HS: September

We have finished our first month of homeshooling!  It has been awesome.  It's still so crazy to me sometimes that we are doing this but it also feels so normal and exactly how it's supposed to be for our little family.  I am really loving it.  It is incredibly rewarding to watch Jacob's growth and the little victories that we have.  I feel like I am understanding him more through teaching him. 

Our first month we definitely did some major shifting around.  The biggest switching around was curriculum.  I ended up switching our phonics/language arts program and science program.  I found a different one that I love and find myself looking at it all the time.  Jacob also is really liking the switch and I think it is just a much better fit. 

We've definitely had to tweak other things but when I think of where we are at compared to a month ago, it feels like we've been doing this a lot longer.  We are definitely finding our groove and if I could just figure out a more effective way of managing Sarah and Benjamin while doing school we will be SOLID!

I wanted to do a little recap of what we are doing every month (completely for my own benefit) and also, so I have a place to put some of the fun pictures I sometimes take while doing school.  This is, obviously, a major part of our life now and I would hate to not document it.  

So here is our recap for September (plus the last week of August)!

We switched language arts curriculums so that shook things up.  Jacob is currently working through the preschool book in this curriculum because I wasn't quite sure if he was ready for the kindergarten yet.  He is breezing through and we should be done with the preschool book by the beginning of November.  We have reviewed letters A - J with their letters and sounds and rhyming words. 

I also added handwriting, which I hadn't initially planned on.  This has been great and even though Jacob has beautiful handwriting, I've found that he was making a lot of letters and numbers "incorrectly" and so we are refining some things there.  Plus, he actually loves the handwriting program that we do because at the end of each page is a picture that he gets to color or a prompt for him to color a picture - WIN!

Math has been going well.  Jacob is flying through what we have done so far.  It has definitely all been review, but this next month I think we will enter some new territory.  I am really liking the program so far though and I think Jacob is too.  We finished our first chapter which was all about Numbers to 5.  We talked about the numbers one through five, what makes things the same, different, and matching.  We are in the middle of our second chapter which is about Numbers to 9.  We have talked about numbers six through eight, and making pairs.  Easy peasy for my man. 

Science was another big switch up with our curriculum.  There were things I was definitely not enjoying about our initial science curriculum and our new one seemed pretty advanced but I have been amazed at how well Jacob is doing with it.  I have always felt that kids {usually} rise or fall based on our expectations - and Jacob has definitely risen!  Science is all unit studies and I am really enjoying it!  It may be my favorite subject we do (which if you knew me growing up, science was ALWAYS my least favorite subject, so that's saying something!). 

We started our first unit about arthropods.  Do you know that arthropods are?  Because I did NOT!  It's all about insects, spiders, and crustaceans.  It is actually fascinating and I definitely learn new things every time we do it.  We are still towards the beginning of the unit but we have learned some new vocabulary words like: invertebrate, exoskeleton, and cold blooded.  We learned the difference between invertebrates and vertebrates, made a venn diagram about insects and arachnids, identified the different parts of an insect, and did some "insect stations" where we learned about mosquitoes, fireflies, termites and silkworms.  It's been SO interesting.  Jacob also decided that he wanted to do a presentation on praying mantises so that will be fun to work on together this month.

making termite mounds

Now, to Jacob's favorite subject - ART!  Jacob loves when we do an art project!  The first art project was called "Color Mixing Hands".  We talked all about the primary colors (or Super Hero Colors as we call them) and secondary colors (or sidekick colors).  Our next project was called "Happy Sun" which was good practice for Jacob cutting.  Next was our Van Gogh Sunflowers.  I really liked this project and thought Jacob's turned out AWESOME.  Last, was our Symmetrical Butterfly that we did today.  This was a great project to learn about symmetry and practice some more cutting.  This boy loves his art!

Color Mixing Hands

Happy Sun

Van Gogh Sunflowers

Symmetrical Butterfly

Finally, we do read alouds together.  In August, we read Charlotte's Web by E. B. White aloud as a family and that was lots of fun.  This month, we read A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond.  I had never read this one before and I think we both really enjoyed it.  We even watched the movie that came out recently afterwards, which I must admit, Jacob liked a lot more than I did - but it was still fun to kind of compare the two.

