Tag Archive | months

Slow Move to the End of the Week

There have been a few goings on that I have NOT posted about… let’s see… I had Ken pick up something off Freecycle – some sheets… flannel and not that while they won’t work for the original plan (pink for Trinity to make into curtains), the flannel ones will work for Emanuel’s mattress bed (at least until we buy him a single). So that is something! The others… well I am debating some ideas of making them into something!

I do have pictures of two of my leopard print duct tape creations! I am loving the look of it and plan on making a purse using these two colours and black… though I am debating the pattern and look I want.. Do I want to use MORE leopard and black accent… so maybe all the long strips be the cookie dough, the horizontals be the leopard and the accent black? PLEASE weigh in people!!

Spotty

I finished up the boys’ Trumpet of the Swans books they made. I used a cropodile and these neat plastic rings that I found at the local kids’ supply store! I think they worked out nice! This is the same thing we plan on doing with Stuart Little when we finish the book.

And then there is the laminating! Well I got done the Buggy Board Math Mats… all I need are some dry erase markers, the crayons are nice but I want markers as well. 

Laminated and ready to go

And then there is the days of the week and weather/season pieces I got from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I have subscribed to her newsletter and it is absolutely AWESOME for ideas. I seriously wish I could turn my blog into something like that, but I also enjoy it being a lot more than homeschooling… this is us in a nutshell to share with the friends and family who are NOT able to enjoy and experience first hand on a regular basis. 

We started our day early today… BLECK! We are so not a morning family. But we needed to go to the bank and thought we could go at opening. Turns out we had to wait until 11am for an appointment time but Ken had to run out to the post office to sign a form and send it right back for a contract anyway. So it was lucky he did that and stopped in at the bank to make the appointment without us. It really is a pain to get the kids into the vehicle and then it turn out to be for nothing! Since Trinity was up until midnight playing (so not happy about that) she actually slept in and had to be woken up. Echo woke up before 5 am and Ken was not cognizant enough to realize he should NOT take her out of the crib until it was too late. So they finished the morning on the couch snuggling. The boys found the one bit of Legos I had not put IN the bucket and stowed back away and used that as an argument starter while I was waking up and bathing… seriously Legos are a blessing and a curse in this house! 

Pre Bank Post Lego

I have to say I am in love with BMO, they were able to give us an appointment that we got into when we walked in the door… the lady was nice, speedy and able to deal with the kids easily! Joint account is now done… Just need to set up auto withdrawals and deposits and all that… though personally, I prefer cash! I actually have an aunt who works for BMO (different town) so bad on me to NOT be dealing with them already!

We decided to fill our morning up before the appointment by watching Electric Company. The kids (Echo included) really do enjoy the segments and the music and the storyline. I am not sure how much is sticking yet but today we were reviewing some of our favourite episodes… Netflix only has the first 12 of the new series… and pbskids.org does NOT allow Canadian viewing of full episodes (figures), the same issue as Cyberchase… Ken is still working on finding us episodes we CAN watch… I am almost down to having to purchase the dvds… not cheap!

We finally assembled our months of the year lapbooks. I used a couple resources for this… but the main one is a lapbook set up from homeschoolshare.com. As well as months of the year printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I also looked up months of the year on EnchantedLearning. We added in our pictures from yesterday based on the books we read and it turned out quite nice! Hopefully the boys can come back to these books and work on their months… we are getting there but it is not as easy to experience months as it is the days of the week! 

Finished!

All open

I heard back this morning that my dad’s second procedure was a success… both arteries are unclogged and he gets to go home tomorrow! Certainly a weight off my shoulders. I hope to get a chance to chat with him very soon! It is hard to be so far away but at the same time, thank goodness for technology to keep in touch! 

We ended our day early with a lovely early dinner for the kids and then Emanuel and I made up a crazy patterned flower! I was surprised at how the two patterns looked so… cute together. He was so proud! Zander and I have had a nice long talk and discussed his obsession with things we really can’t do right now the way he wants to (going to the beach, digging for treasure chests… playing hours of Minecraft). We are going to find things he DOES like to do and we CAN do together. The plan is to make a duct tape creation tomorrow just the two of us.

Emanuel and his flower

That is something we so quickly forget about – the one on one time… with all the kids and Echo’s needs the time gets lost in the muddle. It is something to work for. It looks like I may go on a trip to visit Karyn’s parents’ farm on Sunday… and Saturday is kick it to the curb – where you can put stuff out on the curb and people can come and take what they can use. Should be an interesting weekend!

Binky Baby

What a Day!

So I am rather sure aliens picked up my kids and replaced them last night with grumpy old men… that is the only answer as to why all of them are acting like nothing ever goes their way and life is 110% UNFAIR! Well, probably not, but it is a better and more humorous one than – they just all are cranky. Which they are! It has been a rather uphill battle all day with schooling, cleaning, playing nicely together… you name it, they simply could not do it.

