loving...

::The cold crisp weather snuggled under the quilt that is soon going to be for my mom

::Playing elf as I knit and sew, nurse and knit, knit and sew some more

::Dianna Krall Holiday station on pandora radio

::Amish friendship bread

::Another baby's first Christmas

::Listening to Emile sing "Deck the halls with boughs of holly, Fa ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya"

::The deep philosophical conversations with Avery about the true meaning of Christmas. Very enlightening!

Happy Solstice!

We are thoroughly immersed in the holiday season! From busy preparations, extreme sugar highs accompanied by the sugar crashes, and the sore hands from last minute Christmas crafting. We are so excited to welcome winter and celebrate this season with all of the ones we love and are so grateful for!

Avery has been very inquisitive about the existence of Santa Clause. He is not afraid to pursue deeper investigative work in order to discover the truth. Me, being such a bad liar, am trying my hardest to not lie but keep the magic alive without telling him the ultimate truth. Very tricky, business. I want him to feel the spirit of giving that I think the story of St. Nick gives. Of course there are so many other stories and people to offer that example. I want my kids to have that nostalgic feeling of waiting for Santa, seeing the half eaten chocolate chip cookies, and the note that he leaves every year since Avery was old enough to believe.He figured out that I was the tooth fairy, I'll give him that-it's a pretty crazy story. But Santa is real, he just is!! I have some pretty grand plans this Christmas eve in order to keep the magic going. My plan includes jingle bells, maybe some reindeer on the roof top and tracks in the yard!?!?! Hopefully Santa will get my memo and come through.

Holiday Craft

We have been working on this Advent calendar since the first of December and it's finally finished, now that we're halfway through the month. I am so excited about it! The idea came from Family Fun magazine Nov. edition.

We rummaged through old magazine looking for doors, windows and other Christmas feeling objects that could serve as a "door", cut them out and pasted them to red card stock. Then I took a craft knife and cut three sides to our pictures. We pasted the red card stock with all of our pictures on them to green card stock of the same size and viola! Mini windows where I wrote down a Christmas activity for us to do as a family every day of the month. Our activities include caroling together as a family, donating warm clothes to homeless shelter, baking Christmas cookies, family game night, craft night and more!! It came out so good and am looking forward to bringing it out next year and reminiscing on all of the memories we are creating.

Happy Holidays!!

Tis the season

Feeling the love this holiday season. New babies, lots of opportunities to snuggle and stay warm inside. Reading books together, knitting gifts and baking yummy holiday goodies are our main focus these days. I've also lightened my load a bit while I adjust to having three children, I've decided to send Avery two days a week to a friend who home schools other children along with her four kids. Avery loves it and it gives me time to do age appropriate activities with my almost three year old (although he will tell you for sure that he is going on 26). Life is good at the moment, I have these super love hormones to thank for that! New babies are good medicine, actually quite addictive! I'm so crazy in love I want to have 10 of them, luckily I have a sensible husband so that won't be happening.

I will be back posting here and there, taking it slow and easy until we get adjusted to this new life. Stay tuned...

Warmest holiday wishes to you and yours!!

Halloween at Hogwarts

Days of the week

In our grammar text we are suppose to be reviewing the days of the week. Avery usually knows what day it is, but I thought it would be fun to make a game out of it. First I had him name the days of the week in order so that I could write them down on construction paper, then we discussed what activities we do on each day, I wrote that down and cut it out in to strips. I shuffled it all up and had him tape the activity next to the day that we do usually do it. He was relieved to do this activity instead of copying the days of the week and writing for himself what he does when. He's not too fond of writing at this point, I'm hoping that changes as the year wears on.

In the afternoon we went to their grandmothers house and had a little Halloween party where both of the boys decorated their own gingerbread haunted houses! Emile's unfortunately didn't make it home in one piece, but he certainly found it tasty.

Hope you all have a wonderful Halloween weekend!

Fall poem

Fall by Avery

Fall has come to make places chilly.
We make fires and get really silly.
Pumpkins, trees and leaves,
clouds that are funny if you please.

Busy Busy

Today was an absolutely great day! We were very busy, very inquisitive and very happy! No one lost their temper today which is not normal for us at all.

