Minivan pics and a little about preschool

I mentioned we bought a new (to us) minivan a month back but haven't posted pictures yet.  Not gonna lie - it's a pretty sweet ride.  Clara is very protective of it and likes to shout at others cars to "drive slow, cars! don't wreck my minivan!".  I love how easy it is to get the girls in and out of it, I love the power tailgate and sliding doors that open with the press of a button, and I love the amount of cargo space in the back, especially when the back row of benches is down (it always is for us unless we have company riding with us) because it will make trips so much more comfortable. 

 

You have no idea how much Paul loves this vehicle and how long he has wanted a minivan.  Its both adorable and weird.

In other totally random goings-on, I have been prepping materials for preschool for Clara.  We won't start until fall, at least not officially, but since I am going to homeschool her (at least for this year - not decided about what to do for the future) I feel like the more prepared I am the better it will go.  There are SO many resources available to help moms who want to do a homeschool preschool that really it has been a matter of gathering and organizing and figuring out how I want to approach things.  I have a pinterest board that I am constantly adding new things to when I find them.  My favorite resources so far have been the site "Confessions of a Homeschooler" and "1+1+1=1".  They have everything from free printables to lesson plans to pictures of their home classrooms/study areas, etc.  I also made a trip to Lakeshore Learning to pick up some helpful supplies. 

Doing all this prep work has even sparked my own imagination and I created a sorting game using my Silhouette Cameo for the letter "a" where I put upper case "A"s and lower case "a"s on ants that Clara will sort to the correct side of a picnic basket.  I already had stuff for the letter "a" with an apple theme, but I just thought that the ant idea was cute and it gave me a chance to learn a lot more about using my Silhouette machine. 

In the meantime, we've started doing some color matching activities and Clara has developed an obsession with the Leap Frog Letter Factory and Talking Word Factory videos.  Because of those two little movies she is constantly (and I mean CONSTANTLY) sounding out the first sounds in words she thinks of and identifying the first letter.  (This is especially funny when her pronunciation is off.  She is convinced that "yellow" starts with the letter "l" because she pronounces it "lello".)  She even pulled out a workbook with cutting projects in it and identified the letters and sounds in "cut" and sounded it out while I pointed to each letter.  She didn't really read it - I'm pretty sure she knew the word from the context of knowing what the book was and given its similarity to the word "cat" which is the first word that the Talking Word Factory video explains, but still, it was exciting to hear her make each sound "c-u-t", then say them faster together, and then actually exclaim "cut!" like she had realized its meaning.