Calendar + Weather Chart {Free Printable}

I have been having such fun making some resources for Peter to use in his Pre-Prep room. I posted a photo of this calendar and weather chart that I made on Instagram and Twitter, and sparked some interest. So, I have decided to share it here on my blog, for free!
You can access the four-page full-colour PDF file via Google Docs using THIS LINK.
Here’s a preview of what you’ll be downloading:
We laminated the two charts, and cut out the day-names and weather descriptions and laminated them too. Mr. Peter (as his students call him) uses the Calendar and Weather Chart each morning. They sing the ‘Days of the Week song’ to the tune of ‘The Adaams Family’:
There’s Sunday then there’s Monday
There’s Tuesday then there’s Wednesday
There’s Thurday then there’s Friday
And then there’s Saturday
Days of the week (click click)
Days of the week (click click)
Days of the week, days of the week, days of the week (click click)
Once they’ve sung the song, they choose the appropriate day name for today, yesterday and tomorrow, then they look outside and have a chat about the weather and choose the appropriate descriptions for the day and stick them to the charts. It’s a lovely little routing for them, and Pete says they all enjoy it.
I hope you will too!
I’d love to hear how you use it and if your kids like it.
Enjoy!
[All clipart is straight from Microsoft Clipart, and fonts were a mixture of downloaded and some that we made ourselves using this great app on our iPad!]

A Peek At My Week

This week has been incredibly fast-paced for the Friend Family, as we try and settle into our new routine being a Double-Income-One-Kid family.

Yes, Peter has started his new job! After a few days trying to find his feet (he was meant to be kind of eased into the job with someone helping him in his room, but for a number of reasons this didn’t happen and he was on his own from day one!) he is starting to get into the swing of things. He has brilliant ideas and plans for his kids, and I’m loving seeing him passionate and excited. I’ve also had fun helping him design and make some resources for his room. I love doing creative things like that and don’t get to do them so much in my role as a Distance Education teacher. The only real hurdle we have left to overcome is to find another qualified and fully registered teacher, hopefully in a local Kindy, who can mentor Pete so he can meet the requirements to get his full Qld Teachers Registration in the next twelve months!

It has been interesting for both Pete and Mayana that she is in his Kindy room. They are both having to adjust to the idea of not being solely each other’s, and Mayana has been acting out a little this week as she finds her feet. It seemed by the end of the week that she was starting to go back to being her lovely self, so it will be interesting to see how she goes this week. It’s a huge adjustment for her going to long days of practically full-time kindy, and considering that I think she hasn’t done too badly at all.

Mayana had her first dance class this week, and despite the fact that I got my times mixed up and she only actually got to do the last 10 minutes of the lesson (she didn’t notice this at all by the way), she had an absolute ball. It was literally one of the cutest things I have ever seen in my life. For starters she is at least 30cm shorter than everyone else in her class (even though she is the same age as half of them), and the look of pure concentration on her face as she tried to copy everything her teacher does was almost too much for me to take. I wish it wasn’t weird to take photos of her with other people’s kids so I could share it with you! She has had fun showing everyone she knows all of the things that Miss Desiree taught her. It will be interesting to see how much she picks up in an actual half hour lesson this week, and I’m already looking forward to seeing her in her concert at the end of the year!

We took a whirlwind day-trip to Kenilworth on the weekend, where we met up with my parents. Opa had promised to take Mayana on an ice-cream date if she could make good choices and have listening ears (our buzz words of the week) at Kindy for Papa on Thurday, and we thought it would be good to follow that through in a timely manner. It was an awesomely fun day, if a little exhausting!

For me it’s the same-old same-old, busy busy busy at work trying to keep my head above water, and eternally grateful that the bosses started my replacement off now and not a few weeks before I left. I honestly wouldn’t have survived without her these past few weeks- it has been such a blessing to have her there! Plus we get along famously and I have very much enjoyed her company. It’s fun having new staff in our office!

And that, my friends, is pretty much our week in a nutshell. I myself cannot believe that it is a week since I was sitting her writing last week’s post! The days are just flying by, and here we are practically in the middle of February already!