First part of the day was spent doing our school work. In math we are practicing number bonds, grammar we are still acting out our action poems, history we are learning about the Israelites and for a writing exercise Avery wrote poem about Fall, which we will probably share tomorrow along with his finished illustration to go along with it.

After we got that all out of the way we went down town to the Library, ate sushi for lunch in the park and took a very long walk around the pond checking out all of the ducks. It was Emile's first time to the park to see the ducks! I couldn't believe I have not taken my child to see the ducks in his two years of life, I felt like a terrible mother. He absolutely loved every moment of it. He kept asking me to show him the Mr. and Mrs. Mallard- from the book Make Way for Ducklings which we read this morning. So, such a full day and it is not over yet. Art this afternoon then soccer practice this evening. We are all going to sleep so good tonight, (right after the french toast I'm making for dinner...yum!)

A beautiful day

What a beautiful fall day ! We woke up and made yummy pumpkin spice muffins and went outside for school and play. Emile busied himself with this homemade oatmeal "sand" box where he does loads of pouring and filling, also he had a Tupperware full of assorted dry beans that he pretended to cook and then after he was done planted them in the garden. Daddy will have a little surprise come spring when Lima's, black, red and navy beans start sprouting up all over the place.

Avery worked in his math book, finishing up the review tests. Now we are ready for the second half of the first grade workbook.

In grammar we did more labeling of sentences (nouns and verbs). For a little fun I had him make up some sentences talking about an animal and what the animal was doing- then acting the sentence out in the yard. They both had loads of fun doing that!

Here's a few of their thoughts:

"The lion ran across the field."

"The ant bit the man."

"The bat swung from the tree."

"The elephant danced on one foot."

The last one was especially funny to watch them act out!

This afternoon (so that I can have a rest) we are going to watch a DVD on deep sea life. Avery has always been fascinated with ocean life and all of the amazing creatures that exist in that ecosystem. So in asking him what he would enjoy learning about this week (just for fun) he requested creatures of the deep sea. We also went to the library and checked out books to go along with his peaked interest.

So a nap is calling at the moment. Enjoy this beautiful fall weather if you can!

We are loving our new schedule lately. Wake up, eat, read, eat, read some more, eat some more. Avery is especially grateful to my extremely slow state of being these days. Audio books have become my greatest ally. We've been listening to storyteller Jim Weiss who is absolutely wonderful!! Greek myths, Shakespeare for children, American tall tales, and a favorite around here- Rip Van Winkle, complete with Rip's rap!

We have still been doing our "school" work, it's just in disguise.

We are finished the first book in the first grade math curriculum, after his review we'll take the test to see if he retained all of the concepts, if so he can move on to the second workbook that will last the rest of this year. Still not too sure if I like this math curriculum. It's either too easy or worded too weird so that even I don't understand what they want him to do. If anyone who reads this has any great math curriculum ideas please feel free to share!

Also taking a break from the human body unit this week to do science experiments. Avery's request of course. Right now we are oxidizing pennies, soaking paper towels in vinegar and recording the reaction. Interesting how the side that is not touching the vinegar turns green but the underside that is sitting in the vinegar remains the same color. The book doesn't tell me why this happens so I have to do my homework now.

My camera is still out of commission, but hopefully will be back in working order to add some pictures to these boring blog post.

Moving slowly

I'm nearing the end of this pregnancy and I'm feeling rather heavy lately. I must confess, waking up late, pizza for dinner, and PBS kids are all becoming more common these days. I try and make up for it with reading hours of Harry Potter to Avery (book 4, wahoo!) and a few play dates here and there, but as I suspected my ambitiousness is wearing off.

We are still doing a minimum of math and grammar/spelling daily, history and science a couple times a week. That's about all the structure we can handle right now. And it's really plenty.

My plan for the coming weeks and even the weeks after baby arrives is just simply to read tons of non-fiction library books (from the comfort of my own bed mind you). The boys can entertain themselves for literally hours of quiet time with a book, and that's without me even reading it to them. So We are checking out loads of books on a variety of subjects and are just going to hunker down and read...a lot!

But tomorrow I am forcing myself to get dressed, get moving and Avery and I are going to the Natural History Museum! http://www.lnhmpmuseum.org/ I am looking forward to some one on one time with him without his little parrot right next to his side.

