Thursday, February 22, 2007

It is hard to see but Riley went on a # scavenger hunt. There is 1 car, 2 hammers, 3 shapes, 4 rattles, 5 books, and 6 dishes. He had fun, it seemed a bit overwhelming at first, but he was so proud of himself in the end!
I got this idea off of the preschool ideas link in the last post. I made Jake a "bank" out of a nut can, I covered it with construction paper and put his name on it, then covered it with fun stickers. He was so excited that I was making something for him! Then I gave him a handful of coins and said put them in. He put them in and dumped them out for over a half an hour! He loves his bank and periodically has asked to play it since then. It is ranking right up there with the wooden puzzles!
We have been enjoying "RE" week, the kids have watched a little too much TV, and I have been doing a lot of reading. I don't feel like I am at any conclusions yet, but I have read a lot of great things! It is hard to get things read let alone get to hash it out in my head with my three wild Indians running around. (I can really say that too, they are a little Cherokee)! :)

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Well I have dubbed this "Re" week. Re-view, Re-vamp, Re-lax...hmmm, I wonder if there are any others I could insert there. :) Although there was one new thing we worked on, I decided that I should be introducing the lowercase letters with the upper, so since we have gone through A-H we worked on the lowercase A-H. So far Riley did pretty good, he has a hard time forming the letters the correct way, so we worked on that today. I have these cool stamps that are "dot" letters, so I stamped them in his book and then he traced them. I put them together like "Aa". So far so good, plus he was eager to work at it today!
I found this and thought it had some fun ideas for Jake, we have a theme for the month, but it is pretty loose, yesterday Jake worked on the file folder game "Grandpa's Garden" from the Finch Family File Folder Games book. (I have 1, I would love ALL of them!!)
So we will see how "Re" week goes, and we'll see what gets revamped! :)

Friday, February 16, 2007

Well this school year has definitely been a roller coaster, not the best fall to start kindergarten! Being nomads for a month and packing and unpacking on ether end of our wondering, curriculum building got the fuzzy end of the stick. So with the limited amount of research time I chose a packaged curriculum. It is good, but now after diving into it, and banging our heads for a few months, I have come to the conclusion that it is just not for us. So maybe I will be exploring the selling side of eBay! So now I am mostly improvising our curriculum now, loosely following the shell of the one I bought. I wish I could call TIME OUT and gather myself. But I think with my present state that could take a few years, so we press forward. I have been reading other blogs and trying to glean from experienced moms. Now I just need to get myself motivated and into action. Something my severe lazy bone works against. The other impediment unfortunately is money. I hate to admit it, but homeschooling does take some money. I know there are moms who can do it relatively free, but our library and my sanity are not so ready. So we improvise. I think this is a good buy, I have had it recommended by a few moms. I am looking forward to getting it and starting working with Riley on reading. Not hard core, I don't want to turn him off I want him to love it! :)

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

So for the month of February Jake is learning about weather, so for an art project I had on the list to make windsocks. I guess since I am from San Diego I imagine the round tube with many tales flapping behind, so we were going to do it with a tube of construction paper and crepe paper tales. Dan did this activity with the boys while I ran a couple errands, and can you guess what kind of windsocks the pilot made? Ha Ha, so funny that we thought of two different things that both work well with our discussion on wind. It gave me a good giggle though! So here are my boys and their windsocks!
I have been reading more here . :)

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Well I thought I would start a blog with what we do for school and also different teaching options I learn about! So lets start this wild ride!
I have had many people when I tell them we home school say, "your brave", I haven't, but I'd like to respond, "your the brave one". I know it is not like me to have a loss of words, but I have had a hard time with the question of why we home school. Hopefully it will come soon. In single words, that will be investigated further I'd say: content, socializing, learning, love, out come, God, character, country, family.... I'll leave the list hanging, it is not complete.
Here is an article I read this week, I thought it had many good points. And another article. I may not agree with everything, but I found it thought provoking, and had some good information I could use. :)