November is quickly slipping away from us it seems, and with it my time for Christmas gift crafting. As posted in yesterday’s entry – I HAVE got a new feltie in the making – Hello Kitty in all her feltie glory. Fat Sheep would NOT approve. Speaking of Fat Sheep – she recently updated her blog with her Halloween experiences with our family. She did make a marvelous prop for Echo’s Little Bo Peep costume! 

Yesterday was a better day than the day before… we have outlawed saying DON’T WANT TO… and have discussed behaviour that is something you can be proud of vs something that makes Mommy and Daddy sad. There have been more time outs than I would like but to nip it in the bud we have had to go to zero tolerance. I am just thankful that I have Ken home to step in when I feel overwhelmed. I wonder how many OTHER parents have these not so good days/weeks/months… 

There was a big surprise for Gavin in the mail yesterday though! A lovely lady in Nova Scotia sent him an envelope full of beginner patterns and kits to get him going with his cross stitching! He was so excited, he opened the envelope and went through it all right there and then. We just have to finish his newest self design before he moves onto one of these. I have to say there is a certain amount of pride in the fact that ONE of the children has already shown a passion for something so dear to me!

Gavin and his new patterns!

We have been battling teething and diaper rash with Echo all week. I think we are starting to see some progress on both. 4 molars now in place and zinc cream a regular part of our changing routine I think she will be much happier by the weekend. She is over 16 lbs finally! I don’t remember if I mentioned it but we briefly weighed her on the weekend and she was almost 16 1/2 lbs!!

Clapping with Daddy

We had friends work out a way to get a much needed snowsuit from my mom’s to here as well! Trinity is in love with her new pink princess coat! I am so grateful that people will help us out like this. The van should be fixed SOON but in the meantime it feels so lovely to have people who are willing to network with us! 

Modelling her new coat

We have been continuing our worksheet work and sight word learning. Zander is slowly starting to TRY to sound things out over guessing. He does seem to ignore the rules of language etc though. Which can make for frustration on both parts and some giggles on mine.

From reading to a math break

Yesterday was jammie library day for Trinity and Emanuel as usual. The theme of the stories was dinosaurs and as a wonderful coincident Emanuel was wearing Gavin’s dinosaur pj’s! The craft was making their own paper triceratops which was great fun. We did some looking for books and movies and while I was in the adult fiction section Trinity made a new friend and read a story.

Dinosaurs!

 Aunty Karyn picked us up for the library with a special gift for Trinity – a new Hello Kitty themed placemat! Which of course has been used for every meal since! 

Hello Kitty

He Chris stopped by today to drop off a bucket of things for the kids and myself and included in that was something for Trinity – an OLD SCHOOL My Little Pony! Happy girl! There was also a dictionary, thesaurus, gaming device that I have to work out how to use for the boys, some craft supplies and binders… always welcome!!! And I had the batteries I needed to get the device going on hand and everything! This also reminded me of the boys’ gift from LAST Christmas – the Math Shark. 

With pony and my beta kitty

Math Shark

I am working on my felties tonight and making my plans for the rest of the month. We are determined tomorrow morning to read about snowflakes! It seems like we start out with the best of intentions and get side tracked or confused or derailed lately. But at least the stuff we do INSTEAD is still interesting and fun! 

Now don’t forget to enter my 1000th post draw and win a feltie of your choice! You can do so by clicking HERE. 

Flashcard baby time

Heads up on the 1000th post draw! If you haven’t entered already you have to go to THIS post and follow the instructions. If I get enough entries I plan on drawing two names!

Slow progress on the mood change today but we are working on it. The boys are simply not motivated right now so I am trying to mix it up with different worksheets, topics and breaks in our actual work time. We finished off our Stuart Little time with reading some books on REAL mice we got from the library and then as a group we made two lists – things we learned about Stuart and things we learned about real mice that interested us. Each of the boys then drew  their own mouse on our page. We have everything from a brand new baby mouse to a full out nest!

Our group mouse page

Today marks the beginning of two of our new topics of study – Snowflakes/winter and Recycling. There are lots of resources on the internet for both topics but for recycling we started with a maze and colouring pages both off of Education.com. You  can check out my Recycling Worksheet Collection on their site. I will be rating them and adding to it as we go along. 

Snowflakes began with some worksheets off of abcteach.com you can pay for membership but we have found a few useful free worksheets and printables there. This topic marks the beginning of our winter craft bucket as well… I try to find things on sale, at Dollarama, etc etc and save them according to season. You can find the dot-to-dot snowflake we did here.

I have ordered a mini kit from Fun-in-a-box-Canada for Emanuel and Trinity. I ordered the Christmas min kit and it came to under 8.00. They ARE revamping their concept though and after the 17th will not be shipping the activity boxes. So I am bookmarking their page and going to check back after then. If they remain reasonable and have the same sort of set up I may do a 10 month series for Emanuel when he starts his first registered year! 

