Well, here I am, playing “catch-up” again. lol First of all, I have some exciting news to share.

JUSTIN READ TODAY!!

Not alot, but he did read 2 full sentences. I’m just so super proud of him! Just a couple of weeks ago, he was adamant that he was never going to read. “Never, never, never” were his words. lol Well, today he did it and was shocked when I told him what he did. lol He’s quite proud of himself, although kind of shy about attention to his accomplishments. I still had to make a little bit of a fuss about it though. I attribute his success to our recent changes in my approach to teaching him. Everyday he practices his handwriting (letters, numbers, & name) either on the white board, chalk board, or in sand….his choice….for 5-10 minutes. Then he plays one (or more) of his file folder games for another 5-10 minutes. After that’s done & he’s “warmed up” for school, we sit at the table & he does his math worksheet & an Explode the Code worksheet. He hasn’t had a meltdown during school in 2 weeks! Yay! Here are a couple pictures of him enjoying his Explode the Code.
 

Still studying the planets & space in Science, we have done a couple of different activities to show the kids the size & distancing of the planets in relation to one another.
A poster model of the solar system:
 

This was a neat little thing the boys & I did to demonstrate just how far the planets are from each other. It was pretty amazing to actually visualize the vastness of space! We made little flags (using index cards & skinny straws) with the names of the planets, sun, & our moon.
  
Then we went outside to place the flags & step off the distance between them (each step representing 36,000,000 miles!).
 
At the end of our little activity, I just had to take a picture of the total distance of our “solar system.” It’s going to be a little hard to see in this picture, but the boys are at one end (the sun) and I’m at the other end (Pluto). Look for the tiny speck of red close to the middle of the picture. That’s Jack’s shirt. lol

We ended up taking 103 steps @ 36,000,000 miles per step. Do the math. That’s HUGE! We found it amazing that our moon in our “solar system” was only spaced a finger width away from Earth. Considering the vastness of the solar system that’s not very far, yet it’s the farthest man has ever traveled in space. Amazing!

Cooking Day! Since we had to quit our 4H food & nutrition group (too time consuming!) I decided to have a cooking day once a week with the boys. We’ll obviously be cooking more often than that (we gotta eat! lol) and they’ll be able to help out, but once a week we’ll be dedicating to cooking instruction. Our first was last Wednesday. We made chocolate cream pie with meringue! YUM-O! lol
Here’s Jared helping with the crust:
 
Justin helped with the chocoate filling:
 
And Jack made the meringue pretty much by himself. I helped only by checking the stiffness of it.
 
And the finished product!

It. Was. Delicious! And was completely gone by the next day.

One last picture to share before I go. This just warms my heart everytime it happens. Jack being teacher and helping one of the boys with their school work. In this picture he’s helping Jared learn his math facts by playing math hangman with him.

I love homeschooling my boys!

I have found a new addiction! I totally love these things! And even better, so do the boys. Here’s Justin playing with a couple of his.

I found several patterns free online to print out to make more. Here are a couple that I made for Justin.

Pizza Number Party (www.mormonchic.com)
Match the numbers to the correct slice of pizza with the same number of pepperoni.

Sunny Letters (www.mormonchic.com)
Match the lower case letters to the upper case letters.

Here are some that I made for my 2 year old nephew.

Matching Shapes (www.mormonchic.com) 

Noah’s Ark (www.mormonchic.com)

Dress the Bear (www.mormonchic.com)
This one is so cute! He has several different outfits that can be changed: baseball uniform (as pictured here), doctor suit, clown suit, camo suit, or pj’s.
 

Firefighter Hat Match Up (www.mormonchic.com)
Match the colored firehats.

Farm or Zoo Animals (www.filefolderheaven.com)
Sort the animals into the correct category, farm animal or zoo animal.

And here’s one I made all by myself! I made the design using Microsoft Digital Image Suite.

It’s a board game to go along with our history lessons. I even made out question cards based on the lessons they have learned so far. We played it tonight & they all loved it. I loved it because I was able to see just how much they are learning. I was very impressed with how many of the answers they knew! I guess they really are listening, even when I think they aren’t.

Now that soccer season has started & Jack has started 4H we are incredibly busy…for us anyway. I’m not used to so much busy-ness and I’m finding myself having a hard time keeping up with everything lately.  So here I am at 6am this morning to update my blog so you can all see some of what’s been going on & keeping us busy.

*Sorry, no soccer or 4H pictures to share yet.*

Ok, let’s see…. SCIENCE!

