Wonderful World of Welch

Whatever is true

2012-02-09T17:03:00.000-06:00

If God is shaping Caroline to be a prayer warrior, then I think He is shaping Charlotte to carry the sword of truth.

She's really picked up on Caroline's memory verses we've worked on since Christmastime. She has at least four in her collection right now (Luke 2:10-11, Ps 34:13, 1 John 3:18, and 1 Cor 13:4). I'm pretty sure at 3 years old, Caroline only knew "Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right."

Charlotte also loves to carry around my little green Bible. She just brought it downstairs where I was filling out some paperwork and proceeded to flip through it, track on the words with her finger, and quote off every verse she knew... flipping to new pages for each different verse.

Whatever is pure

2012-02-09T16:16:00.000-06:00

Caroline and I had a discussion about Phillipians 4:8 a few weeks ago... "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."

I can't remember how it came up, but I made up an illustration of pouring dirt in a glass of water.

Anyway, the girls just accidentally turned on the stereo while they were watching a kids show and Caroline called me up to fix it, stating that "it might not be pure." It was on AM radio, or it probably wouldn't have been very pure, but I think it's so neat how she took our conversation to heart.

Caroline's first bass guitar

2012-01-30T19:32:00.000-06:00

Well, it's only a matter of time in a musician's household before the kids have their own instrument. I figure, we did pretty well making it five years.

Kevin spent some of his Christmas money on Caroline's first bass guitar, along with some money she had from a gift we had to return. We went for a neutral white, and added a girly pink strap. Kevin says that window clings stick to the body, so we'll be on the lookout for some princess stick-ons soon.

It is a three-quarter size Ibanez. It still looks huge to me compared to my sweet little girl.

Charlotte dragged out an electric piano and claimed that it was her bass. She had fun tinkering on it while Kevin worked on switching the guitar from a right-handed version to a left-handed version.

I think daddy is enjoying having a new guitar in the house as much as the kids.

Potty song

2012-01-25T18:28:00.000-06:00

I sing a special good night song for the girls that my mom used to sing to me. One evening, Charlotte requested a potty song and on the fly I had to revamp the song.

Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte, go potty.
Little girl that Mommy loves.
If you poo-poo or pee-pee,
Just make sure it's in the potty.
You're so special to me,
And you'll get a special treat.
Keep your panties, dry and clean,
And go-o in the potty.

So just in case she is ever going to sleep at your house, that's the new bedtime song.

Beginning sounds 2

2012-01-25T18:26:00.000-06:00

Charlotte is exploding with her beginning sounds. She's done two worksheets this week and done really well... except why would you put a cow and give C and K as an option on a preschool worksheet - seriously?

We just finished labeling half a dozen things on a princess picture and she identified both the sound and letter for the words (hair, princess, dress, nose, lips, etc.).

I think that sometimes I fear that my successes with teaching Caroline are unique and that things won't go as well with subsequent children. I'm feeling really good that Charlotte is showing a love for learning so early and all on her own initiative. Especially since I know she's not getting as much attention in that area as her older sister did.

Beginning sounds

2012-01-22T21:33:00.001-06:00

We've been having the girls take turns going to practice with Kevin and whoever didn't get to go to practice gets to ride home with Kevin after church on Sunday (we only have one car seat for his car, so it's a special treat).

Anyway, Charlotte got to ride home with me today and she was looking at a Mickey Mouse early reader book. She started listing off all the characters and asking what letter they started with. I helped her pick out the beginning sound and then identify the letter. She got pretty good as we got closer to home (Mickey, Goofy, Pluto, Daisy, Minnie...).

Looks like it's time to pull out the Beginning Sounds worksheets from Kids Learning Station. Wow, am I really coming full circle and starting with a second student?!

Human body unit

2012-01-22T21:29:00.000-06:00

Just thought I'd share with any of my homeschool followers that we are embarking on our Human Body study for science in one week.

In an effort to simplify my lesson plans, I'm going to follow along with Spell Out Loud Human Body Unit for some lesson ideas and use the My First Human Body Book (coloring) ($4) for our "worksheets."

This should carry us through the end of the school year.

I'm excited about starting a study on the body because Caroline seems to ask a lot of questions about things like digestion. I'm hoping she'll really enjoy it. I happen to love physiology and how it shows what an amazing Creator we have!

I may even get to add in some fetal development stuff at the end of the year right before the baby comes, which I think would be really fun... minus all the birds and the bees stuff obviously.

Week 19 In Review

2012-01-20T20:17:00.001-06:00

This week is brought to you by the letter K... letter K as in ketch-up... or catch-up as I prefer, because we were supposed to do K back in December when everyone was sick and mommy was in her first trimester.

Verse: "Keep you tongue from evil." Ps 34:13
Song: You are my King
Rhyme: Three little kittens

Charlotte's shelf has: kite build a pattern, large pattern blocks, kite number cards, 1-5 puzzle, kite dry erase pre-writing, letter books (a favorite this week), and regular pattern blocks with kite template.

I was way behind in our study of the five types of vertebrates, so we ended up making an entire lapbook this week for science and hitting them all. It was fun and it turned out we got to close it out with a trip to the zoo on Saturday.

Something about our Bible verse this week "Keep your tongue from evil." made me think of making something that was good for our tongue... jello stickers. So, I printed the Bible verse out for both the girls and painted the back with a concentrated solution of lime jello. When it dried, I cut the strips and let the girls go to town coloring, cutting, licking, and sticking their Bible verse to construction paper.

The best part of the week was that we had three days of playing grocery store in our math curriculum. The first day, we created our grocery store, sorted the items, priced them, and named our grocery store (Caroline and Mommy's store).

After having some fun with our sister playing for a day or so, the lessons continued and we practiced adding our 2-digit amounts. Mommy carefully priced everything so there was no regrouping (math talk for having to carry a ten).

We had two days to shop for our two items and then make a receipt. We had four shopping trips each day.
I was really impressed because we were supposed to just use dimes and pennies to represent each of the two items and then recount them together to get the sum. Caroline wasn't that into it, so I went ahead and explained how to add the amounts in the ones and tens columns to get the sum and she liked that way much better.

Let's check in on Charlotte during school. Oh, she's got Ariel swimming in the deep end off of the trampoline. Silly girl.

Week 18 In Review

2012-01-13T20:01:00.020-06:00

We were still easing back into school, so I got Charlotte's shelf updated for letter L (ladybugs), but didn't quite get to making anything for circle time. So we had another week without circle time, but that's any easy thing to let go since the girls have mastered most of the things I include.

We have lots of ladybugs in the house, so the shelf contained: Ladybug number cards (which I really stressed with Charlotte this week), chunky puzzle, ladybug sorting by size, peg puzzle, ladybug shape matchup, ladybug pink/purple counters, ladybug lacing, and a sensory bin with brown shredded paper/bugs/magnifying glasses.

I was glad to have a use for the brown shredded paper that I saved from a gift basket and the magnifying glasses are always a big hit.

Here's one way that we were able to include Charlotte in a math lesson. Caroline's lesson was using the pattern blocks. She had to use the blocks to fill a shape and the graph the number of each block she used. So, since the pattern blocks were out, I grabbed our other pattern pages and let Charlotte play with those. She chose the bunny of course.

I usually try to make a sticker, cutting, or gluing activity for Charlotte each week. This week, I drew some ladybugs on red paper and put them out with some circle stickers (like the garage sale price stickers). She worked on this during another lesson.

Journaling is turning out to be a big hit, since we are working on it before breakfast is even over.

The girls picked out some ballerina shrinky dinks with their Christmas money, so we did them as a treat when our schoolwork got done one day. I forgot how fun they are!

I think the girls were holding school in the schoolroom one day. Caroline pulled out a TV tray and was reading and Charlotte was facing her and "reading" her own book.

Hair-raising

2012-01-12T20:40:00.009-06:00

Our not so successful experiment with rag curls.

I'll start off to say that in my mind, the biggest success was that she slept in them all night without complaining about them.

I let her hair dry quite a bit before I put them in. I guess I need to do fewer sections next time, or only leave them in for an hour.

She doesn't look too happy with me, does she? I sprayed her hair down with water and brushed them all out. Kind of reminds me of my first perm. She'll thank me someday that at least it was temporary.

Week 17 In Review

2012-01-06T19:37:00.030-06:00

We eased back into school the week of New Years. I didn't do any official lesson plans. We just picked up where we'd left off with our math curriculum. Charlotte asks to do her own math quite often these days. Here, she is coloring a worksheet we never did from early in the school year. Then, I realized that I had a Saxon phonics program that I wasn't using, so now I grab worksheets from the pad that came with it. They look the same except they have a letter and pictures... which I think are more interesting anyway.

We are working on a new routine so I can get more work done in between school breaks. Once we are done with math, I give Caroline a break while I fold laundry. The girls love to cuddle and watch a show in my bedroom.

Caroline is really excelling with reading. She completed her first Tinkerbell novel last year, "Rani and the Mermaid Lagoon" and is now working on a new one. She's actually started all three, but her main progress is in "Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue." We bought the movie with Christmas money, but are saving it for her to finish the book. She's very excited to reach the middle point of the book which has all the pictures from the movie on purple pages. (She made it to that before January was over.)

We spent some time reviewing our color spelling words from before Christmas (I think our rainbow on the bulletin board was a fun way to practice and also talk about rotating paper when we write.) I also started giving a more official spelling test on Friday instead of making a fill in the blank on a review worksheet at weeks end.

The girls got jumbo coloring books from some friends of ours and spent some time coloring.

I'm starting a journal (again) with Caroline. This time, I'm talking about an idea with her, then I write out a sentence about it, correcting any grammar from how she phrased it. Then, she copies it and illustrates. It follows some of the theory behind what we'll do next year in our Writing with Ease curriculum. It also encourages her to do original artwork, which I feel I've been lacking in giving her opportunities to do so.

Of course, Charlotte wanted a journal too, so she's using some older write and draw tablets from my earlier journal attempts. I just write a word that goes along with Caroline's topic and give her a picture to color on top.

Another part of our new routine is being more intentional in having the girls unload the dishwasher. Since I put all their dishes in the bottom of the pantry a while back, and knowing I won't be bending that direction in the near future, I have better motivation now. Charlotte does the silverware and I unload everything but the kid dishes for Caroline to finish.

12 week ultrasound pictures

2011-12-29T20:16:00.010-06:00

One thing that I looked forward to all through Christmas was that my 12 week ultrasound was right afterwards. Everything looked great and our due date of July 10th was spot on.

Charlotte has been very into the pictures. I had them in my purse for awhile and then on the fridge where the girls could see. Sometimes Charlotte asks me to put them back in my purse, and then she'll want them out again.

A couple weeks later, we had a little boy over to play and as soon as we brought him in the house, she wanted to get in my purse. I knew exactly why. I gave her the pictures and she got a magnet and put them on the fridge to show her friend. It just melts my heart. She's about a year older than Caroline when we did this with Charlotte's pictures, so it's interesting to see the difference.

And Caroline gets everything even more this time around. Although for some reason she only babytalks "baby" and points to my stomach when she wants to acknowledge that we are pregnant. I can tell she is going to be a big helper though.

One morning, I overheard Charlotte wake up on the monitor and fuss for some covers. Caroline very sweetly was trying to help her. I heard her say, "Can Caroline help you?" and Charlotte indicated that she wanted mommy. Then Caroline replied that mommy needed her rest because it was a lot of work growing a baby in her tummy and tried to persuade Charlotte to accept some sisterly help. Too bad it didn't work in the end and I came to the rescue.

Done in December

2011-12-18T19:52:00.018-06:00

Here's some other miscellanous things we did in December.
Daddy came up with a unique way to wash the dogs.

Daddy got a bike for his birthday and since he was in need of a new helmet, we also upgraded Caroline to a bigger one and let Charlotte have the princess one.

Playtimes in mom and dad's bed before breakfast.

The Ann B Dextrous toy came out of storage and got new batteries. It's fun when a toy gets new life and interest from your children. And it's funny when something that isn't a toy, can be so hilarious... like the bar stools.

Charlotte has taken to climbing up onto the couch to "read" a magazine. She looks so grown up when she does it.

