Diaries of the Teacher Mom

Week of: Life

2011-02-20T16:56:00.000-08:00

This week has FLOWN by. Seriously, where did it go? We managed to do a few lessons almost every day but did nothing for our theme week. Even though it was fine and we accomplished what we "needed" to accomplish, I feel that I need to get more organized with our themes. We did start to read our next Magic Tree House book about Dinosaurs. Next week I have a bunch planned to go with our Dinosaur/Volcano theme. Perhaps that is an odd combination, but there are volcanoes on the cover of the MTH book, so of course Charlie wanted to study them as well. :)

The weather has been gorgeous here, 50 and higher. So, the boys have also spent a great deal of time in our ~~mud pit~~ backyard. We have also taken a few walks around the neighborhood. It has been such a welcomed change to get.out.of.the.house!

Besides our lessons, celebrating Valentines Day, doctors appointments and the girls over 2 days this week, we spent a good deal of time just doing everyday stuff around here. Organizing, throwing things out, playing, laughing, planning Tommy's bday party, and spending time together. So, this week our official theme was: LIFE.

Week 2 of Valentines

2011-02-12T06:59:00.000-08:00

It is kind of nice not having a "theme" per se these last 2 weeks. Instead we have been focusing on making Valentines Day crafts and cards for some of our favorite people. This year we are really trying to reinforce giving to others. Whether it is taking food to the food pantry at church, donating used toys and clothes to the Salvation Army, taking dinner to a neighbor in need, or making cards for our family and friends, we want our children to grow up with giving hearts.

The boys made 2 types of hand-print valentines. I added the wording "Happy Valentines Day, Love, Charlie/Tommy". I think they turned out so cute!
We also painted the outside of the boys pinky finger and along the side of their palm to make the heart prints. They also made their Valentine card box to collect their cards in and prepared their Valentines for the Co-op friends on Monday.

Penny even made a cute butterfly Valentine card.

On Thursday we had a small Valentines Day party with a few of our friends.

For our treats we had confetti cupcakes, brownies and strawberry milk.

The kids decorated their cupcakes and made a valentine card to take home. It was a lot of fun!

Besides all our pre-Valentines Day fun, we stuck to our basic lessons as well. Charlie completed lessons in Phonics and Math, practiced his hand-writing by finishing up his Thank You cards from his birthday and we picked up his Explode the Code book.

I had a conference call with Charlie's "teacher" from K12 this week as well. We went over his test scores from the AIMS web test he did a few weeks back. Charlie scored average or above average on all subjects. She was also pleased with the progress that he has made from the beginning of the year and feels that he is right on track in most areas and ahead of the game in some. She also said that if we continue to complete lessons at the rate we are currently working, then we will be done with his school in late April. The last day of school is technically June 3rd. We will most likely continue on as we have been, possibly taking a few days off for the boys to have a "free day" from school and for me to devote to planning their summer curriculum and Tommy's curriculum for next year.

What we were playing with this week:

Linking up this week to:

No Time For Flash Cards
ABC and 123
Preschool Corner

Week of the Valentines

2011-02-07T12:25:00.000-08:00

Tissue Paper Valentines Day Hearts

This week both boys shared the same theme and we worked on our Valentines Day decorations and cards. We made tissue paper hearts with contact paper. They are so pretty on our front window when the sun shines (which isn't often these days!).

The boys also had fun buzzing around the house with the "love bugs" that they had made.

Charlie continues to do well with his daily phonics and math lessons. We learned about matter, solids, liquids and gases in science this week. We also made a weather chart and will be charting the weather for the next few weeks.

Charlie is using blocks to solve subtraction problems.

Tommy is still enthusiastic to do "school" with us.

This week he did a few sheets in his workbook and played on Starfall.com. He is also doing much better playing independently when I need to work solely with Charlie.


Having fun with dress up as Kings and Knights in their "castle".

Our school year with K12 ends in May and won't start up again until August. I am planning a summer curriculum for the boys to do at least 2-3 days a week during those months. I am also gearing up to put together Tommy's Prek curriculum for the 2011-2012 school year.

And our last bit of fun over the weekend was making some yummy cookies for the Super Bowl.

Linking up to:
Preschool Corner

No Time For Flashcards
ABC and 123

Preschool: Week of the The Penguin

2011-02-02T05:53:00.000-08:00

Tommy's Penguin

I have done some tweaking on a curriculum for Tommy and have decided to focus on one theme for a few weeks. We will be doing different activities based on the theme we are learning about.

This week we started our Winter theme of Penguins. When Penny was hospitalized for RSV, my dear cousin Amy from Montana sent us a copy of Don't Be Afraid, Little Pip by Karma Wilson & Jane Chapman. Ms. Wilson is a personal friend of my cousins and therefore signed the copy for our little Penny. It was so thoughtful of both of them!

We started off by reading the book which is about a sweet little penguin named Pip who desperately wants to learn to fly but is told repeatedly that she must swim instead.

After reading our book we made penguins out of model magic. I told the boys what characteristics they needed to make or how to roll the clay etc, but they
did everything else. Their creations could not be any cuter!!

I had hoped to use the penguins to make snow-globes with, but we all agreed that they were just too cute. See, I am learning to go with the flow! :)
While I was getting our supplies out I set the boys up with a cute video from National Geographic about penguins. They learned how scientist tracked and counted penguins by placing bar code chips in their feet and then having them walk over long pieces of metal that they disguised in the sand. The penguins were so cute!

Another fun activity was making snow cream. I got the idea from Susana, who is my wealth of knowledge blog friend! Trent gathered some snow from the front yard (we had plenty to spare!), I added some milk, vanilla and a little sugar. The boys added sprinkles and ate away. Charlie said it was ok but too cold, Tommy accidentally dumped about half a tube of sprinkles on his and thought it was "gwoss" (gross) and Trent said it tasted like watered down ice cream. I think we will try it again next year when I can taste it and make it better (no dairy for me because of little Miss Penny). It was fun though and something we did as a family, can't beat that!

Tommy also did some worksheets from Starfall.com on the number 3 and the letter C. Our neighbors had also given a ton of odds and ends preschool workbooks. I have given one to Tommy as his school book to do with us as Charlie finishes up his seat work. Tom loves it and it makes him feel so big.

Hammering his ABC puzzle

Color match game I made him.

The boys also had some fun in the tub with a full bottle of shaving cream (our fake snow) and a few chunks of colored ice. I took different plastic containers and filled each of them with water that was different colors. I then just put them outside for a few hours and later that night brought them in when it was bath time. We let the boys play in the shaving cream with the chunks of ice and they loved it. Since they were in the bath it didn't matter how messy it got. In the end the boys had fun, they were clean and I had a squeaky clean bath tub! Win, win for everyone!!

We made these adorable penguin footprints and a snowman snow-globe out of more model magic.

Linking up to:

Preschool Corner and 5K too

Read.Explore.Learn

Kids Get Crafty

Weekly Wrap Up

stART
No Time For Flash Cards
ABC and 123 Learning

Kindergarten: Week of the Mummy 3

2011-02-01T18:52:00.000-08:00


Tommy the Mummy

We finished our study of Mummies this week. We read both Mummies in the Morning and Mummies and Pyramids from The Magic Tree House series. We all enjoyed reading these books during lunch or as a family before bed.

Charlie participated in almost all of the Winter/Penguin themed activities that we did for Tommy's school.

Making his snowman and penguin out of model magic

Brother's doing school together

Having fun with shaving cream and ice chunks.

The boys also started their Co-op this week. We all had a great time. Charlie is enrolled in a LEGO class and a Fun With Numbers class. Tommy had fun playing in the nursery and I enjoyed myself at the Bible study for one class and then volunteering in the nursery. There are about 100 other kids at the Co-op ranging from newborn to high school.

We are really getting into a groove with our schooling and it feels good. Life is settling down a bit and we are getting to experience our new "normal". I love each and every day that I get to spend with our boys, teaching them and watching them grow. I truly feel blessed!

Paper Mache Snowman Faces

2011-01-30T18:00:00.000-08:00

Tommy's Snowman Paper Mache face, with carrot nose and coal eyes and mouth

One of the books we read this week was The Biggest, Best Snowman Ever by Margery Cuyler.

A very sweet story with an even sweeter lesson, that you are never too small to accomplish big things! Nell, the little girl in the story, is told that she is too small to do much of anything. She sets out into the wintery woods where she meets up with her animals friends an together they build the Biggest, Best Snowman Ever! Proving that with a little help from her friends, she indeed "big" enough to do BIG things.

To go along with this story and our week long theme of Snow/Winter, we opted to make paper mache snowman faces.
We started off by practicing writing our letters in flour, an idea I have seen all over the blog-sphere. It is great fun for little people and a wonderful exercise for little fingers.

Once the boys were done ~~making a complete mess~~ writing their letters, we started to work on our snowmen faces. We used water and flour mixed together and then dipped bits of toilet paper into the mixture. I helped Tommy form some of his pieces because it was difficult for him to do so since it was so sticky. It was great fun, until I went to clean up!
We waited about a day for them to dry and then painted them. Orange for his carrot nose and black for his coal eyes and mouth. I think these turned out so great and the pictures don't show their depth. Tommy had so much fun to have complete control over his creation and I think that shows!

Ice Cube Sun-catcher

2011-01-24T12:39:00.000-08:00

This was a very cool activity for the children and myself. It took a few days to complete but the end result was worth it! Isn't our ice cube sun-catcher pretty?!

We tied this project into Charlie's science lesson on measuring liquid. It also turned into a spontaneous art class when the boys mixed different colors of food coloring to make the colors that they wanted. We used our fun tropical ice cube tray from Grandma Candace for the ice cubes. We put the tray outside for a few hours to freeze them. Again linking into Charlie's science lesson on temperature. That is one of the cool aspects of homeschooling, that lessons over lap and the younger ones can be learning right along with the older children.

Once the ice cubes had set we filled a cup with water and placed it in the middle of the black flat bowl. The water in the cup keeps it from moving around when we filled the black bowl with yellow colored water. It also makes a smaller circle in the sun-catcher that we can use to hang the sun-catcher from a tree etc.We placed our sun-catcher outside again (I guess temperatures in the low teens are good for something!) and let it freeze over night.

In the morning we brought it in and ran it under the tap for a few seconds to loosen our suncatcher from the mold. Our ice cubes did not hold their "tropical" cute shapes but melted into small round balls. Regardless, we all thought it turned out very pretty.

Daddy hung it from the playscape in the backyard and we will continue to enjoy it as long as the weather permits. This is one of those projects that we will certainly do again and the possibilities are endless!

Linking to:
Something for the Weekend
Kids Get Crafty
Preschool Corner and 5K too
Creative Connections for Kids

Preschool Theme: Winter/Snow

2011-01-22T20:08:00.000-08:00

This week we focused on all things Winter/ snow for Tommy's school time.

We read a lot of fun books.

We made snowball cookies. Tommy loves to help in the kitchen. He calls me "Big Chef" and insists that I call him the "Little Chef". Oh, how I long for him to stay this sweet forever!!

For a fun craft the boys made snowmen out of shapes.

We also made an ice cube sun-catchers.

We all had fun doing resist snowflake paintings. I used a white crayon and drew snowflakes on a piece of white paper. Then the boys painted with water colors over the paper to "find" the snowflakes. Tommy loved watching the colored water pull away from the wax on the paper. It was a fun project!

Tom also did a few worksheets from Starfall.com focusing on the letter A and the number 2.

We practiced our letters in flour and then made paper mache snowman faces.

Tommy continues to amaze me. We are just starting to do formal instruction with him with regards to the alphabet and number recognition. He can write his name and can correctly identify most of the alphabet. Yesterday at lunch I was reviewing the sounds that all the letters make with Charlie. Tommy knew every single one of them and answered with lightening speed. I was shocked but very proud of our sweet boy!

Linking up to:

Preschool Corner and 5K too

Read.Explore.Learn

Kids Get Crafty

Weekly Wrap Up

stART
No Time For Flash Cards
Creative Connections for Kids

Happy Birthday Charlie

2011-01-19T18:59:00.001-08:00

Our independent, outgoing brainchild who loves to laugh, cuddle up with his lovey and kitty, who will offer you a bite of his donut because he is generous like that. Who thinks that anything about bottoms and stinky feet is hilarious. Who is obsessed with trains and LEGOS and prefers the color orange over any other. Who adores his little sister and is partners in crime with his little brother. Who stole our hearts and made us parents. Who continues to amaze us each and every day at his vivid imagination and inventive skills. Who can ride his bike (with training wheels), is learning to swim and can read. Yes, that boy is turning 6 today.

Can you believe it? We barely can!

Happy Birthday dearest Charlie. May you always know that we love you completely and may you always feel God's love and grace!

School: Theme of the Mummy

2011-01-19T18:58:00.000-08:00

The boys playing in the snow at the kitchen table

We are FINALLY back to our "normal" selves, thank God!! (Our 2 month old baby has been in the hospital with RSV. She is home and doing great now.) And even though this week has been a bit rusty around the edges, we still managed to get a lot accomplished and have some fun in the midst of it all!

