Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Today Lucy made a paper snowflake, watched Phineas and Ferb, filmed a 6-part Christmas musical with her nativity figurines, went to the library and picked out three books and a movie, filmed the two of us having a conversation about glitter and/or ponies and/or boys, helped me make the dinner she picked out for us to make from her cookbook, and when I told her what the word "tolerate" means, she thought of a relevant example from her own life. I also told her that platypuses secrete milk all over their bodies so their babies just suck on their mom's fur, and she said, "Oh, that must be why when Candace was Perry, she sweated milk!" And thus we were both delighted.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Today Lucy went swimming, wrote two songs and made up a dance to go with one of them, made a comic book about being helpers, made 4 Lizards Like the Humans videos and 2 craft tutorial videos, and figured out $400 x 3 in her head. She also used the word "particles" in a sentence and made a pun about the word "retire".

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Lucy is spelling! On Monday she spelled "peekaboo" out loud in the car. (You could have knocked me over with a feather -- I had no idea she could do that.) And tonight she just left a note outside her bedroom door for us to find, on which she attempted to spell things by herself!! I'm terribly excited. She has been copying the words she wants from books for a long time. This is the first time I've seen her attempt to spell things without asking for help and be willing to spell things wrong (which she did).

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Long time, no blog. Today Lucy struck up conversations with two different adults at the library, read a 9724 word 1-4 grade level chapter book in one hour, and in the past week she's used the words "decorative", "endemic", and "prosthetic" correctly in everyday conversations, figured out that quarters are called quarters because they're a quarter of a dollar, and gleefully read the 4 pages of generic info on puncture wounds that the urgent care gave us when she fell off the couch, ran into the coffee table, and bit all the way through her own lip. So I think we're doing alright.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, September 1 - 3, 2015

Tuesday was pretty much spent watching one of the Pooh movies on Netflix. And drawing pictures for a scrapbook she was making (one of which was of her wearing a Norman mask and it was super surreal and awesome). But when I mentioned offhand that the story of them substituting Piglet for Baby Roo and hoping Kanga wouldn't notice was my favorite part of the books, she got out the book and started reading. And then she read and read, and she got to one of the poems and she cracked up, and she read some more, and I got out the other book, and she it. And then she drew some more pictures (of course).

Wednesday was almost exclusively taken up by Lucy making many episodes of a TV show about lizards. She got her little plastic lizards and had them do stuff in front of her tablet camera. They're actually impressively coherent -- there are three main characters, all with their own personality quirks, and each episode starts the same way: Ronaldo Lizard is sleeping in his bed, he wakes up with a start realizing his alarm hasn't gone off, grabs his bag and his travel mug, and goes off to a different job, where two lizards are waiting to show him how they do the job. There is also a special episode where they watch Star Wars and decide to make their own Star Wars movie (so meta). (Also it should be noted that the last time Lucy watched a Star Wars movie she was 2 and she does not remember this. But she found my vintage pop-up Star Wars books the other day and has been reading them.) She would shoot an episode, and then come show it to me. And then all morning Thursday, she's been rewatching them. Here is the episode where Ronaldo goes down to the docks.

Wednesday is also library day, and before she had a massive screaming, flailing frustration freak out that I handled very calmly and refused to be embarrassed about (which drained every last piece of my emotional energy and then I was cranky with everyone the rest of the day -- you win some, you lose some), she made some really cool digital art on the computer!  There's a program where you can take webcam photos and then edit them with a paint program. She started a series of photos of her playing Blue's Clues. It was going to be super cool! Here's the one she finished:



Also this drawing of one of the Disney Fairies cooking? (I really like the egg being cracked into the bowl!)

A large portion of Thursday afternoon was spent using both Star Wars pop-up books plus the inventions pop-up book as sets for some of her Duplo people to have adventures on.

