Something you don't want to hear at your child's school

Oh Caed and Chinese pre-school. So much to say. A friend pointed out that maybe since I worked in pre-school for so long in the states it is especially hard for me to watch (and put my child through!) what pre-school here is like. Bottom line right now is that he is not doing well there. He gets in trouble constantly for hitting and scratching, for not participating, not dancing, not wanting to wash his face. Obviously the biggest issue is that he cannot communicate that well. One day he told me (after teacher told me he had hit a boy) "I was just playing lightning Mcqueen and Tokyo Matter with him" - which of course I am sure the boy had no idea :) Caed is very imaginative, he love to tell stories and get people to act out things together. I think it is really hard for him to be there with all those kids and have his language ability go from story telling and explaining anything he wants to being able to say only basic things :( I'll hold back [a bit] on all my other complaints for now....

Onto some cute stories...

A few weeks ago Caed came home and told me of a child in his class, 

"Mayo is a boy girl that is a boy and a girl mixed up. He is bad because his mommy and his daddy hasn't disciplined him yet." First of all Mayo is not a name - it means "don't have" so not sure where that mix up came in. After thinking it over I assumed that he was talking about a girl with short hair like a boy (since surely it wasn't a boy with long hair which is not very Chinese - Caed's teacher even told him that he needs to cut his hair because only girls have long hair like him). The disciple thing comes from us always telling him that discipline is to help him, and instruct him and teach him so that it will go well with him. If we don't discipline him he will grow to be a boy who doesn't know how to interact with his friends {side note there are lots of times that he is the aggressor, with all that discipline talk I am not sure how much of the teaching wears off at times.} 

*I was right by the way "Mayo" is the GIRL in the orange sweater on the right of the above picture.

Standing outside for 15 minutes to practice the flag raising ceremony - don't get me started on this

his class

listening to a teacher story

Oh and the very best - 

This was last month. I went to my kitchen window to watch Caed do his 'dances' but his whole class was there and not him. I texted this to Sean, then went out to go buy groceries. On my way to the store I stopped by the gate and there was a teacher there and I asked why KaiKai was not with his class her reply, 

"Oh he fell and bumped his head and was bleeding so he is at the hospital"

me - Is he okay? How bad is it why didn't you call me??????

"He will be fine, we tried to call but no one answered"

 (okay this is partially my fault they had my old cell phone number not my new one, the house phone we later figured out was out because a line was crossed or something {on a side note it took weeks of calling the phone company to get that stupid thing fixed, more than once the guys told me "it's raining today, call me back when its sunny" - and when he did came it took 5 minutes to fix...})

Back to the story. Caed's teacher who speaks no English took him to the hospital which is a five-10 min walk down the road. I was a bit frantic thinking of him all hurt and bleeding an in a hospital not understanding what anyone was saying. So I walked quickly (okay ran) to the hospital but couldn't find him, ran back to the school, not there yet either, back halfway down the street, still no sign, and finally back to the school and he was there. All hopped up on candy. Not crying. Just with a cut on the back of his head and some red stuff the doc had put on to top the bleeding - which made his blonde hair look like, well bloody. They were all really appologetic. Asked if I wanted to take him back to class. I opted to take him home early for the day. Thankfully the teachers there are really caring and took great care of him. They said they just wanted to make sure he didn't need stitches. 

I hope never again to hear the sentence "he is at the hospital" when I inquire about my son's whereabouts. 

Real Princesses and Other Recent Happenings

We saw this car outside our apartment the other day (Sarge - as Caed says)

Little boys peeing in the street. Kinda glad that this is completely appropriate here. Speaking of which Caed stopped wearing a diaper at night a month ago. I am very surprised to say that he has done amazing. One night I asked him if he wanted a pull up or underwear and he picked underwear. Now he just gets up and goes if he has to pee at night. Twice he has had accidents on the way to the bathroom, but overall I am (knock on wood) very pleased!

A few weeks ago there was a party for all the students studying a foriegn language (i.e. English, French, German, Japaneese) @ Sean's school (Have I mentioned here that Sean is now an English teacher at a University???). Anyway we thought little party like what we had been to before - we were wrong. There were hundreds of people, lights, video equipment, bubble machines, programs, a red carpet. 

And paid models, or as Caed shouted when he saw them, 

"REAL PRINCESSES!!!

He loved touching all the jewels on their dresses. 

Sean and the other foreign teachers put on a sit where they sang and 

 the famous scenes from Titanic. It was very funny. 

On an unseasonably sunny day this moth Caed and I accompanied some new friends to a local waterfall. Here we are having some 'snacks' - mostly fish grilled on little coals. 

This woman was introduced to us a while back because her son is autistic and a mutual friend knew that both Sean and my work in the states was with autistic kids (me early intervention and Sean high school and post grad). This lady's story was amazing. I could write lots on it, and what it is like to have any sort of special needs child here, but it would end up sounding pretty rant-ish. Anyway I'll just say again she is an amazing and strong woman I respect very much. 

Started teaching some of Caed's peers for 1 hour a week on Saturdays. They love it - Caed not so much. He has already played all these activities.

Another play date set up through a contact at Sean's school. Caed had a blast playing guns and swords with MaoMao and DingDing (KaiKai is Caed's Chinese name). 

The Dairy Fairy

This place just opened up outside of a Walmart in the big city an hour from our house. Love it. Instead of blizzards they have hurricanes. We haven't tried it yet.

In a new mall we found this play place - unlimited play only $1.50

Best part is they have bins and bins of these build it things. All different sorts, though C is fond of the 'water pipes' he is playing with above. 

All his hot wheels were lined up for a drive-in movie. 

