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."