Then she said she wanted something new from the Homeschooling Cabinet (TM), so I opened it up and she picked these dress up fashion plate type things where you switch out swatches of fabric to make new clothes for the figures (kind of like these). Apparently that was great fun.

Thursday also meant the first Girl Scout meeting of the year. Big group, ice breaker type things. She had to ask some people what they are most scared off, and one of the grown ups said "credit cards!" so on the drive home we had a great talk about how credit cards work and how Norman and I use them and why they might be scary to some people.

Monday, August 31, 2015 (plus weekend)

Well, today we went grocery shopping and swimming. I didn't get in the pool today, so she made friends with the lifeguard, since she was pretty much the only person there.

Today she'd been quiet for a while, and when I found her, she was sitting in her rocking chair, reading (just reading) a time/money/fractions math workbook.

On Friday in the car, we were talking about carrier pigeons (because we had been laughing at a comic strip about how birds can't read), and she wanted to know how they know where to take their messages, because she knew about carrier pigeons from Curious George. I said that I didn't know, and maybe each bird only flew back and forth between two places. (Is that right? I never did look it up.) After several minutes of silence, she said, "Maybe each place you want to send a letter to could have a different colored pole outside, and you could put the color of the place you want to send it to on the envelope and you could teach the pigeons the color code!" I was very impressed.

She watched Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure, which I think must have something to do with a scepter? because she kept talking about making and delivering different kinds of scepters and then she drew the dress she was going to wear to do this, and it has symbols for every season on its train.



And also whatever this is... instructions for how to build a scepter?



This morning she planned a hike in the backyard because she wanted to show me what she thought was poison ivy (it wasn't), but then she planned out a whole thing with a map (which I suspect is modeled on something from Lumberjanes) and she packed snacks in her backpack and got a hat and everything.



And on Saturday we went and saw a replica Spanish galleon that was docked in town. We could go all over and see several decks below and they had a little thing where you could practice tying different kinds of knots (Lucy was already familiar with a few of them because of Lumberjanes) and we learned that the captain is a woman (which made Lucy very excited) and it was all around pretty cool.

Wednesday and Thursday, August 26 & 27, 2015

Wednesday:

Library, as usual. Norman put a hold on the Lumberjanes collection that had an issue she hadn't read in it, so she pretty much just plonked herself down in the children's section and read it. While she did that, I looked through all the juvenile graphic novels and picked some out that I thought she might like. She read two of them while we were there when she was done with Lumberjanes. Then she drew a picture. Then she made friends with a brother and sister (the sister's name was also Lucy) and they bonded over Lego books.

She made me a bracelet! Clever design, really. (A strip of newspaper and foam stickers)

Oh and she finished that fish lantern that we got in the Kiwi Crate.

And she wrote "LUCY MOM B-DAY" on her leg, reportedly because those are the words she can spell.

Thursday:

She's been all over her Girl Scout manual the last few days. She's been like doing some of the activities and reading the whole thing (again). Some stuff about money and who knows what all else.

Somehow we started talking about the Quints (some characters on Curious George) and we couldn't remember all of their names, so I looked it up, and then she pretty much just read the whole Wikipedia article of the list of Curious George characters.

Also watched some Curious George.

I found out about Amazon Underground (which deals in completely free apps with completely free in-app purchase so like heck yes sign me right up), and put a fun little cooking app on her tablet, so she played that some.

Read Lumberjanes some more, and there's something about 100 cookies and a Yeti or something? She started talking about how if she had 100 cookies she would trade them for 10 cookies because 100 is way too many. So then she was muttering something like, "...and 9 times 10 is 90, so I would give up 90 cookies!" Ummmm yes. Yes you would. o.O

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Disney Fairies movies

She figured out how to turn on the Spanish audio and subtitles on Netflix.

She made and wrapped some birthday presents for me from some of the characters from the Fairies movies. I opened them right up because she used some of her blankets that she sleeps with to wrap them. She wrote an illustrated story called Beauty and the Bees about a male fairy ("sparrowman") who gets turned into a bee and then a fairy falls in love with him, etc, etc. Apparently the title is a throwaway joke from one of the movies, but she drew it for me!

