’s plain potato chips!  The other night I had a craving for super buttery and salty popcorn.

Gender? No clue yet.  Mikayla thinks it is a girl.

Labor Signs?  I sure hope not!

Belly Button in or Out?  In.

What I miss.  I miss drinking multiple cups of coffee a day.  I am trying to limit myself to one cup and even that is half regular, half decaf!  Just not the same.

What I am looking forward to.  Finding out the gender on February 14!  We didn’t find out with Mikayla, but for multiple reasons are choosing to this go round.

Weekly wisdom:  Prenatal yoga is a lot more relaxing and enjoyable without a toddler "stretching" next to you, even if you have to get up earlier than you would like!

Milestones:  Thanks to my dear friend Catherine, I started Prenatal Yoga (Ben and Mikayla refer to it as Baby Yoga though).  I start each day with the DVD she sent and am hoping it will help with our epidural free labor!

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Big Announcement

Sunday, December 30th, 2012

In August of 2008 we found out we were pregnant with Mikayla.  In October of 2012 we found out we were pregnant with our second baby.  Baby Kickert #2 is due on July 4, 2013.  Mikayla is excited to be a big sister and even got to join us for the first ultrasound!  We will post more details soon.

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Preschool–LOW Week 3 (Cc)

Sunday, November 4th, 2012

This week we moved onto the Letter Cc.  Here is our learning poster for the week:

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And here are some activities for the week.

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Here is a picture of her number book we add to each week.  The number and number word is at the top with space to put the correct number of stickers.  At the bottom I have made lines for her to write/trace the number.

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Acting out our Nursery Rhyme Three Little Kittens

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Letter C cat – I used a C for both the body and tail.

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Shape cat – I gave her different shapes that we stared by sorting and then putting together to make a cat.

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We made a Jack-O-Lantern bag for our trick or treating.

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She matched up crayons based on color.

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She used two triangles to make diamond shapes.

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Mitten matching activity.

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Special Halloween lunch – mummy juice, apple jack-o-lantern and hard boiled egg ghost with raisins for eyes and mouth.

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Number matching with stickers.  She did so good with this!

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Color by letter Cat

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Jack-O-Lantern coloring book.  Each page had a different color you were supposed to color the Jack-O-Lantern.  She worked really hard on this and it took most of our school time for that day!

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Stamping letters.  I had found this sheet at 2 Teaching Mommies website and she loved it.  The pictures had beginning sounds letters next to them and she stamped that letter across the blank space.

Next week we will move onto the Letter D!

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Our Adventures with Traveling Charlie

Friday, November 2nd, 2012

A couple of weeks ago, we received a letter in the mail from a friend in Kentucky.  Their daughter was participating in an exchange similar to Flat Stanley, but instead it was Traveling Charlie.  Each child in the class was given a paper cut out of a Charlie doll and then chose somewhere in the world to send him.  When you receive Traveling Charlie you are supposed to take pictures of things around your area and send a letter with pictures back to the class telling them all about where you live.  We were excited to be chosen to spend time with Charlie and Mikayla had a blast!  During our two weeks with Traveling Charlie, we did a lot of fun things.  Here are some pictures of what we did!

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Charlie got to spend one day in preschool while we had our learning time!  He learned all about Little Bo Peep and the letter B!

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He even got to go on an adventure to South Africa!  This is at the border crossing on our way home.  Hamba Kahle means "Go Well."

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We were even able to introduce Charlie to the Giant African Land Snails!  Don’t worry, I wouldn’t let Ben feed any to him!

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Charlie tagged along for one of our childcare meetings.  Here he is with Mikayla and some of the staff.  They were a little confused by why we were snapping pictures with a paper cut out of a boy!

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Charlie with our kitchen staff and a couple of the high school students.  Look at those huge pots!

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This is Mikayla showing Charlie where the kids wash their clothes.

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Mikayla, Charlie and some of the preschool students.

