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).

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.)

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.

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.

Friday, May 22, 2015

Watched Phineas and Ferb.

Went to the post office and grocery store with me. We had to have a talk about not just knowing that you're going to veer away from running into someone at the last minute, but letting the person know you're not going to run into them by moving before it's the last minute. Oy.

She watched Dotty play her Pokemon game.

She's been reading her Lego ideas book kind of a lot. I think she just pores over it in the playroom whenever I'm not looking.

We made some SWAPS! Well, ya know, I ended up making the majority of them, but still. She helped make two different kinds and also made herself a bracelet. And she helped sort the beads.

And she also had her Colorform-type stickers out again.

She and I wrapped presents for Dotty's birthday, and Lucy wrote her a card (with a pun!).

Played Pokemon Crystal.

Started building a Pokemon day care?

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?"]

Week of October 20, 2014

Play date with church friends.

Copying the titles of songs from the Phineas and Ferb soundtrack on paper and the chalkboard.

She spied a poster behind a counter at our grocery store above a fire extinguisher that said "P.A.S.S." and she wanted to know what that meant. Once I figured out what she was talking about, she got spelling, mnemonics, acronyms, and fire safety all at once! (It stands for pull the pin, aim, squeeze the trigger, and sweep it back and forth.) And we talked about when something can be solved with a fire extinguisher and when you need to just get out and call the fire department.

We read a book about time zones on Monday or Tuesday. Then on Sunday she heard one of our fellow parishioners talking about how she used to live in Hawaii and Lucy jumped right in with questions about which time zone Hawaii is in and how many hours difference it is and when exactly she changed her clocks when she moved here.

Made a conveyer belt (her words) for her cash register out of a whole bunch of colored tape.

Library. Dora game and that story typing game. She figured out how to color the backgrounds of the pages and draw shapes.

Turned our coat closet into an elevator with the addition of a piece of paper with two arrow buttons on it.

We read a book about keeping lizards as pets.

She's started making plans again for the hotel she's going to open in our house. This is a picture of all the amenities that room service can provide upon request:

[Bibles, soap, pads of paper, pens, bottles of water, candy, newspapers, iPods, .... and I kinda lost track of what was happening after that]

Lots of Phineas and Ferb (show and soundtrack).

We've been taking walks (well, she mostly rides in the wagon) around the neighborhood and to the post office some days.

Last skating lesson of the session and she passed her test! And we signed her up for the next session at her request. At this point she seems to be gunning for hockey player in a year or two.

Sunday school: talked about about the greatest commandment and another is like unto it. And she remembered what they talked about last week! "They were trying to trick Jesus by asking him a question about a coin with their leader on it." I'm just amazed that she was paying attention.

We took a walk in the forest-y part of a park today, and I started explaining about the Doctor Who episode last night (which she did not see), but it turned into a discussion about the oxygen/carbon dioxide cycle.

Then we walked to a trunk or treat at a church down the street from us (she dressed up as a fairy princess). Then we played at the park for a bit. Oh, and we saw some raccoons! Just hanging around a tree in a neighbor's front yard in the middle of the day just as cool as they could be. A different neighbor had some major tree work done a couple days ago -- I think maybe they were displaced. They were cool to see, though.

[She drew the plant on the piece of paper, see? (This is at a friend's house.)]

[House lizard flag]