I think I have mentioned before that Seth has grown to LOVE puzzles, and that we got 24 puzzles for Christmas!!!
Well Daddy was gone on a business trip and we decided that last night we would have a puzzle party. I told Seth and Aaron that they could stay up late (Alyssa only stayed up 30 minutes past her normal bed time...that's all I could stand (-: ) We had a fun supper of hot dogs and french fries.
We started about 5:00 working on puzzles. We took a break for supper and then was right back at it. We stopped about 8:30 because the boys also wanted to do a movie. So we watched Cars 2. Aaron didn't make it through the movie and I had to carry him to bed when it was over. I even dozed off at one point but was awoken to Seth laughing at a funny part of the movie. He of course watched the entire movie and still didn't want to go to bed when it was over (but of course he had no choice).
This morning I did an idea I found on pinterest for breakfast. I made waffles using refrigerated cinnamon rolls. They turned out really well!!
Before:
After:
After breakfast we started working on puzzles again and did so until Daddy got home.
In total we put together 16 puzzles between last night and today!!!! As we finished each puzzle I labeled the back of the pieces so if any pieces get misplaced we will know what puzzle they go to!
One of our puzzles that we completed was our I Spy puzzle. We have completed it before...but I still think it is one of the HARDEST puzzles ever! It is a weird shape and it has weird shaped pieces. But we did better with it this time. I show Seth how to divide it into different categories to help make it easier. We did the edge pieces that had writing on them, then added in the rest of the edge pieces and then filled in the middle. He was so excited when it was completed!
We had a lot of fun!! I love making memories with my kids.
Wow! What a week this has been! We have had record breaking rainfall this week, along with having a sweet little dog show up that we have decided to keep as our new pet. Thankfully through the midst of all of this we have managed to get a lot of school work done as well! WHOO!!
And today was our first day of the Spring co-op semester! :-) The kids were so excited to see all of their friends again. I am really excited about Seth's classes. He is taking an introduction to biology class, wood kits class and reading club. I was told that in his wood kits class he put his whole kit together with no help! :-)
READING We finished our first Pathways reader this week!! :-) For those who did not see the video posted on Wednesday I thought I would share it again. (remember to click here if you are viewing this through email so that you can see the video on the blog.)
Seth obviously was sharing about his Pathways readers in his reading club class today because his teacher came up to me afterwards and asked if we used Pathway readers! She said her family uses that as well and loves it!
Seth also finished the Explode the Code 1 1/2 workbook this week and started workbook 2!! :-) He is moving right along nicely with it!
We have also discovered that it is a good workbook to take for trips in the car! It keeps him occupied so that he is not pestering his sister! :-)
Math Ok so math wasn't so exciting this week..and to be honest it was one of teh subjects that was set aside when all the excitement of the dog happened. The subject this week was suppose to be about graphing. We were able to read a couple of books explaining the different types of graph and did manage to make a graph of the items in his pencil box...so I guess that was good enough. :-) He is picking math up so easily I am really not concerned.
Next week we will focus on math a lot more because we will be learning how to tell time. :-)
Bible We are still treking right along with our bible stories using our stick figures. Seth told me this week that he LOVES doing the bible stories! He said that he is learning cool ways of drawing stick figures! :-) (but apparently he is really listening to the story as well though because he does a good job telling me the next day what the story was about!)
We have made a bit of a change to his memory verses. I recently found out that they are doing memory verses in Sunday School and they get prizes the next week if they can recite their verse. So I have decided to just use those verses for our memory verse now :-) They have just started memorizing the Lord's Prayer (Matt 6:9-13). They are not going to do a prize though until they have the whole passage learned and they are doing a verse a week. So this week we learned Matt 6:9. Each week we will attach the next verse on.
Here is the video of him reciting Matt 6:9 (he was having trouble with the word Hallowed)...
SCIENCE We talked about rainbows this week and read some fun books about Rainbows. The kids also watched a Magic School Bus episode about rainbows!
OTHER Oh - here are our desks!!! We are so excited and the kids love them!!
And here are some pics of Daisy! We have an appointment set for Monday afternoon at the vet to get her checked out and shots and everything. We will have to also schedule when to have her fixed.
She is such a sweet little dog though and has already won our hearts!
Well I think that is all I have for this week!
