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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

A cool registry website

I'm loving My Registry. With the help of the website you are able to make one registry that pulls from many different websites. I've added the button to my toolbar so I can easily add things when I see them. You can even add things from Etsy which is really great. I'm using it to keep track of the things I want to buy for Husband, the kids, and myself. I'll probably pass the link out to interested parties (a.k.a. my mom, sister, and brother who are forever buying my children gifts) this Christmas which should probably help cut down on the "whatever shall I get them that is an approved toy" (no lead, no MIC, etc.) dance that starts November 1st and lasts through the holidays. I especially like the tags option so that you can put the person's name down. I often forget if something that I bookmark is supposed to be for my kids or for other random people which the tags option should help cut out.


 

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Belle can speak!

Did you know about the risks of BPA in your canned foods, including canned baby food and formula?

Belle did the cutest thing yesterday. She said "mama"! Ok, so it wasn't actually "mama", it sounded more like "Mom" but she was trying to crawl to me (she's doing a scoot/crawl/roll thing to get around these days) and she started crying because it was too much work for her and she looked at me and said "Mam". Of course I picked her up immediately and started celebrating (and maybe rubbing it in the Husband's face a little as well!) She's not yet four months old so it is really cool. She's got a weird little thing going on with her hair though. The sides of her head have these patches of almost baldness where she sleeps on them. Hopefully that'll grow in soon.

Tomorrow we'll be doing origami dinosaurs!

Saturday, June 21, 2008

You Tube Videos Made Easy

With my beautiful new app, YouPlayer, I'm able to watch things in a sidebar while I'm surfing the internet. I've added a few German clips to my playlist and now the kids are able to watch that while I'm typing away at what. Very, very cool.

Playing with my Add-Ons

I just tried the clip mark add-on that I downloaded for Firefox. I don't think that it even posted to my blog which is odd. However, right now I'm typing this in a ScribeFire add-on and watching Janet Jackson's "Feedback" video in a sidebar through my YouPlayer add-on. Both are really cool. I love add-ons. I love Firefox!

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Christmas List in the Making

Though it is only June, I'm working on the Christmas lists for the kids. Most of the patterns that I'm getting are through Ravelry but some are from Crochet Pattern Central. So far…

… I'm going to crochet:

  1. Pikachu (Pokemon)
  2. Mew (Pokemon)
  3. Jigglypuff (Pokemon)
  4. Hello Kitty
  5. S'mores
  6. Bowl of Ramen noodles
  7. Mushroom house
  8. Hot dog
  9. Turtle
  10. Owl
  11. Dog
  12. Strawberries
  13. Bat
  14. Butterfly
  15. Fish
  16. Lots of balls (different textures)
  17. Kitten
  18. Teddy bear
  19. Cactus
  20. Frog
  21. Banana
  22. DNA Model
  23. Rocket ship
  24. Penguin
  25. Celestine
  26. Traffic light
  27. Pig
  28. Cherry pie
  29. Tartlets
  30. Lemon meringue pie
  31. Super Mario star
  32. Elephant
  33. Octopus
  34. Gnome home
  35. Gnomes
  36. Eggs
  37. Various dinosaurs
  38. Bunny
  39. Hot cocoa in mugs
  40. Cookies
  41. Ducks
  42. Shark
  43. Ice cream cones
  44. Dragonfly
  45. Cow
  46. Hippo
  47. Dragon
  48. Manta ray
  49. Alien
  50. Caterpillar
  51. Panda
  52. Birthday cake
  53. Popcorn
  54. Lion
  55. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
  56. Crowns
  57. Dolphin
  58. Jellyfish
  59. Pygmy Puffs
  60. Apples
  61. Rattle
  62. Cupcake
  63. Sun
  64. Lamb
  65. Pear
  66. Squirrel
  67. Meercat
  68. Airplanes
  69. Horse
  70. Pac-man characters
  71. Finger puppets
  72. Totoro
  73. Flamingo
  74. Golden snitch
  75. Crab
  76. Lobster
  77. Alligator
  78. Fried egg
  79. Dodo
  80. Snake
  81. Fortune cookie

…I'm going to (try to) knit:

  1. Toy boat
  2. Ring
  3. Screwdriver
  4. Tooth fairy pillows
  5. Elmo
  6. Cookie monster
  7. Doughnut
  8. Bee
  9. Hot cross buns
  10. Cherries
  11. Various dinosaurs
  12. Olives
  13. Felted alphabet blocks
  14. Goat
  15. Giraffe
  16. Torus (rings for grabbing)
  17. Nativity scene
  18. Celery
  19. Slapstick pie
  20. Jelly doughnut
  21. Corn
  22. Doll
  23. Balls (lots)
  24. Lemon/lime
  25. Kiwi bird
  26. Grass
  27. Sushi
  28. Toy block

