Homeschool or Bust

Cutting Practice...

2012-01-01T20:30:00.001-08:00

I probably saw this on a blog somewhere but don't really remember for sure, but when we got out our new pocket chart and there were strips in them my wheels started turning. I also had found some crinkled pages of Clifford stickers the boys had messed with, so instead of throwing them both away I decided to make something to give the boys some cutting practice. I just stuck stickers along the strip and drew lines between them for the boys to cut along. I cannot believe how much they enjoy this, especially Will. Every time I have strips of paper now I make more. I leave them out on their desk where they can use them when they want. They use them as fast as I make them and are some cutting experts now!

Mommy Got an iPad!!!!

2011-10-06T20:33:00.001-07:00

I have been asking for an iPad for a few months never really believing it was a possibility, but when my birthday started coming around the corner my amazing husband got onboard. He actually just took me to Target one night at 8:00 with all 4 kids a few hours before I left for a week long trip I hadn't packed for and told me to pick one. Sadly, I don't do spontaneous well and couldn't bring myself to spend that much money without mulling it over, and over and over...

So, about a week later he finally convinced me that we should just go for it (ironic, huh?). Of course, I later realized that I married an evil genius because I paid for half of it out of my school budget and picked out my own gift!
Since then I have had to referee 56,326,354,564 fights over whose turn it is to play on it, but I've also sneakily downloaded tons of educational games for them to play. I guess that makes me Mrs. Evil Genius ;)
I can't wait to share all the ways we've discovered to use it in our homeschool. Maybe I can even actually blog all the things I want to since on my iPad I can take a picture and then blog it thus eliminating the waiting to download pictures wait time (can you hear angels singing right now? I sure can!).

Why I Haven’t Done a Sensory Box in a While…

2011-09-27T22:34:00.000-07:00

I love sensory boxes. I have an entire board on my Pinterest account where I put all the cute ideas I find for them. I do have plans to do another one soon, but then I remember the feeling of picking up all the little pieces and the look my husband gives me that I have lost my mind. I guess I can't blame him. Our "Going on a Bear Hunt" tub turned into this:

I guess a lot senses were being engaged at least!

Double Trouble Fun...

2011-09-19T22:21:00.000-07:00

I am ashamed to say that I don't spend enough time working with the boys as I should. When you are #3 and 4 your over siblings often overshadow you. On this day however, the big kids were gone and I was determined to do something with Will and Wesley. There is nothing they love more than popsicles so I thought it would be fun to teach them how to make their own. They helped me make Koolaid and pour it into popsicle molds. They were surprisingly great about taking turns and letting each other have a chance at all the different things.

They were so preciously excited to be helping mommy. Such a simple thing but such a great memory. The only thing that wasn't so great was how they didn't understand it took a really long time for popsicles to freeze...

2010-2011 School Year In Review...

2011-07-31T09:38:00.000-07:00

I went through some pictures to share for the slide show at our tutorial slide show. I'm always hard on myself because I always dream more things than it is possible to do, but I didn't really feel like this was our best year. Mostly because we were so busy with other things which really took us away from school more than it should have. Monday we were mostly home, but we were always tired and slow to start. Then Jackson had guitar lessons. On Tuesdays and Thursdays the twins went to Mother's Day Out at our church. I thought we'd get more done with them at school for a few hours. Some days we did but getting up and getting out and then having to pick them up... Of course, then there was also the thrill of only having two children and luring me to Target! Wednesday I had to take them to speech therapy, and Friday was our tutorial. All this kept us going and going and not as much school happening as I would've liked.

My main goal this year is to streamline our life and not allow the HOME part be removed from our homeschool! Yet, when I looked back through the pictures I had taken maybe we got more accomplished than I gave us credit for- more important things at least, like field trips, projects, quality time. That's worth getting behind in a few workbooks any day, right?

So, here are some of our 4th/2nd grade highlights. We always take "first day" pictures. Aren't they cute? Of course, Will wouldn't cooperate :(

Every year we always raise butterflies. I couldn't believe how into it the twins were this year! Will especially was amazed and loved everything about the entire process.

Of course, I love the educational value and all, but I have to say the great pictures I usually get on release day inspires me in no small part :)

We had a great time on "Release Day". We use orange slices to entice the butterflies to hand around a bit. The twins loved it, but it was a challenge to keep them from eating the orange slices :)
Of course, Jackson is in his happy place any time animals are involved:

One of our favorite field trips of the year is the Trade Days at Traveler's Rest where they have lots of reenactors showing trades from the 1800's. My kids definitely inherited my love of history and always want to stay there all day!

They have lots of fun stations for the kids to make things:

But this year BY FAR their FAVORITE thing was the washing clothes station. I cannot begin to explain how much they loved this. They washed clothes for probably 30 minutes and were upset when we had to leave! Maybe I need to set something like this up at home. I'll take all the laundry help I can get!

We started off the year with a fun unit about TN History. Of course, Ashton was all about the crafts and her iris turned out beautiful:

These two were working on their diaramas for our history fair. Maggie made a Native American scene and Jackson created Fort Nashborough. Ashton made Ruby Falls.

We took a field trip to the Bicentennial Mall which is wonderful. On the giant map of TN Jackson found his namesake city. We played lots of great games on this giant map to learn the geography of our state. I love this place.We also went to Fort Nashborough to see the beginnings of our great city.

Every year our homeschool group has a History Fair. It's the first event we ever participated in and remains our favorite. This year we presented our TN history projects. It came out pretty awesome. We made lifesize research reports of famous Tennesseans and wrote acrostics with their names and facts about them. Maggie chose Nancy Ward. Ashton chose Grace (?) a famous opera singer mostly so she could draw a pretty dress :)

Jackson, of course, chose Andrew Jackson.

They also did a leaf collection. I gave them a menu of project choices to complete like watercolors of the state symbols, flip books of facts, maps of the 3 grand divisions, Q is for duck flip book (including facts like V is for TN because it is the Volunteer State). Ashton also worked with her Aunt Donnie and sewed a state flag. They were all so wonderful we almost didn't have enough display room!

They also insisted on dressing up. Maggie was Nancy Ward. Jackson was Davy Crockett, and Ashton was a little girl from the Civil War.

What a great day to show off lots of hard work!

This year we had the amazing opportunity to participate in a tutorial. I taught Story of the World to grades 2nd, 3rd and 4th which meant that I got to have both kids in my class! It was great teaching in a "classroom" setting again, and the kids loved it and made some great friends. They both took anatomy which included dozens of fun experiments. Jackson took an IEW class, and his writing was really improved by the end of the year. Ashton was in heaven in her Meet the Masters art class. They both took sign language which to be honest I was a little unsure about at first. However, their teacher was phenomenal and they both took to sign language and were quite good at it.

I only remembered my camera about twice. This is Jackson in my class making a mosaic when we studied Rome.

On the last day of my class everyone got to dress up like Romans. My history loving kids had chosen to be Romans for Halloween this year, so that was easy :)

So, as I look back it truly was a great year. Homeschooling is such an honor and a blessing. I'm even more excited about this year and looking forward to many more years spending time and making memories with my 4 little blessings.

Why Didn't I Come Up with This?

2011-05-31T20:44:00.000-07:00

Jackson got this very complicated toy. It's made of little pieces of wood. That's it. Oh, and it usually sells for $60 though I paid a third of that at Costco. So, why didn't I think of selling little pieces of wood for 400 times the cost?

Seems so simple, but you can't imagine how much he has enjoyed these little pieces of wood! It just goes to show the simpler the toy the more they are able to use their imagination. Remind me why I have all these toys lying around everywhere again? I'm so tempted to throw them all away and let them lose with some cardboard boxes that I can just throw away when it's cleaning day.

OK, off my soapbox now. So, Jackson has created many great things:

I think here he is really just trying to keep Wesley from knocking down his creation:

They even, gasp, worked together! I loved the fire in the middle. This was Fort Nashborough we studied during TN history.

By far, my favorite was the Coliseum since we had just started studying Rome. I thought it was pretty impressive:

They were so proud of their creation (and Mommy was just waiting for the crying, screaming and gnashing of teeth about to happen when this cute little 3 year old knocked it over!).

So, go pick up some CitiBlocs and wish you'd invented them too!

Music Fun...

2011-05-30T20:55:00.000-07:00

The kids were supposed to go on a field trip to the symphony when it occurred to me that I haven't done a great job teaching about all the instruments. I'm embarrassed to say that I never seem to fit music in the day like I wish I could. I figured there was no time like the present and at least they'd have a base of knowledge to build upon when they did go to the symphony. I found these great instrument cards at a wonderful Montessori inspired blog I love, Counting Coconuts. I printed 2 copies on cardstock so they could later play a matching game.

First, we talked about the categories of instruments. I have them sort one set of the cards into a giant graph and tell me which one had the most:

As usual, it was a pajama kind of day. In this picture you can also see the edge of the Coliseum they built, an art easel, and a house we were using for our bear hunt sensory bin. Oh, the joys of a homeschooling house...

Then they played a game of instrument go fish. Good times, and they didn't realize it but they were learning the names of all the instruments. Sneaky me :)

So, we still have a long way to go in the music education department, but what a fun way to start! They also absolutely loved the symphony, and we plan on going back soon.

First Chapter Book!!!!!!!!!!

2011-05-29T21:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I did the classic thing that homeschool mommies are always warned about it. You'd think I'd know better, but I fell into the trap. I began to panic about the fact that my daughter didn't love to read and wasn't reading well enough. She was in the beginning of second grade and still chose step 1 reading books for free reading time. She would rather take the easy route than try something and fail so she always chose the books she knew she could read easily. Not only that, but she didn't like to read. I wasn't sure how that even happened. I mean I vaguely remember giving birth to this child so I knew she had to have at least half my DNA. I can easily read a book a day (if those annoying things like housekeeping, cooking and laundry don't interfere), so if the math is right she should at least want to read half a book a day, right?

But, that was far from the case and I was worried. It's hard sometimes being the teacher and the mommy because you take the full blame when something doesn't seem to be clicking. After a panicked e-mail to the homeschool mommies I admire who have older daughters, they all told me what I knew down deep inside (all kids learn at different rates, just keep reading to her and pushing her, the beauty of homeschooling is that they can learn when they are ready, etc...). They also included personal anecdotes about their daughters not liking reading at Ashton's age. Those were girls who now read voraciously, and who I usually talk books with when I see them. That renewed my hope and settled my panic.

I followed their advice and just encouraged my daughter where she was (although I did pack up all the easy, easy readers to take away that choice :). Then just about 2 months later she woke up and informed me that she had stayed up late reading a Junie B. Jones book and finished half of it! She asked if she could keep reading and finish it all. We quickly squeezed in some math then I let her read away. She finished it in the early afternoon. I told her she had read an entire chapter book in 19 hours- including the 9 hours she was asleep! We all celebrated like mad and made a giant, humongous, told everyone we know deal out of it.

And just like that, MY daughter became a reader:

And I became a little bit wiser mommy, very grateful for the gift of far wiser friends.

Symmetry the Fun Way...

2011-05-29T21:12:00.000-07:00

I have this dream of the type of math teacher I want to be. I love the living math and hands-on approach. I just never seem to pull them off due to lack of planning time and inability to follow through. But today I rocked it (if I do say so myself-hee hee). We had a great time learning about symmetry.

First, we got out the twins' letter blocks and we sorted all the letters into symmetrical:

and non-symmetrical:
Then we used our Bendaroos (or Wikki Sticks) to show where the line of symmetry was and sorted the blocks into vertical, horizontal, or both lines of symmetry.

The bendaroos were perfect for this activity:

Then we figured out what the fraction of each category would be which was a great lesson in fractions:

Then I gave them more fraction questions to do on their own (what fraction are red, what fraction are yellow and blue together). They did great and really showed an understanding of fractions.

So, this day was a great math day. If only I could figure out how to make them all like this......

Dollar Store Centers #10...

2011-04-05T09:56:00.000-07:00

While I love shopping at the dollar store to make up new learning centers, it's nice to find one ready to go too. They really have a great learning section which I frequent way too often. Ashton did great with these synonym and antonym match ups:

I so need to make sure to do more learning games with her because she always has this face when doing centers as opposed to the angry face I sometimes (I know, shocking, right.) receive during school hours:

It was a good activity with some good words, especially for a dollar.

My girl is growing up way too fast!

Take a Shot at Drilling...

2011-04-04T01:27:00.000-07:00

Always looking to add a little fun, we took our math practice to the court, the basketball court that is. I would flash them two numbers. Ashton had to add them, and Jackson had to multiply them. The first one to answer got to take a shot at our basketball goal. The first to 21 was the winner, but when math facts are being learned we're all winners. That's how I felt anyway :)

I think this is what you call a game face: As an awesome added bonus, it kept these two still for a couple minutes anyway as they cheered on the drillers:

So, come up with a reason to get outside and for a reason to count it as school as well!