Crafty Window Frame

Last summer they were tearing down all these old buildings across from where we live to build a park. A friend went and got these neat old wooden frames for me. They have slept in wait until recently :)

I sanded then painted then distressed them $2.00 for paint and sand paper

Then took them outside where Sean used some tools to attach the little knobs I ordered on taobao (my first taobao purchase by the way! Only 14 cents a piece. 

Then I took it to the glass guy and he cut and put in mirrors for me for $5.85. I took the hooks from an old picture and attatched them to the back. Then I got to work (really it's work) drilling whole and putting those anchor things in the cement walls. 

Then I made this cute pennant thing with fall colors, and framed Caed's turkey hand art, and glued leaves to this old glass vase to make a fall candle. 

Love those turkeys. 

Rainy Day Fun

* First I apologize that all my pictures from this month are of so low (phone) quality. My camera is broken, we are working on a replacement...

A few weeks ago it was a rainy day and we went to the hardware store on our street and bought two tubes (I think they are for drains?) for 50 cents. We also found a piece of styrofoam someone was throwing out. Then with some packing tape we got to work on our marble roller coaster. 

It was pretty cool - we taped it to our sliding glass door. 

And made a funnel at the top for the marbles.

It stayed up for 4 days. Fun. Cheap. Activity. 

HomeSchool Pt 2

In October we did a pumpkin theme. This doesn't have to do with pumpkins but one day we did body painting in the bathroom.

Stamp dots

Pumpkin patterning (I got all these free print offs from

 http://www.2teachingmommies.com/) they have tons of different themes and they are all geared towards 3-4 year olds. 

pre-writing stuff, he loves this

pumpkin art. 

After this my camera died. It was so sad. It won't close. So now we are camera-less (well we still have phone camera and ipad) but from here on out until we get a new camera our pictures will not be the best quality...)

HomeSchool Pt 1

So the last few weeks of September I started doing 'homeschool' with Caed on the mornings he doesn't go to Chinese pre-school. 

i have been really enjoying this time with my son. I am so very thankful for this 'set apart' time with just me and him. I love watching him learn and play. I love that I am in a place where I can be doing this with him. And I love that he wants to do homeschool (maybe this is only because his other option is Chinese preschool which he is still not super excited about...).

I got lots of ideas from other blogs and put together lots of themed activities that we work on for 4 weeks at a time. The first month was dinosaurs. Here he is pinching and transferring dinos. 

Setting the table for snack time. We have been talking about table manners and good questions to ask people while you are eating. It is super cute when he asks Sean while we are eating, "How was your day today daddy?" "What was your favorite part of the day?"

Folding washcloths (hum maybe I didn't take many pictures of the dino themed activities we did...)

Sorting Biggest to Smallest

Every morning we do a Bible time first (I am using a great curriculum for 2-3 year olds that a friend gave us). Caed is memorizing verses too. If I can ever figure out how to load videos to the blog I have a super cute video of him doing his verses. After that we do calendar time. Then he can pick whatever activities he wants from off the shelves. 

One day we made jello and 'burried' dinosaurs inside. 

'excavating' jello dinos

with our friend Grady

I forget who mailed us these but they are called, "Story Cubes" and they are super fun. Each die has a small picture of something on each side (sun, bell, sad face, lock, arrow, hand etc). You roll them and then make a story out of the dice that show up. At first I would just roll three and C would tell a 'story' about them. But now he likes all 9. I bet you could make a set of these too with a little time and big dice...

Christmas in October

An amazing group of people back in CA did something for us called "Christmas in October" 

(that may not be what it is really called...)

They asked us each to pick some gifts we woudl like back in the summer and they sent them all in packages. They were all wrapped in Christmas paper and Christmas cards were even included. Caed was ridiculously excited to open presents for 'no reason'.

His Cars figurines, he loves them!!!

Kitchen Art

I had this idea the other day to use this super cheap clear plastic sticky paper to put some art up in the kitchen (which is tiled floor to ceiling). I printed off some free prints from the internet (mostly verses or quotes found on pinterest). 

Cut them and placed them face down on the clear plastic

stuck it to the wall

And yeah there you go. I think a 1 meter roll of that stuff was 15 kuai - like $2.25

Halloween

There was a Halloween party at Caed's school. It was pretty funny. 

Here he is with his lead teacher Luo Lao Shi

For weeks leading up to this party Caed told me he wanted to be a 'mean pumpkin' which I think he meant jack-o-lantern. Anyway I cut some felt flipped an orange shirt inside out and got to sewing. Well the morning of halloween he woke up and said he had changed his mind and wanted to be a bat. No way child, I am not making a bat costume last minute. So he decided on skeleton (he got these jammies from his aunt and uncle!). 

Zhang Lao Shi

Tao Lao Shi (She is adorable!)

Weird shaped Chinese pumpkins

Love it!

This is a bad pic but this is Caed's favorite teacher Lisa Lao Shi - she comes and teaches his class English. He loves her, I mean really loves here, and she loves him too :) He came home the other day with a Dove chocolate bar in his backpack and he told me, "Lisa Lao Shi gave it to me." I asked why and he said, "Because she loves me." She came over for dinner last month too. Caed invited her by himself. I went to pick him up and she said C had asked her to come to dinner this week. 

Touching the witch. 

Seriously mom stop making me take pictures with people...

And what preschool party is complete without some choreographed dancing to Michael Jackson???

I love C in this pic like he saying, "See look mom I told you all we ever do is dance at school..."

we made these pumpkin oranges with a sharpie for his teachers and all his classmates

made these cute tags for the cookies we made for all the teachers and staff at his pre-school

the cookies

Later we went to another Halloween party with the college students @ Sean's school and C wore his mean pumpkin outfit.

see the hat

silly pumpkin