BUT we did get in some library book time… 2 Hello Kitty, one Dora and two books about the months of the year.  And then the boy all drew their favourite month… 

Favourite months

Really beyond some workbook time…

Sight word book

It was just best for everyone that the kids head outside and play! Thank goodness they are listening and remembering to put their lid on their sandbox. There is a stray cat running around (we think an escaped pet) and that is all we need – kitty using the sandbox as a LITTER box! 

Fun in the sun

At least Ken had enough time free to do some more work with magnets with the kids… we need  to find some sort of sheet or something they can do to put in their files!!! He is really trying hard to spend more time with them whenever possible as they have been asking him to! 

Daddy time!

I spent my free time laminating the last of our stuff that was waiting and cutting everything out. I will share those tomorrow… Right now I need to get back to tidying and sorting for tomorrow. We have an early morning bank run to do, lapbooks to finish and hopefully a real LACK of bad moods and attitudes! 

Of course THESE TWO got along fabulously for the most part

This entry was posted on 12/10/2011, in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

Back to Schooling

In starting out week we started our concentration on learning about the days of the week. We have walked through the names multiple times but this week I have decided to use some of my online resources and find some worksheets to help cement the information. This ties in nicely with what Gavin needs to learn about to progress in his math book. Though I am finding it harder to track down good worksheets about the months.

I finally found the time to trim down our coin flashcards my sister-in-law Holly pointed out to me (they are using the same website for some resources in my nephew Jimmie’s classroom). I printed them out on cardstock and wrote the answers on the bottom left hand corner on the back. Gavin spilled a little paint on a few of them but on the back so I am not going to waste the paper to reprint.

Flashcards

With dealing with the months I found a variety of pages to get us started. The first worksheet was more about seasons and time to just sort of tie that in to the months in the year. The bulk of my pages ended up coming from EnchantedLearning. Just search out months and days of the week and there is quite a variety of printouts for all sorts of ages and levels. This is one subscription I am planning on keeping up for as long as I can! For starting with the days of the week I gave them this worksheet first based on the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We have a couple copies of this book though I have already packed them up (figures). the boys are rather familiar with the story. We did, however, find a youTube video of the story for tomorrow.

Working on the worksheets

Completed Weekday book

I sent out emails to the two homeschooling egroups I am a part of to see if anyone else has some ideas and personal experience on this subject. I cannot emphasize enough how helpful it is to have cyber support group when homeschooling. We are the only family in our group of friends and even our family who is homeschooling so often times when things come up or we need information our usual avenues are simply not there. The city we are moving to has a rather active homeschooling environment. The big yearly conference is based there. That is actually one of the reasons we chose this city as our new home. Where we live now is surrounded by schools so people who chose to live here tend to enrol their kids in them. I think we all are looking forward to a fresh start.

The boys have all rather consistently proclaimed that the basement playroom is “boring” and that there is “nothing to do” down there. So the solution to that – take advantage of the sentiment and BOX IT ALL UP! Everything except for probably their downstairs Legos and either their Lincoln Logs or Mega Blocks is going to be put away. That saves me a bundle of work right before we move. All they want to do lately is play outside anyway. As the scuffed and bruised shins, dirty faces and worn out children at the end of the day show.

We do have a concrete sign of permanent spring into summer season here. The owners of this house planted tulips in the front yard years ago. They are still coming up. We haven’t started any sort of container garden this year as we are still not sure what we are moving into. I think once we get settled I will go get some starter plants or a houseplant though for the kids to watch. I would LOVE to get an aloe plant. My mom had one when I was growing up, it got HUGE! I must sneak out to the front tomorrow and take a picture.

When I was packing I came across a book I had originally bought when I was pregnant with Trinity with the intention of reading it while I breastfed her. It was a great find and now has reappeared for me to read over the month of May. I do love a good history book and this one is a wonderful look into the French Revolution. I really need to get into a bookstore and peruse the history section again and try and find another gem.

Liberty

We are starting to go through the stuff in the cupboards with the intention of using up and NOT replacing. Tonight was a package of pudding, the kids certainly were not complaining. I want to use up as much as we can and each time we go to get groceries we are taking our time and truly thinking through what will FOR SURE be used. I want to get focused on the idea of having nearly NO toss out of food. What we bring into the house must be eaten not wasted. We did really well at that the year Ken was sick. After all there aren’t much in the way of left overs when you have so many kids anyway and ours are thankfully not overly picky.

I am still on the hunt for super affordable Hello Kitty things. I scour eBay every so often and have friends keeping eyes open. The plan is to keep collecting affordable items to give our resident Kitty fiend for Christmas. At this age expensive just means she loses or breaks (potentially) something expensive… lower price means I don’t have to be on top of her when she plays. If I can get ONE kid out of the way early on all the better.

Now to continue with the cleaning, packing and watching of Black Adder.

Our cookie monster

This entry was posted on 09/05/2011, in Uncategorized. 4 Comments