Were back in school baby!

Whew! Its been a bit of a bumpy road as far as school goes for the past few month. First we were hit with summer. We decided we would take off June but continue work once July hit :) yeah that did NOT go as well as planned! We started off ok in July but as the month went on we did less and less....I think it was getting hotter and hotter and wearing us OUT! Not to mention in our "classroom" at home it gets like 90* BLAH so we were doing school work downstairs in mom and dads bedroom most days. It also didn't help that I found out we are expecting #4 (wahoo :)) and was super super tired all the time.......Then the middle of August came and everyone else started getting ready to head back to school! We got Emily all set to start Kinder @ the school where my mom helps out and the Fausett kids go. I would not have been able to send her if it weren't for the help of my mom transporting her! Emily REALLY loves it!!! She gets excited everyday and I know she is just having a blast playing with all of her friends! So with Emily in school for half the day and ME being a super slacker in the "preparing" homeschool department, I kind of re-evaluated what we were doing. Bob and I discussed it and decided to give K12 school a try. It is in online, virtual public school. My hope with K12 was that because all of the planning was done for me it would be so much easier because we could just focus on the "learning & teaching" and it would save me lots of prep time......this however was not the case. I think I spent MORE time logging and submitting things then Steph did working, at least some days it felt like that. Plus she was required to submit extra tests and assignments to "show that she was where she should be". I have NO problem with all of this and I completely understand why they have these things in place, it just doesn't work for us and our style of homeschooling. So as Bob loves to quote James Bach, he told me "Jump in and Quit......its OK" so we did......we quit. I am ok with it! We took one day off and spent it watching all kind of fun educational shows and now we are back into our workbooks and child directed learning. Steph really learns so much better when it is "her idea" and also a subject she really loves.....So now Bob and I have to get back to my weekly planning meetings to make this work! I have my doubts EVERY day.....but thankfully we have a great group of friends who support us and it REALLY helps that Bob is on board 100% and willing to help with anything I ask!

So that's where we are! Steph is loving homeschool,  Emilys @ school part of the day and we work with her the other part to keep her moving along. She is a super smart girl and we like to do some "extra" at home to keep her brain going, and Sarah........well Sarah is sad she doesn't go to school like Emily, but she has been doing some great things around here :) Just today I watched as Emily was "teaching" Sarah how to do math! It was great!

Hopefully more blogs to come now that we are back in the swing of it!!

Emilys Pattern

I have so much fun with Emily and watching her learn! Kindergarten is my FAV stage I think :) So we sat down to work on AB and ABB patterns. Of course she already knew this (must have gotten it at preschool because we have only touched on it here at home) anyways she got right to it and was coloring in her pattern. I told her she could put anything in the box, an X or squiggles.....as long as it was the right color :) Then we got down to the bottom and she said I don't want to do an ABB pattern because I want 3 colors, I want an ABC pattern :)

So we flipped the paper over and made an ABC and ABBC and ABCC pattern :)

Sometimes I DONT give enough credit!

So while Emily and I were working on Mr.Scrapy pages Sarah was in the playroom coloring. She brought me this

Sarah "mommy I made this for you"

Me "no you didnt, Emily made that?" "Emily did you make this"

Emily "No I didnt make it"

Me "Sarah did you REALLY make that"

Sarah "YES I made it, and it has eyes and a chin and a forhead and arms and fingers and a nose and a mouth"

Me " OH MY GOSH SARAH thats SO GREAT!!!!!! I LOVE IT! Can I take a picture of it?"

LOL OH sometimes! I really have NEVER seen her make more than a circle and scribbles so when she brought me a whole person I just assumed she didnt make it! Go Sarah!!! I felt bad for doubting her skills! Sometime I just forget that shes 3 1/2 and even though we CALL her our baby she really ISNT a baby anymore!

Mr.Scrapy

With only 2 weeks left of preschool Mrs.McMurry just HAD to send home one more story bag! So we took Mr.Scrapy around with us and had some fun :) The plus side of this is Emily had to cut out all the pictures and then dictate to me what was happening in them :) Its a lot of work for me with all the picture taking and printing ect. so this round we just printed them at home and that made it so much easier. Then she cut them out and glued them onto the sheets, then we wrote a story about all we did with him.

I love her teachers and her school but I have to say I am sooooo ready to be done with it!

Mr Scrapy in the car with Emily

At horse lessons riding Jim Dandy

Sitting on Em when she got her teeth cleaned

Waiting for a snack

Cutting out the pictures for the book!

Mr.Scrapy had a busy 2 days!

Tuesday Fairy - Thanks for the Whack

Just a regular day around here :) we are sitting at the table, Emily working on writing a letter to Bubbie (which ended up being Dear Bubb with a bunch of check marks....more later) and Steph doing her work and over Sarah comes with her pencil. "I am ready for school work mom" she said! LOL :) LOVE IT!!!!

One thing I struggle with is not sticking with what I had planned in  MY HEAD! Like sitting down with Emily to write a thank you letter to Bubbie for the sleepover. I had planned for her to write a sentence or two and draw a picture and off we would mail it. However that is NOT what happened. With each actual letter of the alphabet she wrote she wanted to put a check mark on it (I had written Dear Bubbie on a different sheet she was using to reference) so of course it made sense for her to check off the letter after she wrote it...LOL at first I was so irritated! I mean that's NOT how a letter should look and it certainly wasn't the letter I had envisioned her writing!!! Then my Homeschool Fairy must have whacked me upside the head and I remembered WAIT I have a 5 year old here who just read me 2 books and is writing letters!!!! Who cares if there are check marks! Who cares if it isn't perfect SHES 5 and shes having FUN!!!! So then I let her run with it! She enjoyed the check marks and then started drawing lines all over and playing with a rock.......so letter writing wasn't on her agenda for today but we practiced making check marks! :)

REALLY trying to follow A Leadership Education and today's lesson for ME was to remember

INSPIRE NOT REQUIRE!!!! 

