Some Birthday...

How was my 39th birthday you ask? Well, it's started really good, then it took a turn for the worse... My baby girl A7 had an allergic reaction to something she ate at IHOP when we were having lunch with DH. She was having problems breathing and kept putting her hands around her throat in an attempt to let us know something was wrong. We drove her to the ER and after 4 hours we were able to bring her home.

I am so thankful to the Church body for praying for her and Kathy for coming over to lay hands on her and pray and for taking X4 back to her house so he wouldn't have to wait at the ER for that long. Thank you Kathy, may you have an abundance of treasures in Heaven!

We are to give her Benadryl and watch for any itching or any rashes on her body. She will be sleeping with Mommy and Daddy tonight!

Please continue to pray for her, we are going to an allergist to find out what caused the allergic reaction.

Happy Birthday to Me!

TY Beanie Craze

I remember many years ago when the whole beanie babies craze was happening. I was never into beanie babies, I do have a couple of beanie lions though. Well, thanks to Mc Donald's my daughter is now into beanies or as they called them now, beanies 2.0!

They have the new 2.0s in their happy meals, we went yesterday and the kids each got one.

Ty also has TyGirlz! They are like beanies but girls. Of course A7 wants one and of course I ordered one for her. If you go to the Ty store you can buy them for $9.99 plus free shipping, you know how I love free shipping!
I also got one of the pets and clothes for the TyGirlz for only $4.99, free shipping as well!

Homeschool Share

Homeschool Share now has a Workboxables' page. You can print games and activities for your workboxes. They have it divided into different categories like preschool, phonics, graphs etc.

Speaking of workboxes I went to AC Moore the other day and found these wood model kits for our boxes, I bought the bird feeder and the tall ship for only $1.49! Not only do they get to build it but paint it as well. I know my kids will enjoy that!
Which reminds me, I signed the kids up for the Lowe's Build and Grow clinic. This Saturday(25th) they are building a helicopter. They provide the kids with goggles and an apron as well as the kit. You don't have to stay and build it there, you can take it home, which is what we are going to do. You can go here to sign up.

The Doctor Is In

My kids like to play a lot of pretend games. Supermarket(we have play food items and a cash register), Restaurant( we have made up menus) and now we can add doctor to the pretend play list!
I just purchased a doctor/surgeon costume from eBay. It came with everything kids need to play doctor. I also made fake insurance cards, doctor office docs and fake medical school diplomas for them, it is too much fun! I even bought a doctor coat for myself!

I was able to find a blood pressure monitor and a stethoscope for $7 at Amazon!
I had to "disable" the blood pressure thing to make sure the kids would not hurt themselves with it, but other than that they work great and the kids are able to listen to each others heart beat! I got some elastic bandages for all those broken arms and legs we get at the doctors office! The kids are having a blast operating on the neighbor kids, even Daddy needed surgery!

I got the idea for the id cards from this toy wallet I found at Amazon, I figured I could do this myself and I did!!

What's in the box?

Here are some of games and activities in X4's summer work boxes .

• Connectagons Heart-to-Hearts

Each heart-shaped wooden tile in the set of 60 (30 patterned, 30 plain) has 8 slots - connect tops, bottoms or sides to build up, down, or around - changes of heart have never been more fun! Finished sculptures make imaginative room decorations, too!

• Blockhead

Stack the wooden blocks higher and higher-but don't let them fall!

• Boggle Jr. Game

• Lacing Shapes & Beads
  

• Rubik's Cube

Workboxes

I've seen a lot of homeschool blogs who are using the workbox system, post what they are going to have in their boxes for that week. I thought that would be a neat idea. The thing is my kids are going to have pretty much the same things in their boxes week after week.

We are using 9 boxes instead of 12 and most of them are going to be filled with the usual math, reading, handwriting etc. however, there will be a box or three that will change week to week. I thought maybe I could post about those boxes at the beginning of each week.

So I made this icon pic to go along with that post:Yes, there are much cuter ones out there but this is as good as it gets for mine!!
I will show any games, activities or even snacks in the boxes for both kids. I get so many ideas from other blogs that I feel is a good thing to share any ideas I might have!

Even though we are not doing school right now I still have stuff in the boxes for the boy, I will post some of the fun things I have in there for him in the next few days!

July is going so fast!

I can't believe is it almost the middle of July, my birthday is almost here! Got a lot done this past week..Wonder Woman lives!!!! I hadn't been her in a while, but she was back!
Got so much cleaning done, threw lots of stuff out(my favorite way to clean), By the end of the week I had nothing to do...well, there's plenty still to do just didn't want to do it!!!

The Grandparents are coming this week so I won't be blogging much. Hopefully we'll be going to the pool before they get here. Went to see Transformers finally!! it was great! loved it!
This coming week Half Blood Prince is coming out and since the grandparents will be here by then we have our sitters!! Thank you Nina and Grandpa!

That is all for now!

Home Improvements

This past holiday weekend was "work on stuff that still needs to be done outside" weekend!
We really needed to get the area around our shed done, too many weeds and not enough room to more around there. I wish I would had taken a before pic, I didn't but here's an after pic!

