Sunday was another at home day… with  company once again. This time Joe, Gabriella and Zachary. They were so glad to see Nana and Baba again as well as their cousins. So it was run run run for the kids and a nice visit with his brother for Ken.

Outside

And inside fun

I managed to sneak off with Bree to do some shopping, have some Dairy Queen and generally do girly things. I found Hello Kitty stuff for a quarter marked down at Michaels (well on clearance that is, pencils and the like), stopped in at Bath and Body Works to get some hand sanitizers (5 for 5.00 and not sealed the same way they are in Canada). Sat and chatted for hours… it was TERRIFIC!

Monday was back to the grind stone. Back to schooling, and sorting out future classes. In the mail I received the coupons for Pizza Hut and the information for a reading program we are starting in October. I have printed out most of the printables we need to get going with and will be sorting out books to start. I may have to do some used bookstore and thrift store hunting for leveled readers… or raid the library! You can find out about the program HERE. 

Gotta find lots of different ways to motivate! (Zander teaching Echo colouring skills)

Trinity and Emanuel did their craft project for the book Hungry Caterpillar. You can find our caterpillar project HERE. I really enjoyed this one – it covered colouring, scissor skills, creativity, gluing and of course… binder clips! 

Colouring the print out

Cutting

Caterpillar AND food

Gavin is back to work on his cross stitching again and boy does that make me HAPPY. He is determined to finish his mouse joke card and then start another one. I am so glad that one of the kids is ready to stick it out with what is one of my absolute FAVOURITE crafting activities. (sorry crochet you are getting up to second and beating out duct tape but I must stay true to my first love!). 

My crochet IS coming along though!

So Tuesday went a bit off kilter with Ken pulling an all nighter coding and myself having a lovely mishap with my head connecting with the edge of our bedroom door while cleaning (thus loosing half the day to a nap and Tylenol). I am not sure the kids were too upset as they got to play more time outside. BUT we did have the time for our basics and the boys to work on their Minnesota folder, which is now decidedly ONGOING.

Tuesday NIGHT, however, was fun fun fun! After seeing Nana and Baba off to a movie we got supper ready (spaghetti and garlic toast) and awaited our guests – Shandai and her boyfriend Skot! They brought knitting supplies and board/cardgames. So after supper we stitched and  gamed it up! It was a total blast and I look forward to doing it again! Add another couple to couples to game with!

Gaming with friends always rocks!

So as days never seem to go the way we want we still had Emanuel learning on the computer…

Working on the PBSKids.org site

Trinity with the learning apps on the iPad… And Zander and Gavin spending learning time with Ken. Which was a total  treat! 

Thanks to Baba and Nana taking some time with Echo

The great adventure for tomorrow – hunting down a pie pumpkin for homemade pumpkin pie!! Wish us luck!! 

Can you believe this top was mine when I was tiny!

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