Fall schooling update!

Things are proceeding in our homeschool.... not as fast as I might like, but we are going forward and still having fun a great deal of the time!!

Isaac is getting his tonsils evaluated by an ENT tomorrow afternoon after 4 or 5 cases of strep this year, mostly back to back!! Feels like we have had antibiotics in the house since spring, and that slows us all down alot. He is praying for a removal verdict, largely based on ice cream preferences.

It is hard to get Alyza's schooling done, I feel much less enthusiastic once I get Isaac through english and math. I'm contemplating switching our daily schedule around so hers gets done first. I know this is the better plan, but hard to motivate myself in the morning!! Working on it!

Other than that, the most exciting news is that a sweet friend of mine is getting married this spring, and she has asked me to be her Matron of Honor! I was Mom's this past June, and it just strikes me as funny that at my age I get to be in two weddings in one year!! Blessed, indeed! Wonderful matches, both of them!

Rank graduation is coming up again in November for the boys, and they are excited.

Me- I'm dying to put up the Christmas tree. Is it too early? I suppose so. What about November 1st? That would be fun! I'd love to have it up before my birthday.

Update on our Heart of Dakota experience in homeschooling...

Well, we still like it!!

Alyza still ASKS for her schoolwork everyday, and is sad if we don't do it... the boys enjoy it, too, despite themselves!! Will update more later!

Our fingers are blue...

Today was the first day of blueberry picking season that was not covered in a HEAT ADVISORY, so we took advantage of the weather early this morning!

Usually we struggle to get one gallon before the kids get too cranky, but the crop is wonderful this year, and we easily picked TWO, and ate our fill, besides! I just LOVE this tradition, and look forward to it all winter and spring!

We'll freeze one for smoothies and yogurt and pancakes, and inhale the other by the weekend!

2 thumbs up from Isaac!

Saturday night Isaac crept out of his bedroom and came and whispered in my ear, "I really like our new curriculum, Mom..." and I tried not to cry!

He was very skeptical, that young man, but has really enjoyed our school time more and more each day as he sees that it is consistently good. I think he has been waiting all week for the fun and interesting things to stop, and the torture to begin! I even added in his formal grammar study(Preparing to Build), and he was SO pleasantly surprised by the doable, short lessons. He immediately realized it was something he could do well, and quickly, too. He is doing formal literature study(Drawn into the Heart of Reading, otherwise known as DITHOR) as well!! Next week we will add math back into our routine, and the following week we will add formal handwriting practice. Finished in 1 and 1/2 hours today!

Alyza loves her pink school (Little Hands to Heaven), and is all about the letter 'A' this week! She has discovered collages, and I'm afraid she won't complete another full sentence or meal until she has covered the entire house in pieces of construction paper artwork! She cuts everything out of magazines, sunday ads, and grocery fliers! Perfectly, too! Such girliness!

oooooh...TKD update!

Isaac attended TNT's Taekwondo Summer Rank Advancement Camp, and in one week of intense, 4 1/2 hour training days he graduated from brown belt to RED BELT!! Isaac is currently training towards his Red/Black Belt, and with hard work will be graduating to that rank in August.

Congratulations, Isaac!! Hard work pays off!

Summer School

It is flat out TOO HOT to do anything else, so we have started up school!

We are just 3 days into our new curriculum(Heart of Dakota), and are really enjoying our school time.

It is just the right blend of reading and activities, although it will be next week before I'm organized enough to add in our math and Isaac's formal grammar work. I have both of them and need to lay out the scheduling for each subject.

The boys enjoyed geography playing "twister" with the continents we taped to the floor, making currents in the bathtub with medicine droppers for paper boat shapes, and for science today we learned about sea creature's blubber with a little vegetable shortening on their hands and a sink full of ice water.

Alyza is learning all about the letter "A", and how God created everything... She is very enthusiastic, and the fingerplays and songs we are learning are PERFECT for her learning style and personality. Trystan is reading like a hurricane, devouring everything I give him. Isaac is enjoying himself despite his preconceptions, and really likes his biography on Amelia Earhart he selected. Overall, a great start!

We still have plenty of time for playing in the hose and eating popsicles, too, those other required summer courses! Yesterday the kids were sprayed by firemen at the library park, and went through fire obstacle courses... quite a hit!

Other than that, the house is a bit of a wreck, and we are all getting a workout killing flies! SUMMER!

Learning something new today...

