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!