Finishing up

Today we started on the second last lesson in math which is on subtraction. E picked it up right away and did her math pages so fast!! She's really good at telling time too (that is, as long as she remembers to put on her glasses in the morning so she can actually *see* the clock!).

We also did some more spelling out of our SWR book. We started on list B and she learned words like: good, so, no, last... She's learning 20 new spelling words a week with this program, and is doing great! Hopefully she'll be a much better speller than her mother.

We also did some painting (actually we did that yesterday, but hey, homeschooling can happen on sundays too can't it?). E and I painted together and had lots of fun playing with the crayon resist technique where you color with crayon first and then paint over it. (the paint doesn't stick to the crayon).
No pictures for your viewing pleasure today unfortuantely, because super blogger mom has to make dinner.

Nature Walk

The weather was so hot and uninspiring this afternoon that we decided to brave the sun and go for a walk through our community. We piled H into the stroller, sprayed on our sunscreen and wandered off up the sidewalk.

We saw so many dragonflies, although the kids swear they were the same two that were following us (Z told me they were a brother and a sister). We also saw:

-a hawk flying high overhead with two crows flying around it's head like little brothers would to an older sister.

-a beautiful black bird with red on it's wings who was singing the prettiest song.

-some pretty alberta roses in full bloom

-some brown-eyed susans (beautiful!)

-an airplane (z's favorite)

-three ponds, full of the sounds of birds, frogs and insects

-a duck sitting on a big rock

We had a nice time, and as a bonus, all four of us were so tired when we got home, we all slept for two and a half hours. (my favorite)

Art show!!

Well the big day finally came, and our little Artist went to the opening of the art show her piece was featured in. All day, she was waiting with great anticipation for the big event. She was especially happy that her siblings, parents, grandparents, and great grandma, and great auntie were there to celebrate with her.

They had all the children's artwork framed and hung on the walls of the building with nice ambient lighting, soft background music, and of course ants-on-a-log, juice boxes and twizzlers for snacks. All the children looked so proud... and none were more proud then our little girl who got to cut the ribbon to open the show. She was very grownup about the whole thing and enjoyed talking to the director of the school. Now she is very excited to take another art class next year.

The photo is of her painting with the ribbon before she cut it. It will be on display for the whole month of July if you want to go see it. (One amusing highlight of the evening was her little sister H who kept trying to grab the scissors off the table beside the painting... I guess she wanted to cut the ribbon too? ) 

Getting organized (again)

Not a lot of formal schoolwork here today.. the kids are too excited that we get to go to the airport to pick up Auntie Val. Instead, I spent the morning reorganizing all of our school books. We have acquired quite a lot of history and science and art books... not to mention all my scrapbooking supplies.

This armoir from a dear friend is going to serve us just right for the year. I think I need some more bookshelves if I want to buy any new books for grade 2 up. :-)

 

We've been in quite a nice rhythm over the past few weeks. I've recently started a new house cleaning schedule (isn't it fun to keep searching for the perfect system that will transform you into this amazing domestic goddess??). Anyways, I got it from motivatedmoms.com and I have been enjoying the short list of daily chores I am supposed to do each day. I have found it much more manageable than flylady. If you go here you can download her 2002 schedule for free, or you can pay a small amount to get her current year's lists.
We have also been making it to daily mass again each morning at 8am. An early hour to be sure, but such a grace-filled way to start the day. When we get home, we're already in the right frame of mind to focus on school work for a few hours.

We've been busy learning how to tell time in math, and how to find the area of a rectangle or square through skip counting. In our Language Arts program (SWR), we've been busy practicing cursive (she's getting so good!), spelling, and reading through our weekly lists. I have really fallen in love with this program!! The author suggests that instead of frustrating a child by presenting them with an entire page full of words they have to slowly decode and understand (i.e. a book), why not start with mastering individual words first so they become easy and almost automatic before embarking on reading in books. That way, 'reading' doesn't become a battleground. She doesn't actually think she's reading when she's only reading me a word at a time.

Father's day this weekend was lovely for us. All of the father's in our family were out of town, except my darling husband, so we had a nice quiet day together. First the kids and I got up early to make daddy breakfast in bed (waffles... what fun to make!!), and then we went off to mass as usual. After that, we packed a picnic lunch and went for a nice afternoon at Bowness Park, and finished off the day with an ice cream cone.

new blinds

Everyone is very excited around here about our new blinds that were just installed. What a treat to be able to wander around the house without feeling like you are in a fish bowl in the pet store!!

Sean and I were especially excited about the room darkening ones that will enable us to have a wonderful deep sleep (no street lights shining in our eyes, and no kids getting up at 5 am with the sun).