Caroline continued the tradition of crushing my candy canes to make our Ritz thin mint treats. I discovered that I can keep melted chocolate warm in my mini crockpot and then I don't have to re-microwave as I dip.

We went to a drive-thru Life of Christ at the West Houston Church of Christ. Next year, we'll remember the DVD player. It was a long wait, but worth it.

We had our mac 'n cheese at the picnic table while we enjoyed a day with nice weather. I took the opportunity to air out the house in hopes of ridding it of all our germs. Notice, Caroline has a doctors office sticker. This was our final go around for the sinus infections.

Charlotte likes to "read" my green Bible too. She's taken to tracking with her finger and she'll quote her Luke 2:10 verse sometimes.

One day, a teaching opportunity came up at the lunch table and I was going to share some other verse from the Bible with the girls to explain myself. But as soon as "Do you know what the Bible says?" came out of my mouth, Charlotte broke into "The angel said to them, "Do not be afraid...""

We got a few of my favorite Christmas projects in at the very end... cotton ball Santa beards and lace up Christmas stockings.

We ended up having our neighbors join us to make the Christmas stockings and then it turned into lunch, with a few more neighbor kids. It's amazing to me how NOT overwhelming eight kids in one house can be. It can be kind of dirty though. I had to redo most of my holiday cleaning. But, all the kids ended up playing and I got to visit with my neighbor and induldge in Christmas goodies without little fingers wanting some. It was so worth it!

Week 16 in Review

2011-12-16T19:27:00.031-06:00

We repeated a Gingerbread man theme that I'd worked on last year. It really is one of my favorites because the printouts are so cute and we always incorporate decorating something gingerbread.
The girls learned the second verse for Luke 2:10-11: "Today, in the town of David, as Saviour has been born to you, who is the Messiah, the Lord."
Song: Go Tell it on the Mountain
Story: Gingerbread Man

Caroline of course learned both verses very well, but we were totally surprised by Charlotte. Not only does she now verse 10, but after Christmas, she randomly recited verse 11. Who knew she was really listening and absorbing. I love having this opportunity to hide scripture in their hearts at such a young age.

Again, I was still recovering from whatever hit me after my flu shot, so most of the bulletin board is from their Sunday school class, or just random art. I didn't even do lesson plans. I just tried to keep up with whatever math lesson came next. We also focused on spelling the six basic color words.

Charlotte's shelf is almost irresistable this week: hide the gingerbread man behind the number, Candyland Castle game, build your own gingerbread man (just brown fun foam), matching gingerbread man color buttons, Candyland, and a gingerbread man golden book.

I traced a cookie cutter to make a craft project and then drew some gingerbread houses to go with some remaining foam candy stickers from several years ago.

We followed our tradition of doing Read and Write the room the week before a holiday. I actually used the gingerbread printouts and printed them two per page, to come up with the worksheet. Then I had colored crayons around the room for the girls to find and circle their man to "catch him."

Another Pinterest find was making gingerbread houses out of graham crackers. It couldn't be easier! I made them up the night before and left the roof seperate. Then I portioned out candy and icing and let the girls go crazy.

We had another cracker to decorate and eat for snack, so we could save our finished houses for daddies to see.

Matching fuzzies to buttons.

Now that dad is home, we get to eat them!

I had some Christmas tree number cards, so Caroline spent one morning sorting all her flashcards to the corresponding answer. It was a lot of work, and I'm pretty sure we didn't finish all the cards she's mastered.

Kevin's birthday

2011-12-10T19:17:00.012-06:00

Well, this year I remembered not to put the birthday candle in the HOT cherry cobbler. Ice cream on top worked so much better! And per Kevin's request, he had a hamburger with grilled cheese sandwiches for buns.

I know that Kevin likes my food when he takes a picture of it with his phone!

And because he's such a super dad, he spent his birthday evening driving the girls and me around Prestonwood to look at Christmas lights. And because he's an extraordinary husband, he swung by On the Border on the way home to buy me the ONLY thing that sounded appetizing... chips, tortillas, and queso. I don't think first trimester preggos have cravings, we just have one and only thing that will fill our hunger yet not make us lose our lunch. Thankfully, I made it through my first trimester without losing my lunch.

Week 14/15 in Review

2011-12-10T18:50:00.041-06:00

It's so funny how things work out since letter J ended up falling right at the beginning of our month of Christmas celebrating. There was an alternate theme for our Letter of the Week print outs, but Jesus fit just perfectly for us!

Verse: "But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all people." Luke 2:10
Songs: Joy to the World
and Jingle Bells (which I had bells for the girls to dance with)

Charlotte's shelf has: Jesus dry erase pictures, J puzzles (where you match the dot to the lower case letter), Jesus puzzle from Letter of the Week, Nativity floor puzzle (that I scored at a garage sale), Little people nativity set, and number cards to count stars onto.

I don't think we did much creative stuff on their bulletin board. Most of it is from church. Then there is a big sheet of stickers from all the doctor's visits we had. A favorite was the foam Christmas and Snowman stickers. On the middle blue one, you can see that Caroline used lots of white bits to spell out her name.

Here are my Monday students after they finished their matching workbooks. Caroline is doing a workbook with more J writing practice while the preschoolers work on their do-a-dot pictures.

Caroline learned about vertebrates this week. I pulled a bunch of plastic bugs and animals and had her sort them. She picked up pretty quickly on what had a backbone and what did not. So add that to her big science vocabulary... nocturnal and vertebrate.

There were not many letter J CVC words for spelling this week, so I we learned God and Jesus .

Week 15 ended up getting lumped in since we were all sick. I got my flu shot after Thanksgiving and was sick ever since. Then the girls had ear infections, followed by a never ending cough for Caroline, and then sinus infections for both. We never got to letter K.

We did manage to make a countdown chain for both of the girls. Charlotte lost interest pretty quick. Caroline, is all concerned about fairness these days and noted often who had the shorter chain, due to unequal circumferences of their links.

I don't have pictures, but PE was a huge hit this month. I tried these Christmas action cards for a week and the girls loved them so much that we just did them the rest of the month. "Roll like an ornament, sneak like an elf, twist like a candy cane..." sure beats jumping jacks. Charlotte learned the pictures and liked to take her turn being in charge.

We tried out another neat Pinterest find with Math Power Towers. We worked on them with our twos facts, which seems to be taking us two months to master. Things seemed to be going really well until I realized someone was able to see enough of the answer through the cup to get it right. I also tried it with stickers, but they won't stay stuck. I feel like trashing the entire idea... however neat it may be.

Why didn't I think of wearing my wedding dress to arts and crafts time?

One of the great things about homeschooling is that I have the option to reinforce something when it's needed. I'm still learning to let go of my plans and follow the instinct though. I'd noticed Caroline looking at our ABC chart often to write her lowercase B and D. I'd seen a bat/ball and doorknob/door idea somewhere online, so I made up a quick craft project to help reinforce the idea. It turned out really cute, I think.

Trimming the tree

2011-11-27T18:36:00.015-06:00

The girls both got in on the fun decorating a Christmas tree for their room. Caroline was excited to add some little pink disco ball type ornaments that I'd let her select on a trip to Hobby Lobby. Each year when we do a little tree in the girls' room, it reminds me of the Tasha Tudor book "A Doll's Christmas."

Back when we started our holiday decorating, I decided that I wanted red and green lights on our tree. After nine Christmases, our actual electrical cords are going bad for some reason and we lost our second original strand this year. Kevin sweetly made a trip to the store mid-decorating and then sat with me on the floor changing our every alternating light build. What a sweet guy!

Tied with my Jewel Tree that my grandpa made for me, my other favorite decoration is the Hallmark village collection that my grandma started for me. I have them all the way back to the early 80's. I love that they are Victorian in style and that they are like little dollhouses, with open backs and furnished rooms. I let the girls have some time to look at them before I arranged them in my curio cabinet.

It felt good to be all decked out and get the job done despite feeling first trimester queasy.

Weekend in Tyler

2011-11-26T15:04:00.014-06:00

After a few days in College Station, we made our way to Tyler for some more family fun.

Mom and Dad ring the Salvation Army Bell on the Saturday after Thanksgiving each year and they usually take any grandkids that are around. They get a lot more donations that way! Who could resist these sweet bell-ringers.

We went in shifts this year, so while Will's kids were having their turn, we treated our girls to a cookie. We were right by Santa and Caroline was brave enough to sit on his lap. Charlotte didn't want to go near him though. Then we rode the escalator a few times before meeting up with the rest of the family. Will's kids ended up having their picture made with Santa before they headed back to the house.

After playtime with cousins, we had some extended family over for dinner. My grandpa's sister, Aunt Pat, was in town from Iowa and my cousin Marshall was in town with Dianne. They've been married almost a year, but this was my first time to get to meet her.

It was a fun visit with everyone and while we were doing introductions, we got to announce that we'd have a new family member arriving in July.

It was a funfilled day. The kids all watched a video before bed. We have quite a full living room when they are all lined up.

Thanksgiving in Aggieland

2011-11-24T14:53:00.005-06:00

We spent Thanksgiving with Kevin's family this year. Since they Aggies were playing the Longhorns for the last time (since A&M is moving conferences), we decided to go to "Midnight Yell Practice." The nice thing about the yell practice befoer this game is that it is held earlier... like 8 pm.
The girls had a lot of fun watching everything. Caroline still isn't too sure about the cannon, but it was great fun to be in such a big stadium with the girls, listening to the band, and watching all the people in the corps show off on the track doing their unusual push-ups.

Granny repainted her dining room and got new dining room furniture, so the kids have been upgraded the kitchen table. I don't know why I didn't get any pictures of the grown-ups, but the kids' table sure was festive!

Now that Grandad is home for good, they were inspired to get all their Christmas decorations out after dinner. There was no shortage of helpers to go through all the boxes and help put the nutcrackers out.

The Nutcracker... in November

2011-11-19T15:31:00.011-06:00

I guess we are doing things early this year because we saw the Nutcracker in November. I bought our tickets before the December show listed online, but it worked out that my mom was able to come, so I guess it's all good.
It's a really neat tradition that goes back to when I was little and I started last year with Caroline. So this was her second year to go. Charlotte really wanted to go, but I think she'll have to wait one more year.

We did the same thing as last year. I got Caroline her favorite meal from Chick-Fil-A and took it to my favorite place to eat, La Madeliene. We all shared a dessert of the mini-chocolate mint parfaits.

Then it was off to the show.

Week 13 in review

2011-11-18T15:13:00.000-06:00

It's the week before Thanksgiving so we took a break from letters and did a Thanksgiving theme. We also invited an extra friend to join us on Monday.

Verse: "Give thanks to the Lord for He is good." Ps 136:1/1 Chron 16:34
Song: Thankful
Verse: 10 Little Turkeys

On the shelves, we have: colored feathers to sort, paint chip leaves to string on a ribbon, pilgrim maze with dry erase marker, phonics clip cards, whole/half/third/quarter pilgrim pies, sensory bin with plastic pumkins, acorns, leaves and tongs, and Thanksgiving matching game.

The girls have really enjoyed doing Read and Write the room so we used the set from Homeschool Creations for our Monday activity. I had Charlotte circle her pictures, the preschoolers trace the first letter, and Caroline trace the entire word.

Then we colored a Thanksgiving picture with our bible verse on it.

Caroline learned the moon phases this week. We had fun cutting out the shapes and making an accordian book. I wanted to do a moon calendar, but the moon wasn't out when she went to bed. She was kind of sad that it didn't work out.

For spelling this week, we learned to spell grandma, grandpa, granny, and grandad. It was complete with worksheets with their photos on them.

Then we glued feathers on turkeys.

Week 12 in review

2011-11-11T14:45:00.000-06:00

We covered the letter I for week 12. I think the girls weren't very into their do-a-dot I picture so I guess that's why it's not on the end of the week bulletin board picture.

Verse: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Phillipians 4:13
Song: Lord I Lift Your Name on High
Rhyme: Itsy Bitsy Spider

We had Inchworms on the shelf this week. We had: a magnetic fuzzy page, sorting by size, icecream come math game (for Caroline), inchworm/leaf counting, ice cube trays with wooden cubes, I spy game, and sorting I/i game.

