My Yearly Post

I haven't posted since last August and so much has changed!  We now have another little girl who looks almost exactly like Ladybug in my sidebar ;)  Seriously, twins born 2 years apart!

I sometimes think about blogging.  I think it would be great to document our journey and special to look back on it, but...time.  Not my strong suit.  Time management is something I struggle in!

SO, to update:

Little Girl is 5 now and getting ready to start part time Kindergarten in a couple weeks.  We are going to do some homeschool  in the afternoons.  We are using My Father's World Kindergarten curriculum.  Mr. Man is tagging along as he sees fit.  We do this during the 2 little girls naps.

Mr. Man is 3 and going to go to preschool 3 days a week at the same school as his big sister.  On his mornings off (2 days a week), we are going to do some before Five in a Row which I am so excited about!  Ladybug will be tagging along as she sees fit.

Ladybug is 2 and we will doing Tot School while the biggies are in school.  We are using a combination of Letter of the Week Preparatory Curriculum and this new website I found called Let's Tot School.  I used Letter of the Week with Autumn.  The emphasis isn't actually on letters (misleading title!), but it has a weekly theme and I use the theme to find fine motor activities and fun books.  It really is a lot of fun!  Between LOTW and the Tot School website, it will be about 30 or 45 minutes a day of "mommy and me time"...I think.  We haven't started yet so we'll see.

Then we have a new little miss!  Maybe Little Miss should be her nickname on here :)  She is 10 weeks old and a sweet, snuggly thing.  She will be just held a lot and kissed a lot and hopefully will be awake during some of our read aloud time.

I sure do love my little family.  It's stressful at times and my house is pretty much always messy, but I try not to let that get me down.  It's a season.  Before I can blink, I will have big kids doing all my household cleaning anyway, right?!  My husband will be deploying soon and I can't really let myself think about that or I cry.  But ready or not, it's happening soon.  Even so, I am blessed to be his wife and so blessed to be a mama.

GLE Week 8 Q is for Quail

Curriculum found here.  This week we talked more about Moses.  He had a verrrry interesting life!  Lots to talk about.  We also talked about Qq and what sound it makes and what it looks like.  She knows all her capital letters and most of her sounds, so we just focus on the lowecase one most of the time.  Although sometimes for Q she said /k/ and sometimes for G she says /j/ which is especially tricky because sometimes G does make the J sound!



















We had that little pheasant-I mean QUAIL, ahem- on her desk all week.  Pretty cute little guy (I assume it's male since it's tail is super colorful).  Got him at Hobby Lobby.


 

We painted with feathers and went out and tried to make our own bird nest.  I think we made the walls too thick because it took all week to dry out (we used mud) and then it wouldn't even hold together!  Them birds be smart.

Tot School Letter Bb!  He actually started saying /b/ by the end of the week.  Today I started to show him T and asked what sound it made and he said "/k/k/k/.../b/b/b/..." Pretty funny!  However those are the 2 sounds he has learned so far (C and B-we did do an Ii week, but he never even got close to understanding /i/i/i/) so I'm pretty impressed!

Playing in his pasta bin with ABC Find It from 1+1+1=1.  He does really well with that so we do it pretty much every week.  He is pretty limited in what he can do without getting super frustrated so we keep it simple around here for my little man!  A perfect example is the school bus craft from No Time for Flashcards.  DISASTER!  He had a total meltdown when I glued the pictures down.  He didn't want to color the bus and he got mad at me when I sang the wheels on the bus song.  So I did the craft without him and then he happily carried it around all day! :)  

One thing Mr. Man will do happily all day long is read.  Autumn crafts way more than him, but he reads way more than her so go figure!  So far, they both have a healthy dose of appreciation for books for which I am exceedingly happy about.  

Caleb's books focused on the /b/ sound and Autumn's were just bird books I had.  None of them fit the theme very well, but we made do. 

GLE Week 7 I is for Insect

This week for our bible study/preschool at home, we talked about Moses and the plagues.  Curriculum found here.

Only a couple of pictures this week!

Our 10 plagues index cards.  For the 5th plague (sick livestock) we ended up putting pictures of farm animals on it.  The bottom picture is some activities we did.  Both the iguana with the Avery stickers and the big I with the iguana's glued on it came from 1+1+1=1.  The dragonfly is a paint, cut, and glue from learncreatelove. 

Books about INSECTS! (or, bugs!)

  Tot school!  I tried to just go with whatever letter Autumn was working on (in this case, Ii).  I have now decided to work with him on letters he already knows or is somewhat familiar with (the letters of his name for example).

Painting an egg carton inchworm.  Some printables from 1+1+1=1 and The Mommy Teacher. 

We were putting Avery stickers on the igloo, but they ended up all over his legs! :)

Finding I books that feature the /i/ sound was a challenge for us.  We basically had no book focus this week.  He also didn't really get "I".  The whole point in doing things with him is simply for exposure though and now he does see letters and points them out so I know he is absorbing more than meets the eye.  I think in his head he believes he knows all the letters and they are all called "E" :)

GLE Week 6 "c" is for colors

Also, week 6 encompasses the story of Joseph and his beautiful (if problem causing) coat.  Curriculum found here.

Wearing her paper bag coat, retelling the story with her Joseph puppet, and some of the crafts we made. 

This child.  We mixed these one day and now she knows them.  Model student!

I thought I would also teach Caleb his letters along with Autumn (even though they have their learning times separately from each other).  Caleb is 22 months.  We learned all about what sound C makes!  All of the materials I used with him can be found at 1+1+1.  (LOVE that woman!)

Finding C words in a kidney bean sensory bin and some artwork

Even baby sister got in on the action! Yes she puts things in her mouth and yes I was watching her like a hawk. See my hand in the bottom of the picture? 

Literature for both kids!  Autumn's (left) goes mostly with the theme (colors) and Caleb's goes more for the letter sound. 

We decorated pumpkins this week and I thought it was funny there was a pumpkin for what both kids were leaning.  Caleb's has a big C on it and the pumpkin on the end has rainbow crayons melted all over it to emphasize colors!