Lily and Oakley

For months and months, Ok about 4 months or so Lily had been asking to ride a horse. I kept putting it off for 2 reasons; 1) where do you find a horse to ride when you aren’t in the horse scene and 2) Lil’s really timid so I didn’t think she would actually ride the horse and it would be traumatic for her.

A few months ago we started doing a Special Day each month with the kids, really for now it’s just for Lil, but eventually it will be for both of them. Each month one of the parents take a child and does something special with that one, then they switch up the next month.

One day on one of the local Facebook homeschooling pages someone asked about where to ride a horse locally, I started following the conversation and then messaged the two people that we were told would do rides/lessons. One of the ladies-Hannah and I struck up a deal and Lily’s horse riding adventure started to come together. I decided that it would be a great Special Day thing to do and I also decided that if all Lil did was look at the horses it would be worth it.

Even though we decided it would be a Special Day all 4 of us went to see the horses and it was a huge hit. Hannah had 4 or 5 horses and one pony. All of the animals were very friendly and we all petted, snuggled and gave treats to all of them. Then the big moment came and Lil got on a horse; Oakley and rode around a ring with Hannah leading. It was awesome. Lil had a fantastic time and wanted more.

Since dance was not happening during the summer we decided to do 2 riding lessons a month during that time. We went to her second lesson last weekend and I was so proud of Lil. About halfway through the riding part of the lesson Hannah asked Lil if she wanted to try riding two handed, rather than using on hand on the horn and on hand on the raines, Lil gave it a try and had really no problems with it. Hannah then let go of Oakley and Let Lil control her herself and Lil did great. Oakley is trained to follow or go to Hannah so Lil had to keep fighting her, but she did great. Hannah was really impressed and so was I. My little cowgirl.

Lesson 1

Lily meeting on of the horses (Cleo I think) for the first time.

Lesson 1

Jake loving on Cleo.

Lesson 1

Lily’s first lesson. Getting a feel for Oakley.

Lesson 1

Lily’s first lesson.

Lesson 1

Lily’s first lesson. Hannah let me get a few good pictures. 🙂

Lesson 1

How meta. Mark took this one of me taking pictures of Lil during her first lesson.

Lesson 2 Saying Hi

Lesson 2. Hi Oakley. She’s so much braver already.

Lesson 2

Using two hands with Hannah close.

Lesson 2

Using two hands, all by herself. I believe she’s stopping Oakley here.

Lesson 2

Around she goes.

Lesson 2

Saying goodbye.

Lily's second horse riding lesson

Because I can’t stop myself, here’s a couple videos of Lil riding.

Lily's second horse riding lesson

Monday, Funday

We woke up to our first bit of Montana snow this morning. It had started around 8 last night as what was reported to one of my friends by a cashier as The Storm Of the Century. The wind was howling and the snow was coming sideways. In the end there was only a thin layer of snow on the ground this morning. If that was the storm of the century this is going to be a nice calm winter and I’ll be so happy.

Somehow after getting over her initial excitement about the snow Lil’s attitude deteriorated and we spent the first almost 30 minutes of the morning in tears (hers) and grumps (again hers) and frustration (both of us) so I decided to change my plans for school today. I was originally going to do language and reading practice and some math in the morning. I changed my mind to do fun creative art type stuff. Lil is so creative I figured the creative outlet would help get rid of the grumps. It worked like a charm.

First I gathered some snow in a 9×13 cake dish and set up Lil’s water paints.  While she molded the snow into a snowman (shocking) and then painted it I worked on making some playdough. She loves painting snow and spent quite a bit of time making a whole scene out of the pan. The she decided to see if she could make ice out of the snow by putting it in water. We talked about the science of what happened when she put her snow in the water and it was very interesting.

I was trying out a new playdough recipe and was still working on it when she finished her painting. She proceeded to dance around the kitchen counting to 118 for me and then counting by 10 and then singing the days of the week. This is the stuff I love about homeschooling Lil. Even when we aren’t doing a real lesson there’s still learning happening all day everyday, it’s awesome.

I made this huge batch of playdough by the recipe because I wanted to see how it worked out naturally. Let me just say I should have gone with my intuition and made a 1/2 batch or something because I have a huge mountain of orange playdough with orange glitter. Normally I make my playdough plain and then separate it into smaller amounts and then add the food coloring to it before I knead it. This works fine with my normal recipe, but like I said I wanted to make this recipe the way the author intended first. So I only made one color and Lil chose orange. I should mention that this is a 5 cup of flour recipe, it really did make a mountain of dough. Before I kneaded it and it became smooth it looked like someone had dumped a bunch of sweet potato mashed potatoes on my counter (and added glitter). I really do like the texture of this recipe and will be trying it again, but my way to see if it works out. Of course my way ends up with me having very colorful hands for a few hours, but I’d rather that then so much of one color.