Tell me about your week!

Zoey x

{Baby Two} 28 Weeks

 

A week into the third trimester… can you even believe it? In not too many more weeks I will be on maternity leave, and then before we know it we’ll be meeting the newest member of our family.  It’s all just flying by too fast to really process it properly!

I’m starting to reconsider our decision not to do the antenatal classes again. A part of me feels like I need to do them to help me refocus and prepare myself for giving birth again. While I had a good experience last time (in as much as you can call labour a ‘good experience’) there are some things I know I would like to do differently this time. Like trying to be more active, and I don’t know, maybe it would be good to actually wear some clothes this time?

At the end of the day I know that everything will be okay, and I’ve still got time to prepare myself, but I just want to make sure I’m in the right headspace when the time comes, and I’m definitely not there yet! Maybe I should check a few books out from the library or something.

Other than that, things are going well. I’ve had two physio appointments in the last few weeks, and learned a few things about how to adjust my posture, and been given a couple of exercises I have to do each day and it has made a huge difference. I still have my ouchie days, like after I spent an hour squatting and scrubbing the crayon off the walls that Mayana was ‘practising her letters on’… But for the most part, I’m definitely noticing a difference. My lovely husband also brought one of our ergonomic office chairs from home to work for me, and not being on the dodgy chair I was using there has also meant a significant drop in my pain levels!

Baby Two and I did Zumba this week. It is hard! I like to think that my baby-bump contributed to my awkwardness levels, but I’m not silly enough to think that I wouldn’t look pretty ridiculous trying to Zumba pregnant or not! I felt good for it though, and I’ll probably give it another go this week. The baby slept through the whole class, but spent plenty of time practicing his Zumba moves later in the evening!

This week will see me doing my glucose test for gestational diabetes, which I somehow have to squeeze into my already very busy week without missing too much work! I’m kind of looking forward to an uninterrupted hour of reading time, but not so much to the drink or the needles.

There isn’t really too much more to say… this pregnancy has been pretty uneventful so far, and I think that’s always a good thing as far as pregnancies go! Next weekend we have big plans for starting on the baby’s room, and I’ve been looking online for all kinds of elephant-themed things for inspiration. I have a few ideas up my sleeve, and I’m looking forward to getting creative in there!

Less than twelve weeks to go, I’m getting so excited!

A Peek at My Week

This week has been a huge and exciting and very happy one for the Friend family!

We’ve had plenty of adventures this week… visits with friends, a trip to the beach, we built a dress-up box, played, hung out in Pete’s awesome hammock. Mayana has enjoyed her second day at Kindy, where she wowed her teachers with her ability to write and name so many letters. But this week has been a very special week, with some very big news…

Last Sunday night, Peter and I were feeling a little down-in-the-dumps. It was really dawning on us how little time we really had before I go on maternity leave and become basically income-less. Peter has been applying for jobs like a mad-man, but despite a few interviews, no offers had come his way. So Sunday night, Peter was checking out the internet for the eleventy-billionth time when a Kindy Teacher position caught his eye. At the kindy that is practically across our back fence!

On Monday morning he gathered his resume and all the bits and pieces that go with it, and stopped by to drop it off. He hadn’t even gotten home when his phone rang. It was the director asking if he would like to come in for an interview on Tuesday, at 10am. The next morning, at 10.09am, Peter called me at work with the amazing and awesome news that HE HAS A JOB!!!!! He basically had walked in, been given an overview of the position, and told that if he wants it, it’s all his.

God is so good. Mayana is able to go to ‘Papa’s Kindy’ on the days that she isn’t at her normal kindy (at least until I’m on maternity leave), and we get a discounted rate for her fees because Pete will be working there. The whole hassle of having to get another car is now a non-issue, because Pete will only need to walk about 200m to get to work. It’s amazing to look back at how stressed we were when we had to unexpectedly move house last year, but now we know that in God’s bigger picture, this house would be perfect for the situation in which we now find ourselves. Pete starts his new job tomorrow, and will be working 34 hours a week over Tuesday-Friday. We feel like such a weight has been lifted from our shoulders, and are once again a living testimony of how God provides. 

