Second Week of Kindergarten and Our Camping Trip

This week was a little more challenging because I had the brilliant idea to do school while we were camping, and that just didn't happen. So thankfully because I only have one kid in school, playing catch-up wasn't too hard. 

 

Our week started off  so good! I finally bought some play-dough because I haven't found a recipe that I like yet. Hopefully someday I will, but right now store-bought is serving us well.

The boys tried to form letters out of it, and they definitely need to continue to practice rolling the dough into logs. But, they had fun, and that is really what matters.

They have also been doing a lot of spelling and handwriting practice. Ira has always done so well, so it has been interesting to watch Asa struggle and try over and over again. He is extremely motivated to write like Ira, and he is starting to pick up letters really fast. 

We studied the painting Dance at the Moulin de la Galette by Renoir. His paintings are so beautiful, and this is one of his most famous. Anyway, for art we made a "party collage", inspired by the party scene in Renoir's painting. This was one of my favorite art projects so far. Usually, the boys are more interested in painting blobs than actually painting scenes and things. Well, this time is was just pasting pictures I printed off from the internet or took from the very few magazines we own. They seemed to really like it, and I loved the result. It was fun to look at their "parties". 

 

Later that day we decided to go to the park for a change of scenery for our outdoor play time. The most extraordinary thing happened! Ira wanted to sit in the green handicapped swings and have me push him.

 

Ean really likes to run right where the swings are swinging, so I was wanting to keep him away from the swing area. I explained this to Ira, so he goes and sits in a green swing by himself. About 10 minutes later I look over and see him pushing a little girl in the other green swing. My Ira! Ira doesn't usually notice what is going on around him, since he is autistic. 

 

I don't know how it happened, but the fact that he somehow chose to push someone else on the swing made my heart swell. 

 

It is moments like this that make being the mother of an autistic child a honor and a pleasure. 

 

Ira really took off with helping the rest of the week, which is crazy because the past several years he has resisted doing anything that is chore-like. First, he helped shuck corn for dinner after we came home from the park. He and Asa had a blast and were sad when they ran out of corn. Too bad I don't really like corn, because we would have more so they could shuck some more. 

Later, after dinner was done, I measured the ingredients, and Ira poured and blended black bean brownies. He has never tried to help cook before, but he did amazing! Since then he has helped make several things. His favorites is waffles. I am not a fan though because I get to scrub the waffle iron down really good every time he is done, haha.

Finally, the day came to go camping! I have been waiting all year for this, and it ended up being so fun! The boys loved the lake, the fire, and the tent. They loved the sticky marshmallows a lot, haha. I learned a few things for next time. 

First, I am camping when everyone is back in school. So I can show up much later because I don't need to fight over campsites. I had the whole campsite to myself until about 6pm, when a woman from New Hampshire decided to stay for the night. Because I showed up around 1ish, the boys were ready to set up the tent and start the fire at 2:30. 

 

It took a lot of effort to get them to be interested in anything else. I had planned on doing school. Yeah, that didn't work. I thought we would just hang out at the lake all day. Nope, that didn't work either. Everything was done before dark, and they were wondering when we were going home. I did my best to stay happy and to keep them happy, but it was a bit of a struggle. So, we will just come much later. 

 

Second, I brought a water cooler so we didn't get heat exhaustion. And yet we all still had heat exhaustion because I didn't make sure we were drinking water. *sigh* That was a pretty silly mistake, which cost us a lot of enjoyment over the trip. 

 

And third, I am use to camping in places that have lots of wood to burn. Not this campsite. Thankfully I brought charcoal, just in case.  The fire we had that night really was horrible because I tried so hard to just use what I could find. The next morning I just used charcoal, which made a fire that was too good, haha. It burned forever! 

 

In summary, I loved camping. And I want to go one more time before I leave for my trip to Missouri.

The first thing Ean did when we got home was started to pull everything out of cupboards when I was making dinner. This kid loves anything that isn't a toy, especially if it came from the kitchen. I need to be better about teaching him to clean up when he is done.

We got back into school the day we came home from camping. We did an enrichment activity to build story comprehension of Owl Moon by Jane Yolen.

 

We decided to make puppets. I traced out some basic shapes from the story, and Ira colored them in without me even asking him too. 

 

I was so impressed with how they turned out. And we had a lot of fun playing out the story. 

 

I really loved our art from this week. Seeing our "Party Collages" and b's made from leaves made me so happy. So I snapped a picture. 

 

Later in the week, I changed Ean's diaper and took off his clothes because it was almost bedtime. He brought me his swimsuit and shoes a few minutes later. 

 

After I put them on him, he went and knocked on the back door. He isn't verbal yet, but he is starting to get creative in how he tells me what he wants, haha!

 

The next day he wanted to go outside, so brought me Asa's red boots. It was hilarious to watch him walk around in them, but he did a super good job. I was impressed, since they are 4 sizes too big for him.

For me, when it comes to personal projects, I had a lot of time to myself because Matthew had rehearsals every night this week...which is glorious! I watched the 1985 and am almost done with the 2008 versions of BBC's Sense and Sensibility. I loved the 1985 version until the very end. It wasn't very fulfilling to me. So far I am really enjoying the 2008 version, even if Edward isn't as awkward and plain as he is suppose to be. That is one thing I don't really mind, haha. While I was watching those, I got a lot of work done on the stuffed Nativity set. I just have the shepherds and Mary to go! I am so excited to have them available to the boys this Christmas!

When I am done with the Nativity set, I get to break in my new sewing machine by learning how to read real patterns from the store to make some clothing. I am a little nervous. I have looked over the instructions, and boy are they intimating!  But I assume that as I start working, they will make more sense...hopefully!

My concerns from last week haven't changed much. 

Asa and Ira still are only halfway potty trained. No changes there.

Their food preferences haven't changed either. They are not being quite as picky about the zucchini anymore, but they still like sandwiches a bit too much.

The screen time did decrease a little bit. It helped they were too busy to remember that they wanted to watch something, and then I tried to establish boundaries and expectations before we even turned on the tv when they did watch something. That really seemed to help.

No new concerns thank goodness!