And also a field journal by the disbelieving dad of the human girl in one of the movies. Illustrated rock journal! With bonus butterflies!







(I'm really digging her spelling process. She still puts "water writing" in the middle, but more and more often she's put the first letter of the word, and sometimes even the last letter too! Progress!)

We worked on a Kiwi Crate, which means we built rubber-band-powered paddle boats and decorated sails for them, and started on a mod-podged fish lantern! (to be completed tomorrow)

Monday, August 24, 2015 (+photo dump)

Today we:

-- went grocery shopping

-- went swimming. for like an hour? it was a long time. we had fun.

Also Norman strew the instructions to one of his card games, so the first thing I heard this morning was Lucy talking about how it's just like Pokemon but different in certain ways or something. I dunno. They looked at the cards for a while before we went shopping.



Also, yesterday Lucy made dinner! Okay, she said she wanted to make dinner, and she decided what to make and I... assisted. She learned how to use a knife safely to chop up fruit, and we also made grilled cheese. She burned her wrist on the pan during the making of the first sandwich, so I finished that up. But she made the fruit salad and sliced all the cheese.

Also I got Hungry Hungry Hippos from the thrift store so we've been playing that.

Also Disney Fairies movies, which has resulted in some cardboard and tape tiny house crafting (because usually she takes everything that happens in the fairy movies and translates it to lizards).

Also Pokemon watching.

And she's still about those Lumberjanes.


Oh my goodness I thought I was done but I wasn't because I found these photos from this last week.

She has this activity book where you're supposed to fill in the cartoons with what you think the characters are saying. She figured out that it would be great if these penguins were saying some dialog from one of the Lumberjanes comics, so she copied it in!



And then... she got a new Kiwi Crate, and she made a little booklet like the Kiwi Crate instructions, but for one of the projects in her Girl Scout binder! (a panda mask!)







And THEN, one day last week I woke up to Lucy telling me that she had made Norman and me some "peanut butter toast with basil, paprika, and garlic leeks." And like... WHAT. I was like, "Well, whatever that is, it will still be there in 15 minutes when I'm actually conscious." It turns out it was this:



"Garlic leeks" = green onions (she didn't know the name of them). She chopped them up with a steak knife. This is part of why we had knife lessons yesterday. Gracious. And mine had chocolate sprinkles, because my birthday is coming up. Yes I took a (tiny) bite. Because, as I'm always telling her, you won't know if you don't like something until you try it!

And also I took these today. Looking very grown up!

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Lots of writing today... and drawing.

She made a quiz sheet for me to answer and then wrote down what her stuffed animals thought too.



She saw a post on FB about the questions I ask her every so often (to see how her answers change) and wanted me to ask them again, but I wasn't going to, so I said maybe she should ask me questions instead, so she did, and she drew the answers. (She got frustrated when she was almost done and crossed it out. But then after she calmed down she copied it all again to finish it. Progress!)



She drew a picture that has something to do with that Mickey Mouse Christmas movie.



She saw this anagram in one of the Lumberjanes comments and was obviously smitten (we are not immune to finding potty humor hilarious).



She learned about polygons "tiling the grid" from a Tumblr post I saw and showed to Norman. So then she tried to do it with hearts and circles.



She read a bunch more from the Jesus Storybook Bible.

She got out her Pop-Up House of Inventions to read, and then decided that it would of course make a great dollhouse with her Duplo people.

We went to the library and she did some art paint program on the children's computer.

She had her last swim lesson. I signed us up for membership at the place with the indoor pool, so we'll go swimming once a week for the foreseeable future.

Oh yeah and she took some photos and filmed an intro for some new show about lizards that she's planning to make.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Well, this morning she was still watching those Mickey Mouse Christmas movies, so she dressed up like Santa.

