'A' is for Airplane

With the first of September looming ever nearer, I figure it is time for Jay and I to begin our curriculum for this year.  Hooray!

Several people have asked about our curriculum.  I looked into several different ones before deciding that I could make my own, and would like it better than anything I could buy.  There are so many great free resources for preschoolers on the Internet that it seemed pointless to buy anything!  So for anyone interested, I am going to post our weekly lesson plans on here.  :0) 

I will go through each day and tell you our theme and give you a bulleted list of the things we will do.  I will also do my very best to link to all the resources we use so that you can use them for your child if you choose to. 

I do feel very strongly that learning should be fun!!  So I never force Jay to do any of these things.  If he doesn't want to, we will take a day off or even a week if need be.  When he gets tired of one type of activity, I try to switch it up so that he gets to do something new.  Hopefully he will grow up with a love for learning!

This week we will cover:
The letter A and the sounds it makes
Airplanes
The color brown
The number 1
Triangles
Matching and Memory Skills


Monday: The Letter A
-color (or paint or chalk or whatever he feels like doing) a letter A coloring page and decorate it with airplane stickers
-while Jay is coloring we will watch this, this, and this
-glue our letter A coloring page to a brown sheet of construction paper and hang it on the wall

-make a set of letter A Memory cards (one card will have the letter A on it and the other will have a picture of an airplane on it)

-sing our ABC's
-use pipe cleaners to make a big A and a little A
-go fishing for letter A's (I put some of our refrigerator magnets in a bowl.   We use a Popsicle stick with a string tied to it with a paperclip for a "hook".  And Jay works to catch letter A's and pull them out of the bowl)

Tuesday:  A is for Airplane
-color an airplane coloring page and put letter A stickers on it
-while Jay is coloring we will watch this
-glue our coloring page to a piece of brown construction paper and hang it on the wall

-we will talk about the sound that the letter A makes in the word airplane
-we will go on a scavenger hunt in out house and yard to find more things that start with the letter A
-we will sing I'm a Little Airplane
-We will read Cars Trucks Planes and Trains

Wednesday:  Airplane Watching Day
-we will go to a park near the airport to have a picnic lunch and watch the planes fly over us
-we will look around the park for things that start with the letter A and for things that are brown
-we will build paper air planes and fly them

Thursday:  The Number 1
-color a number 1 coloring page
-while he is coloring we will watch this and this
-glue the coloring page to a piece of brown construction paper and hang it on the wall
-make a pair of Memory cards (one will have the number 1 on it, and the other will have 1 sticker on it)

-Jay will do a worksheet where he draws a line to connect several sets of matching objects (I picked up a preschool worksheet book at the Dollar Tree with all sorts of fun worksheets in it!)
-we will play Memory
-we will read a book about the number 1

Friday:  Triangles and the Color Brown
-color a triangle coloring page
-while Jay is coloring we will watch this and this
-glue the coloring page to a brown piece of construction paper and hang it on the wall
-make a set of triangle Memory cards (both cards will have triangles on them)

-we will play with pretzels and use them to make triangles
-we will play the memory game that we made throughout the week
-Jay will do a worksheet where he circles things that are triangular
-we will review the week by going on a mega scavenger hunt where we search for something that begins with the letter A, something brown, something there is only 1 of, and something triangular.  Jay will get a special treat at the end--I think we'll make cookies or something!  :0)

So there you have it!  Our lesson plan for our first week back at "school!"

And just in case you are wondering, I do not leave every coloring page up all the time.  I replace the ones we have up as we cover our next letter, number, shape, or theme.  Then I hole punch them and put them into three ring binders.  These binders become Jay's very own Letter, Number, and Shape books!

Vintage Chair Love

The previous owner of our home left all sorts of interesting things here. One of my favorite things is an old solid steel desk chair.

Isn't it fantastic!?  Well except for the red spray paint and the green Naugahyde?? 

It even has a sticker from the manufacturer, Emeco Corporation, that says it was delivered in March of 1951.  So this chair is 59 years old!

Well, I got busy with some spray paint and new fabric and here is the result:

Not too shabby for a 59 year old huh!?

Here is a closer up shot of the fabric, because I seriously LOVE it.  It has browns and blues and greens.  It is whimsical and playful...and just perfect for our home office/playroom!! 

