Seth’s Week In Review

After a few weeks off for Christmas and all of us being sick the first week in January we finally got back to school this week and we had a great week!

We are working on implementing a new schedule!   I think we are finally finding a schedule that works for us!

My mom got the boys new desks for Christmas which we all LOVE!!  They love having their own space!!  The desks are just perfect!

We also got a Wii for Christmas which we are all loving!  In fact I have implemented a PE time on the Wii every day into our school schedule.  Seth is impressing me at how well he is able to do some of the games!  He is soon going to be beating me!!

   

Seth got to work on some new Thomas the Tank Engine workbooks he got this week!!  We practiced our numbers, counting, sequencing, practicing writing our letters, and working on our phonics.

This picture didn’t come out as good as I hoped.  I wanted you to see his 3.  He was so excited.  He has been having trouble writing his 3’s until he figured out that it is like a backwards capital E.

The boys enjoyed playing outside this week!  We have had unusually cold weather the past few weeks and have been cooped up inside a lot.  This week the temps were closer to normal for this time of year and the boys enjoyed the sunshine!  (of course rain came in Thursday and Friday).

 

Seth learned some new chores to do around the house this week!  He loves his whisk broom and dust pan set that I found on the $1 aisle at Target!  He is really good at sweeping up trash off the floor!

 

Seth also enjoyed putting together some new puzzles that he got!

    

The boys got a lot of kitchen toys for Christmas!!  I set up one day the living room so that they could go shopping at the grocery store (aka the couch) and then cook in their kitchens (aka the recliners).  I was going to have them do this for 30 minutes!!  They were having so much fun and so engaged in it that they played this for an hour!!  Mommy was able to get caught up on some computer work!!  :-)

  

On another n0te: I have made a decision on the kindergarten curriculum I am going to use in the fall for Seth.  We are going to use the My Father’s World curriculum!!   I am so excited about this!!  I am hoping to be able to order it in the spring so that I will have plenty of time to go through it and prepare!!

We Are Back At It

It seems like it has been forever since we have had school or I have posted on this blog!  We had a great Christmas vacation!  We got to spend some extended time at my parents.  It was very nice.  We were going to get back at it last week but we were all sick!

But we got back at it today!  The boys were so excited too!  The most exciting thing was our new school set up thanks to the desks from MiMi!  The boys love these desks and they work PERFECT!!  Our so called school room was already too small.  But the desks fit perfectly under the desk in that room when not in use.  The room is perfect to hold all of our resources and I can use that desk to organize the materials that we are going to use in the upcoming days or weeks!  We just simply move our kitchen table out of the way (it has slides on the bottom) and bring our desks in the dining room for school.  The boys love it!

We got a Wii before Christmas so we have added in a time for physical education on the Wii every day into our school schedule.  The boys love this as well!!  They love playing the little games on the Wii Fit!

Since I was sick last week I got to spend some extra time in studying the book I got for Christmas – Managers of Their Homes by Steve and Teri Maxwell.  I also got Managers of Their Chores and Managers of Their Schools.  (these can all be found at http://www.titus2.com) I would recommend these to ANYONE who is trying to figure out how to schedule their days in their family’s home.  These books are AWESOME!!  Thanks Mom!  I have a rough draft schedule that we are working with this week trying to figure out where we need to tweak it to get us a good schedule that will work for us!  The boys do SO MUCH better on a schedule!!!  Plus you realize with a schedule that you have more time in the day that you sometimes realize when you get your priorities in order :-)!

It’s good to be back!!! 

Raising Rock Stars Through Living

We are taking our Christmas break so we are not doing any formal schooling right now.  But I decided to go ahead and do a post because we are constantly doing learning through living.

To me, raising rock stars consists of a lot more than planning times of bible lessons.  Raising rockstars involves teaching my kids how to live a life that is pleasing to God.  Raising rockstars involves showing them through example by the way I live my life and teaching them how to make the right decisions.

The other night we went out to eat with my in-laws.  At the restaurant was one of those games where you put in $0.50 and move this little pincher around to try to grab a toy.  Of course it will come just close enough to make you believe that you could get it if you had one more shot.  Before you know it you have wasted several dollars on a toy that is probably not even worth the first $0.50 that you put into the machine.  But of course it is very appealing…especially to little ones…and Seth went over to it and asked if I had any money so he could play it.