Great Article

Here is a great article on homeschooling from the East Valley Tribune. Just wanted to share :)

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/local/education/article_84eb8e1a-72bf-11e0-831f-001cc4c03286.html

Wings!

had to share an awesome shot I got while watching our new friends.....I guess this one is Jill :)

We have Butterflys!

We had been watching.....waiting and finally this morning Emily came and woke me up she was soooo excited "Mommy the butterfly's hatched" So we came upstairs to check it out. Sure enough we had one butterfly and a second that had JUST come out :) So we went and got them some fresh orange slices to drink on when they are ready. Sure enough while Emily was sitting watching her butterfly learn to use its wings, another one came out! She was sooooo excited to SEE it "hatch"! Then we watched as it opened its wings of the first time, and we watched as it learned to use its legs and tongue (aka Proboscis, which DID you know that an elephants trunk can also be called a Proboscis!)

So amazing and wonderful to be able to watch it all and too see the excitement on her face as SHE watched it!

3 more to "hatch"!

Butterfly UPDATE

ok so they were all officially in thier chrysalis' today so we moved them into thier new home. This is where they will hatch and live until we release them!

This is them in the postition they go into before/while they spin thier chrysalis.

Here they are all moved into one big house.

How to tune it all out!

Stephanies solution to tuning her sisters out while she does her work :)

Workbox AWESOMENESS!

SO I gound a great system to help keep us organized. Its Sue Patricks Workbox System.

The idea is great. Each night I load the boxes with what she is to do. Then she can work through the boxes. Certain boxes will have work then a few boxes down it may be a game, or snack ect. We tried it out last week and it worked really great! She went right to it and got started 2 days in a row without me having to tell her to get started! :) We are going to add some new elements to it and pep it up and keep it fun! I know once I start putting a "go swimming" card in the box she will be super motivated!

NO sub?!?!

Ok so today I learned one really sucky thing about homeschool today......when you are sick there is no sub.....and even worse there is no "take your kids to school all day" place! So I woke up with a BAD BAD headache and thankfully Bob was able to work from home to help out in the morning with the kids, but alas no REAL school work got done today! Oh well, we will make it up another day.

On the plus side I did get an email from our homeschool group and found a great program that Kumon and Scholastic are doing. If you complete the activities you can earn up to 5 books for FREE!!! So we printed those out and got going. Emily is DONE! That kid is AMAZING!!!

We actually have her enrolled to go to Kinder @ Mirage (where the Fausett kids go and my mom volunteers in the K class) but the more I work with her the more I think she will BLOW those kids away! We will see.......

So while we worked on our activity pages, Sarah wanted something to do also. So I gave her a cutting/triangle assignment....she loves to cut!

And Steph was flying through her pages, until she started to read Babymouse (BTW if you have young girls this book is a FUN one to get them reading, comic style)....


On to our caterpillars.....we moved them into a new home last night with LOTS of new food for them. Today they have been super active and fun to watch! Here is a picture of "Climby" he is one of Emilys, along with Hungry and Wormy. Steph named her's Jill, Jenny and Jake. Sarahs are Climby, Chick and other Climby! LOL Here they are in the new house, and a close up of Climby and Wormy!

Caterpillar Science!

Love this time of year and all the little wonders of nature! We were SO lucky to find a friend who BREEDS butterflys! :) So she got us 4 caterpillars for each girl......unfortunatly each girl lost one....so now they have 3 each.....wierd how that worked out.....anyways here are pic of them from the day we got them and now. They grow fast!

Can you see them?? There are 4 in there (one is hiding down in the crack) the best one to spot is on the top of the picture.....TINY little black caterpillar!

and here they are 6 days later!

They will be painted lady butterflys.

Finally getting a routine!

So its been a few months, 3 1/2 to be exact....but who's counting! We FINALLY seem to be getting the hang of this homeschool thing! We are getting into our routine and system which is working well. We get up, breakfast, get dressed and get to school work! I get Steph started on her work then I have been working with Emily this week. She is making a "word" book, so the first page is an "at" page....words like cat, bat, rat ect....today she did an OG page.....I had to keep reminding myself "she's just a 5 year old, this is just kindergarten". She kept getting side tracked, wanted to write both uppercase and lower case letters for dog....so it looked like this
DdOoGg LOL I let her do it because its great practice writing the letters! I have such a hard time telling them "that's wrong" hate to discourage her in any way. She wanted the Mommy letters to be with the baby letters......there is a REASON to her systems ALWAYS! So then I explained to her that this time I wanted her to write the mommy letter at the beginning and all of her babies after that :) Seriously she is going to be SO MUCH FUN!!! Love her imagination!!!! Oh and then she wanted to be a leopard and write with her "paws" (after I wouldn't let her write with her mouth).

Ok off to get some updated pics of our caterpillars!

The first post!

Ok I am going to add to the agenda to come here WEEKLY! Really wanting to blog our homeschool experience! And have a great place for dad, grandma, aunts ect to check in on us and see what were doing!

This week is BUTTERFLY'S! So much fun! We have lapbooks planned and REAL caterpillars that we are watching and waiting to see transform!!!

Pics soon!