I have made some changes with regards to our schooling and plan to make more in the upcoming weeks. I have been longing to do more unit studies with the boys that both of them can participate in and also find other sources for Charlie's LA.

The boys playing LEGOs together

First change was with Charlie's Language Arts curriculum. I am not pleased with some of the content/activities that the K12 provides so I am picking and choosing what lessons we complete from them. Instead we are going to be using The Magic Tree House series books which we can also use to do unit studies of different topics.

We will read The Magic Tree House book and if there is a study guide book to accompany it then we will use that to do further research. If not, then we will use other books from the library. We will plan on studying one subject for a few weeks or until we are finished doing the projects/readings.

Using blocks for math

I also am starting to work on another curriculum for Tommy. He is eager to do "school" with Charlie...sometimes. I won't enforce school time with him until next September, but need to have some stuff ready when he does want to participate.

I bought the first four books from The Magic Tree House series and asked Charlie which one he wanted to ready/study first. He choose Mummies in the Morning. We read the book in about 3 days, during lunch and before bed. I was surprised that it held the attention of both the boys. Charlie was REALLY into the book and begged to finish it. Tommy was obsessed looking at the picture of the Mummy. Gotta love it!!

Charlie wrote his name in Hieroglyphics

To go along with our study of all things Mummy we made hieroglyph writings just like the ones that were in the tombs of the great pyramids. Charlie did his name and the word train, of course :) We also made a bookmark with hieroglyph writings on it to use with our Magic Tree House books.

This week we started reading from our daily devotional book for kids. There is a short reading for each day and then activities you can do to go along with what you are studying. So far we are all enjoying it.

Charlie continues to work very hard on his phonics and math. This week he reviewed his sight words, reviewed the alphabet and made a letter train, identified vowel and consonant letters, built nonsense words and blended word parts.

He also started a dictation notebook. Every day he will be writing a few words in the notebook and we will keep track of any words/letters that he may need additional review on. We both really like the phonics program that K12 provides.

Tommy on Starfall.com doing math

Both boys enjoyed the new Starfall.com website. We signed up for the members only portion which has math components as well. This is such a great learning tool and Tom enjoyed the numbers section.

We had a pretty great week considering that we were just getting off a 2 week holiday break and then 1 week of sister and mom being gone in the hospital. I love being able to teach our boys at home and feel so blessed to be able to do so. The time I am spending with them is priceless!!

Excuse Our Dust

2011-01-19T18:55:00.000-08:00

We are updating this blog and apologize to those of you that are being bombarded with posts tonight. Life happened and I have been unable to keep this blog up to date, until now.

Grab your coffee or your tea and sit back and see what we have been up to.

And please join us as we continue on with our Homeschooling adventures!!

Snowman Soup and Christmas candy

2011-01-19T18:52:00.000-08:00

This year the boys made some cute little packages of Snowman Soup for some of their friends and neighbors. As part of our Christmas preparations we tried to focus more on giving and doing for others like Jesus did, then the presents that they would receive on Christmas.

After washing our hands :), we let the boys stuff their little bags full of marshmallows, a candy cane, a packet of hot chocolate and a few Hersey Kisses. Tommy was MORE then generous with his bags!! We wrapped them up, tied on a recipe for Snowman Soup, and delivered them through out the neighborhood or gave them to friends when we saw them.

It was a fun project that the kids could have a lot of control in and a great family project of giving to others! Something we will certainly do next year!

Trent also made some of our famous candy cane bark for his boss and co-workers. He really went all out this year and experimented with different chocolates and what combination went well together etc. I believe that he settled on a dark chocolate base, then white chocolate and crushed candy canes on top. I have to say that I LOVE working in the kitchen with my husband and we seem to do a lot more of it during the holidays!!

Homeschool: Kindergarten & Preschool CHRISTMAS!!!!

2011-01-19T18:50:00.001-08:00

We are finally healthy, just in time to celebrate Christmas!!

Trent is on vacation for the next 2 weeks so we are enjoying our family time. We are having a very short week of academics, spending time with family and friends, celebrating some old and new traditions, and just trying to relax and spend time with one another.

Charlie worked on a few Science lessons this week. We learned about plants, what they need to grow, the different parts of the plant etc. Charlie made a sunflower and really took time carefully cutting out each piece and then gluing them to the "stem". He graphed different types of beans and did a few computer games about plants through his K12 online curriculum.

We also revisited our Kidney Bean plant that we planted a few months back. The plant was doing great until it collided with some clean dishes and the stem broke :( So, it was perfect timing to harvest our 3 beans.

That is all the school we did. The rest of the week we have been finishing up all the errands we needed to wrap up before the holiday. The presents are all wrapped, the Christmas work party attended, turkey is defrosted, laundry is almost done, last trip to the grocery store has been run. We are preparing for Country Lights and then it is off to Nie Nie and Papa's house in the morning.

Merry Christmas!

Stained Glass Nativity Ornament

2011-01-19T18:46:00.001-08:00

This was by far our favorite Christmas craft to make and one I will cherish always. It was so simple and yet, I think it captures exactly what we need to focus on at Christmas time.

I had bought some vinyl Nativity scenes last year. I had no idea what I would do with them but I loved them the minute I saw them.

I had the boys take small pieces of tissue paper and lay them down on contact paper to give a stained glass effect. We covered that piece with another piece of contact paper and then laid the vinyl Nativity on top of that. Then I attached some simple ribbon we had in our craft drawers to hang the ornament from the tree or in the window.

I just love them! and the kids really enjoy making the stained glass.

Merry Christmas!

Homeschool: Kindergarten Getting Ready for Christmas part 2

2011-01-19T18:45:00.000-08:00

(Penny watching Charlie do school)

The last 2 weeks we have all been kind of "off". It all started with a migraine for me, followed by nasty head colds for all the kids and I, ear infection for Charlie and tummy bug for Trent :( There was a lot more fighting and whining going on and far less patience on my part. LOTS of prayers were said :)

So, some days we simply have been in survival mode and others have been better and more productive. We did manage get a lot of school done and do some fun projects along the way. I did scale back our Christmas curriculum that I had planned and I am thankful that I have not tried to push things and get it "all" done. Instead we have been able to spend a lot of quality family time together focused on the true meaning of Christmas!

Charlie is starting to work on graphing in his math and he LOVES it! We did a bunch of graphing last year so he has a good idea of the process and is doing more complicated problems.

He also continues to plow through his phonics and is doing really well. He is spelling words and reading up a storm! I do need to set aside time each day for him to do more independent reading. I also need to find more beginner readers for him to work through.

(Charlie making words)

We are also working on following instructions and listening carefully. He sometimes has a hard time focusing on things if it isn't something he 100% wants to do or isn't something that he choose to do. If it was his idea to do it then he has NO problem giving all of his attention to it. I am sure that this is something that we will continue to work on for a.long.time. with all the children! :) (Thanks Aunt Susie for the advice and encouragement! It helped us a lot and he is doing SOOO much better!!) It is obvious that he is really trying.

(Learning about muscles, the brain and your heart)

We did a really cool science project (despite my migraine) and managed to have fun doing it too! We reviewed about bones and joints and learned about muscles in our body. We made a neat model of an arm with a paper towel role, deflated balloons and tape. The balloons represented our muscles and how they work to make our arms move. Charlie enjoyed this project and even added veins and drew bones on the paper towel roll.

Charlie showing me how his "arm" bends with the "muscles"

We also learned about our teeth and the boys watched a video about Molly Molar on the computer.

The boys made some homemade peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. They were super yummy and no one even noticed that I used whole wheat flour :) Charlie made his cookies "mystery" cookies and hide chocolate chips in the middle.

Then we started working on our Christmas crafts. The boys made pine cone glitter ornaments and Christmas trees out of pine cones that Grandma Candace brought from Whidbey Island.

We also assembled our Gingerbread Train. Trent hot glued the cookie pieces together and the boys and I decorated with royal icing and lots of candy. It was really nice to work together and a fun activity for all of us.

Tommy worked on counting and number recognition using one of our Leap Frog games.

And despite all the sickness, we still managed to have some fun.

Honestly, I am really looking forward to next week. I pray that we will all be healthy and getting back into our new groove!

Homeschool: Kindergarten & Preschool Getting Ready for Christmas

2011-01-19T18:43:00.000-08:00

The germs were still lingering but we managed to get A LOT of school done. Charlie is flying through his phonics and is doing great! He is reading new words everyday, spelling words and eager to read books. We still need to get caught up on our Science lessons, but I am not concerned. I know that once the holidays are over we will be able to start our new schedule and will quickly get caught up.

Tommy under the dining room table playing with beans and cars and asking me for "sum pivacy pease, Mama."

Tom tracing letters.

Tom doing the magnetic ABC puzzle.

I spent more time this past week working with Tommy on his ABC's and number recognition. We had fun working on his ABC puzzle, recognizing letters and placing them in their correct spot, talking about different words that start with letters etc. He is READY to start a full on school curriculum. I had backed away from a curriculum that I had planned because I thought it was too advanced and not that engaging. Come January though I will have a new curriculum for him so that he can "really" do school right along with us.

We started our Christmas study activities last week. We brought out our Nativity and let each boy take turns unwrapping each figure and placing them in the stable. They LOVED doing this and it is something we will make a yearly tradition. Then we read our new Christmas book, I like to buy a new one each year. This year I found a great little book at Michaels that is simple enough to keep both boys interested in the story, and yet nicely tells the story of Jesus' birth.

We have also been doing a lot of fun activities.

The boys decorated ice cream cones with green frosting and different candies to make Christmas trees.

We had a fun Christmas themed tea party.

I made the boys Candy Cane play dough with silver and red glitter in it. They had great fun playing with it. This is the second time we made homemade scented play dough (the first being our pumpkin spice for Thanksgiving). We all really enjoy the fun scents and glitter in it!

The boys had fun painting a Christmas picture with water paints and q-tips. I remember doing this type of thing at my Granny's and loved it. They did too until the paper started tearing from the water.

The boys also made wreath ornaments to give as presents.

I am praying that we are at the end of our sickness and that we can all be healthy before Christmas. Trent is on vacation for 2 weeks and I hope to do some fun projects with him around and really focus on the true meaning of Christmas :)

Homeschool Kindergarten and Preschool: Week 10Thanksgiving!

2011-01-19T18:40:00.001-08:00

One of the easiest and our favorite craft for this time of year was the Give Thanks banner we made from a variety of beans, glue, yarn and construction paper. I wrote out the letters on the construction paper, the boys and I covered the letters with glue and the boys went to town placing the beans on the letters. We will definitely do this again next year.

The boys and I went shopping for our Operation Christmas Child boxes a few weeks back...and Penny went to. That is going to take some getting use to, I am so accustomed to saying just the "boys" :) The boys picked out some toy trucks, stickers, harmonicas etc as well as some fun toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap etc. We did this last year and Charlie really remembered the meaning behind what we were doing and was excited to pick out the different things to send to his "friend".
We had a lot of fun last week and did a BUNCH of school work and lots of fun activities gearing up for Thanksgiving.

There was also a lot of loving going on. Both boys are still smitten with their little sister :)

Tommy had fun playing playdough.

Charlie concentrated on Math and Phonics again this week. His teacher gave us permission to skip through a lot of the lesson since most of them are review for him at this point. I am carefully going through the lessons to make sure that we aren't overlooking any concepts that he does not know. I am excited to see him be a bit more challenged!

Both boys had fun with our Fall sensory bin. I added plastic gourds, paper leaves, crystal pumpkins, pine cones from Grandma Candace and a few trucks. I gave the boys some measuring cups, spoons and containers and let them go to town. They really enjoy these sensory bins and it really holds their attention.

We had fun making these Turkey hand print cookies. The boys helped with the entire process and had just as much fun eating them as they did decorating them ;)

They also completed some foam Turkeys that I picked up either at the art store or at the dollar store.

I also made a Cornucopia out of dough for our table centerpiece. It turned out ok, but I have bigger and better plans to do it again next year.

We read a few books about Thanksgiving and why we celebrate. I had wanted to make a Mayflower ship with Charlie but we didn't get to it...maybe next year.

We have so much to be thankful for! It was a great week!

Published

2011-01-19T18:39:00.001-08:00

Charlie wants to be published in the Lego Club magazine. He made this super cool mobile crane and we are going to send this photo off to Lego. He thinks it is super cool that Lego actually publishes kids pictures and their creations. I think his imagination and mad Lego building skills are even cooler.

Penelope Jane

2011-01-19T18:37:00.001-08:00

November 1, 2010
11:04 AM
8lbs, 21 in

Halloween 2010

2011-01-19T18:36:00.001-08:00

Charlie wanted to be a robot and Tommy wanted to be a "Scary Skeleton and I am going to eat you up" for Halloween this year.

Trent and Charlie made his costume together. It was AWESOME and Charlie LOVED it!! It had all kinds of wires and lights, gadgets galore. The had a lot of fun doing it together and Trent was so cool about allowing Charlie to place things where he wanted them.

