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".

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.

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)

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.

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!

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Watched Curious George.

Watched Curious George while reading an entire book about plants? (She said she read the whole thing and this is entirely possible and she kept throwing random plant facts at me including something about ant/tree symbiosis?) She does that sometimes -- like she needs the noise to help her concentrate on the book or something. I understand.

Played outside.

Watched Blue's Clues movie. Was playing on her little piano keyboard along with them (there's a whole long sequence where G-Clef-Ray-Charles explains music).

Played outside.

Spent like 2 hours playing Legos and there was lots of talk of weapons and battles and emergency evacuations.

Children's museum. Cleaned up after other people in the supermarket section, then drew a picture about that. Played in the water table room. Found some pretend horses and fed them fake apples?

Watched Phineas and Ferb.

Drew a blueprint? For something. But like, she used a blue colored pencil.

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Watched Lego Friends while playing with her Friends Legos. (The one where they invent something to prevent dolphin bycatch and then go on a yacht cruise is her favorite.)

Helped me tie dye? Okay, no, I didn't let her use the dyes, but a few weeks ago at Target she picked out which things she wanted dyed, and today she told me what design she wanted and which colors.

Played with her learning clock a little.

Played with her tape measure a bunch.

Decided that she needed to search for something she lost under the couch a long time ago, so this is a the getup she came up with for that mission:

(LOL like possibly we should clean more. In fact this prompted Norman to take the couch apart and vacuum everything.)

She worked on this craft set that I bought at the thrift store a while back. She recognized and could name the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower.

Watched the Scrambled States of America Scholastic DVD she got from the library (twice -- once while reading along with the book).

Played in the sprinkler.

We watched several YouTube videos, including watching the old Disney short cartoon In the Bag, which of course she loved.

Found the mailing address of the publishing company that makes the Disney Fairies graphic novels she's been reading, so she decided she wanted to write them a letter telling them that she likes the books. This turned into a whole ordeal, but before she threw a fit and gave up because it wasn't perfect, she did some writing. 

She has these pads of sticky notes that say "Lucy" on them, so she took several sheets and wrote "Inn" after the "Lucy" and drew little pictures of what it's going to look like at her hotel.

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Watched Pokemon

Colored with gel pens. Like a lot. Very studiously.

Asked about how "exactly" locks work, so we watched some YouTube videos that explain it.

Went to the library. Signed up for Summer Reading. Kind of sat right down with a new Disney Fairies comic before I interrupted to ask about another book.

Legos.

Watched Phineas and Ferb.

Tuesday, May 2, 2015

Watched Pokemon.

Came with me to Bible study. Colored with her gel pens the whole time.

We made some more SWAPS:

Perler beads:

And puzzle piece monsters that I neglected to take a photo of.

And she also made a puzzle (I bought a bunch of blank ones for various projects).

She spent a lot of time in the playroom with her tiny bits... I don't know what to call them. She has a jar of miniature Christmas ornaments, decorative buttons, etc, etc. Sometimes she sorts them or plays with them like dolls.

She got out her Girl Scout book and read two of the flower friends stories aloud to me while I made dinner, and then also asked me the discussion questions.

She dressed up like a "scientist" (rain coat, safety goggles, magnifying glass, paper, and pen) and went outside. She came back in saying she had "captured some ants successfully", and then later that she had gathered some grass seeds (which she has been very interested in for the last couple weeks).

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Phineas and Ferb

She found a giant dead bug this morning, and Norman took it outside and made some comment about how the circle of life continues. Lucy wanted to know what this means, so we talked about nutrients and fertilizer and post-mortem decay and stuff. Not real in depth, but yeah.

During church she drew pictures of lizards doing the things we were doing. There was a lizard taking lizard communion getting ready to dip a bug in wine, a lizard sitting on a pew drawing pictures... It was very meta.

After church we played at the park, then had a picnic where she did a bunch of excited kite-flying.

Also someone was passing around little paper dove cutouts with the fruits of the Spirit and Bible verses on them. Lucy found a pile of them and wanted to look through and see what all of them were. She noticed that many of them are also part of the Girl Scout Law. I told her there's a patch she can earn for making a presentation about how the Girl Scout Law is similar to the things we believe God wants us to do, which of course she already knew about because she's read her entire Girl Scout handbook front to back. I'm gonna see about having her do that in the fall. The subject comes up with her pretty often, actually.

Norman and Lucy went to the children's museum. Golf ball runs, giant water table, pretend supermarket (which is super cool and everything really works), made a crown out of construction paper and pipe cleaners...

Saturday, May 23, 2015

Phineas and Ferb. Just a lot of Phineas and Ferb.

First (as far as I know) grammatical magnetic poetry sentence: "Leave the other children to the sky." Okay then.

Went with Norman to eat ice cream and wander through Target looking at whatever she wanted. Apparently it was a very meandering trip.

We went to dinner for Dotty's birthday. She noticed a sign that said milkshakes were "Five Zero Zero", so I wrote this for her:

And we also drew crazy aliens on the kids' menu to pass the time.

