End of June Already??

We've been so busy around here with VBSs, summer camps and the pool that I keep forgetting to blog. We've been having a great time! The kids loved VBS, they've gone to three of them and now this week is summer camp 10am to 2pm. They have a giant water slide 100ft long!
There's two more VBSs in July and possibly a Soccer camp at the Church.
The kids are really looking forward to my niece coming to stay for two week in July.
Plus we are going to Hershey Park for my birthday! I Love Summer!

School's Back!

We're back!! We had a wonderful three week break from school and now school's back!

A6 is starting First grade. She is so excited to be in 1st grade. During the summer months we are going to do reading 3x a week, math, phonics and writing 2x a week.

Reading will probably take no more than half hour a day, math, phonics and writing up to an hour the most. We'll have plenty of time to do school and then go to the pool afterwards!

Of course once Fall gets here it'll look a little different, but for summer this will be more than enough.

I told A6 now that she's in 1st grade we'll be doing alot more than last year, I'm going to be expecting more of her, she's up to the challange!

Even X3 wants do school, I'm just going to continue to read to him and now A6 is reading to him!

Summer Vacation is here!

Yesterday we had our last Clubs class of the year, we brought the kids over to our house for ice cream and a movie last night. The kids had a great time. Next week it's the awards ceremony for the kids and the following week we are having a picnic with all the little ones who don't get to go to camp.
It is going to be a nice break, but since Dh and I are taking over Clubs for next year I'm sure it's going to be a short break!

We've had rain most of the week, which is okay since we've been doing nothing but play all week!
This Saturday we are going to the Washington Zoo with the Church! The kids are really looking forward to it.

For Memorial Day weekend Dh is going to be at camp with the 3rd and 4th grade boys, so the kids and I are going to stay with my family so we won't be home alone missing daddy :(

For the next few weeks we are going to have a webkinz blog :)
A6 wants to show everybody her rooms so I thought why not show pictures here!?
We will do a room of the week or maybe even a room everyday since we have plenty of them to show!

That is all for now, it's 5 am and I can't sleep so here I am writing this post. I'm sure I'm going to be crashing sometime today.

Last Week of School...or is It?

This week was supposed to be our last official week of school, however between doctor appointments, pest control appointments, Bible studies, Truth project, friends coming over to visit, we haven't really gotten much done.
We've been reading Frederick this week, no math, no phonics, just reading. I don't think we are going to be doing anything else the rest of the week.
I'm not too worried since we are going to keep doing some type of school throughout the summer.

Speaking of summer I just saw the sign for the first VBS of the season!!! Starts June 2nd.
Hopefully this year X3 will be able to go to a few of them.

Well that is all for the next few days,

Happy Mother's Day!!!!!!!

Twilight

I've been reading so many books lately that it's hard to blog about all of them, but I have to blog about this one.
Twilight is a story about this girl Bella who falls for this boy Edward, who just so happens to be a vampire.
Edward loves Bella but can't decide whether to kiss her or kill her... so of course I loved the book!
There are four books in all, the fourth and final book is coming out sometime in August.




There is also a movie in the works, which also looks good.
I found this picture and I love the way Bella and Edward look in it.
Seeing this pic made reading the book so much easier for me.
















I've also been reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, they are great books as well, the fourth book in that series is coming out in a couple of days..I can't wait.
This book is also being made into a movie!

I'm going to be reading The Land of Elyon books next...so many books, so little time!

Truman's Aunt Farm

This week we've been rowing Truman's Aunt Farm, this is such a funny book, the kids really like it!
Since we have one more week of official school, (next week I will have my 180 days of school) we are taking it easy, we've been doing a lot of reading and playing lots of math games.
Somebody from Church introduced me to Doodle Dice and the kids love it. Even X3 can play this game.
I'm really looking forward to having a nice week off from any school, then we'll be doing school two times a week just to make sure that everything stays fresh in A6's mind!



Yesterday we had our annual bike race during Clubs, this year we had a scooter race with all the younger kids. X3 got to race his scooter and came in second place!! We had so much fun, it was a little cold but all the running around kept everybody warm. Dh and I were exhausted by the end of the night.

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!!!

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!!

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!!

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!!!!

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...

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.

Easter

I hope you all had a great Easter. We sure did! Between Good Friday Camp and the Easter egg hunt we had a great time. I'll be posting lots of pics soon. Today I'm cleaning all of Easter away:)
I'm also doing some lesson planning that I didn't get to do last week.
I'm very tempted to take the next three days off to do just that and start school on Thursday.

We are going to focus on math and reading for the next few weeks and since the weather is getting nicer we'll have lots of nature study trips and crafts.
For music we are doing Vivaldi The Four Seasons, Spring my favorite!
Check back soon for pics.

