Update

My phone got run over by a shopping cart at WinCo. Just ordered a new one, because it's way cheaper to get one on Amazon than at Verizon. Here are a couple pictres I neglected to post previously

SUPER HERO WEEK

So we're doing a super hero week...the kids LOVE all things super hero. We've been focusing our lessons on character traits of super heroes...like the Stripling Warriors who were courageous, strong and truthful. 

Playing a super hero matching game

On Monday our very own super hero was able to take off work, so we went on a SUPER short day trip.

Will is showing off his SUPER strength at his gymnastics class

These super hero pics didn't turn out as fabulous as I'd seen elsewhere, but they're pretty fun

Saving letters and sight words from the Alphabet Villain. They loved finding the words and sounds I called out. This was a great "boy" activity, he was so focused the entire time because he got to run back and forth while thinking about the sounds he was supposed to find. SUCCESS!

Using SUPER vision

And as I type, my little superheroes are running around in the back...in their super pajamas...at 10:30. I was one of those ladies who swore her kids would never do certain things...playing outside in pajamas was DEFINITELY one of those things! Luckily, pajamas can be washed. I guess it's bath-time!

More Olympics

Painting Olympic rings...

 that turned into monsters!

Running around in the 50+ degree weather, and SUN, finally some sun!

Valentines

We played Olympic Bingo. This ended up being a great chance to talk about good sportsmanship and how to behave when you lose! Character Building!

We've talked a lot about flags this week with the Olympics, so we made some of our own. Ruth made the Lithuanian flag and Will just got creative

Caden Dirks

My dear friend, Stephanie Dirks, has 5 adorable and amazing kids. Her oldest, Caden, is 12. He's been in the hospital for 2 weeks (arriving there after being life flighted after finding a bleeding mass on his liver). He has liver cancer, but started chemo this week. He is an amazing boy, just like his mama. A family member started a drive for Caden to help cover medical costs while they are away from home (they have to be in Seattle for 3 months, while all the little kids are still here being passed around between friends and family). This is such a trying time for them and thought I'd pass on the link to help support Caden. If you can, please donate, even if it's a few dollars, click on THIS LINK TO MAKE A PAYMENT. It's easy and secure. Also, if you'd like to read about this amazing family, Stephanie has a blog HERE, you can follow their journey.

I'm so grateful to have made such good friends here already who are so kind. They have helped us to feel at home right away...just like what happened in Twin Falls. We've been so blessed with good friends. I guess I just want to pay it forward however I can. I really can't imagine being in Stephanie's shoes right now, but she has amazing faith. 

WHITE

The snow just kept coming this weekend so we were glad we got the sleds!

The weather was warmer yesterday so the kids enjoyed a picnic in the backyard

Ruth dressed Claire up in the wedding dress. All 3 kids came downstairs to show me and Claire immediately started spinning and showing off her "pretties." Her smoothie mustache cracks me up.

HALT, Rewind, take a deep breath

Homeschooling has become my pride and joy recently. I have loved having themes each week to guide our learning...however I may have taken it a bit too far. Reality check, Will is not yet 4...and he's a boy which means he's just not ready to sit and write for 15 minutes like Ruth. Ha, ha. I got a bit frustrated about that this morning! He's a smart boy who has learned a lot, but really isn't ready to be reading quite yet. I honestly thought that in 2 weeks I could have him sounding out words, HA! After reading several articles about developmental milestones and boys behavior I am rethinking our approach to his schooling at this point. Ruth is really an exception, she is more advanced than other kids her age and always has been and I need to stop comparing the two of them. She thrives on book work and meticulously forming words, word searches and alphabetizing things. Will is still so wild and wants to explore and be physical. So for now we will be trying to incorporate physical movement while learning letter sounds and go back to learning character traits through scripture stories.

Unfortunately I have steered our learning away from scripture based activities and pushed my kids too hard academically. Don't get me wrong, it's not like they've been sitting at the table for hours every day, I've broken it up into several 15 minute activities...but we have completely dropped our scripture study, articles of faith and learning new primary songs. I think some of this is because both the kids can sit at the computer or on my tablet for an hour doing ABC mouse, starfall, or any of the many educational apps I've found. I equated Will's ability to focus and play an educational game for an hour with him being ready to sit and study math and reading.

