Month: August 2014

Clare at School

Posted on by heather.e.d.mcpherson@gmail.com

 This fall Clare and Sam will both go to the Montessori school that she has been attending.  Clare will be in her “third year” in place of going to traditional kindergarten at the local elementary school and Sam will begin the Montessori Children’s program.  We went back and forth about where to have Clare go to kindergarten, but ultimately she decided to stay at her Montessori school so that she can stay with Sam.  It’s a small school with just two classrooms and Clare will be in one room and Sam will be in the other.  We’ve really liked the school for the small, close-knit community, the loving and thoughtful teachers and the education that Clare’s received.  Sammy is soooo excited to go in the fall and I think his classroom will be a great fit for his personality and interests. 

 Here are a few pictures of Clare’s activities at school (taken by the school).  Montessori has very specific materials and ways of using them to develop certain skills.  I’ll do my best to explain what is happening in the pictures, but some of it will be guessing 🙂

This is Clare and a couple of buddies checking out some Christmas lights in a glass vase.  I’m not sure what the Montessori lesson is, except maybe it’s exploring different lights? 

 In this one Clare is grating soap bars into soap flakes and mixing it with water to “make milk.”  I think they then use the soapy “milk” to wash things, since scrubbing and washing are very big in Montessori classrooms.  Everything that you see has a very specific process behind it – Clare brought over the “soap work”, set it up with the underlays and trays, put on a smock and then did the work.  When she was done she cleaned it all up, put it away in its specific places and wiped up any water and soap spills.  Later in the afternoon it will be a child’s job to wash the smocks and wipe down the tables and chairs. The children are all given quite a bit of responsibility for caring for the classroom.

Above, Clare is hanging up laundry – that is little bits of fabric with little clothespins.  I’m pretty sure this is a dexterity and fine motor skill exercise.

Playing with metal shavings with the magnetic wand.

She and her best girlfriend C are doing some counting and math work with the numbers and beads.
 Last year Clare stopped napping and started doing “second work time,” which is a more structured, academic time in the afternoons for older children.  Every Monday she writes an “agenda” of her lessons and activities for the week – making sure that she includes work activities from the practical life, science & geography, sensorial, math and languages portions of the classroom.  It’s a chance for her to develop her planning skills as well as her writing skills.

Clare is in the middle of the bottom of this picture.  She and a group of friends are listening to a lesson from their teacher. Clare’s teacher is a very sweet, soft-spoken woman who runs a calm and orderly classroom with an incredibly gentle, yet firm, hand.  Clare adores her and has learned quite a bit from her. 

Summer in iPhone Photos

Posted on by heather.e.d.mcpherson@gmail.com

Is there anything better than summer?  I mean, really, summer in Oregon is pretty magical.  Summer as a child is pretty magical as well, long days, sprinklers, BBQs, popsicles, picnics, birds, flowers and bugs.  Summer in Oregon, with our two kids, has been one of the best that I remember.  It’s been non-stop, never a free weekend, go-go-go and soak it all up mayhem at times, but it’s been lovely.  The kids are old enough to participate and enjoy it all and they’re young enough to remind us to relax and soak up the little details in between the non-stop adventures.
Rather than trying to re-cap all of the summer goings-on, I’ll just do an iPhone photo drop of various summer pictures starting with our family trip to Bend over Memorial Day Weekend.  Also known as the Time When the Frog Was In Our Canoe.  
 
I started a new job back in the spring, which meant that I now have Friday’s off with both kids.  It was a great day to hang out with them (and go to the grocery store, catch up on laundry and other house stuff).  We went to the new outdoor exhibit at the Children’s Museum, did art projects, ate snack outside, went to the park, hung out with friends and played and played.  
“We made crowns!  We are a kind and queen!  Take our picture!”
Fourth of July brought Grandma T, Grandpa Dan and the Blues Fest.  It also brought our new deck (see previous post) and, shortly after, our vacation to Washington and Clare’s birthday.  

 August found us in Newport for the annual camping trip with Clare’s school.  Camping with the kids (for two nights) was great.  The kids LOVED it and J and I even had a good time.  We went into Newport for the day and went to the aquarium and hung out on the pier. 

While many of our weekends have taken us away from home, we have stayed in Portland a little bit.  There have been BBQs with family, friends and neighbors on the back deck, impromptu movie nights at friends’ houses (in the picture above the kids are watching an outdoor showing of Frozen with friends), visits to the pool and enjoying our Portland experiences like eating outside at watching the Portland Thorns.
 

Ahhhh Oregon, thank you for giving us such a wonderful summer.