Movie Night

When you turn three in our family you get to participate in our weekly Friday Movie Night!  It's awesome and we love it.  Sarah was really excited about getting able to stay up "late"...and for the popcorn!  Since it was her first movie night a couple weeks ago, she got to pick which movie we were going to watch - Toy Story 3, of course!

Sarah's 3rd Birthday

This girl that is bursting with personality, sweetness, and an ample amount of sass has turned three years old!  AND WE LOVE HER!

We love our Sarah.  She is the glue in our family.  The one thing everyone comments on with our little girl is that she is FULL of personality!  She is 100% her own person and we love everything about her.  There is never a dull moment with her around.  Sarah is also the sweetness queen around here.  She is so aware of others and how they are feeling.  I am so impressed with her.  She is so quick to give a genuine hug, wipe away tears, pat your back and tell you "it's okay, I'm here."  She oozes sweetness and we love that about her.  Sarah also has a saucy side too though.  She can definitely hold her own around the house too - but somehow she manages to do it in a (mostly) adorable way.  

Some of Sarah's favorite things are:

Books: Caps for Sale: A Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys, and Their Monkey Business by Esphyr Slobodkina, Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Pena, and The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper. 

Movie: Toy Story 3 and The Peanuts Movie

Favorite Activities: Building with blocks, doing puzzles, Mrs. Potato Head, and coloring

Favorite Snack: Pretzels and Graham Crackers

Favorite Game: Candy Land

Favorite Songs: Popcorn Popping and I Love to See the Temple

To celebrate her special day - it was all about MERMAIDS!

We got up and had waffles with strawberries, bacon, and orange juice! YUM!

We then packed up and headed to the beach!  Because, we were mermaids for the day after all!  We headed over to the city beach off of the boardwalk since we knew no one would be there rather than driving up to North Beach.  We had the whole beach to ourselves and it was awesome.  

Sarah ran around collecting sticks and burying things in the sand.  Jacob and Mark created all sorts of projects in the sand.  And Jacob and I sat at the edge of the water for awhile before moving into our perfect little half tent so he could crawl around a little (and only ate sand once...I think!).  It was a perfect morning.  

We then came back home, had lunch, and put Sarah and Benjamin down for their naps while the rest of us got ready for the party!  

Grandpa and Grandma, and Grammy came to celebrate and we had a great time!  The kiddos became mermaids and had to figure out how to be mermaids and find their treasure of shells.  Then we used the shells and some sand to make some sand art.  

Then we sat down to have some dinner.  Crabs (chicken salad sandwiches), Sea Chips (potato chips) with dip, and seaweed (grapes) topped with mermaid juice (blue punch). 

Next we opened presents.  I don't know who was more excited, Sarah or Jacob?!  Sarah was in love with everything.  I swear, you could give her a rock and she would hug it and call it her special treasure.  She is so happy with everything (well, almost everything, she is three after all!).  

Finally, we had her mermaid cake!  

We love our Sarah so much.  She brings an incredible amount of joy to our home.  She is a light to everyone.  We can't wait to see what the future brings for our little one.  Keep being you, Sarah.

9 Months

This little man is
nine months old.  

Benjamin is growing!  He is 28 inches in length (43%), weighs 18 pounds 13 ounces (24%), and has a head circumference of 44.5 cm (28%).  He's still in nine month size clothes.  The biggest change in his routine is that we have phased out his morning nap so now he just takes one gigantic nap in the afternoon (2-3 hours) and it is awesome.  

This little guy is a mover and groover.  He is still just army crawling but does it super fast and is everywhere ALWAYS!  He is never in the same spot for long.  He is starting to pull himself up a little bit on things.  

He is starting to babble a lot more.  I feel like he actually repeats sounds more than our other kiddos did.  His favorite is ba-ba.  

He loves playing peek-a-boo!  

Benjamin just loves to be touching me at all times.  He has pretty much been this way ever since he was born!  If I am sitting down he is GUARANTEED to be found crawling all over me.  The thing is that he is not just sitting in my lap - he just crawls ON me.  Yes, I am a human jungle gym.  He also has some anxiety when I leave the room.  The key is whether or not he notices me.  If he sees me leave. he is one unhappy camper.  So I have gotten pretty stealthy at times.  

We love our Benjamin.  

End of Summer

We had a busy and productive Labor Day!  But we did sneak in some fun.  We have loved using our pool this summer and today was a great swim day!  We love our little water babies.