A couple weeks ago we made this sun viewing box as a safe way to observe the sun.

The idea is that you point the box with the foil side facing the sun, the sunlight will shine through the hole and shine the image of the sun onto the back of the box. I guess it worked alright. It just looked like a circle of light to me. lol But the boys had fun with it, so I guess that’s what matters.

Also in science, we discussed the different phases of the moon. To demonstrate this, the boys made this neat little moon model.

Then we took it into my room (where it’s darkest), and, using a flash light as the sun, proceeded to turn the moon model as it would rotate around the earth (our head as the earth….LOL).

Yeah, kinda hard to tell much about it since it was so dark. lol

Moving on to…. HISTORY!

We’ve been doing lots of different stuff in history, but (shame on me) I only have this one picture of the boys holding their clay bricks.

We were reading about the Israelites in slavery & took a little bit of clay, added dried grass (and a little dirt), shaped them into “bricks”, and let them harden in the sun. *Kinda looked like little lumps of colored poo to me!* LOL But the boys had fun.

Ok, next….. LANGUAGE ARTS!

Jack & I finished our reading of The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner. It was a really good book, as children’s literature goes. We enjoyed reading it together. Here he is doing his sequencing of events from the story.

Jared is doing very well with his reading. He’s read all 12 of the short vowel readers in his set, and 3 of the 6 blends readers so far. Here he is hard at work reading one of his books.

Justin has been giving me the fits about doing his language arts. I haven’t quite figured out the problem yet, but with a few tweaks here & there things are getting smoother with him. I discovered that he LOVES practicing his writing in a pan of colored sand, so here he is having a blast writing away!

I just have to be a little more unconventional with him, I guess.

Last, but certainly not least….. FILE FOLDER GAMES!

I have just discovered these neat little learning games. I’m so excited about them! I found these already made up ones at Mardel the other day. All I had to do was laminate a few things, add some velcro circles, and we’re good to go. These are for Justin to (hopefully) help him with his schoolwork without having meltdowns. LOL

Fronts:

Backs: (I used double sided tape to stick a snack sized baggie to the back for storing the pieces)

A couple of them opened up:

I have ideas in mind now for some other ones: multiplication facts for Jack, addition facts for Jared, place value for Justin, a history game board, maybe a science game board. The possibilities are endless! I just hope the boys like them as much as I do. LOL

Yeah, I didn’t really feel like coming up with a title. LOL

 It’s that time again! Soccer has started! Jack will be playing his 4th season this year. He’s excited, but bummed at the same time. He’s very excited to be playing soccer again (he bugs me about it all summer!) but he’s bummed because many of the boys from his team, boys that he’s been playing with since they started, have either moved up to the next level or simply aren’t playing this season. Justin is actually going to play this season! He played once before & did ok (although he was the John McEnroe of soccer! LOL) because Jared was on his team. He wouldn’t play last year because (I think) Jared had moved up a level & he was “alone.” He decided he wanted to play this season, so we signed him up. He’s had 2 practices so far. The first one (last week) he totally refused to go out on the field. He clung to me like a sock full of static. LOL Tonight, though, he went out there & played & did a great job. He really enjoyed himself. We’ll see how he does at his game Saturday.

Now for some school stuff. Today in science we talked about solar eclipses. The boys were very interested in that & were so confused at first wondering “If the moon is between the sun & the earth, why can’t we see it?” (as we do when it’s shining in the night sky). So, I had to show them. Taking our globe, a flashlight, & a little ball we made our own representation of a solar eclipse.

Now just some random thoughts. Poor Jared. He feels so left out right now. He wants to play soccer so badly that he can’t stand it, but can’t because of his broken arm. (By the way, we go next Thursday afternoon to see if he can have the splint off for good. Keep your fingers crossed.) We were at Justin’s soccer practice tonight & it’s the team that Jared would be playing on. He just sat there, watching & looking so sad. Then Jack started playing football with a few of the other kids that were there & he couldn’t do that either. There’s a tree there that’s just perfect for climbing that Jared just loves to play on. Can’t do that either. And then there’s 4H. He wants to join, but he’s not quite old enough. They have to be 8 in order to join, so he still has another year to wait. Poor kid. He just can’t do anything fun! Well, hopefully it won’t be much longer and he’ll be able to get back to his normal play. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a funny picture of him being silly.