Long story short, we're revising Will's education to match his ability and developmental stage. More physical games to reinforce letters and letter sounds. I also got a book called Math Play, that we'll do more activities out of. I'm gonna keep the whole theme idea, but not kill myself trying to make sure each and every activity utilizes the theme.

Here are some pictures of this week's activities. The remainder of the week will be more games and less book work. The theme is Olympics.

 Biathlon Event

Torch relay race where they run to me, answer a question (from flashcards we have) and then run back to their teammates and pass off the torch

 Here's Ruth sounding out the word she has to read for her turn

We got the LeapFrog Human Body pack to learn about our bodies. The kids love this stuff, it's fun and they learn a ton. We also have the US map and a bunch of the books.

Here Claire is playing in the box the LeapFrog stuff came in

Here Will is being obstinate about matching the upper and lower case letters. This is the 3rd time we've done this activity, this time with the Olympic theme, and he was just not interested. 

I feel frustrated about Will not wanting to sit and do school activities, BUT I'm really glad that with some prompting I'm able to adjust what we're doing with what he's ready for and what he needs. I'm SO glad he's not in a preschool that's telling me he's disruptive and won't cooperate. I'm so glad we've decided to homeschool so that as the teacher I can change and adapt and give my kids what the need and help push them just enough so the grow. I'm also grateful that as homeschoolers we can study scriptures so my kids know that God is important to us.

After I gave up all my grand ideas about how things were going to go today: the kids actually had fun and worked on sharing and being kind.

Snow Finally Came

It snowed about an inch last night, and Target had their sleds on sale, so...

They had a blast slipping down the hill, and Claire sat there half way up the hill laughing like a crazy baby! Then we filled up their squirt bottles with water and food coloring and let them paint the snow, although this didn't work as well as I saw on Pinterest!

Castle Week

This week we learned all about castles and the people who live in them. We had so much fun. This week was great for the kids because they were actually interested in the theme! So here are some activities we did:

Will is matching upper case magnets to lower case letters written on a castle I drew.

Ruth doing a 100 piece castle puzzle

Inside the castle: counting stairs, dragon eggs and royal jewels (he LOVED this activity, which was surprising, but he asked to do it several times).

Building castles out of shapes, first one that I traced the shapes and then they made their own.

Decorating shields with specific shapes and words. Ruth had a hard time following instructions here. And I was surprised that they both had a hard time drawing squares and triangles.

Spelling words and stamps: king, queen, crown, castle, prince, princess, dragon

Here they once again had to make a castle using specific shapes (we clearly needed more practice drawing them) and then decorated our castles with stickers of dragons and princesses.

Stained glass windows

ABC mouse, sometimes they want to choose their own activities. I'm glad that they want to take initiative in their own education. The letter videos have been priceless to Will's mastering the alphabet.

Playing "Castle Keep"

More spelling practice, later she put them in alphabetical order

Drawing patterns on the Queen's dress

Ruth worked on a Venn Diagram of the similarities and differences between living in a castle and living in a house. She did great and didn't even need help thinking of any answers. Will worked on more patterns as well as a page of "More or Less."

Building towers with pattern blocks.

And Friday's are usually more relaxed, so today we made cookies inspired by "Dutchess Bakes a Cake" and then made a huge castle built out of garbage we've saved over the last week and a half.

I turned all the boxes inside out and re-glued them and covered the juice bottles in paper bags so we could paint everything. It was lots of fun.

Other books we especially enjoyed this week were, The Knight Who Was Afraid of the Dark, Whinnie the Lovesick Dragon, King Bidgood's in the Bathtub, and Princess Hyacinth. There are SO many books on castles, kings, dragons, knights and princesses' that we had a huge pile to take home with us this week. We also learned a lot about castles because of David Macaulay's book, "Castle."