Homeschool Madness

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I have been contemplating this for a while now. Luigi is clearly ready for preschool type work and we have pretty much been doing just that. However, the Princess loves to do whatever Luigi is doing. But she’s only going to be three here in about a month. I guess I’m just tied up with the name…Preschool. Are they really getting old enough for that? Are my babies growing up that quickly? Part of me wants to keep calling what they do Tot School just to keep them younger in my head.

Usually, I will put together several activities for them; more for Luigi and only a couple for the Princess according to her abilities. But they are basically learning the same thing. We are currently using the Letter of the Week from Confessions of a Homeschooler. With Luigi, I am focusing on teaching him to write the letters, as well as identify the capital and lowercase. And the same goes with every other skill.

So my basic plan is to keep doing what we have, with Luigi doing more Preschool-ish activities and the Princess still doing Tot School-ish activities. (Even if they both chime in together) I will continue to present the same material with the goal of introducing it to the Princess and working on proficiency with Luigi. Hopefully we can still have most of our time together this way.

I am also working on being more organized with these two. I want to get a workbox-ish system going for Luigi and trying to either have them share some boxes, give the Princess her own boxes, or use trays for her. We have the trays already. We just use them for crafty things right now.

Oh the possibilities!

For this stART project, we read Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews.

In the story pictures are made with black dots, each picture using one more, resulting in a cute little 1-10 counting book. Luigi got a kick out of the train (surprise, surprise) and they all liked the balloons.

Afterwards, the children decided that they wanted to make pictures using dots.

Luigi chose to use a black marker to make dots and I helped him connect the dots to make a picture. The princess started out using the marker to make the black dots but then wanted to use the round stickers I found. Mario used two stickers and drew a nice little picture of himself dressed up as the character Link.

I have never intentionally done a stART project. I always thought it was a good idea, but never put one together. Well, inspiration must have hit the children this week because after reading some of our new library books, they asked if they could do something more. Like I’m going to say NO?

First, we read Blue’s Big Week by K. Emily Hutta

This one was a super easy one because in the back of the book, it gives you a project idea related to the story. In the story, blue leaves clues as to what she wants to do on Friday. Throughout the story, she fills in each day of her calendar with things she wants to do that day. So, after reading the story the children each made their own “My Week” calendars.

Mario chose to read a book on Sunday, practice his skateboard on Monday, play outside on the play set on Tuesday, play in our pool on Wednesday, draw with chalk on Thursday, set up our tent on Friday, and go to the park on Saturday.

Luigi and the Princess wanted to have friends over Sunday, blow bubbles Monday, go to the library on Tuesday, go to the pool on Wednesday, ride bikes on Thursday, have ice cream on Friday, and go to the park on Saturday.

Luigi is 3, Peach is 2!

We are using Letter of the Week from Confessions of a Homeschooler!

We’ve been having lots of fun this week! See HERE to see all that we’ve been up to!

I printed off Letter B activities but we never got to them. Instead, we took it easy (as easy as we could with our crazy schedule) and did a few fun things with these Ant Numbers from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Luigi and Peach love to walk, run, jump, and everything in between on these numbers!

Here he goes!

(He was so cute doing this, I couldn’t pick just one picture!)

Then we set up the numbers like a hopscotch (his idea!) and they hopped on the numbers:

Going backwards…

Going forwards…

And finally, we brought out the cars and drove them through the numbers. We talked about how old they were and how old they will be on their birthdays (both are coming up very soon!)

We had ONE free day on Friday where we didn’t have anywhere to go. I took the opportunity to make an Aa craft that we weren’t able to fit into our Letter A weeks.

This was a collaborative effort, with Luigi wielding the glue and coloring the baby a, Peach helping me color the big A (with Luigi tracing it in black) and both of them using their fingers to put ants on the anthill. I thought it came out really cute and Luigi was mega impressed!

Non A activities…

Luigi has suddenly become interested in building his own lego creations…the world better watch out!

We also did two stART activities this week (very unintentionally! It just happened!) which I will blog about very soon!

That was our week! To see what other moms are doing, click the Tot school link at the top!

We’ve had a full week! Summer just keeps going and going!

Fourth of July, we made a blackberry pie (slightly overdone! Oops!)

And we made Smores on a stick! Ours are…slightly messier than the tutorial!

Later in the week, Mario dressed up like a sorcerer…

We caught a story telling at the library…

We went to the BIG pool!!

Mario had fun practicing his swimming skills…

The little ones had fun playing in the shallow end…

We had some fresh corn from our garden for dinner!!

And baby Daisy went to a baby birthday party!

All these babies are from our November due date group! The birthday girl was born four  months early!

Never a dull moment with us!

It’s always a treat when our cousins come to visit!

The dog gets a good look at the guinea pigs…

Princess Daisy gets a good look at the dog…

The boys play with the dog…

And everyone has tons of fun!

And they all slept so well that night! We really should do this more often!

Okay, I just dated myself with that title. Oh well.

Here’s a little bit of the fun we’ve been having with our time off this Summer!

A little reading…

Drawing mazes…

Drawing on graph paper…

We are keeping up with our math skills using these neat Spiderman addition and subtraction cards we found in the Target dollar section a while back!

What’s a Summer day without some Lego building?

These kids really, and I mean really, love their guinea pigs! They make homes for them, make mazes for them, carry them around…the guinea pigs don’t complain. I think they are used to the kids now and they just hang on for the ride…

Ahhh! Giant guinea pigs terrifies the city!

I’m so glad the kids enjoy them!

Today I found an easy way to impress my children…

My super hero tools…

Mix the batter and pour into heart shapes…

Add some sprinkles

and attempt other crazy shapes…

And the wow factor has been put back into a pancake breakfast!

To make it into a Muffin Tin breakfast, we added silicone cupcake liners with syrup for dipping, scrambled eggs, diced ham, and blueberries!

The Princess tasted a blueberry for the very first time and declared them “very GOOD!”

Mario declared this the “best, best, BEST breakfast EVER!” And he wants me to do this exact same thing tomorrow.

Luigi was too busy stuffing his face to give an opinion

I simply MUST do this more often! They each ate three or four pancakes EACH! So glad they enjoyed it!