Tommy wore his skeleton pajamas and a skeleton sweatshirt along with some glove we found at the dollar store. But his favorite part of his costume was his face paint. After I put it on him he looked at himself in the mirror and started running around the house like a crazy "scary skeleton". He was so funny!

We stopped by our friends house to take a picture with Miss Mags, the Monarch Butterfly.

Tommy and Daddy carving a scary face on the pumpkin.

Charlie took control of his pumpkin this year.

We went trick or treating on our favorite street in Mayfield and Grandma Candace came along too. The whole street decorates and participates in trick or treating. One house pulls their pick up truck up on the front yard and has the car and yard decked out in scary garb. They don't just hand out candy but actual Halloween toys that glow in the dark etc. They also have a "scary chain saw guy" who runs around and chases the older kids with his reeved up saw (with chain removed). The boys are fascinated, scared to death but LOVE it and ask to go to that house first.

It was a great Halloween. We had so much fun trick or treating and watching the boys. It is amazing how much they change from year to year. It was so fun to watch how involved they wanted to be in putting together their costumes together and how brave and excited they were to get their "treats". I just love spending these moments with our boys, together as a family.

Lake Farm Park

2011-01-19T18:34:00.001-08:00

Our last family of 4 field trip was to Lake Farm Park, one of our favorite places to visit. We have a yearly membership there and never grow tired of all they have to offer. We decided to go the day before I was to be induced with Miss Penny.

Charlie and the big shovel, Tommy and the great tomato
We visited the green house, looked at all the plants and played a few games about bees and pollenation.

The ponies were out and the boys both wanted to go for a ride.

(Tom)
Tommy was a bit nervous but once he saw how much fun Charlie had on the ride, then he was eager to have his turn.

(Charlie)

(Trent showing Mommy pig who was boss)
We also stopped by the barn and saw the new born piggies. They were about 2 weeks old and so cute. The boys loved petting them. Their mommy piggy was being a little aggressive and was kind of charging the gate (which I happened to be kneeling down by to pet one of her babies).

Charlie petting baby pigs

It was great cool Fall afternoon with our boys. We had a great time just taking our time and being together.

Charlie's Natural History Museum Classes (Monkey & Spiders)

2011-01-19T18:33:00.001-08:00

I thought it would be fun to sign Charlie up for some classes at the Natural History Museum to do with Daddy, once a month on Saturdays. Not only do they offer some supplemental hours for his K12 school, but most importantly they give Daddy and Charlie to spend the morning together, just the two of them.

Charlie's first class was in September and they studied Monkeys. They made a monkey mask, looked for Monkey's through out the museum, learned about different kinds of monkeys like the spider monkey and had different monkey themed activity centers set up around the Discovery Room.

Last weekend Charlie and Daddy went to his October class that was on spiders. hey learned different facts about spiders, listened spider stories, had themed spider activities, looked at a real spider and made a fun spider and water spout craft
.

Apple Picking

2011-01-19T18:32:00.000-08:00

Every year we have wanted to go apple picking but haven't gotten around to doing so. This year we made out way out to Eddy's Orchard and picked apples to our hearts content.

It was such a nice Fall day, cool, crisp air, slightly overcast with a mix of brilliant blue skies and warm sun rays.

It was so relaxing, not busy at all with crowds of people, and just a great family outing. Not to mention that we never want to buy apples at the grocery store again!!!

Wow, it is amazing the difference FRESH off the tree apples taste!

I think we all ate about 3 apples in our 30+ minutes that we picked, they are that good!
We will definitely be apple picking in the future. In fact we had to tell Tommy we would go back as soon as we ate all 18lbs of apples that we picked.
Which will probably be next week :)

Spooktacular Halloween 2010

2011-01-19T18:30:00.000-08:00

We usually have a Halloween party each year but this year because of everything going on we opted more for a Halloween "playdate" with 3 of our friends instead. The season of slow, remember :)

Charlie was very involved in the "planning". He wanted things SCARY and creepy. Gone are the "cutesy" Halloweens for this boy...I think. So skeletons and graveyards are now part of our decor.

He wanted a pumpkin hunt but settled for "skeleton bone" hunt (dog bones)
and Daddy threw together a scary graveyard. The graveyard had a walkway (boards for the kids to balance on) and they had to try and walk through the graveyard without falling into the graves. Tommy LOVED this and did it over and over again.

We kept it simple and let the kids play, ate Halloween donuts from Pattersons, apple cider and ghost covered lollies as a going home treat (per Charlie's request). We opted not to wear costumes but scary Halloween shirts.

Charlie and Tommy had a great time with a few of their friends. It was a nice afternoon and reminded me that it doesn't take much to make things special for little ones. I am so happy that Charlie had a part in planning everything, he was really proud of himself. The only thing he complained about was that none of his friends wanted to play chase the skeleton, they all thought it was too scary :) Our boy is growing up!

Homeschool: Kindergarten & Preschool weeks 8 & 9 Letter I

2011-01-19T18:27:00.001-08:00

We have done a little bit of school the last 2 weeks. We started back to our school lessons a week after Penny was born. I have had Charlie concentrating on the basics, Phonics and Math. I also had Charlie do more independent work on the computer for the Study Island portion of his curriculum. This is a testing portion that K12 offers to help practice different concepts that he is learning. He did really good and I think it is a great exercise for him to do on his own. It really is sharpening his ability to follow directions and computer skills.

I have given Tommy a break from his weekly curriculum but realized today that he needs more structure so I am starting to incorporate more of his work back into our daily routine.

Besides the basics we have tried to do a few fun things as well. We made pumpkin playdough from scratch. The boys really liked doing this and it was super easy to make. We then made turkeys out of the playdough. I think they turned out really cute. With the extra playdough and materials we had we made up 2 packages for our friends Luke and Elizabeth and sent them in the mail. We talked about Thanksgiving and how we are thankful for things and people in our lives. We got the idea from my friend Susana, who did this last year.

We also did our crafty ABC for the week, the letter I. We made Iguanas. Tommy is REALLY into writing the letter "I" lately and even though he knows how to write his name he is much more excited to write "I, I, I" over and over again :) Charlie got creative with his Iguana and added his name and his initials to it. If you look closely at the bottom right corner of his picture you will notice that his Iguana has "pooped"....so typical of my little fella :)

Charlie had a great time making a paper bag city. One of his magazines had a few sheets of store fronts, houses etc that he could cut out and then glue to paper bags and make a city. He loved this project and did it over 2 days.

Tommy had a fun week doing projects around the house, helping me do laundry and washing the dishes.

First 2 weeks back at school went slowly, as to be expected. But we had fun doing our studies and projects and starting to figure out a new routine.

Homeshool: Kindergarten week 7

2011-01-19T18:25:00.000-08:00

The boys raking leaves in the back

Today is only Monday, but I can't let the day go by and not jot down some notes. If ALL days were like today, we would surely be living in School Heaven! Hands down this was our best day of school ever!

The boys and Miss S. all got a long beautifully. There was little or no bickering and lots of team work. We accomplished A LOT and had LOTS of fun doing it.

Honestly, if I can squeeze even one more day like today out of this week then we will be at least 3 weeks ahead in Charlie's curriculum and we won't have to do any school work right after baby comes. Even though I plan on doing some work with him during that time, it will be a relief to know that he won't fall behind if we don't get to his lessons for a week or two.

Charlie has really been working on his handwriting and spacing of his words. Just recently we started having him write not only his first name, but his last name as well on all his worksheets. Within 2 days he could spell his last name from memory.

One area that I know we need to work on is Charlie memorizing his phone number and being more confident in knowing his address. He knows his address but needs lots of reminders or questioning to recite it. I want him to be able to write and say both of these important pieces of information and do it without hesitation. I think I am going to make up a daily sheet that he needs to fill out with this information to practice reciting it and his writing.

This week Charlie worked on the sounds /u/, /ch/,/y/,/sh/, and /aw/ in phonics. He reviewed many lower and uppercase letters. One of them being the lowercase letter "q". He also learned that q is always followed by the letter u, and that they are called "glue letters" because they don't like to be alone. He is starting to learn different rules like this and is doing well remembering them.

He also continued to finger stretch out words, divide words by syllables, made complete sentences and learned about sound subtraction.

Charlie continues to be ahead in math. In the curriculum they have moved away from identifying shapes (thank goodness!!) and now have him counting to 10, which is still far below his skill level. I am supplementing his math curriculum with Singapore Math and other fun ideas that I find. I have also started to teach him how to tell time to the hour. He uses his Kumon book for practice. We are also moving on to the value of money. I plan on talking with his "teacher" from K12 and see about moving him up a bit in the math program. I think at this point it is needed.

We also had lots of fun this week since Halloween is right around the corner! For science we started to learn about our bodies and our skeletons. I choose this lesson to coincide with Halloween. Charlie did a
skeleton dot to dot,
worksheet, we watched a video/song on youtube about bones, and made a skeleton art project out of pasta noodles.

We all had fun making our skeleton!

We learned about joints and bones and why they are important to our bodies.

We also bought some different pumpkins at the store and Grandpa brought us some pretty cool gourds that we dissected and compared the insides. We then painted with the pumpkins and some apples.
Charlie colored and wrote in a pumpkin life cycle book that I made for him to complete, and practiced his handwriting in another Halloween book.
We also watched a pumpkin story on Starfall.com and made a cute little foam pumpkin that Miss S. gave to us for Halloween.

The kids also made these fun monster cupcakes out of snowballs and candy.
and then had fun eating them

We read the book Five Little Pumpkins

and pulled out our felt board and Five Little Pumpkins felt set that I made last year. The boys loved playing with it and we have read it a bunch of times during the week.

Charlie also made a replica of the Empire State Building out Legos. He got his hands on the Lego Holiday catalog (thank you Suzi :) and hasn't put it down since. There is a HUGE set for the Empire State Building that he wanted but it cost BIG bucks, so he opted to build his own. I just love how creative he is!

It was a nice week, we accomplished a lot. I am happy with Charlie's progress at this time and feel comfortable taking the next 1-2 weeks off of our daily routine after baby comes.

Homeschool: Week 6 Kindergarten/Preschool

2011-01-19T18:23:00.001-08:00

The week is over and I don't know where it went. I literally did not take one picture of what we did, which was not much. Charlie did the basics on Monday and Wednesday and Tommy did a bit of school on Monday as well.

I know that we got a lot done around the house and made final preparations for baby sister come. We bought a new dryer after going to like 10 different stores, more like 3, but it literally took up a whole day and part of an evening to finally get it figured out.

The boys were able to play with some friends when I had my doctor's appointment on Tuesday and with Nana for most of the day on Thursday.

Today my Dad came for a visit (hooray!!) we got some business done, ran an errand and then met Trent for lunch. Grandpa brought us pumpkins, some cool looking gourds, cornstalks and another decorative plant...what is that again Dad?? It was so nice to see him (YOU!) and the boys were more then excited and talked a mile a minute and couldn't get enough of him. I think that by the time he left he was ready to head back to some peace and quiet in the country :)

Tomorrow, Charlie and Daddy have their monthly class at the Natural History Museum which is on spiders. Charlie has really been looking forward to it. Tommy and I are going to take it easy and probably stick close to home (between having more false labor and blood sugar level drama, I am not going far these days). I would love to do a spider craft with Charlie to go with his class.

And if the weather cooperates tomorrow night then we are going to Magical Whooloween,
which is a fun Halloween family event an our local Metroparks. The highlight is riding the little steam train through the not so spooky forest that is decorated with carved pumpkins. I don't get to ride this year though :(

I think that over the weekend and next week we are going to process the 18lbs of apples we picked last week. Some apple sauce and pumpkins pies are on the menu. Carve our pumpkins and do a bit of dissecting, weighing and exploring the inside and life cycle of pumpkins. I hope to do about 10 phonics and math lessons with Charlie, 1-2 Science lessons with both boys and read a bunch of Charlie's LA stories. Not to ambitious or anything :) That is my goal anyways. We will see what we get done and if Lady Lydic holds off for a few more days.

Homeschool: Preschool Letter L

2011-01-19T18:21:00.001-08:00

Tommy had a good week of preschool. He is just starting to build with little Legos and loves to make things with Charlie.

He worked on his foam ABC puzzle, hammering in the letters.

This is only the 2nd time that he has done the 1:1 cards and I was really impressed with how well he did this time.

He helped empty the dryer. He LOVES to clean and do laundry :)

Charlie helped him work on a new "to him" puzzle. Team work and helping little brother at its best!

Working on the Letter H glue and cut project. Not one of our best moments of school, but he finished it and moved on to his ABC's as he calls them (Starfall.com) and was a happy camper again.

Tommy asks to do ABC's every.single.day. And he would literally do it for a whole afternoon if I let him, which I don't. I limit it to about 20-30 minutes. But I am really impressed with how quickly he has mastered the basic computer skills on both the laptop and the PC. Here he was matching the shapes and spelling words. He doesn't "know" how to spell the words but is learning the letters and their sounds etc.

