Happy Father's Day!

This post deserves much more space, but I think that Joshua and Hannah can say it better than I can.

Happy Father's Day, Claude! Thank you for setting an amazing Christ-like example for our children.

The Fall and Restoration of Man (or Truck)

In the words of Joshua, nearly three years old, here is the basic scenario of humanity's (or transportation's) need for a savior. Theologically it holds up...kind of. He's got the basic idea, so we were pleased (not to mention entertained).

J: "Trucks disobeyed God."

C: "But if they're friends with Jesus they can obey God."

J: "Trucks die on the cross. If they want to."

C: "Well, they can figuratively...or literally."

And this little story was but a chapter in the life of the trucks. An epic adventure was told to us over dinner by Joshua, who was greatly inspired by a picture that Claude drew on our white board of an ice cream truck. Other ice cream truck inspirations included a ballad to horses, cows, and birds, by our very own Hannah Chew, along with an ode to ice cream from Joshua. Needless to say, we enjoyed a very interesting dinner this evening.

Photo Update

Just some photos from the last month or so. Enjoy!

Out of the Mouths of Babes

As Joshua becomes exponentially more verbal Claude and I have experienced many laughs. The following is a dialogue from the lunch table.

Today, Joshua and Hannah helped to pick out a gift and to make a card for our friend who will soon be turning 1 year old. Naturally, she was the topic of much discussion today. When will we see her? She's coming over today - according to Joshua. Etc etc etc...

"How old is your friend?" I asked Joshua.

"She's 17 years old," he replied confidently.

"If she's 17 years old," Claude begins. "That would make you 18 and Hannah 17. And Daddy and Mommy would be..."

"Let's not say!" I laughed. "But I do wonder. In 16 years we will be..."

"Old!" Exclaimed Joshua.

Laughs were had by all excluding Hannah who didn't know what was going on. Come to think of it, Joshua probably laughed only because he heard Daddy and Mommy laughing. He continues to insist that our little one year old friend is turning 17. I think her parents will find that she turns 17 quickly enough!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Learning to Learn

"The Plagues" by Joshua Chew (with assistance from Mommy)
As we told the story from Exodus 7-12, we drew each plague. We also spent the week telling the story with our own sound effects. The favorites were "Blah!" for the water turning to blood that no one could drink and a noise I can't clearly type that represented swarms of locusts. Now they both think that they hear locusts nearly every place that we go!

So, we've been doing this homeschool preschool thing for over a month now. I think we're in our fifth week maybe??? Anyway...it's going quite well. In fact, Joshua has pretty much learned all of the basics I had planned for this fall and through the end of the spring.

The goal was for him to be able to easily and correctly identify colors and shapes. There are a couple of each that need some attention, but he generally knows all the basic colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, black, brown, white) and colors (circle, oval, square, rectangle, triangle, diamond, heart, octagon, crescent/moon, star).

So, we're doubling up concepts (one color and one shape each week) and seeing if we can get through them by December when we'll have a "break" which really means that we'll do everything that we normally do without a specific focus. Well...we will be doing a unit on Jesus' birth leading up to the celebration of Christmas.

But I'm learning a lot about learning. The main thing is that Joshua and Hannah just learn without much effort on my part and without me planning anything. I have realized that Claude and I have been actively teaching Joshua and Hannah without really noticing. For example, our weekly trip to the grocery store always goes more smoothly if they are involved. So, I'm always asking Joshua to help me count whatever produce we're buying, to identify the colors and occasionally the shape of fruits and vegetables.

This realization, in combination with reading a book called "The Homeschooling Handbook" by Mary Griffith, is causing me to think a bit more about teaching theories and approaches. I'm finding that Joshua and I accomplish our learning objective goals for the week without much addition or change to our non-school days. There is a little bit of forethought in terms of what we'll focus our attention on, picking a Bible verse and hoping to find an acceptable and singable melody for it, and a Bible story with some type of creative or interactive teaching element.

And then we just go about our week. Some weeks we're doing every activity I had thought of and other weeks we don't get to anything formal aside from coloring a poster with our memory verse. But every week, Joshua is learning more and more than I expect. Praise the Lord!

Shape of the Week: Triangle
On the menu this evening, we had triangle biscuits. Joshua is learning how many sides a triangle has...for now he says "1,2,3,5,6!" But he does know a triangle when he sees one and that's literally what counts for now.