Caroline had a jump start on our week. Saturday I laminated some ice cream cone cutouts and made math matching facts. Then, because she was bored on Sunday, she ended up working on a clock worksheet that was something extra for our math lesson later in the week.

I'm always glad when the girls are happy to get things off the shelves to play with. Here's our friend matching the inchworms to the leaves they've eaten.

Caroline made a pretty design with the magnetic fuzzies.

We studies the planets this week and it was a big hit. Caroline learned a song from Spell Out Loud that lists the planets and has them all memorized now. We also used some planet cut-outs from 1+1+1's solar system pack. The highlight was that daddy took the kids on a walking tour down a long sidewalk in our neighborhood and drew the planets to scale with sidewalk chalk.

Charlotte working on coloring handprint turkeys while Caroline did some math. We took them to the nursing home later in the week.

Working on counting in dimes and pennies.

Now it's Charlotte's turn to put magnetic fuzzies on the page.

Charlotte hears a lot about math... mostly from Caroline's complaining or because I tell her that I'll help her when I'm done with Caroline's math lesson, so lately she wants in on the action too.

2011-11-09T16:32:00.000-06:00

Oh, and Charlotte "read" her first book to me last night. She had "Are you a ladybug" almost memorized.

It's funny because it has the same pattern and flow as the "Are you my mommy" book that Caroline first memorized.

2011-11-09T14:20:00.000-06:00

Here's some fun things that the girls are up to lately.

Charlotte:
-She's started coloring inside of the lines and filling in shapes over the past few weeks.
-She makes a really good effort at counting to 30 (we count our calendar every day). Then sometimes she skips to 100 and says it very enthusiastically... because we are usually pretty excited to get to 100 around here.
-She likes to ask Kevin at dinner, "What did you do at work today, daddy?" She'll often ask multiple times.

Caroline:
-She's working her way through her first chapter book. "Tinkerbell and the Mermaid Lagoon" is over 110 pages and she read 4 chapters in her first week having it. Our deal is that when she finishes it, we'll go buy another one.
-She likes building "hiding spots" in her bedroom with Charlotte. It usually entails moving every piece of movable furniture to form a corral near their closet.
-She likes tucking Charlotte in at night... reading her a story and singing a sweet, made up song to her.

Week 11 in Review

2011-11-05T14:06:00.035-06:00

Halloween fell on Monday this year, so we did our "Halloween" theme the week before. Chances had it though, that we still landed on letter "H." Funny how that works out.

Verse: "Honor one another above yourselves." Romans 12:10
Song: If you're happy
Rhyme: Humpty Dumpty

Our Letter of the Week theme was hippos. Our shelves had: a hippo book, hippo puzzle, hippo color matching, shape links to sort, hippo clip cards, Hungry Hippo game, and hippo bar graphs to color wiht dry erase markers.

Our first math lesson of the week had to do with measuring liquid volumes. Here's all the prep I did on Sunday (I'm amazed the girls part of the patio is clean in the background... our tools are almost never hung up.).

We wore costumes for school on Monday, so I had ballerina and pretty princess school.

The girls had fun dancing around for PE with their pink scarves from the Target dollar spot clearance. We made the scarves into snakes and ran away from them, made them tails, bees, you name it.

Of course, you have to graph candy for math if it's Halloween, so we graphed skittles.

I sort of enjoy modifying the lessons to fit my different age groups. The preschoolers sorted theirs and drew circles to represent their counts inside of larger circles. Caroline put hers on a bar graph... a technique she's long mastered since we started graphing colored chips on Little Debbie brownies this summer.

Then the math curriculum lesson began.

She had to guess how many cups each container would hold and we put them in order from the least amount to the greatest. I was glad that Caroline made guesses. Sometimes she shys away from things where she can't determine the answer from the beginning.

We sure had pretty results. We used our unifix cubes to count the cups.

We worked on counting by 2's during a math lesson later in the week. We made a clothes line out of yarn and hung up pairs of socks. It went pretty easily since I'd taught her the "two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate" chant earlier in the week during a bike ride.

I can't believe Caroline completes these math drill pages with 25 problems each. It just amazes me the amount of work she can do just a few months into Kindergarten. She wasn't even writing numbers at the beginning of the year.

We worked on biomes in science this week, which of course called for a trip to the zoo! We explored the tropical bird house for the first time and really enjoyed it. I had a list of animals and we identified the biome for each. Then she showed daddy when he got home from work. Charlotte had her own list this time of animal pictures to circle as we saw them (she felt left out during out last field trip, so she has her own "assignment" now).

The zoo with Mrs. Alicia

2011-11-04T14:31:00.007-06:00

Enjoying the beautiful weather, we made a trip to the zoo with Mrs. Alicia.

Guess it was warm enough to swim with the fish.

Who let the monkeys out? The girls were entertaining themselves while we waited in line to feed the giraffes. At first, the giraffes weren't in the mood to eat, but once they got going, the line moved really fast.

It was $5 for 3 pieces of romain lettuce and Alicia was sweet to share a leaf with each of the girls.

It's always interesting to see what happens on the carousel. For now, Caroline has decided that she's a big girl and wants to ride the ones that go up and down.

Happy Halloween

2011-11-01T22:32:00.021-06:00

Halloween fell on a Monday this year, and even though it's a school day, we had to have a special breakfast. So, we tried out painting toast with colored milk. It was a fun process, but the girls weren't that excited by the finished product. I think they ended up having cereal before we got dressed in our costumes for the entire day.

We rented a bounce house for our annual street party and it arrived during naptime. I'm always so ready for the girls to wake up so the fun can begin.

A couple neighborhood kids came over and the kids had practically gotten our money's worth before the party even began.

It's funny that we host the Halloween party each year, because our house isn't the most decked out of everyone on our street. But, I decided to make an effort this year, so I hung orange lights around the garage and draped some $1 table clothes from the garage door. Then we set the potluck tables up in the garage as usual.

This was the year of pigs in a blanket. I think we had about four families that brought them (including us). I guess that's what we all think when I put "finger foods" on the invitation. I tried to add a healthier alternative with a carrot platter I'd seen in a magazine. It turned out really cute, but didn't look like a pumpkin for long.

There are six famililies with young elementary and preschool aged kids on our street. We managed to successfully get them all in a photo... not that they are all looking, but they are all in one place.

Then the trick-or-treating began. Our friends, Alicia and Ian, joined us for the evening and walked around the neighborhood with us. Then Alicia had some time to enjoy the bounce house as much as the girls had.

And finally, to end the night, a triple slide with Abby!

Carving Pumpkins

2011-10-30T22:20:00.009-06:00

We carved our pumpkins after our Sunday afternoon naps were over. Kevin pulled up a parable for how to share the gospel while carving a pumpkin and he shared the story while the girls and I got to work.

It took some prodding, but I finally was able to get the girls to get their hands dirty.

Both the girls drew their pumpkin faces with dry erase markers and I carved them. Caroline also had me put a cross on the back of hers.

I did take a little liberty with them both to make it easier to carve and so they didn't have pea sized eyes.

Week 10 in Review

2011-10-30T21:40:00.038-06:00

We took a week off of our Letter of the Week curriculum to do Halloween themed activities. I was a little unsure what Bible theme I would tie in, but then a friend sent me a story for how to share the gospel while carving a pumpkin and "I am the vine" was included. The kids were really into talking about our pumpkins and the fact that they are no longer attached to a vine so, they will no longer grow and will slowly die. And then we talked about how we can stay connected to God by reading the Bible and praying, so we will continue to grow spiritually.

Verse: "I am the vine." John 15:5

Song: I am the vine

Rhyme: 5 Little Pumpkins

Things learned:
Some Halloween spelling words
Plant systems
Skip counting by 10s, -1 math facts, counting dimes
Worked on writing our last name

On our shelf this week, we had, wrapping bugs with spider webs, making patterns with halloween rings, counting/feeding pumkins to the toy story alien (parmesean container), uppercase/lowercase ABC card puzzle, halloween memory game, puzzles, lining up pumpkins (orange fuzzies) on a vine (green shoe lace), and dry erase color by number.

We had an extra guest for school and it made for lots of extra fun. It was neat for each of the girls to have a friend to play with. It did make for a little bit louder volume all morning, though.

I tried out Read and Write the Room with some halloween words. Basically, you just hide words around the room and as the student finds them, they write them on a clipboard worksheet. It makes it a more kinestetic experience.

I usually try to personalize all the ideas I find online to fit out needs, so here I am prepping for the activity the night before. Since I had four students at various levels, I prepped three age appropriate worksheets (Caroline had to trace the entire word, my older preschoolers traced the first letter of each word, and then Charlotte just had to get her sticker). Then, I made "stickers" by printing the pictures and sticking them to the back of the laminated words with double stick tape. The annoying part was that they didn't unstick from the cards as well as I would have liked.

All the work paid off because it was a big hit with the kids. They were excited to pose with their completed sheets.

After all the friends were gone, Caroline and I did a lesson on photosynthesis, transpiration, and respiration in plants. She learned that plants need water, sun, and air to make their food. We had set up some celery in colored water on Sunday afternoon and we recorded the results in her science journal during out lesson.

I'm still trying to prep a cut/glue activity for Charlotte each week. Some weeks she's more into it than others. I'd prepped four pumpkins for her to make faces for, but only had the attention span to do one.

Some school days are harder than others. Sometimes, I try to switch things up to get us in a different setting and hopefully in a better attitude. Here are the girls having a picnic in the garage so they could watch it rain.

I just don't know how I would homeschool without the internet and all of it's possibilities. During a Hooked on Phonics lesson, I decided we needed some reinforcing in identifying what words start with SH, CH, or TH and my google search did not dissapoint. So, Caroline and I spent a better part of our afternoon lesson creating The Around Town Digraphs game. We colored it together and then laminated it, and then the game was one. I'm sure the fact that we used starbursts as our game pieces added to the appeal.

I HEART You

2011-10-29T09:48:00.000-05:00

We've entered the smiling heart drawing phase...

I'm always entertained by the phases the girls' drawing goes through. Caroline is in a "smiling heart" phase right now. It even has eye lashes. And one of the great things about teaching her writing and spelling is that I get a ton of presents with "Mommy" written on them : ) She also likes to write the date, which is just the year "2011." She even writes the date on her Sunday School papers.

Trick-or-Treat at Ainsley Courte

2011-10-28T18:30:00.000-05:00

We had our annual trick-or-treat visit to Ainsley Courte today.

I'm sure that if they've told someone once, then they've told people a thousand times that they are ballerinas this year. They have been very excited about it. I was excited about it too because grandma got Caroline (and Charlotte, too) a new leotard and skirt for her birthday that worked great, so mommy didn't have to sew anything.

We made a quick stop at my allergy office on the way so I could catch up on my shots. The office was pretty empty, so the girls danced around while we waited our 20 minutes. I just love looking at their little buns. They turned out so cute.

A cold front came through last night, so it was a little chilly this morning. I kept putting Charlotte's sweater on and then she'd take it off.

All the residents thought the girls were so cute.

After getting their treats, the girls sat around on the floor eating some of their bounty.

Fun and Games

2011-10-24T22:13:00.010-05:00

The weekend before Halloween is always a double wammy of fun for us.

First, we have a cook-off at Kevin's office. Every department has a team and they create a booth with a theme, often including activities for the kids, and then they cook some amazing food.

A favorite theme this year was the Angry Birds booth. Kevin and Caroline got to play a game to get those pesky pigs. My favorite food was the tacos at the Willy Wonka booth.

Then, if we haven't had enough fun, we head to the Fall Fest at our church. The girls had a blast on all the inflatables. A favorite was a green alligatory/dinosaur they had to crawl through. They saw it from the street and it was our first stop. Caroline went through, but Charlotte was a little unsure. They also enjoyed the obstacle course and slides.

After our hot dog supper, the girls entertained us with a dance.

Week 9 in Review

2011-10-22T09:30:00.001-05:00

We had G is for Gumball week a week ago. Ironically, I never got our gumball machine out for treats. Oh, well, they'll get enough sugar when Halloween comes around.