Playdough Mat, finishing up letter L

L is for Lion

This is the book that we are using for RRSP. I love this book and how it applies scripture verses to every day scenarios in a manner that little kids can easily grasp.

5 Senses Experiments with Charlie

Touch

Taste...too funny!

T-ball with Daddy....he is going to be a great athlete someday!

Painting his papermache pumpkin

Working together with Charlie to make the color orange

I had him mix red and yellow paint in a ziploc bag to make orange. He really liked doing this, squishing it with his hands and seeing the colors mix.

We also spent a good deal of time outside this week. I am taking full advantage of the mild, yet wet weather we are having, even if it means we do less school. I know that in a few short weeks the weather will change and we will be able to spend less time out for long periods of time. Here Tommy is making "hot cocoa" out of mud and water...yum!

Tommy is really doing great with his school. He is quickly learning to recognize all the letters of the alphabet, can sing the entire ABC song, can count to 20 and we are working number recognition as well. We are focusing primarily on ABCs and numbers right now. Reading lots of books and just having fun. He is so eager to learn and be like his big brother Charlie!

Homeschool: Kindergarten week 5

2011-01-19T18:10:00.001-08:00

Charlie making a kite out of a leaf, string and a stick. We love his creativity!

We are back into the swing of things, finally!

Charlie worked on his basic subjects, Math, Phonics, and LA. We also did a few science lessons, supplemental hours in Health a handful of fun projects.

Spelling words with Boggle Jr.

Making mazes with marker tops

Crafty ABC: L is for Lion

Charlie is reading!! I am so proud! He has read his level 1 Phonics book to me almost every night for the last week. It has basic CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words in them like, Sam, Pam, mat, bat etc. They also contain a handful of sight words that he is easily memorizing. Did I say I was really proud of him???? :) This week we will move on to the next book of the series. I plan to keep it slow going and FUN!!! I also want to pick up some phonics/reading games and books at the library on subjects that he is interested in.

We finished our paper mache pumpkins. We all just loved this project!

I took plastic grocery bags and made a bunch into a ball. Then I took yarn and tied it around the bags to make the sections of the pumpkin. Afterward, the kids took toilet paper and dipped it into a mixture of Elmer's glue and water to make a papermache. They layered the toilet paper on the pumpkin until the entire surface area was covered. It took about 2 full days for the pumpkins to dry and then the kids painted their pumpkins.

Before we painted them though we did a lesson on mixing paint. We didn't have any orange paint so we made our own.

I first drew two overlapping circles on a piece of paper and put a dot of yellow on the far end of one circle and a dot of red paint on the far end of the other circle. I had the boys spread their color around the circle and then meet and mix together in the overlapping section of the circles to make orange. It was a great hands on way for them to see the colors mix and to work together to do it.

I also put 2 dots of paint, one red and one yellow in a plastic bag and had them squish the bag and mash it until they mixed the colors together to make orange.

We did a lesson on our 5 senses using the book

We put different things in a bag, had the kids close their eyes and try to identify the objects but just using their sense of touch. We did the same thing for sense of taste and had them taste different foods and then tell me if it was salty, sour, sweet etc.

Charlie tasting his lime and feeling in the bag for items.

The boys also spent last Saturday at our local hospital taking a Sibling class since they will both be big brothers here shortly. We spent about 2 hours, touring the hospital, learning how to care for a baby, diaper and hold a baby, we watched a few videos, picked out a project to make at home, had a snack and looked at pictures of new babies. Our boys had the whole room laughing when they looked at a picture of an African American baby boy and asked why his penis was black....and then looked at a naked picture of a baby girl and asked where her penis was. The teacher (who was nice enough but clearly NOT a teacher for small children) quickly flipped through the remaining naked pictures of the babies and moved right along. Ha ha!

Charlie also did several lessons on Study Island that is a review computer site for our K12 curriculum. It has games, worksheets and then quizzes the kids on what they have learned. He really enjoys working on the computer.

The boys worked together to build lego trains and trucks. Charlie also helped Tommy learn how to put a new puzzle together. I encourage them to do an activity a day together to "help" one another and do team work.

I am also having the boys help out in daily chores. Charlie was asked to clean the base boards on the first floor. He ended up doing ALL of the base boards in the house!!!!

Another great week under our belts!

Homeschool: Kindergarten week 4

2011-01-19T18:09:00.001-08:00

We have "officially" been homeschooling Charlie for a month now. It has gone really well, despite having a "set schedule" like I would like to have. We are still supplementing the curriculum and tailoring the lessons more to Charlie and his knowledge of subjects. I am still enjoying having the bulk of the lessons prepared for me and now able to focus my attention more on the planning of the "fun" activities that we do.

We have certainly had our moments of refocusing, discipline, and difficulties dealing with a younger sibling in the mix. However, we are learning what works best and when is the best time to do certain subjects. I might prefer to get everything done in the morning in one sitting, but I know that doesn't necessarily work for Charlie. For example, his phonics lessons are best accomplished on the couch with just the two of us working together and no other distractions. Math, science, handwriting and LA can be done at any time and with little brother present. It is all about learning what works for this season in our life.

This week we played catch up a bit after spending last week with family down in the country, celebrating our beloved Grandma's life. We took things easy and did what we could. It was nice to be home and getting back to our haphazard schedule.

Charlie completed the basic lessons, Math, Science, Phonics and LA. And we were able to add in a few other fun things along the way.

He LOVES math and is adding and subtracting up a storm. He is even writing out math problems in his art work...too funny! So we pulled out the dominoes for some domino math.
We did our crafty letter of the week, L is for Lion.

Played dress up

And did lots of drawing of maps.

We also made paper mache pumpkins out of garbage bags and toilet paper

and made pumpkin spice cookies.

Homeschool: Preschool letter T

2011-01-19T18:07:00.001-08:00

I love the fact that our boys are learning side by side, teaching one another and having a great time doing it! And they look so cute too :)

This week we did a few scheduled activities for Tommy and finished up the letter T. He used playdough to make the letter T on his playdough letter mat.

He worked on some of his RRSP curriculum which had him practicing cutting along a thick grey line to cut out his Bible verse (Thou Shall Not Steal) for the week and then taped it together. He is very good at cutting but until last week I had not instructed him to actually cut on a line or a specific object out. I was pleasantly surprised the growth he had in this area in just a few days.

He worked on the foam ABC puzzle, pounding the back in with his little hammer and colored his letter T for turtle. We also reviewed his letter vocab cards.

Mr. Potato head came to the rescue while Charlie and Mom did some Phonics work.

Tommy and Miss S did some 1:1 sorting. The flash cards have a number 0-3 written on them and they had to put the correct number of pom poms into the right bowl.

For our craft we made window suncatcher tissue paper leaves. Tommy spent so much time putting every piece of tissue paper carefully on his sticky contact paper. He was so patient and insisted on doing it all by himself.

Charlie was also doing the same project and was a few steps ahead of Tommy. I didn't even have to tell Tommy what the next step was, clearly he was paying attention and was NOT going to miss any of the fun. He rolled out the air bubbles and then promptly ran off to the backyard to find leaves for me to trace. However, he got side tracked after finding a leaf or two and thought that "making" me some delicious mud and sand coffee and painting his arms with his creation was far more fun :)

I also bought out the watercolor paints for Tommy to experiment with. He used different fall colors to make a beautiful painting. We then cut the picture into little leaves and let him make a tree with fall leaves.

I really think that art is therapeutic for Tommy. He gets so serious about what he is creating, very quiet and is very purposeful in his creations. I love watching him create, he is such a sweet boy.

We also read a lot of books, ABC and fall themed books were our favorites.

Homeschool: Kindergarten week 3

2011-01-19T18:06:00.001-08:00

(Charlie making a collage of drawn trains and train pictures he cut out of magazines)

Charlie had another good week of school. He continues to do well with his lessons. I am hoping that within a few weeks of having the baby that we will be able to settle into a daily schedule, for now we are doing school between my doctors appointments etc. So sometimes we are doing school in the morning (which seems to work best for us), during naps (Charlie is usually pretty tired by then and needs a rest as well, not the best time for school) or after naps (which works fine, but Mama is low on steam by then). Mornings seem to be our "good" time of the day for all of us, so we try to sneak school in then whenever we can.

Charlie continued on with his core lessons of Language Arts, Phonics and Math. Charlie also took the KRAL test this week and one online session with his K class.

We have gone back to Explode The Code for Charlie's handwriting practice as well as supplemental phonics. He really enjoys these workbooks far more then the Handwriting without Tears program...which literally brought us both to tears at one point :)

For fun we made Mummy Pizzas for lunch. I used toasted English Muffins, spaghetti sauce, pepperoni, sliced string cheese and grapes (for the eyes). The kids loved them and ate them right up!

One of the craft projects that we did this week was make suncatcher leaves using contact paper and tissue paper. Both boys loved doing this project. Charlie started off by making a pattern with the different color paper and then dumped a bunch of tissue paper over them to fill in the spaces. Tommy placed piece by piece and refused any help. His attention span these days is incredible. I have had both friends and his speech therapist comment on how amazing it is.

After the boys placed the paper down, they rolled out the air bubbles and then I sent them out to the backyard to find as many types of leaves as they could. Charlie brought back 4 different leaf styles that I then traced and cut out of their mosaic tissue paper creations. Daddy and Charlie later identified what kind of trees the leaves came from.

Charlie also did 2 different art pieces this week using pastels, which was his first go with them and he really enjoyed using them. So much in fact that I had to cut him off after he completed 2 art pieces one right after the other. My friend Susana, over at Our Homeschool Fun, introduced me to an amazing new art site for kids. I allowed Charlie to pick out one of the fall art projects from Art Projects for Kids and use his pastels for the first time. He choose the How to Draw a Fall Tree project.
This was the first time I had assigned him to look at a something and then draw what he saw. I think that he did a great job. He smudged the pastels with his fingers and tried to blend colors together to make the clouds. I also sat with Charlie and drew the same picture. We talked about how each of us was looking at the same inspiration picture and yet our pictures were very different and why that was.

Charlie had such a great time that he begged to make another drawing. This time he choose The Symbols of the Season project.

The only thing I made sure that he did was divide the paper up into the 4 boxes. I was really kind of surprised at how with this picture he added more detail and paid closer attention to the actual inspirational picture. He added the lines for the pumpkin and his eggplant had great resemblance to the other picture.

We did a lot of fun things this week alongside our normal studies. However,it was a hard week in terms of scheduling everything we needed and wanted to do. The 4 weekly doctor appointments are truly putting a damper on all the extracurricular activities and fun projects that I would like to do and had planned for the boys. We have had to withdraw the boys from the homeschooling co-op that meets on Mondays for this semester. It just wasn't possible to make it on Mondays until the following session that starts in January. I am really bummed about this (thankfully I hadn't talked about it too much with the boys!), but I know that this is a short season in our lives and in a few months we will be settling into a new routine and will be able to add more back into our daily lives.

Planting Beans

2011-01-19T18:05:00.001-08:00

One of our supplemental projects last week was planting beans. Charlie did a lesson on Jack and the Bean stock last week and we decided to plant beans to go with it. We placed Kidney Beans in mason jars and then put a napkin in it to act as the dirt. Tommy dumped a whole fist full of beans in his jar and Charlie only put 2-3 beans in his. We drip water on the napkin 1-2 times a day and after about 3 days the beans started to sprout.

The boys enjoy looking at the beans each day to see how they have changed. Charlie wants to plant the beans in the backyard to see if they will grow into a large bean stock like in the story.

After we planted them Charlie wanted to dissect the rest of the beans. He cut them open and looked at how they were formed.

We will see if we can keep them going over the winter and then plant them in the backyard in Spring.

Tea Party

2011-01-19T18:04:00.001-08:00

As part of our school fun, and just fun in general, we had a tea party. On the menu was lemon tea colored pink (which really turned orange...but close enough), warm apple cider and brownies bites. We sat out on the back porch and set the table with a white linen table cloth and our best china. We even used Great Gram's cake stand for the brownies.

The kids LOVED it!! Tommy kept saying "Oh tank you Mama! Tank you for tea patty"...too cute! They sat so nicely and nibbled on their 3 brownie bites, they were amazed that I let them have 3. I let them choose what tea they wanted and how much sugar (splenda) they wanted in their tea. They all did so well and enjoyed the free range to "do" and choose what they wanted. They had such good manners and the boys even said that Miss S should go first...ladies first you know!

We sat and chatted, drank, ate, drank some more and talked about how next time we needed to make big tea party hats.

It was so much fun, we can't wait to do it again!

RRSP: Letter T Week 1 and our "schedule"

2011-01-19T18:02:00.001-08:00

We started Tommy's Preschool curriculum this week, Raising Rock Stars Preschool. Again, I was not nearly as prepared as I thought that I was, but I was happy to go with the flow. We are not following the curriculum to a tee, but changing things up to fit with Tommy's needs and my desires for his learning.

