Getting Better and Better

I am excited to share that each week is getting better and better with school. Pax and I have fallen into a routine that works for us and for the most part, it hasn't been interrupted too much. Today we had a review day on some of the things we learned this week (because this week deemed challenging as far as how much new information was in our curriculum). Our review day didn't last as long as a normal day and Pax was rather upset our school time was over early; happy Mom moment right there!

Here are some of the things we learned about or experienced this week:

We learned a lot about plants this week and one of the science experiments we were supposed to do last week, we did on Monday. (I had to go grocery shopping for food coloring and celery) We learned that plants receive water from the root and the water travels to the leaves. The celery is an excellent way to demonstrate because the food coloring changes the colors of the leaves when they receive water.

We did an introductory lesson on rainforests and part of our art assignment was to draw plant and animal life we would see in the rainforest. We used YouTube to listen to the sounds of the rainforest while coloring with markers. Pax said this was one of his favorites of the week because I colored with him. LOL.

One of our favorite ways to read is on the floor or couch. We like to get comfortable and just take it in. Pax choose to lay on the floor while listening to his Bible story about Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt. We also had our oil diffuser running (as you see in the picture above) because we were both feeling a little but congested from the change in weather.

Paxton has really worked hard on writing his numbers. He said writing numbers is much harder than writing letters. I think he is doing a fabulous job myself.

Unfortunately, the weather was cold and rainy most of the week but we still managed to have some fun at the park and in our yard. We brought out the sidewalk chalk to practice the new letters we were mastering and we spent time at the park burning off energy!

Weekly Accomplishment: number writing (specifically 1-7 and working on 8 and 9)
Working On: The sounds letters make (M,T,R,B,F,A)
New Skill: writing words and recognizing them (This week we learned mat, rat, at, and fat)

Have a great weekend everyone! :)

Day, Interrupted

Last week was probably one of the best weeks we've had in homeschooling. Paxton really showed consistency and progress in his handwriting, both with letters and numbers. On more than one occasion, when we had finished our homeschool assignments for the day, he asked me if he could work on extra stuff. You aren't going to see any pictures of assignments this week though, because I think some of our favorite experiences were done outside of the "classroom".

We hit our first "I don't feel like it" day on Thursday. I welcomed it with opened arms because this meant we would be getting the first one out of the way and I would know how to better prepare for the next one. I noticed his attitude was off from the moment he woke up on Thursday morning. He acted grumpy, didn't want to eat breakfast, and kept slouching in his chair when we began activities. He finally fessed up and told me he just didn't feel like doing school at the moment. I had texted my best friend Misty and asked for a quick prayer to get me through the day because we were having a rough morning. She, in her infinite wisdom, suggested we take a much needed break and head outside.

Misty suggested something I should have thought of doing at the first sign of Pax's struggle. I just wanted to stick with our routine and move along. I love looking back at this moment and realizing just how flexible homeschool is supposed to be and to take advantage of our freedom to break the routine when needed.

Here is the result of our break:

I love this picture! He is laughing, the hose created a beautiful rainbow, and his/my stress diminished as soon as we stepped outside.

We did a lot of other fun things last week too! Check them out....

 On Tuesday (which is going to be a weekly thing) we visited the library with our cousin Jude. Pax had fun playing on the computer.

 Pax and Jude exploring the Lincoln logs

One of our science experiments consisted of adding soil and water in a mason jar, shaking it up for a few minutes, and waiting for 24hrs to see how it separates into humus, water, clay, and rock.

Do you see the layers?

We had a piano lesson with Grandma and are learning how to recognize quarter notes, half notes, and whole notes, as well as paino (soft) and forte (loud).

Looking forward to a great week ahead! We are working overtime on some of our assignments to enjoy a few extra play dates this week!

Cooking Activity- Roman Bread Pudding

For the past couple of weeks, we have been learning about the Egyptians and the Romans. In today's lesson, in our book "Living Long Ago", we learned that the Romans ate lots of weird things like snails, oysters, stuffed dormice, and boar's head. We also learned about some of their desserts that sounded a little more appetizing.

Paxton suggested we try the recipe the book offered for Roman Bread Pudding. We had several disadvantages when attempting this recipe because one ingredient was bread and we only had diet low carb bread. I know from experience that this doesn't cook well. I also didn't have enough olive oil to make it more like deep fried but I agreed we could try it anyway and here is what we discovered.

 Pax helped me gather the ingredients which were milk, cubed bread, olive oil, and honey. 

The low carb bread soaked up the milk and became mushy instantly. We tried it out anyway and learned that it did not want to cook in the oil and only certain parts browned. Had we used more oil and attempted to deep fry, this might have worked better. 

We drizzled raw honey on top of the fried bread and Pax ate about half of his serving. I was done after one bite. LOL.

Maybe you are brave enough to try this recipe out for fun? We decided this is a recipe we probably won't be trying again but had fun anyway!

We're Back!!!

Good morning everyone! As Pax works on an art project, I am stealing a few minutes to share some of our adventures from the first full week of homeschool! I am beyond thrilled at how much fun we had last week. I still can't get over the fact that I have this amazing privilege to teach my son at home and be in control of what he is learning. I am living the dream! (my dream at least!)

I want to share with you some of the highlights from the week. I am sorry, but there will be a lot of pictures in this post as I cover the week. I am proud of everything we learned and how much fun we had getting back to our routine!

Enjoy!

~Kendra

Every kid deserves a first day of school picture, whether they homeschool or leave the home for school! This is my kindergartener!!!

