can I duplicate this day??

I could tell Ellie was frustrated with the way school went (or rather didn't go) yesterday.  We did a little bit of learning here and there but there was nothing formal and, as I am learning, my daughter needs formality, rigidity and structure (at least when it comes to learning).  As I tucked her in she asked why we didn't "do" school ... I reminded her of all the things which we did do, but could tell that she was not satisfied with my answers.

This morning I was pondering my conversation with Elle and my desire to do something different.  I feel like I need to invest in a curriculum, and I really hope to do that one day, but until we have the finances to do that I have to work with what I've been given.  There is a lot of free materials on the internet and a lot of good ideas ... just all of those take time, forethought, planning, all things I struggle with!!  I prayed about it and asked the Lord to guide me today.  I then wrote out my plan for the day and went to make breakfast. 

After breakfast and morning chores I pulled out Ellie's penmanship.  We spent about 20 minutes reviewing numbers and all the letters.  She did very well and I realized that sometimes I expect too much from her ... she's only 4 1/2 after all!!  I praised her a lot and we ended with her feeling good and uplifted instead of frustrated by not being able to "do it".

Penmanship was followed by math!  Josiah had fun with the number wheel (matching dots with a "number clothespin") while Ellie did her math worksheet.

penmanship pays off!  She wrote all the numerals on her own!

I worked a little bit longer of Josiah's recognition of numbers skills.  He is doing much better than he was even a week ago (that's when I found out my son didn't know all his numbers)!  Elizabeth put "dot cards" in order and then matched them up with the right numerals.

What a FUN school day!  The trade-off?  A messy house, but hey, what'cha gonna do?  My children had a good morning with mom and the dishes will get done ... as soon as I sign off on here!

A craft a day (well, kind of)

Thanksgiving week.  Thought that we would do a craft a day and make that be our school week.  Here is what it ended up REALLY looking like!

Monday we finished the cork boats that we started 2 weeks ago.  They turned out cute and a lot of fun to play with in the creek at the park near our house.  Unfortunately though there was not very much water so they kept running aground!!

 Here is our fleet - ready for action!

Found out almost immediately that I needed to make the string twice as long

Tuesday Ellie and I modge-podged her oatmeal box so it can stylishly hold all of her headbands!  She had some favorite pictures from advertisements that she had been saving that she got to glue on to the box.  My favorite was the little Santa Claus that she said was a "running snowman".  So cute!

one side

other side

finished product!

Wednesday we took a trip to the Library to sail our boat again ... the kids made some friends and shared their boats with them.  It was a lot of fun!  We also  began the "changing faces toilet roll dolls", unfortunately we did not finish them up until Sunday.  I was sick Thurs and still feeling a little under the weather on Friday.  By Saturday I felt better but not good enough to draw the toilet roll dolls ... okay, that is a bit of an excuse for my lack of artistic ability!  On Sunday Chris was around and able to help draw on the rolls ... I am just not artistically inclined ... at least not with a paper and pen!!

Royalty: King, knight, princess and queen!

Finding some encouragement

I just read a very encouraging and challenging article about my role as a mom, specifically as a mom who homeschools and is trying to keep everything else going!!  Click HERE if you need a little pep-talk too!

I've been going to a Parenting class weekly led by Chelsea Cameron.  I just got back from my class a few hours ago.  One of the things that she said today, which I believe completely relates to the article mentioned above is, "Your life is a walk.  One step at a time.  Small steps take you in a new direction."

This week I am making three small steps:

1.  clean up after each meal
2.  no naps allowed (for myself)
3.  hike up tarantula hill after reading the Bible every morning

I think that these are TOTALLY attainable so here I go!

13 Words

We read the book "13 Words" by Lemony Snicket this week.  In it the author adds a new vocabulary word every page or so ... despondent, haberdashery, baby, scarlet, etc.  On Wednesday night I went out for a bit after dinner and came home in time to help tuck the kids into bed.  Elizabeth told me that dad had given her a time out that evening and while she was in her room she felt despondent ... AWESOME!!!  I was so excited that she used the word properly!!  Today she pulled out a very red crayon from her desk and excitedly exclaimed, "I found the color scarlet!"  What an amazing little sponge!

It is so incredibly exciting to see my children grow and learn.  Tomorrow (hopefully) comes a new blog post about what they did and learned this past week - stay tuned!

first week of school accomplished

It's Sunday night and I'll be starting a new week tomorrow for school but wanted to give an update on how the rest of our week went last week.  On Wednesday we played with water!  Elizabeth and Josiah transferred water from a tub into measuring cups with various items ... medicine droppers, scoopers, small measuring cups and teaspoons.  They watched things float (plastic egg) and sink (marbles). We also put bubbles with food coloring into the water and swirled it all around.  I got my ideas using the Montessori at Home ebook by John Bowman.

