December

We're slowing down in December to focus a lot on the holidays and what they mean to us. We're making presents for our friends and family and learning about the Christmas story.

Of course when I stumbled on this activity pack I couldn't resist printing it for Doodle.

Download:  http://christianhomeschoolhub.spruz.com/downloads.htm?display=B284615B-095D-4E47-9CDC-22C37883D4E9&act=get&guid=515B70AD-22DE-450E-BAB1-7DFE468262C7

I've adapted it so that instead of drawing stockings Doodle puts stickers in the space equal to the number being focused on. It's helping him count and a one to one correlation. It is amazing to me as I back off the forced routine every night he asks for this pamphlet and goes through a few pages on his own. He's reading numbers, counting on his own, and generally jumping into this themed pack with two feet.

Happy December! Hopefully come January we'll back fully back in the swing of things. ;-)

Love this

Our Mornings

Confession. I am not a morning person. I despise mornings. I stay in bed until the very last possible second and then add another minute or two. I just don't DO mornings.

This does cause some issues in our day and our routine. On the rare occasion I am up at dawn I feel we get so much more accomplished in our home. But I just don't have the motovation to get up until I absolutely have to.

Thus we've create some uber simple morning routines in our home to allow me the extra time I need to wake up while drinking my coffee before I can jump into "Mom" mode and handle the day.

First, we write.




Now Doodle is getting better about writing, but he is still hesitant. So for Doodle all I want to see him do is trace the letters as above. No real need to push him to do anything else, although he is encouraged to write them on his own if he feels like it.

MissyMae, however, is ore advanced on her handwriting and so she is asked to both trace and write her own letters on her mat.




MissyLou is given a mat and a marker and allowed to do whatever she feels like.



After writing and eating, I have dishes to do. And the kids aren't quite ready to leave the kitchen. So we transition into a sequencing activity. This day we did the ABCs.




We have regular flashcards for letters and numbers as well as a few other home-made options that help the kids learn how to put things in order and think about placement. MissyMae is by far the better sequencer, but the other two help as much as they can.



And just about the time that they finish, my coffee is gone, the dishes are done, and we're ready to get dressed and clean for the rest of the day.

It's OK

I have to tell myself that often.

It's OK ...

that my house does not look like the cover of Martha Stewart Living.
that I forgot to shower today. And yesterday.
that I don't have life figured out.
Or that I still have yet to finish X or Y or Z ...

I am seeking contentment in my life. In my home. In the people I love and live with.

I want to be able to be proud of my home, which is difficult at the moment. Three young kids, two dogs, two cats, and a husband who works 9 - 5 leaves me the responsibility of caring for the house, kids, and pets and running a business. It's seems my work so often comes last on the list of my responsibilities but in truthfulness my work is the reason I am able to be home to care for the kids and house and pets. Without my photography, I would be in a 9 - 5 career path lacking the flexibility of being available to the kids. Contentment.

I don't have the bank account to buy the furniture I want. Instead, I have the time to spend at home to teach our kids the morals, values, and education we feel important.

Contentment.

And authenticity. We are busy. Life is hectic. We are rarely home and our TV collects dust. My house should work for us. It should work to minimize our work inside the home and make it easy to keep tidy during the days.

As I focus this week on purging items from our house which are extra, unnecessary or just unwanted, I am trying to keep focused on the thought of reaching authenticity in our home set up. And finding contentment with what we DO have.

Where have I been?

Living.

Thoughts to share -

Being active is important to us. Especially since so many kids are overweight, and with Doodle being a boy, the husband and I feel is so vital to introduce Doodle to appropriate physical play outlets for his energy and to get exercise. We have found our local YMCA offers 8 week "seasons" for sports and this is perfect for us and Doodle's attention span. We keep him rotating through 4 different sports during the year and he loves it.

