First Day of School

So it's upon us! The start of another school year. Matthew and I went out by ourselves yesterday for a special shopping trip for some last-minute school supplies. It's rare to get out with any of them, let alone one-on-one time with them since Daddy's working 6 and 7 days a week now. So we enjoyed it and tried to make the most out of it. Got some good deals, too!

The kids were very eager to get started this morning.

We read the creation story this morning and made a melted-crayon earth to mark the beginning of our timeline.

They enjoyed their rug time reading with the Boxcar children and acting out the chapter with the little "dolls" they had made last week. The girls need lots of work on listening and not interrupting, so we're trying to focus on that during rug time.

Our science reading was about where rain comes from. After each part, Matthew would color the corresponding part on his water wheel.

When he was finished he put his two pieces together and could spin the back one to see the water cycle in action!

The girls did some freestyle coloring during all of this.

Then we took an impromptu trip outside to check out where the rain water on our street goes.

We also made a rainbow on the driveway with a glass of water. After this picture we got a really good one with bright colors. Ashlyn was the most fascinated with this experiment, while the others were more excited to run around the yard

They were excited about their new (cheap Target find!) lunch items.

Thankfully Andrew took a good morning nap today! Once the girls went down for their rest time, Matthew did his spelling work. It's supposed to take him a week to learn the words, but he spelled every one of them 100% correctly the very first time I said them. I'm really trying to find a good Language Arts fit for him but it's not working too well! With Sonlight, the grammar is way above his head while the spelling and reading are beneath him. We'll keep trying to find a good fit.

More Prep

In trying to add the girls in to Matthew's more advanced readers, I knew we had to do something to make it fun and keep their interest. So, since our first book is The Boxcar Children, we made a little figure of each of the children and also made the boxcar. The kids had so much fun doing this that they were wanting to play with them all day!

You can't tell in the pictures but we also made a railroad track that the boxcar is sitting on. I hope this makes the story more fun for them!

Matthew decided he can't wait until the 31st so he wants to start school this week. So tonight we took the kids for a back-to-school-bash ice cream treat from the dollar menu at McDonald's

(some kids don't need ice cream to be happy )

Prepping for Another Year

We've set our first "official" day of school this year as August 31st. It's been a little crazy around here trying to prepare! This year I'm planning to include the girls a whole lot more now that they're old enough to start to learn to sit still and listen more. So they'll be participating in craft time and Matthew's Read Aloud time, as well as our family Bible time around the breakfast table. I've got a CD of Matthew's memory verses set to music and am hoping they can learn them along with him. They're about halfway through their memorization of the Lord's Prayer and are doing great with it!

So Read Aloud time is going to be our "rug time" or "circle time" or what have you. I decided that sometimes I'll have a little coloring page or something for them to do while I read, so for those times they'll sit around Matthew's little table. Other times they'll just sit quietly on the floor and give me their full attention. I was trying to figure out how to make them recognize this reading time, even though it will have various forms.

I decided I would make them each a poster board with their name on it and they can find their name and know to sit at that spot and that's where they'll be while I read. I'm only planning to use these during that Read Aloud time. So hopefully they'll quickly recognize the correlation.

So yesterday they got to "decorate" their name card with stickers. They had so much fun!

Amazing Little Brains

"School" has been difficult lately with a miserably-teething 3-month-old who wants to be held all day long. But that doesn't mean the brains aren't engaged. Ashlyn (2 1/2) can spell her way through an entire book (she'll literally look at each page and say "T-H-E D-O-G I-S B-L-A-C-K" or whatever.) and Jessica (also 2 1/2) knows all of her letters and can do each sound.

As I was leaving my 4-year-old's room tonight after putting him to bed, he said, "Do you know what loud noises are called? Cacophony."

Goodnight, Matthew...

Guess I'll quit feeling guilty about not doing much organized education these last few weeks...

Color Wonder = BIG thumbs up!

I love Crayola's Color Wonder products. It's SO wonderful to be able to give each of my 3 "coloring aged" kids markers at the same time and not have to hover and pounce when they stray from the paper. It is wonderful to be able to sit nearby taking care of the baby or reading a book while they color and not having to worry about the walls and carpet!

The kids love them too

(I only WISH Crayola was paying me to say this!)

Back to the Blog World

Wow... 3 months, huh? It's been a whirlwind. We've still been trucking along with school, but have had a little trouble keeping up with everything with the new (very fussy) baby. Blogging has sort of fallen by the wayside.

We had Matthew's 4 year check up last week (about half a year late but had to wait for insurance to cover it). The doctor said he had a small fine motor delay because he couldn't hold the tiny little pen and write his name very legibly (he's used to fat markers at home). While I don't think 4 years old is really old enough to be behind in much of ANYTHING, I still figured that as long as he didn't protest, we'd work a little more on his writing and drawing. I found a John Deere letter coloring and sticker book at the dollar store (not the "we're going to end everything with .00 and call it a dollar store" but the "everything's a dollar" dollar store). He loves John Deere because they sponsor the zambonis at the arena where Daddy works, so it was perfect. He's had fun tracing letters in that today.