In addition to these things (which are all for my kids!), I want to:

Crochet:

  1. Mitten or gloves and hat sets for my kids, the Husband, my mom, my dad, my sister, my brother, and my in-laws.
  2. Afghans for my kids, the Husband, my mom, my dad, my sister, and my brother.
  3. A purse/bag for my mom, my sister, and my nieces.
  4. A wine holder (in which I'll put a bottle of nice wine) for my in-laws and my parents.
  5. A scarf for my brother and my sister.
  6. 20 preemie hats in acrylic and 20 preemie hats in cotton for a local hospital or charity.
  7. A few things for an online charity I keep meaning to join each year.

So obviously, some of this stuff isn't going to get done. I'm going to try and narrow down this list a bit as the year goes on. I'm trying to decide what I'm going to get started on first. I'm going to do the toys in either acrylic or cotton. I have some green (various shades), blue, pink, and purple acrylic right now. I'm thinking that I can make some of the balls and/or blocks right now. I want to make blocks in various sizes and make a lot of them. I remember that my cousin had these big foam blocks that looked like bricks when we were kids and I loved pulling those out and playing with them when I went to her house. I'd love to make some of those for my kids. Maybe like twenty blocks, even more if I could do it.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

We’ll Have Some Spanish With Our Letter of the Week, Please!

The baby will be three months in just a few days which means I'll be starting The Letter of the Week Nursery Program in the next week or so with her.

I've decided to officially add Spanish to our languages. I wasn't going to do it but we have so much access to Spanish materials and there is such a huge part of our population that speaks Spanish that it is just senseless to ignore it. Money is tight right now so I haven't been able to order books/music/dvds in German like I was planning on and there is no where that I've found, even in bordering cities, where I can buy materials in German other than the same old, dry textbooks. I'm still going to keep at German but it just makes sense to introduce Spanish as I can find a ton of stuff for that easily and free. So for each Letter of the Week book that I order from the library, I'll also order the Spanish version (easily done as the books are filled with popular hits).

We're studying dinosaurs right now. Each week or so we check out ten to fifteen books on the subject that we're studying. This week I've ordered:

  1. Dinosaurs All Around by Caroline Arnold
  2. The Visual Dictionary of Dinosaurs
  3. Dinosaur Valley by Mitsuhiro Kurokawa
  4. Where to Look for a Dinosaur by Bernard Most
  5. Dinosaurs, dinosaurs by Byron Barton
  6. Dinosaurs, Asteroids, and Superstars by Franklyn Mansfield Branley
  7. The Way to Draw and Color Dinosaurs by Don Bolognese
  8. I Wonder Why Triceratops Had Horns and Other Questions About Dinosaurs by Rod Theodorou
  9. Creatures of Long Ago: Dinosaurs by John Sibbick
  10. Origami dinosaurs by Yoshihide Momotami
  11. Drawing Dinosaurs by Jerome Goyallon
  12. If Dinosaurs Came to Town by Dom Mansell

So hopefully those will all come in soon and we can get started. The book that Fin and I are working on this week is Little Dinosaur by David Kinefield. I'm writing out the words on note cards for him and will also work with him on them each day. My goal is to work through a small book each week so that by the end of the week, he can read it with ease.

I have yet to find a homeschool planner that I've found meets my standards. I have three kids and I want to look at all three's work for the week in one blow. I did find one site with some cool planner pages but it isn't exactly what I want. So I think I might be drafting my own in Word when I can find the time.

Monday, June 02, 2008

The Ridiculous Things People Say

"How will they ever learn to get along with people?" So many things are wrong with this statement. Schools are designed to separate children into odd little groups of people of all the same age and, in some schools, the same abilities. When else in life will one be surrounded by only their age mates, even spending "breaks" with only people of the same age? This doesn't teach children to get along in society, it contributes to society's ills. When people ask this question of me I always want to question whether they've read "Lord of the Flies".

"They'll be behind all the other children!" Right now, my four year old is reading. Not everything, he wouldn't be able to read this blog for instance, but he'd be able to pick out many of the words in it. His birthday is in the winter which means that he wouldn't be entering kindergarten this year, he'd have to wait until next year. When I was a kid, kindergarten consisted of review of the basics and then basic reading. I learned to read in an experimental preschool program when I was two so I was bored out of my mind and my birthday is late in the school year so I was one of the young kids in the class. I can only imagine the utter tedium that my almost six year old would face in a setting such as this with the level he is at now when he's four. So they most certainly won't be behind.