Day 304 - noah's animals

They dressed as animals (and an insect) from Noah's Ark.   We went to Darci and Andy's first for pizza and then to church for a family night.  They were showing the new Veggie Tales Movie called The Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Noah's Umbrella.  It was a cute movie and a fun night with friends.

Day 303 - a princess fairy party

Caroline went to her friend's birthday party this afternoon.  She had a blast on the trampoline and during the candy hunt.  She told me that she was so happy to have 2 ring pops so she could share one with Calista later.

Day 302 - little pumpkins

It's a year for little pumpkins.
The girls brought these home from Karleigh's birthday party and I think they are so sweet.  They haven't even asked about carving pumpkins this year so we're skipping that.   They have some fun Harvest activities to look forward to with friends and at church.  They aren't big Halloween fans because of the scary stuff but they do love the candy :)

Day 301 - appreciating daddy

The girls surprised Ken at dinner with some flowers, a note and the special plate.  They miss him.

He was really, really touched.

  

Day 300 - puzzles

Courtney is loving puzzles right now.  She has two 25 piece puzzles she does over and over again.  Caroline helps her sometimes which is great because now Caroline is enjoying puzzles a little more too.

Day 299 - the garbage truck

They drop everything and cover their ears when the garbage truck comes.  It makes him laugh every time.

Day 298 - waiting to go

The girls were ready and waiting for church this morning.  I'm so happy that they enjoy it so much.

Day 297 - papi and vavi

We had a really nice visit with Papi and Vavi.  It had been a while since we had seen them so the girls were really excited.  It was great spending some time with them.

Day 296 - caroline

She has been riding her bike a lot more now.  She really wants to get one of her training wheels off but isn't quite ready.  She knows that Calista took one off at 5 1/2 years so she wants to do the same.  She doesn't ride as much because of where we live so it's different.  So she's been riding her bike more often, with that goal in mind, of course.   She's such a cutie-pie.

Day 295 - daddy

Ken has been gone a lot more lately.  He added a second job which keeps him out some nights until late.   It's a really difficult time for him right now.  He misses the girls so much and I know they miss him too.

Day 294 - playing school

A Solar System Lesson.

Leaf Lapbook - Kindergarten

I thought I'd post our Kindergarten lapbook from last week.  Since Caroline likes to include the pictures of the related projects in the lapbook, I think I'll have to keep these forever.  I plan on putting them in a binder at some point but for now I just have them out in a basket for sharing and reminiscing.

 

Day 293 - apple tasting

We're studying apples in Kindergarten right now.  We brought home a great sampling from Apple Hill so we thought today was the perfect day for tasting.  They had some recording sheets to gather their findings and were ready to taste.   We tried one apple at a time and then recorded whether it was sweet/sour and if they liked it or not.   I think Claire was the only one that liked every apple.  It was a very, very fun activity.

Day 292 - sweet smiles

Mondays are different.  I like Mondays and the girls are eager to start school but it seems we always run out of steam earlier in the day.  Mondays are actually the only day that the girls sleep in a little more.  They are all tired out from Awana.  These pictures are from yesterday but they made me laugh so much when I saw them that I knew I had to include them.  These sweet, sweet smiles....so excited and ready to go to Awana.

Adventures - Week 3 and 4

We've been pretty busy in Adventures these past few two weeks.  There is always a craft going on and I can barely see the table in the dining room anymore.  I'm behind on laundry, cleaning and even posting!

In bible we're learning the names of Jesus.  It's amazing because the girls are in a play at church this semester and it's also about the names of Jesus.  Super exciting for them!  They made these neat Jesus window posters and they are now hanging in our living room windows.

Calista also made this candle to go along with her memory verse.  Instead of gluing the label on the candle she stamped a border on tissue paper, wrote her words with a thin marker,  and then we used wax paper and a heat gun to adhere it into the candle.

Then she painted some water-thinned glue on the candle.

I didn't have much salt left so we just used glitter instead.

I think it turned out beautifully.  We enjoy it at dinner time now.

She was so happy to have read aloud time that was part of her curriculum.  It always seems that the read alouds I do are more geared for the younger ones so this was a special time for us daily.  She took the Squanto book really hard.  Realizing that Squanto never saw his mommy and daddy again crushed her.  When I finished the book I could see she was about to burst into tears, and she did.  I was so thankful that I could be there to talk with her about it.   It was a good book though and I'm glad we read it.   We finished it in a few days so I added another read aloud, The Rough Faced Girl, which was good too.