Symmetry...

2011-04-03T09:54:00.000-07:00

We just did a mini-lesson on symmetry and wanted to follow it up with some much needed art. After talking about all the places in nature that symmetry can be found, I challenged them to create a symmetrical butterfly. I was so proud of what they came up with. I loved Jackson's mean butterfly:

Ashton did a great job as well:

These came out so well I think a framing might be in their future!

Cars for Sale...

2011-04-01T07:32:00.000-07:00

Imagine my surprise to come outside one day to find my little entrepreneur girl had turned our driveway into a car dealership. She already had some interested customers (it might've had something to do with the fact that she was "selling" their cars).

She was really putting the sell on this handsome customer: I love his look here like he's really thinking it over or maybe he's just trying to negotiate:

Apparently he feels like he got a good deal and seems pleased with his purchase:

She made signs and money and everything :)

This is a full service dealership and even offers repairs. They're free I'm sure!

I thought I was just there taking pictures, but she talked me into making a purchase as well:

I love how she always includes the twins in her play and they eat it up.

Going on a Bear Hunt...

2011-03-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

Along with the letter B study we HAD to go on a bear hunt. I was hoping it would go well because we used to do the bear hunt song to keep them occupied in restaurants about a year ago, but it would end up making Wesley cry because he "didn't want to see a bear!". When I first told him we were going to do a bear hunt he was still a little reluctant :) But he persevered!

We read Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. We even watched his video on You Tube. Of course, everyone had to have their own bear with them:

Does he maybe still look a little scared?

Of course, my junior teacher has to be involved in everything so she made her own bear hunt book to read to them- love her! Then we went on a bear hunt under and over everything in our house- this was the big mountain:

While Sissy was leading the bear hunt upstairs, Jackson and I were quickly constructing a bear cave downstairs:

Inside were bears for everyone holding treats (teddy grahams of course) to snack on in the cave:

Maybe he likes bear hunts now?

Always have to include sister:

I was so excited about this sensory bin. I totally copied it from one of my favorite blogs, Delightful Learning. I had a lot of fun making it. I especially loved the mud and river made of paint in a bag. It felt so good and squishy :)

The kids had a lot of fun with it and made a huge mess as usual.

Oh no, the bear came to their house!

I love anything that has my boys using their imaginations- and playing together no less:

We had a fun day of memory (and a little mess) making!

Twin Tot School #23: B is for Butterfly...

2011-02-13T13:17:00.000-08:00

Will and Wesley are 41 months old.

It made sense that after caterpillars come butterflies! There are so many fun B words though that we also used band-aids and lots of bears!

My favorite thing to do is something fun on our letter sheet to hang on our alphabet wall. For B we covered it with band-aids. I mean all kids love the chance to stick band-aids on something, anything. Plus, I got these at the dollar store! Of course, you can't have band-aids without sticking at least one on yourself, right...

I thought it really turned out fun:
This little monkey is, well a little monkey when the camera comes out:

It used to be that Wesley really got into the tot activites while Will was the more destractable one, but that really changed this week. Will wanted to do them all and worked for quite awhile. He did an amazing job on all of them too. Mommy was very pleasantly surprised. This was his first time to really do this size sort completely on his own. I got this from Confessions of a Homeschooler as well as the other butterfly pages.

This Melissa and Doug lacing shape we've had forever but it held his interest and he wanted to do it just right- a blanket stitch araound the edges. You'll notice a second grade workbook beside him as Mommy also teaches spelling and English at the same time. Oh, the joys of homeschooling multi-age kids :)

All of our favorite things to play with are these magnetic pompoms. I can't remember where I first saw this but they are just dollar store pompoms hot glued onto circle magnets. We have these hanging on our walls holding up memory verses, but they were really made for these letter magnet pages.

I've worked on counting forever with the boys but have never tried to teach them numers. I'm really trying to focus on teaching them the numbers 1-3 right now. This was the first time I've put out these pages where they put the number in the box and then count out that many objects (in this case butterflies). Wesley wasn't interested, but Will did wonderfully.

Wesley's favorite activity of late is writing. He wrote a W all on his own the other night. I'm so sad I didn't take a picture of his first letter, and of course it had to be on the Magna Doodle so was immediately erased. Jackson's was the same way 7 years ago :(

He really likes doing these letter pages because I told him the dotted lines were roads so he loves to "drive" his car around. Hey, whatever it takes, right? I tell Will to make monster truck noise to blow his nose :) On a side note, I've taught Welsey 26 letters of the alphabet and he can play Wii like a pro but I can NOT get him to blow his nose!!! I think it is my greatest failure as an educator to date because I have tried silly thing after silly thing for nothing. Oh well.... but he writes well!

This was the HIT of the week. I joined Carissa's RRSP (an amazingly cheap value you really should do) and finally got around to printing out the vocabulary cards and putting them in baseball card holders. Then they took turns (a miracle in and of itself) using the big finger (love that thing- has saved many a lesson from being too terribly boring even for my 2nd and 4th grader). I'd call out a word emphasizing the beginning letter sound and they'd point to it. They loved, loved, loved it. We ended up doing the letters A-D over and over and over. My goal now is to make up some cards of my own with personal things that start with that letter like a picture of Daddy for D. I'll do that in my bonbon eating free time :)

Our letter B craft was tearing and crumbling tissue paper (which is great for fine motor skills) and gluing them onto the butterfly wings. I heart this picture of Will's sweet hands:

He did it perfectly. He and Ashton are my crafty, crafty kids.

I was hoping he would be interested long enough to go around the outside wings, but he wanted to keep going. It turned out B for beautiful and he was Beamingly proud of it :)

No craft goes by without this girl taking part whether it be a preschool or adult craft!

This was my favorite scene from the week:

Both boys asked if they could cut so I put bins under them hoping to catch the pieces. They have been really good cutters from a really early age, but I guess that comes from having older siblings who leave scissors laying about...

I think I should start a feature called "keeping it Real" or something. So many times I read blogs and think their homeschool day is so perfectly organized and runs so smoothly that something is wrong with me as a mommy because my kids have the pointer stuck up their nose instead of doing their work. I never want to give the impression that our days are picture perfect because that could not possibly be farther from the truth so here's my keeping it real picture this week. Between crafting and learning numbers and letters everyone took a break when mommy snuck away to do laundry to take turns tying the twins to the office chair, spinning them and seeing if they could catch a football while going around. As you can see from the picture Will was horrified by the disruption:

We couldn't leave the letter B without doing what I hope is the first of many book units, Going on a Bear Hunt. I can't wait to share the fun we had hunting!

We had a wealth of B books and could've spent another few weeks doing fun activities!

Please check out all the other great Tot Schools at 1+1+1=1.

Weekly Wrap Up...

2011-01-31T18:18:00.000-08:00

Well, this week did not start out like I planned it! The twins had the stomach virus. Right now Will's tonsils are giant and coming out next week so for him to be getting sick was not a good situation. I stayed awake watching him. Needless to say, Monday ended up being a sick day. We were so lazy, but Ashton did set up a really nice restaraunt which had her writing menus and orders. That counts as school, right? We did watch a lot of "How It's Made" on the science channel. That counts too, right?

Oh well, hopefully next week will be better!

Twin Tot School #22: C is for Caterpillar...

2011-01-30T10:42:00.000-08:00

Will and Wesley are 40 months old.

We are moving right along in our letter curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler. We did lots of activities from there, but apparently I didn't get many pictures. However, this activity was a huge hit. The big kids were even eager to get in on the crafting:

God knew I'd need two little brothers to keep them from fighting over one, but it sure was a surprise to me!

It's a success if Will actually participates!

One big letter C plus some pom poms, eyes and pipe cleaners give you a darling caterpillar C!

We also went to their first library story time. They did well considering how, ummmm, not toddler friendly (to be nice) the librarian was...

but we were thrilled to find their favorite books- CLIFFORD!

And C is for Clifford! We had also just gotten hair Cuts and it made Wesley look so much older, sniff, sniff...

The best part of C is for caterpillar week was that we got real caterpillars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The boys were fascinated and had to see them several times a day. Then they were in awe when they went in their Chrysalis:

How intent is sweet Will????

He'd sit and watch them forever. I can't wait for him to see them emerge as butterflies!!!

I also made up a silly caterpillar song and love to see them tickling each other:

We had a fun week of caterpillar fun. Go check out what other tots are up to at Carissa's blog.

Amazon.com Widgets

Pick and Draw...

2011-01-27T00:52:00.000-08:00

I put one of the kids' Christmas gifts in their workboxes, Pick and Draw. It is this awesome card game where you draw cards from different categories (like face, nose, hair, eyes) and draw a character using those features. It's amazing how many different ways the characters come out.

I also admire how the creator of the game uses it as a chance to tell kids about how

creative God is!

Now, being the good homeschooling mama I am I had to add a little more to it (the directions suggest you can too) so each time they drew a character they had to make up a name and some silly facts about them.

I also appreciated the drawing tips since I don't have an ounce of artistic talent to share. For example, if you shade the lower set of teeth in it looks like they are talking. Who knew?

The only downside I see is running out of paper since Ashton wanted to keep all her characters. The second time we played I got smart and had them fold a sheet to make little squares for each character. I didn't take pictures of my creations, but I had the best time playing with them!

I love good ole' "Gum Drop".

This lady was kind of crazy.

Although we need to work on spelling "bored", I did think he made this guy really look bored.

I highly recommend getting this game. It is so affordable and one of those rare things all ages can play together. Next time I think we're going to write some adventures for our new friend- yeah writing practice!

In Their Free Time...

2011-01-25T12:54:00.000-08:00

The other afternoon I was reading some blogs (shocker I know). I always love reading the geography posts at Confessions of a Homeschooler (and plan on using her curriculum with the twins when they are a little older). I showed the big kids their boats they made for Thailand. We aren't studying that now. In fact, school was over for the day but they apparently inspired. They went to work in the kitchen. I was busy and didn't really watch exactly what they were doing. I was amazed by their creation since it was done completely by their own initiative and through their own creativity since they found all the supplies themselves as well.They both made their own boats and actually helped each other without fighting (gasp). What good is a boat without a launching party complete with Roman maiden and excited little brother?
Mission successful- the boats floated perfectly!

I absolutely adore when they are creative on their own. That's what I want for them. Sure, it makes my house even messier (if that's possible), but it's so worth it to see them doing something non-electronic :)

Of course, now I also have two giant boats hanging around my house, but at least it makes great decoration for the schoolroom!

Twin Tot School #21...

2011-01-23T09:42:00.000-08:00

Will and Wesley are 39 Months Old

I fell in love with all of Erica's letter curriculum at Confessions of a Homeschooler and was so excited to begin using it with the boys. After lots of printing, cutting and laminating (and loving every minute of it) we were ready to jump in. I'd like to give her a plug here. At first I just printed them from her website where she offers them for free, but you have to download each thing separately. Then I decided to just go ahead and buy it. I mean it's only $10. Let me tell you it is worth every penny. Downloading it all at once is so much faster. Besides I was happy to support her and give something back since she so generously shares all she makes.

I don't think it matters what order you teach the alphabet (believe me that is hard for me to admit because I am very into going in order). Therefore, I decided to start with D is for dinosaur since my boys are so into dinosaurs. I got our trays all set up with all our activities.

Their favorite activity was sorting capital and lower case D's. This is the first time we'd done anything like this, and they did great!

I also got lots of great stuff from 1+1+1=1 's dinosaur tot book. I love how Wesley is really thinking about this size sequencing!

Often, they want to do the same activity at the same time which means I get to referee. As soon as they saw the Dinosaur Train color matching from 1+1+1=1 they both wanted it. We all LOVE that show (thanks to that show my Ashton is always coming up with a hypothesis about something!). I held up a color and they had to decided which one of them had the character that matched that color.

Confessions of a Homeschooler also has these uppercase letter printables that are perfect for decorating. We chose to decorate them with dino tracks! The boys walked their plastic dinos in paint and tracked on their D.

I'd just bought a book of paper plate crafts (see widgit below) and was thrilled to see it had the cutest dino you could make out of those cheap-o paper plates. The boys did a great job painting them. They are getting so big!
I printed off a dinosaur from Making Learning Fun. I gave them paint trays with Q-tips for each color. They used the Q-tips to carefully paint in each circle. This was hands down their favorite thing we did. Mommy loved it because it was pretty mess free. We have got to do some more of these.
Another blog I enjoy is Tired, Need Sleep. She has tons more dinosaur activities that I can't wait to try next time around. I'm kind of figuring we'll go through these letters now that they are 3 then repeat them with more in depth activities the next year.

