Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Life School

Tot School

Here are some pictures from the last 2 weeks of our life.  Wiggles has been very busy.

 Roller derby Aaron  Aaron train set

Wiggles loves to put on his Big Sis’ skates (pay no attention to my laundry in the picture LOL)…he also loves his Thomas train sets….

We went to the lake and you can see how much Wiggles loved it…

 Aaron in lakeBritt and Aaron in lake Aaron on beach at lake Aaron on float in lake

We have been going to the ball field for the big kid’s baseball games and Wiggles plays on the playground.  Here are a couple of pictures…

Aaron at ball park playgroundAaron in the sand at playground

Monday, July 27, 2009

Busy Summer and found a Co-op for next year!

We have been busy with summer baseball with the bigger kids and haven’t had much time for “school”.  Wiggles has been learning a lot.  I just haven’t had my camera there for “life” school.

I will try to sneak some pictures this week though as we are in tournament time for baseball and soon it will be over.

The great news is I was pointed in the direction of a local co-op and it does music, art, and drama.  I am very excited.  Big Sis is going to learn guitar.  Bubba and Tadpole will have p.e., music, language arts, and art.  Bubba’s p.e. is called Loco-Motion (it sounds fun).  Big Sis will have individual guitar lessons, music theory, art, book club/drama, and p.e.  So that takes a weight off of my shoulders for these extras.

Here is the really great news!  Wiggles will be in the co-op as well for pre-school classes with music, crafts, story time, ABC-123’s, hands on learning and play group!  They use a lot of Abeka resources and he will be used to the format.

I have been seriously debating whether to continue Little Hands to Heaven.  It is a very repetitive guide and he already knows his letters and sounds and numbers and can count.  I am out of printer ink and masking tape and have been too busy to get more with baseball going on.  The amount of copying that the guide requires will suck your printer dry. 

He had been getting bored with LHTH before baseball and not wanting to participate in any of it.  He did start out liking it and enjoying the activities, but as the weeks have went on and it has been the same activities every week…he has shown a preference for the Abeka materials.

We have been doing Abeka sheets instead and it has just went so much smoother and he seems to enjoy it more.   I’m not going to worry about it until baseball is over and then we will try one more week of Little Hands to Heaven and see how it goes before making the final decision as to whether to continue.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Mix and Match week

Tot School

We are still doing LHTH, but we are doing more Abeka at the same time. 

Letter-F, Review E

Number-7 , Review 3

Bible-Young Moses

I am still without masking tape and ink for my printer so we kind of just winged it this week.

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Sorting bears by color into their cups and sorting the cups on our Pooh color wheel.

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Coloring

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Wiggles trying to infiltrate the kitchen and Bubba in the background jumping on the couch.

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My mischevious boys acting all sweet after being caught in the act.

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Wiggles Ee Abeka page.  We glued salt to our Ee’s for the snow.

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Coloring out Abeka 3 page.

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Finished page

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Practicing Coloring

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We love trains.

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This is an activity from LHTH.  We are studying about Moses and Wiggles had to glue the basket to the water (blue paper) and hide it in the grass.

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That is it for our week.  We had a good time even if we weren’t too organized about it.

gdiaper Winner

Congrats to The Bluths!  I will be contacting you by email to get your info and such.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Unit 7 (Sort of)

We started Unit 7 this week learning the letter F, but we didn’t make it too far.  I was out of masking tape and some other supplies…so we just worked on some fun Abeka coloring sheets.

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Big Sis helping Wiggles with his coloring sheets.

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This is Wiggles joining in on Big Sis’ BHFHG lesson.  He is pointing to the North Pole and saying Nort ‘ol.  LOL!

We are going to pick back up our lessons this week with Unit 7.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Unit 6

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Tracing our E with our sandpaper letters.

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Relaxing with Bubba

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Using tongs and pom poms to color sort.

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Putting little pom poms through the tiny hole in a Cane’s cup.

Wiggles had a great week and we are really enjoying school again.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

gdiapers Sweet Deal-(Contest Over)

(Wiggle’s sweet little gbum when he was just a little Wiggles)

gdiapers is having a sweet deal right now.  They are selling their everyday g’s 6-pack (3 orange/3 vanilla bean) for $70.  That isn’t the best news.  As a gmum, I am getting a $30 off code that I am going to share with you guys….which means…yep, you can get 6 gdiapers for $40!

Here is the code- g1014Taylor

To use your personal gMum/Dad coupon code, add one or more everyday g's six-pack(s) to your gDiapers.com cart, enter your code and click the "redeem" button. The price will automatically drop from $70 (regular price) to $40. What a sweet deal!

