Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns

Valentine Day Preparations

2012-01-31T02:28:00.000-08:00

I am not a big fan of Valentine’s Day, but my daughter is already very fired up about the day and has all kinds of grand plans about special Valentines for me, her father and her teacher. I let her plan those special Valentines on her own, but I also know that we will need 24 Valentines for her classmates. So this year I attempted the project that Kelly at Little Wonder’s Days described in detail – shaving cream painting.

Kelly said that the project was “not much mess at all” and in principle I agree even though it looks pretty messy from the pictures I took. But the very fact that I was able to stand back, take pictures and let my 5 year old handle most of painting after a short demonstration makes me agree with her. Clean-up took only about 15 minutes, not much longer than after a regular “paint job”.

Daughter loved the whole experience and didn’t mind washing hands and tools several times during this card making process. She insisted that boys will not like pink cards and chose blue and yellow mix for them. A couple of lessons learned:

1. Contrast colors would have worked better – our pink and red mixed more or less into one color.
2. Don’t even think of using regular printed paper! The heavier cardstock, the better.
3. Try to remove as much shaving cream as possible before setting out to dry. Otherwise, shaving cream will flake off later (this ended up being the messiest part).

So the first part of our Valentine’s preparations is over. The next step is to actually decorate and write 24 Valentines. 2 are down, 22 to go!

Week In Review–January 29, 2012

2012-01-29T02:55:00.000-08:00

School. Anna had a lot of fun events this week. On Monday they celebrated Chinese New Year by painting banners with Chinese characters. They continued to learn more about Chinese characters throughout a week. Anna’s school does a lot to encourage writing. This week was an annual author week – they had three different authors visiting their school, reading their books and telling stories about writing. In addition we went to an author event in our library and brought home The Year of the Dragon by Oliver Chin signed specially for Anna. Unfortunately, Friday was a furlough day, but YMCA was opened all day, and Anna whipped up a lot of fantastic crafts there – they will all be sold (or so she hopes) at the Art Show in February.

Afterschool. Life has been busy this week, but we had fun spending some quality time together even if it wasn’t much. With my husband gone, Anna went to Y every day and stayed there until at least 4 pm. In the evenings we were playing, talking and reading. There was also a library visit, gymnastics and a Russian lesson. Quite a lot for one tiny 5 year old, but she has been in a great and helpful mood all week except missing papa whiny moments every so often.

Places we are going. We had a super gun visit to San Jose Children Discovery Museum yesterday, and it deserves a separate post. They had a special Chinese New Year event with a lot of performances of local Chinese youth groups including dancers, musicians playing traditional Chinese instruments, and martial arts practitioners. Anna volunteered to dance a Lion Dance – there she is as a tail of a Lion.

Quote of the week:

Anna asked me about lottery numbers on the window of the store. After doing my best to explain to her what a lottery was, I asked her,
What would you do with a million dollars?
Anna (after some consideration). I would get a house. If I am ready to get a house.
Me: How will you know if you are ready?
Anna: If I am 17 or 18 years old, then I am ready. Maybe I am ready. Because, you know, nothing is quite the same when you are not around. But don’t worry, mama, you and papa can come and live with me in my new house.
Now, here is my favorite from the last week:

Cachey’s Mama Preschool shared two posts about her preschool house unit. Her preschoolers were comparing houses around the world, building with marshmallows and completed an incredibly well constructed “protect the house” experiment. I wish my daughter had attended her preschool!

What My Child Is Reading–January 28, 2012

2012-01-28T02:36:00.000-08:00

There was another big library haul this week. Anna threw a few picture books in the book bag – whatever looked good to her. I added some of my own choices. We are still reading through Mr Popper’s Penguins together at night, so I am only going to profile the books that we managed to read together during the day.

Our library finally got much-talked-about I Want My Hat Back by Joe Klassen. Strangely, I couldn’t check it out but we read it together in the library. All I can say is one of those “boy books”. My girl just went vivid at the idea that one character clearly lied to another character. She actually got quite loud about it saying, But… but… he is wearing a hat! He is not telling the truth! The humor of the ending didn’t really register with her even though she understood the ending quite well. Anyway, now I can cross this book off my ever growing “Must Read” list.

On Tuesday our library had a very fun event – Oliver Chin was reading a new book in his Tales from the Chinese Zodiac series – The Year of the Dragon. I was glad that I was able to take Anna there – Oliver Chin is not only a good writer, he is also quite an actor. The story is very engaging, and the illustrations by Jennifer Wood are soo cute (Anna’s words). I definitely recommend checking out this series, and we ended up buying this book.

We are doing a little human body science here, and I was happy to pick up See Inside Your Head book in the library. As all Usborne books, it’s extremely well done and full of interesting information. I can say that I learned a lot more about brain from it. It was too much for Anna (this book is recommended for 9+) but she was very fascinated with the page explaining mental illnesses – she is usually interested with all the things that can go wrong.