Of course, school always includes playing with big sissy. She teaches them to use their imagination and I absolutely love to listen to them. Watching how well she interacts with them makes me so glad we homeschool and they get to spend all day together and not just a few hours (well, most days any way :)

I can't wait to show off my new school room (as soon as hubbie paints that last wall-grrrr). By far my favorite part are my gutter book shelves. I always use one of them to house the twins' Tot School books. So, this week it showcased our favorite dino books:It's so surreal to me to be reading these next 2 dino books to my TWIN boys because I used to have to read them EVERY night to their big brother back when I just had one child. In fact, I still have these books memorized! I highly recommend Dinosaur Roar. When you read each page in a different voice it makes it even that much more fun!

Sandra Boynton is one of our all time favorite authors so of course we would love her dinosaur book. Again, funny voices are a must.

An hour doesn't go by that these two aren't playing trains. Mommy was proud of this track. Why is building those things like the hardest geometry puzzle ever?

And why can't I be rich enough to have an entire room devoted to train track......

We even took some time to watch Dinosaur Train on PBS Kids. Sissy helped them play the games. They thought they were big boys getting to be on the laptop!

Another great part of our new school room is a place on the wall to hang their work. They were so excited to see their work hung and tripped over each other to be the first to show Daddy when he got home!

I made up a silly little song for them to sing, but they ate it up. It especially seem to really help Will who sang it for everyone he met! Ignore my singing and focus on their cuteness!

Aren't they cute?

You're probably thinking my children are perfect little genius angels (haha-sarcasm here!).

So, in order to keep it real, here's my absolute favorite picture of the week:

Yeah, he gets that from his Daddy- hee hee!

Make sure to go over to Carissa's blog to see what others are up to.

Here are all the bookds we used. Hopefully, this will help me remember what we have when we revisit D next year!

Amazon.com Widgets

Fun in the Box...

2011-01-20T22:01:00.000-08:00

One of my all-time favorite homeschooling resource, Homeschool Share, added a section for workbox activities call 'Workboxables'. I printed these off and my game girl loved them. These were actually easy peasy reviews for her. I was just interested in finding out if she remembered what a quadrilateral is since we haven't worked on them this year. She absolutely did and didn't miss a single one:

This was another really easy one of counting by twos, but since we hadn't done it in a while I always like to make sure it's sticking in that cute little head of hers. It is:)

I love the free resources on this website and that I can print and go!

History Fair...

2011-01-18T21:50:00.000-08:00

In addition to our world history studies, we are also studying Tennessee history. This is something we plan on studying off and on all year and especially this summer when we can go on the tons of great field trips available.

Our wonderful local homeschool support group hosts a history fair each year. We decided we should show off what we had learned about our great state. The kids were very excited to do a diorama of their favorite event from TN history. We got together with another family and got to creating.

Ashton chose to create Ruby Falls where we had gone a few months before (and by we I mean they went with their while I stayed above ground since I am horribly claustrophobic). She did this absolutely on her own:

Jackson made Fort Nashborough where we took our first field trip to:

They all made the paper irises (state flower of TN) like I always made with my 4th grade classes:

Ashton's was especially beautiful:
I have to say, I was very proud of our display and how much they had accomplished in such a short time. They had their leaves they collected for a leaf project. I traced their bodies and they turned them into characters from Tennessee history. Mags was the amazing Nancy Ward, Ashton was a world famous opera singer I'd never heard of, and Jackson was not surprisingly Andrew Jackson. They had to research their person and write an acrostic poem telling facts about them as well.

They did lovely watercolor paintings of different state symbols. With our aunt's help Ashton sewed the flag all by herself. She was so proud it had to be our centerpiece.

The kids also all chose to dress up. Ashton used clothes from my old reenacting days to be a little girl from the Civil War era. Maggie was Nancy Ward. Jackson was a cute Davy Crockett and was a fountain of knowledge about him since we watched the old Disney movie!

The best part was watching them tell others about what they'd learned. They would talk everyone's ear off! I was astonished at all they remembered.

These events are always so wonderful. It is so gratifying to see so many children in love with learning!

Christmas Fun...

2010-12-23T09:34:00.000-08:00

As usual I had many more Christmas activities planned than we could ever get to, but next year, right??? I did finally get the kids their own nativity set which was really neat. They enjoyed this Playmobile one.

I was excited to do a sensory box when I found the shiny red and silver stuffer at the dollar store. Then I hid lots of ornaments from the dollar store in there. However, that stuff is packed in there tight and it was hard to find anything in there. Lesson learned, less is more :)

Ashton had them cover their eyes while she hid the ornaments in the sensory box. How cute is Spiderman here?

He used his Spidey senses to get him a good one!

Oh, sensory bins are they always messy?

Carissa had some good printouts for Christmas marble painting. For some crazy reason I couldn't put my hands on any marbles. Not even the Hungry, Hungry Hippos came through for me! So, we used one of our Magneatos making it giant marble painting.

I really wanted to do one since it looked so fun.

My crafty girl has never met a craft she didn't like:

Oh, the concentration:

Next step, Mommy cuts out the tree and then on to glue and glitter-

Glitter glitter everywhere:

We have always had the tradition of making reindeer food since this guy was little and didn't have hands as big as mine! This is the year he stopped believing (although he told me not to tell him any more) so I was very excited he wanted to still participate.

We did this on Christmas Eve Eve so girl of course was getting her hair did.

This was the twins' first time to make reindeer food. They loved it.

We're all about antlers in this household:

Didn't he do a great job?

Will thought it was "punny".

We always feed the reindeer on our way out to Christmas at Grandmother's.These boys were serious about making sure Rudolph got fed:
Let the rest of the Christmas fun begin!

Masking Fun...

2010-11-03T12:50:00.000-07:00

So glad God sent me twins so Jackson and Ashton would each have a partner to craft with. I picked up these fun masks for them to paint. My little stinker:

Apparently, Will chose to read while Jackson did his painting:

There something so perfect about having all 4 of my kids around the kitchen table working. We love homeschooling!

Fall Sensory Bin...

2010-10-19T22:35:00.000-07:00

After another fun trip to the dollar store (it's so wrong how much I love that place!) I found this leaf dish, fake leaves plus some tongs. They picked the leaves up by the stem with the tongs and put them in the dish. They all enjoyed this: Then I got brave and broke out the fall sensory bins. One is filled with corn and the other with black beans. I had different fall things like pumpkins hidden in them. All 4 kids played well over an hour with this which is a miracle in itself. They didn't make as big a mess as they did last year, but I still sat there and picked spilled ones up the entire time before it got out of hand :)

I had also hidden Halloween foam stickers in there for them to find. Will was a big fan:

Unfortunately, he loved them so much he wanted to wear them as tattoos:

Wesley was all about the pouring, and quite excited by it too:

He also worked diligently with his tongs:

These were a lot of fun. I'm really convicted to do more sensory bins. I adore anything that gets them all playing and using their imaginations. I've seen so many great ideas out there in blogland that I can't wait to try some more. Plus, that means I get to go back to the dollar store, right???

Science Fair Crawfish Edition...

2010-08-30T13:13:00.000-07:00

Our wonderful homeschool group had a science fair and we decided to study crawfish for it. We decided this because we had been playing in the creek with our friends the Parrishes and the kids were really into catching them. They even found some really cool pregnant ones! They had lots of questions about them so we decided to study them.

My kids live for science and history fair days!
Some of the things we studied and included on our board were:

1. a graph of a survey of what people call them: crawfish, or crawdad

2. poem about them

3. scientific drawing of them

4. pictures we took of the ones we caught

5. research reports by each kid on different topics, for example: food, habitat, body parts, reproduction, etc.

6. an acrostic poem

7. a drawing

I love watching the kids show other kids their reports. It amazed me how interested they are in learning about other kids' reports and asking so many questions.

We did this with the Parrishes (Maggie got sick that day.) and even brought in some crawfish to show off:

Days like this reinforce why I homeschool and are such a blessing!

My New Schoolroom...

2010-08-25T14:29:00.000-07:00

I finally decided I needed to just embrace the fact we're homeschoolers and turn our dining room into a schoolroom. And yes, you can see all this as soon as you walk in my front door. This is our reality though. We love having our schoolroom here. Before the twins would be locked in here while we were across the gate working in the kitchen which made them crazy and had me hopping the gate like a jumping horse :)

So I bought these great white cubbies and can store so much in them. The centerpiece is the great school table I got such a great deal on. The twins love it being in here as well because they drive their cars around and around and around!

This is Jackson's side. We use the great boxes as our workboxes. On the shelves we keep clip boards and our three ring binders we use for Galloping the Globe and copywork.

This is Ashton's side with her 12 boxes, mini office and copywork binder.
The twins sit right across from the table at their little table. We use this table all the time for schoolwork and those naughty meals we eat in the living room.
This is the bookshelf I bought with the school table. I have it organized with Jackson and Ashton's separate book and on the back are our unit study books.

This is my favorite part. I keep all their workbooks right there within arms reach. It has made us be much neater as we can both just reach right behind us to replace them. The shelves are just tall enough that the twins can't reach the markers and pencils on top- thank goodness! The red bins at the bottom have a lot of math manipulatives and center materials in them.

This is my other favorite spot. This is Tot School central. These shelves are ideal for their tot trays. They can choose to work at their table which is close, on the little carpet or sitting in their cute chairs.

I had to include this picture because it shows where most of our "teaching" has been occurring lately :) I was always anti-mini potty. I figured you might as well teach them to use the real potty from the get go. Then I started potty training twins and spent the first two days taking one or the other over the gate to the potty all day- literally! Then I decided they needed one their size and easily accessible. Plus I love that they have their books right behind them.

I happen to have a super supportive and handy husband who listened to my pleas for more storage space for school materials. He moved my washer and drier from the laundry room right off the kitchen to upstairs in our bedroom closet. It has been wonderful because I don't have to carry all our laundry downstairs and then back up. Plus, now I have an amazing amount of storage.

This is my new wireless printer (more awesome handy husband!), teaching books, science supplies, Play-Doh bin, orange bin for oversize Tot School stuff and the purple bin for things I am hoping to make into tot tools.

The best part is the 6 rolling drawers I was able to put where the washer and drier had been. They are STUFFED. They hold office supplies, art supplies, extra workbooks and tons of center supplies.

This used to be used for workboxes and now is on overflow space which also houses my beloved laminator!

We also have a world map that goes with Galloping the Globe. I was so glad to be able to move our bookshelf downstairs from Jackson's closet. It is much more convenient. I adore this bookshelf because my beloved grandfather built it for me as a child. Now it is two shades of blue because we painted it to match Jackson's old Blue's Clue's room and I can't bring myself to repaint it!

I am ridiculously excited about how organized these books are. Some are by author and some are by subject, but I know where everything is which is a small miracle.

This is the other side of my laundry room which is also my pantry. My husband installed all these shelves (this post is beginning to be an ode to him isn't it!). This makes me laugh because you know you're a homeschooler if your pantry has more school stuff than food! Only the third shelf has food on it :)I finally have a good place to store all our board games. They are even sorted by age. I'm hoping this encourages us to play them more. We all love to play games and I have no idea why we never seem to :(

Now we move back into the living room. We have a very good sized closet in there that I claimed for Tot School supplies. I have all our tot toys on the top 3 shelves because I only get them out during school time.

These are the bottom shelves which house their every day toys.

So, as you can see, it's a good thing I embraced that this is the house of homeschoolers because it is obviously taking over the house like it or not! In the interest of full disclosure my house is never this neat. I was part of a homeschool room tour my local homeschool support group did so I cleaned up for them and knew I better snap pictures while the opportunity was there!

Just wanted to share our space!

Free Goodies...

2010-08-23T19:36:00.000-07:00

We have just started using Amanda Bennett's Download-N-Go units to supplement our studies. We are starting with Davy Crockett to compliment our TN history studies. Then we'll be doing Seashells before our trip to the beach. Ashton requested that one and Pizza. Jackson requested to study Benjamin Franklin and Amelia Earhart. The units are nice because everything is already done for you including internet links and videos. They also have a lapbook ready to go. I don't print everything (that would be hundreds of pages). I make a folder for them on my laptop, and they read through it on the computer rather than me printing a hard copy. That way when they get to a part that has an internet link they just have to click on it and go. They are fun supplements and cover a wide range of topics. I can't wait until we do Ireland! Did I mention they are really affordable too?

I plan on posting what we do with them in more detail as we work our way through them.

But this post is to tell you that you can get a FREE download of Expedition Mexico here. I hope you enjoy it, but hurry because it ends August 27th.

Tot School Prep...

2010-08-19T02:13:00.000-07:00

My summer goal was to have some Tot School activities prepped and ready to roll. That way when my crazy, busy teaching 4 kids life rolls around, all I would have to do is grab something out of the pocket and be ready to roll. Plus, I got to use my laminator and it's always a fun day when I get to use my laminator :)

One of the things I always seem to let slip by are holidays. The holidays sneak up on me and I have nothing fun prepared. That happened to me at Easter, and I was so upset with myself because there are so many great Tot School Easter activities out there I felt like it was a wasted opportunity. So, I went ahead and printed all the great Easter freebies at Confessions of a Homeschooler (love, love, love that blog and all her awesome printables!).

