Reggio Emilia... if it's good enough for my classroom, it's good enough for my home!

While taking my grad class this last month, I learned about the Reggio Emilia approach to education. While it is primarily used for early childhood education, I was inspired and convicted all at the same time about my classroom, my approaches to teaching and even my home!

 

So, for those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, let me give you the very much abridged version of what Reggio is...

1. Child, parent and teacher are all partners in learning.
2. Teacher is an observer. Provide the tools and the foundation, but allow the students through trial and error to take control of their learning.
3. The environment is the third teacher. "The layout of the physical space in the classroom encourages encounters, communication, and relationships. The arrangement of structures, objects and activities encourages choices, problem solving, and discoveries in the process of learning."
4. Children participate in complex, long-term exploration of projects. A project could last the entire school year!
5. Learning is documented daily. The teacher OBSERVES the children learning and documents specific examples of learning.

 

http://www.reggiokids.com/the_reggio_approach.html

 

Here are some Reggio classrooms. I love them. The natural light, the clean lines, the plants and the overall sense of wanting to be in that room!

 

If you are interested in learning more about the Reggio Emilia approach, there are tons of articles on the web. Here is one. http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Reggio_Emilia/

But now let's take this home. How does this play into my home life? Well, as I am working on the girls rooms and organizing their crap toys, I am inspired to use more natural and/or clear products to store things in instead of brightly colored bins.  I love storage bins, but I have found that these brightly colored plastic bins overwhelm Lexi. She can't see what is in them, she can't distinguish easily where things go and then ends up in a meltdown because she didn't make any progress cleaning.

So, I am thinking.. instead of deciding for her where things should go, I am going to invite her into the conversation and allow her to organize based on how she wants thing done. My gosh, it is her room after all. She LOVES pretty things and I think would probably do much, much better with clear glass jars to put Barbie shoes in rather than have a large tub full of Barbie stuff that she can't find.

I like how the picture below has random items placed together, not for function, but for color. Lexi would be all over this! And really, why should I care if she puts her Barbies, her books and her art supplies together based on color rather than function!

 

And look at this one! I love the blue wall. 

 

And this is a dream playroom! Wow.

 

Okay, one last thing... Who wouldn't want to put the colors back where they go if you had something like this!! Too cool. That is next on my agenda to make!

 

Refinishing furniture

Years and years ago Doug built us a bed. It's been in storage for the last 9 years. We had been looking for furniture for Maddie and had discussed using this bed, but I didn't really want to paint it. However, in the end, I decided that it was much better to paint the thing and get it out of storage than for it to sit and eventually rot.

 

So, this morning Doug went and got the bed and we started sanding. (side note: squatting and sanding is hard work. even more so after a 10 mile run!)

 

Doug and I both worked on sanding the bed.

 

Here is one the baseboard with one coat of paint! I love it. I wish we had done this sooner!

 

We are also refinishing a dresser and a curio cabinet too. I figure I'm already filthy and hot, I might as well knock it all out in one day! 



 

So why am I inside taking a break? Well, it's 2pm and 93+ degrees and everything is drying. I'll go back out in a little while and do a light sanding on everything and spray another coat.

 

I can't wait to show you the finished furniture in Maddie's room!

 

no lakehouse trip for us this year

We are supposed to be at the lakehouse this week. Remember?

My side of the family goes to the lakehouse for a redneck time of it during the week of July 4th. I've blogged about it in 2012, and 2009. The girls and I should have left Wednesday morning... but Maddie woke up Tuesday in a bad asthma attack. She couldn't talk for HOURS because it was so bad.  I am very, very thankful that we have written instructions and specific guidelines for treating an asthma flare. But this meant that we were looking at the next couple of days of breathing treatments every 4 hours and then beginning a taper IF she was better.

So... Tuesday evening I met my sister Libby in a parking lot about an hour away from our house and handed off Lexi so that at least Lexi got to go to the lakehouse. Sending my child to the lakehouse without me was scary.  I'm not good at the letting go part of parenting. But I guess this can count as Lexi's "summer camp" experience!