This endeavor is proving to be a platform of change for me. I'm learning to be a little bit more organized, to think ahead, and above all to be patient and flexible. I'm also finding that I am beginning to be more inquisitive and to seek out information on topics that I don't know much about. Basically, I am learning to learn from a two-year- and a one-year-old.

Working on Working Together
You can see our need for this lesson if you observe closely...Joshua is taking Hannah's hand away from the tray of unbaked triangle biscuits.

I'm still thinking about what we'll tackle after the winter holidays. Probably something along the lines of counting and maybe recognizing letters of the alphabet. I'm not entirely sure. Scripture memory and Bible lessons are becoming the backbone of our daily/weekly lessons so those will certainly stay. Claude and I are talking about a memorization challenge (as Joshua and Hannah get to be a few years older) to include an entire book of the Bible. Hopefully we'll all get in on it, but I have a feeling Joshua and Hannah will out run us pretty easily! :)

So, I'll count this as an update, throw in a few photos of some semi-formal activities we've done in the past couple of weeks, and call it a night.

Return of the Mommy! :)

And so Mommy returned today!

Yay! I have to relinquish the role now though... :(

But yay Mommy's home!

Mr Mom Day 2

Well it's Claude again and it's day 2 of Mr Mom.

Praise the Lord He enabled today!

It was a pretty simple day, that was the goal, wake up, breakfast, clean up, get dressed, prepare some lunches for our outing, catch the train into Grand Central, walk around Grand Central both on the inside and literally walked around Grand Central on the outside and then catch train back to Hartsdale, lunch, snack, play, color, hang out, dinner, baths and bed.

Praise the Lord!

In the main concourse...


Oooo...

Joshua taking it in. Hannah wanting to wear Joshua's bear backpack.

The rope on the barrier was more interesting than the car.

Orange Moped.


After a hard morning being carried/riding around in the stroller

On the way home.


Yay back home! Praise the Lord!

Hannah's 1st Birthday!

Praise the Lord! One year ago today, the Lord brought Hannah out of the womb and into the Chew family! What an adventure it has been and what a joy! Hannah has been taking her first steps and looks like she'll be pretty proficient pretty soon given the great example that Joshua has been to her of all the developmental milestones!

So we celebrated low key, since Becca was heading to Women's Retreat this evening, so we just went to the Greenburgh Nature Center, said hi to the goat, the prairie dogs, the chickens, ran around the lawn a bit, made some pizza, ate some pizza, sang Happy Birthday to Hannah after which she promptly put out the candle with her finger and cried accordingly and then ate birthday cupcakes and then dropped Becca off for Women's Retreat and then put these guys to bed after falling asleep in the car!

Mr Mom

Well, greetings all, it's my turn to put a post out for our family! Becca is now on Women's Retreat with the Church of the Nazarene and so I have the run of the household for the weekend!

So far the plans are to ride the Metro North into Grand Central which should be a sufficiently stimulating and lengthy enough of an outing for Joshua and Hannah. Lord give me wisdom as to when we should be venturing out for this during the day!

Tonight was easy, Joshua and Hannah fell asleep in the car after dropping Becca off!

So.... pray for me! :)

Week 3 and Still Schooling

The Chew Family Preschool managed to make it through week 3 of schooling. Week 2 was rough and week 3 was better although we were all sick at some point throughout. Following is what we did and learned for the week. We had a lot of fun and were excited to have Claude home for one day. True, he was home sick, but he was feeling well enough in the afternoon to join us on a "green" walk around the neighborhood and to lead the Bible lesson.

Learning Objectives for the Week:
-Green
-Baby Moses (Exodus 1-2)
-Exodus 2:24 (Memory Verse)

What we did:
-Hand Print Tree: We made some green paint (water, powdered milk, and food coloring). Then we put our hand prints on the top half of a length of banner paper. We had a lot of fun with the texture of this paint. It was creamy and foamy. A big success! Joshua thought that it tasted good too! Once the paint dried, I added a trunk. It looks great and Joshua loved working on it.
-Bible Lesson--Baby Moses: Following is the video of our Bible lesson. Basically, we acted out the lesson by putting a baby into a basket (in this case, a bucket), and dropping the basket into the bath tub. I was amazed that when I brought Joshua and Hannah into the bathroom to start the lesson they were both immediately captivated. They couldn't keep their eyes off the Bible illustrations and paid close attention to everything I did in initially acting out the story. Then they happily participated. We repeated this several days during the week. This video was the fifth or sixth attempt at recording it on the first day, so we had lost Hannah's undivided attention.