Doodle is reading CVC words easily. We've not spent much time on sight words yet, focusing more on phonics, but we have started to examine where to bring in sight words in a fun, stress free way that encourages learning by play rather than learning by command. I am thinking some type of Bingo style game would be best at this point.

Math is centered on learning the "teen" number family. We're getting there. Doodle and MissyMae are both learning to understand that 19 is not just a 1 and a 9, it's a whole nother number. I believe reading has helped them understand the concept.

Science is whatever nature activities we happen to stumble into. Not stressing on it. Doodle asks lots of questions, and we try to answer them best we can.

More and more we feel that homeschooling is right for us. We've also located a few co-ops where kids can attend classes in a building two days a week so there is still some teacher lead instruction, but they're not being faced with peer pressures and introduced to peer culture before WE feel our kids need to be. I love the idea. Most places appear to be about $350 a month which works out to be the same cost of Doodle's daycare. This is something we are seriously considering. I have long felt one of my major issues with public school is the number of hours a week the kids are in desks away from home. Having my child in a desk two days a week is reasonable to me. Even three days a week I can get behind. I just can't see how a kindergartener or early elementary needs 5 full days a week to teach some of these basic learning ideas.

Off soap box.

For phonics we stumbled on this wonderful book : http://www.homeschoolingsupply.com/carson-dellosa/language-cd-104290.htm

Doodle loves it. It's put together in a test format that allows Doodle to quiz himself with minimal parental direction. It's become our perfect dinner time distraction.

Our days now look like this

Morning, pre breakfast, Doodle does handwriting which is just a simple ABC tracer page right now.

After breakfast is clean up, dressed, and play time. Generally around 10 we transition into logic play with puzzles and games, and before lunch we're back at the table working on worksheets. Some I print off the internet, some are from workbooks we've collected. Most of what we do in the mornings does not take a lot of "teaching" from me. The kids pick it up easily once I've read the instructions. We also listen to some CDs I've found which have "circle time" style songs, days of the week, months of the year, etc.

After lunch I usually encourage some free play time while I clean. It is at this time I will find myself sitting down with Doodle and we'll do some math on the computer or work on something new, read a book, focused learning is how I would describe it. Learning that takes a lot of my direction to explain and teach it. Again, at Doodle's age we only work in 15 - 20 minute spurts throughout the day because of his attention span.

Quiet time comes whenever Doodle is fussing over having to focus and I don't push him. Some days we only work for 5 minutes, others we'll get nearly 30 solid minutes.

After quiet time is more free play, some general picking up, dinner prep and we'll pull out the phonics book at this time. Or do a craft or coloring activity.

Since relaxing my approaching to Doodle's learning he has actually picked up in his interest. The less I made charts and lesson plans, the more I just had the next lesson ready to go and waited for Doodle to ask for it, the easier things have gone.

More Seasons

Speaking of seasons and weather, I thought I would share how we work on these concepts here.

Weather is fairly easy for Doodle to grasp. We talk about if it's sunny or not, cold or hot, and he understands these basic ideas. We have paired them up with speaking about the seasons and done informal conversations about the temperature during different seasons. Hot in summer so we swim, cold in winter so we wear gloves, etc.

A few weeks ago I saw these magnetic dress up dolls and I realized this was a perfect way to really help drive home the concepts of seasons and weather. This weekend we spent some time in the mornings playing with the dolls and selecting clothing for different seasons. I'd tell them to pick out a summer outfit and they'd put something together.

Seasons Days & Months

I've been thinking about how I can better teach Doodle the seasons and days and months besides just silly songs and some workbook pages. Today I stumbled on this idea from Michaels and I think it's *perfect* for helping a younger student learn about seasons and days and even months.

In the craft video the woman explains how to make this, and my adaptation is to have the tree leaves change with the season, maybe using velcro?, and under the swing having the days of the week and maybe on the other side the months of the year.

Another thing I'm excited about with this tree is how moveable it is. No matter what room we work in it can be set up anywhere with minimal fuss.

