Busy Busy

Well haven't we just had a busy few weeks. Last I wrote we were finishing up our school and trying to get ready for the girls big 5th Birthday Party. We had a great get together with all our family and the girls enjoyed celebrating their birthday Alice in Wonderland style. We had a Tea Party Brunch since breakfast foods are their favorite and the girls got to wear their costumes I made them for Halloween. Av was the Queen of Hearts, and Brin was Alice. They were both so excited and enjoyed every minute of it!

To decorate I had hanging lanterns and curly cues, a this way/that way/wrong way sign, I painted the roses red, had and Alice book out, and covered the table with playing cards and mini tea sets. I also enlarged some of the images I took of them in their costumes and had those around the room. For brunch we had hashbrowns, fruit salad, coffee cake, bagels and cream cheese, mini pancakes with eat me signs, egg strata, mini fruit and yogurt parfaits, drink me signs on the cups with a variety of juices, and the girls choose a donut tree instead of cake. It was fun, whimsical, and definitely Alice inspired!



The girls in their costumes blowing out candles, opening presents, and enjoying their sprinkle donuts. We have always sung to them separately so they can each enjoy their birthday as individuals. They love it and get excited for that bit of attention.



A few of the images I got at their costume photoshoot. They had so much fun and enjoyed posing and pretending to be the evil queen and sweet Cinderella.







More to come on what we've been up to!

Back to the Grind!

After getting really lax and taking almost all of last week off due to daddy being on vacation for 3 days for Thanksgiving... I'm now trying to get us back in the swing of things. I have to admit that over the last 2 weeks I've felt like I've hit a wall. The inner high school senior is me has reared it's ugly head and I'm wondering when the heck this year is going to be over because I'm ready for summer! I'm thinking that's not a good thing when it's not even December yet. I'm also thinking it means I need to restructure our curriculum a bit becuase if I'm getting this bored, then surely they aren't too far behind? Maybe I'm wrong, but this is Preschool after all and I think they need more fun in the mix. Then again, maybe it's just a case of the holiday antsy's? I also know that we'll be on vacation up to Disneyland for the girls birthday all next week, plus getting ready for their b-day party this weekend has me itching to just accomplish things without school in the mix. I know however that this is really good for them (and me) and if I'm more careful with how I prep and organize my time I wouldn't be feeling quite so much of a strain.

Today instead of following our usual curriculum I just grabbed random workbooks, games, and activities that fit into each category of our day: ie: Bible, Writing, Sight Words, Math, Reading, Language, and Art. I'm kinda thinking that's better and less monotonous than just doing the same type of worksheet every day. I will definitely still add those in, but maybe do a lot more mixing up to keep it fun. Because today was actually fun again (for me anyway) and they seemed to really enjoy it so that's a plus.

Finding our Groove

I really feel like the girls and I have found our groove with this whole homeschool thing. At times I feel like our curriculum is a bit repetitive... and I admit I get a bit lazy and don't always add in fun creative things to the daily schedule. The girls really love the bonus activities like workbooks, art, and hands on manipulatives and I really need to be better about including those in our weekly curriculum rather than just the standard worksheets we tend to do each week. The repetitiveness isn't too bad though becuase it really does help them to learn and grow.

I think most days they really enjoy everything we do and I've really enjoyed watching how far they've come in such a short amount of time.


- Our white board contains the letter of the week, and the sight words we're working on. This day we were working on addition. I would put up the magnets and then they would answer by putting the correct number magnets on their board as an answer. They enjoyed it becuase it was different than just writing the numbers like they usually do.
- I'm surprised how much better the girls have gotten with their word ladders in just a few short weeks. They still struggle a bit with blend ladders where they add an ending letter to create a word, but they do really well adding the letters to the beginning of the word family.
- We're still slowly but surely working on our cutting. They are getting much better and having an easier time controlling their cuts, but still have a ways to go to cut accurately.
- Still plugging away at our weekly Cubbies lesson's for Bible time. It's amazing how quickly they can memorize their verses. I just love that they are hiding God's work in their hearts!



- Getting better and better at their handwriting. We've started working on writing their names correctly with a capital and then lowercase... but they have quite loudly voiced that they don't want to do it that way. Hoping it's not too hard of a habit to break, and Brin is already doing better, but the little e gives her trouble almost every time.
- We've start putting together and reading their first sentences. Some days they have more patience than others but I'm amazed at how they can already sound out simple words. I try not to push it though and when I see them getting frustrated we just finish what we are on and move on.
- The girls are doing well with their sight words. It still hasn't quite clicked with them that the sight words are the same ones that are in sentences, but I'm sure it will happen soon. At least they are quick to sound them out if they get stumped.
- They really love these color by number workbooks. They have really found a love for coloring (especially Av) and it's fun to watch their creativity bloom through their artwork.