Bible Verse: "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." Mark 16:15
Song: Amazing Grace
Rhyme: The Grand Old Duke of York

Things learned:
G handwriting and sign
Science: Parts of a flower
Math: Games

This week on her shelf, Charlotte had golf tees with marbles (a big favorite), roll a gumball machine puzzle, gumball machine lacing card, fuzzies with tongs, gumball counting, and gumball prewriting with dry erase.

I also make a gumball glue and sitcker page, but they weren't very popular.

I think the number one favorite thing for all three of us this week was the Marble Laboratory. I picked up two kits at the Dollar Tree during the summer, having seen this with floral balls on other blogs. Just to make sure it worked, I did a test batch Sunday night. I personally enjoyed watching the changes myself.

Then, I set Caroline up with her science journal and we drew a picture and made some predictions. We also weighed ten balls on our balance against some pennies, so we could compare.

While we waited for Caroline's batch to change, we played with the set that I made the night before.

My inner engineer came out and we made a run for them with some water bottles and I taped it to the dishwasher front.

I decided to give Caroline a break from our Saxon Math pages this week, so I came up with some fun activities and made a list for her to choose from each day.

1. Playing Candy Land with flashcards instead of the color cards. I felt bad that I kept getting the 8+8 and 9+9 cards.

2. Putting 10 gumballs in each gumball machine with paint and q-tips and then skip counting to 100.

3. Writing her own story problems about gumballs on a worksheet I created.

4. Practicing math facts with "poke cards."

Charlotte works on her preschool workbook while Caroline does her spelling.

Caroline wasn't in a "good" spelling mood for letter G spelling day. I ended up letting her write on a magna doodle... special treat, right? Well, at one point she ended up writing "no" for her spelling word. She got to do the entire lesson again when daddy got home.

Caroline and I did Roll it! Write it! with her spelling words on Wednesday while we were missing BSF since Charlotte had a temperature. It was really cute because Charlotte joined us on the floor with her dry erase prewriting page.

Charlotte hurt her knee, so Caroline got her ballerina doll for Charlotte and sat with her reading while the ice pack sat on her knee. So sweet!

On Friday, Caroline made tissue paper flowers with all the parts of the flower that we learned this week. I layed all the materials out with her cards before we began. Technically, she's just supposed to learn the words and not necessarily be able to identify where they are.

Caroline decided we needed bugs to help pollinate the flowers, so we made a set by twisting a pipe cleaner around a pencil for the body and then adding wings.

When we finished, we had to make another set and leave it outside of Charlotte's bedroom door as a surprise for her after nap.

Doctors office fun

2011-10-20T09:32:00.017-05:00

We did end up at the doctors office with Charlotte last Thursday. Since we were on our way to the pumpkin patch if the prognosis wasn't too bad, I happened to have my camera along.

Here is how we entertain ourselves while waiting for the doctor... crayons and the exam table paper.

I read it in a magazine years ago and we've been doing it for a long time. The girls start asking for crayons as soon as the nurse brings us back.

Pumpkin Patch

2011-10-20T09:32:00.016-05:00

Our fifth annual pumpkin patch trip, October 20. Wow, I can't believe we've been going for so long!

My friend, Melissa, happened to be there at the same time this year. We couldn't help but reproduce a picture we took in 2008. Wow, how three years has changed our big girls.

Guess we have to get the siblings in on the action too.

Week 8 in Review

2011-10-18T15:00:00.000-05:00

We took a week off from the ABCs and spent a week on a Flower theme.
Bible verse: "Still other seed fell on good soil." Mark 4:8
Song: What do plants need? (to the tune of "Are you sleeping?")
Rhyme: Mistress Mary (the Christian version of Mary, Mary)

Things learned:
Counting by 10's
Drawing verticle lines (Charlotte)
Science: Part of a plant
Spelling: one through six
We didn't get to work on our states this week.

Charlotte's shelves were so pretty this week. I loved all the flower stuff. The girls both really enjoyed having fake flowers at their disposal. I know lots of bouquets were made, but I'm not sure if they ever got sorted into the right color coded can.

I love how pretty our sensory box was this week. I know I've seen similar things on other blogs. I washed our pots and garden shovels from the sandbox and put them with our pinto beans and more silk flowers.

Charlotte has really enjoyed cutting, gluing, and doing stickers, so I prepared a tray for each this week. And then, of course she barely touched them. The girls did end up getting into the stickers on Friday and Caroline made each family member a little card. She even drew stems under the sitckers. They'll be on next week's bulletin board photo.

These mini flower erasers from the Dollar Tree were a huge hit. I used them with preschool number mats which I had printed out as two per page. They ended up being the perfect size to put over the dots.

I created my own verticle line tracing worksheets with clip art and dashed lines for the preschoolers while Caroline wrote 1 - 50 in the spaces for a 10's skip counting flowers worksheet.

Sometimes I just fly by the seat of my pants around here, so Tuesday's lesson was tweaked midstream. Charlotte finished her shape workbook quickly so I drew a bunch of shapes and she found each kind and dotted them with a color I specified. Caroline wanted in on the action, so we scrapped the foam shapes for Read! Build! Write! mats and I scrambled the remaining letters on a page for her to stamp as she needed them.

Caroline is doing really well in her Math lessons... academically. Emotionally, she gives me a lot of trouble and thinks math is boring. We'll be taking a break from our math curriculum next week and doing some math games. Here she is working on her homework while Charlotte colors a princess coloring book.

We revisited our number one - three sight words this week and added four - six. I think we've almost got it. Here's the end result of our game of Roll! Read! Write! I'm really impressed with how well her handwriting is getting.

Flu shots

2011-10-13T16:33:00.000-05:00

The girls got flu shots today. Their reactions were totally typical of their personalities.

Caroline was an emotional wreck from the time the nurse mentioned the shot during the screening portion of her checkup (Thanks!). I had to hold her down for the shot kicking and screaming.

Charlotte on the other hand was totally enamoured with the sucker I had given her to hold. Only once they stuck her did I feel her little body tense up and she very dramatically announced "That hurts me! Somethings hurting me." with a tone of surprise and shock.

Caroline has been limping all afternoon. However she was fine traipsing all over the mall to the Disney store and play area.

Charlotte, who even got an extra shot, is doing great. We've even taken her bandaids off.

Prayer play

2011-10-10T14:58:00.000-05:00

Caroline is upstairs having quiet play and apparently her toys are taking prayer requests. From what I overheard, one was about not bothering mommy and daddy and the other was to not sneeze.

The birthday girl

2011-10-09T19:23:00.000-05:00

We celebrated Caroline's birthday this weekend with some family. Caroline wanted a ballerina party with a cake made from her Ballerina Barbie. I always feel like I've ruined the cake about halfway through, but it turned out really cute in the end.

Caroline had one of her favorites for lunch... flour tortillas. The grown ups opted to put Crock Pot Pulled Pork on theirs.

We got Caroline her first bike for her birthday. Kevin put it together the night before - I love that he enjoys assembling toys for the girls, it really is his delight to do it. Since there isn't a good way to wrap a bike, we just had Caroline close her eyes. I think she was surprised even though we'd mentioned in the past that we were going to get her a bike.

The cutest part about the bike reveal was how thankful Caroline was. She gave Kevin, Charlotte, and me a hug before she even got on the bike. It really confirmed for Kevin and me that Gifts is her primary love languages.

My niece Paige let the cat out of the bag that they had gotten Caroline something from Tangled. It was a big hit regardless. The girls spent the rest of the afternoon playing with the little Tangled characters inside of the Loving Family Motor Home that Granny and Grandad got her.

My grandma Betty had sent a present for Caroline. After she opened it, she adamantly explained to my mom that she was to go visit my grandma and give her a big hug for her. I was also impressed that Caroline was able to read my grandma's signature on the card.

Aunt Katy, Uncle Paul, Ethan, and Seth got Caroline the Toy Story Barbie. The irony is that I'm almost positive that I had the same one... although, her unitard was a little less metallic.

Part of the reason I steered Caroline towards a ballerina party was because I knew my mom had gotten her a new ballet outfit, video, and doll. Caroline was playing with her doll before bedtime and kept repeating, "I just love her so much."

I can't believe Caroline is five. It feels like such a milestone because she's started school this year and is really such a big girl. I'm so thankful for her sweet spirit. I also can't believe we've been in this parenting thing for five years. I know Caroline has taught us as much as we've taught her.

After the party, Caroline rode her new bike for all her guests. Paige and Charlotte got a turn too. Caroline seemed to lose interest a little after the first trip down the sidewalk, but after sharing her bike, she was off and pedaling again. She did really well for her first time.

Week 7 in Review

2011-10-09T18:47:00.000-05:00

"F" is for The Fruit of the Spirit... and Fish.

This is one week that I like to change from the verse that goes along with our "ABC Bible Verse" book. We did the fruit of the spirit last year, and Caroline still knows them!

Bible verse: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such there is no law." Gal 5:22-23
Rhyme: Two feet

Things learned:
Letter F handwriting and sign
Science: Volcano
States: Florida and Georgia (I found some tourism commercials on youtube to watch and the girls loved the Disney World parts.)
Spelling: fat, fan, fed, fell, fig, fit, for
Math: time of day, non-standard measuring, +1 facts, graphing

Our Letter of the Week theme was fish. We had on Charlotte's shelves, laminated fish puzzle, fish bowl fill 'n spill, fish builders, fish pattern, fish number cards with paper clip and magnet sticks, fishing pole puzzle, sensory rice bin with acrylic fish and shells, and board books.

Charlotte requests stickers and cutting a lot lately, so I make a cutting tray and sticker tray (with stickers we got from Texas Children's Hospital in a mailer).

Of course, we had goldfish for snacktime!

A thinking cap helps when you are searching magazines for pictures of Morning, Afternoon, Evening, and Nighttime activities.

I'm not on top of everything. The little girls had a field day with the rice in the sensory bin. It was strewn all around the dining room, and somehow was even on the piano.

Charlotte did fairly well cutting her fish apart.

Tuesday, we had a zoo day. It was wonderful to spend time with friends and enjoy the zoo without ANY school groups there.

Of course, I guess there was one school group there. I took a clipboard and writing paper for Caroline and we found eight animals with the letter F in their name (Giraffe Catfish, Giraffe, Flamingo, Tree Frog, Leaf Turtle, Glass Frog, and Mossy Frog). Then we looked them all up on youtube when we got home. I felt very official, having her do school work on our field trip.

I often worry about the things that will be different for the girls since they are homeschooled. One night, I read a book called "I Like Kindergarten" to Caroline. Since it used to be my book, I knew the story and wondered how Caroline perceived this little girl that was going off to school. It's an old book, so the Kindergarten class looks a lot like our school, with little preschool tables and no desks. And I knew that at the end of the story, the little girl pretends school with her baby sister.

It left me wondering as I was finishing the book, will Caroline play school? Will she have any desire to pretend to be the teacher?

Thankfully, I didn't have to wonder long. Caroline announced that she was going to make a Kindergarten worksheet for Charlotte the next morning. She did a great job and mirrored several items that are often in her math workbook pages. It was really cute to watch her help Charlotte work on it. Then she did another two-sided worksheet for her later in the week.

We got to measure the things in our house with Unifix cubes this week. It's always fun when we find a way to get up and move around during a math lesson.

Then, I got down all my scrapbooking fiskar scissors during Charlotte's naptime. Caroline had fun cutting with all the different edges. We layered them to make a fish and mimic their scales.

Last week, I laminated a printout of the United States and we now color in the states that we've learned about. Charlotte really likes this activity and has asked several times throughout the week to "color the states."

Caroline finished the first half of her First grade Hooked on Phonics program. We are on to the red book next week to work on word endings.

Week 6 in Review

2011-10-09T17:29:00.000-05:00

This week, "E" is for Elephant.

Bible verse: "Even a child is known by his deeds." Proverbs 20:11

Song: Every Move I Make

Things learned this week:
Letter E handwriting and sign (I'm happy to report that I worked on the lowercase letter e with Caroline this summer, and she is doing very well at "hitting the ball and rounding the bases" as HWT says.)
Spelling: egg, eat, ear, one, two, three, four (Spelling didn't go so well this week. There aren't many E-words on our list, so I threw in some sight words that aren't spelling the way they sound. I think we need to repeat those again later.)
Science: seasons
Math: started a coin cup, counting backwards (which she already knew - thank you Mickey Mouse), subtraction stories

Here's part of my prep that I do each week. I pull letter manipulatives (scrabble tiles this week) for all of her spelling words. She uses these to build the words on Tuesday with her Read! Build! Write mats.