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This is a view from our walk up to the hostel.  It is really green right now, but soon will be dry again!

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Mikayla and Charlie posing in front of one of the mango trees.  They are almost ready to eat!

Below are some pictures of the animals we saw while traveling with Charlie:

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Preschool–LOW Week 2 (Bb)

Monday, October 29th, 2012

This was our second week of the Letter of the Week curriculum.  It is still going really well.  Although I will admit that some of the themes are a little strange.  Like in two weeks the theme is eyes…I think we might be switching that one up a little!  Here is our learning poster for the week:

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Letter – Bb, Number – 2, Color – green, Theme – jungle, Vocabulary Word – vine, and Nursery Rhyme – Little Bo Peep

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We practiced dressing her baby doll for a practical life activity.  She still gets very discouraged if she can’t do something right the first time, but we are working on gaining confidence and independence!

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I started implementing a sticker chart last week to help with her independently completing activities.  She is always wanting me to do some part of the activity for her.  For each activity she completes on her own (for the most part), she earns a sticker.  When she completes a row of five activities she gets a piece of candy.  If she fills up her chart she gets a sucker.  So far it is working out well.  Although, if she doesn’t earn a sticker then she tends to give up for the day!

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Shape race.  I laid out green shapes on her desk and then would call out a shape for her to race and get and place on the blanket.  She would choose which action she wanted to get from place to place (i.e. run, hop, skip).  She did so good with this!

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We practiced writing the letter B all over a balloon. 

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Bird and nest letter match – she matched capital letter to capital letter.

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I gave her a sheet with different pictures on it, some starting with B and others not.  She had ot choose the B objects and color them.  Then we cut them out and glued onto her butterfly.  I was really impressed with how she was able to determine the correct sound the words began with.

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On this worksheet with her nursery rhyme she colored to B’s with a purple marker and the A’s with a yellow one.  This required a little assistance and we had to go line by line, but she did great!

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She glued white pom poms onto a cut out of a sheep.  Then we talked about what you would see around the sheep.  She said she would see green grass, a red sky and a yellow sun.

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She practiced stringing letter beads onto a piece of string. As she would string the letters she would say their names and sometimes their sounds.  (Helpful tip – place a piece of string on the end they will be stringing the beads or objects onto to decrease string from fraying.  Also tape down to the surface you are working on to keep it steady for little fingers!).  Please take note of the collection of "objects" watching her during learning time!

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Sheep number match.  The sheeps bodies had certain number of dots and she had to match up the heads with the correct number.  We did the same game with some capital and lowercase letters later in the week too.

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Letter B bear!

We also played with her blocks and babies a lot this week.  I didn’t do much with the theme this week because I ran out of time to research it!  We did make a rainstick though out of a paper towel tube, toothpicks and rice.  She has enjoyed making music with it this week.

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She also enjoyed playing teacher this week and walking through our calendar time, which includes going over our learning poster!

Here were her journal words for this week:

  1. Name – we continue to practice this and get her writing it at an appropriate size.  She writes so large right now it covers the whole page and is all over the place!
  2. Green – she found pictures of green things in a magazine and I cut them out for her to glue in her journal.
  3. Baby – I modeled for her how she could draw a picture of a baby on her own.
  4. Vine – she practiced drawing squiggly lines for vines.

Next week we will move onto the Letter C, as well as trying to do a few fun Halloween activities!

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Preschool–Letter of the Week (Aa)

Thursday, October 25th, 2012

Last week I mentioned that we would be starting our Letter of the Week Curriculum (LOW).  I found this curriculum here, and am using it as a springboard for our activities each week.  This curriculum centers around a learning poster comprised of a letter, number, shape/color, vocabulary word and nursery rhyme.  It isn’t a very detailed program, but I think it is great one to use as a guide and then expand on it as you see fit.  If you are looking for a cheap preschool curriculum (this one is free) then I would recommend checking it out.  We are only one week in, and I am finding it very helpful.  It also offers different levels if your child is older or younger than three. 