Making a wigwam

She really got excited about making her Native American village.  We found some additional information on the symbols on the tepees and she loved recreating some of what she learned.

A few of our other recent activities this week...

Making the WWJD necklaces

Putting the memory verse together.  She strung it together and hung it on the wall.  We later added a chart underneath where we're adding the ways in which we notice each other shining our light on others.

On Fridays we go to a homeschool co-op.  In Calista's Science class they had them experiment with ants.  She set out some plates with 4 different flavors (bitter, sweet, salty, vinegar) to see which would attract the ants.  She noted the activity throughout the day and said they liked the vinegar best.  I was surprised!

I am really happy with our curriculum choice.  It is a great fit for our family and I love how excited they are for school.  Adventures, in particular, has been such a blessing for Calista, my workbook loving child.  She's having the opportunities now to explore and create much more that she did in the past.  Her love of learning is back!  Praise God :)

Day 291 - she did it!

Since Caroline has moved up into the Sparkies at Awana she now has a game time. It's not like the little Cubbie room anymore.  It's a big group of children, lots of noise, lots of action.  Since the beginning of the year Caroline has not been participating in the games very much.  She has gone around once or twice but only with someone holding her hand.  We talked about it a few times this past week and really tried to encourage her to play.  

Well, tonight when we were there she started refusing again.  She had the leaders encouraging her and I even ran around with her once.  It seemed as if she would never do it but finally she did it!  

Look how proud she is!  She said that she encouraged her friend to do the three legged race with her because she never played any games either.  Such cuties :)

Day 290 - apple hill

We went to Apple Hill today.  We loved it there and wanted Ken to see it too.  We left early to beat the crowds and made it in perfect time.  We had the yummy apple donuts and spent most of the time in the maze.  Calista went around 12 times!  Courtney and Claire helped me pick apples for our apple lessons next week.

Aside from beating the traffic, we also had to be home in time for Ken's USC game.  He was going to a friend's to watch it and it he couldn't be late.  We wore the shirts that Grandpa sent and that made Ken so  happy!

Day 289 - half birthday

Lucky for me Caroline says she wants to stay 5 forever.  She wants to remain a little girl and never leave mommy.   I love this idea.

Happy half-Birthday sweet Caroline.

Leaf Week in Kindergarten

Great fun this week again with Kindergarten but this time with leaves.  Courtney and Claire got into this topic more than in past weeks.  I'm guessing it has to do with how much reading, discussing, crafting etc we did around leaves.  I can easily say that the nature walk to collect leaves was the twins' favorite activity.   We will be taking nature walks much more often.  We had to literally hunt for leaves but we were able to fill about half of one bag.

We studied, sorted and created with our leaves.  After reading The Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert,  Courtney wanted to make her own leaf man and bear.  Claire chose a self portrait.

Courtney wanted to keep making more!

Look how fabulous it turned out.

Here are a few more of our leaf activities.  Caroline is also completing a Leaf Lapbook to wrap up this study.  I'll post that over the weekend hopefully.

Leaf painting

Leaf prints

I think that this week we read more books than in the previous weeks.  It rained so we felt like doing more reading and cuddling on the couch.  We gathered so many leaf books from the library that I may have overdone it.  The list below includes only the favorites....requested again and again.

The Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert

Look What I Did With A Leaf by Morteza E. Sohi (especially for creating leaf people and animals)

Leaves by David Ezra Stein

A Tree is Nice by Marc Simont

Fall Leaves Fall by Zoe Hall

Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert

Leaves! Leaves! Leaves! by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace

...and the absolute, all time favorite book this week...that I need my own copy of is...

The Tale of Three Trees (retold) by Angela Elwell Hunt.

Our reading time is also going well.  I'm still not certain that the reading portion is meeting Caroline's needs so I'm looking into how I can better supplement.  I've been adding reading activities into her workboxes, having her read to me from her Playful Pals books and just playing some phonogram games.  Last year we did most of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons but I stopped so we could follow MFW K's reading plan.  I will continue to follow that but I'm really hoping to purchase Spell to Write and Read as soon as it's in the budget.  I'll also use it for Calista's spelling.  I never purchased Spelling Power since my plan was to get the Spell To Write and Read.

A few photos from our reading activities this week.