-Green Walk: We walked around our neighborhood in search for things that are green. We found several, Joshua was excited, and took a lot of pictures. The camera battery died part way through our first attempt, so we ventured out a second time in the afternoon. Following are some photos of what we found.

-Memory Verse Poster: This started out in week 1 as a way of filling time, but it has been so effective in learning our memory verses that I've done it each week and will probably implement it in our church nursery curriculum. I simply take a large piece of paper (legal size), write out the verse and reference, read it to Joshua and Hannah, sing it to them, and point out the words as I go along. Joshua colors it, helps me hang it on the wall, and then we just review it whenever their attention is on the poster.
-Green Lunch and Green Roll Cookies: We made spinach pasta with pesto and steamed zucchini for lunch (all green) then after lunch, Joshua and made a roll cookie recipe with some added green food coloring and green sprinkles on top. I also made a rebus pattern of the cookie recipe so that Joshua could help me "read" it. Both activities were very popular with Joshua (Hannah was asleep through both) and a lot of fun to work on together.

What We Learned:
-Correctly identify the color green in nearly all circumstances. There is still confusion when we see something that is very dark in color. Joshua sometimes thinks these are black even though they are actually green. But his color identification in general has made marked improvement since the beginning of September.
-Bible verse memorization. Joshua can say, "God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them." -Exodus 2:24. I'm very proud of him! Hannah loves to dance and clap to the little song I made up for this verse.
- Bible story of Baby Moses. Joshua can identify the major characters in this story (Moses, Pharoah, Jochebed, and the Princess). He can also recite much of the text as it appears in the Beginer's Bible.
-Daddy is a very good teacher! We always miss Daddy while he's a work, but after having him home one day this week I realized just how much we love having him here. This is not to say that I ever thought that I didn't love having him at home with us, but the realization was fresher and deeper than before. It was great to see him teach the Bible lesson and to go on a walk with him while we discovered green things along our street. It's too bad he was sick that day! Maybe it would have been more enjoyable for him that way.
-Sickness is bad, but it brings naps! We were all sick with colds this week. I am never happy when any of us are ill, but this week Joshua napped every day (excepting Saturday) and Hannah took longer naps than she has been recently. What a blessing! They got the rest their bodies needed to overcome the colds, and I enjoyed some time to work on nursery curriculum and to just rest a bit during the middle of the day. An unexpected but very welcome treat. I'm not sure this week will hold the same, but one can hope. Perhaps naps aren't completely out the window yet???

Unexpected Motivation

Yesterday, Claude and I put Joshua and Hannah down for a nap...only they didn't sleep. We found Joshua sitting on his bed with a small pile of hair clips. He had taken the bag of Hannah's hair ties, dumped each and every one of them out onto his bed and formed a pile that he was pushing his finger through.

Today, I also put them down for a nap. Hannah had already been sleeping for an hour and apparently Joshua woke her up when I put him down to bed. At some point I could hear that they were awake, but I didn't hear anything out of the ordinary. I'm getting used to them occasionally staying awake through their nap time.

When I entered the room to get them up for the afternoon, I found that Joshua had, like yesterday, gathered a group of like things and put them in a pile. Here is what I found upon opening the door:

Every piece of clothing in Joshua and Hannah's dressers, plus every pillow, soft toy, and blanket from their beds was crammed into Hannah's play yard. Not a single article of clothing was lying on the floor. And not a single square inch was available for any additional articles. Except for the corner where Hannah stood, the place was packed. Praise the Lord that Hannah hadn't fallen asleep. I'm sure she would have been smothered under the weight of this.

We had plans to take a walk to see the cement mixer that was working down the street today. Let me just say that plans changed immediately. Instead we spent the afternoon folding, sorting, and organizing clothing. At least I had some unexpected motivation to sort out clothing that the kids have outgrown.

I wasn't too thrilled at the time but I did think to myself, "One day I'll have a good laugh about this." I'm starting to laugh now, especially when I try to imagine Hannah standing up in her play yard watching as Joshua carries everything he can find in the room in small armloads and deposits it into her bed. I can see the expression on her face. It's the same as usual when she's watching her big brother do anything. There's always an element of "I wonder what he's doing? Maybe I can learn something from him."