I put my printer into overdrive, wore out some scissors and had my laminator smoking. Then I bagged each separate activity into cute little bags so it's be ready to roll come Easter. How's that for preplanning?

Then I had some more fun in Walmart's office supply department. I bought this expandable file folder in 3 different colors. This is now my holiday and theme folder. I'm working on printing activities for holidays as well as different themes I think the twins might enjoy like trains, farms or baseball. I also dream of making files for book studies including activities and crafts (I plan on starting with The Very Hungry Caterpillar next time I have free time-haha!).

My main accomplishment this summer was getting letter of the week activities ready, A-E at least. Again, I printed most of these from Erica's great blog. I'm so excited to start working on a letter a week with the twins. Some of the things I printed and prepared the boys might not quite be ready for, but I plan on using these for the next few years. I'll warn you that doing all this requires an investment in printer ink, but since it's free otherwise it makes it worth it. In fact, Jon and I decided to buy a Kodak printer since their ink is so much cheaper. I've printed and prepared A-E, and it's so thick with all the different activities that my nice file folder holder barely fastens! I'm going to have to get several more by the time I make it through the letter Z.

My kitchen table looked like this for a while, but it was fun. I have also scoured all my favorite blogs and preschool sites to find crafts that go along with the theme for each letter. I copied a picture of each craft I wanted to make and put them all into an alphabet document. For example, this week we started with the letter D for dinosaur so I found some fun dinosaur crafts to make with the boys. For some of them I went ahead and gathered the supplies for the crafts and added them to my letter D file.

It was so great this week when I was running around like crazy to just grab my D folder and start working with the boys. We had so much fun. In my file I also copied songs and rhymes to sing with the boys, but this time I made up my own "Dinosaur Starts with D Song". I've seen those blogs where people tape themselves singing songs and share. That is never going to happen here! You'll just have to trust me it was cute :)

I also have another folder for color, shape and number activities. They are also all things I've found for free on different blogs. For numbers, shapes and colors I intend to just pull out one or 2 activities here and there to go along with the letter activities.

I have to say I'm pretty proud of my organization which isn't always true with me :)

I only did the letters A-E to make sure the boys enjoyed the activities before I did them all. If this week is any indication, my only regret is that I didn't print and prepare more letters already.

Twin Tot School #20...

2010-08-15T11:10:00.000-07:00

Will and Wesley are 36 months old.

This is the first time in several week that I have set out their trays as we have been taking a break from schooling and have been so busy! It felt so good to be getting back to our normal routine. It's also pretty neat because I can see how far Will and Wesley have come since we first started Tot School. Their attention span has greatly improved (especially for Will, Wesley was always fairly good at concentrating on one task). I've been working hard at making some new things for Tot School and am looking forward to working on them soon.

Although we've had this toy since Christmas, this is really the first time the boys worked on screwing the different pieces together (although you can see that Wesley was also using his car as a hammer):

This Melissa and Doug spelling puzzle is probably both of their top two toys right now (if you don't count any and all things Lightning McQueen!). It is really helping them with their letters too although they are all lower case and we have really only worked on the upper case.

This was just a quick thing I pulled together for them to practice using a dropper with colored water:

I love this picture of Jackson and Will working so sweetly together:

It was also fun to do on a paper towel:

I printed this shape wheel from Carissa's blog. You're supposed to use clothes pins with the shapes on them but I haven't gotten around to making those yet :)

I had a VERY rare minute alone with Will and wanted to see what shapes he knew. So we used Ashton's little Barbie dog he was playing with. I'd say, "Take the doggie to the octagon" and he'd do it. He loved using the dog and I loved how many shapes he knew!

Topping mine and the boys list of their favorite tot toys are definitely Automoblox minis. They got this set for Christmas and they are awesome. They can make tons of different combinations of cars and there's actually enough for both of them to be happy!

Then they spend the rest of the day driving them around and around the school table :)

That was our week as we begin to get back in our normal routine. Head over to Carissa's blog to see what other things are happening in Tot School.

Crazy Hair Days...

2010-07-09T14:15:00.000-07:00

My kids went to a local VBS, and of course they had to have dress up days (not my favorite) but the kids were excited. We tried our best to empty Ashton''s hair bow container!

I was expecting her to get tired of them and none to return home, but she was happy for the time being.

Jackson used this as an excuse to sport the haircut he wishes he could have everyday:

My dear migraine suffering carpool friend did a pretty great job on her kids- even giving one a real mohawk!!! (It was later just turned into a short summer style.)

Ladies and gentlemen may I present the award winning "Best Crazy Hair" out of like 700 kids!!!

Ahhhh, crazy hair. Good times, good times....

Twin Tot School #19...

2010-07-04T14:10:00.000-07:00

Will and Wesley are 34 months old.

We have been so unbelievably busy since summer started there hasn't been much school of any kind. However, it was fun hanging out with just the twins while the big kids were at summer camp. We went shopping and found a really cheap Cars game. Since they are currently obsessed with that movie we had to have it. Here they are playing their first board game:

To be honest it didn't last too long, but it will eventually be great for teaching numbers and colors.

We are loving our magnetic pom poms! They are pompoms I hot glued small round magnets to the back of. I got the idea from this great blog. There are tons of free printables to use with them.

Plus, it's easy to make enough for 2 tots to do at once-score!

They still like their Mickey Mouse color matching though it is really easy for them now. I've been meaning to make one with secondary colors....

We also played Hullabaloo for the first time. Wesley really got it. Will loved running from space to space!

But mostly our time is devoted to this:
However, it's not going so well as you can see by this picture where Wesley was begging me to put a diaper on him :(
So, there will be a lot more potty training in our future and hopefully more Tot Schooling thrown in along the way. Check out what lots other tots are doing at Carissa's blog!

Fact Practice...

2010-06-23T14:06:00.000-07:00

We are drilling some major addition and multiplication facts around here this summer. I found this idea to make it a little more fun on one of my new favorite blogs, Confessions of a Homeschooler. I had them start at the top of the stairs. Then I held up a flashcard (addition for A and multiplication for J) and if they got it right they could move down a step. First one to the bottom wins. As you can see here Jackson was ahead, but Ashton actually ended up winning:

This was a little more fun than regular drill. I was pleased to discover that they knew their facts better than I thought they did, but we have lots more fun drills coming!

Fun in the Box #16...

2010-06-11T10:37:00.000-07:00

Why just do math worksheets when you can make it a little more fun. I save every milk cap that enters this house (which is a lot because we are a milk drinking, cereal eating family of 6). There are so many things you can do with them. For this workbox I wrote the numbers 1-9 twice and placed them in a bucket. Jackson was working on 3 digit subtraction so I took a piece of notebook paper and went ahead and drew the problems with blanks. By doing this he knew how many he had to do, how many digits, and it lined them up for him. Notice the paper is turned sideways. This is a great trick I learned teaching 4th grade. The lines on the notebook paper act as guides to help them keep their numbers lined up. That alone eliminates most mistakes kids make when writing their own problems.

Jackson had to draw out 6 caps which became his problems.

I recommend telling them they have to write the numbers down as they draw them for the top but allow them to rearrange the lower numbers to make sure the bottom number is smaller than the top (another important skill!).

This is also obviously great for addition as well. We'll probably soon use it for multiplication too since that is our summer focus!

Fun in the Box #15...

2010-06-10T13:27:00.000-07:00

I was looking for a better way to have the kids practice their spelling words. I adapted an idea Jackson's 1st grade teacher used- spelling tic-tac-toe. I made a grid with 5 rows and 5 columns then filled them with every fun study-your-spelling-words activities I could think of. Some examples are: rainbow write your words (write in different colors), write silly sentences using your words, spell words using letter magnets, play Spell City, ABC order, etc. They get to choose what activities to do, but it has to result in a tic-tac-toe with 5 across, down or diagonal. They color in the box when they completed it. I tried to mix up types of activities they would have to do to get a tic-tac-toe like writing, moving, art or computer. That way they get a good mix of fun, serious, quick and longer. They loved it. It was way more fun than the traditional ABC Monday, 3 times each Tues., etc. Most importantly, any time you give your kids choice they buy into the activity much more. When they feel in charge they are much more into it which equals less fussing by mom! This is also a perfect workbox activity.

One choice was an activity I got on the A-Z Reading website when they had a free trial :)

They reach into the bag. They have to do whatever the cards they draw tell them to like "write a sentence with your word about a funny monkey" or "write a sentence with your word about a lollipop eating hippo". You wouldn't believe how much they enjoyed this, especially Ashton. You could easily type up some silly directions like this. For some reason drawing something out of a bag makes it more fun as well. I wonder if it would work for chores?

The only change I'm considering making is maybe going from 5 across to 4 or maybe even 3. That would give us Friday free for testing and maybe Monday for an introduction lesson.

I hope you can use this for spelling fun. I;m trying to think of how it can be adapted to some other subjects, hmmmm.........

Crafting It Old School...

2010-06-09T21:37:00.000-07:00

The kids had both just finished reading books they had been working on. In my ongoing quest to brainwash them that reading is fun (because it haunts me that I have sadly failed in that area!) I wanted a project they could do to present their books. We had just bought shoes. I always hesitate to throw them out trying my best to come up with something they could be used for. Then the idea of a diorama hit me. How many dioramas did I make in my day? I loved every one of them. So, for this project we kicked it old school style with the classic diorama. They ate it up and worked on it for hours. I got a shower, quiet time, did some laundry came down and they were still working. Of course, it cost me a lot of paper, foam and pipe cleaners but what are they for anyway. Then Ashton tried the trick of secretly pushing it all into one of Jackson's workboxes when I told her to clean it up :)

I was truly amazed with their creativity. Making a 3-D project requires a little more engineering which Jackson enjoyed. He had just read The Boxcar Children and showed their campsite in the woods around the boxcar. As far as a reading assessment goes, this worked great. I saw that he had really read and retained lots of details from the book. Plus I got to throw in fun terms like setting and character when admiring it!

I loved the pipe cleaner tree trunk. The clothesline was a nice touch as well.

Ashton had read Junie B. Jones Aloha-ha. I thought it was clever that they put on a lid and handle.

She felt bad that hers wasn't quite as 3-D as Jackson's, but I thought it was good. People would've been a lot harder to make 3-D. She showed the scene with the inter tube in the store. Notice the quote she added (another good literary term).

They showed these to everyone. This is definitely a project we will repeat. I guess I have to go shoe shopping :)

In My Happy Place...

2010-06-09T20:16:00.000-07:00

We are on a short summer break. I have a new cheaper ink printer. I bought some fun organizing thing. My house is clean (for me anyway). My kids are attending VBS with friends this week (they're gone from 7-1!) and next week they'll be at summer camp from 8-5 each day. What does all this equal? Planning time!

There's something you need to know about me. I'm a planning junkie! There's not much else I'd rather be doing. Now that we are on a break I should probably be relaxing or scrapbooking or something, but instead I am planning for next year. It is great.

I am determined to get lots of stuff planned, printed, cut, ordered, and organized before school starts. Once we are in the full swing of things, I never have time to do all those things well enough. I am so tired of treading water in our school i.e. scrambling around that morning figuring out what is next. I know it's impossible to plan too specifically (for us anyway) but I can get the broad strokes prepared.

So, here's what I've been doing that I'll be sharing more about later:

1. Ordering the next needed books in our curriculum. I love the feeling of knowing a box is going to show up on your porch at any minute!

2. Ordering two new highly recommended history curriculum: Story of the World and Mystery of History. I plan to use them together.

3. Planning fun crafts and getting the supplies together. I love this website: No Time for Flashcards

4. Helping the kids come up with some fun summer topics they are interested in studying. I've just ordered some Download N Go units they each chose. I just got them, but they are really looking promising.

5. I'm finding some great Tot Tools to make at Tired, Need Sleep that I want to make starting with a felt board. I'm hoping the big kids can help make some for some crafting-avoid-the-TV-fun.

6. I'm writing my own TN history curriculum to use with the big kids.

7. Most of all, I've been printing, cutting, and laminating an amazing free letter curriculum I found at one of my favorite blogs, Confessions of a Homeschooler. Did I mention it is free???

Now I'll just have to pull some activities for Tot School out of my organized file folder and school will be on! Priceless!

What a fun week, although my printer would probably like a break. Sleep is overrated anyway...

MIA Me...