I've started doing some more focused preschool activities with the girls. They love to color so it's great to get them all at the table coloring and then use that time (provided Andrew is sleeping or at least content in his swing or bouncy seat) to read some of Matthew's books to all of them. The girls are learning to sit quietly for a little bit longer stretches as we do this, plus working on some fine motor skills at the same time ;-) We're learning lots of active songs and they're blowing my mind with how much they're picking up about letters. Matthew has an alphabet floor puzzle and it was all over the floor the other day and Jessica said, "Mommy, H - hhhhh, hhhhh, hhhhhh" (making the sound). Then Ashlyn said, "Yeah Mommy, wook (look), S - ssssssssssssssss". They got almost all of them right and were able to do the sounds. I was impressed because I didn't realize they knew so many letters.

Today Matthew was drawing a picture and he said, "I'm going to draw our family. Look, there's me, Daddy, Ashlyn, Jessica and Andrew on planet earth. And here's you, Mommy (points to a person on a completely different part of the picture). You're on Jupiter." Thanks, bud! He proceeded to tell me that Jupiter is the "bounciest" planet (so at least I was having fun) and that I had taken a rocket to get there. I guess it's good to know he doesn't think that's where I originated or something

Week #7 Review

What an insane week! We've been without internet since Wednesday, which is why this update is late. In addition, I've been helping Stephen on a project for work that the EARLIEST we've quit on this week was 1:30 a.m. One morning it was 4:30. Of course, with 3 young kids, you don't compensate by sleeping in the next day! So things have definitely been interesting here this week.

Thankfully, Matthew was very cooperative this week so school went smoothly.

The week was very tough on the kids with them not seeing Daddy AT ALL, so on Friday we made him pictures. First, Matthew made a sunshine with a smiley face (the eyes and nose are kind of hard to see in the picture). I know it doesn't look like much, but I'm AMAZED at how far he's come:


Then we traced a sign language "I love you" (he stands at the door each morning and presses his little hands up against the storm door in an "I love you sign" and keeps it there until he can't see Daddy anymore). So he signed it up against the paper and I traced it. Then I wrote "Daddy" on another page for him to copy, but he wrote these letters COMPLETELY by himself. I bumped the paper while he was writing the "y," but I was so amazed again at his improvement in this area!


Then the girls drew theirs. Jessica:


Ashlyn:


We hung them all on the fridge for Daddy to see when he came home in the wee hours of the morning. I think they brightened his... night.


This week's verse was "Forgive as the Lord forgave you" (Colossians 3:13). He was able to recite all 7 verses tonight, though was a little bumpy on the references, but I was impressed!


In planning ahead for a few weeks (I was amazed at how much time I had when I didn't have internet access ), I realized that since we skipped 25 weeks of reading, he only has a few weeks of reading left before he's done with the books we have. So I looked up what books were in the next reading level for Sonlight and then went to my trusty "Paperback swap" account (a GREAT resource if you don't already know that!) and was able to get TWELVE of the books off of the list for FREE! One of them was 16.99 through Sonlight and someone had it listed on Paperback swap! I couldn't believe my luck. Now I just need to get a Sonlight order together to be able to get the schedule for the readers. Hmm... wishlist items?

Week #6 Review

Matthew had another week where he just wanted to keep going. He finished one of his books by Tuesday! But I always try to just go with it because by Friday he really doesn't want to do much. This Friday was devoted to crafts. We had read "The Clever Mouse" this week so we made a mouse bag puppet. I cut everything out and placed the whiskers because they were a little harder, but he put on the glue and placed the other pieces. He broke into a huge grin when I showed him that it was a puppet. He just didn't see that coming at all


On Wednesday at skating they got to ride on saucers while the teachers shot them across the ice. Needless to say, Matthew had a blast.


He is doing SO MUCH BETTER with his reading to me now that we switched books. He's so much more expressive and today got through an entire page properly pausing at all the periods, continuing on through line breaks if he didn't see a period and really enjoyed looking up and making eye contact at the end of phrases.

He's also doing great with his memory verses. He learns one each week and tonight was able to quote all 6 of them and had only forgotten one reference. His memory never ceases to amaze me. His verses so far have been:

Week 1: Pay attention, my child, to what I say. Listen carefully. Proverbs 4:20
Week 2: Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1
Week 3: God loves a cheerful giver. 2 Corinthians 9:7
Week 4: Let the peace of God rule in your hearts... and be thankful. Colossians 3:15
Week 5: Tell your neighbor the truth because we belong to each other. Ephesians 4:25
Week 6: Obey your leaders [because] they keep watch over you. Hebrews 13:17

We also went to the store together and picked out a Kumon workbook. It's the Let's Cut Paper book for the younger kids. They had one for 3, 4 and 5, but he's had NO experience with scissors so I got the one for age 2 and up and added the other to our wishlist. He's done two pages so far and is really doing well. His hand shakes when he tries to line it up but he's able to open the scissors wider than he was a couple of days ago and has cut fairly accurately on the line. I'm restraining myself from getting a few of the other workbooks (a coloring, tracing or maze one to help with his pencil holding), but I'm impressed with Kumon so far! Everyone's recommendations were right on the money!

On a non-Matthew related note, Ashlyn has recently started to sit through longer and longer books. She'll find one and bring it to me and just plop in my lap. Today we got through an entire book of Matthew's (as in, not a short board book) and she never moved. Granted, it was a Blues Clues book and that's something that completely holds her attention, but still, it was motivation to start to save harder for Sonlight's Core P3/4. I was hoping it would be something all of us could do together (I currently have to wait until the girls are occupied or napping to work with Matthew to avoid distraction) and it seems like the girls are getting closer to attentiveness in that regard.

So all-in-all, another good week. It definitely has its difficult moments, but so far our schooling journey has been very positive.