Fun day!

My kids have been amazing this week! We've been working hard to get the house cleaned and organized, stay on top of school work and doing all of this with Jay being gone all week (and the next two!)
I decided to let them pick something fun to do. They decided to go to Ikea. May not sound that exciting, but they have a drop off play area that has a huge ball pit and toys! Maizie is still too short to go (just about an inch too small!) Plus, we are able to have lunch for about $5!
After Ikea, we went to Michael's (for yarn and some supplies for the kids) and then to PetSmart for crickets for Alyssa's frog Alice.
It was a nice day, lots of bonding! The kids behaved so well! Tomorrow some cleaning and I have to work! FUN FUN FUN :)

Syllables and Shaving Cream!

Today I actually felt like I taught Alyssa something in reading :) She is basically teaching herself to read. She figures things out on her own! I usually think I am about to teach her something exciting and new...only to find out she has figured it out already :) Today we learned about syllables! She picked up on it right away, but it was a new concept for her!
To entertain Maizie while we did school work today I made a fun bag filled with shaving cream and red sugar. Underneath it I put a sheet of paper with an A written on it and some stickers. When she squished the shaving cream around she could see the pictures!

Awwww....

Casten asked for his own cat for Christmas...not going to happen, but he did find that he could snuggle with our Josie :) He had only been awake for about 5 minutes when these pictures were taken!

A New Favorite!

I thought I'd share that The Chronicles of Narnia was a BIG hit :) The kids loved it! They actually sat still for most of the movie. Very impressive!

Stringing along!

Today has been a fun filled day :) We practiced reading during breakfast. Alyssa worked on phonic blends and Casten continued reading short a words!
While we were cleaning up from breakfast, Maizie broke a necklace Lyssi had made, and started stringing the beads back on the string! I was so impressed!!! She wanted to take it apart again after she fixed it! So I went downstairs and brought up a bag of beads and string! The kids sat for an hour stringing together necklaces! They did great! I gave the bigger kids patterns to use, and eventually Lys started making her own!

 Casten was upset his was so short! He had messed up his pattern and had started over!

 Where did Maizie go?

She dropped her necklace!

The rest of the morning we worked on math. Later we started our science unit on the ocean! It's been a fun day! Now we are snuggling in the living room watching The Chronicles of Narnia (the kids haven't seen it before. The theme of the Santa in our mall is Narnia,  so I thought it would be fun! )

Just keep swimming, Just keep swimming.....

Things are plugging along here! We've been busy trying to clean, reorganize and manage our time better. It's been going great so far! The kids are loving their new responsibilities and really embracing their school work. It's been amazing!
Alyssa's favorite new job is the dishes :) She washes the breakfast and lunch dishes. I'm still washing the pots and pans, but she's been doing all the plates, cups and silverware! Casten in his desire to do everything Sissy does, has decided his job is to dry the dishes!

For school, Alyssa is getting much better at math, we've even moved onto subtraction! She's still not crazy about it, but she's getting encouraged that she's finally got it. I've been researching different ways of teaching her to help her figure out the problems without having to draw dots to do her problems. I found in a workbook an idea of having a number scale and having a bunny start at the first number in the problem and hopping up the number trail the number of spaces in the problem. It really helped her be able to visualize the problems better in her head. She's using the scale less and less!
Casten has actually caught up with Alyssa in math, which makes my life much easier! I'm able to teach them math together! I had been working with Casten doing a mix of preschool and kindergarten math books, only to realize last week just flipping through the books with him that he actually knew all the stuff already! LOL! So we started this week teaching him addition and by the end of the month I'm sure they will be working together! He's already doing addition problems as fast as his sister! The boy loves numbers!!!

Reading has been going really well. Alyssa is still reading above where she should be. I think it's mostly curiosity! She loves to know everything! She's been reading more and more of her Magic Tree House books on her own! She's also starting to spelling things correctly on her own! This is what she did this morning! The top one says Twirly Whirly (obviously spelled incorrectly!) and arrow heart. Yo Yo and Math are spelled correctly on her own. Dice is pretty close, she's still making her b and d backwards, and she did spell Ice Cream on her own!

 Casten is reading very well too! It's more of a challenge to teach him to read because he has an attention span of about 2 minutes! LOL! He is still reading at a phonetic level and I'm trying to get him to memorize what Alyssa's teacher last year called "heart words", words like the,and, so, etc. Yesterday we were reading on www.starfall.com and we watched a video called "How the alphabet got their order". Afterward, I gave him letter magnets and he put them in order!

I found some old workbooks that belonged to Lyssi to help Casten with his printing. I think he'll really like it, it's called letter stories. Each letter has a story explaining how to write the letter. I'm hoping he'll be interested in it enough to actually sit still and work on his printing! Alyssa is still working on her cursive! It's been going really well. Her cursive is so much neater than her printing! It is also helping her print her letters correctly!

