Homeschool Kindergarten and Preschool: Week 10Thanksgiving!

One of the easiest and our favorite craft for this time of year was the Give Thanks banner we made from a variety of beans, glue, yarn and construction paper. I wrote out the letters on the construction paper, the boys and I covered the letters with glue and the boys went to town placing the beans on the letters. We will definitely do this again next year.


The boys and I went shopping for our Operation Christmas Child boxes a few weeks back...and Penny went to. That is going to take some getting use to, I am so accustomed to saying just the "boys" :) The boys picked out some toy trucks, stickers, harmonicas etc as well as some fun toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap etc. We did this last year and Charlie really remembered the meaning behind what we were doing and was excited to pick out the different things to send to his "friend".
We had a lot of fun last week and did a BUNCH of school work and lots of fun activities gearing up for Thanksgiving.

There was also a lot of loving going on. Both boys are still smitten with their little sister :)

Tommy had fun playing playdough.

Charlie concentrated on Math and Phonics again this week. His teacher gave us permission to skip through a lot of the lesson since most of them are review for him at this point. I am carefully going through the lessons to make sure that we aren't overlooking any concepts that he does not know. I am excited to see him be a bit more challenged!

Both boys had fun with our Fall sensory bin. I added plastic gourds, paper leaves, crystal pumpkins, pine cones from Grandma Candace and a few trucks. I gave the boys some measuring cups, spoons and containers and let them go to town. They really enjoy these sensory bins and it really holds their attention.

We had fun making these Turkey hand print cookies. The boys helped with the entire process and had just as much fun eating them as they did decorating them ;)



They also completed some foam Turkeys that I picked up either at the art store or at the dollar store.


I also made a Cornucopia out of dough for our table centerpiece. It turned out ok, but I have bigger and better plans to do it again next year.


We read a few books about Thanksgiving and why we celebrate. I had wanted to make a Mayflower ship with Charlie but we didn't get to it...maybe next year.

We have so much to be thankful for! It was a great week!

Homeschool: Preschool letter T

I love the fact that our boys are learning side by side, teaching one another and having a great time doing it! And they look so cute too :)

This week we did a few scheduled activities for Tommy and finished up the letter T. He used playdough to make the letter T on his playdough letter mat.

He worked on some of his RRSP curriculum which had him practicing cutting along a thick grey line to cut out his Bible verse (Thou Shall Not Steal) for the week and then taped it together. He is very good at cutting but until last week I had not instructed him to actually cut on a line or a specific object out. I was pleasantly surprised the growth he had in this area in just a few days.

He worked on the foam ABC puzzle, pounding the back in with his little hammer and colored his letter T for turtle. We also reviewed his letter vocab cards.

Mr. Potato head came to the rescue while Charlie and Mom did some Phonics work.

Tommy and Miss S did some 1:1 sorting. The flash cards have a number 0-3 written on them and they had to put the correct number of pom poms into the right bowl.

For our craft we made window suncatcher tissue paper leaves. Tommy spent so much time putting every piece of tissue paper carefully on his sticky contact paper. He was so patient and insisted on doing it all by himself.

Charlie was also doing the same project and was a few steps ahead of Tommy. I didn't even have to tell Tommy what the next step was, clearly he was paying attention and was NOT going to miss any of the fun. He rolled out the air bubbles and then promptly ran off to the backyard to find leaves for me to trace. However, he got side tracked after finding a leaf or two and thought that "making" me some delicious mud and sand coffee and painting his arms with his creation was far more fun :)

I also bought out the watercolor paints for Tommy to experiment with. He used different fall colors to make a beautiful painting. We then cut the picture into little leaves and let him make a tree with fall leaves.


I really think that art is therapeutic for Tommy. He gets so serious about what he is creating, very quiet and is very purposeful in his creations. I love watching him create, he is such a sweet boy.

We also read a lot of books, ABC and fall themed books were our favorites.

Homeschool: Kindergarten week 3

(Charlie making a collage of drawn trains and train pictures he cut out of magazines)

Charlie had another good week of school. He continues to do well with his lessons. I am hoping that within a few weeks of having the baby that we will be able to settle into a daily schedule, for now we are doing school between my doctors appointments etc. So sometimes we are doing school in the morning (which seems to work best for us), during naps (Charlie is usually pretty tired by then and needs a rest as well, not the best time for school) or after naps (which works fine, but Mama is low on steam by then). Mornings seem to be our "good" time of the day for all of us, so we try to sneak school in then whenever we can.

Charlie continued on with his core lessons of Language Arts, Phonics and Math. Charlie also took the KRAL test this week and one online session with his K class.

We have gone back to Explode The Code for Charlie's handwriting practice as well as supplemental phonics. He really enjoys these workbooks far more then the Handwriting without Tears program...which literally brought us both to tears at one point :)

For fun we made Mummy Pizzas for lunch. I used toasted English Muffins, spaghetti sauce, pepperoni, sliced string cheese and grapes (for the eyes). The kids loved them and ate them right up!