Owl Babies by Martin Waddell was Anna’s K book for this week. We read it many times before, and if you missed it, make sure to read it while your children are still young. It’s classic, and illustrations by Patrick Benson add so much charm to the story. Anna commented that the reason owl babies were so worried is because their mama didn’t tell them she would be gone. I think it’s a great point coming from a trusting 5 year old who wants to know everything that is going on.

Writing Acrostic Poems

2012-01-25T06:42:00.001-08:00

I picked up an interesting book during our last library’s visit – Ana and Adam Build an Acrostic from Poetry Builders series. Victoria Peterson-Hilleque did a pretty good job both explaining what acrostic is and creating a story around it. The characters in the book are in the fourth grade, but my kindergartener was quite interested in the story and excited to write her own acrostic poems once she figured out that rhyming is not a requirement for them. So far her stories were one word entries, but I am writing some with her to help her understand that she can really fit a story into an acrostic form:

Fish Old light from faraway stars
Is Comes to
Swimming Earth
Happily And falls quietly into
In Night waves
Neat
Groups

Have you tried to write poetry with your children?

Chinese New Year Baking

2012-01-23T02:22:00.000-08:00

To be honest, I only remembered about Chinese New Year when I saw some interesting events on our library’s website and when I saw Chinese crafts pop up in my Google Reader. However, we spent quite a lot of time “in China” recently by reading along a superb book by Grace Lin Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and playing with tangrams. Anna also knew about Chinese New Year from school and requested her favorite dish for dinner tonight – a Chinese takeout of sweet-and-sour chicken and rice.

We might still make it to some Chinese New Year events next week if all the stars are aligned, so I decided to go not with a craft but with a baking project on a rainy Saturday afternoon. I was inspired by this post, but used All Recipes variation instead. Next time I am curious to see how butter-free recipe would work.

First, we typed some wishes/wise phrases to put inside of our cookies. Anna’s first suggestion was, Happiness is the key to success. I asked her how she came up with this, and she said that she got it once in a fortune cookie. She typed some on her own and was delighted to be introduced to the power of Microsoft Word spellchecker. I hope she won’t decide that learning to spell is no longer a requirement.

Anna loves to help in the kitchen – baking/cooking projects are always met with much more enthusiasm than arts and crafts. Her favorite part was, of course, adding food coloring, and she was very proud to be able to handle it on her own and to decide on colors for our cookies.

To be honest, the recipe was not “so easy” for me as advertised, especially in the folding part. Also, the paper scraps with wishes were sticking badly to the dough. Anna, however, was very pleased with the results and gobbled up a few fortune cookies right away. She got, Water Your Mind. Read in one and Pick your favorite food and eat it as soon as possible in another, which, of course, prompted her to ask for chocolate.

And here is the end result – not picture perfect, but tastier than restaurant variety and good enough to share with friends yesterday during a play date. We will finish the rest off today with our Chinese New Year dinner.

Are you celebrating Chinese New Year?

Week In Review–January 22, 2012

2012-01-22T02:03:00.000-08:00

School. There was a big excitement in school on Tuesday when Anna’s most wiggly classmate stumbled on the way to the music class, fell down and cut his head so badly that he had to go to the hospital and get stitches. Luckily, he could go back to school the very next day. It was a good opportunity to talk about safety – it could have just as easily been Anna who still gets bruises and scrapes practically every day.

Afterschool time was busy but not particularly blog worthy (OK, yesterday was blog worthy, but I will keep it for later in the week). I am parenting single since Wednesday since my husband is visiting his family in Germany, and I managed to get daughter to the library and Russian lesson on one day and to her gymnastics class on another. Every evening we cooked together and read, and then it was time for bed.

Work has been crazy since I had to juggle getting Anna to school, leaving early and handling all work obligations in between and in late evenings. This change in schedule really made me appreciate what my husband does for our family!

Places we are going. We have a tradition of going in January to Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge. This time the weather didn’t exactly cooperate – a bitter cold wind was blowing, so the hike along the salt marshes of San Francisco Bay was not as enjoyable as usual. Still, we’ve seen a lot of birds – pipers, herons, various ducks and even vultures and enjoyed looking at the first California poppies of the season.

Quote of the week.
During a big showdown over a lost souvenir from SF zoo that was oh-so important to get when we were there: Mama, I don’t know where it is. I know I put it on this shelf. Goblins must have stolen it! (The object was recovered later in completely different locations – goblins must have moved it).

Finally, I am delighted to host Afterschool this week. I am doing my best to visit every blog and enjoying a lot of great ideas. My favorite this week was a Faux Lava Lamp experiment at Mom to 2 Posh Lil’ Divas. We will definitely be doing this one as soon as I get out to get some Alka-Seltzer tablets. And, by the way, if you are interested in hosting Afterschool, please send an email at sunnyvale422@gmail.com.