Life Lessons

Today our school was more of a life lesson... taught & learned by Mommy. That lesson was, "don't procrastinate on your housework or you'll find yourself using school time to clean becuase you forgot about the TV repairman who called and will be arriving in 2.5 hours." Whoops! So right when I found myself getting ready to start our day, and thinking the 4 days of dishes piling up from hubby being out of town, and the disaster downstairs becuase I haven't kept on top of things could just wait a few more hours until after school. I suddenly needed to get it done and school time was the only time left to finish. I spent 2 straight hours doing dishes, vacuuming, dusting, sweeping, washing the floors, scrubbing toilets, putting away laundry, de-cluttering, and cleaning the kitchen. The girls did their part by cleaning up their toys and putting all their shoes and clothes away.

With about 30 minutes of school time to spare we played with our plastic shapes to build pictures, and drew with markers. I plan to give them lunch and then read a few library books after the repairman comes. The bad news is we didn't get to do our lessons for the day, and we didn't do them yesterday becuase they stayed the night at Gama's... but the good news is I now have a clean house and an entire day to spend playing with my girls without any work hanging over my head. So I guess hooray for small blessings!

Elephant & Piggie

The girls already own an Elephant & Piggie book by Mo Willems which was given to them by a dear friend. They love their book and it's such a cute fun story. We've since starting to check them out from the library from time to time and they really are all cute stories. My favorite was "My Friend is Sad" which is all about Piggie doing funny things to cheer up Gerald the Elephant. Piggie disguises himself as all of Garald's favorite things, but it doesn't cheer up Gerald, he only gets more sad. Piggie finally shows up as herself and Gerald is so happy becuase while all these cool things showed up, it wasn't his best friend Piggie so he was so sad. It's such a sweet story about friendship and teaches a really great lesson! So go check it out, you won't regret it!

Giving Thanks!

For the next two weeks leading up to Thanksgiving we are spending time focusing on what we are thankful for. We are talking about giving thanks to God for all he has provided for us, thanking others for things they do, and having a kind and thankful heart. Here are some of the things the girls have been thankful for so far:

Avalyn - The Love her Mommy & Daddy give her, her bed, Nana

Brinley - Her House, Her Mommy, Daddy & Sister, Auntie Stacey & Uncle Matt

It's so fun watching them think really hard and then get excited about something they are thankful for. I truly hope we can ingrain in them from an early age how blessed we are and how thankful we should be for all that God has given us and the freedom he's allowed us to have.

Giving In

So this morning after forcing my bleary eyes open and doing my Bible Study I came downstairs to get breakfast. I stayed up way too late last night reading and was truly paying for it by being beyond tired. The girls were happily playing candy-land and my little ponies when I announced it was time to get dressed and pick up for school. They both looked at me and said, "Noooooo, please no school today mommy. We want to play our story and we just started." The tired in me just couldn't resist so I actually gave in and said, "okay... but know we can't do this next year for Kindergarten, we have to have school every day." They both jumped up and down and thanked me over and over so happy to continue playing. I on the other hand made myself some breakfast and then climbed back into my bed with my book. I only felt a liiitle bit guilty, but decided that I was too tired to care.

So yah, I'm a total loser homeschool mom and I know I should have just pushed through... but I took the easy road. I figure I won't be able to take advantage of "days off" next year so I might as well do it now. Booo! Oh well, I'm not gonna lie... it was really nice to just get laundry done, watch a movie with the girls, and relax with my book.

Super Why ABC Letter Game

For our last Funday I thought we should play something educational, so I pulled out our Super Why ABC Letter Game! Not only is it fun, but it teaches letters, phonics, reading and spelling. You move your Super Why character around the board and draw a card that corresponds with the space you land on. There are 4 types of cards that do the following:

Alpha Pig with Alphabet Power: Players point to the uppercase letter on the board that matches the lowercase letter on the card.

Wonder Red with Word Power: Players read the words or look at the pictures on the card and say another word or words that rhyme.

Princess Presto with Spelling Power: Players say the word pictured on the card, then point to the first letter or fist two letters of that word on the center of the board.

Super Why with the Power to Read: Players point to the word on the board that should replace the underlined word on the card to make the silly sentence make sense.



I really recommend it as a fun way to interact with your kids and get them to enjoy basic reading and sounding out words. It also helps them get excited when mommy doesn't know the answer and needs their help. ;-)

Neglect

My poor blog has been neglected for the past few weeks. We unfortunately had our first case of the sickies that knocked us out for an entire week. The girls both got really high fevers (up to 104) for 3 days along with headaches, and a cough. It pretty much kept us from school for the entire week and once Friday rolled around I too was feeling a bit under the weather so we just watched way too much TV and tried to rest. I can't feel guilty about that though becuase I rested enough to keep whatever it was from coming on and I was 100% by Monday! Horray!!!

Last week I decided to do Monday Funday with games and reading since it was Halloween and then do Wednesday through Friday school. Here is a recap of some of our recent activities!