They are also going to start selling gcloth!  I am super excited about this!  So now gdiapers will offer both the flushable environmental friendly grefills and gcloth as options to “stuff” your gdiapers.

I love all the options!

I could go on and on gushing about gdiapers…here is a link for you to check them out yourself.

gdiapers.com

To celebrate this sweet deal, I will do a giveaway of one everyday g’s 6-pack.  All you have to do is leave a comment to enter.  This giveaway ends on July 10, 2009.  I will draw a number and that comment number wins.  So make sure to leave your comments by then.

I’m excited this is my first give away!  gdiapers for a happy planet!

Monday, June 22, 2009

Marvelous Monday

Tot School

LHTH-UNIT 5

Letter-Ee

Number-6

Bible-Joseph becomes a leader.

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Practicing tracing sandpaper letters for the letters we have learned so far.

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I somehow skipped the Wikki Stix when we learned the letter Dd, but I remembered today when we introduced Ee.  He loves the Wikki Stix and will do them proper for a few minutes then he piles more and more on until he grows tired of it and he will help pick them all up and place them back in our ziploc bag.

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Here is our finished number 6 worksheet.  We glued 6 pictures of pillows onto our paper.

Friday, June 19, 2009

LHTH Unit 5

Tot School

Believe it or not, we have actually done LHTH everyday this week including Tuesday and Thursday!  It is going great.  Normally one of the girls helps me teach Wiggles.

They take turns on Tuesday and Thursday helping him do Abeka pages while I am teaching the other kids.

This week was review from A-D.  I didn’t get a lot of pictures, but we had fun.  I am loving using Playtime Devotions as his devotional.

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Riding our Thomas trains on the A.  BTW, never use your husband’s double sided industrial tape (he is an electrician) on carpet and leave for more than a day.  It is like cement.  I had to pry the A from the carpet and you can see where it left a mark in the shape of A.  Lesson learned.  If you can’t find your masking tape, do not grab something just because it looks similar.

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We learned about Joseph and his coat of many colors.  Here Wiggles is making a rainbow of stripes like the coat on his coffee filter.

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Tadpole helping Wiggles with his B project.

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His finished B project. 

This is from LHTH.  We thinned some glue with water.  Wiggles painted it on his B with a q-tip and then sprinkled decorating sprinkles on top.  It turned out great and colorful.

This has been an excellent week and we are now moving smoothly through our day with all the kids and schooling.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Unit 4

Tot School

We finally finished Unit 4 of LHTH. It tooks us 3 weeks! Public school got out the last week of May so we had a lot of awards assemblies to go to as well as Bubba’s kindergarten program. Then, I started schooling the big kids at home. So finally Wiggles has finished Unit 4 and we are back on track schooling.

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Here is Wiggles putting Tigger Tails (macaroni shaped like Tigger’s tail) on his Dd page for LHTH.

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Big Sis helping Wiggles write D and d in cornmeal after practicing with our sandpaper letters.

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Trying it by himself.

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These are our art work from the local library’s storytime.

I also made a schedule to keep all of us on track. I color coded it by kid and the together activities are their colors together…their names are on it but I blacked them out for the web.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Still Learning

Tot School

We are still doing LHTH, but we have slowed down quite a bit since I have started schooling the big kids also.  This week, I plan to get back into doing LHTH M,W,F with Wiggles.

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This is some horrible picture taking on my part.  Here Wiggles is jumping to “Rachel”.  We are learning about Isaac and his sons.  What you can’t see is the strip of masking tape that he was jumping from to his stuffed animal that was Rachel.  Then we marked his jumps and compared them shorter, farther, and closest.  As I said, horrible picture taking skills. 

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Here he is reading his Bible.  He always wants to read it himself after we are through.

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Here he is doing tiny pom poms through the straw hole of a Cane’s cup.

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Pouring kidney beans from the bucket to the measuring cup.

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I’ll just be honest.  I don’t know what he is working on here.  He is having snack and working on one of his sheets while watching Word World.

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This is one of his extras.  BTW, he shares a room with big brother (my 2 yr old does not have this many game systems).  He does have a Little Leaps Learning System which is great.  Here he is playing Thomas with some help from Big Sis.  These aren’t video games and you (or one of your bigger kids) do have to help your child with it.

http://www.leapfrog.com/en/families/little_leaps/little_leaps_learning/lilps.html

Leap Frog, unfortunately, has discontinued these.  They are much better than Vsmile baby.  You can still find them on Ebay for a good price with the dvd’s.