What My Child Is Reading–January 21, 2012

2012-01-21T02:11:00.000-08:00

We came back from our weekly library trip with an excellent haul of new books to read. We have finished reading Where the Mountain Meets the Moon together, and Anna commented that this book definitely deserves the medal (Newberry Honor) that it received. Now we are reading another Newberry Honor book – Mr Popper’s Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater. Anna picked up a couple more Rainbow Fairies books that she didn’t read yet and decided to branch out into The Tiara Club by Vivian French (insert the big yawn from me here, but at least I don’t have to read them to her).

I stumbled upon E-mergency! by Tom Lichtenheld in the new books section, and what a terrific find it has been. This book is entertaining on so many levels and appropriate for younger kids just learning their ABCs and for older kids who love comics. It’s been a while since Anna was rereading the same book over and over again and begging me to read it to her too – this was definitely a reading highlight of the week.

For our Afterschool Math this week we read The Warlord’s Puzzle by Virginia Pilegard/Nicolas Debon. I enjoyed the story and the illustrations more than Anna did – she was not exactly thrilled by strong emotions of anger or fear that were conveyed by illustrations. She didn’t want to reread the story later on her own, but both of us enjoyed playing with tangrams in the end. I’d say that Three Pigs, One Wolf, Seven Magic Shapes is a more light-hearted introduction to tangrams, at least for sensitive kids.

I had high expectations from the cover of There’s Nothing to Do on Mars by Chris Gall. To be honest, while I enjoyed beautiful illustrations, the story line failed to impress me or Anna. There is not even a twist to suggest that the whole plot line was cooked up in an overactive imagination of a little boy. I do admit that maybe my daughter and I are not a target audience for this story and it would be better received by superhero-obsessed boys.

Anna’s class will be celebrating 100 Days of School in a few weeks, so I decided to check out 100 School Days by Anne and Lizzy Rockwell. It’s part of the school holidays series by the same authors, and we enjoyed all the books that are targeted at K-1 age group. We read 100 School Days before, and Anna commented this time that they didn’t do any “in between” activities for 10, 20, etc. days. Well, her class is not 10 kids like in the book but rather 25. I am not complaining, however, my own 1st grade had 44, and I turned out just fine

A Tangram Master

2012-01-17T16:16:00.001-08:00

Warlord’s Puzzle by Virginia Pilegard/Nicolas Debon was recommended a couple of weeks ago by Almost Unschoolers, and I thought that the book was too interesting to miss. It also went well with our current theme of learning about China and Chinese folklore through a wonderful fiction book by Grace Lin Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. Anna was quite interested in the story and immediately exclaimed, This is about our puzzle on the fridge! Our magnetic fridge tangram is older than our daughter, and I tried to get her interested in them before. In fact, looking at my blog I discovered two early attempts here and here. Alas, it was too early, but this time she picked up the important part about making a square – the straight line from the two big triangles must continue down. Once she figured it out, she was able to put together a square easily and repeated this feat in the evening with our fridge puzzle. We also did some puzzles from Three Pigs, One Wolf, Seven Magic Shapes by Grace Maccarone – a hilarious tangram take on Three Pigs. The tangrams in that book were presented with shape lines in, so it was more “follow instructions” exercise. I hope we will do more tangram fun later this week – after all, we have a whole book full of them that came with a beautiful wooden set.

Week In Review–January 15, 2012

2012-01-15T02:06:00.000-08:00

It was exciting to see so many participants in Afterschool last week. I loved this Rapunzel doll at April’s Homemaking. Making wooden dolls is one thing that I would really like to try this year. Another great idea came from Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas – she and her girls did some very colorful baking soda and vinegar experiments. I am looking forward to new ideas this week when Afterschool is hosted by What Do We Do All Day. And now on to our week.

School. It worries me a little that when I ask Anna if she learned something new in school or whether there was something that surprised her, she always says, “no”. My husband helps in the classroom once a week, and he says that “super stations” are pretty interesting with some challenge for more advanced kids. At least Anna loves school as much as ever and claims it’s interesting even if she is supposedly not learning anything new.

Afterschool. I had a big presentation at work this week and worked late 3 out of 5 days. My husband was running a tight ship though – Anna had a playdate, restarted her gymnastics classes (she finally agreed to be moved to a group for 5 year olds) and attended a very fun music program in school with a special guest. And… ta-da… she started Russian lessons with a teacher who will be coming to our house. The first lesson was a bit turbulent, but I am hoping that they will find a way to work together, and I will find will power to speak more Russian with her.

Quote of the week. Me: Anna, did you learn anything about Martin Luther King in school?
Anna: No.
Me: Nothing at all? How strange! Do you know who Martin Luther King was?
Anna: No, I don’t know who he was, but I know who killed him. His first name was Earl, and he went to prison and died there. Will you go to prison forever for wrecking someone’s car, mama? Because papa said it can happen to you, you know.