(Beard, pillow-belly, hat, sleigh, reindeer, and bag of toys included [those are pipe cleaners attached to Moose, her stuffed reindeer])

She and I had reason to be hanging around outside a place with a variety of interesting plants waiting for something, so she decided that we should gather materials for clothing and fire wood in case we had to wait their a very long time. (I sewed some leaves together!)

She randomly sat and read from the Jesus Storybook Bible for like half an hour, because she wanted to look something up that she'd seen in this Easter puzzle pad that she has and has been working on, but she ended up just reading a whole bunch instead.

She set up a system for us to send notes back and forth to each other from my craft room to the playroom. She's been writing her letters in code.

She hung around in my craft room while I was working, always eager to help me with stuff when she can.

She went with Norman to a board game shop.

She said that she wants to have two boys and two girls when she has kids, so Norman gave her a coin and had her flip it four times several times and keep track of heads and tails (Local Statistician Can't Stop, Won't Stop).

Spent awhile reading some Lumberjanes comics.

Monday, August 17, 2015

Today was the first day of school for the local public school kids. So Lucy is officially, technically in 1st grade. We celebrated this fact by... doing what we normally do.

-- Grocery shopping

-- Taking apart our fan that broke the other day and figuring out how it worked (all three of us had fun with this!)

-- Going to swim class

-- Reading -- in Lucy's case the first Nancy Clancy book

-- Coming up with lizard schemes (including trying to reuse some fan parts to make it so they can have electricity, and coming up with tiny Christmas decorations for them)

-- Watching Mickey Mouse cartoons

-- Playing with Legos and action figures

-- Writing important messages in code...? (The code lately has been abbreviating each word with the first letter. Super cool, actually.)

Wednesday - Sunday, July 29 - August 2, 2015

On Wednesday, more swim lessons. (This will go on for 4 weeks.) She asked the guys who are teaching the class where they are from ("Europe" LOL I'm curious about a more specific answer, personally!), and dove for some rings (with help).

But before that, we went to the final library program of the summer, which was a magic show put on by a 16-year-old magician. He was great! Great sense of humor and good with the kids. Lucy got picked to help him with one of his tricks! It was long and complicated, and she was very patient and spoke up clearly. It ended with her getting a balloon dog. She was very impressed.

On Thursday she made this great joke:

[That's a rock and some scissors taped to some paper]

On Saturday we went to the local Pride parade:

And then had beignets at the adjacent farmers market:

(Which was a big deal to her since she's been watching Princess and the Frog so often lately.)

Oh and we also saw some break dancers! Oh and Lucy spotted a young person wearing a unicorn headband thing and she was entranced. She "called" her stuffed unicorn on the "phone" to tell her about it, then went up to the girl and told her that she liked it.

Today she was watching a Curious George episode about camping, so she brought her tent out of her bedroom, and took her pillow case off her pillow (for a sleeping bag), and set up this circle of rocks, and found something to be a marshmallow on a stick:

She and Norman also watched The Cat Returns today. Lucy picked it out at the library because she knows Norman likes Miyazaki movies.

Oh she's been so busy with so many schemes... I can't keep track. Today she was rather taken with a particular drag queen that she saw on the roller derby program and at the Pride parade. She got out all the fancy jewelry she could find and had me put blue eyeshadow on her and made a flyer where she changed the drag queen's name to put "Lu" in the middle of it.

She had me put some nuts in an ice cube tray with water and freeze them so she could play hockey with squirrels. (???)

Did I already say that she's obsessed with calling out when the time on the clock is a palindrome? She still is.

She's been big on reading and watching the same thing at the same time. Like, she checked the DVD of Cinderella out of the library so she could watch it while reading her cinestory graphic novel of it that she has. And she checked out both a graphic novel version and a DVD version of a Disney Fairies movie.

Also every now and then she'll just clean the bathroom. Not well, of course. Today it was the mirror.