Here are all the E activities for Charlotte's shelf. Elephant magnetic pom poms, Noah's Ark (which had been stashed away for awhile and got lots of fresh attention), E/e sorting, dry erase tracing, colored elephant puzzle, more animals, squeaker eggs, and elephant board books.

Having fun for circle time on Monday. They really enjoyed shaking the egg shakers and dancing to "Every Move I Make." Then all three girls put away the circle time quilt.

Caroline had company during her math lesson. Her fellow princess scribbled in a notebook while Caroline worked on her worksheet.

Charlotte is having fun cutting and glueing small strips of paper this week. I've moved her small table next to the kitchen table, so she can do her work nearby while I'm helping Caroline with math.

Here we are doing a new activity. Roll it. Write it. Spell it. I made my own set of templates for our Education Cubes and Caroline had great fun rolling and writing each word three times.

I think the girls were a little carried away during Circle Time this particular day. But they sure are cute. We did get things reeled back in to say the Pledge.

We did an elephant craft and I showed the girls how to make gray paint. For Caroline, I used different amounts of white and black so she had a gradient of shades.

I'd baked muffins for Alicia's birthday and figured that I'd get one more use out of the tins before I put them away, so we had a muffin tin lunch. It's really just lunch served in a muffin tin, but the girls thought it was super neat and there is an entire Muffin Tin Mama blog devoted to it.

We ended lunch with the story of the Little Red house so we could see the star in our apple. It something I saw on a blog and wanted to do with the girls as soon as I read it. Would have gone better on "A" week, right?

Knock Knock times four

2011-10-05T15:06:00.000-05:00

The girls have been on a "Knock, knock" joke kick for several months.
This was an interesting take on the joke at lunch today.

Caroline: What's daddy's middle name?
Me: Kevin
C: Okay, mommy, I have four knock knock jokes for you.
Me: Okay, I'm ready.

C: Knock, knock.
Me: Who's there?
C: Caroline
Me: Caroline who?
C: Caroline RuthAnn Welch

C: Knock, knock.
Me: Who's there?
C: Charlotte
Me: Charlotte who?
C: Charlotte Lillian Welch

C: Knock, knock.
Me: Who's there?
C: Mommy
Me: Mommy who?
C: Mommy Marie Welch

C: Knock, knock.
Me: Who's there?
C: Daddy
Me: Daddy who?
C: Daddy Kevin Welch

Then, she added a fifth joke where she did all four of our names.

Halloween or Christmas

2011-10-03T07:27:00.000-05:00

I decorated for Fall last night, but Charlotte thinks it's Christmas. In her defense, I guess she was only a year and a half old this time last year.

Heart dress

2011-09-30T14:11:00.000-05:00

Charlotte is actually 5 months younger than Caroline was in these photos.

It's probably the fact that Caroline still had bangs, but I think Charlotte looks older.

Best shots

2011-09-30T14:08:00.000-05:00

Yay!! I'm doing a dance of joy that we got so many good pictures of the girls today. Not only are these Caroline's 5 year portraits, but they are also her first official school pictures. So, I went for a very school girl look for the first part and I think they came out really cute. I actually found this cute smocked dress at Goodwill! Score!!

And as I'm inclined to do, Charlotte happened to have something that co-ordinated. This belonged to Caroline. I'll have to search for a picture of her wearing it.

Then, we had an outfit change. Caroline is in love with the polka dot dress. She got it from the Slabic girls and it's her absolute favorite. She'd pick it out every Sunday if I let her.

Charlotte calls this her heart dress and I actually have a set of 3 year old portraits of Caroline in that dress.

Early risers

2011-09-30T07:26:00.000-05:00

My girls used to wake up at 7 o'clock on the dot and then Caroline would start a show for them on the TV. Sometimes, Caroline would set it up for Charlotte and then she'd head back to bed.

But, since it's been darker in the mornings, the girls have been sleeping later. And now, when they wake up, they climb into Caroline's bed together - pillow pets and all - and Caroline reads for them.

I'm so glad they have this opportunity to share a room and spend time alone together. Don't get me wrong, the loud bedtimes are no fun, but the payoff this morning on the monitor is so worth it.

10 years ago

2011-09-25T21:27:00.000-05:00

Ten years ago, I was sitting down to my first date with Kevin.
We started out the day as co-workers. We were friends from training class. We'd known each other a little over a month. Kevin had offered multiple times to car shop with me and I'd taken him up on the offer a few weeks before. We'd attended the Red, White, and Blue football game honoring September 11th. There was an infamous thank you note.

Now, I was buying the car. We'd just finished completing the paperwork on my red Ford Escape... the one Kevin now drives. It was getting late and we had gone to the dealership straight from work. Kevin asked me if I felt like cooking or if I wanted to go out for dinner (he took such good care of me, even then). We decided on Cheddar's and ran to our respective homes to change clothes.

I was a little surprised when the man I only saw at work in white dress shirts and ties, showed up in cargo jeans, a flannel shirt, and wearing two earrings!! Yes, you can't expect to change much about the person you marry, but in my case, wardrobes are fleeting.

Anyway, we sat down to our meal along the back wall of the College Station Cheddars and Kevin asked me about the most open ended question that one potential mate can ask another potential mate, "Tell me the story of your life."

I knew at that point that Kevin was either A, really interested in me, or B, had no idea how to start a conversation.

Well, ten years later, I'm glad that the answer is still true. (It was answer A in case you're still guessing.) So, tonight we celebrated with chips, queso, Santa Fe Spinach dip, and something we now call the Monster Cookie, but back in the day was known as the Cookie Monster.

I'm so thankful for an all knowing God that knew all along the perfect man He'd planned out for me. I'm thankful that the story of our lives are now woven together into one.

And we have two lovely and entertaining additions to our table. I pray that we are able to fulfill God's part in His plan for their lives so that someday we will have a small contribution in the story of their life that they'll tell to their potential spouse. I know those guys will have a lot to live up to.

Drum roll please....

2011-09-25T21:08:00.000-05:00

Here are the long awaited (okay, it's only been a week) pictures of Kevin's shaved head...

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Handsome either way in my opinion. I'm going to have to coupon more shaving cream now though.

Week 5 in Review

2011-09-25T20:58:00.001-05:00

In case you can't guess from the following pictures, we are on letter D this week. And D is for dinosaur.

Bible Verse: "Do all things without complaining or arguing." Phillipians 2:14
Song: I'll praise you with a dance
Rhyme: Diddle Diddle Dumpling

Things learned this week:
Letter D (handwriting and sign)
Spelling Words: dad, den, dig, did, dip, dot, dug, do
States: California and Colorado (I started checking out a series of states books from the library this week. There is a lot of content, so I just read little bits while they do their Target workbook.)
Math: Pattern blocks, Balance, Doubles (0-9), 1st Math Drill page (doubles 0-5), learned to self check on flashcards
Science: Types of weather (started doing a weather song during circle time to the tune of "Oh My Darlin'")
Reading: "And then it rained..." with Venn diagram
Art: Donut collage

Here is Charlotte's shelf at the beginning of the week. The dinosaurs that my neighbor let me borrow were a huge hit. We had big ones, and then some small ones that I put with some duplo blocks as scene. Another highlight was the sequencing dinosaurs... ordering seven cutouts largest to smallest.

Here are my Monday pupils working on their Target ABC books.

Then we repeated our PE routine from last week. The bandanas are a big hit. We use them like stepping stones to get across the "river." You have to stay on the stones, so the girls have to step to one bandana and then lay the other one out in front of them. Repeat, repeat, repeat. It's a lot of up and down, plus they are getting to fluff the bandana in flat on the floor.

Charlotte liked her dry erase coloring page this week too. She got it off her shelf several times. Caroline colored it once as well. She did each section in two colored stripes. I wish I'd taken a picture of that.

Caroline was in a silly mood during pictures this week. Here she is doing Read-Build-Write mats. We are using scrabble tiles for a few weeks to change up from reading rods.

Our math lesson is starting to overwhelm us both. Thankfully, I just realized that I can go from five lessons a week down to four, and still finish by the end of the year. Actually, we are 23% done!!

What overwhelms me is the amount of items involved in our lesson. But I see value in each one...
- Fill the date in on the calendar
- Write out the date on handwriting paper
- Add a straw to our place value cans (a highlight for Caroline)
- Write the number of straws on place value strip
- Practice handwriting on the number of the day
- Count to 100 ( I almost always skip this)
- Several other things that I leave out because Caroline has mastered them (patterns and graphing the weather)
- Then there is the actual lesson I teach her
- Work on flashcards now that she's learning her facts
- Then she does the worksheet
- And there's an independent worksheet for later in the day.

This week we add a "coin cup" which will be a coin purse in our case and we'll practice writing cents.

No wonder Caroline says she doesn't like math.

But, like it or not, she's doing a great job with it and it's something she needs to learn for life. Here's a fun day when we got to use the balance. I borrowed it from my neighbor. There was just one lesson this week, so I'm glad I didn't run out to buy one.

Here's a Venn diagram we made for a book called "And then it rained..." Then you turn over the book and it's called "And then the sun came out..." I read one story and Caroline read most of the other. It has a character named Matthew DeWitt that is a Christian and quotes scripture.

We are still moving forward with Hooked on Phonics. I've given up writing it into my lesson plans. I've been trying to pace us in the book so we don't go too fast, but Caroline has mastered most of the stuff we are covering (beginning sound combinations), so I'm just letting her do as much as she wants so we can get on to the second half of the 1st grade box (simple endings). Pluto is helping us on reading days so we remember to "paws" at the period.

The grand finale of our week was donuts on Friday. Caroline twisted my arm and said we must have donuts since donuts starts with D. And I figured, hey, that's as good a reason as any. So we invited our friends and SIX families joined us for donuts and then play at the park.

Poor little overrun store owners.

And then I had a brainstorm after seeing a collage post on The Wonder Years this week and getting donuts, so I changed our art project to D is for Donuts. I traced our big foam D and then cut out pink icing. Then I pulled some stuff I had around that looked like sprinkles and let the girls go to town. Again, it's so interesting that my 2 1/2 year old is so much more dainty in her use of glue than my almost five year old.

Caroline specifically ordered her picture to have a section for each type of collage ingredient (split peas, hole punches, colored rice, glitter confetti, and cut up straws).

We ended the week with a picnic in the front yard to enjoy the cooler temps (however fleeting they were). We also had our neighbors join us. I love picnicing in our front yard in the fall and spring.

Math Drill

2011-09-22T11:59:00.000-05:00

Caroline just did her first math drill. 25 problems of her six doubles facts (0+0 thru 5+5). She got a 100%. That is after I figured out she was intentionally doing the second row wrong... as I had done in my example when we talked about checking our work.

So, I had to make a copy and then we played a game afterwards where she did them wrong on purpose... she got a 48% on that one ; )

It's always so interesting to look ahead in curriculum and think "no way is she going to be doing this" and then finally see them accomplish it. That's how I felt with the readers in Hooked on Phonics. I really didn't know how she would be able to read them and now they are a breeze.

Sisterly Love

2011-09-19T21:09:00.000-05:00

The girls had a super sweet week of being cuddly with each other. There were evenings of watching Seasame Street on mom's bed, afternoons watching a bit more TV while dad was on his way home from work, sneaking into bed in the morning so big sister could read little sister a book (pillow pet and all), playing hide out in mom's closet (again, pillow pets and all), and going for rides in the wagon with our new A&M sock monkeys.

Charlotte hurt herself twice today and Caroline drew here heart and flower pictures on our dry erase board. What was really cute was that she was copying Charlotte's name off of her Sunday school paper that was on the bulletin board. What is funny is that the teacher didn't print it very neatly, so Caroline's spelling ended up being "Charace." What a great lesson in practicing neat handwriting!

Week 4 in Review

2011-09-19T20:57:00.000-05:00

Week four started out with a special guest for class on Monday. She's going to join us on Monday's this year while her mom has a leadership meeting. It works out great because the girls behave better when we have company and now Charlotte has a playmate while I'm doing Caroline's math lesson.

