Raising Rock Stars ~ Week 3 ~ H

Letter: H

Number: 3

Sight Word: and

A few of the activities:

Resources:

*all resources are linked

November Missions

Yes - I know - Gone for so long! Lots of excuses .. but I shall not bore you with them. ;) I'm really going to try to blog on some kind of regularity. I have all these plans in my head and just none seem to come out from my fingers to the keyboard and onto my blog!

With that said onto the good stuff. I've been enjoying Mama Jenn's little blogspot lately. She has a mission of the month. I've been doing weekly missions on my own the last three weeks so I thought this would be a fun way to help hold myself accountable (in some form) with my personal goals.

My November Missions:

• Make all of Babystep#1 Preflight Check my daily routine
• Print out and deliver kids' size info. for grandparents and finish wishlist
• Finish Nathanael's first year baby album
• Catch up on Project Life
• Completely prepare for Advent
• Have Christmas card pictures taken
• Have school year pics. taken and Nathanael's 1 year old pics.
• Start the Belly Fat Cure with husband
• make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies

Well that's it ... my November Goals!!! Can't wait to get started ... I just love lists and goals :) Thanks Mama Jenn for feeding my list and goal need while encouraging me to be productive with myself and my home!

Preschool ~ Week 2 ~

I just realized I didn't take any pictures of this week!!

Lesson:

Letter: T

Number: 2

Sight Word: the

Resources:

Carisa's Letter T post! ~ I always view Carisa's blog post on the letter we are working on. She has additional links and others who did the curriculum link up with their ideas so it's a great resource.

*resources are linked

Zack's First Week of Preschool

We are actually on our first review week (so week 7)! I have a lot of catching up to do on my preschool posts. Zack seems to be enjoying the curriculum and school in general.

This week:

Letter: L/l

Number: 1

Sight Word: see

* We mainly followed the suggested curriculum.

*We played a game where I printed out 5 each of the letter, number, and sight word. I taped them all around the house and he then had to hunt for them. He really enjoyed that game.

* Read "My L Book". (awesome goodwill find, almost the whole collection!)

Resources:

*resources are linked

August Trays & Shelves

We moved to a little country city just a few minutes outside of Nashville, TN! Here school started August 5! I've had very little time for getting ready for school between moving, packing, and all the stuff you gotta do when moving to another state. However, we started! No choice in the matter do to homeschooling laws around these parts! ;)

So here are our trays & shelves in our very own homeschooling room (pics. to come when it is actually complete):

Chris ( age 6/First Grade):

Superminds - will be changing pattern every so often

Sketch Book - we have not incorporated any drawing, sketching, art time. We do have a weekly art picture study but until we work in hands on art this will do. He seems to look forward to his sketch time and gets into it. One side is regular oil pastels and the other side is chalk pastels. I bought them both on clearance at Jo-Ann's for $1.97/each!

Bought this at Border's with 50% off coupon! Chris loves it and has only used it once a day for a week and has learned how to tie shoes from it!

~ his shelf at a glance ~

Zack (age 4/ preschool):

Math ~ there are numbers 1 - 6 in the card pile.

He sorts them out and then matches a bean to

each picture.

Fine Motor ~ cutting. He still struggles with just this basic cut.

So I bought him scissors like these to help as his little hand muscles develop.

They have made a big difference!!

A part of his shelf that's not trays :)

~~ beads/lacing, puzzle, & card sorting ~~

~ his shelf at a glance ~

I really, really can't rave enough about trays and shelves!!! The boys absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE them!!! In addition, I've seen much improvement in the boy's various skills!

VBS 2011

Vacation Bible School is something we look forward to every summer! The church we are members of do not have a VBS. However, the church where my MOPS group meets does! So that is where we go. This year was a bittersweet year for us. We are moving in July so it was our last VBS year and Zack's first year old enough to enter! We all had a great time and I so will miss this church. They are such a sweet group and the Pastor there just loves people. I was the leader for Zack's group so I don't have many pics. of Chris. Not only was he in a different group but the elementary children are in a separate hall from the preschoolers & kindergardeners. Here are a few pics:

Zack is holding up the J for a song that we sung.

Chris is on the far right with some boys

that he hung out with that week in his group.

Zack is second from the left. This was his whole group.

We actually had the smallest group. The boy in the middle was our helper.

What's Going On

What's going on for us:

June -

• Week 1 - our first family vacation to Myrtle Beach, SC ~ was AWESOME!!! will post pics.
• Week 2 - trip to Missouri
• Week 2 - trip to Tennessee
• Week 3 - Vacation Bible School ~ another fun week! it was Zack's first year! will post pics.
• Week 4 - Found out we will be moving by mid July 10 1/2 hours away from where we live now!!!!!

July -

• Lots & lots of packing to be done!! plus tons of other things - phone calls, visits, etc.

So school will not be starting in July for us this year but the tentative date is August 1!