What My Child Is Reading–January 14, 2012

2012-01-14T02:55:00.000-08:00

We are still reading through Where the Mountain Meet the Moon in the evenings, and Anna is reading through Rainbow Magic series, but she was quite disappointed this week when she only found two new fairy books in the library. We read a few other books together.

Dear Mr Blueberry by Simon James is a delightful book! It’s set as a letter exchange between a girl and her teacher during a summer break. I thought that the teacher could have at least acknowledged Emily’s imagination in his responses, but his factual approach adds humor to the story. I challenged Anna to come up with her own scenario for this book, and we might even do some writing activity to follow up, but we didn’t get around to it yet.

Since we are working on our “Eat Healthy Foods” resolution, we reread a non-fiction Good Enough To Eat book by Lizzy Rockwell. The book is a little outdates since it talks about the old food pyramid, but it gives a good overview of food groups and different healthy options. It also has several recipes in the back, but we haven’t tried any of them yet. I can think that all the talk about healthy eating starts bringing results, since daughter is eating her vegetables more cheerfully nowadays.

One Dark Night by Lisa Wheeler and Ivan Bates was Anna’s K book this week. It was the second week in a row when she got a book she hadn’t read before, and she was pleased about it. The story is more appropriate for preschool age, and has a fun twist in the end. Anna commented that the book was misleading us about what is about to happen and contrasted it with Jan Brett’s books where she gives clues about what is going to happen next in her illustrations.

Finally, I brought over Martin Luther King Jr. Day by Linda Lowery from the library to tell Anna a little about the holiday next Monday. I learned a lot from this book, but mostly it’s because I didn’t go to school in the States. The book is marked for grade 2, and I would think that for once this is low, since it’s hard to truly appreciate what MLK did without understanding more about history. The book is also pretty long, so I would say it’s better for 7+ kids.

Lunch Box Blues Challenge

2012-01-12T13:27:00.001-08:00

As many others, we started the New Year with “eat healthy foods” resolution. We actually don’t do too bad on it at home or even when we eat out, but by the end of last year situation with Anna’s school lunches was disastrous. She started to reject every one of her normal choices and ate next to nothing three days a week when she had her lunch in YMCA. We brainstormed some ideas on how to improve the situation and implemented a couple of changes:

1. We reduced her morning snack to half a portion to make sure she is sufficiently hungry by 12:30 pm when she has lunch in Y. At home she usually has lunch at 1:30 pm.
2. We stopped asking her what she wants to eat because it was clear that she has no clue. Even when she “ordered” something, she most often brought it home not finished.
3. We changed up her lunch container to a “fancy” one with four subdivisions. We discussed My Plate with her and talked how we need to eat things from different food groups.

But that's where my own lunch box blues start. The blog world is full of adorable bento boxes and fun lunch ideas. Some people have plenty of time and energy to cut fun veggie shapes and create ham flowers. Well, I am a working mom, and I am usually on calls by 6:30 am. My husband is in charge of lunch box preparation, and he is not at all interested in getting fancy with lunch prep. Three food groups don’t present too much challenge as my daughter readily eats fruit, whole grain crackers and veggies (she usually asks for peas or green beans). But she doesn’t eat cheese no matter how fancily it’s cut, and she doesn’t like lunch meats. So I am giving my readers a challenge:
You are given a container with 4 sections. What will you pack that doesn’t require an elaborate prep or heating? An additional challenge – container is not entirely spill proof. Handicap – our school is a peanut free zone.

We Are Going to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo…

2012-01-10T02:49:00.000-08:00

This weekend the weather was perfect as it usually is in early January. It was sunny and in upper 60s as we headed out to SF Zoo. Anna was excited – according to her, “we haven’t been in a zoo in a thousand years!”. She is partially right – even though we have a membership, we don’t get out there often enough. This time we led her to define where we will go and how long we will spend where. It was a nice change not to be in charge and just enjoy the moment.

Anna’s favorite place is, of course, Children Zoo. It’s a great hands-on place set up as a mini-farm. Children get to brush goats ans sheep, scoop the droppings, feed the goats (if parents buy a few food pellets for 50 cents), see how chicken hatchery works and pump water. We spent at least an hour in that area.

Anna also wanted to see “the monkeys”. SF Zoo has a pretty big primates exhibit with various monkeys including rare gorillas and chimpanzees. They were pretty active when we were there and enjoying a nice warm day. Anna also enjoyed an interesting interactive quiz comparing humans to gorillas.

Anna also wanted to see bears. SF Zoo has polar bears and an interesting grizzly habitat. Anna commented that this polar bear looks green and not white. When we came home, we read here that In zoos, polar bears have been known to turn green due to colonies of algae growing in their hollow hair shafts.