Shhhh! Don't tell anyone I let them stay in the PJ's one day. I'm really good about us getting up and dressed every day before school... but it was our first cold day of fall and they were so warm and cozy in their fleece PJ's so I let it slide! ;-) Activities - Putting their alphabet in the correct order, Lacing Cards, Letter Find, and Making Numbers as I call them out.


Writing worksheets, Missing Numbers, Spelling Recognition, Shape Tracing, Word Ladders, and simple Addition. For our Cubbies lessons we've been going through creation. As an art project I drew up the first 3 days of creation we had learned and they colored them with marker while I read Genesis 1.

3-2-1 Blast Off!

On Wednesday we hurried through our school day so we could end 15 minutes early. At 11:48 we watched a rocket launch. This wasn't just any rocket, it was the rocket that held Uncle Matt's company's new satellite. We spent a bit of time talking about the earth, moon, and orbits so they had an idea of what was going to happen. Before the launch they had an animated clip that explained the entire launch sequence and what happened at each phase after takeoff to get the satellite in it's correct orbit. We counted down the launch and watched it take off live. We also watched for the next 20 minutes while they tracked each step and verified that it had been successful. After that it would be 9 hours until we knew if it arrived in it's correct orbit and was able to work. So glad to report that it all went perfectly and is now a working satellite!

Just another reason I am loving the idea of homeschooling. We can take time for these special events and enjoy them and learn from them together. So blessed to be on this journey and I know it's right where God wants me!

Reward Day!

The girls finally filled up their star chart for doing a few weeks worth of activities with good attitudes and no melt downs. That chart really was the key to getting past Brin's perfectionism and is continuing to work well! As their treat I decided to take them out to get Ice-Cream. They hardly ever get Ice-Cream so it truly was a treat and they enjoyed it so much! After that I asked them if there was anything else they wanted to do and they said they would love to go to the park, so we spent the afternoon at the park where they ran around playing with a group of other girls they met. I'm so glad we were able to make time for that and that they felt rewarded for their hard work in school. Now I just have to figure out what they'll get in a few weeks when they finish their next chart!

Unfocused

I'm kinda feeling all over the place this week. I pulled my upper back and neck really badly over the weekend and still wasn't able to situp for more than a few minutes at a time on Monday. I started the morning by putting on a leap frog educational video. After that I had the girls bring their Cubbies books as well as a few library books upstairs. While lying on my back we did their Cubbies lesson, Bible Reading, and then read a few books together. I felt so bad for missing yet another day of school, but was happy to have at least accomplished a little.

Aside from the bit of chaos in our school schedule... I'm having trouble keeping focused and using my time well. I feel like I keep starting things but not finishing them. I have a school schedule, but the rest of my day feels unorganized. I'm struggling to keep the house cleaned and orderly... I'm making meals at the last minute without much thought... and I have so many side projects going or needing to get started that I'm just not being productive.

I'm sure what I'm feeling is normal, and I'm focusing so much on school that I'm letting all the other areas slide... I just have to find a way to balance it all so I'm doing the other things well. I'm think I'm going to try to get through this month and then make a few changes come November!

Oh Charlie!

With the start of school, and our weekly library visits I was itching to read some chapter books to the girls. I had no idea how they would do and if they would be able to focus without pictures. I thought it would go well though so I figured we would give it a try. A few months back I had DVR'd the old school Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and we hadn't yet watched it so I figured that would be a great first book. We spent about 2 weeks going through it. We read it a bit during our 30 minutes of reading time for school, but we often just curled up on their beds at night to read a few chapters before bed.

The girls actually did much better than I expected. Av would get a bit fidgety from time to time, but that's just how she is and she was always paying attention so it didn't seem to matter. Each day before we read any new chapters I would ask them questions about the previous chapters. I wanted to see how well they had understood and remembered what we read, as well as remind them where we were before starting off again. I was kinda surprised at how much they grasped. They always knew the answers to the questions and would often ask me smart questions or think aloud as to what might happen next.

They absolutely loved the book and looked forward to it every day. It was especially fun to finish because we got to watch the movie together with Daddy for Family Movie Night. We had pizza and piled on the sofa and watched the movie together. We talked a bit throughout about what was different from the book. They started pointing out things they noticed and it was fun to watch them compare and contrast on their own. I'm so glad we did this and I'm already looking forward to the next chapter book we read!

Survived!

This past Sunday my sister, dad and I pulled off the ultimate surprise. It was my mom's 60th birthday and we were able to completely surprise her with a huge party of over 70 of her friends and family from all different parts of her life. She had absolutely NO idea and was in complete shock. You seriously couldn't have faked the look on her face. We weren't quite sure how to plan a party for the ultimate party planner... since my mom is her own Martha Stewart, but luckily my sister and I inherited her party planning genes and I think we did a pretty good job. We've been planning and working on all the details for months and it was so fun to see it all come together. As soon as we get the photos back I'll be sure to share some of what we did.

