School Update 8-14-13

The school routine has been going very well; they even tell me "mommy, let's play school now." We have been steadily working on days of the week, letters, colors, shapes, straight/curved lines, phonics, art crafts, following directions, critical thinking skills, math basics, and prayers/commandments. They can now both verbally spell their names, and Lucas is a pro at writing it. Olivia just started writing her name without my "dots" to trace.

 We made these books for the letter N today. There are so many great free preschool ideas online. :)

 We started learning The Lord's Prayer this week. I don't specifically remember saying it in front of Olivia too much, but she seems to remember certain parts...I forget she has the memory of an elephant. I downloaded a kid's song version to play today and they liked it. It's sometimes seems like it will be difficult explaining concepts from the Bible to such young kids, but they are pretty receptive to the lessons about being fair and just and forgiving. The only funny thing is that Lucas tends to say "Kevin" instead of "Heaven" :) There are some questions that are harder than others to answer...we recently watched "The Prince of Egypt", and Olivia asked, "so if you're bad, God takes away your children?" I didn't know exactly how to answer..I told her God took the children to Heaven with Him, but wanted to send a message to the adults that they were doing wrong by enslaving the Hebrews. I tried to just say that yes in the earlier days, God would punish people for not listening to His rules. Then He gave Moses the commandments to share with the people, and eventually His son Jesus came to save us, but we still need to listen to Him and be good to each other. She didn't ask anything else so I guess that was satisfactory for now..

 These were fun for them to do. Matching ice cream cones/scoops according to the number, shape, upper/lower case, and colors. Anything using gluesticks excites them. haha.

 They've pretty much memorized the commandments (and throw them in each other's faces when they aren't behaving..). 

These are the manuscript books. I write the upper/lower case once for Lucas (left) and he writes the rest of them all the way across. For Olivia (right) I lightly write upper/lower case all the way across for her and she traces them. I think she will soon be ready to write them on her own. 

 These are the full curriculum books we ordered. We do about 5 pages a day. Here's an example:

I found these books for $1 at target (lots of good stuff at dollar store too). I didn't incorporate it in "school time", but instead gave it to Lucas in his free time, to try to keep him from playing too much nintendo lol. He worked diligently on his own for a while and look how well he did: 

 Lucas has been writing his numbers 1-10 on his own daily...he loves to write the number 5....he says, "it looks big and strong like daddy!" We have to laugh, because he evidently thinks the big belly on the five looks like daddy's, and that it equates strength :) I'm surprised he didn't call me a 5 yet, but I supposed my profile would look more like a big ass B!

We started 11-20 today. Writing them was no problem, but he has trouble pronouncing 13 and 14--they sound the same from him (it's hard for them both to pronounce "th")

We were working on our last name yesterday (spelling it aloud is always more difficult for him than writing it). And he has trouble remembering some of the names of letters. I know he learns best with video/song, so youtube is another 'resource' we use. A week ago he kept calling "S", "the snake", because he forgot its actual name is S. A couple Youtube videos later, he was yelling out "ELL  YOOO  CEEE    AY    ESSSSSSSSSSSSSS! LUCAS!"

  (as opposed to "ell yoo cee ay snake" lol) 

I wish I had been doing this much earlier, especially since neither of them ever had any preschool or class experience. But I think they will do great as long as I persevere. 

Meet Bubbles

Today daddy got up early & excited like a school girl going to Disneyland :)

 We all went to the reptile expo in Arlington to 'look at' snakes. John had a few pet snakes in his childhood and has always enjoyed them. Ever since we planned on going, Lucas and Olivia have asked if we could get one...