2010-06-08T20:04:00.000-07:00

I have been gone for so long from my blog, and it has made me very sad. Blogging is in my top 3 hobbies (with scrapbooking and reading!), and it has been awful being unable to find the time to blog. Life this last half of the year has been really...interesting. Actually, it was mostly December through February that were so hard. Since then I've been trying to recover! Lots of things made those months hard. We hit the typical homeschooling slump being a year in and stuck in the house in those dreary winter months. Majorly contributing to that was having 2 2 year olds hitting the "terrible twos" with a violent vengeance. They fought, bit, hit, escaped from the house, drew on the walls. and destroyed the place. On the upside, they were really cute doing it! About February Will in particular really began to be able to communicate a lot better and most of his head banging fits stopped which relieved a lot of my "my child is going to be brain damaged stress" from my life. Which, trust me, was a lot of stress!

Any way, we are doing much better now and enjoying our short summer break. It's short because we have some lost ground to make up from those rough months :)

So, here I am again and hoping everyone hasn't given up reading this blog! I've got lots of catching up to do. Now the kids are in bed and the hubby is out of town- time to get blogging!

Field Trip and Flooding...

2010-06-06T12:48:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of the year we planned to go see Charlotte's Web at the Nashville Children's Theatre (an awesome place). Then Nashville flooded. Everything seemed to be shut down. I figured there was no way we were going to get to see the play even though it was about 5 days after the flood. But apparently "the show must go on" even though you had to use a porta potty! I'm glad it wasn't cancelled because it was one of the best plays we've ever seen there.

Since we were in Nashville, we had to drive around to see some of the historic flooding.

We were amazed at how much water the pumps were continuously pumping up from underneath the big buildings:

This is the Country Music Hall of Fame. We watched as they started pulling seats out. I really need to bring the kids here. It is great.

It was amazing to see all of the water and know this was almost a week later. I hope the kids will remember this big event one day and glad we got to witness a bit of it. We really had some great conversations about all the people effected and what a tragedy it was. What upset them the most (Ashton was literally crying) was seeing the damage it did to our church. Still they got to witness the great Tennessee Volunteer spirit as everyone poured out to help their neighbor. Made us proud to be Tennesseans!

Twin Tot School #18...

2010-05-02T17:59:00.000-07:00

Wesley and Will are 33 Months Old

It has been eons since I have posted in Tot School. I have really missed it, but my life has been so overwhelming that there was definitely no time for blogging. Even our Tot School time has suffered as Mommy was so overwhelmed. Let's just say that the "terrible twos" times 2 is...challenging :)

Any way, we're back this week. I haven't even gotten to share all the awesome tot tools they received for Christmas (thanks to Mommy offering to shop for for grandparents, great grandparents and aunts- sneaky huh?). This Melissa and Doug cupcake set is a huge hit! They both love playing with this and the pizza one. Doesn't Wesley look happy to be celebrating somebody's birthday?

They also like Melissa and Doug's dress up Joey. I made the mistake of leaving him out and have been finding his clothes everywhere (just like everyone else's clothes in this family-grrr!). Their favorite outfit is to dress him like a superhero because they think his Super Why!
They are now using their car rug and love driving their cars on it. They are becoming full fledged little boys now and their cars are their favorite toys in the world.

We just moved our schoolroom into our dining room (another post I'm behind on), and the twins had to work at the table and be big like bro and sis:

These peg toys by Laurie are always our go to tot tool. If you can only get one or two toys I highly recommend these as even my big kids love them too. They are so versatile.

We broke out our new Melissa and Doug (I'm pretty sure???) lacing beads. I love the colors on these. I also love how sweet Jackson was to help them:

Girl (that is what Wesley calls Ashton- we love it!) is a beading expert helped Will make an awesome necklace:

My little poser was happy to model it. He is going to be the one to love dress up as he is already into capes and anything his sister dresses him in :)

I am amazed at how good these boys are at cutting. I don't think I would have thought to let them cut at their age if their siblings hadn't left them where they could reach them. They are really good at them, thank goodness!

They are also really good at finger painting. Again, I remain so amazed at how fast they are growing up!

I don't think anyone has to "teach" their child to do the ole' leg hold. Why is it that all kids do this? Will is a big fan. I have always called him my little monkey because when I carry them both downstairs after nap I always have to pick Wesley up first with my strongest arm since he weighs so much more. That meant Will always had to hold on like a little monkey! As you can see, he's very good at holding onto things :)

I am so happy to be back at Tot School! Please check out Carissa's blog to see what others are up to.

I Don't Know Why Jackson Can Never Get His Work Done...

2010-05-02T17:55:00.000-07:00

Fun in the Box #14...

2010-03-25T20:26:00.000-07:00

I wanted to give Jackson a challenge with money. I gave him a bag of coins and on index cards I wrote different problems like, "Make $1.21 using 7 coins."

He enjoyed it and did a good job. He loves logic type puzzles that he has to figure out, just like his mommy!

Dollar Store Centers #9...

2010-03-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

I loved all the cake and cupcake bulletin board cut outs from the dollar store and have made several centers from them. Ashton needed to work on even and odd. It amazes me how she will do anything presented like a game like this without a word of complaint!

She got everyone of them right! Even and odd, check!

How to Clean a Penny...

2010-03-25T15:56:00.000-07:00

Part of our Disney fun was making those souvenir pennies so we wanted to make sure they were nice and shiny. We decided to make it a science experiment. We searched through our pennies and found equally dirty ones so they'd start on equal footing. We tried cleaning pennies in Salt, vinegar, mustard, ketchup and milk. First, we all predicted which one we thought would clean the best. Which one do you think would?

Nothing beats messy science!

They loved this and wanted to keep trying more and more things from around the house!

Can you tell which one got it the shiniest?

I predicted vinegar, but it was in fact ketchup! How cool is that? Of course, it has vinegar in it and also the acid from tomatoes. We all thought that was too cool!

I SO need to do more experiments like this...

Thanksgiving Reader's Theater...

2010-03-02T20:32:00.000-08:00

In an answer to prayer we have found a wonderful family to do homeschooling activities together! It really makes homeschooling more fun, not just for the kids but for the mommies as well.

Our first official unit was a Pilgrim study. I was telling them about how little room they had on the Mayflower, so I taped off a small rectangle and gave them each huge pillows to represent their belongings. They had to stay inside the tape the entire lesson. If they crossed it they "fell overboard". Sweet Kim even had activities planned for the twins as well. As you can tell, they loved them!
How sweet is she to let them make such a mess! Sweet and crazy I guess- hee hee!

Definitely crazy...

She was Tot Schooling her 3 before it the term was even around. She had them some great beads to string:

I wrote a Thanksgiving Reader's Theater with parts for all the kids. This is at rehearsal during the prayer scene- how sweet! They decided to circle up and pray together like that.
Wesley was definitely cut out to play a little indian, although he wouldn't cooperate during the actual performance.

How funny is this little boy?

I thought Jackson did outstanding on his painting- of a deer and hunter, of course!

Kim helped the kids cook a delicious meal. Then it was time to perform for our very special audience- the daddies!

They are very good at the bowing part:

This is what homeschooling is all about and was incredibly fun, for all of us!

Geography, Check...

2010-01-12T13:50:00.000-08:00

Today for Ashton's reading lesson we read a poem about different kind of houses. For the follow up question I asked her what kind of place do you think they live in if they live in tents and it is very sandy. I was expecting a very general answer of desert. Instead she said, "Kazakhastan" and proceeded to tell all about life in Kazakhastan. I was very impressed. I'm going to be honest and admit that until recently I didn't even know that country existed. I would obviously love to take credit for this knowledge, but I have to give full credit to her wonderful missions teacher at church. Thank you Mrs. Deanna!

Twin Tot School #17...

2010-01-02T19:48:00.000-08:00

Wesley and Will are 29 months old.

It has been a long time since I have posted because with the holidays and life we've just been too busy, but we are glad to be back in the swing of things!

The boys both get very excited over making crafts these days. When we pick them up from Sunday School they show us and then everyone else they see their pictures saying, "I made. I made." It is so cute! On this day they used their dot painters to "made" some great pieces of art:

See these proud smiles!

When they first started these 3 piece puzzles they needed help, but now they are rocking them. It's amazing how fast they learn.

Will is diligently working his puzzle, but I love the little feet sticking out straight out!

We broke the good ole' Aquadoodle out. I think big bro and sis liked it more than the boys!

Wesley is all about how high he can stack the pegs. Look at that face, I think he surprised himself!

This is one of their first ever Tot School toys and now they can do several all on their own. Now we need to work on the names of these shapes- one of this semesters' goals.

When you have access to all these great trays, why not use them for your breakfast?

This was the tallest I've ever been able to build this tower before they knowcked it over. They even named several animals and we talked about the letters as we built it.

Don't my 2 little famers look intent?
Of course, some things never change. Like this look on his face when he knocks a tower down:

There's a few of our activities we've been up to lately. For more great Tot School posts, head over to Carissa's blog!

Gingerbread Fun...

2009-12-19T16:12:00.000-08:00

We went to our homeschooling group's Christmas even- gingerbread houses. These were not the graham cracker glued to a milk carton that we have done before. We had a wonderful mom who literally baked for days to make these beautiful REAL houses. Then we spent hours decorating them and could have spent longer we were having so much fun!

It was amazing to watch how creative they were. Their final creations were absolutely beautiful:

(Ashton's on the left.)

Of course, my kids really just came for these 2:

Ah, young love...

This was yet another day that makes me so grateful God allows me to homeschool.

Astronaut Training...

2009-11-30T11:57:00.000-08:00

We finished our unit on space and decided to have a mini celebration and eat our astronaut ice cream we bought at the space center. Dehydrated ice cream had everyone a little puzzled:

and it tasted about as good as it looked!

Will wasn't sure, but he braved through it since mommy was offering him sweets!

I've mentioned before that both boys,but especially Wesley, are space obsessed! He also likes showing off for the camera lately so here he is showing his "pace" ice cream:

We all kind of gagged and choked our way through the 3 flavors (some of us anyway- others refused after the first disgusting bite!):

Will bravely tried the strawberry:

We all laughed and laughed because as much as the rest of us hated the nasty stuff, guess who begged for more and more????

Now we KNOW he is definitely going to be an astronaut when he grows up since he can obviously handle the dehydrated food, as long as he doesn't inherit mommy's claustrophobia...

Fun in the Box #13...

2009-11-22T10:40:00.000-08:00

As part of our "mappin' Mondays" we were learning about reading grids. We looked at some maps and did some worksheets practicing our grid reading skills. To make it more fun I also made this grid reading game. They rolled dice I modified- 1 with a free space over the number 6 and 1 with the letters A-E and a free space. Then they located that square on the grid. Before they could mark that spot (with a penny or dime) they had to follow the silly directions on their square. The directions were things like "walk like a monkey, touch your toes to your nose" or "do the chicken dance".

Skill wise, it was a bit easy because they really got the grid reading. However, they loved it and kept begging to play again!

Galloping the Globe Notebook...

2009-11-16T08:32:00.000-08:00

As we gallop the globe we needed a notebook to record our travels. I printed this cover off the Galloping the Globe Yahoo group.

We spent so much time on China we made a lapbook of all we learned. I used several resources from Homeschool Share. We won't do this for every country. My goal is to make 1 lapbook per continent. I simply punched holes through the file folder in order to put it in the binder. We did mini books on several topics like Mt. Everest,counting to 10 in Chinese, Chinese picture book summaries, the Great Wall, emperors, and basic facts about China.
I also googled images of the money and printed a few on cardstock.

The cover has their name in Chinese, the flag, and a paper doll dressed in Chinese fashion from Making Friends.

Here's the boy version :)

The back cover also has their Draw, Write Now pages and summaries they did after reading The Story of Ping. Behind the lapbook we included our notebooking pages. We use the great country info and Children Just Like Me notebooking pages from Jolanthe.

This is Ashton's version where she writes "he goot a sackne" translation: he got a spanking!

That is our 1st country in. We will add other countries in behind and divide them with tabbed dividers. We're enjoying our trips so far!

Fun in the Box #12...

2009-11-15T10:38:00.000-08:00

This is what the kids found in their box today:

I put lots of random items in the box and a paper folded in half with 4 flaps cut. They each had to secretly pick 4. On top of each flap they had to write 3 adjectives that described the 4 different items they had chosen. Underneath the flap they drew a picture of their item. Lastly, they took turns reading each other their 3 adjectives to see if they could guess what they chose. Then they lifted the flap to show the picture to see if they were right!

They did well and had fun. We also practiced labeling our adjectives with our chant "What kind? Which one? Hooooooowwwww many?"

Fun (Almost) in the Box #11...

2009-11-14T11:51:00.000-08:00

Today the kids found this Little People house on their school table. Today's lesson was prepositions. I remember being taught in school they were anything a mouse could do to a house. So, ours became anything this bird could do to this little house. They worked together and Jackson recorded all the prepositions they found. I did have to give some hints and tell them to think of opposites. They really found a lot.

Then I showed them a list of all the prepositions. Jackson read them and Ashton highlighted the ones they found.

I was impressed by how many they found and hope this helps them remember what a preposition is!

Candy Time...

