a little fun...

UPDATED POST: isn't it embarrassing to not include the picture you blogged about. :) here's the beach ball picture.

 The hanging beach ball. I read about this when Dawson was little. You tie a string through the loop of the
plug and then hang it from the ceiling with an eye hook. He played with that for hours.

      I thought Caitlin might enjoy the idea too, so I just taped it up in her doorway. The hook works better than tape, but it still was fun to play ball in the house.

Play Doh.....



This is what you can do these days with playdoh.

*note
     Dylan said this wasn't done yet, he wants to add voices and sound, but I thought it was good enough to show.



Week 22

This week, Caitlin started her Florida lap book.

While the boys watched Liberty Kids online, Caitlin had a little unit study on our state. She loves to cut and color and use glue sticks! I turned on my Cricut and cut out letters for her to use.



 

We added a little every day.

Other than the printer ink being low, everything looked pretty good. She enjoyed it and we will move on to Georgia next week.

   The boys had a great week, they worked hard on their spelling words and grammar lessons. Dawson learned about banking in math, Dylan is still on fractions in his workbook.

  Our schedule has been the best ever! I moved math to after lunch, we seem to get a second wind and focus is much better. I've become a morning person! Now I have the time to download videos from the library, print out papers and make our daily schedule all before the kids get up out of bed! I'm talking 5 AM wake up call! I absolutely LOVE it! Charlotte Mason says it takes 6 weeks to form a habit. I have four weeks to go!

    The weather was perfect the last few days. I took some pictures just hanging out together.....

Ready for week 23! Have a great week end :)

Week 21 Wrap Up

This week the kids had structure back in their lives. We got so much done and it felt great to get back in the swing of things.
    Caitlin knows her 2's, 3's, and 5's multiplication tables and we have started 6's
  She started reading from 1st grade readers this week too! I can't even take the credit for it. While I am doing one on one time with Dawson, my other son Dylan helps Caitlin with her skip counting and reading. He seems to get a kick out of teaching her and it's working out pretty good for her too!
    Meanwhile, Dawson is getting his much needed time together with me for some of his studies. It's getting harder! I'm hoping I have enough energy to get some Units together again. It's still very hard for me to jump from 7th grade Grammar to Kindergarten Arts and Crafts. Maybe I can get Dylan to do it :)
    We got back to Home Ec on Thurs. We made Pizza dough and bunches of pancakes! We froze the pancakes for next week. We ate the pizzas tonight! :)
   Looking forward to week 22!

Back To Normal

 We are on week 21 and back on a schedule! The kids worked on math and reading during Christmas, it was a nice break but I'm so glad to get back to normal!

   Caitlin is skip counting 2's and 3's and 5's, She is almost finished with her, "100 Easy Lesson" reading book and she is writing too!


    Dawson just finished with percents in his math book. We will be doing some "Life Apps" the next couple weeks with learning how to manage a checkbook, budgeting, writing out checks etc.

   Dylan has been doing fractions, improper, proper, mixed numerals common denominators.

Happy New Year!!!

weeks 12,13,14

Week 12....everybody was sick.

Week 13.....not prepared to do anything because we were all sick.

Week 14....Trying to get back into the swing of things.


This is why we home school all year.

We have been keeping up with our math lessons this week and i am getting a Thanksgiving unit ready for them. Thank goodness for our online library system! They can watch videos and e books. They watched a Squanto e book yesterday and an adjective writing video.

 Can't wait for the energy to come back in my life. I'm tired of yawning!

Proud :)

Caitlin wrote this all by herself!

week 10

Week 10! This week we did some things differently. First was a change in our diet. I made the kids a high protein breakfast to start the day. I'm trying to see if it helps on our focus problems that we have around here. Dawson even has a small amount of black coffee. I mean small as in a couple tablespoons, just enough to keep alert for the morning.
We did some changes in our daily routine too. I didn't do a bunch of subjects in a day. I brought it way down. In fact, one day all we did was math. We accomplished so much doing this that I'm planning some math workshops to do every couple weeks. We will do math right up to lunch, and then change subjects. They seemed to soak it all in better this way.
I was thinking about taking a fall break for a week. I know the kids would love it but I have a feeling that when December rolls around we will have enough unscheduled days off. It always happens, might as well accept it.
We did some creative writing this week that turned out pretty good. They still don't like to write, but it's getting a little easier and less painful to complete. :)
Today was a Park Day for us. Our home school group met and put together shoe boxes for Christmas. We gathered supplies and filled plastic shoe boxes with all kinds of neat toys and things for kids overseas. It's always fun to get together with the other moms.
Hope your week went great!