Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? B4FIAR

Wow this week has flown by! We decided to have a TV detox this week. We started noticing that Big Boy was getting way too attached to his TV shows. One Sunday morning a few weeks ago we woke him up telling him we were going to church to see our friends and he started complaining saying, "nooooooo, I want to stay home and watch my shows!!". That was the final straw, I hated that he would rather watch something with zero interaction than to go and play with his friends. Big Boy is naturally very sociable, so this response was very abnormal and heart breaking to say the least. At the beginning of the week Big Boy asked a LOT to watch his shows, but by the end of the week he wasn't asking about it anymore. I also saw a HUGE increase in his listening skills and respect. While we were at the library this afternoon he was playing on the computers for about 5 minutes when we needed to leave. I told him we needed to go and he listened right away, and when I asked him to put up the blocks he had taken out he didn't complain or push back like he was doing before our "detox". I really do think his respectful behavior is directly related to the amount of one on one time we've had while doing "school" and our focused time together. I will say that it has been an incredibly trying week for myself, definitely not all puppies and rainbows. I had gotten used to using the TV as a crutch when I just wanted a moment to myself. I had many, many cry outs to the Lord for energy (our bible verse this week was just as much for me as it was for Big Boy! "Seek the Lord and his strength.") Little Man is very clingy still and when he would go down for a nap Big Boy wanted me to to jump into 100% play mode. Whoever said being a stay at home mom was easy obviously hasn't done it, or has an EXTRA BIG scoop of God's grace and patience, in which they obviously need to share with the rest of us out there! The Lord provides though, and this is just a season that I know I will want back some day, and that day will be sooner rather than later I'm sure. Don't get me wrong, we did have several wonderful moments of fun and wonder together which makes all the hard ones much easier to handle.

.... Now on to our book and school week! This week we read the book "Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?" by: Nancy Carlstrom. If you haven't read this book I would suggest taking a look. We really enjoyed the cute rhymes and playful spirit of Jesse Bear and his family. During some of our readings we stopped and counted all the bears we saw (I think there were 72 or something), every time we saw a flower, and even talked about wall paper choices in Jesse Bear's bathroom. One of my favorite discussions we had focused on the last page of the book where it showed Jesse Bear's bedroom. We talked for a long time about how Jesse Bear must have cleaned up his toys at some point during the day because at the beginning of the book his ball was out and he was playing with toys but at the end they were on his book shelf. We took the book into his bedroom and pointed out similarities between Jesse Bear's room and and Big Boy's room including windows, rugs, and even some toys. We then talked about how Jesse Bear is taking care of his toys by putting them on the shelf and we should too. Big boy took the initiative to make sure his room was cleaned up for when Daddy came home and I was shocked! Among the many life changes we are working on is trying to instill good cleaning habits (which I will be the first to admit is not a strength of mine). Seeing him decide he wanted to clean up his toys to take care of them made my heart smile.

 Our first activity that we did with this book was probably my favorite one. We took a giant piece of paper from our roll of paper we got from Ikea a little while back and I traced his out line. He then decided what "paper Big Boy" got to wear. He had such a good time, giggling at how big the drawing was. After he colored we decided to measure it because he thought it was HUGE. Then we measured himself and compared the two. I tried to add yarn hair but he wanted to draw it on himself as well as ears, a mouth and ties on his shorts. This is one of the first times that I've seen him so excited about coloring and creating something like this so I didn't push too hard for adding my own touches (except the goggly eyes, it just had to be done of course). I love watching him grow and see his creativity start to flourish!

Some of the other activities we enjoyed this week included a duck count, vocabulary words and match up, rhyming words, a Jesse Bear wardrobe coloring book, tracing lines, and play dough bear Jesse Bear clothes.  

We also talked about what Jesse Bear ate during his lunch and while I read Big Boy separate between what Jesse Bear ate and what he didn't eat. Once again, he did such a great job with this! It's amazing how smart he is and how quickly he catches on to things despite this being his first time doing a more focused learning time. We even learned about a few new foods! 

The weather has been amazing the past few weeks so we took advantage of the 70's and 80's in October and went for a few walks around camp. We stopped and played in the sand one morning just like Jesse Bear did. "I'll wear sand on my hand in the morning". Big Boy loves digging and drawing in the sand and wanted Little Man to join him, but Little Man is still in the "I can't get dirty" phase of life.  After playing in the sand we took Jesse Bear (a teddy bear we dressed up with Little Man's clothes to match what he wears in the book) to the swings. Swinging is THE BEST activity for all of us. It's low energy for me, and high energy fun for BOTH boys, WIN WIN! We read the book again while the boys swung and Big Boy got a kick out of me pushing Jesse Bear too. I kept trying to call the boys Big Boy Bear and Little Man Bear, but Big Boy was very adamant about the fact that he is not a bear 😂. 

For Little Man we've been working on pointing. He's been having a blast pointing and pushing buttons, and tonight while reading our book he pointed out lots of different pictures in the book. It is a special gift to be able to watch your child learn new things and be able to use their bodies in ways they hadn't been able to before.

The last thing we did was make Jesse Bear sugar cookies. Big Boy helped from start to finish! We don't have a huge kitchen space so he hasn't had much experience being able to help me bake and we both really enjoyed the bonding time. We talked about counting and general helpful hints while baking, like turning the oven on to warm up while we cut out cookies, or mixing the dry ingredients separately before adding them into the wet ingredients. He was very good at making sure we didn't get "poofed" (his words) on with the flour by adding it in slowly. When it came to decorating time he really just wanted to work on adding sprinkles and being the taste tester, which was fine because it was getting late. We decided there were WAY too many cookies for us to eat by ourselves so we brought them to church with us to share with our friends.

                  

    
*Tips for baking with kiddos/ in general... Use a glass to hold open the icing bag and get some of the rubber bands to close the  bags so the icing doesn't pop out the top.

  

This weekend we also explored a pumpkin patch with daddy and I was able to set up our space a little more with this homeschool wall. I found this cool felt map at a thrift store complete with animal felts that I'm excited to use alongside some of our books. We talked about which continent we live on and put a brown bear over the general area of where California is. We have also been working on predictions in weather. Big Boy is very hopeful that it will be snowy every morning when we go and check. Ever since we talked about visiting Memaw and G-Daddy at their new house and seeing snow he's been very excited about the possibility (no matter how slight-a-chance) of snow. For now I've been enjoying this organizational set up. Each folder is a different day of the week and we have our chalkboard complete with our memory verse and sign language (just noticed our memory verse is wrong on the board... it's actually 1 Chronicles 16:11 not 6). What are some ways you organize your space?? I would love to hear some your ideas.  I pray that someday God will provide us with a homeschooling room for the boys, but for now we are happy to utilize the dining room table. 

Stay tuned for next weeks book, "Goodnight Moon" by: Margaret Wise Brown!