Rough morning

We attempted to do outside school again today...didn't go so well. Casten is definitely a bit off today. Not sure he's feeling 100%. He spent almost an hour working on his journal entry. He did a great job and was incredibly focused. The question today was What is your favorite place? Alyssa answered Aunt Gail's (Aunt Gail you are the person on the left with the G over your head!)

Here is Casten's slide (his favorite place is the park)

Maizie learned the number the number 1 and the letter A. She likes singing the letter song (to the tune of The Farmer in the Dell, An A says ah, an A says ah, Every letter makes a sound, an A say ah!) She is in desperate need of either a trim of her bangs or to sit still long enough to let me fix her hair....she's not very cooperative with either one, so she has her hair in her face ALL the time!

Even Klesko came outside to join us this morning! He surprisingly behaved very well!

After it took 20 minutes for Casten to color 6 little ducks (again not from lack of attention but too much attention) and fighting with Alyssa to sit still, I let them have some play time. Then Jay made them come inside and gave them a talk on how they needed to focus and pay attention during school time. We continued our work at the kitchen table, with much better results! Alyssa asked to do handwriting, so we learned how to make cursive Bs. She did an AMAZING job!

Casten was still taking a long time to do his work, so Jay actually skipped him ahead to more challenging work. I worry when I skip over things that maybe he isn't learning things thoroughly. However, he seems to get very bored if we spend too much time reviewing things that he knows. 

 

After handwriting Alyssa worked on her reading. She was excited to read her first poem today! After she was done with her reader, she went on to find her Magic Treehouse book and was reading it on the couch! It was SO awesome! She was sitting there reading her book to herself. Jay asked her today if she was going to be our bookworm :)

Maizie is on her way down for a nap now, the two big kids are relaxing watching some TV, and Jay and I are about to eat our lunch. Hopefully our afternoon goes a bit better! I need to do reading with Casten, we have science and Bible time this afternoon also. We'll be working on our paintings and heading over to the park right by the house to observe the wetlands

Art of Creation

This afternoon we did some reading outside on a big blanket in the shade. It was wonderful. We were reading a Magic Treehouse book. It's Alyssa's favorite book series! She read an entire chapter on her own! I was VERY impressed!
After Maizie woke up from her nap we did our Bible time. We continued with Creation and started our paintings! Today we made the sky, ocean and land. Here are some pictures of the process! I can't wait until the end of the week when they all come together!

Maizie's finished picture

Lyssi's finished project

What a BEAUTIFUL day!

We woke up this morning to such beautiful weather I asked the kids if they wanted to do school outside. Of course they said yes :)

We started with our journals, I wrote our normal chalkboard message on the side walk and the kids Wrote in their journals about their favorite outdoor activity. All three of them came up with some sort of combination of the park and riding their bikes!

We went on to math. Did a little bit of cheddar bunny addition, then did math problems on the driveway! We also played some hopscotch to practice recognizing numbers! Plus it was fun!

Later Lyssi and I snuggled under a tree and read a story from her reader. Afterwards we went and practiced writing and Casten worked on alphabet order.

All in all we've had a really fun morning! They behaved so much better and were much more focused outside. I think we'll be doing more lessons this way!!! Now they are outside having a blast riding bikes with Daddy!

Wonderful weekend!

Heading back into the classroom tomorrow :) The kids and I are excited to get back into our routine.
We got the house VERY clean this weekend for my neice's Coraline's baptism. We are excited to have everything organized and cleaned up. Hoping it will help with our routine!
Had a blast today visiting with family. We LOVED getting to see Aunt Sissy! We get to see her so rarely, it was a wonderful treat! Not to mention she looked AMAZING!
We are also begining to meet a bit with our new homeschool group this week! The kids are looking forward to making some new friends!

More amazing work from Memory Lane Designs!

Too Cool for School!

Alligators, Peacocks and Bears....OH MY!

We eventually did make it to the zoo yesterday! It was fun, but a VERY short visit. Traffic was terrible, so it took us over an hour to get there! (usually a half hour or less!) We did get to walk around the swamp for a bit, and got to see animals that live in the wetlands.

 We also got to see the new bear exhibit. It was REALLY neat. We went to see it the weekend it opened and you couldn't even walk around. Alyssa and Casten did a great job navigating us through the zoo. Alyssa really did an amazing job. She didn't get turned around at all while looking at the map. She got really excited to find things we were walking past on the map! I would say the geography lesson was a success :)

A VERY neat thing we saw though was a mommy peacock walking around with her babies! We thought that was really neat!

Work, zoo, cookies

Going to the zoo FINALLY today! Maizie fell down yesterday as we were getting ready to go. She couldn't (or wouldn't!) walk on her right foot. We looked at it and she let us move it around and touch it so we didn't feel like it needed attention from the doctor. However, all of the exhibits we were going to look at for our lessons were indoors and you can't take strollers inside. So we postponed until today!
We spent a lot of time yesterday checking out our new computer games that came with our book set. I had a flashback playing Oregon Trail :) PLEASE tell me I'm not the only one that remembers that game! But we did get one game that has an entire curriculum for kindergarten to 3rd grade! It was very exciting! I was really in need of some older games for Lyssi. The ones we have are too easy for her. I was really excited to see the unit they had on the game for animal habitats! It was just PERFECT!!!!

On a different subject I want to let everyone know how incredibly SWEET my husband is :) First off he was sitting downstairs helping Lyssi with her computer games yesterday. It was so cute! Plus the kids LOVE when Jay sits with them! Also I had a taste for chocolate chip cookies last night, and he made me some from scratch :) Such a sweet guy! Thank you sweetie! I love you!