We had a very fun trip and stayed for 4 hours. I did my best keeping Anna awake on the way home, and she was sleeping soundly at 7 pm without any protests about going to bed too early.

In honor of our zoo trip, I am going to pick up Life-Size Zoo from the library again. It’s an awesome book with a lot of interesting facts about animals and beautiful photos. I am sure that Anna is going to enjoy reading it again, especially since she just saw some of those animals up close and personal.

Week In Review–January 8, 2012

2012-01-08T17:26:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the new year of our Afterschool Blog Hop! It’s officially hosted today by MaryAnne at Mama Smiles.

School. Anna was very excited to start school on Tuesday even though all of us had a hard time starting our days early again. She was happy that they had a music class on the first day, and an “Art Vista” program (led by parent volunteers) on Friday where they learned to make clay animals. She also was excited to get “Outstanding” in behavior one day this week – this is the first time ever she got to “Outstanding” which is not given lightly by her teacher. She asked to celebrate by eating part of that giant chocolate Santa in the picture. Unfortunately, she missed one day of school already – I was asked to pick her up on Wednesday because she was throwing up, and we held her back home on Thursday to stay safe. Luckily, she got back to normal after sleeping for 18 hours straight from Wednesday late afternoon to Thursday morning.

Afterschool. Somehow we didn’t do much this week (or so it feels). Anna had a playdate one night (mostly they were racing their hex bugs in a maze), then she was sick, then we had a library night where we usually spend at least an hour. On Friday we played a couple of games of checkers and cooked together. Anna loves to cook and can be a great helper if she is in a good mood and wanting to help.

Places we are going. We had our first field trip of the year on Saturday – to San Francisco Zoo. I will write a separate post on it, but the weather was perfect for a trip, and we let Anna be in charge this time and decide where she wants to go. Not surprisingly, her main objective was Children’s Zoo where she got to brush and feed farm animals.

What My Child Is Reading–January 7, 2012

2012-01-07T03:12:00.000-08:00

Anna continues to read through Rainbow Fairies series – I guess I need to start ordering missing books from other libraries. She loves the fact that there are so many books and keeps rereading her favorites many times, so at any given time we have about 10 of those books in the house. She doesn’t display any interest to reenact the books though – this is when I wish she had a closely spaced sibling or a readily available playmate, since I am not up to it!

For the second week now we’ve been reading aloud Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin. We read a lot of her picture books, but this one is a full size fantasy novel. Theoretically Anna could have read it on her own, but I don’t let her have it in her room, since I am really enjoying discovering this story with her. I like the fact that the story features a strong, action-oriented female character. I think many kids 5+ will enjoy this book, and it can charm young teenagers as well.

We still try to keep going with some geography activity even though I abandoned my attempt of deep country dives for the time being. Who’s Been Here by Lindsay Barrett George is a series of books usually set in a particular habitat, for example, in the pond. They offer short descriptions and then a visual clue, and the reader can try and guess what animal left this visual clue. Around the World is set across different continents, and Anna enjoyed tracking the progress of the book on the map. I recommend it for 4+.

Officer Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathmann was the first homework book of the new year and one of the few books in the program we haven’t read before. It’s a pretty funny story about a policeman and his dog. I found some interesting extensions online, but at the time of this writing (on Wednesday) daughter is sick and we didn’t get to do them yet. I am curious what rating she will give to this book in her writing journal. I think it’s very good for 3-6 years (and for safety theme), but Anna might already find it boring.

Vacation Wrap-Up

2012-01-03T20:13:00.001-08:00

I really enjoyed my vacation this year. I “signed off” on December 16 and managed to convince myself to close my Outlook on December 20 when I noticed myself compulsively reading and even responding to incoming emails. Anna also had two weeks of vacation, but she went to a very fun winter camp in her afterschool for the first week. It gave me and my husband a chance to finish our Christmas prep and spend much needed time as a couple. In the end of the year we fell into a routine of spending most of our precious time together in front of TV, and it was good to discuss together what we want to do better next year.

The second week was spent doing fun activities together:Celebrating Christmas and opening presents…Reading a lot of good books, even on the road.

Hiking in our favorite State Park

Observing free-flying tropical butterflies in California Academy of ScienceCelebrating a New YearTrying out a new park

Catching some snowflakes even though they were fake. Our Californian girl probably thinks that snow comes in soapy bubbles.

On Monday night I asked Anna, What was your favorite part of vacation?
Anna: So much mama! I love you, mama!
Me: I love you too, sweetie. And what was least favorite?
Anna: No school!