Reading Made Easy Workbook

For the past two years I used Reading made easy with A7 for phonics and reading. It is 108 lessons which take about 20 minutes 2 - 3 times a week. It took us two years to go through the whole book. A7 learned how to read and write because of this book!

I'm planning to use this same book with X4 this coming Fall. I was fully aware that what worked for A7 may not work for X4. Part of what worked with A7 was the fact that she got to draw right along with doing her copy work, that really helped her out because she loves to draw.
X4? not so much!

I was wondering how I was going to get around that when I came across this wonderful post from Blog, She Wrote!

Reading made easy now has a companion workbook. I looked at a few sample pages from the workbook and it looks like something X4 would enjoy doing. It is a different approach to RME that I know will suit X4 just great!!

Valerie has developed a series of four workbooks to supplement the Reading Made Easy curriculum manual. Each workbook contains review material to accompany 27 lessons in Reading Made Easy. The workbooks include:
· word/picture match-ups and other exercises to strengthen phonetic and decoding skills.
· sentences, poems, and rebus stories to develop reading comprehension.
· copy work passages from Reading Made Easy with space to complete the writing exercises.
· space for the drawing and creative writing exercises suggested in Reading Made Easy.

The workbooks are in pdf. format. The cd is $25. It is my understanding that they will be available in hardbound copies at a later date. I went ahead and purchased the CD, I enjoy printing my own! I have the RME manual as a pdf. as well.

Cookies N Cream

Our beloved pet dwarf hamster Cookie died last night. Not sure what happened, during the day she was really active climbing the cage as usual, eating just fine. Some time in the evening she was not moving, we thought she was really tired from being so active since she usually sleeps during the day.

Later in the evening she was struggling to breathe and that's when we knew she was dying.

We held her till she was gone...

Bumble Bees Nest

A friend of my Dh lent us a tiller so we could loosen the dirt where our shed sits and add rocks, that way we wouldn't have to deal with weeds and we could actually walk around that area.

A few minutes ago we moved the shed so we could start tilling and guess what we found under the shed...

Bumble bees!!!!!!!!!

I ran like crazy, I was right by the nest..Dh saw me running and ran himself..I was screaming, "a nest!!..it's a nest!!"

That was too funny, I'm so thankful I didn't get stung, but then again I don't think they have stingers..or do they??
Here is a pic!

4th of July

This weekend has been too much fun, and it was only Friday! We got to do some sparklers and fireworks last night with the kids and our neighbor, then the other neighbors had the illegal kind! They were awesome and loud!!

Tonight we are going to Memorial park to see the big fireworks. This is the first time for the kids. They are really looking forward to it!

Lots of hot dogs and burgers today as well...did you know July is hot dog month?? Cool, huh!
I even have a hot dog lapbook..ha ha!!

Have a full of fun 4th of July everybody!!! Eat lots of hot dogs!!

Our Upcoming School Year part II

I had planed to wait one more year to start kindergarten with X4, who is going to be X5 by the time we start school. However, my DH really felt that since we are homeschooling it would make sense to just go ahead and do K with him but to go at his own pace.

I know it will look as if I have a lot of stuff planed for him, but this is just to see what works and what doesn't. His school will only be about 1 to 1.5 hrs, while A7 will be closer to 3.5 hrs.
Here's the planned lineup for our upcoming year(X4):

Five in a Row
We'll continue to do story time. However, since A7 is moving into more difficult books, X4 and I will be rowing BeforeFIAR and only a few FIAR tittles.

• ABC Bunny
  
• All Falling Down
• Harry, the Dirty Dog
• Brown Bear, What do you see?
• The Foolish Tortoise
• The Little Engine that Could
• If You Give a Mouse A Cookie
• If You Give a Moose a Muffin
• In November
• Stranger in the Woods
• Going on a Bear Hunt
  
• Owl Moon
  
• The Snowy Day
  
• Caps for Sale
  
• Wake Up Groundhog
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar
  
• The Grouchy Ladybug
• Mr. Gumpy's Outing
• Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?
  
• Little Ninos Pizzeria
  
• The Carrot Seed
  
• Blueberries for Sal
  
• The Tale of Peter Rabbit
  
• Katy No-Pocket
  
• The Salamander Room
  

Unit Studies
We have a few unit studies to break the year up.

• Reptiles and Amphibians
• Dinosaurs

Lapbook activities
I found these lapbooks on the 1+1+1=1 website. They are perfect for X4.

• Cars (Disney)
• Big Machines
• Handy Manny
• Hermie & Friends
• Nemo (Disney)
• Ratatouille (Disney)
• Thomas the Train
• Veggie Tales
• Word World (PBS)

Math

• Math U See Primer(2/week)
• lots of math games
  

Language Arts
We'll be doing Reading Made Easy(2/week), this curriculum takes about 2 years to complete, although it may take longer with X4.

Handwriting
We'll be using Handwriting without Tears' Get Set for School, once we are done with that one we'll start Letters and Numbers for Me.

I have a variety of games and activities that we'll be doing during the week as well.

• cut & paste
• coloring
• tracing
• painting
• dot to dot
• matching games
• sequencing
• lacing
• puzzles
  
• pentominos
• geoboards
• & many more!