As mentioned above, each week has a letter, number, shape/color, vocabulary word and nursery rhyme.  I will be sharing each of those items from the learning poster each week and then expanding on them as I see fit.  Here is our learning poster from this week.

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And here are some of our activities for the week.

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This is from when I taught kindergarten.  She matched the apples (uppercase letters) to the worms (lowercase letters).  Afterwards we had to use the worms as characters and play with them for a bit!

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She made apple prints with apples halves and paint.

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We put the characters from our nursery rhyme (Hey Diddle Diddle) onto popsicle sticks and then reenacted the NR.

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I read her the story about the Little Red House and then we cut open an apple to see the star inside.

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Then we took the poem version of the story and matched up pictures for each line.  When I taught kindergarten we did this in a pocket chart.

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We graphed apples based on which color we spun on our apple spinner.

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Number spotted cows.  She used glitter glue to make corresponding spots for each numbered cow.

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We talked about real and fantasy and what fantasy in our NR and then glued pictures onto the correct side.

I was not very good with the camera this week, but here are a few more  notable activities we did.

  1. I held up shape cards and she would jump for each square and touch her toes for any other shape.
  2. Part of the LOW curriculum is to have a counting book that you add to each week. This week we placed one sticker on the number one page and practiced writing the number.  I will try to snap a picture in future weeks to show what the book looks like.
  3. Read some books about Johnny Appleseed.

I also have Mikayla doing a journal "writing" each day.  I write the word and then leave an extra line for her to write the word if she wants to.  She also has space to draw a picture or glue something each day.  Some days she is really excited about writing something and others not so much.  I only really push it on the days she is supposed to write her name (which will happen each week).  Here are her journal "writings" for this week.

  1. Name – practice writing her name on designated spaces (this did not go well Confused smile)!
  2. Cow – She glued a picture of a cow in her journal and then  colored it.  She also practiced writing the word.
  3. Apple tree – I drew the tree and then she stamped her fingerprints for the apples.  She then counted the apples as I wrote the numbers beside them.
  4. Aa – she used her letter stamps to stamp A’s all over the page.
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Preschool–Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Monday, October 15th, 2012

Since we finished up all our letters and Mikayla is getting older, I felt it was appropriate to begin preschool with her.  If we were living in the states and both working, we would be sending her to a preschool at this age, so why not!  This past week we started our journey with one of my favorite books Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.  If you have never read it, you should.  It is a book about all the letters climbing to the top of a coconut tree, falling out, and starting the climb again. There are also two follow up books we used Chicka Chicka, 123 and Boom Chicka Rock.  The first is most similar and about numbers that climb up an apple tree, the second is a book about the numbers on a clock having a good time when no one is looking!

I wanted to start off our first week of preschool with some fun stuff and what is more fun than Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.  Next week we will begin with a more structured letter, number, shape approach, but more on that later.  For now, here are some of the things we did this week.

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Isn’t her little smirk here hilarious?

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She is so hard to get an actual smiling picture of!

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Journal time.  I wanted to incorporate daily journal "writing" into our learning time this year (still not sure how that will look, so I am open for suggestions).  I got her this plain composition notebook and let her decorate it with stickers to make it hers and we talked about what it was and how we would be using it.

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Chicka Chicka tree hat.  She was not as excited about this one as I was.  But I thought she looked cute!

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Counting with sticks.  We did something similar last year with pom poms, but this time I used "coconut sticks" as the counters.  She is still not a huge fan of math and really struggles to complete any math activity.

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For this week’s journal, I wrote a word and she drew the pictures.  Our words for this week were sun, tree, coconut, and letters.  On each page I wrote our word for the day and then left a space in case she wanted to practice writing her words (which she never did).  I think starting next week I will make one day each week practice writing her name.

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Chicka letter match.  The tops of the trees were capital letters and the bottoms lowercase letters.  She was awesome at this game.