March update

March has turned out to be a busy month for us, not because we have tons of stuff to do but because we've been sick. Yesterday I got the chills at Church, I came home and had to call Dh because all I wanted to do was lay in bed. I thought I had the flu, I didn't get out of bed today till after 11. A6 got breakfast ready for herself and her brother!! She knows Mommy is not feeling well. X3 took another super nap almost 4 hrs, it seems after he uses his energy to play or be outside or whatever as soon as we get home he needs to take a looong nap. His body is still recovering I guess. It's so hard to tell with him. One minute he's jumping around playing, the next he's passed out on the couch. I hope we will all be feeling much better by the time Nina and Granpa get here.

I have pictures of A6 at her dance class trip, I'll be posting them as soon as I get them from the phone. The dancing thing is out, she had fun at the dance studio but she is not interested in learning how to dance anymore.

We also went to the YMCA this past Saturday. The Daisy Scouts had a pool trip. It was only for an hour but she had tons of fun. Dh and I talked about it and we decided to make her a member of the Y so that she can take swimming lessons. It's a lot cheaper if you are a member.
I can still be there with her while the lesson is going on, I just can't get in the water which is fine with me.

Dh bought the movie Enchanted yesterday, it was wonderful it's so funny and romantic! A6 is watching it as I write this. X3 is playing in his computer. A6 tells me he's been playing games that are too difficult for her to play. Boys just seem to do much better with computer or video games than girls for some reason.

This week we have Good Friday Camp then on Saturday we have the Easter egg hunt and bike race, I hope the weather is nice for the egg hunt. No rain! Sunday of course is Easter. Dh has a special meal planned for Easter, he's going to get to use his new toy a dutch oven or French oven.
I think it takes like 4hrs to cook. This should be interesting!

Holy Week

It's been a while since I posted anything, X3 got the stomach flu, he was vomiting all night which meant that we were up all night. He's feeling a little better. It's a good thing we have this week off because of Easter, we have lots of books to read but that's all we're doing.
A6 just got back form a dance class. The Daisy Scouts had a dance class field trip. She is not very flexible, she enjoyed the class okay, but told me she doesn't want to do dance class.
Well, dancing with the stars is about to start, I'll finish this post later.

What we are doing in March Part II

We had a busy week. Since we were sick the week before some things didn't get done, so this past week I've been playing catch up. We just finally got all the laundry done and put away.
The warmer it gets the more we want to be outside! Library day was wonderful as well.
We just got all these books about Easter and egg hunts, I'm still looking for St Patty's day one.
COOP went really well, I can't believe we only have 2 more Fridays of it. The kids are really going to miss it. We've been talking about having a Park day for the kids after COOP is done.
I would love to do something like that!




This week we are rowing The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Since next week is Holy Week we are going to have it "off". Which means we are going to be doing Easter activities and we'll keep reading Easter books just for fun!!! It's funny, we seem to do so much better when we are doing school things "for fun". A6 is really getting there as far as reading. I had this book schedule for last week but A6 wanted to do another one instead. So last week we read Albert. It has to do with Cardinals building a nest on Albert's hand. She loved it and even read a little bit from it.

We are done with HWT Letters and Numbers for Me. I asked A6 if she wanted to start the next one, My Printing Book right away or wait till Aug and she chose to wait. She gets to do writing everyday anyways, so we can wait! Her writing is getting much better as well. She flips some of her letters and numbers but I've been told that's normal.

I've been thinking about music lessons, specifically piano lessons. I found this site KinderBach, which other Moms that I know are using and I really like it. I like the fact that you can get away with using just a keyboard to teach piano. A6 has a huge keyboard she got for XMas.
She can learn the basics then when she is older and wants to continue we'll pay for actual lessons.
I guess eventually we'll have to buy a real piano... that's what tax refunds are for!!
I've heard over and over again how learning how to play a music instrument helps kids do so much better academically. Also learning a foreign language! Thank God we don't have to pay anybody to teach her that!!

X3 is doing good, still has a bit of a runny nose, he is using the potty all the time now!!!!! He refuses to wear pull ups to go anywhere, only to go to bed.

The kids are looking forward to Nina and Granpa coming for Easter!

What we are doing in March Part I

We are all feeling much better this week, the weather was beautiful yesterday! The kids got to go outside and play with their friends most of the afternoon.
I'm getting together a March reading list, since Thursdays is library day I decided to make a list of books to read for the month.
This month is all about Easter, bunnies, duckies, jelly beans!! Also about the real reason for Easter!
We have a lot of Easter books already, but It'll be fun to look some books up while at the library!
I'll be posting the list as soon as I'm finished!