Pause there for a moment…

We are teaching our kids about giving and how our money belongs to God and that we always need to give back to him what is due and that we need to give money to help the missionaries.  We make sure that the boys have change every Sunday morning to take to Sunday School to give for missions.  Also, Seth is sitting with us in service on Sunday nights and his favorite thing to do is to put change in the offering plate as it passes by.

Now return to the restaurant with Seth standing in front of that silly game…

Seth asked me if he could have some change to play that game.  I simply gave him an option.  I told him if he wanted to play that game he could but if I gave him change to play that game then he would not have any change to put in the offering plate on Sunday night.

His answer was “Mommy I want to wait and give my money to Jesus”.

YES indeed!!!  I am raising a little rock star for Christ!!

Click here to see more posts on raising rock stars!

Creativity For Kids Giveaway Winner

Well my first giveaway was fun!  Maybe next time I will get more people to participate.

Congratulations to Hannah – comment #5 (chosen by random.org).  I have contacted her and she has 48 hours to respond.

Thank you to all who participated.  I can’t wait for the next product review with this company!!  If you haven’t tried out any of their kits you really need to.  Click here to order a kit online or find a store near you that sells them (our Target sells them).

Tot School – Getting Ready For Christmas

Aaron is currently 29 months old

We aren’t doing much of regular “tot school” this month…but we are having fun learning experiences through making Christmas decorations, Christmas presents and just having some good ol Christmas fun!!

We made a lot of Christmas decorations this week.  We made two different types of Christmas tree decorations.

For one we put felt around a foam cone and then Aaron stuck ball pointed straight pins in the foam for the ornaments.  He really enjoyed doing this one because he was able to do it all by himself.

We also made pipe cleaner trees and stuck beads on them for ornaments.  He had a little bit of trouble doing this but he sure tried hard!

We read Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus from the bible while we set up our nativity scene.

Aaron proved to me that he can do simple patterning as we made our ornament ball wreath.  I wanted to thread our ornaments by doing a shiny one and then a glittery one.  Aaron was handing the ornaments to me…saying “shiny”, “glitter”… and was doing a very good job keeping them in the right pattern.  I was so impressed!

As a family we enjoyed decorating the Christmas tree and got some really fun pictures in the process!

 

   

Click here for more tot school posts.

Seth’s Week In Review

Seth had a pretty good week this week!  As far as school, we are going to be a bit laxed until after Christmas!  We are too busy making Christmas decorations, and presents, and just having fun!

We are still striving to do a bit of school every day though.  We worked alot on our counting this week (Seth is still working at counting  group of objects…learning how to make sure that each object gets counted and that it only gets counted once).  We also worked on our phonics – concentrating on beginning sounds of words.  He is doing very well with this.

We were busy, like I said, working on Christmas decorations.  Here are a couple of pictures from that.

We are using our nativity scene for our Raising Rockstar lessons this month.  This week we set up the nativity scene as we read Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus in the bible.

We also had fun decorating the Christmas tree and getting some really good pictures in the process!

Seth is getting so big!  It is so hard to believe that he is approaching 5 years old (in March).  We are planning on having a great big 5 year old birthday party!!

Our Handmade Christmas Blog is up!

Hey guys!!  I have decided how to share my handmade Christmas presents with you to give you ideas for fun,easy Christmas gifts.

I have created a new blog specifically for this.  The main reason is because my family, who I am making these gifts for, reads this blog and I don’t want to ruin their surprise (so family please please please do not go to this other blog until after Christmas!)

Iwante to be able to share my ideas that I have found in hopes that you will find some ideas so that you too can have a handmade Christmas!!!  I really think too much emphasis is put on how much we spend at Christmas…who gets the most expensive gift.  I do not think that is what Christmas should be about!  Christmas is all about giving (we are celebrating the birth of our Saviour – who gave his LIFE for us).  Christmas should be about creating and sharing memories!  Having a handmade Christmas helps accomplish that!

Some of these gifts my children have helped me with…some of them they haven’t (mainly due to their young age).  I will do my best to give clear instructions.  Most of these ideas I have found from other websites and I will give credit where credit is due!

And I love comments!!  So please please please let me know what you think and if you found any of these ideas useful.  Please feel free to share links to these blog posts!

So if you would like to see what we are doing for our handmade Christmas please click here to go to the blog (family please please please do not click that link!)