Alyssa also started a computer Spanish program this week. I think I'll have Casten do it also. I'm excited to start this. I've been debating on what language to start them with. I wanted something more unique than Spanish, but ultimately it's the easiest to teach. There are so many resources out there for me to use. Since neither Jay or I speak a foreign language, I figured this was the best route to go for now!
This week we'll also start our Ocean science theme. I'm excited for this one. The kids love fish and water! It will work out well with all the fish tanks in our house! We'll also be going to the aquarium on Casten's birthday (11/30)
Maizie is busy being a princess :) She comes out to join us when she wants, but mostly she is enjoying the free play time by herself. She really enjoys playing on her own. She loves playing in their play space under the stairs all on her own! She'll sit down there for HOURS and we won't hear a peep from her! It's really neat to spy on her, she's got such an amazing imagination!!!! For fun here is a picture of her with her water balloon she got over the weekend!



oh....it's been SOOOOO long!

It's been a while since I've written on here. We are plugging along. Nothing too exciting to report! I've been working hard to get caught up on my hat business, and Jay has a crazy school/work schedule this quarter that has him gone all day Monday and Tuesday. Then on Friday he leaves after our co-op and doesn't come back until Saturday afternoon (at which time I usually head to work myself!) It's been very busy!
Alyssa has gotten the hang of addition! Today she was working on problems and didn't need to use any tools to answer a lot of them! I was really excited! She had previously been using dots to figure out her addition problems. Then one day my mother in law and I were at a teacher's store and saw a workbook that showed a bunny hopping up the number trail. They started the bunny at the first number of the problem and then the bunny hopped up the number of spaces of the second number. That made it easier for her to visualize the problems! I'm very proud of her progress. Already at such a young age she hates math! I'm trying to make it more exciting for her, but not sure how! I've always loved numbers and number problems, so I'm not sure how to make it more fun! Any suggestions would be welcomed!
She is also doing AMAZING at her cursive and typing. I'm really proud of that! She's trying so hard to learn the cursive writing. It's also helping her in her printing too! She's starting to write her letters all correctly.
Casten is reading :) He can read words that are spelled phonetically! It's so neat to see him learn! We are still working on number recognition with him. He can count pretty high, but he doesn't recognize numbers higher than 12 most of the time! (If I prompt him and tell him the name of a number like 35, he'll be able to figure out 31-39). Hopefully we'll move on to simple addition before the end of the year!
Maizie is just hanging out, along for the ride :) She hasn't had too much interest in sitting with us, which is fine for now. I think after Christmas, I'll start making her do a little work each day. She's such a strong willed child, I think it's better to get her sitting and listening at a young age!
We are LOVING our co-op! The kids are making so many new friends it's awesome! Casten is fitting in incredibly well! He's definitely one of the older ones in the group. Academically they are keeping him engaged, which is great! Socially he fits in so much better with the younger kids.
So that's what's going on in a nutshell! I'm hoping to have a lot more interesting posts in the near future!!

Alyssa's birthday is this Sunday! If you'd like to come by and bring your kids, we'd love to have them! Alyssa really just wants kids to come to her party, so if you are free, please don't worry about a gift, just come on by! We are having the party in the South Suburbs. We'll be at the Michael's store in New Lenox, on rt. 30 at 1:30!

First day of "School"

The big kids attended their first day of our co-op yesterday! It was so much fun! They had a blast and can't wait for next week. The co-op offers music, art, science and gym. I had Alyssa placed in the 2nd and 3rd grade group. Everything we do she's always the oldest. Since her birthday is so close to so many cut-offs, she was one of the oldest in her kindergarten class last year, she's the oldest amongst most of our family and friends (or MUCH younger) and most places (including church and this co-op) put kindergarten and 1st grade together. So I thought it would be good for her to be with kids that were closer to her age, and social abilities. She fit in so well I was excited! Casten has a friend that was in his class, so I actually was able to drop him off without tears! It was very exciting.

We also got a new addition to the family yesterday :)

I saw a listing on Craigslist for an American girl doll for $10. It's arm is broken, but they have a doll hospital and it's only $25 to get it fixed. So She got an american girl doll for $35! I thought this is a good trial doll. She really wants Elizabeth they are retiring her at the end of the year and she is Felicity's best friend, and I have Felicity from when I was younger!

But our new addition's name is Isabella Elizabeth Queen. Alyssa is just in love!

We didn't tell her what she was getting. Just that she was getting a surprise and that it was broken but we could fix it! We were almost there at this point, she was so excited!

She was so excited when she saw what it was! This is her walking back to the car!

And riding in the car. She was just SO happy!

She couldn't stop talking about her! She woke up this morning bringing out Isabella and Felicity, they wanted to watch TV :) I'm so glad she's so happy! It was a very special gift for no reason but that we love her!

Our little movie star!

Alyssa has been begging me to cut her hair short for months. Today I finally gave in and took her! She looks SO freaking cute!

Before (I didn't take the time to fix her hair before we left...I figured it was pointless!)

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