It also just so happens that I bought some leaf crafts awhile back which I can have the kids help me with for this tree. It's going to be an exciting craft weekend here!

Math | PreK+

I've been meaning to write about our Math choices because I think Math is one of the harder areas for me to pick what to give to Doodle.

We started using a Math sticker book to beging to formally introduce the numbers to Doodle. It allows him to interact with the pages and do activities without needing to write a number which is important to me as he's still struggling with his handwriting. The less I can pressure him to write and the more I can allow him to do without writing the more excited he is about learning.

Enter our Math sticker book. You can buy it off Amazon but I assume I bought it at Staples or Target or some other such place as we'd had it awhile before we used it. Doodle loves this and we've adapted it to help him learn so much. The first set of pages is one number per spread (2 pages) and it asks the child to place the sticker with the number in a box above the number word, then place an equal amount of star stickers in a designated box and finally on the other page the child is asked to color a picture and add stickers to it equal to the number being worked on.

Usually Doodle and I will do the first page and talk about the number he's putting on, count aloud the star stickers and finally i'll have him jump up and down while I count to the number again. After the number 12 the book starts to work on some basic Math functions. "Count the animals in the box" and again it's all done with stickers.

This is important for me because it shows me that despite Doodle's handwriting issues, he is still learning his numbers and math skills by using the stickers and placing them in the correct spots.

We also use learning cubes for our math time as well. Legos would work just as well, as long as they stack together easily and can be counted individually.

I've recently introduce Tracer sheets into our math time as well to match the number we're working on that day. Doodle is getting more excited about learning how to write and it's allowing him to feel more open about learning and working together. The other day I asked him out of the blue to write "12" on our easel and he TRIED. He wrote it somewhat backwards and slanted but he TRIED and I was thrilled to see his confidence growing so quickly.

Of The Week

Doodle has been displaying a reluctance to practicing writing his letters or any organized writing activity. I'd hoped over the summer he would outgrow this but it's not happened and it has forced me to really look at what could be causing it. He is a bright kid and loves to learn but refuses any suggestions at writing letters or numbers.

After thinking for some time, I stumbled on the thought that maybe his being a very dominant lefty was causing problems in him learning how to manipulate his writing utensil. I paid close attention and sure enough during our days when we came to hand writing he shut down emotionally and refused to try. I did a little research and I found some great sites talking about learn to write left handed and the obstacles that kids face in a right dominant world. This has really made me look hard at my kid and realize that it is so very very important for me to focus on giving him confidence in learning how to write well left handed. I feel so strongly about this, in fact, that I've decided to take this fall semester to focus heavily on learning to write before we jump into much anything else at the kindy level. Despite him being ready for it, so much of the curriculum I'd looked at requires Doodle to write at some point in time. (numbers for math, copy words for learning to read, etc) and if he is not confident in his ability to write he will continue to hold back in learning and refuse to grow.

So what do I do now? I take my neatly organized and planned curriculum and I decide to rearrange it in a way that makes sense on how to teach a kid to write. Again, although Doodle knows his alphabet, I'm working on helping him learn to write it which means we will be focusing time on turning letters into shapes and learning how to create those shapes first with hand held manipulatives and then followed on paper with a writing utensil.

Week 1 - August 30th - September 3rd

Letter - L

• Tracer Page -  Put into a sheet protector Doodle and I will take turns learning how to go through the motions of writing an "L" with fat dry erase markers. The sheet protectors allow us to reuse this page daily by wiping it clean after completed. (Other tracers available here.)
• Lacing L Craft - Part of learning L will also be phonics related and serve for our art time. We will be making collages and coloring letters and talking about the sounds and words that start with the letter/sound/etc.
•  Letter(word) Search - Always looking to encourage focus and logic this will be a fun new activity for us. Doodle will search for the "L"s on his own and then I will work with him to continue and find the words as a whole. Good opportunity to work on sight words with him as well. Likely will repeat 2 or 3 times during the week.
• Lizard Puzzle - 6 piece puzzles for some "fun" computer time. 
• L Book - I'm not sure if we'll use the one here or just make our own but I am enjoying the idea of a week long "Letter Book" project with a new theme each day/page.

