So far the kids have continued to be excited about school and homework!

Reagan has completed reading the Jr. classics of Moby Dick (in under an hour), and The Wizard of Oz, and also read Charlotte's Web.  She's a good portion of the way though another E.B. White book now, The Trumpet of the Swan, and is also concurrently re-reading the Bunnicula series.  I believe she finished up Howliday in on Saturday.  I still can't get over how fast that kid reads!!

This weekend we took the kids for a special trip down to Phoenix.  We spend Saturday evening, and Sunday morning at the water park of the Arizona Grand Resort, but Saturday morning and afternoon were spend at the Challenger Space Museum!  This was a great experience for all!  The trip to the museum was all planned by Daddy, who also found out on the museum website that there was an opportunity to earn a special Girl Scout patch there for Reagan.  They have a Boy Scout patch program as well, but Adam isn't old enough to join the organization until next year.  (He can't wait!)  There is a mobile planetarium that they have at the museum on certain dates, which is why Reagan was able to do the program.  We attended a showing and all the kids loved it.

Soccer, Homework, and Grandma Cookies

One of the things that I love about doing a home school/ Montessori blend with my kids is that I don't have to stress about making sure that they are getting all the "necessary" stuff from what I am teaching them.  We do a lot of traditional style learning at home as well as doing lots of practical stuff, hands on, and teachable moments.  Basically we can just have fun and learn as we go.  There are some who continue this kind of approach full time with their kids while home schooling, but that just isn't for us.  And when I say that, I mean both for me, and for the kids.

My kids are total academic workaholics!  They work on grade workbooks for fun and LOVE to read.  They were really disappointed last week that they weren't getting any homework from school until Friday!  When they came home yesterday with their first homework of the school year, they each munched a celebratory Nerds rope and spread themselves out on my bed to get started right away.  My Kindergartener was done in under 10 minutes with his entire packet for the week, and my 2nd grader completed all of her spelling homework, including a practice spelling test and writing spelling word sentences.  Boy is 2nd grade homework different from the Kindergarten homework of last year!

While they were in school yesterday, the 2 year old and I had some fun preschool time drawing pictures with marker (a special treat).  She did several, including one of a dolphin, one of herself, and one of her Christmas list (the kids are getting an early start this year).  She also helped make Jello.  We did some counting practice, and though she gets mixed up after 5, she can get to 10 with only a little help now.

This morning I took the older 2 kids to a pre-season soccer clinic put on through the kids' soccer league by the  soccer team from my college.  We ran into some friends there, and the kids had a great time getting back out on the field, and brushing up on their skills.  After a quick lunch, and stop at Sam's Club, we came home and it was nap time for the younger two, so the older ones were looking for some fun quiet time activities.  Reagan started with her daily reading time for her school homework.  There's a minimum of 20 minutes a day.  Right now she is reading The Wizard of Oz specifically for this so we can track it per the teacher's requirements for reporting pages read, title, author, and synopsis, but she reads plenty of other things still too!  Adam sat down with a Disney math workbook and did 4 pages with me.  Two were addition, with which he is familiar, and two were subtraction, which has sounded scary to him.  It's amazing what a picture of Lightning McQueen on the page can do for a daunting new math topic.  He was thrilled to do it, and found that with the assistance of pictures representing the subtraction, that it was easy for him to do! :)  Those "I knew you could do it, and now you know too," moments are awesome.

So, after some more traditional school work, we headed for the kitchen and the kids baked up a batch of cookies from a "cookies in a jar" mix their grandmother made and gave them for Christmas.  Admittedly, there wasn't as much measuring math as there usually is for these kinds of projects since the mix was pre-made, but they had a ton of fun mixing the dough and rolling the balls for the cookies.  And I bet after dinner tonight they will have a great time eating them too!

While the cookies were in the oven, the kids sat down in the library for a game of Word Shout, but Adam was tired, so it wasn't a very long one.  He headed off for a nap, so once the cookies were done, I helped Reagan set up for some time on Vocabulary Spelling City.  Her teacher set it up for all the kids in the class so that they can practice writing and spelling with their weekly spelling words at home if they have home or library Internet access.  So far, I would really recommend it, especially for home schoolers.  In our case the teacher is providing the lists we work with, and if you sign up for a paid account, you can set up your own lists, and track your child's work without having to actually sit with them while they do it.  But even if you don't have your own word lists they give you grade appropriate general ones that you can work with.  There are also many of their game features that are free for your child to work with.  Certainly worth checking out! Reagan spent a LOT of time on there, which gave Adam a chance to work on his Web Ranger program through the NPS once he got up from his nap too.

I will be starting back to school myself in just over a week and a half, so who knows if I will manage to keep up with the blogging.. but since I am trying to plan on actually having more planned activities ready to do with the kids, and need to have things for Catie to do on a daily basis now that the older two are back in school.. I should at least hopefully have something to write about and be on a better schedule to share those things as well.

So it's been almost a year since I posted on here.. I've been a little busy though...

Today is the kids first day of school for the year at the Montessori School.  It may seem somewhat confusing that this is a home schooling blog, and that I have children who attend a public school.  I get that.  We do home schooling as well as the regular school.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  The most important reason is that the kids LOVE it.  Another big reason is that I really believe in teachable moments and that almost everything in life is a learning experience.  So today my oldest starts 2nd grade and my second is starting Kindergarten!

Today in their lunches I'm sending along a note for each of them to let them know that we're thinking about them, and how proud we are of them.  I got these card last year and love them for kids for all kinds of events at school.. spelling test, student of the week, end of the school year, or just because!  They're made just for kids and are really great quality because they're done by Hallmark, but not too pricey (2/ $1.00 if I remember correctly), and are smaller so they are prefect for little hands and fitting in lunch bags.  Of course if you're crafty, you can make them too!