All of the curriculum and books needed for the next year have been ordered and I can't wait for the boxes to begin pouring in.  I want to look, touch and flip through all of them and then I want a day or two (or three?) with no children around so I can go through them, highlight, set up schedules, make lists and plan out our year. 

We've had a much calmer week this week.  Samantha and Jonathan are at their grandparents for the week and its just been Christopher, Andrew and I.  We went to the pool on Tuesday and plan to do so again today after homeschool parkday. 

Our 4th of July plans are the same every year.  We get together with my siblings at my parents house and we grill out, play some outdoor games and enjoy one anothers company until its time for fireworks.  I'm looking forward to seeing my nephew who is walking now.

Our routine went out the window last week with Victory Celebration at church but wow, it was worth it.

So while the older kids and their dad are away at a Twins game today (blessed with tickets by a friend) I am attempting to get back into a routine.  I have been working on laundry and baking bread.  More specifically trying a recipe for gluten free bread.  I am also working on putting together a 2 week gluten free meal plan that limits milk for Andrew.  I'm thankful that he does not mind rice milk.  The meal plan needs to be simple and not all these fancy meals I'm finding on the other sites.  While they look divine I really need to have my life at the most simpliest level right now.  I can experiment once or twice a month with a new meal or baked good but I need to have a decent meal plan in place before school begins.

We've got breakfasts down.  We are really only eating cereal a couple of times a week now.  The rest of the week we are eating eggs, pancakes, oatmeal or fruit smooties.

Lunch time is going to be a bit tricky as we still haven't found a great loaf of bread substitue yet.  We are currently using an English Muffin from Kinnikinnick.  We keep them in the freezer and take them out as needed.  Then defrost one english muffin half way and slice into fourths.  These make small round sandwhiches and are the best substitute we have found so far.  Andrew likes to eat pnj & jelly on them and they also make yummy mini pizzas.  Just add sauce, light topping and cheese.  I'm not sure how we will do this now that we are trying to limit casein but I'm going to research that a bit.

I'll come back and either update this post or begin a new one with our menu for the next two weeks soon. 

It is our annual Victory Celebration at church this week.  Dr. Hilton Sutton is the guest speaker each night this week.  So, along with Victory Celebration, Kindergarten with Andrew and starting to sort through and organize our school room there is not much time for blogging.

Feel free to stop by Word of Life Outreach Center and watch the services either live (at 7pm) or when it is convenient for you.

Blessings and I will be back next week.

A few days ago the boys called for me to come look at the weird bug they found crawling on the couch.  They said it looked like a bean or a small pebble with legs. 

This is what we found.

I didn't have a clue but Christopher guessed that maybe it was a tick full of blood so I ran to the computer did a google image search for "tick full of blood" and sure enough we had a match.  YUCK!!!!

We've had many encounters with ticks since moving to the country.  I am pretty sure they are coming in with the cats but obviously this one was attatched to something.  We are positive it wasn't the kids because we would have seen something this size over the last few days while we've been at the pool.

Here it is upside down.

I think I prefer the small version. 

We finished up the two week introduction lesson of Kindergarten today.   We are schooling Monday thru Thursday and are taking Friday's off.   Each morning we begin with Bible and for the first 10 days we learned about the days of creation. One of the fun activities that we did together was creating a creation quilt.

Each day we read a portion of Scripture pertaining to the day of creation and then Andrew colors and cuts out the pictures and glues them to a pre-cut piece of construction paper.  Mommy was in charge of assembly and let me tell you, it was quite the task.  I remember doing it with Christopher and thinking to myself that when it came time to do it with Andrew it would be a breeze.  Not so.  As much as I wanted to start hand quilting I think I might wait, lol.

Here is the almost finished quilt.  We will add day seven today.

We learned to sing the ABC's in a different way also.  Rather than singning them the popular way and slurring lmnop we sing them slowly to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star pausing at certain breaks.  I've inserted two asterick marks after each pause so you can try to sing them too. 

A-B-C-D-E-F-G **

H-I-J-K-L-M-N **

O-P-Q **     R-S-T **

U-V-W **     X-Y-Z **

Now I know my ABC's and I know that God loves me!