2009-11-08T11:04:00.001-08:00

Last week we did graph our candy, and I was planning on doing some candy experiments we never got around to, but this week I am totally inspired. Head over to one of my favorite blogs and check out her awesome ideas and free printables for candy week. We'll be doing lots of these fun activities this week. I'm so excited both about learning and experimenting with candy instead of eating it!

Twin Tot School #16...

2009-11-08T10:35:00.000-08:00

Will and Wesley are 27 months old.

This wasn't technically Tot School, but I had to snap a picture of one of those beautiful moments where they are actually happily playing together! They loveLittle People almost as much as I do!

They are masters of all farm animals now. This is Wesley in the middle of making his pig noise while showing me the finger puppet. I love that Tot School makes old toys new again. I bought this farm set 8 years ago and it never gets played with until I made it part of farm week. It's amazing to me how intentionally playing with your kids can enable them to play with things on their own later, giving you time to blog:)

Will was very proud of his cat!

I have this puzzle out for weeks now. In fact, I leave it on the shelf all day. It's the first puzzle they have ever worked without any help. Mostly they love it because they think the house looks like Grandmother's house and are always showing it to me!

This was another moment where I caught them playing on their own. Wesley was feeding Will a pretend waffle. I love how they are using their imaginations so much together.

As we begin learning about zoo animals, nothing beats riding a zebra. Look at that hair go:

I was surprised to see Wesley take his toy over here to play because that is the time out corner! I have also always helped him match the animal halves up on this game. I was very surprised to see he can now do it on his own- smart boy.

I love anything Leapfrog. While I am not actively tryingto teach the boys the alphabet, they are learning that letters make sounds. This is a great toy to reinforce that as it sings the song and makes the sounds.

I got this file folder game back out because we haven't used it in months. It is matching different colored Baby Moses to same colored grasses. They did a great job except for the two shades of pink which were very tricky.

My dad's favorite snack as a child was peanut butter crackers with sugar sprinkled on top. Leave it to my daughter to glamup the traditional snack by adding pink sprinkles. I decided it would be fun to let the boys add red and blue sprinkles. They "ate" it up- hee hee!
I just got these droppers from Oriental Trading. I put a drop of blue food coloring in water in a divided bowl and showed them how to transfer the water from one side to the other. They did it then decided it would also be fun to squirt it on themselves and up in the air. As you can tell by the picture of Will's mouth this was after the peanut butter snack.
This puzzle was just more exposure to the letters as I made their sound for them as we put the pieces in.

Wesley worked dilligently at hammering for awhile. You give that boy a hammer and he'll do anything- just like his dad.

I was very excited to order these paint trays from Oriental Trading and began imagining the things we could do with them. I started with one-to-one coorespondence hoping they'd put 1 pompom in each circle. Instead, they threw them all over. Maybe next time...

I got out some foam zoo animals and my favorite divided tray. I handed them one animal at a time. They had to say its name and make its sound then sort it with other animals like it. We usually sort by color so sortingby type was new for us. They got it right away. This became this week's favorite activity, and we did it several times. They stuck with it long enough to sort about 40 animals- much more than I expected.

Again, Will loves to show me the animal. The lion was his favorite as he got to roar.
Wesley was a big fan of the kangaroo who we made jump because Mommy has no idea what and if kangaroos make a noise.

I thought it was funny that Wesley kicked back in his chair to work a puzzle so laid the pieces out for him on the arm, and he loved it.

Their favorite activity of the week was definately not one I had planned since they decided to "IEIE" (what they call writing) on my walls!!!! At least they look contrite-not!

In their sweet defense I did later catch them using their mop to try to get it off- how sweet is that?!

Apparently between picture taking and laughing I didn't properly convery the naughtiness (go figure?) because the next day I discovered Will had IE'd on his face with a pink highlighter!

When I asked him what he'd done he wouldn't look at me and tried not to smile:

I finally got him to show me his handiwork with his signature tongue stuck out:

Whew, what a week! What do tots do at the end of such a busy week? Why kick back in their recliners,of course!

I'm pretty sure Will is calling all his peeps to see what they did in Tot School:

If you want to see what all your peeps did this week in Tot School, kick back and head over to Carissa's blog!

At Least She's Retaining Something...

2009-11-06T09:22:00.000-08:00

Ashton was telling me that she was digging a hole in their new secret hide-out.

A: I have a lot of digging to do. I want to go down all the way to the magma, I mean the mantel.

Well, it's not the stereotypical China, but I'm glad to know she remembered what we studied all the way back in January!

Dollar Store Centers #8...

2009-11-03T10:33:00.000-08:00

The dollar store had this pack of the cutest little plastic boxes. I looked at them 3 different times but couldn't figure out anything to do with them. Finally, I bought them anyway:)

I wanted to do something with estimating and I remembered these boxes. I filled them with different amounts of black beans (I had them for Halloween sensory tub for the little ones.). I made a control group with 10 and 100 to show them what those look like.

I put little post its on top of each box and wrote blanks for me, J and A to make our own estimates. At the bottom was a line for the actual total. After everyone made their estimates, we divided up the boxes and counted the beans (another great math activity!).
When the numbers were higher their estimates were farther off. I think this was a great activity to get them realizing what big numbers look like.We will definitely be repeating it- maybe with candy corn, yum!

Twin Tot School #15...

2009-11-01T20:18:00.000-08:00

Will and Wesley are 26 months old.

It is sad how much I love empty Parmesan containers :)
This time I just cut bright plastic straws (or rather my mini tot teacher did!) into smaller pieces for them to put in the holes.Wesley was all about dumping them back out:

Will was pretty excited about his magnetic letters, until he dumped them in the floor :(

Ah, the Parmesan container again. This time they put in beads:

How many times have I shared this activity? They love it. It is probably their favorite tot school activity ever:

Thanks to the T-Jay dollar bin we got monster stamps. They were a B-I-G hit!

Big bro had to give some stamp tutoring and do a little stamping of his own, of course. They spent forever taking the tops on and off. That was their favorite part. You just never know :)

I made 2 October sensory tubs. One was filled with pumpkins, plastic bugs and spider rings hiding in black beans. The other was filled with Halloween shapes and cups for pouring hiding in corn. Who loved them the most? Sissy. I even found them in the bathroom one day where she had played with them while, well you know!

The bins I had them in were way too little, and they made a huge mess. I need to get a bigger and deeper bin!

To go along with farm week, we had a trip to a local pumpkin patch which had a petting zoo. Wesley was beyond excited by the goats! They stayed there petting the goats for about 30 minutes! I was pretty proud of our farm week learning because they knew right away they were goats!

They also were thrilled to milk a fake cow. This picture isn't the best because they kept milking it from behind.

Forget my little bin. They could've stayed here for hours.

When I talk to people about Tot School they always say, "My kids would make a mess." Here's my answer, "yep, but it was fun while it lasted."

Exhibit A: my floor:

Exhibit B: what was under Will's bottom:

And last, but certainly not least: Mommy's favorite of Will peeping through a hole a playset:

For more great tot fun check out Carissa's blog!

Our First Official Group Field Trip...

2009-10-27T12:20:00.000-07:00

Last year we weren't exactly what you would call involved, but this year my goal was to get involved with other homeschoolers. I think we are doing a good job and having fun at it. This was our first official field trip. We went with our group to Traveler's Rest to their trade days to see how people used to make things. I'll be honest and say that we really kind of went around on our own so so much for the involvement! We had the absolute best time though, including me!

This is the beautiful old house we got to tour. Jackson is really interested in Andrew Jackson because they share a name. It was fun to see where he stayed when he came to visit.

They had several hands on crafts. I have always wanted to know how to make a corn husk doll. They actually fairly easy.
Jackson was even able to adapt his to be a boy!

We learned a lot about bees and were able to find the queen bee. Do you know how long they live?

There was a huge group of kids watching the musket demonstration. However, after the noisy discharge only boys were left :)

I was absolutely fascinated by the soapmaking.Ashton, not so much...

We got to write with feather quills. I was awful. The kids were pretty good.

They really enjoyed getting to help do the pottery wheel. I was just sad there were so many kids so I was unable to try :(

It was freezing, but it was awesome to do something with just my 2 big kids. It is so exciting for me who as a child begged to go to every historical house in 3 counties see my kids enjoy history as well. We honestly could've stayed hours more if we could feel our extremities! In fact, they were wishing their daddy could take off and take them back the next day because they knew he would've loved the gunsmith and arrow heads. This event is something we will definitely do again. We love field trips!

Twin Tot School #14...

2009-10-26T10:28:00.000-07:00

Wesley and Will are 26 months old

I wasn't able to post last week, and I'm late this week. Let's just say we've had a lot going on!

Last week started off great with farm week. Monday I had a great setup. For the first time I was using my new trays and my new bookshelves together. All 9 were filled with farm themed activities with another couple of things on top. I was so proud!

The boys really enjoyed having so many options, and it really has helped with them not fighting over the same things. Although they still keep a close eye on what the other is into as Wesley is doing here:

One shelf had tons of farm books on it. If you haven't put books out as a tot tray you need to. I was so amazed at how much they read the books from their tray even though they were the same books they barely read when they were sitting on their bookshelf in the same room!

They were so cute on this day because they were loving chilling out in their little chairs:

Both boys are puzzle crazy now. They work puzzles all day long if I leave them out. They are so much better at puzzles than they were even a few weeks ago.

I got these great new puzzles that are matching numbers with items. The twins by no means know their numbers, so I set this up with only 3 pieces directly across from each other for them to match up.

It's wonderful to have a big sis to read to you:

This is how I planned this activity to go: we would say the colors of the balls and he would hit them:

This is how the activity actually went: he ditched the tower, he used the tray to roll the balls back in forth until one rolled off.

This is how I saved the learning: when the ball rolled off I would say, "Where is the red ball?" Then he had to tell me the color before I'd give him the ball :)

He thought it was hilarious:

Wesley's favorite part was wearing a cat mask Nana gave him and roaring at everyone until the got him:

That was the great Tot School morning they had. Then Will woke up with a fever. He had a really bad case of croup that landed us in the ER. While there he decided he didn't want the monitor on his toe. So, he removed his sock then tried to put it back on. Daddy pointed out it was a good Tot School activity so we snapped a picture on his phone:

Then the little stinker tried to put the monitor back on:

So, Tot School shut down last week as we recouped.

Last week was fall break and Daddy was on vacation. We took a trip to Huntsville to the Space and Rocket Center to culminate our space study. If you will remember that Wesley in particular is obsessed with space, you know he had the time of his life. If only I had a nickel for every time he said, "Look rocket!" "Look space!"

I love this picture because this is how he spent the day pointing his chubby little arm at all the rockets!

The boys (Daddy included) were sporting their new Superman shirts and were all adorable, even when pointing to more rockets!

They both got to ride their very own rocket! They had so much fun that we decided we should probably start a savings account since space camp is probably in their future! The best part was the entire way home Wesley spent pointing and telling us about every "rocket" he saw which were all actually cell phone towers and church steeples!

We had no official Tot School since Mommy was enjoying fall break as well, but we had lots of fun!
We rocked out:

They "helped" with laundry:

They found sister's dress up bin:

They had a little life school cleaning lessons:

They worked as a team- 1 with spray and 1 with towel:
And for Mommy's favorite:
So, there is our 2 week wrap up! Go over to Carissa's blog to see what others are doing!

Tot Tool...

2009-10-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

Ever since I saw this on Carissa's blog I have wanted to make this tot tool. I decided to make it first for my nephew since he actually likes for me to give him homework!

The picture and circles were done on my word processing program. Then I used coke tops and covered them with circles I cut out with my scrapbooking supplies. I think it looks great except for my handwriting which I have never liked :)

I love this tool and can't wait to make it for the boys!

For My MOPS Friends...

2009-10-16T12:06:00.000-07:00

I had the honor of talking to our local MOPS group about some activities they can do with their preschoolers today. It was a lot of fun, and they were a great group. I gave them a list of the blogs that I enjoy stalking, I mean checking, for new ideas. I thought I'd add links here to my favorite blogs for them and other people that have asked me.

I've talked often about how inspired I am by Carissa's blog especially with Tot School and linking up every week. She also started the Totally Tots website which has lots of great features.

I find most of my blogs from people who link up to Tot School each week. Some of my random ones I have on my favorites list are Spinner's End, Walking by the Way, No Time for Flashcards, Homeschool Creations, Letters Numbers and Books, The Activity Mom, and My Family My Forever. These are just some of the very creative mommies who really inspire me.

I also shared some Tot Books I made. There are also these other great sites with free printables: Childcare Land, File Folder Fun, and Christian Preschool Printables.

Here are the trays I had and here's some of my favorite toys.

Thanks again to the MOPS for letting me have show-and-tell today! I'd love for you to leave a comment and let me know you stopped by!

Twin Tot School #13...

