Kindergarten

is coming for Thomas next year! It is gonna be interesting to see if his mother can actually pull it off!! For 2 years we have been telling him 'no - you don't have to do school - this is for brothers - go play or sit with us quietly'. Let me just say to all of you with little ones - NEVER EVER say this to your child - it will come back to haunt you! Granted he almost always chose to sit with us(and not quietly I might add) but now that I have started talking about starting school next year - he is retty adamant that he will NOT be doing school!

it is hard to fuss at a child that walks around all day telling me - 'mommy. i love you' constantly and for no reason at all.

i do know that i will be using My Father's World Kindergarten program to teach him to read. I used part of it with Ben and I used part of the 1st grade with Stephen. We are currently using The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading - which I like alot - but every time I pull out this big ol book to do reading/phonics with Ben he goes crazy! Do I have to do that whole book? Not right now just this page today. But that whole book has to be done? Over and Over!
I just recently acquired the MFW 1st Grade TM and student stuff at a local used curriculum sale and so I will be starting that with Ben this week and hopefully he will be a little bit happier with that!
Anyways....all that to say I am a little bit nervous about how Thomas is gonna fit into the scheme of 'school'. he will be doing is own Reading program and math and I am hoping he will just tag along with the rest of the stuff with us - pretty much like he does know. It never seems like we have enough time in the day to get it all done(poor planning or laziness on my part for sure) and we are adding a non reader to the program!

Bendaroos

When we were in GA we visited a Toys R Us - the boys have never seen one before!! It was quite an experience for all of us - I was overwhlemed by the amount of toys that are available to kids - it is crazy!!
Anyways....I did find these cool things that were on sale and I thought they looked like something the boys could do while I was reading.



Well - it turned into quite the activity. They spent hours building creatures with these things.

These Bendaroos are really cool and fun!! They are sticky and yucky but they don't seem to dry out(so far) and the boys love creatinga nd recreating with them!

This turned into a school day for us!!!

Our Week

So often I read these weekly wrap ups from other HS blogs and I wish I took the time to do it for us but I just never do! Alot of the time I feel like we didn't do much that week - which could be true or could not depending on the week.
This is one of those times that I find myself comparing to other HS moms and I get so down on myself about what we are or aren't doing and it frustrates me that i do this to myself!!
It is times like this that I so often get reminded of how amazing it is to just be able to be home with my boys and watch them learn and grow in so many ways - not just what they are learning in school but what they are learning in life!
I love doing school the Charlotte mason way but the plan we have been following didn't have any 'projects' so I borrowed My Father's World Creation to the Greeks from a friend to get some ideas. I love some of the projects they do in their curriculum!

The boys each built a Pyramid from sugar cubes........

I was feeling like the proud teacher when they decided to make small pyramids all around the big one for the wives - since they weren't buried with the Pharaohs!

Daddy was home so he helped Thomas

Stephen picked up on the pattern pretty quick and he was off and running

The finished Pyramids....

How we did it:

*Each boy had 1 box of sugar cubes(the only place we could find them was at Food Lion)

*1 8x8 piece of cardboard

*the bottom of the Pyramid is 8 rows of 8 - it could have been bigger since each boy had their own box of cubes - maybe 10 rows of 10

*the next row is centered on the line of the 2 cubes underneath it

*keep building up until you get to the 1 on top

*you should have enough left over to make small pyramids too!

I can't wait till we get to the Plaques of Egypt.....those will be fun!

Living Math Books

WOW! I found this list of living math books while on my blog hop and I just had to post this list for my readers and for myself!!! I hope you enjoy it!
I would love to hear if you know anything about any of these books at all???

Homeschool Blog Hop

This is gonna be fun....join in!!! I can't wait to start hopping and meeting some new homeschool moms!

i had no idea but i am not allowed to share stuff i do on worksheets.com so I am gonna take them off of scribd!! sorry!

Copywork

I finally started being more regular with our copywork and I love it! Stephen has been writing sentences that I got from Happy Scribe. They have a good selection of copywork books on different topics and you can print them out in different fonts or cursive. Basically each book has 24 pages - each with 1 sentence per page, then a traceable sentence and a couple lines to be able to write the sentence more than once!

I have been struggling with what to do with Ben who is just starting to be comfortable writing. I had some abc printouts and he has been doing 1 letter a day. Now that we are at Z, I started looking for some simple words to have him do and all I could find were sentences, poems and such. I just feel like that is too much to jump to right now. I just want some simple words.

Today I found a website that allows you to make your own copywork worksheets and then save them as a pdf to your computer. I am in hog heaven....I have been making worksheet after worksheet of copywork for the boys!!

I have done - days of the week, months, number words, homonyms, words from the Abeka blend and word book, books of the bible and the ten commandments(since we are getting ready to learn them). Go here to my scribd page and get copies of all the copywork I just made!!