New Year Crafts and Activities

2012-01-02T02:08:00.000-08:00

We haven’t read any fiction books about New Year this year, but I brought home this non-fiction book about New Year celebrations around the world and asked Anna to pick what looked interesting to her. She wanted to do a cake with a coin baked in it (Greece), a wish balloon (we ended up skipping it), an apple and honey snack from Israel and a Trinidad drum. Trinidad drum was easy, since I had an empty coffee can. Add some acrylic paints and a drum was ready for operation in about 2 hours. Anna was happily making up her own New Year songs and singing them for anyone who visited us in these couple of days. One other activity that she really wanted to try was German fortune telling with melted wax. My husband said that it’s actually done with molted lead, not with wax. Wax didn’t work out too well, since all we were getting are tiny drops which all looked pretty much like sea shells, but Anna still enjoyed this part of New Year celebration. Oh, and instead of baking a cake, we baked cupcakes and put a coin in one of them. Anna was disappointed when papa ended up getting it

I thought that we were done with New Year crafts when we did our drum, but I read this post by Kim at The Educators’ Spin on It where she shared some interesting links for New Year’s crafts, and I was very taken by the Resolution Flower. The funny part was that I was planning to discuss resolutions with Anna and write them down, but she was adamant about doing most of the writing, saying, It’s my craft, and I will do what I want! You can guess who wrote what, but the ideas (and some of the categories) are all hers.

Year in Review and 2012 Look Ahead

2012-01-01T02:18:00.000-08:00

Another year is rolling in, and it’s time yet again to look back at the year that just flew by so very quickly. The most important event of the year was transition to Kindergarten, and I am happy to see how much Anna is thriving in school. At work I took more responsibilities and now manage a pretty sizeable team distributed all over the world. I get more money, but I also have longer work days, more stress and more work-related travel. Because of that, a lot of our home organization plans fell behind, and very often we both feel that we do a lot of tag-team parenting and barely manage to catch our breaths. We didn’t do as well in an area of exercise and healthy eating as we hoped, and I am grateful that we didn’t end up with anything more serious than an occasional viral cold last year.

So what’s up for 2012? I am a planner by nature, so, of course, I have a list. But… I read this blog post recently, A Short Guide to Effortless Learning, and one point really spoke to me. It said, Have no fixed plans and goals. The important part here is fixed. So very often I was disappointed when my fixed plans were not carried out due to lack of time or energy. I would like to be more fluid this year and work with what I have. I would also like to stay more in the moment and to follow my daughter’s interests instead of leading. We’ll see where we end up on this road by the end of the year.

Happy New Year, my blog friends! I hope it will be a healthy, peaceful and abundant year for all of us!

What My Child Is Reading–Best Books of 2011

2011-12-31T02:35:00.000-08:00

Since our reading week was heavily dominated by a zillion of Fairy Magic books (which, thankfully, I don’t have to read), I decided to dedicate this last post of the year by putting together the list of our favorite books of 2011. I was motivated by one of my faithful WMCIR participants Ready, Set, Read, but she was focusing on the books published in 2011. I will focus on the books we read and loved in 2011. For reference, my daughter is now 5, an avid and very fluent reader. We still read together every night, and we read together all of the books I am reviewing here.

Best fantasy books – Catwings series by Ursula Le Guin. We love both reading them and listening to the stories on CD. I am looking forward to Anna reading other stories by Ursula Le Guin one day, since she is one of my favorite fantasy writers.

Best books about animals – shared by Life-Size Zoo and Out of Sight. Both books are interactive, full of information and have fantastic photography.

Best (quirkiest and funniest) math book – 365 Penguins. We took it from the library several times, and I see us doing it again when daughter is a bit older.

Best geography book – Around the World with Mouk. Engaging illustrations, interesting story lines and a lot of details. It’s followed closely by Follow the Line Around the World, but the story is lacking here.

Best poetry book – You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You series and any other book by Mary Ann Hoberman. We love her books and I grab them as soon as I see a new one.

New author we love – Julia Donaldson. We started with The Snail and the Whale and loved every single book we read by her.

Most requested book – Rikki Tikki Tavi. Anna specifically liked this version that I linked up to even though she did read an original version that we had at home as well.

The book I most enjoyed reading aloud – Jenny Linsky stories. We still have a couple in this series we didn’t read, and I am planning to catch up on them in 2012.

The book most recommended for home library – A Family Treasury of Little Golden Books. This is a great buy, especially if you have multiple children under 5. This is a great collection that will last for years.

Your turn: What were your favorite children books of 2011?

Thank you everyone who participated in WMCIR link ups of 2011! Happy New Year and see you next week “on the other side”

Toy Winners of Christmas 2011

2011-12-28T21:55:00.001-08:00

It’s funny that before Christmas my normally conservative husband was overflowing with worry that our daughter doesn’t have enough Christmas presents. That cracked me up a little, since I am usually the one “spoiling her rotten”. She was definitely not lacking in gifts from friends and family, even though Santa didn’t fulfill her fish for an “iPod with games”. Instead he brought each of us a hexbug nano, and papa showed her how to build labyrinths out of our wooden blocks for hexbug races. My husband was clearly in cahoots with Santa Claus, since he built an enclosure for hexbugs (it can be taken apart) in advance.