And she was reading her Pokemon book and her Lego book again. Those are pretty much givens these days.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Woke up and immediately started reading her Disney Fairies comic book.

Came with me to Bible study -- watched Frozen (kinda) and used her tablet to play a hair salon game and mess around with the calculator.

Watched Pokemon.

She and I played a new board game I found online last night. Kind of simple, but you get to build your minifig before you start. :-)

Then consequently (long story) we talked about dimensions (one-dimension, two-dimension, three-dimension -- lines, squares, cubes).

She built a Pokemon battle ground (whatever they're called) for the grass types:

Watched a bit of Tangled.

Played outside in the sprinkler. Got brave enough to try to stop the flow of water with her hands, her butt, and a shovel. Decided that she and the sprinkler were going to be BFFs and gave it half of a leaf as a friendship charm.

Built some more cool Lego stuff.

Watched a Disney Fairies movie.

Took some plastic Easter eggs and a bunch of her various small toys and made "toy surprises" like the lady opens on DisneyCollector. Then she used her kids camera to film herself opening them in the style of DisneyCollector (and with amazingly similar syntax and vocal cadence...). 

And then she played outside some more.

And then she took her Pokemon book to bed with her. 

Saturday, May 16, 2015

This morning, with her newly-sorted Legos, she made up a story where an animal rescuer rescued a goblin and gave him a new arm and fed him junk food and media. It was amazing.

While I was at skating, she played Pokemon Crystal while Norman played Brave on the Wii.

While Norman and I were out, she watched Dotty play a different Pokemon game, and they played outside for a little while.

After we got home, Lucy made up another Pokemon (Tentslee? or something?) for me to have for my starter Pokemon in the Cartoon Region, and she gave me my pokeball (plastic easter egg) and pokedex (broken CD case).

Played some games on her tablet.

Hopped on YouTube kids to watch more DisneyCollector videos, but she wanted the ones where the lady dresses the dolls that Lucy has up in new playdoh dresses, so that Lucy could dress hers up in playdoh while she watched.

She made Ariel a seashell button!

She read a book in her playroom, but when I asked she didn't want to tell me which one. She's very weird about admitting to reading. I don't know. But I think the book was a Mickey Mouse comic book we got from the library.

Friday, May 15, 2015

Last theater class -- they weren't preparing for a show, so they just played the movement, self-control, and direction-following games they've been playing. Lucy got a certificate which she is very proud of, and struggled not to cry because she will miss it. They kept saying there will be another class "next fall", and all this time she thought they meant the fall of 2016, so she was very glad to learn about calendar years vs. school years in the car on the way home. :-)

Oh and she played basketball before theater class because that's what they do because it's held in a gym.

She's been working on a Lego hotel, so at the moment she's working on the water slide for the pool.

Amazon shipment day! We got a new container for her Legos, a set of 64 (SIXTY-FOUR) different colors of markers (which I want to keep for myself but I'm resisting), and a bluetooth keyboard for her tablet. I need to find a good typing game for her... Oh, and the box it all came in is huge and if I get my way it will be turned into a TARDIS, but at the moment she's just using it as an awesome fort.

The keyboard set her off on playing several of her tablet apps, and she eventually wound up on the PBS kids website, playing Peg + Cat and Dinosaur Train games.

Watched Kiki's Delivery Service.

Then decided that we need to start our own delivery service.

I installed a (pirate themed!) learn-to-count-money app on her tablet, and she immediately took it and started playing it.

Drew a picture of an "alicorn" because we looked it up because one of the girls in one of the plays last night was playing one.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Bible study (watched Frozen, read her Pokemon guidebook, drew a Lu World poster, played Fruit Ninja)

Watched Pokemon

She and I watched Disneynature Bears together.

Also she's started making her own toast some mornings.

We played a few rounds of Jenga.

She played Pokemon Crystal on Norman's computer (a new thing she's been doing).

Nov 5-9, 2014

Post-vacation time has brought a predictably cranky 5 year old, but also a 5 year old who is remarkably content to get back to her own stuff, her own backyard, and autonomy over her own time.

Lots of playing outside, including "cooking", possibly creating a restaurant or drive-thru place in her tiny playhouse, and dressing up in her swim suit and trying to find a high place to put her lawn chair so she can be a lifeguard.

Lots of watching Phineas and Ferb. And of course responding to Phineas and Ferb by incorporating their schemes into her schemes.

Bike race map:

Copying the names of the Phineas and Ferb songs from the liner notes of her CD (this may have happened before the vacation...):

(And this is on the back:)

Trying to pause an episode at just the right place so that she can copy some words from the closed captioning. She's been quite ingenious lately with different ways to figure out how to spell/write things. Lots of copying from other place where she knows it's already written down.

Girl scout manual:

"Mom, what's an amp hi theater?"

These are bidding paddles for an auction? I've been told?

We put together both the Lego sets she got in Florida. In both cases, she actually got a lot of it done by just following the instructions before she got frustrated and yelled for me to help her.

We went to the library and she found even more tricks to that story typing game (and had the computer pronounce more of her nonsense typing).