It's been absolutely crazy trying to get involved in our new church, doing school with the girls, having time with the family, cooking, cleaning, running my photography business, and trying to have a bit of a personal life all while planning a huge party that basically equates to a wedding without your mom's help. ;-) We did it though and it's now off my plate and I can breath again! Phew! But... not without a little break from school. We ended up taking Monday off since my sister was in town for the party from Ohio and I thought it was more important to spend the day with her rather than doing school. It was also Columbus day so I figured it was a holiday for some people anyway so why not us too? We go to Bible Study on Tuesday, so we didn't have school today and then we'll be taking Thursday off again to spend time with my mom for the day. I plan to cram 4 days of activities into Wed/Fri this week and we'll call it good.

Day in the Life

I feel so blessed to have found a wonderful inexpensive online PreK curriculum at Confessions of a Homeschooler. I've been able to take her worksheets, ideas, and lesson plan schedule and tweak it to best fit our needs. I love the way she lays out her day and so I thought I would share my take on it which is very similar. We do 2 hours of PreK on M/W/Th, and the girls go with me to Bible Study on Tuesday's where they have a 3 hour program for the kids. Friday's have become our Friday Funday where we play games (learning games) and then read for about 45 minutes.

Our normal daily schedule looks something like this:

9:30 - Cleaning Time - The girls are given a 30 minute warning and they have to have the downstairs picked up and ready to go. Since the playroom is shared with the schoolroom we can't have it messy for school so they have to have it cleaned. If they aren't done by school time then I take away whatever has been left out. So far it's worked like a charm and they have yet to leave it messy.

10:00 - School Starts

• Pledge
• Prayer
• Weather Chart - We open the front door and go outside to check it out each day.
• Days of the Week - We talk about what day was yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Then we talk about the date of each day on the calendar. We sing the day's of the week song, and then the months of the year song.
• Letter of the Week - We go over the letter of the week on the white board and talk about the sounds that letter makes. Then we review a few words that start with that letter. We switch between singing the alphabet song and the vowel song.
• Music & Movement - Each day I play one of the songs from the CD I downloaded Songs Kids Really Love to Sing which is a collection of church songs. The girls love dancing and doing the motions to the songs. On Mon/Fri we do a movement song from the CD Kids in Motion. This is the same CD the girls gymnastics coach used so they were already familiar with some of them and just love it!
• Bible - Since the girls are in Awana Cubbies we use their Cubbies book as their Bible curriculum. We read through the lesson and then I put the verse cards up on the wall each week. Every day we go over the verse of the week as well as the Apple Tree Review verses. We spend one day doing the Apple Tree Activity and another doing the Bible Reading off to the side.
• Writing - Since this is where the girls seem to struggle the most we make sure to do a writing activity every day.
• Sight Words - Last week we began learning sight words. We review our sight words every day and I add the ones we have completed to the white board so we can review those as well.

11:00 - That usually takes us about an hour so we break for our snack around 11:00.

• Math - We haven't done much focus on numbers in the past so we do some sort of number practice or recognition each day.
• Reading/Phonics - As we prepare for the girls to begin reading we work on our phonics, sounds for our letter of the week, and word building.
• Language - We spend every day working on a few Spanish words as well as Sign Language words for our letter of the week. We learn the words on Monday and then review them for the rest of the week.
• Art - We don't do art every day, but I try to include something at least 2 days a week. Sometimes it's cutting or pasting practice, motor skills activities like lacing cards, painting, or when I'm feeling adventurous a full blown craft I've prepared for us to do.

11:45 - 12:15 - This finishes us up with our school activities so we sit down for at least 30 minutes each day to read together. We go to the library every Tuesday after Bible Study and the girls pick out 5 books each and I usually grab a few extras for us to read throughout the next week. I've just begun going through chapter books with them so we either read the next few chapters in our book, or they each pick a few of their library books for us to read together. We bring the books into the living room and all curl up on the couch together to read. This is one of my favorite parts of the day and I'm loving this time with them! I've started pausing in our reading to have them read the sight words as I pass by them. They don't love this so I usually do this for just the first book so they can begin to get familiar with those words as we read.

12:15 - Lunch! I make us all lunch and we sit down together and eat and then they are free to play, read, color, or go outside if the weather is nice.

A few of our recent activities: Math worksheets, Write the first letter of the picture, Word Ladders, Writing Worksheets, Sight Word recognition, Number Puzzles



Number worksheets, Sight word practice, Fill in the Missing Number, Cutting Practice, Snack Time, Shape and word tracing, and Letter Worksheets

Checked Out

One of the things I'm loving most about our school day is reading with the girls. We've always read together, but having a set 30 minutes a day (or more) set aside to read as part of our school day, and the fact that they are new books from the library each week... it makes it that much more fun! It's fun to watch the girls walk around the library searching the shelves for their perfect stack of books. They are of course looking for princess books (which seem to be few and far between) but they have pulled quite a few fun stories from the shelves.