Hey! Even superheros need to be able to see, right? LOL

Jack is joining the homeschool 4H group this year. He’s so excited to be joining a “club.” His main interest is in the shooting sports (air guns), but that doesn’t start until December. In the meantime, he wanted to try out the food & nutrition project. They’ve had 2 meetings already & start having their competitions at the end of the month & in October, but when I called this morning I was told that it wasn’t too late to join. Today would be our first meeting. Just our (my) luck, it wasn’t going to be a regular meeting. The next town over is out of power due to hurricane Ike–they didn’t get damage from the hurricane, but the town where their power comes from did, thus, they lost their power–and we were going to serve a lunch for them. I say “just my luck” because if you know anything about me, you know that I’m not extremely comfortable around a bunch of people I don’t know. I can be very shy! I was already nervous about just taking him to the regular meeting, and now it was going to be full on community service! But I want to do this for the boys. They crave being in groups & doing things with other kids. I’m perfectly content to stay in my little bubble, but I need to do this for them. So I suck it up, throw some tuna & chicken salad together, make a few dozen cookies, and head out. As expected, I sort of just kept my back to the wall & spoke when spoken to. Jack, on the other hand, is so NOT like me…thank goodness! He jumped right in, talking to the other kids, acting like a clown as he is best at, & being very helpful to those he was there to serve. We only stayed an hour since I needed to get home early, and Jack was not ready to leave! He loved it so much & I think he’ll do very well in this club. Now if we can just get me to loosen up a bit. LOL

Not really! Jacky thought it would be a good day to take the boat out to the lake to go fishing. Everything was going along great, we (Jack) caught one fish, and everyone was having a good time. We decided to try going down the river, and to get there we had to go through a patch of the lake with lots of stumps. Well as it turned out we couldn’t get in to the river because the water wasn’t quite deep enough. Ok, fine. Instead we decided to try fishing right there amongst the stumps. Jacky was going slow, pulling up to a stump, and my job was to “catch” the stump with a rope so we could tie it off. Ok, going well. I got the rope around the stump, getting ready to tie it off, and then…….

the boat hit the stump, just a little bump, but enough to make me F-A-L-L off the boat! Yep! Right into the lake. I knew I was going to fall, but there was nothing for me to grab onto to prevent it! The really funny thing is, I never thought about how deep the water was (not deep at all….knee deep), that it was going to be COLD (I was already freezing!), or that I was going to get soaked (in BLUE JEANS at that!). My first & only thought was of all the CREATURES in that stumpy water! LOL As soon as I hit bottom, I jumped up trying to get back in the boat before something got me! LOL I was thinking about alligators, gars, & SNAKES! No, I’ve never seen an alligator in the lake, but I’ve heard that there are some, and that just really looked like “gator haven!” LOL I got back in the boat, soaking wet, Jacky looking at me like I was some MORON to fall off the boat, and totally laughing at myself. I then realized that I was FREEZING! Thankfully I thought to bring a couple of blankets with us. I wrapped up in a blanket & shivered for a while, still laughing at myself. A little while later Jack decided he was getting hot (HOW? I was freezing to death!!) so he took off his extra shirt that he put on. Now, my mind went immediately to that shirt & trying to decide if it would fit me. LOL And if it did, how could I get it on & get my wet one off without flashing everyone? LOL I went for it! Still wrapped up in the blanket, I managed to get my wet shirt off & squeezed myself into Jack’s shirt. It fit! It was tight, but honestly it didn’t fit any differently than many women wear their shirts these days anyway. LOL We were going to go ahead & come on home so I wouldn’t catch my death of cold, but I convinced Jacky that I would be fine as long as I stayed wrapped up in my blanket. I knew he & the boys really wanted to fish some more. We stayed quite a while longer, caught a few more fish, & headed home. My clothes were mostly dry, except for my underwear. And let me tell you, you never realize how much you appreciate dry underwear until you’ve worn wet ones for four hours! LOL I was so happy to get home, get a shower, & get some clean, dry clothes on!

Well school was not just “hit & miss” this week, it was plain ole “miss!” Man this week was crazy! We were only home 1 day. That’s so rare for us because we’re almost always home. lol On the 1 day we were home, the boys decided they wanted to do one of our science projects (melting chocolate) that we haven’t been able to get to because we needed a good sunny day. We finally had one (when we were home) and outside we went with our magnifying glass & plates of chocolate. 