She went to her Girl Scout meeting, and they talked about lions, and ways we can take care of pets. She actually gave a really accurate and pithy summary of an anecdote from The Boxcar Children that was on topic!

First staking lesson at her new level. I think they did ice bowling or something.

In Sunday school they talked about this parable and made little paper suitcases and filled them with pictures of (according to her) "4 tips for making God happy." And then after church she played with one of her friends at the park. I heard the following choice snippets: "We can both be Elsa! Two Elsas!" and "We're both mermaids. All that is the water." and "You pretend to be a witch and you're trying to get me!" Good times...

Been reading some Phineas and Ferb books from the library before bed. Which I don't mind because I like doing the voices.

Disney World (Oct 30 - Nov 4, 2014)

Well, we went to Disney World! It's a short day of driving from our house, so it was great to finally get down there. This will be a Lucy-centric accounting of what went on.

[pit stop]

We met up with my mom, dad, and brother, so she got to spend some time with extended family.

[playing the dots and squares game with her uncle]

Grandma and Grandpa have been living/working in Trinidad recently, so they brought her a Trinidadian flag, a map, some currency, and a parrot feather!

She found a fountain/splash pad thing our first night there, and was way more interested in actually getting wet than any of the other kids there:

We had the opportunity to take several ferry rides and many bus rides. On one of the bus rides, it was standing room only, and we were standing in front of a boy her age and his mom. Lucy struck up a very pleasant conversation with him about their clothes and school and cousins and all sorts of things.

On the drives down and back, she worked on a road trip workbook I made for her (mazes, design your own license plates and road signs, finish the robot drawing, etc.), played some tablet apps (Word Girl design your own superheroes, Fruit Ninja, etc.), and somehow generally kept herself occupied and clear of any whining. It was great!

Our hotel's pool had a big slide, and after some encouragement from Norman (and some random ladies in the pool), and a polite request that the lifeguard let Norman and Lucy go down it together the first time, she was going down it by herself!

[That blur in the middle of the slide is the two of them.]

Speaking of our little daredevil, we took her on Splash Mountain (a glorified log ride), and she loved it. I mean, I'm pretty sure I didn't like it as much as she did. She said it was "stunning scary! But the good kind!" She also loved us spinning the tea cup ride as fast as it could go. Plus two different carousels and It's a Small World and the Dumbo ride. Pirates of the Caribbean, not so much, because we forgot her headphones. Loud noises -- no; steep fast drops -- yes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We rode Spaceship Earth and learned about history. We rode The Seas with Nemo and visited the aquarium and learned about fish and manatees and stuff.

She played Agent P's World Showcase Adventure and learned about Mexico:

She read the clues and multiple choice options herself, and it turns out her phonics must be okay, because she can also read "Adios Amigos".

We met Merida and she shot a bow and arrow. We met Tinkerbell (while Lucy was dressed as Tinkerbell), and Tinkerbell asked what kind of inventions *she'd* been working on, and I mentioned her lizard trap ideas, and Tinkerbell suggested maybe Lucy could help her with her ladybug spotter invention and they pinky promised and it was *adorable*. She met Sofia (big head -- can't talk) and insisted on showing her that Sofia was on her autograph notebook. (We met quite a few characters. Lucy did a great job, even if she was a little overwhelmed and didn't always know what to say or how to react.)

We went to the Lego store and she built her own minifigs (an astronaut who got beat up in space, a lady who is moving, and an economist), and spent her souvenir money on two Lego sets, one of which we put together the day after we got home (and she helped quite a bit with that -- she put together the little oven/stove by following the instructions before she even asked for my help).

We visited an Irish pub and they had some dancers who invited the kids to dance with them, and she definitely did!

[She's the one on the right in the purple dress]

Not that this is out of the ordinary, but she was very well-spoken and polite to all the servers at the sit-down restaurants we went to. She knew what she wanted, and she said it!

Oh, and she found a word in a word search on one of the kids menus! I don't think she's ever done that by herself before.

We played air hockey in the arcade!

And there was a candy shop where you fill out a form to pick which thing you want, covered in which chocolate and which topping, and she wrote her name on it (with the new creative spelling she's been trying out) and put an 'x' next to the things she wanted.

We saw a couple stage shows -- a Frozen one with live actors, and a Disney Junior one with puppets. She loved both of them (of course).

Hollywood Studios has this cool playground that looks like you're in Honey I Shrunk the Kids -- she really enjoyed that, I think. Especially with all the talk about lizards lately.

[see, it's a slide, but it's a roll of film. eh? eh??]

On our last day, she found a prop/photo op car, climbed in, and made Norman sit in it with her while she rattled off a long spiel that seemed to be a combination of the recorded announcements from the buses and the ferries. Very professional, apparently.

We saw several different types of lizards and birds around the property. The ferry driver said they had otters, but we never saw any!

She brought Magic School Bus books with her, so I read her at least one of those while we were gone. Volcanos, I think?

She drew this calculator on the last day while we packed up:

["In 'off', does the 'ff' come at the beginning or the end?"]