Emile will have his turn with me next weekend-Mommy and me art class at the little paintbrush! He is sooooo excited about that.

http://www.thelittlepaintbrush.com/index.html

The circulatory system

We have moved to the circulatory system in our science lesson. Today we made a model of BLOOD! So appropriate with the upcoming season (er...I'm talking about Halloween, our favorite time of year!)

We used Karo syrup for the plasma, lentils for the platelets, red jelly beans for the red blood cells and large lima beans for the white blood cells. We mixed it all together in a large mason jar and viola-what blood would look like under a microscope! After the project Avery was able to identify the four major parts of our blood and tell me the jobs that each part performs. It was a really fun lab to do and the clear visual seemed to really help him remember the important information.Unfortunately I have a broken camera so no pictures of our model today.

Check list

I've been struggling lately to get Avery excited about finishing his book work. As much as it is a drag for him to hear me repeat myself 20 times, there are so many other things I'd rather be doing!! So a friend suggested that I make a list for him to check off then after that is completed he gets his reward which is 30 minutes of computer time (during the week it must be educational) . So today I tried just that. The list included...

1. Grammar
2. Science
3. Spelling
4. Math

*30 Minutes Math Blaster*

It took much less time in doing this because there was a definite end in sight for him. He could see the light at the end of the tunnel as opposed to a never ending list of subjects coming out of my mouth.

I wrote out the list so that he could read it clearly, next to the subjects I drew a box were he could put a sticker to show that it was completed. It became a fun game to finish his work quickly!

This afternoon: reading and piano lessons (and nap...oh please let there be a nap!)

Story time

Here is a funny story Avery made today after I asked him to create an adventure story that includes him and other people. We needed to use our new pronouns : we, us, our and ours. He
had a blast brainstorming about crazy plots and funny twists to his already wacky story. He
ended up with a very long list of potential stories that include such titles as "The forest on a full moon", "A boat ride on a sunny day", and "The slimy sea monster". You can tell we read a lot of Magic Tree House books by the sound of these titles. Here is Avery's story...

The Haunted Mall

Once upon a time my friends and I went to the mall. We were looking for a magnet. The magnet was to trick our moms. We were going to do an experiment pulling metal out of cereal. So when we drop the magnet into the cereal it attracts all of the iron.
We started to get lost in the mall. We were in the army section. We looked around for a second then we got out because we all had a bad feeling we were being watched.
We ran and ran and ran until we got to the doors that were open and it led us into a toy store.
We stared down at the ground and there were two toys walking toward us. They were dolls. My friend Olive thought they looked familiar. Then we looked up, we saw twenty-three dolls lined up to jump down. They were about to jump when I had the idea to spray them with antioxidants. They were all electrocuted and walked away for good.
We realized we were in the magnet section again. We found our magnet and zipped out of that creepy mall.

The End.

Lots of letter writing yesterday! We are learning about pronouns this week and decided to get creative with it, so we wrote letters to our friends and afterwards I made copies and put them in our language binder where Avery highlighted all of the pronouns in the letters. I also wrote sentences and had him highlight the ones with pronouns used incorrectly.

While Avery did that Emile insisted on writing his friends letters as well. He now wants to do whatever Avery is doing in "school". If Avery is doing math Emile wants to do math. He brings me Avery's old math workbook from last year that I gave to him to play with and says "momma talk to me about this!" I foresee it being much easier to school him when the time comes. I won't have to bribe and beg him to do his work, he'll just follow Avery (hopefully).

We also started in our human body unit learning about how muscles work. Completing a paper model of a working arm, yarn representing the muscles. When the yarn is pulled the arm moves. The point of the lab was to demonstrate how muscles work in pairs. Fun stuff! We also are loving the human body coloring book that we have listed in the learning tools icon on the sidebar. It goes along perfectly with our curriculum!

Later: Finish reading Harry Potter (almost through with book two!) then art class and soccer practice! Big first game this weekend!!!