We are ready for a fun week next week! We have the vet appointment on Monday and then we have a play date on Tuesday! :-)!!!
I just had to share a bit of our day with you today!! There has been a lot of excitement going on around here!
First off - Seth read the last story in the Pathways red book today!! He was so excited. There are a few more concluding worksheets in the workbook that we will do tomorrow and then on Monday we start the blue book!
I thought y'all might like this little video :-)
(Click here if you are not seeing the video in the email so that you can view it on the blog.)
The other thing I would like to share is that we had a new friend show up at our house yesterday. (Most of you probably remember me telling you that Rocky disappeared over a month ago now). This sweet little dog was cuddled up on our gazebo yesterday morning when I went out to turn the heater on in the schoolhouse. She had no collar. (Our area seems to be a popular dump spot - the animal control officer knows us well). At first we tried to ignore her but she made it impossible with her very gentle and very sweet disposition. Then last night it started raining and raining BAD. (in fact I heard a bit ago that this is officially the wettest January day in DFW history - with more rain to come!!!). So we brought her in and put her in Rocky's old kennel. She did not make a sound all night long!! She also did not pee or poop in there either :-)
Today we gave her a bath (because she smelled like cows) and let here spend some time with us in the school house (so as you can imagine we didn't get all our schooling done today - just the bare necessities.)
Since we have been back in the house she has been content being in the kennel (I think she is just grateful she doesn't have to be out in this cold wet weather!)
We are trying to think of a name for her. Yesterday our story in the Pathway reader was about the family finding a name for the colt and they came up with Little Lady. So Seth thinks that would be cool. We are thinking on it. Alyssa is calling her sissy - but I don't know about that... LOL!!
Anyways - here are some pics we got this morning.
They are spoiling her already!
If she is a puppy she is not a very young one because her teeth look like adult teeth. I guess we will find out about that better when I get her to the vet to get checked out.
Fun fun!! Of course I have been planning on starting with potty training for Alyssa next week and now it looks like we will be housebreaking a dog as well. Oh Lord let this go smooth and easy!!
Please excuse me for being a bit late on my weekly wrap up post. At least I am finishing it before the next week, right? We have just been super busy this weekend. I am also trying to figure out a new blog post app for my ipad (so if you are one who gets an email of this post and things seem a bit weird I apologize. Hopefully you can go to the blog and everything will be fixed :-) )
Anyways, we had a good busy week of school this week. We are still working on getting back into our normal routine, but I think we did much better this week. :-)
READING
Seth read 4 stories in his Pathways reader this week!!! I was very pleased at how well he did as well! If we keep on track we will finish the red book this Wednesday!! YEAH!!!
We discovered this week that it is a lot funner to read the stories if you are sitting in the bean bags. :-) We got Aaron to get a picture of us one day (I'm sorry that it is a bit blurry)
I also had to throw this picture in. One day this week Seth had a sight word test in his Pathways workbook. I had the teacher's manual calling out the words and when he would find the word and circle it he would give me a "thumbs up" to let me know he was done and ready for the next word. (he made a 100 on that test by the way!)
MATH
This week in math we were focusing on measurements and Seth had a lot of fun with this! We were measuring all different things in the room by all different means. We measured the table using a paper clip, a chair using a q-tip, and so on. The picture below is of Seth measuring the bookcase with a piece of ribbon.
We have been looking at getting new school desks so I worked that into our lessons this week. For instance, I would ask Seth if we could tell Daddy that we needed a desk that was 5 hands wide? Of course he totally got it and answered "no because Daddy's hands are bigger!" :-)
BIBLE
The boys are still very much enjoying using the Grapevine Studies stick figuring to help tell our bible stories! They really have a good attention span with this and seem to retain a lot. One of our stories this week was about the tower of Babel. After the bible story the boys had fun building a tower using their tower blocks.
And we managed to get our bible verse memorized this week!! Yeah! Here is a video of Seth reciting Proverbs 30:5. (remember if you are viewing this on email you need to go to click here to view the video.
We also got back on track with our memorizing the books of the bible. Seth has now memorized the old testament through Hosea. Here is a video of him reciting Genesis to Hosea. (email viewers remember to click the above link to go view the video on the blog)
SCIENCE
Our science topic this week was about the stars and planets. I had some experiments planned but we just didn't get to them (I said we were working on getting back in routine...as you can see we haven't quite accomplished it yet). But we did enjoy watching Magic School Bus videos and reading lots of fun library books on the subject!