We typically start school doing circle time. We do the calendar, color of the day, the weather, our Good Morning song, and our Nameo spelling song and we color in the day of school that we are working on. These are our daily boards (picture to come), I got most of the ideas from 1+1+1=1 there are a few things on our boards that we don't do now, but will as the boys get a bit older.

After circle time we move to the school table and I get Charlie started on his math while Tommy completes the rest of his RRSP lesson and workboxes. Once Charlie is done with math I let Tommy play with whatever is in his open ended workboxes and move Charlie on to another subject, usually Phonics. Typically, Charlie and I do Language Arts either during nap time or before bed and we all do Science together.

The Bible verse for this week is "Thou shall not steal" Exodus 20-15
Both boys were able to grasp the concept of this verse as well as memorize it.
The Letter of the week is T and the color is green. Whenever the boys see the color of they week they are to call out..."the color of the week" and tell us what the item is.

Tommy practiced writing the letter T, he also wanted to write Dad...too cute.

He strung green beads onto a pipe cleaner and then wanted to make a bracelet, which he wore for most of the day.

He cut out different pictures that start with the letter T and glued them onto his letter T page.

Our crafty ABC was none other then a train for the letter T.

Tommy also LOVES Starfall.com and asks to do it everyday. It is a fun, educational website that teaches him letters, sounds, basic phonics etc.

A bin in his open ended workbox contained a Fall themed sensory bin. I bought small gourds, cloth leaves and jeweled pumpkins from the Dollar Store. I placed tongs, several measuring cups, serving spoons and his stacking cubes for him to play with. He scoped, poured, separated, and grouped the items for a good 45minutes.

For our "fun" we had a Tea party with lemon tea, hot cider and brownie bites.

Homeschooling: Kindergarten

2011-01-19T18:01:00.001-08:00

We had another great week. We are all definitely learning as we each day passes what works best for us but it really seems that we are all enjoying our school adventure thus far.

Charlie is breezing through most of his lessons so I am adding supplemental material to keep him interested and to provide him with an optimal learning environment. I am grateful to have the direction that K12 offers and have already found ways to supplement those areas that are not up to my standards. I don't think there will every be "one" curriculum that will have ALL the components of learning that I am satisfied with ;)

We also added in the RRSP curriculum for Tommy this week and both boys will participate in that as well. It was a nice break from the academics portion of our day to do some craft projects and add the Biblical part of our school day. Next week I hope to incorporate our Raising Rock Stars weekly Bible lessons, which is something we will do as a family. So far, starting one boy and his specific curriculum at a time is working well. I feel pretty good about Charlie's work and how our daily schedule works with him, and now I am easing in to doing both boys schooling at one time...so far so good.

Besides doing his school work, Charlie had a alot of fun building different vehicles with his Legos, mining in the dirt in the backyard, used Daddy's drill to put a new hitch on the back of the firetruck finding grasshoppers and ants,
planting beans to go with Jack and the Bean Stock he read for LA, making a birthday card for our neighbor, playing with friends, using pencils/twigs and tape to add to his trucks to make them "cooler"

and being a good helper while Mommy was at her 10,000 doctor's appointment for the week.

I love having our boys here everyday, learning with them and teaching them. They are excited to do school each day and we are really looking forward to the start of our D6 Homeschooling Co-op at the end of the month!

First Week of School

2011-01-19T17:59:00.001-08:00

We just completed our first week of homeschooling and it was really awesome!! Charlie was excited to the majority of his lessons, really I think he had fun doing all of them except for the last phonics review this morning. He even asked to do school on Tuesday ;)

This week was a little haphazard with our school schedule due to some doctors appointments and a playdate, but that is one of things I like about what we are doing....flexibility. We didn't do any school on Thursday but easily made up the work earlier in the week as well as today. We are actually a few lessons ahead of the game which is nice to have a cushion! I hope to get a week or two ahead of the game for when the baby comes.

Monday was certainly a day of learning :) I thought that I was prepared but there were several materials missing. Not a huge deal, just a bit of looking for the crayons, a certain book etc. At first I started to get frustrated, but I didn't want my frustration to ruin the day. So, I said a little prayer for help and just rolled with the bumps. I am so glad that I didn't let my need for everything to be "just right" to put a damper on our lessons! See, I am learning too :)
Charlie and I are also really enjoying the K12 curriculum that we choose. He LOVES working on "his" computer and doing all the games and educational activities. He even got a chance to meet the rest of his "classmates" and his "teacher" in a virtual school room. We both thought that was pretty neat!

Even though I like the basis of the program I do think it is a little dry and not very imaginative. So I have already started looking through our lessons and planning extra activities of us to do. I am going to incorporate some more crafts and different science projects into our lessons. I am grateful to have the program though and "know" exactly what Charlie needs to know and have most of the curriculum planned and provided free of charge. Thank you State of Ohio!

It is also evident, but not surprising, that Charlie already has quiet of few of the concepts already down. He is already able to do small math problems in his head, so starting off with identifying shapes etc for math is a bit of review for him. I think that review is good, but I am also going to keep on eye on things and make sure that he isn't getting bored. I know that he can skip through lessons if he needs too.

Here is what Charlie has to say about our first week:
Charlie how do you think your first week of school went? "Good"
What was your favorite part of school? "coloring the trains and making my robot" (There were a few worksheets that he had to color the train cars different colors, practicing beginning, middle and end. And the robot was a shapes game that he played on the computer. Tommy even loved this game!)
Something you didn't like? "Saying the words" (The phonics lesson we did today where I told him 3 words and he had to tell me which 2 of the words had the same ending. This is something he did fine all week, but was DONE when the review came around. Next time we will take a break and come back to it :)

I am so grateful to be given this opportunity to teach our children at home. I never would have dreamed that this would be the path that our family, let alone myself, would be traveling down, but I am so happy with our decision! I feel so blessed to have a husband that is so supportive as well as friends and family members who are encouraging and interested in what we are doing.

Last year as we contemplated keeping Charlie home from PreK I was full of anxiety, fear and uncertainty of what we should do. I felt led to keep him home and be his teacher. My heart told me this was what we needed to do, what we were being called to do. I prayed about it over and over again and always got the same answer. I knew what we needed to do. However, homeschooling is certainly not the norm and to choose to actually do it felt very uncomfortable as far as what other people might think of us.

Then I read this: Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is- His good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12-2

We had a great week! I can't wait to see what the future holds for us!!

Getting Ready for School

2011-01-19T17:58:00.001-08:00

We are gearing up for the start of our newest adventure, home schooling. We dabbled in it a bit last year doing a loose PreK curriculum with Charlie. I discovered a little bit of what works for us and what does not.

What really worked for us this past year was our work boxes, school in the morning and lots of fun and play added into our school time. Having something set up for Tommy to do when Charlie was doing school was also VERY helpful to keep him occupied. We all enjoyed doing science projects and crafts together, so Tommy will be joining in on a lot of the fun again this year.

Trent and I decide to enroll Charlie into a virtual public school. It is basically a state funded charter school that supplies all the curriculum, computer and printer. We also like that this program is essentially a public school and therefore he is "enrolled" in a school, hence we need not jump through all the hoops to "prove" that we are schooling at home and what exactly we are doing. And since the boys will most likely go to a traditional school down the road, I like the idea of them being right on track (if not ahead) of what they will be expected to know in a public school. That way it will make the transition easier for them, at least from an educational standpoint.

The materials have arrived and I have been busy reading through all the Teacher Guides, looking over workbooks and making a list of school supplies that we will need. It is overwhelming, but oh SOOO exciting and I can't wait to get setup and started!

I have also been putting together a preschool curriculum for Tommy. This time around I found several wonderful websites that offer free curriculum that are right up our alley. They are geared towards Tommy's age group, but I know that Charlie will also benefit from the lessons, so we will be incorporating Raising Rock Stars Preschool into our daily schedule as well.

Raising Rock Stars Preschool is a Biblical curriculum where the children learn about God's Word, scripture verses, Bible stories, songs, character building, weekly emphasis on sight words, color and numbers. It is a great preschool program and I am excited to see how the boys will enjoy it. Carisa over at 1+1+1=1 is so generous to share all the lesson plans for free. I also opted to join her members only section for a one time fee of ONLY $10 which has a whole slew of fun computer stuff for the boys to do that goes a long with the weekly lesson. Now, we only have to purchase Word/Excel for our computer to be able to take advantage of it!

I have been a busy bee, cutting out all of our Crafty ABC projects. Charlie knows all of his letters, but I plan on doing these educational ABC crafts with all the kids, including Miss. S. I saw most of them on No Time For Flash Cards and Totally Tots. Just a fun way for Tommy to learn all his letters and for Charlie to reinforce what he already knows.

As a family we will also be following Carisa's Raising Rock Stars family Bible time. I have printed off all the weekly lessons, have ordered most of the books from the library that go along with them, and am busy putting together the fun crafts for each week. We did some of these lessons around Christmas time and they were so fun to do together. It was neat to see all of us working together, learning about God. This is also a great way for Trent to be involved in the teaching of the kids, spending good quality family time and worshiping God all together.

I have been told my other moms who are teaching the virtual K program that it is very possible to complete the weekly lessons in 3-4 days, about 2 hours a day. Not only do I have to record attendance and Charlie is "quizzed" daily on his progress as to assure that he understands what he is being taught but that we are also moving along in the curriculum. Since Charlie is enrolled in a public school, he also has a teacher that keeps a close eye on how he is doing and if he completing the work that he needs to be doing. The nice part is that we can determine how much we want to do in one day, when we want to take vacations, if we do school in the morning or at night, during the week or on the weekends, and on the road or at home.

I have looked through the curriculum and so far I know that Charlie is already ahead in many subjects. I think he will pick up the Phonics very quickly as we have already been doing a lot and he is eager to read. He is far ahead in math, already doing simple addition and subtraction in his head without having to count on his fingers etc. I have plenty of material to supplement his curriculum and it is nice to know that if we need to take a few weeks off when the baby is born, that he is already ahead of the game.

To add to the academics of Charlie and Tommy's learning, we have also enrolled them into a Home School Co-Op that meets once a week. Tommy will be in a preschool setting and Charlie will take 3 classes a session. The classes are taught by other moms on a variety of subjects that I sign him up for ahead of time. I hope they offer the Math Lego building class this time around because I KNOW that he would just love it! The Co-Op is set up just like a traditional school, with lunch, gym etc. They also have field trips, recitals and achievement nights at the end of each session.

I am so looking forward to this year. I can't wait to get the basement set up as our new school room. To organize all the materials and go school shopping. I am so excited for him to pick out his new book bag and folders. I am thrilled beyond belief to know that our boys will be home with me again this year and that I get to be their teacher. That I get to teach Charlie how to read, to see all those first "ah ha" moments. I am so grateful to be given this opportunity and to have the complete support of Trent. I couldn't do it without his assurance and love!

School starts August 26th and we can't wait!!!

Kids Day 2010

2010-07-18T18:25:00.000-07:00

Kids Day 2010 was a thumbs up!

Tommy at the movie theater (and NO I was not the only Mommy taking pictures!)

Charlie at the movie theater playing games

First on our agenda was taking the boys to their first ever movie at the theater. We HAD to go see Toy Story 3 since Buzz and Woody are our latest obsessions. We knew that Charlie would be glued to the screen and we were not sure how Thomas would do. They both did great! The movie was a little intense at moments, like when the toys were headed to the incinerator....nice way to terrorize our kids...thanks Disney! And both Trent and I thought it was sad, but overall a good movie and one Charlie would like to add to our collection.

Presents after naps, R2D2 for Charlie

Tommy and Charlie
And a Buzz Lightyear costume for Thomas

Week of the Big Blue Sea

2010-03-01T17:47:00.001-08:00

Last week was a good week. We had so much planned that our lessons actually spilled into this week as well. We finished up our Ocean theme today.

We did a little kids yoga. Tommy loved it and Charlie enjoyed it as long as he could do the positions like the lady on the show was doing them. If he couldn't then he melted. He actually got sent to his room for an attitude adjustment during this portion of our day. Being banished to him, with a talking to afterward, seems to be helping curve the whining that we have been experiencing.

Charlie's triangle fish. He drew a pirate ship that had sunk to the bottom as well as a diver.

Tommy and Charlie made octopus. They really enjoyed painting these and using circle sticker as the suction cups underneath their legs. We had fun pretending to stick on one another like an octopus might stick to something.

We did a few float and sink experiments. We made a boat out of playdough and put it in the water. It didn't sink. Then we made the clay into a ball and observed that it sunk in that form.

We also saw that an egg will sink in regular water. However, it will float when you add salt to the water.

Neither Tommy or Charlie cared for the salt water....can't blame them!

Tommy "painted" the fort...with water. This was a HUGE hit for all the kids!

Charlie drew many seascapes and then had his whale, sharks and dolphins swim around.

I made a fun snack from graham crackers, goldfish, crushed vanilla waffers for sand and green M&Ms for seaweed.