With Thanksgiving being around the corner I decided to have her make a playdough turkey. I cut a (really bad) turkey body out of brown construction paper and she added to it. She loved it!

Then she made a turkey in her hand, I think it’s suppose to be like when you do a hand outline to make a turkey. That’s my best guess.

Then she made a dog.

After the dog she asked me what to make next. I don’t know where it came from, but I told her to make a ostrich. She said she couldn’t because she couldn’t remember what they looked like. I pulled up Google on my phone and found her some pictures. I think she did a great job with it.

He’s hopping if you couldn’t tell. I think she made a hippo in a pond and a bunny that I didn’t get pictures of. I’m sure more playdough fun will be happening soon.

Calling Dr. Lily Bean

A few weeks ago I found a pin on Pinterest about playing veterinarian during pretend play and since we had just been to the Vet twice in the last few months I thought Lil would enjoy it.

I wrote out a checklist and put it through my laminator (I love a good excuse to use that little thing) and made a stethoscope out of pipe cleaner and walked Lil through the whole thing. She enjoyed it, but I didn’t think she really cared about anything but writing on the checklist. The next time we were out thrifting I found a little doctor set that included a stethoscope and grabbed it up. Today Lil begged me to play Vet. I was so happy. I grabbed the checklist (so glad I saved it) and the doctor stuff from the toy shelf. Lil grabbed Clifford and we went to work on him.

Calling Dr. Lily Bean

Calling Dr. Lily Bean

Calling Dr. Lily Bean

Calling Dr. Lily Bean

We went through all of the items on the list I made and then Lil came up with a whole list of her own.  Most of her items involved Clifford stinking.

Calling Dr. Lily Bean

Then it came time to make him better, so I kept asking Lil what she suggested.  For his bad fur she brought him plates of new food.

Calling Dr. Lily Bean

She used the reflex tester for a eye dropper to fix his stinky eyes.

Calling Dr. Lily Bean

His tail got stuck in a bucket, because you know it was stinky too.

Calling Dr. Lily Bean

His ears stunk so Daddy gave her the funnel and bowl to pour medicine in.

Calling Dr. Lily Bean

The blanket covering him is to make his back better and the funnel/bowl medicine didn’t work for the stinky ears so now she’s trying the toy tweezers.

Dr. Lily Bean's patient

In the end Clifford is going to be healthy soon and he was a very good patient according to Dr. Lily Bean.

I’m playing along with Nanette from Say it, don’t spray it and her Pinteractive linkup.

Nannersp

Sticky Table Play

I saw an idea on Pinterest that I thought Lil would really like.  I’ve seen a few different variation of this same idea, I like Allison’s best.

It really couldn’t be more simple.  With some blue painter’s tape I taped some clear contact paper to Lily’s little bench with the sticky side up.  I have her a bunch of different things to stick to it and she went crazy.  We talked about how it was sticky, well I talk to her, she ignored me and stuck things to the contact paper.

Sticky table

Sticky table

She really liked it and I think it’s going to become a part of our play routine.

401

Waldo was looking at my WordPress dashboard for some reason the other day and brought it to my attention that I was at something like 395 posts.  I was honestly surprised considering how sporadically I post, but I made a mental note to make some comment when I posted number 400.  Well I goofed that up and totally didn’t even remember to check before I hit publish.  So today’s post is number 401, Hizaa!

Now on to what I really wanted to share today:  Lily and the poofballs.

Poof Balls

I am trying to come up with great fun home preschool stuff for Lily and me to do. As a once upon a time preschool teacher this should be easy for me, but it isn’t. First off it was a lifetime ago that I taught preschool and secondly the preschools had their own curriculum and I just had to read, prep and do. None of it was my idea so I don’t remember any of it.

I have been stalking Pinterest for ideas and have a lot of them already. So expect to see a few more posts with Pinterest links in them.

I know I saw many different pins with this same idea, but I can’t find a single one. Anyway the point is the kiddo manipulates the poofballs with tongs.

Poof Balls

It’s good for color recognition, hand-eye coordination, counting (although Lil’s not into numbers right now and it’s driving me mad, but you know how kids are, tomorrow will be all about numbers) and dexterity. And of course fun.

Poof Balls

I gave her three colors of balls, three little containers and the new bamboo tongs we bought the other day and she went to town. First I had her put all of one color in each container, then she sort of ran with it. I tried to get her to count the balls with me, but that was a no go.

Poof Balls

After putting them in their separate containers for a while she started using the tongs take them from one container to another, which is also a good learning thing.

Poof Balls

Poof Balls

This went on for probably 15 minutes so I felt it was a pretty successful home ed sesion. After she got bored with the tongs she grabbed the poofballs and went to throw them at the cats.

Poof Balls

I woke up the next morning and found a poofball or three under me in bed. I swear they are multiplying. There might be a follow up post about Tribbles happening soon.

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