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