Five is…

Posted on by heather.e.d.mcpherson@gmail.com
 
One of Clare’s first acts as a five-year-old was to get a sassy new pixie haircut.  It may or may not have been preceded by (another) (false) diagnosis of head lice, but it certainly fulfilled one of her longtime requests.  She’s been asking for short hair “like Grandma” for a year and I finally relented.  A half-hour hair cut turned my little preschooler into a school girl.  The hair stylist gave her a spray-on purple streak to go with her pixie cut.  In the words of Auntie Debbie, “she looks like she’s 7!” 
 
She’s getting quite the response from her hair cut and is walking around with a little strut to her normal dancing and prancing.  I’ll be honest, for a day or two I missed her precious little bob.  But her sassy pixie cut has grown on me and now I think it’s perfectly Five-Year-Old-Clare.
 
 
Clare as a five-year-old has been really delightful.  She’s writing all over any surface she can get her hands on – Mom, Dad, Sam and Clare are her words of choice.  She’s reading simple words that she sees in the world, “Up” in the elevator, “bye” and “dog.”  She’s questioning everything – “what are the flippers on a whale called?” and “how does a muscle move your foot?”  
 

Princesses still rule around our house, but she may be waning just a touch in her enthusiasm for them.  Her love of Frozen is still pretty endless, especially her beloved Elsa, but she’s as likely to play babies and mama, dogs and cats or pretend that she’s a wasp as she’s likely to pretend she’s a princess.  Or, as she told me the other day at bedtime, “Actually, I’m a queen because I’m a princess who became a mom.”  As I tell her every day, “Clare, you can be anything you want to be if you’re willing to work hard for it.”  She replies, “Oh, I will!”
 

Washington Vacation Part II

Posted on by heather.e.d.mcpherson@gmail.com
 
After our peaceful sojourn to Lopez Island, we packed back into the car and made our way to the hustle and bustle of Seattle.  Seattle welcomed us with traffic, skyscrapers, people of every sort and big city excitement.  It was a hot Seattle weekend and the city was high on sunshine.  We joined them in their revelry and did our best to soak in as much sun and city as we possibly could in our few days there.
 

We rented a little cottage in West Seattle which was comfortable, but not the peaceful retreat that we found on the Island.  It didn’t matter, since we didn’t spend much time hanging out there.  We had a city to explore!  Our first day there found us at the Seattle Aquarium, since we never pass up an aquarium trip.  It was fun to see the underwater view of all of the sea life that we had been watching from above the water.  We picnicked in the Seattle Art Museum sculpture garden and enjoyed some art and then skipped back for a mid-day nap. 

 

I’m pretty sure that all Seattleites head to the beaches on a hot weekend day, so we did as well.  Saturday evening found us eating ice cream on Alki Beach, wading, people watching and eating fish and chips. 

On Sunday we covered the city.  Back in our before-kid days, J and I used to loved exploring cities by walking from one end to the other.  Ending the day with sore, tired feet and happy memories of sights and adventures.  I’ve been dreaming of the day that we could do that with our children.  That day was our trip to Seattle.  We explored from one end of downtown to the other, saying yes to every adventure that presented itself to us. 

We started at breakfast at Lola’s, a fancy gourmet place that welcomes children (a win-win in my book).  After that we strolled through Pike’s Market, seeing fish mongers throwing salmon (well, hoping to), flowers and produce, live crabs and lobsters for sale and street performers.  I kept waiting for little feet to drag and little voices to raise in complaints of fatigue and overstimulation, but they were champs and loved the adventure. 

After we made our way through the market, we (well, I) got a wild hair to buy tickets for one of those “duck boat” tourist trap tours.  The tour driver dressed up in funny hats and blasted music, we drove through the city and then the duck boat “drove” into Lake Washington and gave us a water tour.  J was skeptical at first but in the end we all really enjoyed it.  It also gave us a chance to sit down in the middle of our adventures.

 

After our duck boat tour, we hopped aboard the light rail train to Safeco Field to take in a Mariners game.  If you’re keeping track, and we were, on that day we rode in a car, a boat and a train.  The baseball game was the trip highlight for J.  It held the kids’ attention for about three innings, four if you count eating hot dogs, and then I took them to explore the stadium.  We found a play structure for children to play on and I sent the kiddos up into it.  I instructed Clare and Sam to stay together and every time I saw them they were like the picture below – close together.  That was perhaps the highlight of the trip, not the play structure, or the baseball game, or even Seattle or Lopez Island.  It was the closeness that brought us all together, especially the kids.  The purpose of the these trips is to bring our family of four into a tighter unit, besides the relaxation, adventure and fun. 

 We made it through the whole game and made our way back to our little West Seattle house, with tired feet and stories full of adventures.  We came back home the next day to celebrate our girl’s fifth birthday.  It kicked off another big week, making July quite a party around these parts.  Still, we’re all still talking about the relaxation and adventure of our 2014 Famly Mac vacation.