A good day

I'm not too sure if I should post everyday, as most days are pretty routine and uneventful. Like yesterday for example we did our book work (spelling and math) then spent the whole day reading the rest of Harry Potter! We stayed in our jammies, locked ourselves in the boys new bedroom and ignored the rest of the world so that we could spend the day in Harry's world! It was so exciting!! We cannot wait to get started on the second book in the series. It is so wonderful to see Avery really get into a novel like this, where you are so attached to the characters and find it hard to tear yourself away from the book. Such a good feeling, so glad to share this with him!

Today we focused on our grammar lesson where we are learning about adjectives. We played a fun game kind of like I spy where one person thinks of a noun to describe and the other person has to try and figure out what the noun is according to the clues (adjectives) given. He loved that and it really helped reinforce what adjectives are.

After we got all of the writing out of the way, did some math puzzles in his workbook then onto history! This week it's all about ancient Africa, specifically west Africa. To go along with the history text and map work we drew pictures of life in this region at that time, read tons of African folk tales and today we even made handmade African beaded necklaces made from recycled magazines. Tonight I think we will cook an African inspired meal from a story we read today about Anansi the spider- Plantains, cassava (I think we will just use potatoes) and rice.

until next time...

Human body unit

After our math and spelling lessons today we made a Human Body book to keep all of our projects and worksheets related to this Science unit. We started talking about the skeletal system and completed a skeleton puzzle that we glued to construction paper and put into our new book, naming some of the major bones in the body as well. Emile of course wanted in on the action, so I gave him a glue stick and some real glue (yikes), cut up some bits of scrap paper and let him go. It was a lovely mess!

Sick Day

Friday which is normally designated for field trips and fun excursions was spent in bed where the three of us read Harry Potter, drew wild pictures from the story and did other fun quiet things while Avery fought off a draining fever. We brought all of our pillows and stuffed animals into my king size bed and hunkered down. And today Avery is feeling much better with the fever gone completely!!

We did manage to complete a fun science experiment that made perfect timing. It was a comparison of animal and plant cells using jello! We put half of the jello into a round bowl (animal cell) and the other half into a square bowl (plant cell), put green grapes in the square bowl to represent the chloroplast and whole strawberies in each for the nucleus. Avery documented his observations, diagramming the parts of a cell in his science binder and happily eating his discoveries.

Have a great labor day weekend!

Morning work

We took our school work outside again this morning, and like magic I didn't hear one word from the little guy for nearly half and hour. He was amazed at the smallest things. It really has been a long time since we spent alot of quality time outside besides being at the pool. It has just been too hot and the mosquito's too ravenous.

I caught Emile in a mischievous moment writing on my satsuma tree. I watched before interfering, and was surprised how gentle he was being. No satsumas were injured in this event thank goodness!

Being outside for school also has it's draw backs. Distractions are every where, especially the love bugs that are just calling out to Avery! We did manage to get our spelling and math done, leaving plenty of time for his nature journal and of course chasing the love bugs (definite sign that fall is just around the corner!)

History this afternoon, art class and possibly a nap for me!!

Change

There is always that time of day, right before dinner, where the kids are at their worst and think there is nothing better to do than to irritate one another to tears. I am pulling my hair out repeating "I'm done, I'm done!" I Watch the clock, waiting for Adam to walk through the door and relieve me of my parenting duties for a moment or two so that I can cook dinner. And everything after that moment is a whirlwind! A feeding frenzy, full of demands, messy hands to clean, and chattery voices to continue to listen to. Bath time is a saving grace, but then back to chaos- drying runaway naked boys, finding jammies, playing musical beds and reading our bed time books. Kids are finaly asleep by 9:30 and Adam and I look at each other like an army just raided our house! I am not complaining, it would be very boring without this stuff. There is lots of laughter, tickles and good times. It's still a frenzy, and all adults crave some silence, right?

So the reason for my rambling is just to point out that the change in the seasons touches all, especially little people. The weather shifted a bit last night and this afternoon, when the usual chaos would reign, we went outside and heard only the sound of the birds and once in a while the ohh and ahhh of a child discovering something wondrous in the natural world. The cooler air soothed and calmed us all. I'm so grateful for days like today! We all need a shift sometimes. Seasons change and internally we do too! Welcome September!

For the love of writing

One of my goals when I took on homeschooling was to make Avery a proficient writer and hopefully instill a love of this form of expression, avoiding pressure to "do it right". I think I found the perfect writing curriculum to help me with my goal. Here are just a few of the Writing Principles they list at the beginning of the book by Dave Marks- I just about fell in love!

