Teacher Gifts-- Cookies

Remember how I'm insane and sewed a million teacher gifts at christmas time?  Well I thought the end of the year also deserved a thanks.  This time I did not hand write thank you notes, like I did at christmas time.
I made homemade chocolate chip cookies for nine teachers, and I do make dang good chocolate chip cookies if I do say so myself.  (Or if I listen to all my friends.) Although I only had time for one batch, so they each only got 5 cookies, but I figured that was actually plenty.

This time I borrowed this graphic for the front of the card, and typed a canned message of my appreciation, printed it all out, and then folded up the paper.

Afterward I wondered if I was crazy.  I was talking to my husband about it, and he didn't seem to think it was odd at all I gave gifts to all the specials teachers.  Then I started thinking about it.  A few days ago, I talked to J's librarian for about 5 minutes. Five minutes was all it took to be extremely grateful this woman is in my son's life. She said how fun he was, and how she mentioned in the beginning of the year to the GT teacher he needed to be tested.  She said, "He is something else", smiling, "I'll ask a question, and call him and he will pause and say, well it will take a minute to explain."  I thought I'm so grateful she finds it endearing, because my husband and I struggle with this trait.  Point being, I'm so grateful for great teachers in his life.  As the librarian talked about him, I thought if this was Anne of Green Gables, they would be "kindred spirits". He keeps talking about how excited he is to be a first grader to because he gets to check out two books a week.
P.S.  I used Ghirardelli chocolate chips hoping for something that tastes better than Nestle, and the chips never stopped melting, and reset up.  Hours later, they were still gooey mess.  For some that might be good, for my children they found it annoying.

Summer School

My son is doing school every week day this summer.  Well maybe not everyday, if we have something planned for the morning we'll skip it, and for other reasons. Want to know the main reason he is doing school work all summer, it has nothing to do with the statistic that he will lose 30% of his knowledge over the summer.  It has to do with he drives me crazy when his life is unstructured.  He cries, and whines, and so he is DOING school. He is too precocious for our own good.  This is what I came up with a school jar. 

 Each activity has a clothes pin and he picks two a day.  Once he has done all his clothespins, he puts them back and and we start over.  I thought this would be effective because some of the school activities he does not like, but those are the ones he actually needs to work on over the summer.  This way it is not me assigning it, it is him picking it. If he wants to do more than two work activities a day then, he can earn his quarter to put towards buying new books. His dad decided he could do math worksheet to earn new books.  Yes, we have a reader on our hands, but he also likes to do math too.  Each worksheet is worth a quarter.

I also made a Learning Jar for my daughter.  I don't care if she uses it but I didn't want her to feel left out.  It has more than coloring, things I want her to learn over the summer like counting to 10, recognizing numbers, writing N, learning phonic sounds of some letters.  My husband wondered why I didn't have learn ABCs on one, I said I don't want her to learn the names of the letters until she knows the noises they make.   When I read alphabet books with my toddlers I don't say A is for, I say, ahh (the sound of A) is for. But her jar has fun things too, like stickers, cover the page in stickers, she is only 3.
Would you like to know what my son has to do this summer?

• Writing Page (Describe ___ use at least 4 sentences) He does not like this assignment, hopefully him picking the topics will help.
• Reading what he chooses, and then telling me the summary, and main idea
• Bridge Book (a workbook we bought from school)
• Learn to Tie Shoes
• Debate  my husband came up with this (this is he gives me 5 pro or cons of the a topic, for example why is it good to play outside) (We are working on explanation and comprehension this summer.  We know he is comprehending but his teacher will want evidence he is understanding, so he needs to work on explaining.)
• Dictionary my husband came up with this.  He has a elementary school dictionary, he will have to look up a word, write how to spell the word, and what the word means.  Hopefully as the summer goes on he can summarize the definition instead of copy.
• Math worksheets
• Science, I haven't really planned what this means yet, but he loves science
• Maybe I should add, practice riding a bike.  Especially the two wheeler not the training wheel one.  Then again any pedaling motion he does, I am relieved about. No scooter allowed.

Look What I Did

I finished the top to the baby quilt. The colors are blue, yellow, green and white.

Some of the material came from my sister in law Alisa.  I got the pattern from this book.
Just for the record I have 13 weeks left, probably actually 14!  Ahh! But I'm getting super uncomfortable, so I'm sure I'll be grateful as the weeks disappear.

Birth Stones

I decided before Mother's Day my mother's necklace needed to be updated.
So I picked up some glass looking peridot-- remember I'm having an august baby.  Plus I must be "officially" showing because people come up to me saying, I didn't know you were expecting.

 I guess technically my necklace is backward.
But the first child is Amethyst for February
Second child is Turquoise, so it has two pieces of actual Turquoise.
The third is Peridot like I said, for August, and has three pieces. 
I have no idea what I'll do if I'm still wearing this and have more than four kids, because I don't think I could get more than four beads on a jewelry pin. 

Then I had a million pieces of green glass beads left over from the string I bought, so I thought I would make some bracelets, to herald in my new baby in August.  I felt so motherly in church. HA HA

I loved it, when I showed the necklace to my daughter.  I pointed to the Amethyst and said who is this for?  She said her big brother's name.  (She loves this game and everytime I wear the necklace she tells me who each stone/gem is for.) I pointed to the Turquoise and asked who it was for?  She said "ME!"  I then asked, who is this for?  Pointing to the peridot.  She smiled, and said umm, umm, umm, more smiling.  Then a light bulb went off. "BABY BROTHER?!"  Yup, its baby brother's.  Then she went off, talking gibberish about baby brother, as a pregnant hormonal mother it melted my heart.