Monday, April 21, 2008

The Bee Tree


This week we are rowing The Bee Tree.
It's a story about a girl and her grandfather chasing a bee back to the hive.
We have so many bee resources in our house, it's going to be fun!










I won the Big price today on the Wheel of WOW!!!

Friday, April 18, 2008

Pretty Cool Homeschool Moment


When I decided to homeschool my kids there was one thing that kept freaking me out... how in the world am I going to teach my daughter to read?!?!?!
I decided to use the Five in a Row curriculum because all these moms kept saying how their kids had learned to read using it.
I was a little skeptical but I went for it... this morning as we were getting ready to read our book of the week, A6 put her hand on my mouth and started to read the book for her brother and me!
She read every page stopping only when there was a particular word she didn't know how to read, (I helped her with those) she kept going till the very last page!!!!!

How did I reward my daughter for giving her Mommy a "you're not sucking at this" moment?

A new Webkinz of course!!

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Math U See

This week for math we are learning to skip count! I'm going to take my time with this lesson, MUS came with a music cd and it has skip counting songs that we are going to learn!
We decided to take today off from school and do school tomorrow instead. Although I could still count today as a school day since they are playing in their computers, call it a computer lab day!

My Webkinz Garden


If I'm not careful this blog is going to turn into a Webkinz blog!! ha ha!
On my previous post I was talking about how the kids and I have vegetable gardens in our webkinz world and how everyday we have to maintain them. Water them, rake them and then harvest them.
It is a great way for the kids to see what it takes to take care of a vegetable garden and to see the reward of all the hard work.
We have to wait 7 to 10 days for the vegetables to harvest, which for a kid can feel like an eternity, they are used to seeing results within seconds.

The kids are really looking forward to the harvest, they know all their hard work will pay off!
The food from the garden is healthier for the pets than the one from the WShop, they understand why that is as well.

Once I'm able to harvest lots of fruits and veggies I can show them how we can keep some to eat then sell some of them and make money like real farmers do!

Like I said before, very educational!

Another Gem of the Day


A6 found the gem of the day today!!

Monday, April 14, 2008

The Salamander Room


We are rowing the Salamader Room this week. This book is a lot of fun, insects, birds, frogs, lots of things the kids are interested in! The next few books are all about insects and we are starting to see lots of those around.
It's been so nice here the last couple of days, we spent a lot of time outside over the weekend.
We just set up our hummingbird feeder as well, haven't seen one yet. We also planted some seeds that are supposed to attract butterflies and hummingbirds, we have to water it everyday, the kids are getting a kick out of that..their first flower garden!
We are still loving our webkinz, A6 just got a garden on her backyard and she loves checking it everday and waiting for it to harvest. It takes 7 to 10 days for the veggies and the fruits to harvest. Very educational!!



For those of you familiar with Webkinz world, I found the gem of the day today.
The Webkinz Diamond, the hardest one to find!!!
I just wanted to brag a little.
I got W1000 for it!! SWEET!!!!

Monday, April 7, 2008

Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel

This week we are rowing Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, I also happen to have the book in dvd format. It's always fun to read the book then watch the book!

We only have 5 more weeks of school, we've been doing two math lessons a week and it's been going pretty good. We are going to continue to do Reading made easy and Math U See through the summer, two days a week and then take the whole month of July off.

Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself...

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Webkinz


Webkinzs have invaded our home!
It's been impossible to post anything on the blog because my computer's been busy playing webkinz :)

It all started last Friday during COOP, a lot of the kids brought their webkinz for show and tell.
Some of them had more than one, a few had 4 and 5 of these things.

I decided to investigate, was this another beanie baby craze??

It turns out your webkinz can be adopted online, then you have an online alter ego of your webkinz and he comes with a room which you can furnish, and if you earn enough money you can buy lots of other rooms and furnish them and so on. The trick is to get as much money as possible. You do this by playing games, answering trivia and doing daily activities that earn you money on webkinz land. The more webkinz you have the more rooms and money you get which is why some of my neighbor kids have anywhere from 4 to 9 webkinz. Also, you have to go to special places to buy them, you can't just go to Walmart and get them.

A6 was having a little friend coming over on Saturday for the whole day, and the little girls' Mom gave me their webkinz password so that the girls could play it. Dh and I decided to get her and X3 a webkinz of their own.
Well ... mommy and daddy had so much fun getting everything set up for the kids that we decided to get our own webkinz!!
Let's just say I can see now why one webkinz is not enough. A6 bought a second one, spending her own money, (A6 never spends her own money) mommy and daddy also got a second one!
X3 can only handle playing with one for now, I'm sure that will change!

If you don't hear from me for a while, you know what I'm doing!!

Amber on the Mountain


This week we are rowing Amber on the Mountain, a book about a girl who wants to learn how to read and write.
We are going to be hitting math pretty hard this week so we can catch up, we've gone three weeks without doing any math other than math games.
Playing webkinz has helped since A6 always wants to know how much money she needs to buy things for them.

COOP is over so that gives us our Fridays back, Thursday will continue to be library day and Friday we'll do math as well.
We've been doing crafts and music as well. We've also been watching books on dvd.