Bible Verse: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right." Eph 6:1
Song: O Be Careful Little Eyes
Rhyme: Who took the cookie from the cookie jar?

Things learned this week:
Letter C (handwriting and sign)
C spelling words: cat, can, cap, cot, cup, came, cub, cut)
States: Arizona and Arkansas
Science: Five types of clouds
Math: Writing number 19-23, rectangles, ordinal (first through sixth), doubles facts (0+0 through 5+5)
Art: Cotton ball clouds
We also read a version of Cinderella and did Caroline's first Venn Diagram that I got out of a Fairy Tale unit.

Charlotte's theme this week was caterpillars. Here's the set up of her shelf. She has a magnetic number matching caterpillar, fuzzies to line up in a sports bottle ice cube tray, books, caterpillars to count onto a leaf mat, a peg puzzle, sensory box with split peas, caterpillar lacing, and caterpillar clip cards (which she never did).

Here are my three students working on their Target Phonics workbook (it's the "Panda begins with P" book). I'm letting Caroline do it as well. Then, the younger girls do a do-a-dot picture while I instruct Caroline for handwriting in another Target book that has more practice space.

Charlotte enjoyed having company to play with her shelf activities.

They made it though most of Caroline's math lesson before I sent them upstairs to play.

On another day, I let my girls watercolor a print out for our Bible verse. You can find the print out in the Letter C downloads on Raising Rockstars. I liked that it had our little manta "the first time," "right away," and "with a happy heart" written inside the letters for OBEY.

Meet Mr. Spacer. We also have his spouse, Mrs. Spacer. Caroline practiced her spelling words with him on Wednesday. He's my newest trick for teaching my lefty. It's pretty difficult to leave a finger space when you are a lefty because you have to cross your hands and it just doesn't work. I even made a paintbrush image of him and inserted it onto our worksheet.

Flush

2011-09-18T16:11:00.000-05:00

Around 4 am this morning, I awoke to the sound of our toilet flushing.

The confusing part was that Kevin was sound asleep next to me in the bed.

Hmmm, why is our toilet flushing itself at 4 am?

Well, I get up and turn on the light to find Charlotte sitting in the dark on our toilet. She had a clean, daytime pull-up next to her on the floor and her night time pull-up was in the trashcan.

What a smart girl!! We are on day four of, what seems to be, the end of her potty training journey (minus the setback on Friday when she had an accident ON my bed). I haven't even thought about tackling night time training, but I pray that it may be taking care of itself.

Wordle

2011-09-17T08:34:00.001-05:00

Has anyone ever heard of www.Wordle.com?

It's really neat. You just put in the words you want and then it makes artwork for you.

From my five minutes playing with it, I think the middle word of you list ends up being the main focus. Originally, Math was bigger than all my other words. So then, I redid the list with HOMESCHOOL in the middle and it came out better.

One day until - MICKEY!!

2011-09-16T08:12:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is the day!! We are getting Mickey back when we go to Granny's house.

I'm so proud of Caroline. While she did ask about him on occassion, and of course told anyone we would meet that we forgot him, she's done amazingly well. Far better than I thought she'd do. Especially during bedtime situations.

Here's a letter saying "I am going to watch a movie with mommy."

"To: Mickey"

then she runs out of room and goes back to the top and down the right side

"From: The Welches"

I spelled everything for her.

Eat your veggies

2011-09-12T21:14:00.002-05:00

Bob and Larry were at our local Chic Fil A on September 12th, so we made a special outing after dinner to get ice cream.

The girls were less than enthusiastic once we arrived and saw the costumed characters. I confess, they've inherited this from me. I hated people in costumes as a child. A vivid memory of fleeing from Ronald McDonald comes to mind. But we took pictures anyway and then the girls more than made up for it enjoying their ice cream.

Week 3 in Review

2011-09-10T20:08:00.000-05:00

Since we took Monday off for Labor day, we had a little bit of a mixed up week of school. It took me some time to shift around our subjects to fit most of it in during our four days at home, including our monthly nursing home visit. I was glad to have one last free Wednesday before BSF starts back up.

Instead of a letter of the week, we did a ballet them. It worked out nicely that we could review A and B off of the word ballet.

Bible Verse: "You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing." Ps 30:11

Song: I Am Free (to dance)

Rhyme: Lord of the Dance

Things learned this week:
We have two states named Alaska and Alabama.
The three types of rocks are igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic.
Spelling words: bun, bat, big, black, brown, beg
Writing 16 through 18, graphing, ordinal numbers (first through sixth), and halves.

I don't think we ended up using our "official" PE curriculum at all this week. The weather was so nice that we went to the park at the beginning of the week, and were out and about during that time at the end of the week (which worked out because I was keeping the girls away from the smoke smells wafting in from the wildfires.) I guess the park trip on Wednesday counted as a little home economics since we took our baby dolls.

I let Caroline stamp her spelling words on Wednesday. She was having a difficult time concentrating and Pluto was being a bad influence. She ended up with ink all over but did get all her words done in the end. I did realize that she was copying the color words off of a poster we have in the school room, so I covered them with post-it notes before she did the review on Friday.

Our math lesson on Thursday expected us to eat 10 apples so we could count and graph the seeds. Ummm, I don't think so. Instead, I put clip art cutouts of apples on 10 disposable cups and we counted pinto beans instead. Then we wrote the numbers of "seeds" that were in each "apple" and made a graph.

Kevin administered the weekly assessment of our Saxon Math 1 program on Thursday night and I realized that we needed to reinforce ordinal numbers that we'd worked on the previous week. I think I come up with my best activities when I'm trying to find a new way to teach or practice a concept. So, I printed some flash cards for first through sixth and we practiced putting them in order on our pocket chart.

Then, we put the flashcards in our photo block and combined it with a set of colored cards in a second photo block. We took turns rolling the dice and coloring some clip art ballet pictures until we filled each row. I think she's got it now!

Finally, we made pet rocks for our art project. It did end up that I did all the hot gluing, but the girls had fun picking stuff out of my do-dad box. Caroline wanted hers to have a hanger for our Christmas tree. Thanks Gen for letting me rob your landscaping.

Caroline's Math Brain

2011-09-08T14:38:00.000-05:00

It's very interesting to see Caroline's thought processes unfold. I've seen her do several things during our math lessons that I find quite interesting.

The most recent one happened this afternoon. First, I should mention that we haven't memorized any addition facts... that starts next week. I'm a little excited about the math facts because it finally feels like "real" school. But I'm also nervous because I have no idea how that will go over. Little did I know that Caroline has figured one of our first five facts out on her own. She was doing a problem that had her draw five pennies in each of two squares. Then she had to add them together. As I was observing, she wrote the answer without any sign that she'd counted the picture, her fingers, or had time to count in her head. I asked her about it and she said something to the effect, "Well, I have five fingers on each hand and I know I can count to ten on my hands."

Something else that I've noticed is that Caroline makes addition problems out of things that could be just simple counting. Like, she'll break our manipulatives into two groups. Then she'll count the groups on her respective hands to get the sum.

In a similar situation, she was counting something on a horizontal graph in a unique way. It was eight squares wide and she knew that the first item on the graph was four triangles. So when she got to the row that was full of eight circles, she counted the four triangles again and then added the four empty squares to figure out that there were eight circles. It's like she's created her own form of early algebra!!

Week 2 in Review

2011-09-07T14:45:00.049-05:00

Here's a review of our second week of school:

Letter of the week: B (butterfly)

Bible Verse: "Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry." James 1:19

Song: The B I B L E

Rhyme: Baa Baa Black Sheep

Things learned this week:
Uppercase and Lowercase B.
The sign for B.
There are 13 original colonies.
Parts of the globe.
Spelling words: bed, bag, bell, bin, box, bug, be
Writing 11 through 15, triangles, beginning word problems, counting to 100.

The girls are really enjoying the hula hoops that we got for PE. We pick them up from the floor and hold them over our heads, we hold them like a steering wheel and make big circles, we hold them over our heads and pretend to twirl like helicopters, we jump like frogs on lily pads, we jump through them like an obstacle course, and we practice jumping in and out (which means jumping backwards. There are so many uses. A great $3 investment!

I couldn't help myself and made colored butterflies for Charlotte's sensory box out of bowtie pasta. I spent a little extra to get the name brands because they were smaller. The girls had fun cooking them in their toy pots and pans. Mrs. Alicia came over one day to drop off a guitar and we sucked her into entertaining Charlotte. She made the teddy bear, which was something I hadn't thought to try.

Caroline is enjoying putting her science cards in our pocket chart. I bought metal rings to hook it to our dog gate. She's really good at picking out the big science words to match the questions if she's using cards.

Caroline was very excited to start a new month on the calendar we write on during math each day. She was also excited because we got to make our first bundle of 10 straws on Friday for our place value cans. Charlotte has really been enjoying her sensory box through the first half of our math lesson. She usually ends up watching a show before we are all done though. Baby steps.

Our butterfly craft on Friday was a bit of a flop because the cheap glitter glue was all congealed. So, I ended up getting another craft out that went much better. We used coffee filters that I sprayed with water (to make them flat and wick the paint). Then we painted them with watercolors. Once they dried I put them together with a pipe cleaner to make butterflies. They are watching us from the chandelier. See, the girls are showing you.

All in all, school is going well. I'm still having to deal with a little more fussiness than I would like. I'm convinced that my girls would not behave this way for a teacher in school, but since I'm their mom, they are comfortable enough to be themselves. Oh, the character shaping opportunities available for a homeschool mom!! Not always my favorite job, but it's what God has tasked to me so I will thank Him for the blessing of these children in my care and let His power be made perfect in my weakness.

Week 1 in Review

2011-08-31T16:08:00.000-05:00

We are off an running with our first week of school. Here's our week in review.

Letter of the Week: A

Bible Verse: "A soft answer turns away wrath." Romans 12:10

Praise Song: All in All

Rhyme: The Ants Go Marching

Things learned:

Upper and Lowercase A

Sign for A

That there are 50 states in the United States.

The parts (layers) of the Earth.

Spelling words: am, an, at, add, are, all, and

Right and left, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, finished handwriting numbers, and graphing.

The teacher got flowers for the first day of school. Much better than an apple in my opinion.

Monday, we figured out all the places that we work on our lessons. Math works well at the kitchen table since it has so many materials (the teacher's manual, workbook, handwriting paper, some kind of manipulative, days of school straws, calendar, etc.). Caroline now sits in Charlotte's booster so she's plenty high enough to be in a good handwriting position. Charlotte usually plays with one of her activities until I send her to my room to watch a show on my bed. Math can be up to a 45 minute lesson at times.

Tuesday, we are working on our first lesson of the day at the preschool table. Charlotte has something to do for the first lesson that is similar to Caroline's work. Sometimes it's a workbook and other times it's a motor skill practice. She was very proud of herself for doing stickers while Caroline worked on her spelling mats.

Wednesday, we got to have some fun after school playing in the water. I even taped the holes shut while we cleaned the beach sand out of our wagon, for even more excitement. Our car wash bucket continues to be a favorite.

Thursday, felt like practice fire/tornadoe/stranger on campus day must be for regular teachers. We were in and out of the house seeing the fire engines and utility trucks. We managed to color a map of the United States and then Caroline and I did math by the light of the window as she kept pointing out the utility workers going back and forth from our backyard.

Friday, we made apple prints. Then we taste tested a red and green apple. Caroline thought the green one was sweeter. And then we had cinnamon sugar apples for snack.

And the favorite activity of the week was the Layers of the Earth Triffle. Red/pink pudding core, Orange tinted cake for the mantle, crushed oreos for the crust, blue pudding for the hydrosphere, and green fondant for the biosphere.

It was yummy and Caroline has told EVERYONE about it.

Utility Pole

2011-08-25T16:34:00.000-05:00

Well, it was an exciting day around here. I know I could have handled it with a lot more grace, but what can I say. I was joking around that this side of our yard is cursed since we lost a tree over there during Ike, but it is amazing that God has protected our home in both circumstances (the tree that fell during Ike literally came close enough to hitting our house that the window screens have tears).
I think our pole started to lean a bit more this morning and the lines started touching the neighbor's tree again. So, we got to see a fire truck up close and personal while they monitored the tree. Amazingly, it kept putting itself out. Everytime the lines would touch, we'd here this loud popping, an electric jjooozzz sound, and the top of the pine tree would flare into flames. Each time this happened, the power would go off and then try to restore itself.