And the wonderful thing is that this baby is seriously solid steel, so it will be around for many many years to come!  When I went to reupholster it, there were these little metal tabs that held the fabric down.  It was so neat!  I didn't have to pull out staples or anything, and I didn't need anything other than a hammer to reattach my new fabric.  Things just aren't made the way they used to be!!   

Airplanes Oh My!

We are decorating Jay's room with an airplane theme.  Some of the pieces are starting to come together and it is so exciting!  Hopefully soon I can put up some true after pictures of his room!  :0)  

I found this airplane at Hobby Lobby in the clearance aisle and Jay picked out a bright sunshiney yellow spraypaint for it.  I love the way it turned out!   

I was super excited to find some old airplane lithographs from the 40's and 50's in a closet that had been left here by the previous homeowner!!  There were probably a dozen or so prints so I chose my favorites to hang in Jay's room.  I still have to mat and frame them, but I just couldn't wait to show you!   

Aren't they awesome!?  I was planning to buy some prints like these off of e-bay or something....but these were just waiting for me in the closet!  So exciting!!

Ha ha and of course Jay can't let me get the camera out without taking some pictures of him, so he stacked a bunch of his stuffed animals in his chair and told me to take a picture of "all of us!"   

This chair was actually my grandma's chair.  I can remember her reading me stories in this chair as a little girl.  :0)  So I think it is kind of neat to read Jay his bedtime story in it every night.  (It has definitely seen better days, and some day I will talk myself into having it reupholstered....but for now I am enjoying it just the way it is.) 

How do they move PODS?

Have you ever wondered how they deliver and move PODS!?  Well, when we had our POD redelivered to our new house we were able to witness (and snap pictures of) the whole process.  It is really pretty amazing!  And I did ask permission before I took these pictures!  :0) 

They deliver the POD on the back of a truck.  They back the truck into your driveway and position the POD on the side you select. 

The truck has a machine on the back of it that has a completely different set of controls from the ones inside the truck. 

The delivery guy hooks chains to the bottom of the POD in three places on each side. 

He then uses the machine to move the metal frame on his truck bed out and away from the sides of the POD pulling the chains tight. 

Then he drives the truck out from under the POD.

So now the POD is suspended above your driveway by the chains hooked to the machine. 

The delivery man slowly lowers the POD to the ground.  I was surprised by how gentle this whole process was.  There was very little side to side movement, and the POD did not band onto the ground or anything like that. 

Then the delivery man moves the back cross bar on the machine up so that it is taller than the POD. 

Then he drives the machine away from the POD and back towards his truck. 

See, this is the machine out in the street in front of our house headed back to the truck:

And this is the machine approaching the truck

This is the machine actually going back onto the truck:

And this is right before the delivery man drove away:

Goodbye Creepy Vanity

I'm not going to lie.  This vanity totally creeped me out.  It was so yucky and mismatched and just aweful. 

Our new vanity is just so much more cheerful looking.  

With a few more tweaks and touch ups our master bathroom will be down right usable! 

Floors Glorious Floors...And A Hallway

We have finally for the most part finished our first space in the new house...the hallway. 

Here are a few pics of the hallway in all its former glory:

And here it is now:

I am seriously LOVING these wood floors!  And just look...no more green!! 

Jay's Room Partially Done

We have been working ourselves silly on renovations!  One of the first rooms we tackled was Jay's room so that we had a place where he could nap and play while we worked.  

In case you need a reminder, here is what we started with:

And here is where we stand right now:

Jay and Bobo (the elephant) were posing for the camera.  :0)

We let Jay pick out a "beautiful blue" color for his walls.  Uncle Jim painted the walls while Jay was at Grannie's napping one day.  When we brought Jay back over to the house to see his room he walked in and said:  "Wow it's SO beautiful!"  It was pretty cute!!  

We still have a ways to go, but we are definitely making progress! 

Kitchen Sneak Peak

When I look at this picture of our kitchen before....it makes me want to run far FAR away. 

But I am glad I didn't run because it is really starting to come along.  :0) 

My new Gas stove.  I have never had a gas stove before, but so far I really love it!  It's fun!! 

We used magnetic chalk board paint on our pantry doors, and it rocks!!!  (Please excuse the half painted wall on the right though) 

Anywho keep checking back to see the finished kitchen soon! 

Welcome Home!?!?