OTHER
Seth did well in his Climbing to Good English workbook this week. He likes coloring the pictures because he is very proud that he knows his color words. :-)
He continues to work on his Explode the Code workbook during his nap time. If we stay on track we will finish book 1 1/2 this week as well!! I have also discovered that I can bring along that workbook with us in the car for him to work on and it makes for a peaceful car ride because he is not pestering his sister. :-)
We got a headphone splitter so that Aaron and Alyssa can watch netflix on the big monitor while I am trying to do reading or math with Seth. This really works to keep them occupied while I am trying to work with Seth. (now if I could only figure out how to get Alyssa to leave her headphones alone so that they stay on...)
We are also having a lot of fun with the puzzles that we got for Christmas. This week I told the boys that we would work on it after we got all our school work done. This seemed to help motivate them to get their work done. We even got out there Friday morning, even though we don't do school on Friday, to work on our puzzle.
I am still contemplating bringing the puzzle box in the house and doing the puzzles there, as a boredom buster. I think I would like to get one of those puzzle mats that you can put them on and you are suppose to be able to roll it up to put it away if you are in the middle of one and it not mess up the puzzle. That would be cool!
But I have always enjoyed puzzles and the boys seem to really like them now. I think this is a great hobby for us to have to do together. :-)
I will have more info and better pictures to post this week but...we got new school desks and chairs!! YAY!! Here is a picture of the desk. We picked them up Thursday afternoon and then got the chairs on Saturday. I will get pictures this week of the room set up with the new desks and chairs! So exciting! We even went Friday afternoon and the kids got to pick out pencil boxes and stickers to decorate them with and even got new boxes of crayons and colored pencils and stuff!
Well I think that is all I have to report for our week!
Well we finished our first week back after the holidays!! Yay!!! All in all things went well. Of course it will always take adjustment getting back into a routine...but, for me, it sure was nice to get back into a routine.
As I have mentioned, I have changed some things. I have to be honest and say I just decided that I have not liked the reading/phonics portion of My Father's World 1st Grade, and neither did Seth. I finally came to the realization that it just was not working for us and decided to stop fighting it and just set it aside. Thankfully I have found Pathways and LOVE Pathways so that made sitting MFW aside easier. :-)
So for our Reading/Phonics we are mainly concentrating on the Pathways readers. We have stepped it up a notch and Seth is now reading a new story every day (we will of course take breaks as needed). He read four stories this week and did very well! I also ordered the Climbing to Good English workbook that goes along with the Pathway readers and we started that this week as well. Seth is still doing Explode the Code for his "napwork" and I have a couple of other workbooks that I am using as fillers as I see fit. I am really excited about these changes helping his reading really take off!
We are still using MFW for the bible stories, doing like I have been doing and combining them with the Grapevine Studies Stick Figuring Through the Bible. That has worked for us and I believe will continue to work for us. I am having Seth read the bible story in the bible reader as we do that bible lesson. I was very pleased at how well he was reading those this week. I have to help him some, but not as much as I thought I would have.
For Math we are still working on the Complete Book of Math but I decided that it wasn't challenging enough for him. I think Seth is going to be a math wizard so I wanted to turn it up a notch. My mom, being a public school teacher, has given me many resources. One of the things she gave me this summer was a teacher's edition and student book for Scott Foresman Math. We are adding those lessons. I will be honest, it is not my favorite layout, but I think with some tweaking I think I can make it work for us for the rest of the 1st grade year and then I will do research and hopefully find a math curriculum for 2nd grade that I like (and will probably try to find another one for 1st grade when it comes time for Aaron and Alyssa to get there...but for now it works and saves me some money in the present time).
For science we are sticking with MFW as well but I am doing research online to try to add in some other experiments and stuff to add to it.
Handwriting is another area that I am in an "I don't know" stage right now. Seth hates handwriting, it is a struggle to get him to write anything, and I feel his handwriting needs MUCH improvement. I have tried Handwriting without tears, and he will handle it sometimes...but not always. I am going to try the Draw Write Now books and see if that works with him doing some copy work of the sentences that accompany the drawings. We shall see...
