Day 3 - of back to school

Grade 3. The gusto and umph we started off with on day one has definitely worn off. It took over an hour to finish two lessons of math - and it wasn't particularly hard either. But she was distracted I guess. Its almost 3 pm and she's barely gotten hold of her grammar - but ET had an appointment at the doctor today so that was her excuse. Either way she has until 4 to get most of her stuff done or we can't do any sewing. ET gets grumpy later in the evening so that puts the a damper on further mummy assisted learning.

Pre-Kindergarten. Its always nice when you find out that your 3.5 yr old has been holding out on you. For months I've been trying to determine what S knows - how much of her alphabet, how far she can count. She's had no problems with colors or shapes since she was about 2 - but the rest she's been holding out on. So a few weeks ago, I sat down with her and found out that she knows 20/26 of the capital letters... and about 6 out of 26 lower case letters (ya we need to work on that.) But the shockers that I've gotten in the last few days are these.

• she knows what her name looks like (she pretends to be oblivious!)
• she can finger spell (ASL) her name
  
• she can count to 10 without help
• she can finger count (ASL) to 6
  

so last year's goals......Goals for S for 2008-2009

(DONE) - Identify shapes
( IP ) - Identify ABCs and the letter sounds
( IP ) - Develop a larger vocabulary
(DONE) - count 1-5
(DONE) - count 1-10
(DONE) - sing simple children's songs
(DONE) - Gross Motor Skills: run, jump, hop, march, roll, sommersault, tip toe, walk backwards

We've got them covered. The only thing left on the list is to identify letters and letter sounds which we're working on now. S is a funny little girl who will learn what she wants, when she wants and how she wants and there is no way of getting around that at the moment. So we've been working slowly on the letters and finding reasons that it might be useful. She's now interested in learning to read so the letters are becoming more important to her.

Newborn-garten!
Little ET has finally entered newborn-hood instead of preemie-hood! She is 6 days past her due date and currently 7 lbs 15 oz... at 2 months old. As far as preemies go, she's pretty uneventful. She's not engaging yet but she is waking up more. She definitely has the I want it "NOW" down pat. M has decided that she will be helping me make some toys and things for ET to look at. We're going to start of with some pompoms and black and white images to put around her bed/bassinet/playpen/change area.

So there you have it 3 grades ... and I've sorta got it under control at the moment.

Back in the Groove

I'm trying to get back in the groove of blogging... but not yet ready to jump into the whole school thing just yet. I guess the class room is being set up so to speak.

We added a new student to our classroom this year. She arrived earlier than planned, and had a little delay in the office - a tiny problem with transfer papers I guess you could say.

Little ET (as she will be known here) arrived on Jun 7th, at 31 weeks due to me having severe Pre-E (you can read the story at my main blog!) Spent 35 days in the Intermediate Care ICU (step down from the NICU in layman's terms.) In the mean time life is not usual at our house. LOL!

Feeling guilty that most of the summer was blown away with me in hospital, or me laid up post c-sec or travelling to the hospital daily - you get the picture, I started on August first to play with some fun ideas. I found obscure and neat holidays that are celebrated almost every day of the year. We don't have to do much - just pay attention that they are there and if the girls are up for it, we celebrate it.

August 1 was Raspberry Cream Pie day - so we gathered the ingredients (life got away with us) and we made our pie on the 2nd of August.

August 2 was Ice Cream Sandwich (and Sister's Day) - so I rushed out to the store, got ice cream sandwiches - and we ate the Raspberry Cream pie for dessert this day and had the ice cream sandwiches the next day! LOL! (a day late!)

August 3 was National Picnic Day in Australia, so we got some lunch and picnicked in the middle of the living room floor while watching the Lion King (because it was much too hot outside.)

August 4 (1901-1971) - was Louis Armstrong's Birthday - so we celebrated by finding different video/sound clips on the internet and listening to them. M was able to identify a song sung by Mr. Armstrong - "What a Wonderful World" - which I believe was in Madagascar (though don't quote me on that!)