Today we went to the library and signed up for the summer reading program, and checked out armloads of books, too. We picked out books on tadpoles, frogs, toads, dragonflies, and fun summer projects. Trystan picked out a stack of readers as big as his head... the librarian was very impressed with his ambition!! Isaac had a hard time selecting a book, and finally settled on Old Yeller... I read that book the summer after third grade, too.

We spent time at the park right outside the library with friends we ran into while we were there. We checked out all the baby fish in the lake, the goslings, and a critter we thought was a crawdad. Trystan fell in the water, so we had to stay until he stopped dripping! We spotted a few dragonflies, too, while the kids were all trying to catch minnows with their hands.

When we got home we were reading book after book (after cooling off!) and discovered the little critter in the shallow water we thought was a crawdad was actually a dragonfly nymph!! We learned alot and will study them more in depth in the next few weeks. So fun and exciting!!

Did I mention... NEW BELTS!!

The boys had rank graduation in May!!

Trystan has attained the rank of Beginner Green Belt, and his sparring gear has been ordered!

Isaac is now a Brown Belt, and is about a year out from recommended black belt training. That is just HUGE. He is 3/4 of the way there, and is really beginning to see the fruit of his labor.

I love seeing them learn the effects of long term discipline towards a goal... that is priceless stuff, and well worth the investment!

--Oh... and Alyza wants to take ballerina lessons! Maybe this summer!

Homeschool Happenings...

Congratulations to Trystan, who has now officially graduated to "mommy school"! He had his graduation program May 14th, and even sang a short solo. He was the life of his classroom this year, as you might imagine, and we are glad to have him home! Nervous about where the scissors might be, but so happy all the same!

We have finished our selections for this coming year of study, and are very excited about it. Well, 4 out of 5 Reddings are excited, 1 Redding is a bit doubtful! I think we will win him over, though, and he has enjoyed helping to select some of his first independent reading titles for the coming year. As soon as we are able to place and receive our order we will start! When it is too hot to play, it is just right for reading.

Anyhow, the boys will be studying American History next year. It will be fun to see God use stories of our founding fathers and great American inventors to inspire them to bigger dreams! The curriculum we will be using (Heart of Dakota) will teach most of their subjects through the lens of history, and is a complete, Christ honoring curriculum that encourages the same Godly, independent thinking that made our nation great. One of our goals is to not just teach our children the answers, but to teach them how to FIND the answers, the ideas, and the questions for themselves...

Alyza will be starting school with me this year, too... The same publisher has a wonderful preschool curriculum for her that she will just LOVE. Her minor motor skills are really astounding, she is tracing letters like a pro, and is only beginning to learn her alphabet! She cuts FRINGE all around her art projects, and is really skilled in puzzles. I need to step it up, or she will be writing before she is reading! So easy to forget she is only 4!

Crunchy Dragon Eggs

Took Trystan to see "How to Train Your Dragon" today! As a surprise, I had picked up several bags of "How to Train Your Dragon" candy eggs on clearance a few weeks ago. I pulled a bag of them out of my purse during the show and gave them to Trystan.

After a while, he asked me, "Mom, what do these eggs look like?" It is, of course, dark in the theatre, and we had 3d glasses on... hard to see much! I told him,"I don't know, sweetie, like dragon eggs I suppose, kind of blue with brownish spots on them."

A little while later, he says, "It's alright, mom. At first I thought they were just crunchy. I figured out how to take the wrappers off, now."

My Funny Valentine.

I noly havyes 4U!

Translation : I only have eyes for you, love Trystan

Hmmm.

Alyza brought me a drawing last week when she was THREE and not FOUR.  It was a big oval type thing all colored in precisely.  I oooohed and aaaaahhhed and asked quite politely what this drawing might be, to which she replied, "This is your brain when you are sneezing.  It says you should take a deep breath."

Officially Nine.

Well, the long awaited birthday has occurred, and yes, he DID get Zelda: Spirit Tracks for the DS.  You probably already knew this, since the earth did not explode and all time come to a screeching halt - which was the probable outcome of  this child's celebration if he had to wait one more moment to have that present in his not-so-little-anymore hands.

Isaac, like his brother, chose IHOP for his birthday breakfast.  He is apparently too old for funny face pancakes now, and instead went with the very grown up sounding 2x2x2 breakfast, with all sorts of grown up food choices.  The wait staff sang him happy birthday and brought him ice cream with his breakfast, and proving how very much he has grown, he handled the attention with grace.

His birthday lunch with Ninnie was at Red Lobster, proving he IS my child.  That was my birthday choice for untold years when I was young.  He enjoyed it, and even got to crack some crab legs.

But the highlight was the million boy sleepover that happened that night.  That deserves it's very own post.