Anna had asked for Snap Circuits Jr when browsing a toy catalog. I told her that the toy is marked as 8+ and she has to wait a couple of years for this even though I was very tempted reading several reviews of this set. Imagine her delight when our best friend who is practically her surrogate uncle gave her one for Christmas. She was beyond herself with joy and proved me wrong by building a lot of circuits on her own by now.

Anna was begging for this Merry Christmas Scratch and Sketch since she saw it in the store in the beginning of December. She even began to save money to buy it on her own. Considering that she doesn’t get a regular allowance, this would take her a long time, so I made a suggestion to grandparents. Of course, her wish was granted, and she was very happy with this gift. By the way, the shirt came from her German aunt and uncle together with a gardening kit, coloring books and a small Lego set.

And… ta-da… by far the most engaging present (at least on Christmas Day) that came from me – Klutz Fabulous Book of Paper Dolls. Anna spent hours playing with these paper dolls and changing their outfits (her quirky sense of style always makes me smile). I am a little doubtful as to how long the dolls will last – they could be a little more robust, but so far so good. You can also see wooden train stations made by papa as an extension to her existing train set. She loved them and new trains as well, but they didn’t quite make to the most played yet.

I couldn’t help sharing my favorite among Anna’s presents – Blokus Duo. We love games and have a lot of them at home, so I couldn’t quite convince my husband that we need to get Blokus. I was thrilled that one of Anna’s best friends (or, rather, his father) gave it to Anna. It’s a perfect fast strategy game where the winner is often not known until the game is over. Very clever, and we all enjoyed playing it. Interestingly, I am winning against my husband and keep losing to Anna, probably because I am trying to teach her to make smart moves.

Your turn: What presents were winners in your homes this year?

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T02:33:00.000-08:00

What My Child Is Reading–Christmas Books Part 3

2011-12-24T03:10:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas! Excitement is in the air and in the books we read together this week. I was able to get some of the books recommended by my blogging friend – you can recognize some of your books in an Amazon widget above. However, I decided to share some other favorite Christmas picks of the last two weeks.

I always save ’Twas the Night Before Christmas to December 24. There are so many versions of this book, we actually owe three different ones. However, Anna and I both love the Tiger Tales edition illustrated by Kat Whelan. Granted, action is moved to a world inhabited by mice, but in our family we happen to love mice, and who can resist magically sparkling and glittery pages. The book is really well done, and I definitely recommend it as an addition to your library.

I selected The Christmas Alphabet book by Robert Sabuda not for the story, since there is none, but for amazing pop-ups that made my paper-loving husband go ooh and aah inspecting each page. Anna enjoyed the book too even though she couldn’t quite appreciate the level of mastery required to create these paper marvels. The book is now on sale on Amazon for $9.18 – an amazing bargain considering how expensive it must be to produce. I am very tempted!

I stumbled upon My Penguin Osbert by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel accidentally, but this book was one of my personal favorites of this Christmas season. In the book the main character makes a very specific wish, and Santa really comes through this year. However, the narrator quickly learns, “be careful what you wish for” lesson when he spends his days freezing outside, eats fish for breakfast and takes icy baths. This is an entertaining story for kids and far more funny read for adults.

I wrote about How the Russian Snow Maiden Helped Santa Claus last year as well. This book belongs to our home library – I was lucky to get it through paperbackswap.com exchange. Both Anna and myself really enjoy this cross-cultural book that pairs up characters from Russian Christmas tradition (Father Frost and his granddaughter Snow Maiden) with a very American Santa Claus. I will not give away more, but it’s a very enjoyable book (It also teaches a few russian words given in English transliteration).

Celebrate Everything

2011-12-22T22:29:00.001-08:00

Even though our crafting didn’t really happen this year, we’ve been enjoying the season.

The tree is ready, the presents are all wrapped, and Anna is all excited about Christmas morning. I admit that I am excited too!

Anna went on her very first field trip on a “real school bus” with her winter camp and tried skating for the very first time. Too bad that we were not there to take a picture. We also went to San Jose “Christmas in the Park” and enjoyed beautiful animated displays there as well as in our own neighborhood.

Anna is taking her responsibilities of an “official candle lighter” of Hanukkah very seriously. It’s neat that Hanukkah overlaps with Christmas this year!

We had a few of Anna’s friends over for a “Hanukkah winter party”. I read the kids the story of Hanukkah, we decorated cookies, played a dreidel and made Christmas tree ornaments. Interestingly, everyone knew how to play dreidel – they learned it in school together with a song to go with it.

I am very grateful this year – for my family, my health, my friends and for having enough for all we need and for most of what we want. I am truly blessed.