Word - The

• Spruce Up Sight Words - While I like the phonics approach over sight words, I do think some sight words are good to learn on their own early on, even if done on a phonics approach. I love the way this site turns them into a craft to introduce the words with in a low key approach. I'll be doing a few weeks of 'review' words to see how Doodle takes to the weekly word format. 
•  Sight word memory match game - I will use flash cards of the words in various informal games to force Doodle to read.

Numbers - 1 & One

• I would really like Doodle to learn to read his number words this year. He's easily recognizing numbers up through 12 so we're going to continue with counting and sequencing through 20 but also go "back" and work on number words as well.
• Puzzles - Gotta love a perfect find!
• Patterns - Doodle hasn't shown a huge understanding of patterns so I'd like to help focus him on a new pattern each week and gradually increase the complexity.

Crafts

• Handprint Lillies

Fall Begins

School has started here in our humble home. That means 6 workboxes a day, chapter reading at night, and dedicated craft time each week.

What's in our boxes this week?

Box 1 -

 Every day we do a new page on scissor skills. This workbook starts out with simple straight lines and gradually increases the complexity of the cutting involved over 50+ pages. I typically let Doodle cut the lines and then paste the pieces into an old notebook on his own. A great morning activity for him as it requires little help from me and lets me sip my coffee slowly before jumping into helping.

Box 2 -

Critical Thinking skill.

This morning was a Night vs Day sorting worksheet. Tomorrow will be tall vs short, etc.

Box 3 -

Lately we've been finding sequencing puzzles to work with. Workbox numbers are GREAT sequencing tools for PreK kids. Doodle is learning how to put 1 - 12 in order much easier AND starting to become better at "seeing" the difference between 6 and 9 due to the repetition. Another few days and we'll start to focus on counting marbles to match the number on the number cards.

Puzzle Break - Doodle has shown a new interest in puzzles so we typically reward him in the middle of the boxes with a puzzle break. Target had some awesome puzzles in their $1 section this last week which has increased our home puzzle library this year.

TBC ...

Finished

We finished the Boxcar Children book this evening. The kids LOVED it and really want to read more in the series. I think I'm going to need to be on the lookout for the next books available.

I also am going to put together a study guide for other PreK students. The same questions we used and some of the activities that went along with our book reading.

Next up is likely Stuart Little.

We've also been making leaps and bounds on our reviewing using the Stair game. I dont remember where I first read this, but essentially I have the kids sit at the top of the stairs and I hold a flash card. It could be a letter or number, and each kid has an opportunity to say the name of the item on the card. If it's a letter, we go a little further and have them also say it's sound and if it's a vowel or consonant. Kids are LOVING it and it's become so much more effective than any of the other worksheets I've been trying to use.

Currently Reading

One of the activities which I started to do with Doodle last spring is introduce him to Chapter books. While he obviously cannot read chapter books, he IS learning to focus to longer stories and remember previously read chapters. We typically read a chapter or two before nap time, at night time, and I've even begun to bring the book with us into the car when Mark drives so I can read to the kids. Everyone loves it.

In the spring we read James and the Giant Peach and then followed up our finished book with a family moving night watching James & the Giant Peach. Now that Doodle is back home we've decided to try out the first Boxcar Children novel. The reading is light and moves quickly and the descriptions are simple and easy for preschoolers to remember. We picked The Boxcar Children series also because of its gender neutral story. While Doodle is my primary student, I also wanted something we could continue to read while his sisters were here.



After each chapter we finish I ask three or four questions about what we just read to the kids and have them answer. These questions are simple and not meant to be tricky or hard to recall, but simple to force the kids to think back over what was just read to them and see how much they've retained. I love hearing their answers and how sometimes they've give double the details I was wanting to hear.