Andrew is slowly getting the hang of singing them in this new style.  We've also been learning the hymn This is My Father's World, The B-I-B-L-E song and today added B-I-N-G-O.  I made up hand motions for the hymn when Christopher did Kindergarten four years ago, so Chris has been helping me to teach them to Andrew.

After we've done Bible and our singing we move on to teaching him the letters in the alphabet.  Andrew knows most of the letters by name (both capital and lowercase) so we just do a quick review of the listed letters to be taught for that day. 

We use a set of flash cards (with both capital and lowercase letters on separate cards) and I quiz him on the letter names.  He does pretty good.  We are down to 2 wrong out of 52.  He has trouble with j and h. 

After doing the review cards he pulls out a white sheet of card stock that I've laminated.  It has the alphabet on it and he uses a little button to place on the letters as I call them out.  For instance I might say.  "Andrew, put your button on the letter R" and he places the button on the letter Rr.  I will also ask him to place his button on the first or last letter of the alphabet or the letter that comes before or after another letter.  He does have trouble with these concepts.  Especially the first and last.

We've been reading the books mentioned in the first Kindergarten post.  The first week we read Chicka, Chicka Boom Boom several times and this week the book of choice seems to be the Usborne Alphabet book.  I think he likes that each letter page has a question about the picture.  He enjoys being able to look at the picture and find the answer. 

Math is taught using an informal, integrated approach.  All of the necessary kindergarten math skills taught.  They include counting objects, writing numerals, preparing and understanding charts and graphs, comparing, classifying and sequencing.   We will introduce the ordinal numbers (first, second, etc.), fractions, clocks, coins and simple addition and subtraction.  All taught and reinforced through everyday situations.  We will also be starting a 100 chart next week.

Each month we also do work on the calendar.   Andrew has a blank calendar page that he fills in the date.  We discuss daily what month and day it is and note any special days (such as Grandma's birthday, church etc.).

And that is pretty much how our day plays out right now.  Starting the middle of next week things will change day to day as we introduce a new letter sound with each new lesson.  We are starting lesson 1, Ss Sun, so I am busy putting together resources for this lesson and lesson 2, Mm moom.

Although we have finished our curriculum for the year, I wanted to do some work over the summer with Christopher.  I wanted to work on reading (for pleasure) to increase his skill and spelling.  I wanted to strengthen his math skills and work towards mastery of subtraction and to work on penmanship.  I also hoped to find something to fill some of the couch time that seems to occur either with TV watching or video game play.

While reading through some of my favorite blogs today I came across a neat idea.  A summer challenge.  I loved the idea and immeadiately set to work copying writing up our own summer challenge.  It seems like such a fun way to work on those summer school goals without it looking too much like school. 

The details of the summer challenge are pretty simple.  There are different areas that Christopher can work on in order to earn points.  When he completes a task he comes to me and I record the points earned on the yellow tally sheet.  As points accumulate he can keep track of them on a goal themometer (that isn't up on the board yet) and he can cash in those points to earn some prizes.

As a child, I remember looking forward to the summer reading program at the local library.  Each year I would diligently read and record books on the summer reading program form and push myself to read more than the year before.  At the end of the year we were able to pick out prizes based on the number of books read.  Christopher's excitement over the summer challenge is very similar to how I felt with that summer reading program. 

I'm not trying to bribe Christopher into doing this work, but I do believe that a little incentive will keep him motivated.  He can pick and choose what things he wants to work on and when he wants to do them.  Nothing is required.  It is up to him as to how he wants to approach the summer challenge.  My goals will stay the same though.  We can either work on them in the same manner as we approach school but on a less scheduled approach for the summer or Christopher can work on them through the summer challenge and at the same time learn responsibility, time management and ownership of what he learns.  I thought the latter would be more creative and appealing and I was right.

We used most of the same areas in our summer challenge that Carisa used in her challenge but we tailored them a bit to fit Christopher's needs and skill levels. 

For example, Christopher has a summer Bible reading program at church.  They are reading through the New Testament.  He is already excited about this and now he can earn points here at home each time he does his daily readingas well as working towards the goal and prizes offered at church. 

I wanted to have Christopher spend some time with Andrew doing things that Andrew enjoys and so I included a time of sibling activities that they can do together.  Andrew has become a bit of a mimic (as most children do).  He watches what his siblings to oand because he is the youngest and he tends to want to do things on a much older level than where he should be.  So, to help fill Andrew's need for age appropriate playtime I made a point category for this.