How do you like your cheese?

Just wondering.

Alyza tried hers on a small plate, which was unacceptable.  Then we tried it in a cereal bowl, which was unacceptable and apparently angering. 

Then we tried it in a small bowl, at her request, only to discover that the tiny pink lady believes that cheese in a bowl makes her SICK. and AGGRAVATED.

We discovered that all of this switching around, screaming, and flailing in the floor makes mommy SICK and AGGRAVATED, too. The solution was simple. 

No cheese for little girls until they take a nap.

How is homeschool going?

For those of you wondering, I thought I would post where we are in our homeschool year...

Isaac FINISHED all of his third grade work I had laid out for him for this school year before the holidays last year, so in most subjects he is way ahead of schedule (language arts, social studies, science, etc..) .  We did only a little work in math for the first half of the school year, so that is our focus for the spring semester.  Math, handwriting, and reading.  His reading level remains extremely high, in fact it is very difficult to find a word that stumps him.  In his bible reading he is beginning the period of the prophets.  He enjoyed learning about King David, but Solomon already has garnered more of his interest. I think David's failings and love for God are more interesting to adults, although his fight with Goliath is always a boy - winner. 

Overall, I am EXTREMELY pleased with Isaac's progress, and I am going to try to keep him 6 months or more ahead of schedule whenever possible.  A friend of our family had a really rough year or two in homeschooling with relatives hospitalized for extended periods of  time, deaths in their family, AND moving.  Their homeschool fell way behind, and they are making plans to get back on schedule.  Having watched how hard this was on the mom (the kids, family issues aside, enjoyed the break ), I want to try to keep us a little ahead so that in an emergency we can do whatever we need to without MOM STRESSING like a crazy woman.  So, we are beefing up in basics for early spring, and will start 4th grade early.  This will hopefully also help us ease into Trystan schooling at home, as well.

Trystan is doing GREAT in Kindergarten.  For last semester he had all A's , with one lonely B in handwriting.  He is indeed the class clown, and is a very advanced reader!  He is burning to be able to read the parts in his video games that Isaac can, and is so excited about reading.  He knows math facts way above his age range, because he hears Isaac talking about them.  He is a social butterfly, making friends everywhere he goes, and generally getting along with everyone he meets.

Alyza is craft obsessed.  She started the school year with a 2 glue stick a day habit, and while her tastes are now more varied, she is still a craft junkie.  Nothing gets her as excited as paint, pom poms, glitter, safety scissors or pipecleaners.  It is time to begin deciding whether or not to send her to preK next fall.  It would be so easy to occupy her with crafts while the boys do their table work next year, and she could participate in all our activites and read alouds.  Their is a preK curriculum I want to start with her this spring that I know she will enjoy.  The boys both needed preK to help them learn to sit still and listen to a teacher, but Alyza is so different.  I think it would be nice to have her with us, and all of us learning as a family, as opposed to her coming home at lunch  cranky, tired, and sure that boys have cooties.  Then perhaps we could take the money that we would spend on tuition, and let her take DANCE LESSONS. 

The boys have another rank graduation coming up in mid february.... so stay tuned for pictures. 

And now he is SIX...

Today is the funnyboy's birthday, sniff. sniff.

Before the sun came up, Daddy took him for his birthday breakfast at IHOP. When he came back he crawled into bed with me and told me he had a huge chocolate face for breakfast with whipped cream. Then he asked if he was too old to snuggle. NEVER.

I made him brownies all fancy with the powdered sugar sprinkled on top of the chocolate mountain we made out of them to send to his kindergarten class. We parked and the others waited while I walked him in with his treasure, and I started to cry when I kissed him bye!! He is so big, and I love the man he is in the making, but it is tough on a momma, too!

Ninnie will be picking him up from school for his birthday lunch. Have fun with that, Ninnie. I hear that he is going to ask to go to dales and get fried pickles. He is one of a kind.

Saturday night will be the million boy sleepover. Pray for us!

Boys grow Dirt

Trystan and I had an interesting conversation while debating the appropriate length of his fingernails. He likes them longer, but I don't like the grunge he accumulates under them.

"I don't know where the dirt COMES from, anyway!!" he grumbled. Clip, clip...

"Trystan, boys apparently GROW dirt," I tell him. He disagrees, and I counter with, "Yes, I think they do. I think 90% of the dirt in this world falls off of little boys while they are going about their business."

Trystan foils me with this one..

"No, Mom. Not me. God made everyone else in the world out of dirt.
Me, he made out of turkey."