Paxton loves to practice his handwriting and he is trying so hard to make the letters look just like the ones he traces. He is also learning to cut along the lines as well as cutting freestyle. He worked on this in Pre-K but now he really concentrates and doesn't want to be sloppy.

We got to turn water into ice and graph how long it took when placed in the freezer. (this experiment took about 6hrs from water to complete ice) and instead of making a tornado, we used out Discovery Kids tornado to observe how tornadoes are made. 

We got to celebrate our first "official" day of school with cousins Will and Jude at Chuck E Cheese and visit Will for lunch at his school later in the week.

On Wednesday, we were supposed to have some gross motor play at the park and visit with our friends Brittle, Silas, and Teddy. Unfortunately, an unexpected storm hit Springfield and we were stuck indoors for the day. We decided to make things fun by doing homeschool by candlelight, have flashlight play, and even read our book "The Mouse and the Motorcycle" in the dark. (we had electricity, but just decided not to use it and pretend instead)

Speaking of our current read aloud, "The Mouse and the Motorcycle", Pax came up with the idea to create a "safe" mouse trap using cheese, his VBS hat, and some toys under the hat for the mouse to play with. 

And last but not least, we decided to reorganize our homeschool supplies. Over the summer, I kept throwing things here and there and last week it felt a bit chaotic when I looked for our curriculum materials for each day. We now how every subject on a different shelf. I decided to recycle our diaper caddy and make it into an art caddy instead. Pax loves it and now all of his art supplies are in one place! 

Taking a Break

Hi guys,

If you follow us regularly then you know we try to post often but haven't been lately. We are too busy enjoying our summer and are taking a couple weeks off from blogging. Please come back and check on us August 25th when we resume homeschool and our normal routine. We are going to finish up the summer with VBS (Vacation Bible School), the State Fair, and a last minute vacation to Wisconsin.

I'll leave you with this cute picture of Pax! Enjoy!

Kendra

The Power of Play and Family

Sorry for the delayed post-we've been quite busy! I've been reading plenty of articles about how important it is for children to have time to play. The past couple of weeks have been just that and I can see a real difference in Paxton's disposition. He seems much happier and listens better when he's been given a substantial amount of play time and time to just be a child.

We've continued our curriculum throughout the summer but are spending about two days a week vs. the three to five when we first started. My goal is to start adding a day a week throughout August until we hit five days a week by mid-August. I have seen an increase in his attention span and the times we've spent reading our chapter books, he seems really engaged.

The past few weeks have been all about family too. We visited my step dad in the hospital while he was having back surgery and visited several times while he is "stuck" at home, recovering. We also try to head out to Greenview to visit my Grandma who will be ninety-six in August. AND, we were so excited to see our cousins from Tennessee- we hadn't seen them in two years. (That's just WAY TOO LONG!)

Needless to say, our time has been spent playing outside as much as possible and seeing as many family members as possible!

I'll quit babbling and let you see for yourself...

 July 9- visiting PaPa Tim in the hospital pre-surgery

Visiting Grandpa Biggs' house and got to explore the newly finished tree house he built for the grand kids!

                                  

Searching for bugs and learning to swim underwater. Both- a success! 

                                  

Painting Spiderman and working on our math work during a curriculum day. 

Ending the week with the sweetest surprise of all- we got to see our cousin Katie and her son Elijah while they were in town for a conference. They live in Tennessee and we don't get to visit often. Elijah and Katie are the ones on the end, next to me and Pax.

Next week will be another packed week as we volunteer to help out with our church Summit and meet various pastors and missionaries from all over the U.S. and assist in watching their children during the workshops/conference. I'll keep you posted on how that turns out and how much we actually accomplish in our own studies. Until then, have a fabulous weekend!

A Day in the Life of a Five Year Old

Yesterday was Paxton's fifth birthday. It doesn't seem possible that Donnie and I have been blessed for five years already as Pax's parents. Time flies and I am still trying to wrap my head around the idea of my little man growing up.

He woke up around 6 a.m. and the first thing he said to me was, "I thought when I turned five, my voice would sound different and I would be taller. Mom, I am not taller and I sound the exact same."
This kid cracks me up. I have no idea why he thought his voice would change but I had been telling him that he would grow bigger with each year.

Here is a recap of how we celebrated this little man turning five:

We started the morning off by opening the mustaches he got from his cousin Nate. We each placed one on our face and took selfies. (If you know me, you know this is a silly thing we do A LOT!)

After some breakfast and telling Daddy goodbye as he left for work, we ventured outside to do our usual bug exploration. We were quite pleased to find a giant moth and a bug we had never seen before. I must admit, it was refreshing not to have to search for spiders.

We released the moth before we could figure out what kind it was but we did research the other bug. He is an ivory marked beetle. We released him too! The bug catcher was also another cool gift from cousin Nate.

 

And then we went fishing out on Grandpa Biggs' pond. We had so much fun catching bluegill! Each grandkid caught at least three fish. We immediately released them back into the water-no worries!

PaPa Tim stopped by after we got done fishing with a ton of puzzles for Pax and an ice cream cone. Pax is so excited to try out all of these 3D bugs and dinosaurs!

We ended the day visiting Pax's favorite place to play- Chuck E. Cheese. Donnie, Pax and I had a little friendly competition at the Skeeball games and I am pleased to say I still hold highest score and ticket holder!

I must admit, I had just as much fun celebrating Pax as he did! :) Pax, you are one of the smartest, funniest, and sweetest boys we know and we are honored to be your parents.We love you buddy and hope you've had the best fifth birthday ever!