Caroline drawing objects that start with the letter L.  She then writes the word under each drawing.

Caroline working with some sight words.

We're packing up the leaf books, going to the library and moving onto apples next.

Our (evolving) Schedule

I am such a routine-type person and I love schedules but getting ours in place hasn't been as easy as I imagined.  It takes discipline to keep it in place and sometimes things happen.  Sometimes the little ones are ready for school and sometimes everyone is dilly-dallying, including mommy.

Last week I re-worked our schedule to start with Bible (from Adventures)  first thing in the morning.  This way I include Caroline and it's a great start to our day.  Once we finish our lesson we move into the morning circle time and the little ones join us (on most days).  So here is what we've been working on:

7:30    Breakfast with devotional
8:00    Bible at the school table (Calista/Caroline)
8:15    All girls get dressed / morning chores
8:30    Circle time (prayer, flag, calendar, 100 chart)
8:45    MFW Kindergarten w/ Caroline and twins - Calista workboxes (independent work)
10:00  Snack/break for Caroline - start working with Calista on Adventures
10:20  Caroline returns to complete workboxes and any of the other Kinder Daily Activities
11:00  Continue Adventures with Calista - Caroline activity with Courtney/Claire (or play)
11:45  Lunch prep, lunch and clean up
12:30  Free play Caroline/Courtney/Claire - work with Calista
1:00    Nap time for Courtney and Claire - craft or activity with Calista and Caroline (most days)

The hard part is where I let Caroline have a break after snack.  It's really hard to pull her back most days because she wants to play with Courtney and Claire.  I do want her to have a lot of play time but the schedule doesn't always go as timed and sometimes she has work to complete.

Preparation is also key.  If I'm not totally prepared in the morning then it throws off our day.  I need to have back up plans for Courtney and Claire and really think the day through.  I'm also completely behind  in laundry because I'm jumping from child to child all day (still potty training the twins) so I'm finding no time to stick to my housekeeping plan.   Oh, and they are always hungry.  The twins start asking for lunch at 9:30!

So, I'm going to take a deep breath and just pray more about our schedule.  I think I get hung up because I want something predictable and that's not totally possible with four individual little girlies.  :)

Day 288 - leaf projects

We read a book called The Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert today.  We had already collected so many leaves that we were ready for this project.    Courtney made a great leaf man.   I love how Claire is helping her with the glue.  Her leaf man still needed some eyes.

Courtney really stuck with this and also made a bear.  She spent a good 45 minutes making these.  Claire designed a self-portrait.  :)

Day 287 - our schoolroom

Calista photographed our schoolroom today.  Great idea cute girl :)

Day 286 - colonial days

Calista participated in an amazing program today.  It is called The Great Homeschool History Tour and the topic was Colonial Days and American Revolution.  The students were all dressed in costumes (soldiers, colonial farmers, colonial dresses etc).  They had a lecture the first hour and then traveled to different stations for specific topics and hands on activities.  They served a period lunch of yummy chicken pot pie and apples.  She loved it!

It lasted from 9-2 so we were there most of the day.  It was a little challenging at times keeping the other three girlies occupied and fairly quiet.  It was rainy and windy so we couldn't go outside.  Fortunately it was in a church filled with other homeschool moms so it just wasn't a problem.

Day 285 - nature walk

We went on a nature walk this morning.  They were really excited to collect leaves even though they had no idea why we were doing it.  They ran down the street yelling 'Nature Walk!  Nature Walk!'  We found some leaves on the ground but also had to pick a few so we'd get a good variety for the leaf projects.  It's L (leaf) week in Kindergarten.

Day 284 - dancing and waiting

It's pretty safe to say that Ken won't be happy about this photo but I just had to include it.  The girls will love to see themselves dancing with daddy one day.   We used to dance around all the time when we lived in Morgan Hill.  We waited around a lot for things to happen (job, house selling ...) so we had some time to dance.  Dancing tonight made me think of that time.  I remember that Courtney and Claire were  just babies and we'd hold them as we went around the circle.

Ironically we're waiting again but the circumstances are a little different.  Not less scary, just different.  I think our faith is a little stronger this time too and I know that, and the dancing, help.

Day 283 - karleigh turn two

It was a beautiful day for a birthday party.  The girls love Karleigh and couldn't wait to celebrate with her.  She's like a little sister to them and they simply adore her.