It was wonderful indeed... the first morning, I woke up in a cozy dark room... to a flashflight shining in my eyes. hmmm... I guess the kids liked the dark rooms too. Much more fun to play camping in. (and it was only 6:15 -- not 5am.. pretty good.)

so what have we been up to?

Batteries are dead in my camera again.. sigh. So, I haven't felt like blogging, because I have no cute pictures to share. I suppose I could walk over to the shelf and get new ones, but sometimes even 7 extra steps in a day can be too much :-) Especially when you are expecting child number 4 and baby number 3 has been up to no good all day.

So what have we been up to? Tummy flu, baby kisses, square-foot gardening, planting rose-bushes and willows, spelling, playing math games, going to daily mass, getting new blinds for the house (hopefully they will keep the kids in bed a little longer in the morning), train rides, bird watching, painting, drawing, and lots of other stuff.

Currently the kids are upstairs playing 'funeral'. Don't ask LOL. They have developed this fascination with ancient Egypt, and are very interested in mummys, and funerals for them.

Never a dull moment around here.

Tomorrow we will begin our math chapter on telling time, and in Language Arts we will continue with our new program Spell to Write and Read. E has learned all of the cursive letters and is very proud.

Blessings to you all!

Science for the summer?

Here's a wonderful resource on the web I just found:

The website is called 'Hands-on Science ' and they have many resources- one of which is a free butterfly unit study that is very comprehensive and looks like a fun way to spend the summer.

I also went back to that amazing on-line museum exploratorium.com where you can watch an online dissection of a cow's eye and learn more about how eyes work. cool! I don't have any of those lying around here, so it's great to be able to see it virtually.

One more stop if you have time after all that fun: A live ant-cam. No, it's not watching Aunt Val as she roams through her house dancing to opera music while she dusts... it's real live bugs in their home. Pretty interesting! (they do have anther nature-cam, but it's flesh-eating beetles, and since it's breakfast time around here, I figured you didn't want to see that one)

Mousey

This morning before I even came downstairs the kids had pulled out the playdough and all the playdough toys and were busy creating things. Here is E's mouse that she crafted.. I have been directed to dry it in the oven for her :-) 

spring fun

We've been so busy these last few days... gardening, painting pictures, visiting with grandparents, doing math and writing and phonics. Now that it's springtime, I can see another wonderful benefit to homeschooling: you don't have to be inside all day in school! The kids have been playing outside each day for hours at a time, loving the water, the dirt, the grass, and even the bugs. Z has been having fun picking up worms. E is still warming up to them :-)

On the weekend, we were digging up garden beds in our front yard. This is a picture of him and Z getting ready to plant the rose bush that my dad gave us. It's a climber, and we're thinking of putting up a nice cedar arbour over the gate for it to climb up. Z had a great time digging with dad. For the rest of the evening, him and E played in the other big hole daddy dug (for a willow), making their own little play fort with sticks, a skipping rope and some little bulldozers. I'm constantly amazed by how much fun they can have with a few simple things.

Today, we visited my parents, and the kids had a wonderful time playing in the dirt 'helping' grandpa mix up his soil. Even H joined in this time. When I looked at her hands a while later, She had four very dirty fingers and one perfectly clean thumb!! (Good thing... since she sucks her thumb all the time LOL.. I guess a little dirt won't hurt her.

After that, we went to visit my grandma, and that is always a treat. E did her writing lesson there and finished up the last of the lowercase cursive letters (x, y, z). (did you know they call them 'lowercase' because when the printers would do everything by hand, they would keep the more frequently used letters on the bottome shelf for easy access so they were 'lower' and the big ones were the 'upper' ones).

Below is a few pictures that E has painted in the last little while. She was inspired to paint after she went with her other grandparents downtown to an art fair where different kinds of artists were demonstrating their work. The first picture is of 3 nuns walking towards their church at nighttime, and the other two are just 'artistic'.


 

So sweet!

My father in law is a great amateur photographer, and he took this picture of H a few weekends ago when they were babysitting the kids. Isn't she the cutest thing ever?? One of her favorite things to do is sit and play with rocks... big ones, small ones, dirty ones... she just loves to pick them up and throw them. The other morning I was trying to sleep in a bit, and I was startled awake by a loud sound I couldn't quite place... it almost sounded like someone throwing hard objects onto the floor. Not being entirely sure that this should go uninvestigated, I followed the noise until I found H in her crib throwing a big rock onto the floor that she had somehow smuggled inside. E was picking it up and giving it back to her each time, so she could throw it again. Bang... bang... bang...

Kids can have fun with just about anything! 

My little cursive writer

This morning we finished most of our school work before 10am, so the kids are having fun playing with playdough again. It's amazing how long a few cups of flour and salt can amuse 2 children :-)

You can see Zs new haircut below, btw... we had to shave it pretty short, but he just looks more like his dad now, so he's happy.For school this morning, we did chores first (make beds, clean rooms, get dressed), and then after breakfast E practiced her cursive writing and learning the phonograms from our new book Spell to Write and Read. I am loving this program and we haven't even started the spelling lists yet LOL.