Last week we ran across a cute little book called "What's the Magic Word?" It's about a newborn little bird who gets swept around a farm meeting all the animals. It was a cute little story and fun to read.

It's Pun-kin Month!

Last night in preparation for school I changed out the calendar month. I had every intention of changing out the dates so they were cute and October themed... but the time got away from me and it was already 1am and creating a new month card was about all I had in me. Today when we were going over our days of the week and talking about what events happen in the month of October, Brinley got really excited and exclaimed, "It's the pun-kin month, it's the pun-kin month!!!"

As her teacher I know I should have corrected her... Pum... Pum... Pumpkin. But as her mommy, the one that is noticing how grown up her girls are getting... well, I just didn't have it in me. I promise I've been good about fixing the way they pronounce things lately, but I just had to let my adorable little punkin slide since this will probably be the last year it happens. I just can't believe they are almost 5!

Happy October everyone and enjoy your little punkins while you still can!

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

We are lucky to live close enough to have season passes to Disneyland. We try to go a couple times a month to make our passes worth it, and these trips usually fall on Sunday's since our passes are blacked out on Saturdays. (Good thing our church has Saturday night service so we don't miss out each time we go!) A few times a year we get a hotel for a night or two to make a mini vacation out of it rather than just going up for the day. It's great becuase it changes the entire feel of Disneyland and allows us to stay late for the night shows. (fireworks, world of color, etc.)

We almost forgot we had a free night at Marriott that expired the end of this month and we wanted to utilize the less busy weekdays since we normally go on busy weekends. We decided last minute to go up Thursday and stayed overnight doing the park again Friday. This meant a second break from our school schedule just a few weeks into the year. We had an amazing time though and I suppose that's the perk of Pre-K... no need to feel like you HAVE to do school everyday! We made some amazing family memories and I'm so glad we are able to take advantage of these moments while they are still little and find the magic in everything!

My cute girls cheezin it up!


Believe it or not in our almost 3 years of going to Disneyland we've never taken a picture in front of the huge flower Mickey at the front gate. He's in a mask because the whole park is already decorated for Halloween.


The girls got to meet Rapunzel and Flynn for the second time. It's the same Rapunzel as before and amazingly she remembered the girls from the first time almost a year ago. The girls were the very last ones to get to meet them before they closed for the day and they had the entire room laughing when Avalyn exclaimed that "Guess what Rapunzel, we have you at home on Netflix!" They made jokes about that for the entire rest of our visit!


This morning we started out in Fantasyland and got to enjoy one of the girls favorite rides... Dumbo! The girls both wanted purple and they both got lucky enough to get the two purples that were in a row.


I almost teared up here... the girls are big enough that they can ride alone together in the same row. We went on this ride as a family for the first time on their first birthday... and they had to sit on our laps. This was the first time they ever rode together alone, on one of their other favorite rides Alice in Wonderland! *sniff sniff*


This was the sweetest Aurora ever! She spent a good 6 minutes with the girls and the entire room was already cleared out before they moved on. They were so happy and I will never get tired of seeing the sheer joy and excitement they get EVERY SINGLE TIME they meet these princesses!


Belle is Av's favorite princess so she's always so excited when she gets to meet her. She spends more time hugging her than anything else. So cute!


Mulan was amazing and also spent a ton of time with the girls. She even spent a few minutes showing them an awesome Chinese dance that they did along with her.


We were heading along our way when we saw Minnie Mouse. We don't always stop for every character, but they were so excited and the line was short so we hopped in and they were beyond excited to meet Minnie. The girls kept hugging and kissing her so she danced around with them and twirled them around.


Random story... We were headed back to the car and waiting for the tram... and we had to wait for three different ones until we finally got one with an open row. (We were waiting for the front row so we didn't have to collapse the stroller but it was already filled on the few trams that came by.) We didn't think we were going to get on the next tram but the first row was only half full so we ended up getting on. Then 2 minutes into the ride with perfectly sunny skies it just started to rain... big drops. It was so out of the blue and we were SO GLAD we were on that tram! As soon as the tram stopped the rain had lifted and we were able to get to our car without a drop of rain on us. Pretty crazy!

Game of the Week

For our last Friday Funday we played a great game Sequence for Kids. This is a game that uses a bit of strategy to try to get 4 of your tokens in a row while also blocking your opponent from getting 4 in a row. The girls loved playing it and did really well. I love that it can be played as a strategy game if you take the time to think through your cards and moves, or just more for fun if you don't care to think about it as much.

It's fun to watch the girls individual personalities in the different ways they play games. Avalyn was all about playing defense and trying to block all our moves where Brin was more into the offensive trying to make 4 in a row of her own. Brinley was definitely strategizing and looking at her cards to try to make the best move, and Av... well she was just throwing cards down without a care... but they both had fun and that's what matters!