And I don't remember if I mentioned this a couple weeks ago, but at one of the library programs the presenter did Miss Mary Mack with a volunteer, and this was Lucy's attempt at writing it down. I'm so impressed! So much important spelling and transcribing groundwork is here:

Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, July 25-27, 2015

Okay let's hit the highlights reaaaal quick:

1.) Roller derby Saturday night. It was the kick-off event for Pride Week 2015, so we had a short chat about what Pride is beforehand.  She drew a sign with the teams on it to help her cheer, she kind of watched some roller derby, and she pored over the program that had all the women's roller derby names and the rules of the game.

2.) Storyboards for Princess and the Frog

[frogs with tongues tangled up, firefly spelling his name fancy]

[frogs, tree stump, river, alligator, trumpet]

[frog, raft, tree stump, river]

3.) Swim lessons started today. She was excited and willing to try everything and seemed to be doing pretty well. Afterwards we had a talk about what adrenaline is and how it works and how it makes you feel.

4.) She's been weirdly obsessed with burying nuts in the backyard and then digging them up again later, like a squirrel. Her first attempt ended in ants because she used shelled nuts. We couldn't find any nuts in their shells at Target today, so she kind of gave up and bought some chocolate covered almonds. (Seems logical to me.)

And as always: playing Legos, watching Curious George and Princess and the Frog, and she played some more Pokemon on Norman's computer. Oh and she drew this great Disney Fairies/Pokemon crossover where there are Pokemon-type fairies and they run an "egg care" where they watch the Pokemon eggs until they hatch. I don't know where that paper got to though.

And also she's been making a concerted effort to be helpful, and today she put away the clean dishes early this morning without anyone asking her to and she helped me cook dinner!

Thursday, July 23, 2015

So pretty much Lucy did five things today:

--built things/played with Legos

--watched Curious George and various other PBS Kids videos

--went with Norman to buy some groceries

--played a very complicated role-playing storytelling board game with Norman for THREE HOURS

--made herself a PB&J



THREE HOURS. I'm not sure if it's all the tiny pieces, or the storytelling aspect, or the fact that she was doing it with Norman, but I'm very impressed.

Tuesday and Wednesday, July 21 & 22, 2015

I got out of the shower to find this had happened:

I was so seriously impressed, because it must have taken her forever to lay all those pennies out (182 of them, as it turned out), and she stuck with it!

She wanted to know how many there were, but didn't think she could count all of them (overwhelming, of course!), so I suggested that she divide them into groups of ten pennies each, and then count how many groups of ten there were. She needed some help with this, so I gathered some toothpicks, and we used those to divide them up.

Then we counted the groups, and she used the calculator on her tablet to find out how many there were (18 x 10 + 2). Then we worked on the other coins too. (At which point, she was counting her dimes, and it turns out she can count be tens to 100! I didn't know about this.)

(And then of course she threw a fit when she had to pick all the pennies up, but let's focus on the positives, eh?)

Also she volunteered that she can spell "sí" (Spanish for yes), and did so. So I asked if she could spell the other kinds ("see" and "sea") if she closed her eyes and looked at the words in her head, and she could! This is a big deal -- she's known the first letter of most words for a long time, but spelling beyond that has not come very naturally to her so far.

We went to a one-man puppet show at the library. He played his banjo and sang and told the story with the puppets. Then at the end her showed us how all the puppets work and told us he made them all himself. Lucy loved it -- she was cracking up and interacting with the show the whole time.

She also played in the sprinkler (this always involves filling with water the giant hole that she periodically digs a little deeper).

Let's see... watching Princess and the Frog, the Christmas episode of Kid History, Curious George, some random Mickey Mouse Christmas movie...

Oh, this morning she asked to look through the tub of grown up costumes, which I hauled out of the garage for her to dig through. That resulted in some great stories about things that happened before she was born and/or aware.

And always Legos. Always.