 Having fun scooping the water

 scooping up marbles with a teaspoon ... great for hand-eye coordination

BUBBLES!

Here is Josiah picking out his "fishes" (marbles)

On Thursday we did a bit of math ... I had Elizabeth get more familiar with shapes by using the Melissa and Doug Shape Sorting Box!  She is learning parallelogram, octagon, hexagon and pentagon.  Then we went to the library and read lots of books together and with friends.

On Friday we cleaned the house in the morning and then Elizabeth and I went to meet up with a co-op group that a fellow homeschooling friend of mind started.  We will be meeting every Friday afternoon for 2 hours for us to spend some time in fellowship and for the kids to spend some time playing!  We are using the curriculum, 5 in a row for 4 - 8 year olds.  The children enjoyed their first lesson!

This Saturday Elizabeth asked to do a project so I grabbed the rice and bean box that I had made for them along with a the tweezers and they had fun picking the small items up, looking at them with their magnifying glasses.  Then they got out  their own toys and buried them in the rice!

1st day of P-K

Today was our first day of pre-school!  Since we had started last year with My Father's World Kindergarten curriculum I decided to continue with it.  Today we reviewed the first 5 letters that we had gotten through last year.

S for Sun:  made sun tea
M for Moon:  "Does the moon have it's own light?"  "No." Replied Elizabeth, "it reflects the sun".  Good job Elle!
L for Leaf:  made leaf prints
A for Apple:  made apple sauce
N for Nest:  just talked about nests, nothing special :)

After we finished up we went had lunch and went outside to play on the plastic water slide.

I've decided to move away from the normal printing of the alphabet and will be using the Cursive First Curriculum beginning in the next week or so.  I'm a little nervous to make such a big change but I've been doing some reading on teaching children to write in cursive first and I feel really good about my decision.

Tomorrow I'm planning on doing some hands on Montessori activities from the book, Montessori At Home by John Bowman.

Crafty August

It all started with the Clothesline Busy Bag and thus was born our quest for being crafty at least once a day. The kids sat with me as I cut out each clothing piece, then we went outside and set it up. They had such a blast! Elizabeth hanging each piece of clothing in order of color first and in order of outfits on top of that. Josiah barely getting his hung and definitely not caring about the order in which they were hung! The next day, while I hung out my clothes, I had them do it again. This time I gave them a bucket of soapy water to 'wash' them in and a bucket of fresh water to 'rinse'. It was a success! As a reward for when it was all over I let them play with their squirt guns in the leftover water.

The next day was Wednesday and Elizabeth was begging for a craft so I grabbed my instructions for the Cupcake Busy Bag and went to work! The kids sat around the table while I cut out the various pieces. As they were cut out I handed them to the kids and they got to work immediately putting their creativity to work. In the middle of all this fun I remembered how Elizabeth wanted to make a card for her Uncle Paul's birthday. I grabbed a couple pieces of cardstock, folded them in half and let them each decorate a card for them. They loved doing it and I really wished I had taken some pictures of their finished work!

On Friday I stopped at Kohls with a $10 off coupon. I ended up getting Melissa & Doug's Lacing Beads. Elizabeth and Josiah enjoyed playing with them that evening!

Today we created our own houses out of paper bags. They were both very creative and although they needed a little help with the gluing and cutting process the end result is the process of each of their own creativity!

Elizabeth's house
Josiah's house ... set up nicely with all his cars

Check back in at the end of the month with an update on how getting ready for school is actually going! Maybe I'll even post some pictures of the kids "school area" as well as the cabinets which are going to hold all of my organized craft stuff!

looking ahead and Bible Story reading

I am really looking forward to September when I'll be starting pre-school with Little Miss and Little Mr. I haven't yet decided exactly how it will look. I do know that I'm interested in pursuing some of the ideas found on this WEBSITE, visiting the Botanical Gardens on a weekly basis, taking the kids on a field trip once or twice a month and reading, reading and reading some more!

As a family we having been reading the book, The Child's Story Bible by Catherine Vos in the evenings before bed. It has been fun to watch the lights go on in my children's mind as the stories of the Bible come to life for them. Chris and I have been enjoying reading it too ... it's one of the most well done story Bible's I have come across. I love that the stories are not watered down in any way ... just re-told so that young minds can comprehend them!

A Visit to Gull Wings Children's Museum

The kids had a lot of fun exploring and imagining at Gull Wings Children's Museum this past Wednesday in Oxnard. They are playing w/ Ellie's friend, Grace. They also got to touch a sea star and other sea animals, dig for dinosaur bones, play doctor and paramedic and ride in a space shuttle (I think that was their favorite). We went w/ a group from their school and we look forward to checking it out again!