We've nearly halfway through the book after just one weekend but I'm so excited to see how well they've been enjoying it. It's also better for ME because I can only do so many of the picture books before I need something a little longer and new to focus on.

Go to girl hairstyles.

Here is one of our regular daily styles that the girls ask for often. Half up pig-tails.



I really enjoy keeping some of the hair down and being able to see if I can. But practicality means that it needs to stay out of faces. This is a perfect compromise and a big hit on our end.

Likewise sometimes I get a request for just a ponytail, but we're going out somewhere and I want it a little more special. This is the perfect compromise for us.



I'll take 4 small sections of hair near the hairline, braid them back, and then just tie it all up.



It seems to add just enough texture to be perfect for church or a day party somewhere but doesn't require a lot of time or hair ties.

Organizing Curriculum

Since this is our first "official" year - although I like to think we're a year-round home-school - I'm going to be looking at designing our PreK Curriculum month by month. Instead of traditional 5 day school weeks, we'll focus on breaking up our learning through each day of the week to make it easier and more age appropriate.

Today we did informal letter, number and phonic assessments of the three kids. While Doodle is my official "student" I want to have skill appropriate activities around for the Missies to do when they're with us. I'll continue to do monthly assessments of Doodle throughout the year just to see if we're going in the right direction or not.

As stated previously, August is a heavy review month for us. Lots of going back over the numbers (1 - 20) and the basic phonic sounds of the letters. I also will start to introduce some blends and work on sorting vowels, etc. I also am going to spend some time with puzzles and logic activities. We're also trying to spend some more time on days of the week and the months. I found a fun book about how to tell time so that will be added in at some point this year as well.

Some people have asked me why I'm "skipping" preschool. The short answer is that Doodle is somewhere between PreK and Kindy. He knows his shapes and colors and basic logic concepts. He knows his letters, usually remembers their sounds, and is nearly there on his numbers.

Now with my going back to school things will be hectic, and I'm assuming I'll need to be uber focused and organized. I plan to have it based on a "Letter of the Week" idea but make it more "Sound of the week" oriented.

Back to school...

Life always has twists and turns.

It wouldn't be the same without them. On a whim of sorts I've decided to be forward thinking and go back to school. I want my BA.

And so I'm now meeting and applying at UTA and going with the flow. Life is grand. Minus the loans.

Goodbye Summer

Over a month. Sheesh. What in the world could have been taking place?

In a nutshell learning. Living. Growing.

Doodle spent the summer with his grandparents, multiple sets of them, in Michigan on farms in dirt and riding tractors. For three weeks he was parent-less learning by exploring his world and experiencing what it's like to play outside all day everyday getting dirty and wet and mosquito bitten. Things which we don't have the opportunity to do much in Texas where it is often 100+ during the day.

Of course this is going to mean this fall we're extending our PreK wrap-up and going to be spending a few weeks going over the letters and basic phonics in the fall when we get back into the swing of things. :)

Forever and a day

It's amazing how busy you can get without realizing it.

Doodle and I are enjoying our summer. LOTS of swimming time and outdoors fun. We've abandoned the garden idea due to our seedlings frying in the summer heat.

I've also made the decision to abandon sight words all together. After researching some more, I realized how I would much rather Doodle learn phonetically than by sight words.

And lastly, Doodle is prepping to be gone from home for 3 weeks starting next week. Eek.

Progress

The past two or three days Doodle has been waking up in the morning and asking to do his workboxes, without prompting from me. He is understanding that I am setting them up for him each night so he can do them in the morning. I love this.

I love that I can stay in bed for an extra 20 minutes because he's busy working on his first drawer or two which are normally activities he can do on his own. I love that he's learning how to do things on his own without my help and that he has the interest and initiative to do them right away in the morning. We're still only doing 6 boxes a day but they're really helping keep us organized on our steady progress this summer.