I think the pictures are pretty self-explanatory. As you can see in the first picture, Jared & Justin thought it was more fun eating the chocolate than melting it. lol I tend to agree. Jack kept trying to set the chocolate, plate, & any grass on fire. lol Little pyro! What can I say? He takes after his daddy. lol

Once again, I’m late on the birthday posting, but oh well. lol I can’t believe he’s 7! Where does the time go? It just seems to have gone by way too fast. I can still remember the day of his birth so vividly. We didn’t do much for his birthday this year. We went to visit grandparents (Jacky’s side) the weekend of his birthday & had some cake & ice cream there. On the day of his birthday we were actually driving home, so no real excitement there. lol I did make his cake & we had Uncle Jimmy, Aunt Teresa, Laura, & Lil come over for cake & ice cream. Here’s a pic of the cake:

He wanted a pirate ship this year. It doesn’t look exactly like the one he picked out, but he loved it just the same. The next day we took him (and the other boys ) to Chuck E. Cheeses for pizza & games. Then on to WalMart to pick out his gift from us. He decided he didn’t want us to buy him a present as a surprise this year. He wanted to go shopping & pick it out. Then yesterday we went to visit grandparents (my side) for the day and were treated to ice cream at Braum’s. Yummy! Although Jared’s birthday seemed rather scattered this year, I still think he had a pretty good time.

We went back to the ortho Friday for more x-rays on Jared’s arm to check the healing. The doctors are all amazed at his bone growth. They say considering the severity of his break he’s healing remarkably well. The pins were removed Friday & he now has a “removable splint.” It looks like a half-cast with an ace bandage wrapped around it to keep it on. They want us to take it off a couple times a day & let him start moving his arm just a little at a time. Poor Jared. He was so worked up about getting his pins removed after seeing another little boy getting his removed a couple of weeks ago. The other little boy had trouble with one of his pins & he just cried & cried. When the tech guy was removing Jared’s splint the other day, Jared was just crying and having fits. He just *knew* getting those pins out was going to hurt. Once the tech pulled the first pin, Jared stopped crying and looked at it, looked at his arm, and said, “Hey! That didn’t hurt!” lol He’s so cute. He had no problem with letting him pull the 2nd pin. lol So, it looks like he’s on the road to recovery! Yay!

After taking 2 weeks off after Jared’s accident, we hit the books again yesterday. It feels good to be back in our routine! Today was a history day, so we read our Mystery of History lesson on the early ancient egyptians. We talked about the pyramids & mummification. While I was reading to them, they worked on a mummy coloring page. Afterward, we tried our hand at making a mummy. Jared’s stuffed dog that he got in the hospital was chosen as our dearly departed pharoah. lol 

We had a project planned to make a pyramid using posterboard, but I couldn’t figure it out. lol So instead, we went back to making mummies. lol This time, Jared wanted to be the mummy.

Look at Jack. lol I think he’s being the “priest” sending the poor fellow off to his afterlife. lol

The rest of the day went pretty well. Our switch to LLATL seems to have been a great decision! The past 2 days Jack has done his LA without complaint! He’s doing a book study of  The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner. He’s really enjoying the book! This also gives us time in our day to have him sit & read to me. We take turns reading the book & I think he’s really enjoying this time together.

Jared is really enjoying his LLATL, as well. I was looking through the book the other night & realized that he already knew alot of the material in the book. So I had him sit with me & I did an evaluation/assessment with him. As it turns out, we were able to skip the first half of the book! At this point, he’s working on consonant blends. He gets blending very well, and has no problem with blends such as: st, sw, bl, br, etc. but he didn’t know the ones that have a different sound such as ch, sh, th. So that’s where I decided to start him.

I was planning on continuing the Bob Jones kindergarten workbook with Justin because I didn’t think he was ready for the LLATL blue book (same one Jared is using). However, today was not a good day for him. The Bob Jones book seems to move very quickly & he’s getting frustrated. I looked back over the first lesson in LLATL & decided to give it a try. It was more simplistic than I thought. I must not have looked at that lesson in the first place. lol After looking over it, I decided to give it a try eventhough he had already gone through his Bob Jones lesson for the day. Wow! Did he love it! Basically, it’s easing him into getting ready to read. This first lesson was looking at different sorts of shapes. First he played a matching game with them:

Look at that big ole grin! Next he sorted the shapes into groups….circular shapes & straight line shapes. Then he picked out his favorite circular shape (a plain circle) & his favorite straight line shape (3 parallel lines) and practiced drawing the shapes on the white board.

Finally, he drew a picture using the 2 shapes he picked out. I think it’s pretty cute!

The circle is the head & the 3 parallel lines are the hair. lol Cute! When he was all done, his response to this new school work…..”MORE!!” lol

Yep, I think I made the right choice in making the switch.