We filled clear bottles with water and baby oil, put in some glitter, sea shells and a small plastic toy dolphin. It is fun to shake them up and or make waves. They all LOVED this and I only wish I knew how to keep the tops from coming off so they could play with them more.

Charlie did some pattern work with circle stickers. I made a few patterns and then he had to put the same stickers down. He is really into patterns recently.

Tommy worked on colors and shapes.

Putting straws into a small opening. This was a big hit too!

Another favorite is our dig dig box. I had small toys, letters etc and he finds them. Then has free play. Love the new construction site vest!!

Charlie worked on his word puzzle cards and put the correct letter on the card to spell the word. We are still working on sounding out words.

Impromptu tea party

Indoor excercise

Charlie having some water play time in the kitchen sink.

Shell matching game

Charlie learning to use a ruler. He really likes to use the ruler to make his lines really straight now.

Free paint.

Charlie making his Octopus word folder while Tommy does some writing.

We read some books about the ocean and found some cool kids magazines at the library about ocean life and dolphins.

Tommy started workboxes this week. He has 3 and can do them if he shows interest since he is always wanting to do school with Charlie. My only requirement is that he finishes the box if he starts it and puts it away.

We are all really enjoying using our version of the workboxes. I have them numbered and Charlie knows that when he finishes one then he is to put everything back into it, put it back on the shelf and then get his next box. It is also helpful for me because it keeps everything organized and I am not having to store or find items for projects or different subjects. Sometimes I will also let Charlie pick which box he would like to do. I do this to make it different, a little more fun for the morning and so that he can have more control in the process.

As far as subjects that we are studying go, Charlie has been telling me different topics that he would like to learn more about and I plan accordingly. I have been having a hard time find books at the library to go with our themes. We typically go to a small brach close to our house and I think that is the problem. This weekend I went to Beachwood library (same library Dad use to take us to on Wednesday nights) and I fell in love with that library all over again!! People were staring at me and my mountain of books I was checking out!!

School year is going great. We are falling into a routine and I am in the process of picking Charlie's new curriculum for Kindergarten.

Random sickie week

2010-02-23T14:07:00.000-08:00

A short week, tummy bug, pink eye and two days of doctors appointments. But we still managed to squeeze in some fun activities.

We made a color wheel from cookies and mixed our primary colors together to make other colors. Both boys really loved doing this and not just because they were having fun with cookies and icing!
!
I had Tommy just put the red, yellow and blue icing on his cookies as I knew he would be off and running in about 5.2 seconds. I was right :)
Charlie had so much fun making his on colors. He decided to mix them all together and then asked me to take a picture of his masterpiece
.
We also made a graph with M&Ms. Of course Charlie thought this was fun and even did some simple addition and subtraction problems with the candy.

I had Tommy sort the M&Ms by color. He did great!

We borrowed another cool toy from the toy lending library at our local library. It is a magnetic game and you a special pen to move the magnets to make pictures.
Charlie made a train of course, among other things. He also had fun making different patterns, he is very into patterns these days.

Tommy sorted the colors all on his own.

We also made Valentines bracelets.

Tommy got easily frustrated but managed to put a half a dozen beads on. This was difficult though since the string was SO thin. He did a great job!

Tommy also practiced drawing with a pen on the dry erase board. He colored each object and counted them as he did so
.

We had some great play time fun with Daddy and the new fort that we just got. Gotta love a man that can dumpster dive!! The fort was getting thrown out from a business that rented space where he works, but it wasn't in the dumpster...just along side of it! Regardless, it is awesome and the kids love playing "jail" and making it into a school room!

And a week would not be complete without some cutting practice. He can't get enough of it!

H is for HEART / Valentines Day Preparation / Catch Up week

2010-02-10T18:37:00.000-08:00

The Pieces of My Heart

(this is my favorite piece of Vday art that Charlie has made. He cut strips of paper, glued them down, and then wrote the people & things that he loves)

This week we are preparing for Valentines Day. We are doing lots of crafting and baking along with our normal routine. There are also some projects and fun activities that I had planned for the kids to do over the last few weeks and just never got the chance to do them. I am beginning to realize that we are not married to the theme of the week! So here is to a hopefully fun week of school!

Charlie making a color pattern with his letters. I was washing dishes and happened to glance over to see him doing this. I love catching him doing his own stuff!

Spelling words on the dry erase board with our magnetic letters. He is starting to get the hang of sounding out words.

Playing a fun math game. He had to count the candy hearts and then put the clothes pin on the correct number at the bottom of the page. (Homeschoolcreations ?)

Matching the Capital (Mommy) letters with their Lowercase (baby) letters. He thought this was BORING until I started to pretend that they were Mommys and Babies. Then he was ALL about it! "Oh Mama zebra, your baby zebra is lost" etc....to stinkin cute!

H is for heart.

I made some read heart pretzels for the kids after nap snack. Charlie asked me to make pretzels yesterday and I thought it would be fun to make them fit our Valentines Day theme. They were pretty good, especially with melted cheese...yum!

The boys and I also made some candy cane heart lollies. The boys will take them to their "teachers" at church. We LOVE our Mastering Motherhood teachers (a group that I to each week at church). They take such good care of the boys and the boys just love spending time with them!! This is also a GREAT way to use up those leftover candy canes from making our Christmas bark! (Ucreate)

We had some friends over to decorate Valentines Day cookies and exchange cards.
Charlie's card for Nana (Green is Bot from Umizoomi)

We painted with a cool painting kit that Grandma Candace gave Tommy for Christmas
And we made "creations" out of toothpicks and marshmallows. Have you ever seen a marshmallow that big!!!?

Charlie did a great job adding the "feet" to his creation. He kept adding them until it could stand all by itself.

Tommy had fun too!

And we couldn't help but enjoy ALL of this snow!
Sleding with Daddy. Mommy was out of commission on the 3rd time down the hill and for 2 days AFTER!!. I am NOT 15 anymore and neither is my body ;(

(Pieces of My Heart Craft idea was from Spelloutloud.blogspot.com, I tweaked her idea and had the kids write who/what they love on each piece of paper.)

Tommy School time

2010-02-03T11:26:00.000-08:00

Little brother has been wanting to do "school" too! Next week he just might have his own workboxes, filled with fun stuff of course!

Tommy practiced writing his Ts, drawing lines and circles. He was SO proud of his work!

We painted with sponges which lead to finger painting. Tommy was rubbing the paint around and singing a song while staring off into space. It was so therapeutic and relaxing....he is so silly!

We practiced colors with our duckie game.

Brothers playing with the fishing puzzle game.

Not really playing the Dora alphabet game, but looking at the different letters and pictures.

Very intensely concentrating on adding glitter glue to his snowflake project.

S is for Snow!

He asked again to cut...he LOVEs to do this and I love that he asks to do it!

Playing with his tool puzzle. This was a great Christmas present and provides hours of imaginative play and fine motor skills!

Hiding Dinosaurs in the snow and then digging them out.

All of Tommy's "school" time is just unstructured play at this point. During our play we do focus on our colors, the alphabet, counting, and simple drawings. He is always welcomed and encouraged to participate in craft projects or science projects that Charlie is doing for school. Sometimes he wants to do them, sometimes he does not.

He is really starting to show an interest in a lot of what Charlie is doing and wants to sit at the school table with Charlie and "do" school. I am going to set up just a few workboxes for him so that if he wants to sit and do school then he will have a few quiet things for him to work on.

When Charlie is doing school, Tommy is usually playing close by or working on the project with us. However, I am not comfortable with the amount of time that he is independently playing and will start to set aside more time for fun activities geared towards him.

S is for SNOW / Winter/ Arctic week 2

2010-02-03T11:09:00.001-08:00

We painted with different sponge shapes, including our "snow" packaging noodles!

The boys made an igloo out of packaging noodles, q-tips (icicles per Charlie), and cotton balls.

Charlie found some dice in the dollar bin at Target and wanted to buy them for his math bin. He loves this!

Cutting and taping penguins together so that they can keep warm in the cold Arctic air.

Penguin writing sheet.

Polar Bear maze.

Making a Popsicle snowflake.

Dressing up in winter gear and doing our daily exercise (laps around the house).

S is for snow.

Charlie had to follow the directions to make his own Penguin, very cute!

Mommy and Charlie doing the blubber experiment. This was so neat (Thanks Susana for the idea!) and Charlie really understood the concept.

Worked on more thank you cards. One of the pictures that Charlie drew on the card.

It was to cold to play outside so we brought the snow inside and had lots of fun!

We also did our weekly assignments in Explode the Code and Kumon. This is the last week we will be using Kumon as Charlie really dislikes it and is becoming resistant to doing his math book workbox. So, next week we will only focus on FUN math games and worksheets to revamp his enthusiasim with Math!

Winter week / I is for ice

2010-01-25T11:32:00.000-08:00

I is for ice (http://lettersnumbersandbooksohmy.blogspot.com/)
We added our i to our letter tree and watched Chicka Chicka Boom Boom on youtube again. So fun! I also am using our fridge Leapfrog ABCs when we do our letter of the week. I play the song for each letter a few times as we are doing our craft and also sing the ABC song several times.

We made salt dough snowman (thanks Susana for the idea!!)

Charlie had fun mixing the ingredients which was nice since he has not had a lot of interest in baking lately ;(

We also did a fun experiment with ice, salt and food coloring. (thanks again Susana!) Which led to melting ice chunks at bath time.

Charlie continues to practice his hand writing. This week we made our Thank You cards for his birthday presents.

Each day he traces the letters of the day of the week and we sing a fun alphabet song. We also alternate days using his Kumon and Explode the Code books. We are quickly losing interest in the Kumon book though, which is the math book. I am going to check out another math curriculum and see how that works. He LOVES the Code books though and I need to order the next one soon!!

He also did a few different worksheets throughout the week. He did a dot to dot number sheet and a dot to dot alphabet sheet
.

Charlie did a Snowman math game. (1+1+1=1.com) He laid out the Snowman cards in numerical order then placed the correct number of snowflakes on each number card. He had a great time doing this and I might make some similar cards that are higher numbers, maybe in the 20's and 30s

We made melting snowmen out of candy melts, and varies other types of candy. The kids REALLY liked this and kept saying "thanks mama, this is yummy!". I think they did a great job making their snowmen.

We found a fun snowman sheet on a website, can't remember which one. Charlie had fun coloring the different hats, scarves and snowman. Then I cut out most of the pieces and had Charlie cut out two of the hats. We are still working on cutting and I think he is finally seeing that using the correct finger placement is actually easier then using 2 hands to try and cut :)

And last but certainly NOT least, we worked on chores. They boys don't have specific chores that they must do each day but they expected to do the chores that are asked of them. Cleaning up after dinner, putting plates in the sink, washing the chairs and table, feeding the dog, putting laundry away etc.

And of course we just had to play farmer kitty taking a ride on his new John Deere tractor filled with his harvest! Love it!

Week of the Cat/ Letter C

2010-01-18T12:02:00.000-08:00

Charlie worked on matching lower and upper case letters together and then putting them in alphabetical order. (matching game from 1+1+1=1.com)

Both boys worked on lacing. Charlie decided that he wanted to make a number necklace and he arranged the 1-10 number beads on his lace.

We pulled out a new number puzzle like one I had growing up. It was easy in the fact that Charlie knows his colors and so quickly put the correct pieces together. Difficult in the fact that he is still working on his numbers and does not know some of them from sight. We have been working on the 20's and introducing 30's to him in the last 2 weeks.

We did a connect the dot ABCs, cat style.

Charlie worked on his word card puzzle. He actually sounded out the words and read Cat, fox and. (makinglearningfun.com)

We started our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree today with our letter C. Both boys enjoyed this.

We watched Chicka Boom on youtube and had fun dancing and singing to the song.

Letter C for Caterpillar

Tracing and writing his name...so cute!

We made some of these yummies
frozen bananas covered in chocolate with pecans, coconut and sprinkles
Charlie also worked on some large dice math
He rolled the dice put the number of dice #1 in the first box etc and then added the 2 together. He can now read an equation, 5+3=8 etc. He counted up to 50 this week with his Kumon books. He is mixing up 13 and 14 less and learning to count by 10s. Numbers are still the one area that I know he could use more work in, but I am proceeding as he seems interested and willing at this point.

Charlie colored a cat face that turned into a little pocket and held C words, cowboy, corn etc. He had fun coloring all the little word tiles and would show each of them to me when he was done. It is hard to see in the picture, but little white kitty is sitting next to the crayons watching him...so cute!

Charlie is also taking great delight, both boys are really, in feeding and caring for our new dog, Bo.

This was a short week for us, only 2 days of school. But we squeezed a lot in and had a lot of fun!

Tommy's Tot School

2010-01-06T11:52:00.000-08:00

We have been doing a lot of fun stuff with Tommy in the last 2 weeks

Playing with our Dig container. I keep it filled with rice krispies, toy cars, small cups, spoons etc. This is an all time favorite.

Helping mom make muffins on freezer cooking day.