One of the craft projects that we did this week was make suncatcher leaves using contact paper and tissue paper. Both boys loved doing this project. Charlie started off by making a pattern with the different color paper and then dumped a bunch of tissue paper over them to fill in the spaces. Tommy placed piece by piece and refused any help. His attention span these days is incredible. I have had both friends and his speech therapist comment on how amazing it is.

After the boys placed the paper down, they rolled out the air bubbles and then I sent them out to the backyard to find as many types of leaves as they could. Charlie brought back 4 different leaf styles that I then traced and cut out of their mosaic tissue paper creations. Daddy and Charlie later identified what kind of trees the leaves came from.

Charlie also did 2 different art pieces this week using pastels, which was his first go with them and he really enjoyed using them. So much in fact that I had to cut him off after he completed 2 art pieces one right after the other. My friend Susana, over at Our Homeschool Fun, introduced me to an amazing new art site for kids. I allowed Charlie to pick out one of the fall art projects from Art Projects for Kids and use his pastels for the first time. He choose the How to Draw a Fall Tree project.
This was the first time I had assigned him to look at a something and then draw what he saw. I think that he did a great job. He smudged the pastels with his fingers and tried to blend colors together to make the clouds. I also sat with Charlie and drew the same picture. We talked about how each of us was looking at the same inspiration picture and yet our pictures were very different and why that was.


Charlie had such a great time that he begged to make another drawing. This time he choose The Symbols of the Season project.

The only thing I made sure that he did was divide the paper up into the 4 boxes. I was really kind of surprised at how with this picture he added more detail and paid closer attention to the actual inspirational picture. He added the lines for the pumpkin and his eggplant had great resemblance to the other picture.


We did a lot of fun things this week alongside our normal studies. However,it was a hard week in terms of scheduling everything we needed and wanted to do. The 4 weekly doctor appointments are truly putting a damper on all the extracurricular activities and fun projects that I would like to do and had planned for the boys. We have had to withdraw the boys from the homeschooling co-op that meets on Mondays for this semester. It just wasn't possible to make it on Mondays until the following session that starts in January. I am really bummed about this (thankfully I hadn't talked about it too much with the boys!), but I know that this is a short season in our lives and in a few months we will be settling into a new routine and will be able to add more back into our daily lives.

Weekend of Fall Fun

We headed to Patterson's to pick some apples this past weekend, only to find out they don't start letting the public pick until the end of September. So the boys enjoyed delicious homemade donuts and fresh pressed apple cider instead. Charlie had a white cake donut with vanilla frosting and rainbow sprinkles. Tommy had a chocolate cake donut with chocolate frosting and topped with crushed chocolate cookie to look like dirt and a gummie worm. I miss eating sugar....sigh!

Then we headed to the pumpkin patch and drove the wooden tractor for a bit before heading out.

Fall was in the air, it was cool and crisp but so sunny and bright. I got us all it the mode for one of our favorite holidays...Halloween. So while Daddy slept in the boys and I made some cute and quick Halloween decorations for our home.

First we made Mummies. We raided the recycling bin and found an empty milk carton and a coffee can. We spread glue all over them and then the boys pressed down toilet paper as the mummy rags and glued eyes peaking out of the bandages. I think they are so cute!!







Charlie wants to decorate the house all scary this Halloween. Mummys and Monsters seem to be the limit to his idea of "scary" this year....I am grateful! I love Halloween, but not all the gross gory and bloody stuff. So this year I am still safe that my idea of cute and his idea of scary are one in the same ;)

Tommy's monster, Tommy working on his monster, Charlie's monster

We made scary Frankenstein Monsters out of cereal and cracker boxes. I cut out shapes for the boys and they glued the ones down that they choose. Charlie wanted to add stitches to his Frankenstein and Tommy wanted the side pegs on his "happy monster".

Over the hills and through the woods.......

Our last stop on our Thanksgiving travels, took us to Nie Nie and Papa's house.

We did a lot, and yet we did nothing at all!

We visited an incredible cheese house where we stuffed ourselves with cheese and watched cheese being made. Very cool and very yummy!

Grandpa took the boys on loader rides, as usual. Tommy could hardly wait and went from vehicle to vehicle asking for a ride on them with Papa. Charlie was skeptical this time about a ride, but compromised with Grandpa and found a safe spot near the gear shift for him to ride and put the loader into "gear".

The boys love to ride with Grandpa on the loader.
Thomas x's 2

There were cuddles and shows


We decorated our Gingerbread house as part of our Advent activities


And Charlie and Grandpa also did some building together.

Two little Christmas Elves at work.


And this sweet boy, well, he is just sweet!