At the same time, our garden is coming along well and we even added two blueberry bushes this weekend. While I don't anticipate much fruit from them this year, Doodle does love to walk out there each day and pick off the few ripe berries and eat them straight from the bush.

I KNOW I should be taking more pictures of things, but if I'm honest there are times when it just seems such a hassle to pull out my camera. When I read through my entries I feel I'm missing out not having pictures to go with the stories I'm telling, so I hope to be able to spend more time getting back in the groove of taking pictures of our daily activities.

Mark and I have found the spot where we're going to plant our garden seedlings in. Now just to frame it out and fill it with dirt. :-D

Reading

I'm hitting a point where I don't know what to do.

Doodle is interested in reading. He LOVES reading. He knows his letters, their sounds, and we're working on sorting out the vowels. But how do I teach him to read a word.

We've been working on sight words, but I just don't know... it seems opposite to everyting else we've been doing. Suddenly I'm asking him to memorize words...

So now I'm researching a more phonetic approach and STILL just don't know if I know.

More changes and progress

Doodle has picked up 3 of the 5 sight words we've been working on this week. He also wrote the number 6 which is a HUGE accomplishment as Doodle has ZERO interest in writing.

I've decided to change our workbox line-up to so instead of alternating subjects each day, we'll be doing a page or two each day. I believe this will help stick with Doodle's attention span (5 minutes) and allow us to see faster progress. I'm also trying to get more painting time in as it's Doodle's favorite at the moment. However the clean-up is something I just hate doing each day. Time to tackle my demons. 

Tweaks

In trying to prepare for this fall and a more structured curriculum many of my evenings have been searching out information on teaching subjects and how to better help Doodle learn without much effort right now. I want his lessons to be natural and easy, more of a simply explanation than forcing him to memorize something he's not ready to yet.

One of the fun things I've found is an online math website which allows for a short daily free practice. This is perfect because it's short enough that Doodle doesn't get bored and is excited to come back the next day and do it. It's also good because the website is set up to allow Doodle to naturally progress in his math with minimal effort. We now allow Doodle to log on to the website in the mornings and play it while Mommy and Daddy get dressed so one of us can help if he gets stuck. I can also see what lessons are coming up which makes it easier for me to know what concepts to work with him on in our school area.

Check it out : http://www.ixl.com/math/grade/kindergarten/

Getting Better

It's been one whole week of home schooling and I've already learned SO much.

I've learned that I really rather enjoy being home with Doodle.

That life isn't so hard when I do what comes naturally. When I stick to what my role is. I am a mother. A wife. A woman. Those are my roles at the moment. I need to refocus on this. For the first time in awhile I feel so strongly drawn to the concept of being a mother first and a photographer second. I love my art, I love my business, but the more I focus on my business the less I feel capable of being a good mother or good wife. I need to find balance between the two.

I've been able to really see where Doodle's interests are and how to best connect with him. I've found myself pulling some of Charlotte Mason's ideals into our schedule while still maintaining the structure that *I* need.

I've learned that I need lists.

I've found so much joy in being able to spend time with my child. We've read books. Planted flowers and vegetables. I've listened to him play pretend with his cars the way I did with my Barbies. I've seen him intently color a giant coloring book brought home by Daddy and actually try to stay in the lines. We've sung songs together and he's asked to learn new ones.

Things just feel like they should be. I want them to stay this way.

Idea Sources

Printed off the packet from http://prekinders.com/summer-packet/ on some good ideas for helping to introduce Doodle to math this summer. We're excited to try the math basketball this week.

Breaking Ground

It's amazing to me how our perceptions of things change as parents and educators. I've found the more down and dirty I get into parenting the more I realize how little Doodle needs notebooks and fancy worksheets and how much *I* need them.

It's true. I sit down and look at the worksheets I've set aside for tomorrow and realize there is nothing on those sheets I could not teach to him using something physical and tangible for him. However the longtime student in me just cannot let go of the idea of using "proper" worksheets and workbooks.