2009-10-11T18:26:00.000-07:00

Will and Wesley are 26 months old

We had an exciting week here at our house. We have been raising butterflies or "bugs" as the boys call them, and it was finally time to release them. You can see how excited they both were:
They carried their oranges around offering them to the butterflies but them would get scared if they got too close!

We also went on a field trip to our local nature center. While the big kids were in their class the boys and I had lots of fun. We did some bird and squirrel watching:
We played in the log house that was just their size:
When you have a playground all to yourself you have to run:I think Will's hair is so funny!There was also this really tempting mud hole which believe it or not they stayed out of it. That is until Will was knocked into it right as we were leaving!This was also our first time to have a theme in Tot School. This week was Farm Week.

I got this great idea from another blog (I can't remember which-so sorry!). I was going to turn a jug into a pig, but Jackson decided he wanted to. He did a really good job- see the pipe cleaner piggie tail! Then they fed the pig some yummy beans!
We also worked lots of farm puzzles including this difficult block one, but Will just wanted to play blocks!
This week also included the debut of many new Tot Tools. This came from an activity swap we did. The can lids have stickers on them. They have to clip the clothespins with the matching stickers on them.

This was really their first time to use clothespins, so Wesley was pretty proud of himself!

We also used the hammer to bang in the pieces of our foam puzzle. This was a BIG hit (pardon the pun)!

Another new activity was using the tongs to transfer pompoms into these great pumpkin ice cube trays.

These boys loved this activity!

We finally finished our Parmesan so we could use the container. This time we put beans in the holes since we had them out from feeding our piggies.

Then my favorite tool was color matching pipe cleaners to holes I punched in the top of Pringles cans and surrounded by hole reinforcers colored different colors.

Big Brother helped Wesley a little, but he was still one proud little fellow!

And my favorite photo of the week- a new use for tongs:

We really had a great week, and it was wonderful to watch how proud of themselves the boys were when they accomplished something!

To check out what others did this week head over to Carissa's blog!

Fun in the Box #10...

2009-10-05T20:54:00.000-07:00

Money is definitely something that we need to work on more around here as I don't feel our math curriculum is covering it enough. What could be more fun than using some real money and setting up a pet store? I found these great pet shop cards:

This was a great activity to find out what Ashton knows and which coins and combinations she still needs help with. I think it would be fun to set up a real little store to play with money, hmmm..........

W W W Mommy...

2009-10-05T20:08:00.000-07:00

Tonight the twins and I were playing with markers and dry erase boards. I have never really tried to teach them the alphabet though they call all letters, writing, and writing utensils "IEIE". Both of them do this and must be part of that secret twin language I've always heard about though I speak it as well! Just because I can't draw, I wrote the letter W and said, "W W W Will, W W W Wesley." Will bent over with his marker, wrote something then said with a big grin, "W W W Mommy!" Maybe he doesn't have the letter thing down, but oh it was so cute!

Look Where I Was Featured....

2009-10-05T07:58:00.000-07:00

I was excited to be featured on this week's edition of Homeschool Showcase at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers (I love her blog name and her Hilary Clinton quote at the beginning!). Every couple of weeks she features great ideas from lots of different blogs. I love reading it and finding some things I can use with the kids and finding some good new blogs to stalk, I mean read! The kids were pretty excited to see our things on another blog (Ashton is taking full credit of course!). Please go check it out!

Open Ended Art...

2009-10-04T21:41:00.000-07:00

Growing by Leaps and Bounds hosts an open ended art each week. The point is to provide the kids with certain materials, but otherwise they are completely free to create what they want. September's theme was mosaics. This week was mosaics and torn/cut paper.

The kids love to see art supplies in their workboxes.

Jackson started out making the solar system (I love that even when I don't ask them to stick to a theme we are studying they still do!).

He enjoyed it so much he did a 2nd. I was really impressed with this volcano and how he used the black as part of the design.

Ashton created a butterfly complete with a grassy yard to play in!

My dream is to do artist studies with the kids and I am hoping to incorporate some of that into our Galloping the Globe curriculum. Again, I just have to find the time to get it all planned! So, for now I really enjoy the easiness and creativity this allows.

Tot School on Loan #2...

2009-10-04T14:14:00.000-07:00

J is 47 months old.

I had my nephew again some, but not as much. Then we did things that I forgot to take pictures of :( So, here is what we did. We had J week since his name starts with that letter.

This is him playing the game my sweet daughter made!

We did lots of jumping while we made the J sound. Then he used a stamp of feet and made it jump on the stamp pad and them his J paper while making the J sound.

While the big kids did some written work he joined in with his J page coloring. I think I got these from Enchanted Learning.

Can I tell you how much I love seeing this table full of kiddos learning. 5 looks really good???

Please, don't tell my husband I said that- He finally agreed to have #3 if I promised that would be all and we ended up with twins:)

With this little outdoor loving fellow no week would be complete without playing outside. Today was kite flying lessons (too bad it wasn't K week!).

He loves this scooter and rides it until he is pouring sweat!

He's so fun to have around. We have some fun things planned for Tot School next week, come back! Head over to Carissa's blog to see some other great ideas!

Twin Tot School #12...

2009-10-04T11:46:00.000-07:00

Wesley and Will are now 25 months old.

I am still loving our Tot School shelf. Mostly because instead of fighting over the same toy, they can choose which they want to play and I just pray it isn't the same one! They are becoming very independent with this. They still need my prompting to clean up, but once I start it they are happy to help.

One of the big hits this week was the Tot Tool I made them.

Who can resist Mickey Mouse (even if he is on a paint sample!)?

We were very blessed to participate in a preschool activity bag swap with our homeschool group. So, we ended up with 20 activities ready to go. Some they aren't yet ready for, but they loved putting the beads on pipe cleaners. What a great fine motor activity!
This day (because I was in a hurry) I set out this entire box of puzzles and shapes instead of picking out a few. Will did a good job of figuring out all by himself which shapes and how many of each he needed.

My favorite toy came out as usual. What makes this so great is that they play with it a different way each time. Today it was all about seeing how high they could stack it!

This was also the first day I put out all 4 colors of bears for color sorting. Wesley did great even with 4. Will can do it but is more interested in scooping them in. I have got to get him a pouring activity going!

Then the bears were forgotten as he tried to see how tall he could stack these!

Wesley is always ready to snuggle up and read with anyone who has a book. On this day he listened to an entire book about elephants.

Then there is the super important football class! Down, set hut are some of Wesley and Will's favorite words.

Mommy went shopping and found some great 3-4 piece puzzles. They are just the right number of pieces for them right now.

This turned into family puzzle time- love it!

At the end of the week we attempted a torn paper fall tree. Silly mommy tried this when it was nap time, lesson learned. Both of them loved taking on and off the glue top- there has got to be an idea for a tot tool there, hmmm......

I always save my scrap paper for them to draw on. Will was very excited about this today.

Wednesday was my birthday so we headed off to celebrate. We went to the children's museum. Since they are so into space right now this was a huge hit!

Next, we headed to the airport to let Will see his beloved "bees". It was neat to do things based on their interests!

My favorite photo of the week:
I hope you enjoyed seeing what we are up to at our Twin Tot School! Head over to Carissa's blog to see other great Tot School.

Tot School Tool...

2009-10-04T11:30:00.000-07:00

I made a cheap Tool for Tot. After my sweet husband drug me on another lengthy trip to the home improvement store trip, I ended up in the paint section as usual. I saw these Mickey Mouse shaped paint samples. Will and Wesley are obsessed with Mickey and spot the smallest pictures of him everywhere we go! Since we are working on learning colors right now I knew these would be the perfect Tot Tool. I grabbed 2 samples of each color and glued 1 into a file folder and "Mickey Match" was born!

They both loved working with "mouse" and are really good at matching.

We say the color each time they pick one up, and they usually repeat after me.

I adore this picture because of his intense look. This was Will's first time to complete this without Wesley taking over!

This silly boy is awesome at matching and is really starting to learn his colors. This picture is after we mixed them all up to do again :)

For this first version I only used 8 Mickeys in primary colors, but I am making a "Mickey Match 2" with all the secondary colors for once they master this.

An Epiphany...

2009-10-03T15:19:00.000-07:00

There are days when I have to take a time out from school in order to catch up on my housework. Although I know the ability to do this is one of the great things about homeschooling, I always feel really guilty about it. However on this day the babies were napping, A was upstairs playing Barbies, and I walked in the living room to find this which caused me to have an epiphany. You see, this boy does not really play with toys. The fact that I walked in and found him diligently playing with his airplanes was wonderful to see. He had been using his imagination and playing like this for an hour. I realized I could have taught him many things about space or math on this afternoon, but what he learned all on his own playing is invaluable. These moments of peace and quiet time are the true gift of homeschooling we give to our children. I'll try not to feel as guilty next time I'm cleaning the kitchen, until he and his sister start fighting anyway!

Fun in the Box #9...

2009-10-03T13:57:00.000-07:00

We are trying to learn the books of the Bible. I found these great printouts at Carissa's site. They got to use the Bible this time to help put them all in order.

The left side says the name and the right side tells some great info about each book.

This is just the New Testament and next time we'll do the Old. One day we'll (We because this is something I need to learn as well.) be able to do them all :)

Open Ended Art #2...

2009-10-02T15:53:00.000-07:00

Here is another open ended art we participated in. It was still collage although this time the medium was clay and pebbles. It is always fun to put these things in the workboxes and imagine what they will create.

I have to be honest and say they didn't get into this one as much as I thought they would. They didn't seem to get the possibilities of placing the glass in the clay and instead just stuck it sticking up. Still, it is open ended art so whatever they choose to do is just fine. I guess my kids are just more into 2 dimensional art rather than sculpture!

Regardless, they still had fun!

Fun in the Box #8...

2009-10-02T09:03:00.000-07:00

Every Thursday the kids find in box number 12 "watch Jelly Telly". As you can imagine this is very exciting for them since it's not written work, but mostly because Jelly Telly is so fun. It is made by the makers of Veggie Tales and teaches them a lot about the Bible while making them laugh. This used to be something you had to pay for, but now it is free for anyone to watch. Each day has different features as well as some recurring features (our favorite is the movie review by Michael). The amazing thing my kids learn is the song about the different books of the Bible. They are really funny and even teach me things about the books as well. We usually watch it on Thursday because that is science day. They always have great movies about different things of science with a Christian viewpoint. They also have free movies you can watch on the weekends.

I really recommend watching Jelly Telly. In fact, I usually make them watch it in the kitchen so I can listen to it while cleaning:) Just click on the picture above and enjoy...

China Night...

2009-10-02T07:20:00.000-07:00

For Galloping the Globe we began our studies in China. We spent 3 weeks learning about China because there was a lot to learn about! Here are some of the things we did:

-listened to these great geography songs and learned all the countries of Asia- me included!

-read Children Just Like Me about life for kids in China (This is my favorite new book. Everyone should have this book to teach their kids about life in other countries.) Then we filled out a notebooking page about it that Jolanthe shared.

-Over a few days as we read our library books on China we filled out this notebooking page that Jolanthe came up with. It is wonderful and contains just enough information. In the space for famous person the kids chose that wonderful humanitarian- Jackie Chan! He is actually from Hing Kong which is part of China although maintains their own leaders and currency. I thought he was a funny choice, but his life story is fascinating. He was raised in a school for kid actors and had a really hard time there. It was interesting to learn about how they were treated, though very sad.

-We even watched HGTV's House Hunters International (again in Hong Kong) so they could see how small apartments are there and how rough the bathrooms- ha!

When we finished we had to have a celebration night.

That day in their box they found a box! There were also tissue paper and construction paper to decorate a dragon head. They got to watch a few videos on You Tube of dragon parades for inspiration then they set to creating.

I loved Jackson's face and chopsticks for teeth!They were in charge of cooking our Chinese dinner- teriyaki chicken and rice.

Ashton even had a great wardrobe thanks to one of her friends. The chopsticks in the hair were a big hit!

During dinner they had to present their notebooks and China lapbooks and tell what they learned. They came out really great, and I hope to post about them soon.

Will's favorite part of the dinner was the rice candy I picked up at the grocery. You could eat the paper which worked out great for him!

Wesley preferred the other candy I bought: biscuit sticks covered in strawberry cream. In fact, I had to hide it from him!

Daddy was wonderful and went to a Chinese restaurant to pick up chopsticks and fortune cookies to complete our meal!

Our after dinner entertainment was a dragon dance!
This is my favorite picture of the night- the traditional dragon has picked up some new moves!
I am loving this curriculum and all the new experiences we are having. Perhaps most fun is that I get to learn right along with them!

Yeah, That's My Kid...