 I wasn't sure if John was going to, but I want him to be happy and this really made him happy so we did. I will not be the one feeding, handling or cleaning his cage, so I hope it all goes well.
Here's the tour of the expo:

 Meet Bubbles the Snake:

 If you haven't heard of one of the funniest shows ever, it's called Trailer Park Boys. Bunch of funny Canadians in a trailer park. My favorite character in the show is Bubbles..here's a sample:

I guess we have a "school pet" in our classroom now :)

    We walked around and saw all the crazy reptiles and spiders and tiny baby snakes & turtles. The kids enjoyed it and just at the end, John said, "Everyone only breeds ball pythons..I really want to see the jungle carpet pythons" and ta-da, they appeared. They were so small and docile looking, but apparently while they are little, they can be aggressive. They need to be 'handled' and get larger, and they become calm. So we bought one and got all the accessories, and even fed him tonight..I/m a girl and I feel bad for the mice, even though I'm not an 'animal-lover'...Lucas was concerned about the mouse, and I just said the mouse goes to Mouse Heaven...and that it's the circle of life, and the snakes need them to survive. Olivia was a little concerned, but continued to laugh hysterically during the mouse's demise...go figure.

Here's the feeding video...interesting to watch...make sure you watch til the end for a funny clip...

Tim & Teresa

Cousin Teresa and Tim came over for dinner tonight. They hadn't seen the house since it was just starting to be built so it was fun to watch the kids give them the tour. They have 2 little dogs that are their babies, so they liked Shmoopy & Tyrone---and the dogs thoroughly liked them and showed off all their 'tricks'. :)

  I am excited for Frankie to meet his Godparents! A few more months!

An oldie

This was 2 yrs ago shortly after moving into our first place in Houston (after the Navy). Aunt Susan came to visit and babysat while John and I went to the new house in Humble to paint it. This video was so cute to see how much younger my babies were, and listen to Lucas continually saying "Addibader" while swinging back and forth. I can't say whether his pronunciation of alligator has improved much lol.

Olivia's First Dance Class

Olivia had her first combo tap/ballet class this afternoon. She's never really been in a group/class setting, and I've only been homeschooling for a few weeks, so I was anxious to see how well she paid attention and followed directions in a group. I think she was the youngest, (the class is ages 3.5-5 yrs) but she did alright. She looked so cute but the studio is pretty small and all the parents were like me, wanting to get video and pictures, and had other kids with them so it was kinda stuffy. I think I will just drop her off from now on. Lucas behaved well, playing candy crush. He is excited to start Tball next week too.

Here's some cute video at the end of them skipping around:

Olivia liked it and wants to "go back everyday". I hope it gets easier (for the teacher especially lol) and that we get to see her dance in a recital this year. 

Irony

I had to take a picture of Johnny tonight. We have been enjoying trips to Hobby Lobby, first to get homeschooling supplies/crafts for the kids, but we also enjoy crafts for us. I have very boring non-athletic hobbies...aside from my music, I like logic puzzles ( i just got a 20 pack of puzzle books..) blogs, reading...um super nintendo..eating. Although I used to enjoy the time to do scrapbooking,  I am not very good at it or crafty and don't know how to use 99% of the stuff Hobby Lobby has, but would like to learn.

First we got latch hook sets....I am embarassed to say I screwed it up...twice! I was almost done too. I wanted to hang the latchhook rug in Frankie's nursery...but there were 3 different greens, and I assumed wrongly...these colors look a lot darker without flash, but anyway, they had that dark blue-green color on the right, designated as the "bright green", when I assumed "bright green" was the middle, bright green one...I ran out of one of the greens at some point and realized I messed it up...

   Anyway, we got a new one and John and I made sure the colors were correct before starting (this one has FOUR different greens lol). We also picked up a cross-stitch set, that John wants to complete and frame for his mom when they visit for Frankie's birth...neither of us had ever done one, but thought it looked pretty easy. We were wrong! We were clueless, and after watching a few youtube videos (that weren't very helpful) we figured it out ourselves and though it takes forever to get a lot done, it's pretty cool.

  So, I just find it ironic that John, this big lumberjack looking guy, is drinking his beer and...cross-stitching! He's a little embarrassed  (Norman and I tease him) but I find it cute and I am sure Louise will like it.