Finally, the utility truck came by and said that they had temporarily shut off the power.

About three hours later, another two utility trucks hauling trailers of equipment showed up. Four guys proceeded to trim our HUGE Crepe Myrtle that's near the pole (leaving the debris for us) and dug a new hole for a support post. (I left around that point because Charlotte had a dr. appt. for an ear infection - amazingly waiting at a drs. office was more appealling than being home without power today.) The power is back on now and the old pole is being straightened by the support pole. I'm guessing it took about 2 or so hours of work on their part.

Thankfully, the peak temp outside was about 94 and it only hit 79 inside our house all day. Our AC is catching up. Caroline and I did Math in the dark during Charlotte's nap and both girls colored the USA off and one between trips outside to talk to neighbors and all the trucks this morning.

Here are some pics...

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Not entirely straight, but I guess it will do. That trimmed tree you see in the center background is actually two houses over and was the one shorting the lines and catching on fire. The power company keeps it trimmed back from the lines... poor lopsided tree.

Super Storm

2011-08-25T08:36:00.001-05:00

We had a huge storm here last night. Something happened to our power line in the backyard. I guess lightening struck it. Anyway, the power came back on and off three times very quickly with loud transformer blowing sounds and blue/purple light flaring outside the windows. Now our power pole by the shed is leaning toward the house. And since that lean moved the wires a bit, it caught part of our neighbor's tree... two doors down... on fire. Pretty exciting stuff. Kevin and Caroline were at practice, so Charlotte and I waited the storm out at a neighbors until Kevin came home so we could figure stuff out. Thankfully, that initial power outage only lasted about 45 minutes. And I'm glad that I had my calmer child to wait it out with : )

We all slept in the living room last night to be on the safe side while we are waiting for Centerpointe to come look at our pole. I pray they come today.

Say a prayer that it stays put and doesn't fall on anything. I'm also really nervous about how and what equipment they are going to have to get in our backyard to fix it.

What are we doing for homeschool - Fall 2011 curriculum

2011-08-22T21:19:00.002-05:00

I've been debating how much detail to share about our school days this year. But esp. since Traci mentioned it today, I guess I'd better at least get an intro posted for inquiring minds ; )

One of the speakers at the homeschool conference we attended this summer kept saying that the best thing about homeschooling is that it is "forgiving and flexible." It is freeing to know that anything that doesn't seem to work for our family is subject to change, but for the time being, I thought I'd share our current plan.

First, I chose to work on the Letter of the Week curriculum with Charlotte, so I planned out our year to encompass a week for each letter of the alphabet (in ABC order) with some holidays and special lessons mixed in. I followed our local school calendar just to keep myself accountable. I planned an art project to mostly abide with the LOTW theme and keep a good mix of artistic mediums. You'll hear more about science later.

CLICK IMAGE TO SEE FULL SPREADSHEET

Then, I worked out a daily schedule. The girls participate together through circle time and then our 9:30 lesson either has an age appropriate seat work for Charlotte (Monday and Tuesday) or we are doing a lesson together (Thursday and Friday). Obviously we do PE and snack together. Then Charlotte has her LOTW laminated games to do nearby while Caroline and I do Math (or if it's a bad day, playing upstairs or watching TV). And then she's napping when we do our afternoon lesson and homework.

CLICK IMAGE TO SEE FULL SPREADSHEET

Math: Saxon Math 1 - I mainly chose this because I was able to borrow my neighbor's $50 teacher's manual and because one of the coop options we are considering uses this curriculum in the higher maths. For each lesson, we complete the front part of a worksheet during the lesson and then Caroline completes a very similar worksheet on the back during "homework" time. We are doing level 1 because my neighbor said the levels seem to fall a grade behind and I am finding that to be true, given some pre-math training during preschool. I seems to have a "big one" as far as a new subject we start each semester and Math is our "big one" for Kindergarten. There are two huge workbooks of worksheets and I want to make a good effort at getting through, so we will try our best to do Math daily.

Handwriting: Handwriting Without Tears (orange) - Caroline made huge strides in muscle control and willingness to work on handwriting towards the end of the summer. We are working through the book in ABC order, doing the capital and lowercase letters at the same time. I teach the letters on paper (or dry erase or aqua doodle) during our lesson and then she completes the HWT workbook as "homework."

PE: Family Time Fitness - I found this on a Confessions of a Homeschooler and signed up for the one week trial. They e-mailed me five days of warm-ups, actives, and cool downs, which I condensed and laminated on five colored pages. I think it will be enough variety to give us something to work towards during the months that the girls don't play outside during school hours. We like to do our warm-ups to the Nutcracker suite and pretend we are ballerinas and then we usually listen to a VBS song to do our active stuff.

Spelling: I'm working on putting All About Spelling in our budget, but for the time being, I've pulled all the Kindergarten words from Hooked on Phonics, plus the helper and Dolch sight words, and sorted them alphabetically in a spreadsheet (I love my spreadsheets). We are going to work on the set for our letter of the week. I got some Read Write Build mats that we are going to use with our Reading Rods (ABC blocks that click together) during class time and then I made a worksheet for her to practice writing them (more handwriting practice while reinforcing spelling) for "homework." I don't plan any formal tests.

Science: We are interested in joining a Classical Conversations group at some point and so I borrowed their teacher's guide from my neighbor and pulled my favorite and most basic science facts from each of the three cycles to build our plans for the year. Classical education believes there are three phases to learning and right now Caroline is in the grammar phase. She's learning the building blocks for science even though she doesn't have the capacity to process it. So during this phase you focus a lot on memorization. This week our fact is "What are the parts of the Earth? Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Biosphere, Crust, Mantle, Core." Although she doesn't have to understand it, we read an excerpt from a children's book that related, colored a book about the layers of the Earth, worked on picking the right cards to put the question and answer in our pocket chart, and even did a puzzle with Daddy from Target that shows the layers of the Earth (gotta love the dollar spot).

USA: We are going to memorize the states this year, mainly because my friend, Anne, introduced us to a super cute song. And the girls learn so well that way, I figured why not. I even found another Target dollar spot workbook for both the girls to work on together.

Reading: We are continuing with Hooked on Phonics in the 1st grade box. I'm so not concerned about this right now since my mom and I both suspect Caroline is reading on a 2nd grade level. I'm working on an assessment to do this week instead of HOP so I can have a good baseline. Kevin and I have decided that since Caroline reads so much by choice that we don't want to make it a requirement for school. She is earning rewards such as "movie night with mom" by doing a book journal and I'll encourage her to keep up with that. I'm also reading the Borrowers Avenged and The Wind in the Willows aloud. We'll work on reading some of our children's magazines together so we have some on-level and new-to-her material.

Other stuff: I'm working on doing Quiet 1, 2, 3 so I can have some "mommy time" during the afternoon (seriously, I've tried it once). We are also using Funnix Math for some educational computer time. I got it when it was free and it was amazing at getting Caroline to practice writing her numbers with minimal effort on my part. I'm also going to input her spelling list at Big IQ Kids, which I feel could have a more user friendly GUI, but Caroline likes it.

In the pipeline: Two other curriculum I'm saving for are Writing with Ease and First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind. I'll probably add the spelling or one of these curriculum to be my "big one" for the Spring semester.

First day of school!!

2011-08-22T20:27:00.000-05:00

Well, the milestone has been placed, Caroline has completed her first day of Kindergarten!!

I was so proud of Caroline for how well she handled herself throughout the entire day. She completed circle time, Math, Handwriting, Science, PE, and homework in Math and Handwriting today. She thrived on our schedule and loved checking things off our list as we moved through the day. At one point I asked her if she liked her first day of Kindergarten and she gave me and enthusiastic affirmative response.

Here she is working on her Saxon 1 Math.

Charlotte's first day of preschool had a mixed result. She's fighting some sort of virus with minimal external symptoms short of a fever and a horrific temperament. Like any mother of a Kindergartner, I had my share of tears today, but not from leaving my child in her first classroom. Things did improve after I put in a call to the principle (aka Daddy) and we decided to just let her watch TV so I could make the most of Caroline's exciting day.

We did manage to carve out a peaceful time to spend together to do a letter A activity and play with the letter A sensory box of beans while Caroline was having free time. Charlotte is pretending to be a cat (a frequent occurrence) in the second photo.

Now, here's some of the nitty gritty details of our first day.

I spent about 6 hours on Sunday afternoon (errr, evening) getting everything finalized. I cleaned our craft cupboards (why it mattered to me at the time, I have no idea).

I finalized lesson plans. I laminated an outline for myself so I can update it each week with a dry erase marker. I have a more detailed schedule on the other side for myself and a copy for Caroline on the fridge.

I got circle time set up.

Our run through for this fall is:
- Sing "This is the Day the Lord Has Made"
- The Pledge of Allegiance and "My Country tis of Thee"
- Put date magnet on the calendar
- Sing the days of the week song (to the tune of "Brother John" and our new months of the year song to the tune of "Ten Little Indians")
- Add a straw to our ones/tens/hundreds cans (not very exciting at the moment)
- Read and discuss our ABC theme Bible verse ("A soft answer turns away wrath." Pv 15:1)
- Sing our ABC theme praise and worship song ("All in All")
- Discuss the letter and teach Caroline the sign for the letter
- Do our ABC theme rhyme or game ("Let's Sing Hurray for A")

The, I set up presents for the girls. Since Kevin and I feel that "gifts" is a strong love language for Caroline, we try to make the ordinary feel special. They already had these lap trays (on sale for $5 at Michael's this week), so I stuffed some of our new school materials in the side pocket with tissue paper. Our schedule is also on top of Caroline's pink tray.

I also got the girls matching apple shirts at Target. I'd had plans on making some, but when I found them for $5, I decided to save my energy for school preparations instead.

The girls had fun opening their school supplies in the morning and then we had pancakes for breakfast, at Caroline's request.

I'm so glad to be "back to school." I feel so much more organized following our schedule and it's so much more relaxing to know what we are doing next. I was also relieved that everything except our science lesson took less time than I'd allotted. I'm just so excited about this school year! It really is so much fun to homeschool. Yes, there will be days that I want out, but it really is so amazing to be their teacher.

The answer....

2011-07-30T08:00:00.004-05:00

Caroline's pictures are from Angry Birds. The parts on the right are the blocks that hold up the green pigs... which of course the birds are angry at. The parts on the left are the sling shots and the birds waiting in line.

In the fourth picture, you can even tell that the blue bird has been shot and "clicked" to split into three birds. Very accurate!

One last chance to guess...

2011-07-29T21:53:00.000-05:00

Here's your last chance to make a guess about Caroline's pictures.

It's so intersting to me how the detail increased on her third and fourth attempts.

Kid drawings

2011-07-29T14:27:00.000-05:00

Anyone want to take a guess as to what these are pictures of?

Not to be left out...

2011-07-28T21:14:00.000-05:00

And Charlotte has to be the cutest, most entertaining little girl. She is so full of life and certainly destined for something in front of an audience. She dances, she sings, she retells the stories from her books, she plays coy... this little one does it all. I'm so thankful she's so lovable for the days her two-ness is driving me nuts. I love this little girl so much!!

Does it get any better : )

2011-07-28T21:08:00.000-05:00

I'm amazed and thankful almost daily for the super sweet, loving and nurturing little lady that Caroline is turning out to be. I love her so much!!

I miss old coins

2011-07-24T14:23:00.000-05:00

Seriously!! How are you supposed to teach a preschooler the names of the coins when no two look alike.

All the quarters now have states on the back when there should be an eagle.

And did you know there are new nickel designs? Now the face is artistically off to the left side instead of a centered sillouette. And there's a fancy tree/ocean pictures on the back in honor of Lewis and Clark instead of Monticello.

It's totally frustrating!

I'm all for mixing things up and honoring things that make our nation so great, but can't we keep some things consistant. Or maybe we could just put a big 1, 5, 10, or 25 on there somewhere?!