So we had plenty of mid-week celebrations, including when my awesome family drove 1.5 hours just to have a celebratory dinner for Peter and congratulate him in person. It was so lovely. I have loved seeing the grin on my husband’s face all week, I’m so proud of him!

In other Friend Family News, I have officially crossed over into the third trimester (insane!!!) and am still loving being pregnant… Especially now that I finally got to have a physio appointment and can walk semi-normally again. But I’ll do a proper pregnancy update later with more on that.

Mayana’s big news is that she has added yet another big-ticket item to her list of reasons why she is now officially a Big Girl: she has stopped wearing nappies to bed! I still haven’t gotten brave enough to not put a towel down underneath her every night, but so far (*touch wood*) we have had no whoopsies. She has told pretty much everyone she knows, “I’m a big girl now because I wore NO nappies, ONLY Noonies (her word for undies), and I had NO whoopsies!!!!” Sigh. My little girl is definitely growing up. And maybe one day I will be able to sleep deeply again without half listening out for her calling me or trying to go to the toilet on her own in the middle of the night. For now, she is doing a great job, and is excitedly working towards going shopping for a Justine Clarke CD, which she will earn with five stickers – one for each morning her bed is dry when she wakes up.

Another lovely week full of wonderful memories for our family.

If you want to play along, please do! And make sure you leave a link in my comments, because I’d love to see what you’ve been up to too!

I love my little family so much!

Weekend Project | Dress-Up Box

One of the things we had wanted to give to Mayana for her birthday was a dress-up box. However with our big Perth trip and busy holiday, we just didn’t have time to actually make it before her birthday. Well this weekend we finally got to it.

Peter and I were inspired by this design from the Ana White website, which is where we got the plans for Mayana’s play kitchen last year.  It’s a very simple design, and didn’t take my very handy husband long to knock together at all.

We purchased one sheet of ply from Bunnings for $17.50, and this was plenty to build the whole piece of furniture. Along with screws, dowel, two sample pots of paint (thank goodness we found it easier to choose and agree on colours this time!) and some new rollers for painting, the grand total came in at just less than $50.00.

I had planned to photo-document the process, but before I knew it, Peter was calling out to me that he was done!

He’s a pretty awesome fella, that husband of mine!

My job was the painting.  We chose a creamy butter yellow and a very pale apple green to paint with, and used the yellow for the outside and the green for the inside, the hanging rail, and the edges. They make a nice contrast, but are lovely and soft and not too in-your-face. I got the final coat on this afternoon, and in this heat it wasn’t too long before it was dry enough to bring up to Mayana’s room.

To finish it off, I’m on the hunt for some wooden letters to spell ‘Dress-Ups’, which I plan to cover with funky scrapbooking paper and glue to the front of the box. Later, we might think about adding a shelf above the hanging rail, with a few boxes to store hats, shoes, or any other miscellaneous dress-up items that might appear when we have more than one child dressing up!

We added a few adhesive hooks to the side to hang necklaces and headbands. The bottom of the box is a place for Dorothy Tails, masks, her Doctor’s Kit, and we’ll add other roll-playing props as we find them.

At the moment, our collection is fairly ‘fairy princess’ heavy, but as time goes on, I’m sure things will balance out a little. Her favourite dress-ups at Kindy so far have been a lady-beetle costume and a Fireman shirt.

Mayana is really into role-playing games at the moment, and I know that dressing up will really enrich those play-learning experiences for her. I’m really excited about this new little piece of furniture!

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Oh… and just as an aside: I have a very excited little girl because this week she is going to be starting dance classes! She’ll be doing them at the same dance school that my sister goes to, and is so excited that she’ll get to be in a concert ‘just like Boo!’. I found her this very cute ‘leotard’ (which is actually a pair of togs, but who could even tell!?) for $7.00 on clearance, and I think it will do very nicely as a dance outfit. Could it be any cuter? I mean, apart from when Mayana is in it of course…