Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary

Yesterday we went to the Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary in Modjeska Canyon. I did not know this place existed but it was a really neat place. The kids learned all about Southern California native animals and plants. This was a field trip with CHEP for grades K-1. The boys had lots of friends show up, actually it was a very boy heavy field trip.


They got to hold snakes! Adam held the snake, Kevin held the snake's tail.





We learned about wells.


We were able to pet a tortoise and learn all about him. He was 75 years old!





We learned about mugwort which is a natural remedy for poison oak. We learned great things about poison oak like, "leaves of 3, let it be" and "if the leaves are shiny, hide your hiney" and also "if it's hairy it's a berry" (if it has 3 leaves) very informative, especially since I knew very little about the plant.



Our tour guide was amazing. He knew so much about everything. The kids were even interested in what he was saying.


This is a super cute picture of little guy building a fort today with our food storage. I just had to add it for fun.


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Spanish Class

Today was the second day of Spanish class. The boys love it and learned: me duele mi "cabeza", llame la doctora!! They learned several other words as well to exchange for head/cabeza so cute they are having so much fun! Kevin ran into a kid he went to preschool with today and they sat next to each other. The other side of the boys was taken by their buddies Ethan and Caleb. I love the classes it is fun to get time to talk with other moms and the boys get to hang out with their buddies!





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Turn in Day!!

Today was the 1 month mark for school!!! Yay only 8 more to go! I say that like we are not having a blast. Truly there is nothing more fun than the lazy days of summer, except maybe the crazy days of Christmas!! Now that I am done with that tangent, let's get to business. Today we turned in our work to our teacher. I had the meeting with our teacher while the boys went to their computer lab. Isaac colored in the office and Owen entertained himself on a blanket on the floor with his tag blankie. The boys are awesome! They are doing an amazing job in their school work and our teacher was delighted with our first months work. Of course, I was worried I was doing something wrong because really this has been too much fun. So for now, I am still in homeschooling bliss. This also may be due in part to the 2 year old settling into the routine. He has been an angel during "school time" all week. He has been doing puzzles and art projects to entertain himself and when the boys read books or stories he listens in.


Little guy doing a masterpiece! He is still in talk like a pirate mode from yesterday.



Adam doing some math masterpieces.



Addition made fun for Kevin!



What a typical Morning looks like at our house. The baby is sleeping, of course.

The Big News Of The Week!!



Kevin finished his first chapter book! 9 chapters and 56 pages! Way to go Kev!

Back in the Saddle!

Well we are back in our classroom. Today we did review of math concepts for both boys. Kevin is getting the concept of even and odds, even though it is a hard concept to learn without any division concepts. Counting by 2's is also on the agenda.


Adam got through his patterning chapter and moved on to fun on the computer.



Also we reviewed greater than, less than and equal to concepts.



Adam is reading his little high frequency word readers like a pro!

Kevin is learning about nouns and adjectives and is also mastering them with ease!



It is nice to be back home!

Yesterday the boys had their Spanish class and their Art class at the CHEP site. Adam was awesome in Spanish and Kevin excelled in art!!
Again they show us how different they both are.


Yesterday I spent a good portion of the afternoon making my lesson plans for the next couple of weeks. The circles are things I need to prep for.


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Roadschooling!

Last week we went to Lake Tahoe. We drove up, which is an exciting 8 hour drive mostly through the Mojave Desert!


We took advantage of this time to learn a lot about deserts and why they are what they are. There was also lots of volacano talk since there were large areas of volcanic rocks! The boys were so excited to be going on vacation and still doing school. We took our math and language arts with us. Science and social studies we learned as we hiked, went to museums, and talked about our surroundings. So here is how it went. We did our "book work" in the mornings early. The boys are up with the sun! Then we did whatever activity we had planned for the day. Then we did daily journal entries about our favorite memory of the day!


Ssshhhh here is a picture of Isaac telling us to hush and Kevin cupping his ears...we were listening for animals!


The Way It Was Museum in Virgina City, NV went perfectly with our social studies unit about Now and Then...


We hiked down to Vikingsholm castle at emerald Bay. It was a 2 mile hike the boys all did it but there was a little complaining from our Big Boy, go figure.
We took the Castle tour and learned lots of fun stuff about the castle but everyone's favorite thing was how many dragons were in it!!








Then in the evenings before bed we read books from Adam's curriculum and everyone joined in the fun, even Grandpa.


Yes it is true, we love Roadschooling even more than homeschooling. It is too bad the hubby has to work sometimes.


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Field Trip

Today we went to the K-1 get acquainted zoo trip and picnic!! The boys had tons of fun meeting new boys to play with and I met some other moms with kiddos the same age! There were 25 people that showed up today for the event!  Yay for more playdates!



We went to the Orange County Zoo at Irvine Regional Park. It is fun with lots of open space for the boys to run crazy, feed ducks, ride bikes, rent boats and take train rides! Oh and there is a little zoo with all regional animals and a petting/feeding zoo in it that costs only $2 a person. The boys loved it!












Afterwards we came home and did our lessons while the little guys slept. Normally I would probably skip school for the day but we took Monday off and we always take Friday off so that left very little school this week, lol!!



I love these dry erase folders for being able to reuse work sheets for printing practice!


Journal writing is something we do everyday.

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Crazy Monday on Tuesday

So today was everything but the perfect day! But I used our behavior caterpillar and everything turned out ok. They even made there way back to green after traveling to yellow for a little while. We finally got a calendar set up for calendar time but it is still a work in progress!


No one was sleeping during school today so things moved pretty slow. Kevin did parts of his reading sections to his brothers.


Adam made very complicated patterns, he is like that you know!!



And Isaac entertained himself with his old favorite pastime lining up cars :) Owen was tired but not asleep so he got held and or read to in order to keep the crying at bay until I had a quiet moment to put him to sleep! School ran over into nap time and really that is ok because that was 2 less kiddos in the school room!! Everyone was still happy and Kevin has made it to chapter 3 of his chapter book he got from the library!!!