Monday Musings

I always thought "having" to spend the day teaching my girls would make us butt heads and possibly cause me to be slightly resentful of not having as much "me time." I know it's only been a few weeks, but if anything I feel the opposite. I can honestly say I feel closer to the girls just having set a few quality hours to spend together. I've never really been one to follow a schedule even though I know it will make my life easier. For some reason when I HAVE to do something at a specified time I start to feel stifled by it and begin to rebel against said schedule. But... I'm finding that scheduling a few hours actually helps our day go smoother and the girls play so much better since they have already had a bit of my undivided attention.

Once I changed my mindset from being selfish and wanting time to myself... to thinking about how I could truly serve my children best in the short time I have with them, my thinking was totally reset. We only have 18 out of a hopefully 80+ year life with which we can directly influence and shape our kids. If I'm careful about how I schedule my time I not only get great one on one time with both the girls, but time together where we can play and do activities we never did before. Believe it or not, I also get time to myself where I don't feel guilty becuase I've already given of myself to them first. It's really turning out to be a win win for everyone! So glad God "pushed me" to go in this direction becuase He definitely knows best!

Week 2 Letter Review

This week we focused on the letter E and did another week of letter review. Since I didn't do a year of letters before this I felt they needed one more week of review on the full alphabet before we moved on to other activities. We will continue to focus on a letter each week so they can get better at writing, understanding the sound each letter makes, and learn the Spanish and Sign Language vocab for each letter. We had another great week, and here are some of the activities we did.

We worked on tracing our full alphabet as well as numbers 1-9. We worked on our numbers and making patterns with our colored wooden beads. We practiced cutting as well as gluing when we did our art project of the week. We worked a lot on letter recognition, especially our lowercase letters. I called out letter and the girls had to find them on their alphabet tree. This was great for me as well because it pointed out the letters they need extra attention on. We also worked a lot on phonics and finding letters that matched pictures by sounding out the picture word.




The girls feel much more comfortable tracing their letters, but they need to begin working on writing them as well. While they are willing to happily write their uppercase letters, they are a bit more reluctant and have a harder time with lowercase. Luckily the star chart was a good reminder to try and do their best and we didn't have any meltdowns this week! Lowercase E is a hard one though so they will need lots more practice on those small curves. I wanted to get their vowels done first though for phonics and reading so I didn't focus so much on the lowercase letters not being very good. They'll get better as they learn to write more letters and time goes on.




We worked more on number recognition, writing lowercase E's with dry erase, making letters out of play-dough, duplicating patters with our shape blocks, and more phonics letter recognition matching letters to pictures.



We ended the week once again with Friday Funday. After our usual pledge, day's of the week, weather, and song time we went straight into games and then reading. It was another great week and things went really smoothly. They have already learned so much and gotten better at their letters and I'm excited to see how much they grow as the weeks unfold!

The Letter E

This week we are focusing on the letter E. We've talked about the fact that E is a vowel, that it makes two different sounds and we've identified words with both short and long E sounds. We've written our E's, learned a few Spanish E words as well as sign language E words. All that was left was to do our letter E craft. I found great alphabet craft ideas over at Totally Tots. They turned out so cute and I'm excited to get our big cork-board hung so we can start displaying our crafts!

Star Chart

I've been thinking long and hard about what to do with poor little Brin and the difficulty she has trying to be perfect. It seems like no matter what I say it doesn't get through and she's still so very hard on herself when what she's capable of doesn't meet up with her standards. After having a frustrating morning again on Monday before school even started I decided I had to come up with something to help her. I want her to realize that all I care about is that she tries her best. I don't care if what she does is right or wrong, or even good/bad/perfect, I just want her to try it and not get frustrated when it doesn't come out right.

We talked through the fact that everyone has to make mistakes in order to learn and get better. The best ballerinas didn't just walk onto stage and dance perfectly. They had to try, fall, mess up, and fail but with lots of hard work and practice they eventually got better and didn't mess up as often. But even with all the hard work even the best dancers still make mistakes. She understands... but still couldn't be content with that principle applied to her even after we prayed about it together and gave it over to God. I'm hoping if we continue to talk about it and pray about it, that she'll begin to change her thinking.

It seems that drawing, art, and writing are her hot buttons which really cause her to melt down. I came up with a sticker chart to try to help keep her focus in the right place. The idea is that you don't have to do something perfect or even right... you just have to try your best and have a good attitude and not get frustrated. If you can do that then you get a star for each activity of the day. When the start chart is filled there will be a special surprise at the end!



So far it seems to be working well. Whenever she started to get frustrated she would say, "Mommy, I was going to get upset but then I saw my chart and remembered to be calm and try so I could get a star! Praise the Lord and lets hope this continues to help her do well and get through her day without those frustrations pulling her down!

Favorite Day!