This marks the end of an era. Joshua Chew will no longer be required to take a nap. I think it'll be a harder adjustment for his mother than for himself.

Book List and "Pretend" School

I've updated the Book List again. Check out the side bar for more titles. We're working through the picture books at the local library starting with "A" authors and moving forward through the alphabet. I think we'll be up to "C" authors next week. Some, however, are just thrown in as we find interesting books on the shelves. You'll probably notice a transportation theme running through most of these titles. Not surprising since Joshua loves anything that moves on ground, water, or air.

The Book List only has books that Joshua (and soon Hannah) asks to read several times during the week. Some he asks to read all day, and if Claude or I would sit with him, he would read these favorites at least 10 times before moving on. From past two updates here are some of my favorites:

Toot Toot Zoom (Root/Cordell)
Be Gentle! (Miller)
The Adventures of Taxi Dog (Barracca/Buehner)
Whales Passing (Bunting/Davis)

In addition to working through the Greenburgh Public Library picture book collection, we're also embarking on what I call a "pretend" homeschooling endeavor. Pretend because Joshua and Hannah are only two and nearly one, respectively. We had a trial day yesterday so that I could see if my plan of the time of day for lessons would actually work. It went quite well and we all had a fun time.

Here's what we did and how long it took:
-Read library books -- a stack of 8, took approximately 30 minutes and held both Joshua's and Hannah's attention
-Took a walk to a nearby playground -- looked at wheels on parked cars to identify shape and color, ran around the playground to get our bodies moving, blew bubbles and identified shape (Hannah also experimented with poking and kissing the bubbles); all of this took about 1 hour
-Drew circles, tractors with various attachments, fire trucks, and suns -- re-learned that wheels are circles and that "circles are perfectly round" as Joshua says, also enjoyed making really big and really small circles and got some great gross/fine motor skill practice in while doing it; this took about 30 minutes but was cut short since I needed to prepare lunch, Joshua may have kept going for a while

And here's what we learned:
-Correctly identify circles, something that Joshua could only do on occasion, and now is finding circles all over the place (grapes, rolls of tape, door knobs, and of course...every wheel he sees on a truck, car, etc)
-Bubbles will pop when touched or kissed
-Tractors with manure spreaders are difficult to draw

Claude and I have some fun ideas for the coming year with this homeschooling stuff including learning about cells, more shapes and colors, farm animals, zoo animals, sea creatures, field trips to farms, aquariums, etc, and a lot of art and other activities that sound like they'll be a lot of fun...and simple! (That's probably the best part right there!)

More on the book list after next week's trip to the library. And more on "pretend" homeschooling as the year progresses.

What We Did Today

The date is Friday, August 7, 2009. The events are ordinary. The story is somewhat interesting. But regardless of the entertainment value, this is what we did today...

Today the Chew Family... woke up, ate breakfast, and read the with . put his nose in a just before he made a shaker instrument from a filled with . After seeing off to work, took a while washed the and played with his . It wasn't long before the fell into the . rescued the from the and doused it with before returning it to . and learned about a happy, cool, clever and enjoyed a tasty which ended in a happy, cool, clever .

After awoke from her and finished his tasty , and the kids were ready to go out. Just as they were about to leave the house, interrupted them with an important and monumental announcement. "I go poo poo," said . And off to the he went. was very proud of because this was the first time went to the of his own initiative. This marks a big step in 's training. Once the business was taken care of, , , and went shopping. They ate lunch by a and came home just past 1:00pm.

and enjoyed a while put the away and worked on this blog post. The afternoon was fairly usual. and were pretty until they had a healthy . Things were looking up from there. They enjoyed an outing to the where they sat on a under a . This location allowed for optimal traffic watching and a "present" to be dropped on 's . "Nothing that a little can't fix," thought . She learned later, however, that her initial assessment was wrong. On the way home, and enjoyed a rousing game of and went . An uneventful dinner was followed by baths and then . To say that happened without a fight would not be the complete truth. An amount of resistance followed the routine, of which missed none of it, having arrived home just as the wailing began. The battle was won after 10 short minutes and and enjoyed a quiet dinner on the until a mess ensued on the time front. This required a quick bath, a change of bedding, and made a trip to the to finish it all up. Now time started all over again. This time it was a short battle and an easy victory to and sleeping like .

washed the while updated this blog. The two enjoyed a yummy and slept happily ever after.

THE END