2009-09-29T19:48:00.000-07:00

At Jackson's ballgame tonight Wesley (please keep in mind he is only 2 or my bragging will be meaningless) pointed to the moon (they love the moon and point it out every time they go outside) and said, "Look Jon," (he calls his daddy Jon, yeah nice!) "Jon, look space." Yeah, that's my boy the two year old who knows what space is! Yesterday he found his little clear ball that has a smaller ball inside it with a ring around it. He said, "Look mom space" (he likes to say "look"). It did look like a planet with a ring around it. We have been studying space with the older kids, but I didn't really think Wesley was paying that close attention, especially since we usually do it while he is napping! Who is this genius's teacher? Ha, ha!

Dollar Store Centers #7...

2009-09-29T03:22:00.000-07:00

Grammar is not my favorite subject to tach, so making games out of it has made it more fun for all of us. We began reviewing the different ways to make plurals. This was great review for my 3rd grader, and I'll eventually use it to teach this skill to my 1st grader.

The die cut theme was party stuff though I haven't managed to come up with a clever name yet:)

I wrote the singular version of the noun so Jackson had to figure out how they would be made plural.

Here was his final sort with the choices of: stay the same, add s, add -es, change the y to i and add -es, or whole new word.

He only missed 1 I think. I am always amazed at how these simple games show you how they can quickly get a concept that they could easily trip up on if writing them or working on a workbook (although we do follow up with those as well).

Now if I could only come up with a clever name....

Fun in the Box #7...

2009-09-28T11:01:00.000-07:00

Mommy really needed to get out of the house one morning that was beautiful outside. Our workbox solution: a noun walk.

In their boxes they found a page divided into person, place, or thing categories and away we went walking and observing.

Our noun walk ended at the neighborhood park- lots of nouns there! This was really a good learning activity because we had a good conversation about should a house or a park be a place or thing? Hmmm, always good to get them thinking!

Our School Room...

2009-09-27T21:43:00.000-07:00

I thought I would document what our "school room" looks like while it was clean :)

This is the awesome table I bought which is perfect for our workboxes system. This is in our kitchen since we don't have a school room :(

This is Jackson's side. This table came with 12 shoeboxes already in it- perfect for workboxes. I also love the shelves for storing big notebooks, mini office, clipboard, supply basket and anything they might be using that's too big for their boxes.

This is Ashton's side which is a little different. I added these shoeboxes we already had. On the bottom shelf we have tubs for things we are working on in science and social studies and her supplies (when she doesn't clean it out to hide in!).

This is our bulletin board which Ashton is in charge of which explains why there is way more of her stuff than his :)

I put these workboxes cards up. They are all held on by velcro so they can be moved when completed. The kids don't really seem to need these and don't use them.

This is my closet right next to the school table. This was where my washer and drier were, but my amazing husband moved them up to my master bedroom so I wouldn't have to cart all the laundry down and them back up. Of course, it was mostly so I could have more storage for school stuff!

This is my "what can it be pile" of things I've saved from the trash or bought at the dollar store just waiting to be turned into a Tot Tool.

I bought a bin for each child (the twins share) so I could throw things in that I want to go in their workboxes in the upcoming days.These rolling drawers are awesome. They house office supplies, art supplies, and manipulatives. This is my great bookshelf I bought used at my church. I love the books being cover out. Plus it helps me remember what I have to use!
This is supposed to be my pantry, but I squeezed the food onto one shelf and use the rest to store curriculum and files.
These are my bought Tot Tools. It used to be one of my workbox racks before I got the new desk.

Glad you could stop by for the tour for the brief nanosecond it was clean!

Tot School Tool...

2009-09-27T15:39:00.000-07:00

My 6 year old daughter prides herself on being a Tot School teacher. So, I thought I would share a Tot School tool she made all by herself.

I had this egg carton set out to save to make something out of when it disappeared. She spent days coloring it with a sharpie. Then she glued on the eyes and nose and cut out a mouth.

I think it is really cute:

Next, she demonstrated for me how it is a Tot School tool. She has seen them working on their fine motor skills by putting things in little holes on different toys. So she found a collection of beads, googly eyes and other little things that they could "feed" to her pet. The twins love doing it and so did my nephew:

I am very proud of my little teacher and her great ideas.

My only problem now is keeping her out of the art supplies :)

Twin Tot School #11

2009-09-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

Will and Wesley are 25 months

The twins really loved their new shelf they helped build. They were so excited to see all their things set out on the shelf to choose from. The down side was they were able to scatter 9 things instead of just the one or two I usually give them at a time! I have got to be very purposeful in teaching them to return things to the shelf when they are done. It is just hard because I am usually running back and forth between them and teaching the big kids :) I think it will be easier when I order the trays to set everything on.

Still, my boy was excited as you can tell by his showing me his puzzle piece:

The BEST part of their new shelves was that they chose different things to play instead of fighting over the same one:

I love their little chairs being right there because they can choose to work there or on the carpet or their little table and chairs which are on the other side of the fireplace.
Wesley is my puzzle crazy child which is awesome because I love to work puzzles and need a child to be my puzzle partner one day:)

The favorite toy of the week was definitely the Magna Doodle in all shapes and sizes. They call it "IEIE" (every letter and pen or pencil is an IEIE). I left these out all day and they played with them several times.
I love how proud of himself Will is:

I love these stacking blocks because they are learning about size and stacking now but one day we'll use them for letters as well.

For those of you that always read my Tot School posts I think I need to make a new feature called "Spot Will's Thinking Tongue" because he always has it out when he's working hard!

The best new thing about the twins is that they are very into playing pretend now. I am amazed at their great imaginations. Sometimes, they join in each others' games and sometimes they are in their own pretend world. They love to play baby doll pushing one in a stroller. They also make anything into a telephone and talk away. This week Ashton set up a Blue's Clue's hunt for Wesley. He was so into carrying his notebook around and finding clues.

The favorite one of all of us is doggie or kitty. Ashton loves having them be her pets. Jackson loves chasing and scaring them. They love having their heads patted and hearing "Good dog/kitty". But Mommy loves it the most because I can get them to "fetch" their toys they have scattered everywhere. All I have to do is rub their head when they bring me a toy and they will clean up:

As usual, some of the best moments are things you don't plan but just happen naturally:

We had a fun week. Now while I get to planning for this next week, please read about other Tot Schools on Carissa's blog!

Swim Class Conversation...

2009-09-25T20:41:00.000-07:00

Me: Ashton, you need to finish your workboxes before you go to your PE class.

A: Why do you call it that?

Me: Because you go to swimming like it is your PE class for exercise.

A: Yeah, well I'm not really comfortable with you calling it that. I'd prefer you call it swim lessons.

Well, I can't make her feel uncomfortable now can I? So, swim lessons it is :)

Dollar Store Centers #6...

2009-09-24T09:58:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to read over our state's curriculum standards to make sure that I wasn't missing any skills I need to cover. I realized we hadn't talked about syllables. Of course, I needed to make a center to teach it!

I bought this tray to use with the twins in Tot School, but have found SO many uses for it.

I used the one with 5 dividers for Jackson and typed up words that had anywhere from 1-5 syllables (I actually had to look up some 5 syllable words!). I used some good ole's scrapbooking punches and stickers to label each section for number of syllables:

Here's Ashton's who went up to words with three syllables:

Then we had a mini lesson on vowel sounds and clapping it out and off they went:

As usual, Jackson sees me with the camera and hams it up:

This ended up being a great center they've done a couple of times. It's also easy to type up some new words and have an all new activity.

Our Curriculum Choices...

2009-09-24T08:59:00.000-07:00

It just occurred to me that I haven't shared what we are using this year in homeschool (not that everyone is on the edge of their seats, but more because I want to get it all down!). First off, I have to say that this will probably change as the year goes on and I get more of a feel for what my kids need and enjoy. I enjoy looking at curriculum way too much

which can get dangerously expensive :)

Science: We are continuing to use good nonfiction books and lapbooks as our science curriculum driven by the kids' interests. Right now we are studying space (mostly because Jon wants to go to the Space and Rocket Center-just kidding but we are excited about going!).

Other topics I am anticipating are reptiles, amphibians, human body and Apologia's birds. I really think following your kids' interests makes it so much more meaningful.

Math: We were using Saxon and while I believe it to be an excellent program, it was just not working for us. Jackson has begun hating math to the point of tears. It was killing me. I am researching going to a more Living Math approach I just don't have the time to get it together right now. I just received in the mail the Math U See program. I think this is a great program at describing why math works. I am also excited to see if the novelty of watching a video to explain math holds their interest! The thing I like most about it is the kids move through things at their own pace. If they get it, you watch the next lesson. If they need extra practice there are 6 pages of practice in the workbook and you can do as many as you need.

Spanish: I ordered Hooked on Spanish for the kids this year. I love it for two reasons 1. it was cheap and 2. they can do it on their own on the computer. They just do a lesson on the computer and practice their new words. Will they be able to travel to Spain and converse any time soon? No, but it is teaching them the very basics.

Next year I will probably do Latin with them because I think it is the key to understanding all languages once you learn their Latin roots. For right now, I am very happy with the Spanish.

Specials: We are taking a PE swim class at the local rec center. We are participating in Open Ended Art meme and doing art projects with our other subjects (plus the art of scrapbooking with mommy :) We found a homeschool music class which is great for Ashton but way too young for Jackson. We are considering getting him the guitar lessons he has always asked for. I dream of doing artist and composer studies, but need 15 more hours in my day to make it happen. We also have baseball and ballet at least once a week. Ashton has also joined a wonderful Keepers group we are thrilled with.

Grammar:We are doing this mostly with the games I make them or through literature.

Reading: Our reading for the first couple of months is a program you probably haven't heard of called- P-R-O-P-O-G-A-N-D-A!!! If you read my family blog you might remember this post which has bothered me since. Even though I am looking at a good reading program a friend is doing, I decided to just spend a couple of months having fun with reading. We are still working on sight words and vocabulary and such, but I am trying to pick out great picture books and read alouds just to brainwash their sweet little minds into loving reading- plus, it's a lot of fun for me. Snuggling and reading- what could be a better way to spend an afternoon?

Geography: The thing I am most excited about this year is Galloping the Globe. I read all the things that Jolanthe was doing on her blog with this program and it sounded so fun. So, we Dodds are traveling the world this year (and probably next). We will be learning about the geography, history, language, and culture about each country we visit. So far, we have completed China and started Korea. I will share our adventures soon. The best part is I am learning so much! We sing geography songs, and I have learned all the countries in Asia! I'm not raising geography illiterate Americans over here :)

Handwriting and Bible: Right now we are still reading out way through a children's Bible. After I read to them they practice their handwriting by tracing a story summary I printed out using the Start Write program I just bought. I really like this program because I can make tracer pages of any thing I want for the kids to practice. It's called killing 2 birds with one stone combining handwriting and Bible! I can print the story summary in cursive for Jackson and print for Ashton so that is nice. After we finish the Bible in about a month we are going to start a Bible study. I'm still researching which one (I'd love suggestions!). We also work on memory verses every day. Right now we are studying verses they are working on at church.

Any way, there is my plan. Thanks for humoring me so I can get it down to make me think it through and stick with it!

Fun in the Box #6...

2009-09-24T08:07:00.000-07:00

This morning the workbox was a little scary!

I was introducing Ashton to the greater than/less than sign. Since we always talk about the alligator mouth eats the big number I thought I'd just show her. After she used the alligator then we looked at what the sign itself looks like.

Jackson even reviewed his with some bigger numbers.

If you don't have foot long plastic alligators lying around (are there houses like that?) you can also print a picture of an alligator with its mouth open to practice.

I'm pretty sure this activity cemented in Ashton's mind which way the sign goes since she can always imagine this big 'gator!

Twin Tot School #10...

2009-09-22T14:13:00.000-07:00

Will and Wesley are 25 months.

This week I finally talked my husband into getting some Tot School furniture! We got a cube bookshelf that I can put their activities out on.

Of course, first it had to be assembled which was a Tot School activity all in itself.

A little fine motor work of using the screwdriver:

and putting the peg in the hole:

Then they had to try out the cubbies:

To reward themselves for a job well done, they turned the box into a slide- all on their own:

We were actually amazed at how much help they were and how much they could do. It was a fun project and we are loving the shelf in school.

That's all for me this week. I'll catch up next week:)

Check out all the other awesome Tot Schools at Carissa's blog.

Fun in the Box #5...

2009-09-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

Jackson has been learning about perimeter. So in his box on this day he found objects from around the house to measure the perimeter of.

He worked very diligently on this although I did let him measure to the nearest inch because we haven't learned how to add fractions yet :)

Fun in the Box #4....

2009-09-15T11:04:00.000-07:00

I have to post this because it is so funny. My boy has some serious bed head and still in pj's! We are studying space right now so they used their Kidnex to design their own spaceship.

I thought they were fairly creative and the parts even rotate for liftoff.

A fun little way to start the day! I cannot take the credit for this though. They were playing on their own while I was getting everything ready for school. They were so into it and working so studiously that I told them it could be their first box since it went with our space theme. Needless to say they were thrilled!