I'm getting better at organizing our curriculum and lesson plans. But that's just a fancy way of saying that I'm learning what works for us and what doesn't. Workboxes are awesome for me to keep organized of what I want us to be focusing on and learning about, but it doesn't mean we actually get through them all. Or even any. Today was a total bust on the workboxes. But we did spend an hour playing with coffee beans in the sensory tub. I got the idea from http://www.childcareland.com/ who posted a video about doing a sensory tub with pom poms. She mentioned giving kids scoops and containers to fill with the pom poms and let 'em go at it. Since I've been looking for a way to help teach Doodle about Kenya's agricultural products (Coffee and Corn being some of them) I thought this would be an awesome sensory activity for us this week. We bought whole coffee beans and he spent a good 45 minutes scooping, funneling and pouring into different containers. Plus the entire kitchen now smells of coffee. Yummy. Tomorrow I'm going to allow him a coffee drink (high milk & some sugar added) as a way to wrap up the coffee part. We then spent 2 hours at the pool relearning how to play in the water and hold our breath for jumping in. If I remember correctly, he's a fast learner and it wont take long before he's off the diving board again.

Tomorrow we're going to be spending some time at home and working on our boxes. I do want to try and get through a few things each week just to keep up with our summer goal of finishing preschool.

Our boxes tomorrow contain :

-Rainbow Colorbook : Doodle gets to color the 1/2 page drawings with the color indicated and then we turn them into a book. He seems to do about 2 pages a day before losing interest. Review.
- Kenya Word Art : Doodle will take the word "Kenya" and get to decorate it with whatever he wants.
- Math Stickers : One of the math books Doodle likes allows him to use stickers to count. We try to do one or two a week. New

- Sequence Rummy : Doodle LOVES cheap flashcards and he especially loves these right now. I'm working on putting it into our workboxes once a week to keep it fun for him. New.

- Science | Taste : Bake Muffins.
- Music - Itsy Bitsy Spider : I'm really not that great at music stuffs so I hope to be able to follow through on introducing one new song/rhyme to Doodle each week. We're going to be printing & coloring a matching book with lyrics to read as well.

Summer

Well that's it.

Our Fabulous Ms Ruth has left us for the summer. It's just Doodle and I for the next three months as we tackle this whole home schooling thing ourselves. I'm excited. And nervous. Really nervous. I'm not even sure what we're supposed to be doing at this point, Ms Ruth always handled that. Doodle just kept coming home knowing new things.

But I put together a few ideas for the summer.

First I decided to look at what subjects I wanted to focus on. Since Doodle has zero interest in writing, penmanship was most definitely not on the list. I ended up deciding on a few subjects.
Math
Language Arts
Music
Art
Science
Sensorial Activities.

Each day of the week has three subjects attached to it for us to use in our workboxes. It might be some worksheets or larger actives or games, but it will help me to structure our weeks to make sure we're not forgetting something.

I then decided to put together a goal for the summer (finish preschool) and break it down into a month at a time.

June
Math : Counting & Ordering 1 - 20; understanding quantitative concepts.
Language Arts : Bedtime Books & Chapter Books ; 10 sight words
Sensorial : Cutting & Pasting
Science : Classification, Zoo Animals, Seasons & Weather
Geography : Kenya & England, Maybe Australia if we have the motivation.

Doodle is into maps right now so I've decided to run with it by doing some Geography work. Since Ms Ruth is in Kenya for the summer this is a perfect time for us to focus on Kenya and Africa. We will be researching zoo animals found in Kenya as a tie-in to our science lessons and I'm so lucky that Homeschool Creations happens to have a full lesson plan on Kenya for us. :) We will adapt some of the ideas for Doodle's age, and we're also going to add in some Swahili lessons for fun.

I am excited. I think Doodle will LOVE it and he is going to have so much fun making postcards to send to Ms Ruth and her kids.