Yummy Holiday Traditions

2011-12-20T22:42:00.001-08:00

We are lucky to have friends who open their house in December to their friends for a cookie decorating party . We went since Anna was born, and it is fun to see how her decorating skills evolved over time. As I recall she was only interested in eating the decorations when she was 2, decorated one cookie when she was 3 and maybe decorated two or three last year. This year she was on a roll and spent a good hour and a half carefully decorating about a dozen cookies (I took this picture in the middle). Ironically, she is not really interested in eating them, she generally likes only baking goods containing chocolate. I am very grateful to our mess-tolerant friends (who, by the way, don’t have children) – Anna’s decorating station was a huge mess despite my best efforts.

Another tradition is a gingerbread house decorating that is hosted by dad of Anna’s very first boyfriend. She knew D since they were about 9 months old. This is an event just for two kids and their dads. To be honest, these kids had better times in their relationship with each other, but they still enjoyed getting together for a gingerbread event. Dads helped with the assembly and the icing, but kids decorated their houses on their own this year. Anna is mightily proud of her gingerbread house!

Week In Review–December 18, 2012

2011-12-18T03:28:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone who joined Afterschool last week! There were so many good ideas. I was especially entertained by a cute story behind this mini gingerbread house with an important lesson for kids and parents.

Afterschool linky will be hosted by Kelly at Little Wonders’ Days this week and then we will take a Christmas break. Please drop me an email or a comment if you want to join as a host of Afterschool blog hop.

School. It was the last week of the school year, and Anna was having a blast. There were a lot of winter celebrations. I was amused when she brought home a self-made dreidel and dreidel game instructions as homework. On Friday they had a pajama day, read The Polar Express, and got an icy letter from Santa Claus. She is already missing her teacher.

Afterschool. There was a lot of afterschool writing this week. One day Anna wrote a list of all things she could do on her own, where I contributed some ideas and spelling. One of the things that she wrote down is “to do a worksheet”. She keeps working on “First Grade Math for The Gifted Student” book, and I was impressed that she could figure out the solution for making 30 cents in different ways problem. Just a few months back it would have been impossible, since she just couldn’t understand the conversion of coins to value. She also went for her belated five year check this week. I was relieved to see that she is still on the chart for growth (13%). I almost expected her to be below the norm, since she is really tiny compared to her classmates.

Places we are going. We enjoyed some good weather this week and spent some time in our local park. We also went to Anna’s classmate’s house for dinner. A and Anna are getting to be good friends, and we really click with his parents. Anna also enjoys attention of A’s little sister and gets to play a “big girl” part. It’s fun to see the kids getting along so well and playing together without any need for supervision. They are growing up!

Christmas prep. We were busy this week finishing shopping, wrapping presents, and making and writing Christmas cards, Anna was hard at work making her own cards for her grandparents and for her uncle. This year I didn’t have to cajole her to write them – she was quite willing to write her messages. She was wishing “lots of presents” to everyone. I wrote about 25 cards, about the same number is still left to go, but the goal is to finish all Christmas prep tomorrow!

What My Child Is Reading–Hanukkah Books Preview

2011-12-17T03:12:00.000-08:00

This year Hanukkah overlaps with Christmas. In our secular household we celebrate both, so I will share the books we will be reading during Hanukkah (it starts on December 20) with the hope that maybe you can still find them in the library. This week we read another batch of Christmas books together (one or two each night), and Anna was powering on through Daisy Meadows Fairies books.

I was glad to get A Family Hanukkah by Bobbi Katz again from the library. The book is long, and could be about Christmas celebrations except different food choices and a dreidel game. But it does include a good description of the story of Hanukkah – something that I failed to find in most of Hanukkah books we read last year. It also explains the tradition of lighting a Menorah.

It’s a Miracle! by Stephanie Spinner is my favorite Hanukkah book. I think this year we will split the reading into 8 nights, because otherwise the story gets really long. Every night after the candles are lit, grandma tells a new story to the main character. The first story is about a young girl who dreamed to become a rabbi, then there is another one about a soldier who convinced other families to pray for his sick wife, etc. It’s a good read, and there is a surprise in the end.

The Borrowed Hanukkah Latkes by Linda Glaser/Nancy Cote belongs to our home library. The story focuses around attempts by a young main character to involve their elderly neighbor in Hanukkah celebration. It doesn’t explain why Ms Greenberg doesn’t have anyone to celebrate with, but it’s not really important for the story line. As an additional bonus, there is a latkes recipe in the book. Here is an important tip from me – lots of oil and a really hot pan!

The Best Hanukkah Ever by Barbara Diamond Goldin/Avi Katz is a pretty entertaining story of a family who listens to their rabbi’s advice of selecting “a perfect gift”. They all think hard about what their gifts will be. A lot of unhappiness is ensued until the problem is solved through the wisdom of a child. It’s a fun read, and the book is not hard to follow for younger kids.