She really enjoys learning cursive (and she's not even 6 yet!!)... so I wanted to teach it to her while she was still motivated to learn it. What's different about this approach (SWR) is that she is learning all of the sounds that a phonogram (letter) can make at the same time. So, instead of just learning short 'a' first (like cat), she is learning that 'a' can say 'a' (cat), 'A' (Kate), or 'ah' (wasp). I was worried this might be hard for her, or confusing, but she is just soaking it up... even faster than I am (she corrects me often as to what sounds some of the vowels can make!!)

These are the sounds and letters we learned today:

After our writing/reading lesson, (the theory of this book is that by learning how to spell and write, then you learn to read as a side-effect... it's been proven to be a very good program, and it's such a nice change for us, because the other stuff was painful to work through) we did some more math pages where she is learning how to write and read tally marks. She says this is her second favorite thing to do in math. (her first is being a math detective.. which is really a fancy way to say algebra LOL).

After they finish playdough, we're going to plant some potatoes and some flower seeds (our science for the day)

We are on the way to finishing up K pretty soon. I just want to get through her math book basically, and then we'll take a month off. I'd like to start grade one early this year (maybe halfway through July, or the begining of August so that i can take off November and December when the new baby comes. 

Zach's bad hair day

Yesterday, mommy and daddy were busy all day organizing a class they were teaching this weekend, and so the kids were banished to the basement to play quietly away from us.... This is what happens when you leave 2 kids under 6 alone for the whole day without TVs and movies to keep the sedated LOL...

They played 'haircut'. Luckily Z is a boy, so we can just cut his hair really short. She did one big snip off the back too. sigh...
Now the kids are happily occupied playing with a playdough barber-shop kit where they get to cut the playdough hair instead. Of course this is significantly messier than cutting real people's hair, but the effects are shorter lived. 

math games

I recently showed my face back at the library after a self-imposed sabbatical (too many overdue fines... just my way of supporting them LOL)

Anyways, I found a delightful little book filled with fun math games using cards and dice for grades preK-3. It’s called Shuffling into Math, and we’ve had lots of fun playing games this week.

This afternoon we played a fun game where you roll a dice and then get to pick that number of raisins from the pile. After 3 turns each, we get to count our piles and eat them up!! Z won by a landslide, which is surprising, because I had to keep stopping him from eating his before we were done.


Later, we had fun making shapes out of the raisins. I told the kids to try and make a circle. Z decided that was too hard and announced he was going to make a finger. Go figure!

Now the kids are busy playing some games without me while I try to make dinner before daddy comes home. They started playing a simplified version of war (remember that game? Whoever has the highest card wins the pile)… but Z got really sad and started to cry when E won one round and took his ‘heart’. He had real tears and everything...

So now they are playing another game, guaranteed to have a tie (hee hee!!)… I shuffled the deck and put it in the middle of the table. They took turns turning over a card from the pile, and if it was a club or a heart, it went in Zach’s pile, and if it was a diamond or a spade it went in E’s pile. They were THRILLED when the found out at the end they both tied. Kids are so easy to entertain.

Busy busy

What a busy long weekend!!

On Saturday the kids spent the whole day with sean's parents, and we had some much needed alone time together. We drove all over the city looking at tent trailers, and ended up buying one!! We are so excited to go camping and make some great memories as a family.
We also went for a nice dinner, and later took in a movie (RV) before we picked up the kids.

Monday morning was spent at Heritage Park with my parents, and we all had a wonderful time. It's always a treat to go there... no concrete or ashphalt, lots of green grass and trees, good food, and many things to learn. The kids especially enjoyed going on the train, and the ferris wheel. We bought a season's pass so we could enjoy the park for the whole summer.



This morning, we've been busy cleaning, eating breakfast and doing schoolwork. In math E learned to count by fives, and we practiced counting nickles and pennies. In reading, we are starting our new program SWR (Spell to Write and Read) and reviewed some of the sounds. In art she drew a picture of herself smiling, while looking in the mirror. (cute, of course)...

Oh, and Z is starting to do some school work too... today he practiced cutting in his Kumon book... he had to cut along a line to the star, and then stop... and then cut along another line an then stop. This created a sheep pen with a little folding, and he's spent the rest of the morning playing with it. Amazingly enough, he has managed to turn the whole thing into a train LOL.

Good morning!

This morning we got up early, had a nice breakfast and started on our school work for the day with lots of smiles and joy. Something about the spring time seems to put everyone in a wonderful mood.

