Preschool Art – Year 2 – June

Starting off with my favorite art piece from June. This octopus covered in Fruit Loops was awesome, it even came with a warning from Janet to Jim to not eat any of them because they are at least 3 years old, which is especially funny because he brought home a tree one time with pieces of popcorn glued onto it and more than once we caught Jordan sneaking the pieces off of it. 

Here is the birdhouse that he painted for Daddy for Father's Day

And Daddy with the certificate he made too

This month they also studied underwater sea stuff

I think this was supposed to be an aquarium of some sort...within a day or two the fishy crackers came unglued and were just floating around in there. This is definitely one of the items that will not be in the keep box after clean up day. This is exactly why I take these pictures and post these blogs so that I don't feel guilty throwing these kinds of things out. 

This rainbow is one of the things that I'm sure he's brought home a few times. It seems to be a regular art piece that probably uses up a ton of extra pieces of paper laying around! 

The last little art book brought home from Busy Bee's

I love this because I can totally tell this is our family that he drew

One last painted start

Preschool Art – Year 2 – May

I know I've posted this picture before but I really just love it so much. This was the picture in my Mother's Day card that James made for me at school.

Comparisons from last year to this year. He grew up so much! 

Not a lot of art was done in May, or I guess I just fell off the picture taking wagon because this was all that I could find.

Preschool Show & Tell – Year 2 – Week 34

This was the last week of Show & Tell and I tried to get him to take something fun and exciting, but nope, he wanted to take another random car from the collection. And this week I didn't even get a picture of him with it and now do you think I can find this particular car in the bunch? Oh well, another year of S&T posts are done and I hear that 

Ready, Set, Learn...and he's off!

A few months back James's new school had a fun little morning activity where incoming Kindergarten kids could tour the school and see the Kindergarten classrooms, as well as the music room, gymnasium and library learning commons. Here are a few pictures from that morning. He had so much fun that day with his little preschool friends and it made him (and me) excited for what September is going to bring for James. 

Here they have some really fun activities and stuff that the kids do to prepare for entering Kindergarten and celebrating ending preschool. More pictures coming from the Preschool Carnival and James's Kindergarten assessment in an upcoming post.

He may not talk yet but he is full of personality

I started this blog post a few months ago because I wanted to record all of the ways that Jordan can and does communicate with us even though he isn't talking yet. Since the start of this blog post he has finally started talking a little bit when prompted but is still very much happy to not say a word except for some pretty consistent babbling of mamamam, dadadadada, nananana, papapapa. We have been seeing a speech therapist since January and she is really proud of the progress and so am I as I feared he just might never talk! Can you imagine a child of MINE that didn't talk?!?!

Even though he doesn't actually speak words to us he is very aware of what is going on and understands completely what you are saying and doing around him.

A while back he had a bedtime routine that just cracked me up every night. I would ask him if he wanted me to sing a song for him and he would shake his head yes and then for EVERY single song I would start to sing he would look at me, smile and just wag his finger back and forth at me indicating that in fact no he didn't want THAT song. Then I would look shocked and horrified and then he would burst out into a giggle. Now we've progressed to his saying "ooohhh" when he wants me to sing Oh Canada to him every night and now he'll hum along with me while I sing. I have to get a video of it because it really is so cute how 3 separate times during the song he throws his arms up in the air because he thinks its the end of the song, even though I know that he knows it isn't :)

For months now we've been saying I love you to Jordan by pointing to our eye and saying I, then to our heart and saying Love, and then to him and saying You. Now when we say it to him he will often point to his heart and point back to us and then lean in for a big hug and kiss. I remember one night snuggling with him in my bed when he should have been sleeping but had a rare wakeup and he poked me in the eye and got my attention, then touched his heart and grunted at me (another form of his communication). It was totally unprovoked as I was just laying quietly watching him and it made my heart soar knowing that he was able to communicate, even if he couldn't say any words yet.

This kid is as independent as any child I've ever seen. If he wants something he doesn't want to ask for it, he will just grab a stool and climb up to whatever it is that he wants. He is a great pointer and grunter too and as long as he signed the words Please and Thank You he was able to usually get what he wanted. We have progressed in the past 2 months to some semblance of those two phrases so we've come a long way! Now it's "eessseee" and "ta" which the speech therapist said is great progress.

James's Preschool Year 2 Photos

I opened up the envelope to see this years photos and was both pleasantly surprised at how good they are and at the same time really caught off guard by how old he looks...and how much he looks like my brother Christopher! WOW!