I plan to add weekly or bi-weekly mini challenges in which Christopher can earn either extra points or an extra prize.  There are things like weeding, washing the car, cleaning garage etc. that need to be done and this seems like a great way to earn some BIG points or EXTRA prizes.

I upped the point system a bit and made it into a tiered system with prizes and points ranging from 25, 50, 75 and 100.  He can choose to cash them in at any point or save them until he reaches 100.  We kept the new Webkinz prize (like Carisa) as this is a current craze at our house.  The kids have each had a Webkinz for a couple of months and they are all talking about wanting another one.  So I made that the highest scoring prize.  He's already talking about how long it will take him to save up 100 points.

~ Stop by Peggy's to see all the Daybook entries for this week. ~

*****

Outside My Window ...  The morning has begun.  I got up at 5:30 this morning and already the sun was up and the birds were actively searching for breakfast.

** *

Here is Andrew on his first day of Kindergarten.  He's been so excited about starting school this last week.  I've been preparing and talking about it for the last couple of weeks but Andrew's excitement really took off when we had a back to school shopping spree.  In May no less! 

Don't you just love the clothes he picked out to wear for his first day of school. 

The first 10 days of our My Father's World Kindergarten curriculum is an introduction.  We are learning and reviewing the letters of the alphabet, number recognition and learning about the 6 days of creation.  Andrew already has a pretty good handle on this but it will be a nice easy transition into school time for us and I'll have time to really focus on Andrew because the other kids are already done for the year.

Our plans include a creation quilt that we will be working on for the next 7 days.  Each day we will read a part of the Scriptures pertaining to the day of study and then color, cut and paste pictures, a number and Scripture onto the quilt blocks.  The quilt blocks will be sheets of colored construction paper and it will be pieced together with yarn.  When the quilt is done Andrew can display it in his room or we can leave it hanging in the school room.  We did this quilt with Christopher four years ago and it was such fun.

Here is a picture of our Kindergarten cabinet, minus Andrew's Kindergarten box that we had set out to decorate.  On the top you can see 4 of the books we are going to be using to review the letters of the Alphabet during our introduction study.

• The ABC's for Godly Living, by Freda Lindsay
• Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
• Eating the Alphabet
• Usborne Farmyard Tales Alphabet Book

The shelves on the top hold three plastic baskets with different manipulatives.  Some plastic beads and string, an animal domino game and bear counters and cups.  Under that we have a collection of puzzles.

The left cubbie on the first shelf holds all math items.  Our MUS blocks, Unifex cubes, Funtastic Frogs counters and behind them are the pattern, counting and sorting cards.  Also not seen are pattern blocks.  To the right of the math cubbie are some of our games. 

• Alphabet Lotto (from Usborne)
• Tick Tack Twice
• ABSEAS (Discovery Toys)
• Count Down
• Toddler Tote
• Silly Sentences
• Picture Sequencing
• Group Them
• Numbers 1-20
• Nursery Songs (a listening bingo game)
• Pegs and Pegboard set
• Matching Madness

Off to the right of the cabinet is our WH Chipper Chat. 

The last two cubbies hold Andrew's study Bible and Crayons, a bin of lacing cards and then just some odds and ends. 

We plan to do some Chicka Chicka Boom Boom lessons in the next 10 days that I found online. Along with reading the story each day this week, we are going to  play an Alphabet Bingo game called Boom Boom. We will also cut and assemble a coconut tree onto posterboard and then practing printing the letters on small 1 inch squares and pasting them to the tree and poster.  I also have an ID bagde that we are making for Andrew's necklace and we will watch this cute You tube video.  I'm sure Andrew will want to watch it each day.  I've toyed with the idea of doing a lapbook as well but haven't decided for certain. 

~ Stop by Peggy's to see all the Daybook entries for this week. ~

*****

I am wearing ... a dressy red, black and white top with khaki capri's.  The kids all asked me where I was goiing today.  Apparently I don't look this good on a day to day basis.    I told them I have to teach today.  It's Andrew's first day of Kindergarten.

I am hoping ... that my gluten free bread will turn out today.