I'm was so excited this morning to wake up and head to church for the women's Bible Study. Sadly, I missed the first week last week because of our trip so I was really looking forward to today. The study starts at 8:45 and goes until 11:30. They have a kids program, so I've decided to just do that as our school for Tuesday since they have a story, craft, song time, etc. It works out great and they had so much fun today. The study we are doing is on the book of Hebrews and I'm so loving digging in and seeing what God has to reveal with all these amazing women. I was shocked today to walk into the sanctuary and see a couple hundred women filling the seats. There are 18 women (that were there at least) in our group and it will be great to get to know them over the course of the study.

On our way home we stopped by the library. I was originally planning on going to the library on Monday's, but seeing as how it's on the way home from church and we're already out each week I decided we would do our weekly library run on Tuesday's. The girls were thrilled to drop their books into the slot and pick out new ones for the week. It's so fun picking books out with them and even more fun reading the little gems we often find amongst their stack. I think Tuesday is going to be one of my new favorite days!

Vacation... Kinda

So after a week of school... we totally need a break! Kidding Kidding

Every year the hubby has to go to a tradeshow in Vegas for a week at this time of year. Rather than stay home alone for a week we've always opted to drive out with him and enjoy Vegas for the week. Each year that the girls have gotten older has been easier and easier. This year should be lots of fun since they have learned to swim a bit and we'll be spending lots of time at the pool.

I figure since this is only Preschool and it's the last year we really have the freedom to miss school I would be okay with us missing a week of school. I plan to bring along a few activities, crafts, and some books... and we'd call it good. Can't wait for a fun week out of town. See you all next week!

Friday Funday

Yesterday at around 3:30pm we had a huge blackout. Not only did our little city lose all power, but the entire county of San Diego stretching down to Baja CA, across to AZ, and up to Orange County... all lost power as well. With no explanation and no return of power in site we enjoyed a dinner of PB&J, fruit, and veggie sticks and sent the girls to bed early. The house was quickly heating up and at 80 degrees outside at 8pm it wasn't cooling off the 85* house very quickly. We eventually went to bed early which is something I haven't done in weeks and I definitely regretted not hanging on a bit longer when we were awakened by the power returning at 1:30am making it really hard for me to get back to sleep.

The entire county cancelled school today and the girls were in a funk this morning after not having slept well due to the heat and noises outside. I decided to make it a Friday Funday so I let them play a bit into school time and then they cleaned up and we played a few games together and then read library books for about 40 minutes instead of our usual 20. It was so much fun and something I'll definitely have to schedule from time to time.

I wanted to take a minute to highlight one of the books we read today which ended up being such a sweet story. It was a random library checkout that I knew nothing about, but both the girls and I ended up really liking the story and it led to a good discussion afterwards. The book was called Pete & Pickles by Berkeley Breathed and was a wonderful story of the adventures of a perfectly predictable pig and his new friend Pickles. Definitely a story worth checking out!

Perfection

Poor little B has been dealing with a frustrating case of perfectionism. I have no idea where she get's it from. I mean, she isn't like her mama at all... (ahem *cough*) no not at all *eye roll*. One of the reasons (or excuses) I originally made as to why I would never homeschool was because I was a perfectionist and I didn't want to bring that at all into the classroom. I didn't want the girls to pick up on my bad habits and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to calmly and patiently deal with their mistakes.

You know what though? I think putting voice to that was more than half the battle. Since I am conscious of what I DON'T want to do it makes it so much easier to be intentional about watching myself and my attitude and making sure my head stays in the right place. I start each day with prayer that God will help me in the specific areas I worry about and I find that throughout our school day my mind is where it needs to be and I can be careful about each response I have.

Brin doesn't like to do something unless she can do it right. We have been working on writing, and before school, other than writing our their names (in all caps) or little notes from time to time it's something brand new for the girls. Poor Brin get's upset so quickly and breaks down in tears the minute she feels one of her letters didn't turn out perfectly. It breaks my heart, but makes me so glad that I'm the one who gets to help her through this. I keep reassuring her that it doesn't have to be perfect, and we are just learning and it's okay to try and make mistakes. We won't learn unless we do our best and keep practicing. She just couldn't shake it though so we decided that for now it would be less frustrating for her if she traces letters. She feels more confident doing that, and I'm more than okay with it.



The last thing I want to do is make school a frustrating experience, especially before they are even in Kindergarten. I love that I have the flexibility to help her through her frustrations and change things up so that she's doing what's best for her. I want to make sure I'm continually remembering to use our schedule as a guide, but that it's perfectly okay to deviate from that if it's what the girls or I need. Today after a bit of frustration I flipped around our schedule, and cut an extra writing activity and we started our reading time a bit early and read an extra book. They ended the day happy and hopefully we can work to give Brin the confidence she needs to make mistakes and know it's more than okay.