• "Every person needs to learn to express ideas and feelings in writing."
  
• "There is no right way to write anything!"
  
• "The ability to write is not an expression of a body of knowledge that can be learned like a list of vocabulary words."
  
• "Writing teachers and their students both learn in any effective writing situation."

How liberating is that!? I am so excited to start writing with Avery. He is such a bright boy with so many wild ideas floating around in his head, and writing is such a huge endeavor. To be able to put your thoughts on paper has got to be one of the hardest things to learn, and teaching it even harder. With this book I feel a little more at ease guiding him through the process.

Happy Writing!!

Science observations

Today we accomplished so much and willingly I might add!

This is our tentative schedule we aim for each day- let's see how it evolves throughout the year (especially after the baby is born).

1. Spelling


2. Grammar or Creative Writing-alternating each day


3. Phonics lesson


4. History or Science-again alternating each day


5. Math


6. Reading- 30 minutes I read aloud, 30 minutes he reads independently


7. Piano practice

(See sidebar for books used in our curriculum)

Today Avery was most excited about the science lab. He had to make an observation plot, where he was to look and study a square yard that he measured and roped off and documented his findings. The purpose was to identify living and non living things and describe on our lab sheet how we came to know if they are living or not- answering questions like does it have respiration, does it excrete waste, does it move independently, does it grow and reproduce. He gets all of that, he thinks it is kind of silly to ask such questions, but the process of acquiring the info is exciting! So all day he planned, he plotted, and at the end of the day we took our dinner outside and sat by our plot and inspected inch by inch, discovering all kinds of life! It didn't stop there...oh no! He had Adam go and fetch some large garden stakes and staked out an official more permanent plot for future use. I love his enthusiasm and sense of wonder!

Toddler time!

Keeping little hands busy while trying to cater to the needs of my first grader is challenging to say the least. There is not an end to the kinds of activities I could potentially provide, just a limit to how many arms I have. It seems like he is always needing something that he doesn't have right in front of him, mostly because he purposefully drops it on the floor. I think he gets a kick out of watching his big pregnant mama bend over and reach under our table every five seconds, which sounds simple but if you've ever been pregnant you know how far the floor really is!

So far the favorite activities for Emile (2 1/2 yrs old) are taking magnetic letters and matching them to the letters on a place mat we got from http://www.crocodilecreek.com/home.html. This activity helps with letter recognition, something I am so not pushy with, but he has genuine interest already.

Another favorite that holds his attention is matching pom poms with plastic cups that have colored dots. For now he just matches the colors, the next step will be to match the number of pom poms with the cup with that same number of sticky dots. Good times!

Avery is trucking along. Today as we were transitioning to math he actually said "Yea! Fun math time!" ...and was serious. I nearly fell over!

First day

Our first day was pretty good. Of course it is always hard starting a new routine, but they did great!

We started after breakfast with our language lessons which consist of Spelling , grammer, creative writing and phonics- spending about 10 minutes on each subject. After that we moved to History where he is studying Ancient China, truly a favorite around here.

We saved math for last, mostly reviewing what we covered last year. Basic addition and subtration, counting by 10's and writing numbers to 20.

So while I spent this time with Avery (which took only about 2 1/2 hours) Emile played with play dough and colored with his new Dr. Seuss markers. He did pretty good giving Avery his space (I was a bit nervous), but his volume seems to increase when he doesn't have all of the attention. We shall see how this evolves. I kept it simple to begin with. No hands on activities today or messy projects yet. I just want to get our routine down then we can have a bit more fun.

A little introduction

Hello to Anyone who happens to read this first entry! I'm very excited to start off this year of homeschooling for some reason. Maybe it's the nesting instinct kicking in, or maybe it is the thrill of an eager first grader ready to dive in!



My goal for having this blog is to keep an honest and oh so informal record of our homeschooling journey. I hope to document my curriculum, books we read, organization ideas, and tricks on keeping your sanity while your toddler eats the science experiments. And please...anyone with ideas and there own tricks and treats on homeschooling I welcome you to leave comments and feedback and tell me just how you do it!

First day of "School" - August 24, 2009

May the Adventures Begin!!