All in Kids
About a month ago, my parents bought a pontoon boat. It is a work in progress, but they wanted to buy one so that Melody could experience river/lake/boat life. We had a boat growing up, and I have so many fun memories on the river with my family. So I am really excited for Melody to experience something similar. A few Saturdays ago, we decided to head down to Smith Lake to take a ride on the boat for the first time.
With this being Melody’s last year at her sweet preschool, I wanted to give her a little gift the day before starting. We bought Melody a Pottery Barn Frozen backpack and lunchbox a long while back. She asked for a backpack for her birthday, so we decided to go ahead and give her that then. So we knew we had a lunchbox to give her. And I wanted to get her a new back to school book. The last thing we ended up with was a Rainbow Rangers toy set. I happened to find this on the Walmart website, and I knew I had to have it! It just so happened this was the perfect occasion to give it to her!
I have not done this in previous years, but since it is Melody’s last year, I decide to send a back to school gift to her teacher. This year is the first year she only has one teacher, so that also made it easier. During the summer, I bought these adorable paper clips from Simplified. The specific ones I used for this gift were apple shaped, but I also bought some pencil shape ones too I may use as a gift for someone else later. I then wrote a nice note on matching cardstock, and I had Melody sign it. Then I attached it using ribbon. Super cute and easy!
So this year is Melody’s third and final year of preschool. I remember first signing her up for preschool and crying after dropping her off for her first day. Last year was complete chaos because we had just moved, and it of course ended just as chaotically. She goes to school the morning of March 13, and we never went back except to pick up her belongings in May. This year we have high hopes on a really great year. There are some changes this year, but we are looking forward to getting back into a routine and getting Melody back to school to learn and socialize.
This is a perfect summer craft with your kiddos. You simply cut up some construction paper in the shape of a popsicle. Then cut up more random sized pieces. The kids can then glue the pieces on the “popsicles”, and lastly you glue a craft stick onto the back. Easy peasy!
For my dad’s birthday, we made a craft using work gloves and Melody’s handprint. I saw this a while back and knew I had to recreate it. I do wish the gloves did not have a logo on it, but I also didn’t want to pay an astronomical amount on gloves that I do not intend for him to use.
Recently Melody has started food therapy by seeing an Occupational Therapist. When she first started solid food, she did fairly well. She would eat almost anything we offered her. However over the last few years she has become a lot more picky. She has started giving up foods she once ate often, and now she is becoming even more particular about the foods she does eat. So we finally gave in and started food therapy after her 4 year old well visit.
When quarantine first started, I was on the lookout for some easy and fun crafts for Melody. I ran across this one on Pinterest. You take a piece of cardboard, and you draw hands and/or feet on it. Then draw nails on that.
A paper plate flower is a cute and easy craft that you can do for the spring or summer, or even as a gift for a parent or grandparent. All you need is a paper plate, some paint, scissors, glue, a popsicle stick, and green construction paper (or white paper colored green!). And if you are missing any supplies, you can easily improvise!
A few weeks ago we started a new chore chart with Melody to earn an allowance (we had one two years ago, but it was for learning not money). Brad and I sat down and determined 5 chores that she can currently do but may also need help with learning to perfect. These are not chores we expect her to do daily (for the most part), but we do expect her to do them when we ask her too. If she does them, she gets to put a magnet on her chart for that chore on that day. If she does not do what we ask, I placed a “X” on that slot. This helps us keep track of how well she did throughout the week.
Melody loves using her dot markers. She actually will use them in place of paint in a lot of our crafts because they are less messy and she has more fun with them. Well during the early quarantine days when we first started crafting and schooling at home, I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut and draw a bunch of different dot sheets. This lasted two days, but she enjoyed it. Using the Cameo was likely overkill, but at the time we didn’t have enough ink in our printer to print our own. Now I just print them!
Melody has been in desperate need for a haircut for quite sometime. I sort of thought about doing it at Disney back in February last year, but it wasn’t quite long enough for me to part with. We thought we would have a trip to Disney in September, but with COVID that is looking more and more like it will not happen. So we decided to just go ahead and find somewhere local to get her hair cut. It was becoming to hard to brush and full of tangles.
Back before COVID-19 ruined a lot of our plans, I intended to sign Melody up for gymnastics this summer, and we were going to skip dance this summer. I know she loves dance, but we have struggled to get her to enjoy gymnastics. My assumption from the last two years of summer gymnastics is that she didn’t enjoy it because it was a mommy and me style class. This summer was the chance for her to do it alone. But we just didn’t feel entirely comfortable sending her with COVID still prevalent. Also, dance lasted through a good portion of June. So we actually figured we would not join anything this summer. Dance starts back early August. Then I read about a tumbling camp offered by her dance studio. It was a 3 day camp lasting 3 hours a day. I loved the idea of it being a longer day, and it offered tumbling and fun. And I really trusted their attention to detail when it came to COVID. So I jumped at the chance to sign her up!
During all of our homeschooling due to COVID-19, we had to get creative with our crafts. Crafts are Melody’s favorite. I found this one on Crayola’s website. It was a really easy craft to make, and we continue to play with it even today. Melody doesn’t follow instructions 100%, but your child may, ha!
June was filled with lots of popsicles, yearly checkups, a visit to the dentist, Melody’s first trip back to Publix, pool time, visits with Nana and Grandpa, birthday parties, baking, and lots of playtime!
Back in March when school was closed, and we had to start homeschooling due to COVID-19, we had to get creative about learning at home. One of the things I wanted to continue while at home was calendar time. I decided to make my own calendar at home. I laminated everything so that I could use a dry erase marker on it and reuse it throughout the year.
Melody’s second dance recital was last weekend. This year it was slightly different due to COVID-19, but honestly I loved it! First, the recital was moved from May to June. We were assigned a day similar to how it would have happened in May. However we did not have a rehearsal this year. Instead we came just for our single performance. They did a rehearsal, then immediately performed again for video purposes. Because of this, there were maybe 40 people in the audience at a time, and we only had to stay for just her performance. Then we were free to go! I think things went perfectly, and we felt really safe. Melody did so good, and I was afraid with the lack of in-room dance classes she would not know the dance. Overall it was such a sweet performance, and I would be ok if this was the new norm for recitals at her age, ha!
So unfortunately I didn’t get many pictures from Father’s Day as we just spent time enjoying life. We had a lot of Brad’s favorites throughout the day. We started with cinnamon rolls, lunch were just leftovers (nothing fancy), we went and grabbed coffee from Starbucks as an afternoon pick me up, then we finished the night with dinner and dessert from Freddy’s. I think Brad had a really good day. We ended the day playing outside with Melody which is always fun!
I always find Father’s Day crafts just a bit harder than any other craft. I don’t really know why. This year I found the perfect crafts for our dad’s, but Brad was the hardest one of all. I eventually found something online I liked and went with it. I ideally wanted things that involved her footprint, but she is awful when it comes to putting paint on her feet. This means I need Brad’s help which would ruin the surprise. So we went another route.
So I found this activity on Oriental Trading’s website. So if you want to do it too, that is where you can find a printable (or you can draw up your own in Microsoft Office or Pixelmator). So this gave us a new activity to do during school days with all the homeschooling we did this spring. We are also trying to continue to do school 1-2 days a week this summer.