1st Day of Pre-K

Yesterday was our first day of school, and I'd have to say it was a success! I loved that the slight formality and structure of it made them very willing to switch modes, sit still, and be good listeners. I didn't want them to look back and feel like they were cheated by being homeschooled so they got a back to school outfit and we took pictures of their first day which we'll do every year.

Avalyn

Brinley

We started with the pledge, prayer, calendar time and weather. After that we had song time which they absolutely LOVED! We sang the alphabet, days/months, and then a Sunday School song which we danced and did movements to. We would normally go into Bible after this, and we'll be using their Awana Cubbies lesson each week and learning their verse during this time. Since they don't have a verse this week we just went into the rest of our day.



I got my curriculum from an awesome blog I found http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/ She came up with a great Letter of the Week and K4 curriculum that you can purchase on her site. It's super affordable and very easy to use. Since the girls are ready for writing and phonics I decided to go with the K4 curriculum and then focus on a letter each week since they didn't have a whole year of that previously and they could use a bit of extra focus along with the overall alphabet learning they will be doing.

I decided to start us with A so we talked about and wrote our upper and lowercase A's. We talked about the long and short sounds A makes and sang the vowel song. I mixed up the curriculum a bit to fit our needs and tried to focus at least 1 activity each day in the following areas (Bible/Letter Activity/Writing/Numbers/Motor Skills/Phonics/Language(Spanish & Sign since their uncle Josh is deaf)/Art/Reading (I read their library books to them for 20 minutes) It all fits into 2 hours and then we have lunch and go about the rest of our day.



I can't even tell you how many times they exclaimed "Mommy, this is so fun I LOVE having school at home. Does it have to end?" Makes my heart sing! I'm so excited about this and thrilled that I get to play such a huge role in their education. I think this is going to be great for our family and I can't wait to see how it unfolds!

The Schoolroom

The past few weeks have been filled with Ikea, Amazon purchases, and a myriad of homeschooling blogs. I've gone from feeling nervous, to excited, to... what the heck am I doing??? There is SO much information out there that it's easy to get overwhelmed, especially when you have never before looked into homeschooling (becuase ya know, it wasn't an option.) So now I'm trying not to sink as I tread the waters of all things preschool. I feel really blessed and lucky in a way, that we have made this decision now while I can't really screw anything up. I mean, preschool isn't even required so I have no doubt I'll do okay and worst case have them overly ready for Kinder. Best case though, we'll find our groove over the course of the year and work out the kinks so we can have a great Kinder year next year. But baby steps... one year at a time!

The front room of our house which should be a dining/living room has always been a sort of multi-purpose room. It started out as a playroom for the girls, becuase that was way more practical moving in with 2 babies than a formal dining room. The playroom has changed as the girls toys and needs have changed. This is the playroom after we ripped out the carpet and added the wood floors to match the rest of the downstairs a year ago.





The schoolroom/playroom is still a work in progress, but I'm so excited that it's coming along. We added bookcases to the back wall and a desk for each of us. It still needs to double as a playroom until they are older so I tried to make sure I accommodated both needs. I'll definitely be updating with details once things are a bit closer to being done, but it's on it's way!

Say WHAT???

The inevitable has been around the corner for awhile now, and as much as I didn't want to acknowledge it... over the past few months I've had to. The girls are going to start school in a year and we have to decide what to do about that. I've known Preschool wouldn't be in the cards for us for a few years. With having two at the same age there was no way we would be able to afford to send them to Preschool. Pair that with the fact that their Dec. 6th birthday causes them to miss the Kindergarten cutoff by a day and I figured they would learn all they needed being at home with me for that extra year. I've figured all along that we would send them off to the local public school when it was time to start K, but have always felt a sense of unease about it. I can't exactly tell you why, but it never felt like the right thing to do.

Over the summer as their PreK year was approaching and they were showing a true desire to learn I knew it was time to think and pray more seriously about their schooling. I asked God to give me peace about their schooling, but for the first time ever I told Him I was 100% open to what he wanted and to guide me and show me what the right thing was. I wanted to make the best decision for my girls and their education and I wanted to be open to what he had for them. This is where things get a bit sticky... becuase God didn't exactly answer how I thought he would. I figured he would just give me peace about sending them to public school and that would be the end of it.

But no, God has a sense of humor. It started with little nudges here and there, and then doors began opening, conversations were initiated by people I respect... and before I knew it I was on the path to... dun dun dun... homeschooling my girls. A year ago I would have laughed at you if you told me I was going to homeschool, but after giving the girls education to God, praying about it, and truly evaluating the pros and cons I can say I have complete peace about this decision. It's funny how God can do a 360 on your heart in a matter of months.

We've decided to make this a year by year decision. The girls are more than ready to learn, so I'll do a structured preschool program this year to test the waters and then we'll evaluate how things went at the end of the year and make a decision for Kindergarten. For now though, this is the right path and I'm excited to see where it leads us.