Tomorrow (August 5, 1930) ... - is the other Mr. Armstrong's birthday. It will be "One Small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" kind of day... (this is fun! and we're learning something too.

I Quit, I Think - little homeschool article

A friend found this article that intrigued me. So I thought I'd share...

http://educationrevolution.stores.yahoo.net/iquit.html

It kind of echo's the sentiments of why many homeschool!

Still sidetracked.

But its always nice to find in the media (online) that your county is suffering a nasty outbreak of "Whooping Cough!" and there are fears that people have been under vaccinated!

Bad Blogger

I've been a really bad blogger here for a long time. Sorry diligent readers!
For the most part, we've been caught up in the Humdrum of getting it all done, and moving on to more exciting and fun things. We're about 2 weeks behind where we should be for the time of the year. M doesn't want to school on her birthday - so we're adding in a couple hours to our weekend and our week days here and there to get caught up.... slowly we're getting there.

I'm doing okay withM (7) and getting her stuff done, it's boring but we're getting there... I am trying to spruce up some of her lessons with different Brownie Badges or activities to fit it all together.... like this week we're working on a Sound unit and will tie it up by finishing her sounds of Music Brownie try it kit ... from making friends - mini Badge in a Bag program. Seemed a good fit. We also got to use the the tin can and string telephone that we made at Brownies to show how vibration makes sound travel through the string. Both the purpose the phone was made for and an added bonus we didn't have to wash and puncture another can to visually represent how the sound pushes the air to make noise that our ears hear... we just used our ready made kit! Bonus!

S (3) is another story. She's pretty good at keeping herself busy while I teach the older one or tidy up and then we try to do some fun stuff daily. But I feel really bad that I haven't truly been focusing on her needs like I did with M when she was little. Part of it is lack of energy, part is lack of imagination, and part is lack of patience. She often takes things to a new level and as such becomes hard to handle if I need to step away for a minute and do something else. Where M's attention was humungous at this age S' there and good for her age, but not near as long as M's. So I'm having a hard time. But I'm still looking for ideas!

School around here needs to be more fun, more creative... and I think that is where I'm struggling. I'm open to ideas... teaching grade 2 and then 3 ... and most definitely preschool (alphabet needs work, numbers need work - we're good on colors and shapes though so there is progress there!)

St. Patrick's Day is coming!

When M was tiny I got really into doing crafts with her but they were all over her head and I got frustrated, life then happened and I got out of the habit of doing this fun stuff with them.

Today I decided it was time to get back in the flow of things. Now both M and S are of an age that we can actually have fun with them. M is capable of doing it alone, where S needs more one on one help. Our adventures today lead us to make a Shamrock crown in preparation for the Big March 17th. Here is what we made!

Catching Up

I've been a slacker blogger lately. So sorry - life has a way of keeping me busy!

For Thanksgiving, we got a wonderful surprise and found out we are expecting again. I battled daily all-day nausea for a while and that came to an end with me promptly discovering I now have hypertension... fun fun, so we've been taking it easy and I've been staying away from my 'puter a little just because I think there are better ways for me to spend my time with the girls.

Excuses, excuses!

Well we've been busy with the basics of school, keeping things going and trying to add more fun stuff in. We stopped our Art classes for a while, so we could focus just on Ballet class once a week and Brownie Girl scouts.

For M we've started a 50 states lapbook which might turn into a notebook instead just because there was so much cutting and pasting to do that it became tedious. (did I forget to mention I hate cut and paste... and while m could do it, that would be all we'd do for days on end! LOL!) So far we're finishing up Delaware, which I think might take 2 weeks, because while we've covered the basics of the State, we still have a bunch to read and learn.

Well, while we were doing that S decided she wanted something too. So this past week we decided to get started on the Letter of the Week Program. We're doing the prep curriculum, because until now she hasn't really had any desire to know her alphabet or counting. Now for my part, I don't believe that she "needs" to be doing anything more than having fun and learning as she goes, but she is asking to do stuff, and this seems easy and fun for her, so we're running with it. No pushing, no pressure as long as it fun we'll keep doing it.

I'll be back in bit to post S's totbook! And links to M's also!