As of today, Maddie still has a wet cough and needs breathing treatments at least every 4 hours. Thankfully her peak flow is back up, but that's on the every 4 hour treatments. So I guess I'll call the doctor tomorrow.

Obviously the lakehouse is out for us this year. 5 families in a 3 bedroom + bunkroom 2 bath house just doesn't sound like the place Maddie needs to be right now.

I promised her that our little family would do something "lakehouse-ish" this summer.

Great. Do you know how many times I have said we would do something that I never planned to do because I am so sad that Maddie has missed out on yet another event!

A Frustrating Tale of the Scale

Since January 1, I have gained 9 pounds. Great. 2 of those pounds I gained THIS WEEK.

This should not be happening. Why is this happening?  Okay, I know why...more calories consumed than used.. but more than that.. HOW?

Let  me show you a visual recap.

 

Yes, you read that right. Since Jan 1st I have run 426 miles and burned more than 44 THOUSAND calories. This doesn't include the rest of the cardio... elliptical, rowing, weights, water aerobics...

But yes, I am gaining weight.

I would love to say that it's all muscle. But really... it's not all muscle. On one side of the seesaw is the fact that I logged more than 10 workouts each of the last few weeks. One the other side is that I sat on my rear working on my grad class, blogging and playing on facebook.

So what do I do? I do the one thing that would keep it all in check and that I haven't been doing. Track my food intake. ugh. At least Weight Watchers makes it easy on my phone.

Hmmm.. I wonder how many activity points training for a marathon will get me? :)

A 30 minute Drab to Fab project to complete with your teen!



Maddie has wanted to repaint the top of this desk for a while. It is boring and blah! But ugh... painting makes messes and it's hot outside! So, I came up with a cool solution. Even better, a solution we were both happy with.

We went from Drab to FAB in under 30 minutes and it only cost $10 and no messes!!

 

Before you begin, you need to measure your table top. Maddie's desk was the perfect size for one yard of fabric. 

We got a yard of fabric in the pattern of her choice. Cause really who cares... it's one yard of fabric and I can easily remove it in a couple of years when we want to change colors or kids. Okay, maybe we will keep the kids. You also need a roll of iron-on fabric adhesive. It's a $7 investment at the store and you will have leftovers. Save the leftovers as you can piece this stuff and nobody would know!

Iron the adhesive on. Follow the directions on the packaging. We had cotton fabric, so we used the cotton setting on the iron. Unroll the adhesive right up next to the edge of the fabric. If you have overlap, you can pull it off.

 

 Iron down the adhesive. We used the desktop as the ironing board. Way easier! Lots more space to work. We put a towel between the fabric and the desk and when we finished a section, we would move the towel down the desk to give the area we just ironed a chance to cool.

 

 Once the entire yard of fabric has adhesive, peel the backing off.

Now flip the fabric over so that it is shiny adhesive side down and check the sides to make sure that all ends are covered.

Start ironing down the material on the side with the least overlap. This makes sure that you don't end up with one end short and showing the original desk. I went ahead and ironed the underside of the short side while I was there. However, leave the corners for later!

Once you have the one side ironed down move to the top of the desk. I like to start at the end that I just ironed and move across the top of the desk at an angle. Pull the fabric taut as you iron. If you end up with a wrinkle or bubble, just yank it up, smooth it out and iron it back down!

 

 

 

One the top is ironed down completely finish ironing the rest of the edges. Make sure to give the fabric and tug and hold in place as you iron the edge and underside. You don't want a lumpy looking side. (Maybe that's my problem... hmmm. if only I could give my skin around my middle a tug and iron it down....)

 

Once the edges are ironed in place, go back and finish the corner. I think these corners are called hospital corners. Or maybe you know it as how you make the corners when wrapping a present.

 

The last step is trimming the underside and making sure that all the ends are ironed well. If you have a spot that doesn't adhere well, just tear a piece of the adhesive off and iron it to the fabric, peel the backer off and iron it to the desk!

 

 

And less than 30 minutes later.... COMPLETE!

 

This is better than cute.. it's FAB! And best of all, this was a project that Maddie and I did together!

Need a tutorial that you can access on your smart phone?

 http://snapguide.com/guides/make-and-old-boring-desk-look-cool/