We had a power outage today so I drug out the Winter Crafts bucket and let the kids create. I don’t know that they made much but they did familiarize themselves with the contents, muck around and keep busy when we couldn’t do our Starfall or watch their WordWorld DVD (the laptop it was to run in has VERY limited battery power). I love the big windows in our front room. Even when the power IS on it is rare that we need the light on over there in the morning or afternoon. 

Crafting in all natural light

It is a Christmas egg - there are red bells and blue stars pushed into it!

Poor Echo got woken up when Ken went to check our breaker before heading to the neighbours to ask them if they were out as well (the whole street was as if you looked down to the convenience store their sign was out). So after fighting her all day to get a much needed nap in celebration of cutting her top RIGHT molar she was woken up. Poor thing, she has a horrible rash and is out of sorts BUT now has FOUR molars! 

I was able to drag my craft supplies out of the bedroom before Echo started her naptime trauma and finish up a scrapbook page I started last night. This was back in June when Karyn was in New Orleans and Esther came to visit (you can see Esther and Echo chatting with Karyn via MSN video). I used up the last of my tiny flower die cuts. Now I have to remember whose punch I borrowed to make those!! 

Finished page

It has been a bit of a long day but I think we are making up for it over the week by gradually planning more and more fun activities. The little ones have their library outing tomorrow… the twins and I are going to decide on some snowflake creations… I found completely by accident a neat craft to create a pop bottle pot for a plant that the kids are going to do for their aloe plant… you can find that here. 

Snowflakes!

I was so busy this weekend with company and kids and such that I really didn’t explain our newest homeschooling hit – It is called Magnetic SuperMind. Which apparently “Makes kids super smart!”. It is slated for ages 5-9 but Trinity at 3 had a BLAST as did the Aunties and Uncles over this weekend past. I am hoping to get more cards as there is only a select number in the kit, but with the magnets and the nice tin to keep it all in this is already becoming a favourite. 

A new favourite!

Tomorrow is a new day and hopefully a much smoother one! 

Just the girls

Well that snuck up on me! I started somewhat seriously blogging back when our Emanuel was born… but it has not been until the kids seriously started their schooling with Preschool level fun that I have been at all consistent and here I am… 1000 entries later! We have met some wonderful people through this blog, had some lovely gifts received, sent some ourselves and shared our lives with all of you. This is definitely a boost to keep on blogging! BUT numbers like this really only mean something to the blogger… now to bring something to the reader… 

In honour of my 1000th post I am going to do a draw. Let’s start with the prize – the winner of a random number generated draw will  get to chose a subject to be made into a feltie that will be designed by myself and Ken, stitched by me and then mailed to you! Of course any thing within reason! Felties ARE only around 2-4 inches tall so some details are simply not easily created! I am going to give everyone a week… please ONE entry per person. Now to enter – all you need to do is make a comment on THIS entry. You need to leave your name and your email address and then share either why you read and/or follow my blog, what you have taken from my entries, anything you want to share in regards to our stories or activities, or even just a little bit about yourself and where you are from. In the next few entries on here I will link back to this specific blog for commenting just to make things simple. You have until the following Friday – the 11th, to enter and the winner will be announced on Monday the 14th! 

Ok with that out of the way back to our daily lives… today we woke up to this!!!

SNOW

Thank goodness I had gone through the winter clothes last week, and picked up a coat off of Kijiji for Emanuel. I am just short a pair of snowpants for Emanuel size 6-7 as we ALWAYS buy big for the winter gear. I am hoping to find something on Kijiji, Freecycle or an affordable pair in a store… the problem is FINDING something. 

The first snow of the year was enjoyed by 4 of our 5… Echo woke up with a runny nose and I had the distinct impression that packing her into her snowsuit and plopping her in the snow would NOT be welcome. You do tend to forget over the warmer months, how much work it is to get kids out the door geared up and this was WITHOUT the snowpants!

Ready to go outside

With a house full of guys and their computers on the way it has been a cleaning day for me. Ken also had to head back to the city to pick up Jeff and his oldest Zachary at the airport. They were able to come up from California for the party and then on to spend time with their family up here in Alberta. 

Post travel nap

The rest of our day went pretty much up in the air come afternoon, thank goodness for ongoing sewing projects, Starfall on the netbook and Legos. I am determined to spend some time on mice in the near future as well as collect the last of my snowflake books from the library to get started on our next big focus. 

I am spending the rest of my evening moving all of our homeschooling links and files to ONE laptop. Not an easy task as I have been collecting stuff for years. I hope to expand my links on my side bar and share some of my best finds over the month. With a house full of people and the children in bed it is definitely time to get back to work on my own projects! Remember to leave a comment for the draw and thank you for reading! 

Teaching Echo the Gobble Up game... sort of