First we read a bible story, then we read a beautiful story out of Catholic Tales for Girls and Boys. The kids love doing 'religion' because it usually means we get to read stories. We got out of the habit of doing readalouds for awhile there at the start of my pregnancy (too tired!!) but now that I'm feeling better we've been doing it again. I'm excited about next year, because I just pre-ordered a copy of Catholic Mosaic - Living the Liturgical Year with Literature,An illustrated book study forCatholic children. This will provide lots of great material for us.

After religion, we pulled out our math books and finished up the chapter on pre-algebra. E has fun being the math detective to find out the missing number. She is getting really fast at doing her math facts too... I think we'll keep up with math over the summer on a lighter basis so she doesn't forget everything that she learned this year. Today she did things like ?+2=8, and 100+100, and counting by 2s and 10s.

While E was busy doing math, Z climbed up beside her and I pulled out his 'school' books: the Kumon cutting book and coloring book. He was so proud of his little efforts. They are geared right at his level so he can feel like he's really accomplishing something. The coloring page he did today was sweet.. he had to draw ketchup on a plate of spaghetti. (he also decided to add strawberries, blueberries and lettuce).
Now she is busy in the kitchen peeling carrots for me for dinner and after that I'll shoo them outside with a snack to enjoy the nice spring weather.


 

Mother's day cards

I got such beautiful presents for mother's day this year. Sean woke up early and went downstairs with the kids to make mommy breakfast and color some cards for me.

When they came upstairs, they were so excited to wish mommy a happy mother's day. I love their little smiles first thing in the morning. Sean had made a DVD with pictures and videos of me and the kids set to music for me (had me in tears), and the kids both waved their cards in my face.

E gave me her card first: a beautifully decorated card with ribbons and colors, and a drawing of me and sean in a heart, and then on the other page me dressed up in a tutu dancing. It was pure girl.

Then it was the little boy's turn. Z's card is blue with a bunch of scribbles on it.

"What's that picture of sweetie?"

"ummm.. It's a ghost"

"A ghost??... ohhh... it's ... nice" (trying not to laugh, and wondering why a ghost was on my mother's day card). "What's this picture of Z?"

"oh, that's a man with his head broke off"

(mommy and daddy collapse into uncontrollable laughter and the difference between little girls and boys.... )

MIA?

Well, I seem to have been lapsing in my blogging as of late. I guess that's what pregnancy, 3 kids, a bad cold, a bunch of birthdays, and trying to figure out our curriculum for next year will do for you.

What have we been up to the last while or so?

E enjoyed taking a dance class with her little friends at a birthday party, and can again be seen twirling through the house with beautiful poise and form. She really is quite artsy LOL.

The kids finished up their swimming lessons, and are both so much more brave in the water. We'll have to go again soon, before they forget that they aren't afraid of water :-)

We are slowly working our way to the end of her math book. In the last few weeks we have learned to count all the way to 100 (she likes to practice this on unsuspecting strangers and friends who don't have the heart to tell her they really don't feel like listening to her slowly count that high). She has also been practicing her math facts 1+1, 2+2, 3+3, 4+4, 5+5, and anything plus one. After that, she tackled learning 10+ 10, 10+20, etc... and 20+20, 30+30, 40+40, 50+50... and last week we finished up learning how to add 100+100, 200+200 etc...

Finally, just yesterday we started a lesson on beginner algebra (in kindergarten??)... she is learning to play 'detective' because someone stole part of a math problem:

?+3 = 6

She uses her math blocks to figure it out... and she's getting quite quick at it.
Before we're done this year, we have to tackle beginning subtraction, and telling time on an analog clock.

We've finished with phonics for the year, because I bought a new program for phonics/spelling that takes a completly different approach. It's called Spell to Write and Read (or SWR). I was hoping I could teach myself some spelling while I was at it. Both dh and I are products of the whole-language experiment and rely soley on spell-checker to look at least a little credible.

Next year we are planning to work hard to get reading, writing and math down cold, and spend some more time reading good books on science, the saints, history etc...

The best birthday present

It's an official school holiday today!! Mommy's birthday.

One of the best presents a mom can get on her birthday are two sweet little kids running up to her with great excitment, holding the very first dandilions of the year in their little hands wanting you to put them in a vase. Nothing better than that.

The flowers are cheerfully resting on my kitchen table in an adorable egg cup that seemed the perfect size for the tiny blossoms. 

Our little ribbon cutter

Remember that painting E did in the winter, and her teacher wanted to enter it for their artshow?

They phoned me yesterday with really good news!! They had some artists judge the pieces, and they chose E's to be the one that they print up on the invitation card they are sending out to everyone!

And... they want her to come a little early for the opening night so that they can show her what to do when she cuts the ribbon to offically open the show. Isn't that cute?

It's on June 22nd in the evening if anyone wants to come check out our little artist in her very first art show :-)

Oh, and she chose a name for her paining: 'Love'.