Friendly Letters

The boys LOVE writing letters to their friends. They write one just about every month to a friend or cousin. But when the subject came up in Language Arts I took the chance to show the "correct" way to write a letter and teach some of the terminology associated with letter writing. Their letters turned out so cute. (They always do)








In other news we have been getting serious about figuring out word problems and I recently made these posters in hopes that we can start to make sense of all those words associated with math on those dreaded word problems!

Discovery Science Center

"Homeschool Days"

This month we participated in the DSC Homeschool days program. It was a lot of fun. The boys participated in two of the 4 classes. They had fun in the first class learning about insects but in particular bees. They learned about the parts of a bee and how to pull out a stinger properly. Each class also has a craft that they do while there. The other class was about gasses, liquids and solids. They were able to learn about these and see some of them in action. They used balloons to talk about gasses and then went on to talk about the other two. These classes were a lot of fun for the boys. They take place before the museum opens at 9-10 am and are not open to parents (you have to leave). I liked this last aspect as it gave me a chance to take my little guys out for morning smoothies which they loved.

A Working Vacation (Sort Of)

The last few weeks have been crazy!!! A good kind of crazy but crazy! We have been on two vacations in two weeks.

So while there has been a little of this.


There has been mostly a lot of this, which is why we love homeschooling....


Checking out the local wild life.


Chilling in the Lazy River on a super hot day in Indio!





Surfing Doheny without the crowds!





This week we are getting back into the groove of a schedule and although vacations are fun, I think everyone is also glad to be home again doing our normal stuff!

Hot Days in The Summer

So we "thought" it would be fun to do school at the park, but we picked the wrong day. It was so stinking hot but we got the work done and the boys pretended to play at the playground although really it was just too hot.

Food: Family Traditions

German ShooFly Cake! We decided to try one of our traditional family foods after doing a unit in Social Studies about how food can be a family tradition. I pulled out my cook book that has lots of our family's old recipes in it and we picked one! The boys had a blast measuring and mixing all the ingredients and even more fun eating their creation. I thought a Molasses cake was pretty daring but they ended up loving it!














We shared the rest with all of our teachers because we didn't need all that extra around here!

Week One Done

We made it through the first week! It wasn't easy but we got through. We had to make a few adjustments and a couple of purchases.
We got this preschool book at Costco for Little Guy so he can have a book like the big boys! He even gets tabs like the big boys!


We also made an amazon purchase of this play yard which we have made into a gate! It is on the patio so when I lock everyone downstairs with us they have a little more room to roam!


This allows the Little Guys to have more room to relocate all the shoes from the shoe rack to the front patio!


Here you can see some of the artwork that #3 has done for us with chalk!

Year two Begins

So here we are again at another start of another year. I now have one running around getting into EVERYTHING (16months), one starting preschool, one in First Grade, and one in Second Grade! It is going to be a crazy year. We have #2 in football and #1 starts basketball in a couple of weeks. I am excited for the new school year but also know it will be harder than last year. This is mainly due to the 16 month old. He was asleep A LOT more last year than he will be this year and he is not really into self entertaining in a safe and desirable way. That being said I am courageous and I will find a way to do it with just as much fun, finesse, and patience as I did last year... I will have one less kiddo twice a week in the morning (at preschool) which will be super fun for him and a good break for everyone else. We reinstituted the behavior caterpillar but with a few changes to acknowledge our Media Ticket policy. You can read about that here. I will be doing some serious alphabet and numbers to 20 work with #3 when he is home with us for school. He is interested so I say, why not, plus he needs entertained apparently as well so I don't have two mischievous little beings running around. I have to admit, like last year, I am both excited and scared about the upcoming year. I do hope that my skill at the preparation part can help me through all the other parts! I am much better at life in general when I am prepared, I am just one of those people. So the lesson plans have begun. The projects for the Little Guys have been printed/made/colored/ and even some lamination has taken place. So hopefully we (the little guys and I) have fun, too, while the big boys are having fun learning all they need to know to get to the next level!

 

 

 How we started our first day!!

 

 

A little late night preparation for one of the Little Guys!

Lesson Plans done for 2 weeks.  I do my lesson plans every two weeks, by that point we are either behind or ahead of where I thought we should be when I did the lesson plans originally.   This gives me a chance every two weeks to straighten the plan up again!

 



Here they are the men of the hour!  They are pretty excited about starting a new year!

 

 

and....Here are the Little Guys these pics were also taken today so now you know what I am up against, right?  They are a bundle of crazy fun!!