Zoo Day

Purchased a family membership to the Zoo and planning to spend a lot of time there this year.

Since today was our first visit in over a year I decided to let it be more about becoming familiar with the Zoo and taking the time to enjoy the animals and just learn what we can from viewing them. I was impressed with how Doodle would find the info posts and ask me to "read the words" to him. I left my camera at home, not brave enough to travel out with three kids and a camera.

Over the next week I will be printing out a list of the animals we saw at the zoo and a world map. The kids and I will begin by matching animals with their continents and then we'll start to pick out one animal a week to focus on and do a lapbook of. My hope is that we can make a trip to the zoo once a week.

Picture Love

I realized this winter I hadn't spent time on pictures of the kids. Today I made an effort to fix that and start getting snaps of them again.

Another Mother's Day

While Doodle did let Mark and I sleep in until nine, it was no where the luxurious lie in I imagined I would get on Mother's Day back before I became a Mom. I did, however, get chocolate chip pancakes with extra syrup. Mmmmmmm yummy.

While normally we attend church services every Sunday but after so busy for the last week I made the executive decision to take the morning off and do family time. A visit to Michaels to restock the craft table and a stop by the book store to pick up James & the Giant Peach, a hug to my mother and Mark and I took off to pick up his daughters. MissyMae and MissyLou had made me a flower pot with their hand prints on it for Mother's Day. Quite an unexpected surprise and such a touching gift.

With plans to homeschool Doodle this summer the first thing Daddio and I have opted to focus on is reading and books. Doodle is able to read a good handful of words without help and many of his beginner reader books he has memorized. I am proud of his interest in reading and Daddio and I have decided to branch out to some select chapter books. Our hope is to continue with his easy reader books but also introduce him to some more mature literature to keep him interested and challenged.

Our first book is James & the Giant Peach. The chapters are quite short, usually 2 - 3 pages, and a perfect length to read through, stop and discuss, and continue reading.

Doodle (3) and MissyMae (4) have fallen in love with this book so far.  Once we finish the chapters Daddio and I will be renting the movie to let them watch. We are going to continue this with several different kinds of chapter books throughout the summer, with a focus on books turned into movies as rewards.

Doodle also will be getting a large amount of craft time this summer.

To work on his science we'll be focusing on gardening and growing plants. Doodle also is obsessed with maps right now so we've placed them all around his room and will be talking about different places on them, an early introduction to geography but very timely as MissRuth will be traveling to Kenya this summer, Mark is from England and I have family around the states. I also have decided to make use of our washable paints and allow the kids to use the fence in the backyard as a writing board for letters, numbers, and shapes. Each week I'll be focusing on a different shape and painting them on the fence and creating a game. Since Doodle lacks any interest in writing, this might help him learn how to write. Low pressure, high creativity and fun.

Math skills will continue to be based on RL situations. Counting what we have in front of us and slowly introducing the idea of addition and subtraction without visible numbers, just objects. (Three strawberries, eat one, now how many are left...) I also want to continue some focus on personal hygiene and time/calendar. Getting Doodle to be able to use the restroom start to finish without any assistance is a big goal for the summer, at this point he still needs help washing his hands. And understanding the concept of days of the week would be awesome. :)

~ SA 

I don't know what I'm doing.

Let's get that out of the way right now.

I don't know what I'm doing or why I'm starting another blog or wasting time typing this rather than sweeping up the sand by the backdoor.

But it's because I want to remember and share things with people and friends across the world. I want to have something to show my kids so they know they were not deprived as kids because they didn't have the same toys as their friends. Or because their very best clothes were bought at Target so I would never cringe when they spilled grade juice or red paint on them. I want them to see how we played and learned through doing things. How much better off as people they are because of the time and effort Mark and I put into our parenting decisions.

I also want a place to talk about ME. Just me. :) Randomness that needs a place to fall without much care for who reads or who ignores.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with this.