Foiled

2011-07-18T16:23:00.000-05:00

I washed the girls sheets today, plus folded 3 other loads of laundry. And what should happen at naptime? We were the victim of a leaky pull-up.

Sigh. What's one more load, I guess.

Murphy's law.

Target Workbooks

2011-07-16T11:24:00.000-05:00

Target has some really neat workbooks in their Dollar Spot right now.

I have a goal of teaching the girls all 50 states next year. Well, mostly Caroline, but my friend, Anne, hooked me up with a really neat song, and I bet Charlotte ends up with them memorized as well.

Anyway, they have a 50 states book, so I got one for both the girls.
Charlotte will also love the Numbers 1-12 Bunny book. How perfect, she loves bunnies!

It's not just for feet!

2011-07-13T11:30:00.000-05:00

I'm always on the lookout for the latest and greatest way to clean hard water stains off of things. A few years back, I discovered Lime-Away. It worked pretty good on the water stains on our old shower glass, but I'm sure it causes cancer.

Then, I discovered making a paste out of powdered Tang (yes the drink mix), and that works great for getting the lime deposits out of the crevices of my kitchen faucet.

I've been struggling with a toilet bowl ring in our only toilet that we haven't replaced in the house. I've had a bleach cake in the tank for a couple months and it wasn't helping at all. So, I decided to Google it (my favorite thing). Did you know pumice stones aren't just for pedicures?

For only $3.20 at Lowe's (on the cleaning product aisle) and a little elbow grease - stain no more.

"C" is for headband

2011-07-11T17:01:00.001-05:00

Charlotte is drawing letter C's on our dry erase board and calling them headbands.

Mmmmm

2011-07-08T12:02:00.002-05:00

Mmmmm, FREE lunch for dressing like a cow at Chic-Fil-A. My kind of meal : )

Little swimmer

2011-07-08T08:36:00.000-05:00

Caroline is progressing so well in learning to swim!!

We went to the pool last night and I decided to have her swim with her head down in the water, instead of trying to keep it above water. So, she held her breath (which she'd been practicing in the baby pool) and swam from the steps to me, and back again. She did great!! And it's much easier for mommy to watch her swim, knowing she has a breath in there, than watch her barely tread water.

We also practiced jumping into the pool. She still likes me to hold her through the entire process, but this time, I had her hold her breath so I could pull her all the way under the water. She was really excited to feel her feet touch the bottom.

The pool was kind of empty, so we were sitting the girls on the bottom of the slide and letting them scoot off. Caroline even scooted herself up into the slide a bit and slid back down. After all this, we encouraged Caroline to put on her floaties and go down the slide for real. She did and repeated it about a dozen times. Yay, for our brave little girl.

All our fun was doused when someone threw up in the pool and they had to close it. Um, yeh, that someone was Caroline. I think she just over exherted herself and probably drank a bit too much pool water. Oh well, it was only 20 minutes to closing time anyway.

4th of July Part 1

2011-07-04T09:36:00.010-05:00

We started the morning out making strawberry and blueberry muffins.

Then, the girls decorated our star sugar cookies while the muffins baked.

We had a yummy, patriotic breakfast, and then it was on to decorating the wagon for the neighborhood parade. I keep our decorations each year, so some of these date all the way back to Caroline's first 4th of July. The pinwheels are a couple years old and Charlotte got a kick out of blowing on them.

Next, the girls made necklaces out of the remainder of our star beads from years past. I cut up some blue and red straws to stretch the bead supply. The girls liked the straws so much that it looks like we'll have our star beads for yet another year. Caroline made a pattern on her necklace of red straw, blue straw, white star.

Welcome Home

2011-07-03T08:22:00.009-05:00

I had lots of fun surprises for the girls when they came home.

First, I had rearranged their room so their beds were parallel instead of an "L" shaped arrangement. This of course, also meant that I had to move the wooden letters for each of their names. I also moved the nursery nightstand in so they each had a bedside table. Mom said that Caroline was very excited when she noticed the change and called for Charlotte to come see.

After a quick lunch, we put Charlotte down for her nap. Then, Caroline and I made some red, white, and blue strawberries (dipped in white chocolate with blue sprinkles). Caroline did all the dipping and I did the sprinkles.

Then, we rolled and cut out some star sugar cookies.

Once Charlotte was awake, we make flour stars in the front yard. I'd seen this in a magazine. It worked pretty well and they are even lasted through a couple times that I watered the yard the following week. The one on the side walk looked best.

Finally, after dinner, we all went to the pool. The slide was not working... which Kevin found out the hard way. But it was fun for Caroline to show off all her great swimming skills.

Last day with Grandma and Grandpa

2011-07-02T08:15:00.005-05:00

The kids went on a trip during their last day with Grandma and Grandpa. After a morning of playing in mommy's shortened, formal dresses, they hopped in the car for a quick nap and trip to my Uncle Ed's house. He just got married, so the occassion was meeting his new wife.

Mom said that the girls were both fell asleep in the car very quickly for the trip. Then they were excellent guests. They loved their tiny chiuaua dogs. And Charlotte made good friends with a concrete deer in their front yard. My grandparents were there also.

Tomorrow will be their trip home to Houston while mommy and daddy are at church.

Hi Mommy and Daddy (Friday)

2011-07-01T08:08:00.000-05:00

Hi Mommy and Daddy,
Wow! My prayers were answered. Today Charlotte wore her new red life jacket and we each got to catch fish. Grandpa counted that Charolotte caught 2 and I caught 8 (I actually hooked and pulled in 2 all by myself). We got to have several fast boat rides and the cooling wind was great! After fishing, we took a dip in the lake...AAAAAH! Charlotte didn't swim, but she dunked her stuffed bunny in (so it had to have a wash when we got home to Grandma's).

We also saw 4 deer on Langly Island eating green grass by the shore and 2 beautiful swans. Greatgrandpa and Grandpa sure were nice to take us and Grandma kept us slathered with sun-block so we are not red anywhere. We also had snacks in the boat...fun!

This afternoon we are playing with books and toys and Grandpa is playing along at being "Captain Hook" for us.

This was our favorite day...and tonight we have mac and cheese for dinner with homemade chocolate chip cookies (I just baked with Grandma) with ice cream for dessert.

We are looking forward to seeing you Sunday, decorating our bikes and wagon for the parade, and spending time with Granny and Granddaddy, too! We are being extra especially good, so don't worry!

Love,
Caroline (& Charlotte)

Pigs are flying!

2011-06-30T22:31:00.000-05:00

Well friends, the day has finally arrived. I have created a Facebook account.

I've been avoiding Facebook like the plague because I frankly don't need another computer oriented time sucker, but alas, I have given in.

And I owe it all to my wonderful new SIL (love ya!!). She invited me to Pinterest and I had to have a Facebook account to access it. And I wasn't really sure what I could use Pinterest for, but I finally found a purpose. Of course... it's for homeschool!! It's going to be a great way to organize all the ideas that I find online. It will replace my 3 page document of links for activities to make that only have boring links. Now, I can organize them and show a pictures. Super cool.

I'm also excited to finally be able to follow what some of my "non-blogging" friends are up to.

Hi Mommy and Daddy (Thursday)

2011-06-30T08:05:00.000-05:00

Dear Mommy and Daddy,
caroline mis u museumk; hg ooooooooo (Charlotte)
The purple writing is from Caroline and the blue writing is from Charlotte.

Today we went to the Brookshires Museum and playground. The picture of the bunny and monkeys was taken by me. Charlotte took several great pictures, too. We had our picnic at home in the living room because of the heat. But, it was still fun. Today we've played with Grandma and Grandpa with Playdough and a tent and read books and had all sorts of fun. We are going to go have hot dogs for dinner now. We are excited about tomorrow because we are going fishing. Grandma and I have prayed all week that we will both get to catch a fish and that Charlotte will wear her life jacket:) We are behaving very well!

Love,
Caroline (& Charlotte)

Hi Mommy and Daddy (Wednesday)

2011-06-29T08:03:00.000-05:00

Hi Mommy and Daddy!
Today we had a busy morning going to visit Grandpa and Greatgrandpa at church. They work there every Wednesday to help take care of the church buildings. We had donuts with all the workers...yummy! After that, we went to the library for story time and the theme was dinosaurs. The picture shows us coloring a picture of Elmo and a dinosaur while we waited for the stories to begin. It was crowded, but lots of fun. We both participated with the stories and movements!

After lunch, Charlotte took a good long nap while I went to Wal-mart with Grandma for a few things. We got new silky nightgowns because I really like silky ones now. We told Grandma and Grandpa "Thank you" many times for the presents!! We played outside too, but it is 103 here today so we got pink cheeks and had to come inside to play with toys and books. We have also been doing a lot of dancing on the porch when it's not too hot.

The second picture is "movie and popcorn" as Charlotte says. This is Charlotte's favorite thing. Tonight we had chocolate milk with our popcorn and Charlotte loved that!

Tomorrow we plan to go to the Brookshire's museum, but we may need to re-think our picnic afterwards if it's too hot. We may go to an air-conditioned restaurant or come home instead.

Thank you for the e-mail! We are continuing to be really good and Charlotte's runny nose is lots better! I had a little cough, but my breathing treatments are helping a lot. We love you!

Love,
Caroline (& Charlotte)

Hi Mommy and Daddy (Tuesday)

2011-06-28T07:52:00.000-05:00

Dear Mommy and Daddy,
Today we played in the backyard until Grandpa got home from jury duty. Then we went to open-jump at Jumpin Jack's Party Shack. They have an inflatable for kids 4 and under and Charlotte and I had quite a time there:) I also slid down one of the big slides several times. After about an hour, lots of BIG kids had come, so we headed to Grandma and Grandpa's for lunch (leftovers!) and some indoor play with the Barbies and other little figures (Charlotte is really into playing with Woody and Belle...they are friends!).

Charlotte took a good nap and I had a tea party for the dolls with Grandma! We ate S'mores Goldfish and tea (water) with the Barbies and other figures using the two China tea sets.

We played outside for a while and swam in the pool. Our favorite thing is playing in two washtubs! We bounce up and down until all the water sloshes out...then we fill them and do that again!

We made pizza for dinner...home made! It was awesome! We had our baths early tonight so we could watch a longer movie: Chicken Little with popcorn and lemonade. Then it will be straight to bed because we are both really tired tonight.

Tomorrow we will visit Grandpa's pals at church before we go to the library for storytime. We need to help Grandma shop for more milk, lemonade, strawberries, and ice cream, too.

We hope you are having some fun without us. We are still being very good girls for Grandma and Grandpa!

Love,
Caroline (& Charlotte)

P.S. Today we danced to all of last year's VBS songs and we remembered most of the "moves". Charlotte lovec it and was so cute dancing along with us!!

Hi Mommy and Daddy (Monday)

2011-06-27T07:46:00.002-05:00

Dear Mommy and Daddy,
Whew! We've had a fun and busy day so far. This morning we had cinnamon rolls on the porch and played in Turtle House until it was time to go to the Discovery Science Place Children's Museum. We got there when it opened, so we practically had the whole place to ourselves for about an hour. As you can see from the pictures, we did lots of fun things...can you believe I was brave enough to try rock climbing? And that's Charlotte performing a dance at the drama exhibit...she's quite graceful!

After about 2 hours at the museum it got pretty crowded (the YMCA dropped off about 50 kids)...so we headed to Chick-fil-a for our favorite lunch. Before going home we stopped at PetSmart to see the animals. A water dragon jumped at the glass of an aquarium and really scared us! But he was really just trying to say, "Hi" to the two cutest girls from Houston:)

It's quiet time now and I'm playing a Disney Junior game on Grandma's lap top while Charlotte rests (she had a dirty pull-up, so she hasn't quite gotten to sleep yet).

We know Grandpa will be home from work soon and we will probably play water games all afternoon because it's HOT here!

We have been the nicest little girls and we are honoring Grandma and Grandpa just like you told us to, so don't worry about us.
We do miss you, but we're not too homesick.

Love and Kisses,
Caroline (& Charlotte )

This is Caroline at Grandma's in July 2009. (I had actually sent this exact same outfit, but apparently, my girls wanted to wear skirts all week.)