I found all the stuff to move pictures from my camera to the computer! So I can finally put up some pictures of our new (well new to us) house...and eventually of our finished renovations. :0)


We have owned the house for just over a month now and I can honestly say that we absolutely LOVE it!  It needs A LOT of cosmetic updates, but it has such good bones.  Once we finish our renovations it will be an amazing home for us!! 

I'll walk you through room by room and try to tell you the changes we are making to them.  One thing I can say is that EVERYTTHING was green.  Seriously.  The walls.  The trim.  The ceilings.  The cabinets.  The carpet.  Everything.  The previous owner had a serious love affair with a light sort of celery green color.   

Anywho.. Here is the front of the house:

Here is the cute front porch.  Ha ha it even has new fake grass carpeting on it....that we will probably rip out sometime next spring so that we can put down some tile instead. 

Here is the front door.  It has leaded glass in the middle of it that is really pretty.  I think I will eventually stain it a darker color. 

Here is the living/dining room:

We have already painted all the walls and the ceiling.  We also ripped out the carpet to get to the hardwood floors under it.  We are still in the process of switching out the light fixtures.   

I love this built in cabinet by the front door. 

In all honesty this kitchen was almost a dealbreaker.  It was cramped and very green.  We managed to start a fire in it the very first day we owned the house.  Jay turned on the stove and caught our pizza box on fire.  Needless to say, the stove was one of the FIRST things to be ripped out.  

Most of our budget has gone into this room.  We moved the water heater that was in a closet to my right when I took this picture.  The water heater is now in the garage and our fridge sits in its place.  We painted all the cabinets white and all the wood a khaki color.  We bought a new stove, new sink faucet, new dishwasher, new microwave, and a new grabage disposal.  We still have to rip out that green linoleum and put down some nice neutral tile, but we're probably going to do that over labor day weekend.   

This is the second living area.  We're going to use it as an office and play room.  We are going to paint all the wood my favorite color of all time: Pecan Sandie by Behr.  We are also going to switch out the light fixture and put down the same tile that we use for the kitchen. 

This picture is looking out of the doors of the office into the sun room.  The sun room is really going to be great when we get it fixed up!  We are going to use it as a breakfast area and a second living area.  It will have tile floors and probably some roman shades by the time we get done with it. 

This is the second bathroom.  We are going to leave the ivory and brown tile for now, but we'll probably reglaze it in a few years so that it is white instead.  We have already painted the walls and the cabinets.  And we still have to take the wallpaper off the ceiling.  I am not quite sure why there is wallpaper on the ceiling...but there is....for now.   

 

This is part of the hallway.  It is "L" shaped and leads to all the bedrooms and bathrooms.  I really love the built in bookcase.  We have painted the walls, ceiling, and bookcase and we ripped out all the carpet. 

This is Mr. Jay's room.  It is SO much bigger than his room at our last house.  :0)  Um...and we have redone everything in it.  We patched and painted the walls and ceiling.  And we ripped out that lovely lime green carpet in favor of the hardwood floors under it. 

This is the middle bedroom.  And I know what you're thinking: Wow finally a room that is not green!  Well before you get too excited.....the ceiling was green.  Seriously.  So once again we painted the walls and ceiling and ripped out all the green scary carpet.  

Here is our padded room...I mean master bedroom.  But it was padded.  And covered with an aweful celery green fake silk fabric.  The fabric was stapled to the walls with literally THOUSANDS of staples that had to be removed one by one.  We spent days and days ripping staples out of these walls.  I owe my mom and Aunt Sarah something amazing after all the time and hard work they put towards this room.  Seriously.  Amazing.  Not to mention the fact that the stuffing material behind the fabric was apparently a great habitat for spiders.  Did you know that I hate spiders!?  Well I do.  And now I hate them even more.   

Here is our master bathroom.  It was scary.  And creepy.  We are fixing it. 

The walls will probably stay pink for a few years, but we plan to eventually reglaze them so that they are white.  I think the pink and turquoise is really awesome but Jason is not such a fan. 

So do you think we've lost our marbles yet!?  It needs a lot of work huh!?  Well, here is a picture of my number one criteria when we were house hunting:

 

I wanted a big yard!  And we certainly have one!  :0) 

This is the area that will be my garden next spring.  I think that just this garden area itself is the size of our entire yard at the old house.   

 

 

So now you've seen our new casa.  :0)  Keep checking back to see all the renovations as we get them completed.