Washing up

practiced cutting with playdough during brother's school time.

drawing, working on lines and the letter T

Sink or Float experiment with brother

Color matching game (from totally tots)

C is for Caterpillar letter of the week

another color matching game using cookie sheets and abc magnets

watching the recycling truck

and made chocolate covered bananas..yum!

Back to School! Dinosaur / letter D

2010-01-06T11:29:00.000-08:00

We had a great break in December from our normal curriculum but it is also refreshing to get back to our routine!

This week was Dinosaur and letter D week.

Charlie worked on his Code books

He cut out shapes to make dinosaurs

The boys made fossils and LOVED this activity!

We did a few worksheets about Dinosaurs and the letter D. Charlie worked on cutting, letter writing, coloring, matching skills and recognizing other words that begin with the letter D.
We used playdough to make numbers and count

I took out some plastic dinosaurs from the library and we did a lot of pretend play with them. Charlie even made trees out of Legos for the dinosaurs to eat. We learned about a lot of different dinosaurs and different characteristics about them. I had found a fun sticker book at the dollar bins at a store and Charlie loved matching the stickers with the correct dino!
Charlie is really into make maps. He made a map of a city that had a Zoo and a Museum where the Dinosaur fossils live. Here is a picture of his Dino at the Museum
The pen is pointing to the head of the dino, the legs stradle the musuem. so cute!
We are really enjoying make charts lately. We did a Float or Sink chart and both the boys loved seeing what objects floated and which ones did not. We talked about the similarities between objects that floated, what they were made of etc, and the ones that sunk to the bottom. We even tried to make the yellow cylinder sink by putting other small objects into it to. This was great fun for us all!

Charlie has also been doing a lot of writing. Here is making his buddy Connor a bday card.
And all the kids made D for dinosaurs. It is so cute to see how each one is different.

Advent Wrap Up

2009-12-30T12:16:00.000-08:00

Our Advent family fun continued throughout the month of December.

We learned about the Shepherds and how they went to see Jesus.
We made little sheep out of our hand prints and colored sheets.

Daddy and the boys making their sheep crafts

We also talked about the Wise men and that they brought Jesus' gifts.
We did do a coloring sheet to go with this lesson, but some how that sheet turned into a drawing of one of Charlie's famous "city scapes"
.

When our cousins were here for our Christmas dinner (a few days early) we colored our Jesus pictures.

Brandon colored this one for me.

It is easy to get lost in all the hub bub of the holiday season. It is so easy to allow making commercial magic for our children become the priority on Christmas morning. I confess, I LOVE everything about the Christmas season. I love shopping for gifts for the ones that I love, arranging presents under the tree, baking cookies, twinkling lights, Christmas music, decorating the house with fir trees and sparkling glass balls, and the visit to see Santa is high on the list. And even though we will always put cookies out for the jolly ole elf, we have also made greater strides to teach our children the true meaning of Christmas.

I feel so blessed that our family decided to take even a few short moments during this past month to talk about, read and create all around learning about our Lord and Savior. It was a great experience and something I hope that we will continue to do throughout the year.

Preparing for Christmas: Angel Gabriel and Mary

2009-12-21T11:27:00.001-08:00

This year we started a new family tradition that I hope will last for years to come.

Each week, or every few days as it turned out, we came together as a family and worked on a project based on the happenings around the birth of Christ.

In Part l we focused on the Angel coming to speak with Mary. We read Luke 1:26-38
"Greetings, most favored one and do not be afraid. God has chosen you out of all women. Very soon you will have a baby. You must call him Jesus."

We sat down and colored a sheet and talked about why the angel came to Mary.Our coloring sheets

Then we made an angel craft.

Daddy and the boys making their angels

It was nice to be together as a family, talking about Jesus, and having fun. It was also nice to see the boys working with their Daddy. Since we primarily do most of our school and projects during the day, Daddy misses out on a lot of those moments. It was a really special moment for all of us.

Preparing for Christmas

2009-12-07T11:52:00.001-08:00

wreath made by Charlie last Christmas 08

We have taken the month of December off of "school" to prepare for Christmas. Charlie is at a great age and I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity to really teach the kids about what Christmas is all about. Sure we love the jolly ole elf, and enthusiastically await his arrival, but that is not what Christmas is really about. Jesus is the reason for the season!

Everyday we have an Advent activity planned. Some days it is as simple as decorating a Christmas tree or drinking hot chocolate and eating cookies. Other days it may be preparing our Good Samaritan boxes with toys and candy for little boys in third world countries or taking food to the food pantry at church. Playdates with friends to exchange gifts or making presents for family far away. Thanks to my dear friend Sharon for the inspiration!

Each week we will come together as a family and do a specific project preparing for the birth of our Christ. This will give us the opportunity to learn about Jesus together as a family and have fun doing it. Such a simple idea really, but one I picked up from Carissa

For me there is an excitement in the air when Christmas approaches. The lights, the food, the presents. The biggest present is Jesus! May we always remember the true meaning of Christmas. And may we plant on our children's hearts the importance of this lovely holiday.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Thanksgiving: My First Thanksgiving

2009-11-18T10:23:00.000-08:00

We had a nice week, still figuring out this whole "home schooling" thing. We did A LOT of fun things this week and spent a good amount of time training Sir Thomas. Wow, is it difficult to teach and have a little one under foot! However, I really tried to turn those training moments into positives and with each day those moments became fewer and far between! Thank goodness for small miracles!!

This week we read My First Thanksgiving by Tomie dePaola
An easy read for both the boys, yet enough information to expand on for Charlie and simple enough for Tom.
We colored pictures of turkeys

We made our annual Indian Corn. This year Tommy was artistically inspired and painted more then the corn :) And big brother followed suite.

For Tommy time, we worked on grouping our counting frogs (that I purchased at the Dollar Store) together to practice our colors and counting

We made our Thanksgiving Fact Book, put up our Tepee
dressed up as Cowboys and rode our horse(swiffer) around the house.

The boys used our new dry erase board. Tommy practiced drawing circles and line, Charlie wanted to write our address and Daddy's cell phone number.

The boys made Native American Headdresses using feathers, construction paper and tape. Our first go with tape and they both did really well!!

So cute!

We also played with a bunch of our favorite learning toys that we checked out from the library's toy loaning program. LOVE the library!! We played ringtoss
Tommy and I worked with the clock on shapes, numbers and putting the puzzle pieces in the correct spot. Charlie and I did the same thing and then used the clock portion to introduce him to telling time. I would call out different times, like what time we go to bed, have lunch etc and he would position the hands in the appropriate position. He did great and really enjoyed this! We might need to get this for Christmas!!
Charlie also did the math puzzle and matched up the numbers with the corresponding picture.

We played a lot of games this week, some of our favorite were Feed the Turkeys. Charlie fed them , and himself some candy corn.
And a Harvest Pattern Game I would make a pattern and then he would copy it, then he made me one and I did the same. It was fun working together.

Meanwhile, my good little helper was hard at work.....love it!

We also covered our daily work, devotions, calendar, weather, Kumon workbook, Explode the Code workbook and read a lot of books about Thanksgiving!! Charlie also enjoyed doing several lessons on Starfall.com...great resource!
Turkey Poem:
The Turkey is a silly bird
His head goes wobble, wobble
The only word he really knows is,
gobble, gobble

Thanks for the ideas!!
Native American Headdress notimeforflashcards.com
Harvest Pattern Game, Feed the Turkey Game and coloring sheets from makinglearningfun.com

Bear Snores On, getting ready for winter

2009-11-06T17:35:00.000-08:00

We had a fun, productive week during our learning time! The boys, and I were more then thrilled to be back on track after our bit with the flu!!

We based our week around the book Bear Snores On

We read the book each day and even watched a video of it on youtube. Within reading a few pages, Charlie was chanting along with me "But the Bear snores on..." This is a great book that illustrates nicely how bear hibernates in the winter and how friends can help each other.

Tommy used the alphabet magnets on the cookie sheet
and played the bear emotion puzzle with S while Charlie worked on his Bear Facts book.

Some of the bear facts that he included in his book were that bears live in caves/dens, that they eat berries and fish, have thick fur etc. He glued pictures in his book of bears doing these different things.

Having this book was great because we pulled it out through the week and and used it as a visual aid to remind us of what we had learned about bears. We also glued in our helping loving hands bear wheel that had different pictures of kids doing things like helping put away their clothes, wash the table, hugging each other, reading books together etc. This was to go with the theme of how the animals in Bear Snores On, helped one another and shared their snacks together.

We did our basic work, Kumon

and Code books for some math and phonics work. Even little brother wants to do "school"

I even tried to have their lunch be something fun and "beary", so made their PBJ sandwich look like a bear (kind of!) cut it with a heart cookie cutter, used PB to glue down the popcorn eyes and M&M nose...it was a BIG hit
!

For our science portion of the week we continued to work on our body from our Amazing Me book. We learned about skin and colored some "skin" on our body. Charlie also added his hair since we had forgotten to do that the last time.

We also did a touch and feel bag. I put several items that were different textures in the bag and Charlie had to close his eyes and use his "skin" to feel the items and try and identify them.

In preparation for the cold weather, we made a treat for our outdoor friends by placing our Halloween pumpkin filled with Indian corn and stale bread out on patio table.

We also made several bear "dens" during the week. The boys had a lot of fun getting all their stuffed animals or friends of Bear, like in the book, and placing them in the den too. We also ate popcorn and hot chocolate like Bear and his friends did.

Charie in his bear den, looking at his Bear Fact book and eating an orange in preparation for his long sleep, hibernation. He did this all on his own, so cute

Tommy and Charlie making a bear den for their stuffed bear. I placed plastic food around the house and they walked like a bear to gather it and brought it to the den.

The boys dressed up in different clothes

that they would wear when the weather gets cold, hats, gloves, snow pants and we talked about winter. Even Sammie enjoyed the fun!

We played lots of games, did some dishes, and cleaned up the place.

This is a little song that I sang to the kids as they were snuggling down for a long winters nap in their bear den.

Little Bear

(to the tune of frere jacques)

Are you sleepy, Are you sleepy
Little bear, little bear?
Wintertime is coming,
Wintertime is coming,
Very soon, very soon.

Find a cave, Find a cave,
Little bear, little bear
Wintertime is here,
Wintertime is here,
Go to sleep, go to sleep.

Are you sleepy, Are you sleepy
Little bear, little bear?
You will wake in springtime
In the warm, warm springtime
Little bear, little bear

Time to wake up, Time to wake up
Little bear, little bear
Springtime is here, springtime is here
Wake up now, wake up now!

Head over and see what others are doing at Learning Thru Love

Schooling Closing

2009-11-06T11:02:00.000-08:00

School is officially closed this week due to the Swine Flu.

Check out luvinmy3guys.blogspot.com for more details.

Unit Study: Halloween Week 1.5 :)

2009-10-19T19:23:00.000-07:00

One of our favorite holidays is almost upon us and we are busy with all things fall/Halloween!!

We have fallen into the habit of doing our calendar and weather time during breakfast followed by devotions. Our new children's Bible came in the mail the other day and we are really enjoying it! The way the stories and scripture are illustrated in the book are very easily grasped and Charlie is asking more questions and enjoying his Bible time more!! God is good!!

Tommy Time:

Sensory tube with Halloween items mixed in for him to scope and find
Color discovery boxes from the library toy loan
we also pulled out the sort and thong game

In the last two weeks our "letter of the week" has been M for Monster! We only have friendly monsters around these parts!! and G for Ghost!

Science:

We have a new science book for our curriculum. It is called Me and My Amazing Body. We will be reading a page or two from the book and then do a project that pertains to what we just learned. Our first project will be to do a body outline of the kids on a big piece of paper and then label and place different parts of our body. We have our "body" hanging in the kitchen alongside the calendar. The kids love to stare at it and talk about the different body parts when we are eating lunch
.I drew body parts and had Charlie paint them. Then we glued them on our "body".

Math:
Kumon book
math puzzle
and counting and sorting colors

Prereading: Explode the Code,

working on shapes and the alphabet with Tommy. He really has a good sense of the letters and can say most of them. With this excercise I had the boys hammer in the shapes or letters, depending on what puzzle they had, back into the foam puzzles that I picked up at the resale shop. BIG hit!! :)

Working on Charlie holding his pencil correctly and starting to write his words from left to right. I have noticed that he will think that 12 is really 21 and vice versa and usually tries to write from right to left.

Poem/Felt board:
5 little Pumpkins
Five littel pumpkins sitting on a gate.
The first one said, "Oh, my it's getting late!"
The second one said, "There are witches in the air"
The third one said, "But we don't care"
The fourth one said, "Let's run, let's run!"
The fifth one said, "Isn't Halloween fun?"

Then Wooooo went the wind
And OUT went the lights

And 5 little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

Poem 2:
I'm a little scarecrow stuffed with hay
standing watch in my field all day
when I see a crow
I like to shout
"Hey, Mr. Crow please fly out!!"