Anyways - sorry that was a small book - but those are the changes.
Here are some pictures from our week :-)
I found a neat app on the ipad - it is a spelling app where you can make your own lists. So this week when we discussed the new words presented in our Pathways story I would put those words in a list and then let Seth have fun spelling them out.
Here's a cute shot of Seth reading while Aaron is on the ipad playing his games.
We had an activity this week with our bible lessons of making a map of the bible lands. For ours I drew out the bodies of water on posterboard that we colored blue and then we used the Crayola air dry clay to make the land masses. (I have a plastic lid for a container that has not had a container for some time that I am using to keep the map on). I wanted to make sure that the clay is able to dry well - next week we will label the map. I want to make some little figures out of game pieces so that we can use this map to show areas where people are as we go through our bible stories.
Seth wanted me to get a picture of the map they made with the map we used as our guide. :-)
PUZZLE TIME!! The boys got 24 new puzzles for Christmas!! So we will be adding lots of puzzle time in our school time LOL! (of course if you ask me I like puzzles SO MUCH BETTER than any video game!)
Seth discovered his reader bookmark this week (I forgot I had it). It is a book mark that he can move along the page and it shows one line at a time through the window. He really enjoyed using this to read his stories. Hey! Anything to help him want to read is fine by me!
I had to throw this picture in of Alyssa. She decided to throw a dinner party for her dolls and animals on the couch one day.
Ok - I have to admit - we did not do a good job of getting our Proverb memorized or working on our books of the bible this week...I am hoping we can do a better job of that next week :-).
Well, after a long Christmas break we got back after it today! I have to admit things went pretty well and I really think Seth and I both are going to be happy with the changes I made! (at least our first day was a success)
I will post more about the changes in my weekly wrap up! Just wanted to shout out that we are back at it. :-)
Until next time,
Kellie
Ok, so we kind of fell off the wagon at the end of our advent calendar :-( Remember last post I said I ended up sick on Day 19 :-( Well, it kind of just threw my whole week off...
And I just realized that I didn't even get a finished picture of our puzzle or our nativity scene before I took Christmas down - good grief!!
Oh well... what can you do.
On Day 20 we did do our Snowman pancake dinner that I planned :-) I still wasn't feeling too good but pancakes sounded really good so I did accomplish it.
(they were blueberry pancakes - YUM! - I used blueberries for the eyes and buttons and scrambled eggs for the snow and bacon for the scarf)
Day 21 we had a wedding at church and then church service afterwards and the kids went on stage and heard Bro Waymond tell the Christmas story - so I guess our activity for that day was 'Listening to the Christmas Story'. :-)
Day 22 was a fun day for ME! I got to go get my nails and toes done, hair trimmed, lunch and shopping with a dear friend, NO KIDS :-)... oh...wait..am I hearing you right?? You say this whole advent thing is suppose to be about the kids?? Oh...well they had a super fun day too :-)!! They got to spend the day with Granny! :-)
Day 23 - the boys got to go running errands with Daddy and Papa while Alyssa and I cleaned out her room to make room for her Christmas presents that would soon be coming :-) Then the kids then went and spent the night with Granny and PaPa - a real treat for them!
Day 24 we had Christmas with Granny and PaPa and came home and finished adding our puzzle pieces and manger pieces!
So I guess we didn't do too bad these last days...even though it wasn't what I originally had planned - we did have a focus of Christmas every day - and that is what counts, right?!?! :-)
I thought I would throw in a few pictures from Christmas Day - Daddy and the boys had a lot of fun at the kitchen table playing with the Legos that Seth got for Christmas!
Well - we had a very good Christmas!! Definitely made memories this year!
This week we are not back in school quite yet. I am doing some reorganizing and changing around of some of our curriculum and stuff. I have made a decision to not continue with the reading portion of My Father's World...after much praying and debating and agonizing I realize it is just not working for us. But I feel very good with my decision and feel very good about continuing on using Pathways. I am also making some math changes and some others as well. I will explain all my changes next week! But for now I need to get back to my planning!
It's nice to start a new year! I pray that 2012 is a GREAT year for all my friends and family!! I am excited to think of all the memories there are to be made this year :-)!
