Gallon Guy

I'm usually really bad about doing crafts. I try to have one slated per week, but so many times they end up being ones we're doing "just to do them," and with 4 kids 5 and under, I'd rather not deal with the mess, time and hassle of that. However, this one made sense to me. I could see the benefit to doing it. So we made Gallon Guy: You need one large piece of paper, 4 smaller rectangles, 8 smaller squares and 16 even smaller squares (hint: start with the smallest squares and work your way up!) We used different colors for each so they would stand out.

There he is! I maybe should have labeled the pieces AFTER Matthew glued them all together - some of them you can't see the words anymore, but it adds character. And he's serving his purpose! Daddy asked this morning, "Matthew, how many quarts in a gallon?" Without hesitation (and with Gallon Guy nowhere in sight), Matthew answered, "FOUR!"

(Matthew loved Gallon Guy so much, he made a Gallon Guy mii on the wii.)

Edible Science

Today for science we were studying the various layers of the earth. I was supposed to hardboil an egg to show the various levels (shell = crust, white = mantle, yolk = core), but last night was a rough night with the baby and I didn't want to heat up my house today boiling the water! Luckily, we had apples in the house, so I cut one down the middle and improvised (skin = crust, pulp = mantle, core/seeds = core). When we were done with the lesson, we of course had to eat the apple so that it wouldn't go bad

Matthew took a big bite and said, "Mmmmm! This mantle sure is yummy! And some magma just squirted into my mouth!"

Kids are fun!

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!)

This Child Floors Me...

Matthew loves playing with calculators. This week he's been testing to see that a number times the same number is always the same as the number squared. (In other words, hitting 6x6= will always show the same answer as hitting 6 and the "squared" button.) He gets overly excited when he sees that it always works.

Well today he just wanted to type big numbers. After a very brief explanation from Daddy about what each "place" was and how you read big numbers, he was easily reading 5 and 6 digit numbers without missing anything. He came up to me and read, without faltering or missing anything, the number 555,245,555. I know some adults who can't do that and he's 4! His brain just absorbs stuff so easily and I'm enjoying it while it lasts!!

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

Weeks #11 and #12 Review

We've had a nice 2 week break from our school schedule. But the boy's brain certainly doesn't stop working! Yesterday he opened his Bible while he waited for dinner to be served and said, "Look Daddy, this word says in-tro-duc-tion." Of course he was right. Today he told me I was going the wrong way on the highway because he saw one of those signs that says "wrong way." I always remember as a kid thinking those were for my side of the road because they were where I could read them. But not at 3.5!

He was reading in his Little Bear book and at the end of each page he would say "so..." and recap what had just happened on that page in his own words. That was really encouraging because it's hard for us to know if he's comprehending what he's reading when he reads it himself.

So while we'll most likely get back into the swing of things tomorrow, we'll just follow his lead on what he's interested in. He takes in the world in his own way and in his own time and amazes us more each day!

Week #10 Review

We had a busy week. Wednesday we left for the beach so I just let him do as much as he wanted Monday and Tuesday. He finished everything except Math and a few stories! I'm amazed the handwriting books got done, especially when I was intentionally not pushing anything.

We pulled out a new science book "What's Under the Sea?" to try to prepare for our trip to the beach. It was kind of a dry book and he didn't really get into it so we only read a couple of pages and then just talked about it more on his level. It was fun.

In the car on the way to the beach (the one we went to was about 6 hours away) the kids were all watching Blue's Clues and he pulled out his drawing board and wanted to draw all of the clues. I saw a big improvement in his artwork from before we started working on handwriting. I could tell what each picture was. That was encouraging to me.

Today's impromptu science lesson was the internal workings of the toilet as we had to replace one of ours. He was fascinated and wanted to keep flushing it ;-) It's fun to watch them learn "naturally."

This week we'll just be attempting to finish the math and reading from last week and recover from being gone. If he asks for the other books we'll do them, but otherwise we'll just attempt to have a restful week. If today is any indication... we'll need it!!

Week #9 Review

We did things a little differently this week. A lot more play, and we never did something academic if he said he didn't want to. And we still got through it all! I'm noticing that he'd much rather pull out a book and go through several pages and lessons and then take a break, rather than do one page, switch to a new book, do a page, switch... so we're switching our style a little bit to accommodate that. He's having fun, and that's what's important to me.

To help strengthen his hand muscles we played a game where we spilled a bunch of toothpicks on the ground and had to pick them up with tweezers and put them in a bucket. He thought it was so much fun .

Skating was a little better this week, although still hard. He is still having a hard time adjusting to his new, round-bladed skates. But he felt a little better when his buddy Cole tried to switch to hockey skates and had to switch back. It's hard for him being the only one in the class in hockey skates because he feels like he can't do what the other kids can do, but we keep reminding him that he learned with the other skates and he'll learn with these. He's learning perseverance and his teachers are SO patient with him, so that's been a huge blessing.

Tonight when we were reading his Bible before bed we were facing each other. I was reading and he said, "No, 'The king did everything.'" I had no idea what he was talking about so I kept going. When I got to the second page I realized what he was saying. Each page starts with a phrase in all caps to start it off. The second page had THE KING DID EVERYTHING... as the lead-in to the story. We were facing each other - which means he read it upside down! The kid never ceases to amaze me...

This week's verse was "Let all things be done decently and in order" 1 Corinthians 14:40. Guess I should pay a little more attention to my house if I expect him to respect God's Word... yikes.

Week #8 Review

Well this really would be week #8/#9 review... he did two weeks' worth this week. Every book was "more, more!" The only thing we haven't finished for the second week is his handwriting (didn't want to push him there) and his reading to me. Well that and week 9's memory verse. I didn't want him to have to focus on more than one per week no matter how far he gets in everything else. So we'll keep those on a once-a-week pace.

This brought us to week 10 which includes a book we hadn't purchased yet, so I had to make a purchase. But then to get free shipping I had to add a few more books. Oh darn

Earlier this week Matthew was reading from one of his books. Sometimes it's hard to know if he actually follows the story when he's reading it because he's concentrating so hard on what he's saying. Well he was reading something about some chicks jumping into the pig pen and getting muddy. He stopped and said, "That's.... that's.... that's tewwible!" It was SO funny and unexpected and both Stephen and I started laughing. Then of course he had to do it every few sentences to see if he got the same reaction.

Today's favorite activity was identifying what were mammals and what weren't. He determined that Mommy, Daddy, Ashlyn, Jessica, Isaac, Ethan, Matthew, and Linny (from the Wonder Pets ) are mammals. He thought that was the coolest thing. Oh that he might always be so easily entertained!

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?