****the poems were a BIG hit and we often say/sing them in the car or to settle us down when things get a bit roudy!

Art/Craft:
We bought our annual scarecrow for the back porch and our milk jug ghosts for the front of the house. We also decorated the front bushes with spider webs and Halloween creepy crawlies. We also decorated Halloween cookies and did a fun scarecrow craft. Can you tell that someone is excited?!?!?

We also made candy corn magnets for the fridge.

We also spent some time decorating and cleaning our house for our Halloween party. Both boys LOVE to help me clean! Tommy spontaneously cleaned the bathtub for me during bath time. I go back and forth if that is gross, but the end result was a clean child and a clean tub...can't beat it and no "cleaning" supplies were used besides good old body soap. Charlie helped do a through cleaning of his room, he washed the base boards and the doors and put away his clean laundry. Train em up!! No need to thank me future wives :)

We also worked on our Halloween costumes, carved pumpkins
, watched the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and ate dirt!We also did A LOT of baking. Charlie helped decorate the ghost and pumpkin peep cupcakes!

I am extremely happy with the way that everything just fell back into place this week with school! The boys and I are so happy and really having a great time!

I am pleased to finally have a basic curriculum chosen and in place. I am also getting the hang of planning our lesson plans and doing the prep work for the day. There are a few things that I want to improve/work on.

One, is the organization of our school materials. I am leaning towards a workbox systme but need to purchase the containers and figure out where I will keep them that Charlie can easily access them.

Second, planning more activities for our school days. We have gotten into a routine and have become pretty efficient executing it. It is amazing how much we cover in a 1.5 hours! I don't want to make our school time much longer then that right now, but having one or two extra activities to do would be good.

Third, planning in general. I am getting a good hold on it and not feeling nearly as overwhelmed by it as I was. However, for my continued sanity I need to streamline it a bit and be more prepared. I would really like to have at least a months worth of lesson plans ready to go with the flexibility to add in any material that I might come across before that weeks unit study. Right now I am planning it weekly and doing the prepwork each night before the next school day. I know there will always be some prepwork the night before but I also can cut it down significantly.

It was a great week!! Now let the party begin!

Fall/Nature Weeks 2 &3

2009-10-12T10:52:00.000-07:00

Some of our curriculum books came in the mail over the weekend!!! At lunch today Charlie asked to do "learning time"!! What a change from last year when every morning he would fuss and say that he did not want to go to school. I am SO glad that he is enjoying school at home and is excited to learn!!

Math and Phonics:
This week we started on our Kumon Math book and our Explode the Code phonics book.
Art:
The boys painting with cattails
We also painted with moss, walnuts, cattails, rolled/painted with acorns, leaves and other nature items to add to our Nature Book. Today at church Charlie found a large acorn on the ground. He immediately picked it up and said "Hey Mom, we can put this acorn in our Nature Book!!". I love it when they get excited about what we are doing!

Letter of the Week:

L for leaves, I printed out Maple and Oak tree leaves (the kind of trees that are in our backyard) colored them and then glued them onto our L
Science/Geography:
Trees in our backyard: we went on a leaf hunt in our backyard, gathered leaves and identified them in our tree book that we are making. We also put leaf pages in our Nature Book. You can't do a study on leaves without doing leaf rubbings

.
Charlie doing leaf rubbings

Tommy Time:

I buried foam letters in a sensory rice bin and had Tommy dig the letters out and practiced the letters T, C, L, S and the number 2.
We also did playdough and our new emotions bear puzzle!

The last two weeks were a bit difficult for us. Between having a migraine for an entire week and then refinishing our hardwood floors, we were off schedule and out of sorts....let alone displaced from our home for a few days! But I am amazed to see that we did complete a lot of our planned curriculum and despite the grouchy momma and stinky/dusty/disheveled house, we managed to have some fun too!
All the kiddos having school!

Unit Study: All things Fall (Leaves and Apples)

2009-10-11T20:33:00.000-07:00

Books to read:
Picture Guide to Tree Leaves By Raymond Wiggers
Fletcher and the Falling Leaves By Julia Rawlinson
Apples and Pumpkins By Anne Rockwell
The Apple Pie Tree By Zoe Hall
A Tree For All Season by Robin Bernard (National Geographic, Maple Tree)
Apples By Gail Gibbons

Field trip:
*apple orchard
*nature walk

I extended this unit study of Fall to cover a few weeks instead of the one week that I had originally planned on. There was just too many things we wanted to cover and the weather was not as cooperative as I had hoped.

Last week we had a pretty relaxing, wet yet fun week! It was rainy and soggy outside and so we hunkered down and played and did some school work. We had friends over, we made bread, we read books, we colored and practiced our writing and we had fun doing a few Fall activities.

Then over the weekend we went on a great nature walk and picked up all kinds of objects to use for projects.

Charlie looking at all our nature loot

Science:

We made apple prints

Made a nature book
Calendar/Weather

Math:

Counted acorns in a muffin tin

Made our calendar

Writting/Copy work:

Worked on letters

Did a few worksheets (Charlie LOVES worksheets)

Poem:

Two Little Apples
Way up high in the apple tree
2 red apples winked at me
I shook that tree as hard as I could
Down came the apples
Mmmmmm......they were good

Creative play:
We used the felt board that I made to play out the poem.
Charlie liked making the leaves fall off the tree as well.

Tommy time:

Used block stacker to separate shapes by color
We played our new color matching game that I made.

First week of school...check!

2009-09-25T11:23:00.000-07:00

Today was our play date/field trip day. We played with friends in the morning and after naps did a little bit of school to end our week on germs/health.

More books that I had ordered from the library came in last night just in the nick of time. So, we spent a good portion of the afternoon reading the books and playing with our borrowed Doctor kit. The kids had fun putting band aids on Lovey and our other stuffed friends. We also talked about going to the Dentist and the importance of brushing our teeth.

Charlie also did some copy work and handwriting practice.

Books to read:
Everyday Science: Health by Riley
Meet the People in Your Neighborhood! Doctors! Elmo's World
Wash Your Hands by Tony Ross
My Health: Sleep By Dr. Alvin Silverstein

This week went really well. I think that Charlie liked doing his projects, writing and drawing pictures and reading all the different books. We spent a lot of time together, working with one another, talking, coming up with ideas. I loved it!

There were some things about this week that did surprise me. I went into this adventure thinking that I would be the kind of home schooler that was very scheduled, down to the minute of what we were going to do and on what day we would do them. However, and I realize I am only one week into it, but I think I am leaning more towards having a general idea of what I want to cover within a day, have projects ready to go, and then having a flexible plan of when things get done. Today was a perfect example. I had planned to finish our lesson in the morning but then got an invitation for a play date in the AM. So we went to play with our friends and then finished the lesson in the afternoon. No biggie.

I also think that I need to ease up on the pressure that I have been placing on myself regarding the content of the curriculum. Charlie is only 4 for goodness sakes! He does not need to be writing hypothesis and reading novels. I think for this year my main focus is going to be on Bible teaching, character building, lots of reading and some math. I like doing the unit studies as it keeps things organized and fun for the kids. This is all a great learning process!!

A lot of my ideas for this weeks unit was from Jennifer over at http://schoolingmemoirs.blogspot.com/ She is a creative gal...thank you!!

Germs Day 2

2009-09-23T11:35:00.000-07:00

Today was a good day. Charlie was again eager to do all the activities, improved with his writing, was not frustrated at all during copy work...neither was I! I had to be quick on my feet though...if only Tommy did not have the attention span of a 2 year old! :) I definitely need to find and have on hand some more fun and quiet activities for Tommy to do while Charlie is doing learning time! But I improvised and all was well!

Books to read:
Common Colds By Alvin Silverstein
Achoo! By Patricia Brennan Demuth

Group Learning Time:

Lacing Beads and peg board blocks(I don't know the name of them, but they are blocks in different shapes and colors that click together and on a peg board. There are a lot of different activities you can do with them)

Then we read some books on germs and getting sick. We looked at pictures of viruses and learned about how they spread. We used green glitter and a little hand lotion, to make the glitter really stick to our hands and pretended that the glitter was germs. We then ran around the house picking up toys and cups and watched how we left behind "germs" on the items. Charlie thought this activity was really cool...so did I! Tommy wanted to wash his hands....lol!
Germs on our hands

Then we did a hand washing demonstration on how to wash our hands. Tommy will do anything to get the chance to play in water. So while he washed the dishes, Charlie and I did some individual learning time.

Individual learning time,Copy work:

Charlie wanted to do the word "Sick" again and he did really good. He also decided to trace his hand and put some "germs" on the drawing, just like the activity that we did.

I certainly have a "plan" for the material that I want to cover. However, I am finding that both the boys and I are really enjoying the fact that they can also make some of the choices of what we do during our learning times.

The end of the day left us with the Sneeze project! How fun is this!! We used a spray bottle filled with water and blue food coloring and showed the boys what happens when we sneeze into a tissue. They LOVED it!! We only had one spray bottle so they had to take turns which was hard for them since they were so excited. I thought about getting another bottle, but did not. It was a great lesson in being patient, kind with our words, taking turns and sharing.

Germs Day 1...First day of school!!!

2009-09-22T10:31:00.001-07:00

Today was our first "official" day of homeschooling! To sum it up, it was GREAT!!! If only all of our school days could be like this!!

We started off with our morning snuggles in Daddy and Mommy's bed as Daddy readied himself for work. Watch a little show, put away laundry that had been sitting in our room for eons!, took a shower, dressed, had breakfast together, washed dishes while the kiddos played and then started school.

We did thing a little differently then how I had planned, but so is life! One thing I knew before writing out our tentative schedule for the day was that in no way would we stick to the time constraints. I just put them in there to give me a guide. The other thing that was glaringly obvious (do you like how I make up my own words?....I do!) was that I need to have the lesson plan in front of me. So, I need to make a binder and hopefully will get that done by next week.

The other thing that I have been learning during the times that Charlie and I do academic things is to watch him closely for signs of frustration or tiredness. When I see those red flags I either need to end the lesson we are working on or I need to inject something funny and silly into it to keep him going. I think there is nothing wrong, actually it is something he needs to learn, but nothing wrong with letting him get a little frustrated or keeping at something until he finishes it even if it is hard. But there is a fine line, and if I push him to far then I have lost him. That happened today during our copy work. He did the first assignment so well, he was excited, participating in the decision making, easily accepting correction, writing so nicely. But then we did a second lesson and by the 2nd line I should of called it quits but didn't and we both ended up frustrated. But he drew a cool picture of a bucket excavator! :)

Group Learning time:

Sorting craft noodles based on color. Charlie knows his colors so he was the old pro and helped Tommy despite the fact that Tommy really knew all of them too. But that is just the older bossy brother coming out in Charlie! We also used a large kitchen spoon and thongs to put the noodles into different containers, working on fine motor skills for both, but primarily Tommy.
We then made silly creations out of the noodles by dipping them in water. Surprisingly this activity took up about 45 minutes and the boys really liked it!

Charlie made a picture frame out of the noodles

Then Tommy washed the containers in the sink while Charlie and I read You Are What You Eat!, talked about eating healthy food, the food pyramid etc. I then asked Charlie some questions about the book and he reiterated some of what we had just read. I think that as we do this more, his narration will expand. Charlie then did his copy work, using the words Milk and Sick. Like I said before, he did great with Milk. Picked out the word from the book, was excited to be writting etc. On his own he drew a milk truck etc.

Individual learning Time:

After Tommy was down for naps Charlie and I did a Math game with the craft noodles. This time he put them into piles by color and counted them. We also did some simple addition, he was able to do 5+1=6 and 6+2=8.

Our school day was about 1.5 hours long which is just about where I would like to keep it for now.

Books to read:
You are what you eat! By Sharon Gordon

Achoo! Achoo! By Patricia Brennan Demuth

Time for School!

2009-09-20T18:34:00.001-07:00

School starts this week! Wish us luck!

Weekly Schedule

2009-09-18T19:11:00.000-07:00

Here is what our weekly schedule is going to look like. We will try it out for a few weeks and then reevaluate.

Monday:
Devotion/Breakfast
Tommy speech therapy
run errands and or clean the house
Lunch
Nap
Outdoor play and or craft project
Get ready for dinner

Tuesday:
Breakfast/Devotion
Free play/learning activity for Tommy
Circle time (song, poem, calendar etc)
Unit study: language arts, narration, copy work
Free play
Lunch
Nap
Outdoor play and or craft project
Get ready for dinner

Wednesday:
Breakfast/Devotion
Free play/learning activity for Tommy
Circle Time (song, poem, calendar etc)
Unit study: lanquage arts, narration, copy work
Free ply
Lunch
Charlie math/Tommy nap
Charlie nap
Outdoor play and or Science project
Dinner

Thursday:
Devotion/Breakfast
Mastering Motherhood at church
Free play
Lunch
Outdoor play and or craft
Dinner

Friday:
Devotion/Breakfast
Free play
Condensed studies : Circle time (song, poem, calendar etc)
Unit Study: Language arts, narration, copy work
Field Trip
Free play
Lunch
Naps
Outdoor and or art project
Dinner