Homeschool: Kindergarten & Preschool Getting Ready for Christmas

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 & Preschool weeks 8 & 9 Letter I

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.