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Chicka hand tree – leaves are her hands, trunk is her forearm and then foam letters were used to spell her name.

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I gave her free reign on this activity.  She got an outline of a coconut tree and her letter stamps and went to town stamping letters all over the tree.  We talked about the various letters as she stamped them too.

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Special coconut tree snack – apples for leaves, banana for trunk, peanut butter balls for coconuts and butterscotch chips for the sand.

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We pretended this paper towel tube was a coconut tree and matched the letters using stickers.  This one back fired a little because the stickers kept falling off and it turns out I didn’t actually have a sticker for each letter!  Oops!

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Coconut investigation.  I think this was her favorite activity from the whole week.  We cracked open a coconut and used our senses to investigate it.  She was not a fan of the taste of a real coconut, but didn’t seem to mind the shredded coconut!

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Coconut number match.

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Coconut shape tree.  First we sorted and identified the different shapes and then glued them together to make a coconut tree.  She also really liked this activity.

Like with most weeks we had lots of activities planned for the week that just did not happen.  I overestimate the amount of time she will stay focused each day so we end up with activities that don’t get completed.  I guess it is better to be over prepared than under prepared!  Next week we will start with a Letter of the Week curriculum, but more on that to come.

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Our Learning Space

Monday, October 15th, 2012

For some time now, I wanted to created a special learning space for Mikayla to use that wasn’t our kitchen table.  I wanted it to be an area that she felt was hers and could take ownership of, but also a place that would encourage learning.  Plus, while in the states we spent some time at my friend Lara’s house and her and her daughter were so excited about the learning area she created, I got inspired!  Last Christmas we bought her kid sized table and chairs that would be perfect for a learning space, but the problem was where we had it (scrunched in a corner) was not practical or ideal for learning time.  So one day last week I set out to rearrange furniture to make room for this space I envisioned in my head.  But no matter what I did, the furniture just would not fit in our living room the way I wanted it too.  It looked crowded and forced.  So I sat on the mess for a bit and then an idea hit me…why not use some of the extra space in my room for her learning space.  And it was perfect.  You see, we have a huge bedroom and if you rearranged the furniture just so you have a nice corner of the room with a blank wall to use.  Here is the preliminary set up.  I hope to add more pictures and learning posters on the wall as we go, but at the moment I did not have any sticky tack. 

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Here is the whole set up in the corner of our room.  She was so excited to see the space after her nap that she sat down and started working.

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I think she was most excited about the little Mickey Mouse pencil bag I picked up in the states that was filled with her personal school supplies.

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Supply corner.  The baskets are filled with games I can pull out to play anytime and the top shelf holds our activity supplies specific to that week.  The rec basket has calendar stuff in it and of course our chalkboard.

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The chairs are actually sturdy enough that I can sit on them and be next to her or there is enough space that I can stand behind her to help her with different activities.  I think I am going to really like this space and so is she!

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Some Video Posts

Saturday, August 25th, 2012

Since we are in the states and have some awesome Internet, I thought I would upload some videos I have taken over the last little bit.  Enjoy!

Mikayla reciting one of her favorite Nursery Rhymes:  Jack and Jill

Does anyone remember the Hamster Dance craze?  Well, Rita and Steve were so kind as to send Mikayla a card with the song it for her birthday.  We have been listening to it ever since then!

Every kid should know how to make mud pies.  Here is Mikayla making her specialty!

Who doesn’t love a good tea party in the pool?

Another fun dancing video of my child.  She is a dancing fool and loves having dance parties!

Another Nursery Rhyme – Little Miss "Muffin"

The Three Little Pigs as told by Mikayla

When trying to teach Mikayla to skip I told her to step and then hop, which is what I always told my students.  It worked for my students, but clearly my literal child did not catch on!

I have some more videos to post soon!

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2012 Kickert Olympic Videos

Saturday, August 25th, 2012

As promised, here are some videos from our Olympic games!

Beginning of marathon…

And the end of the marathon!

Hurdles!

Long jump!

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