I can't believe we're finished up week THREE of homeschooling already!  We have been studying Native Peoples of Canada with the Bigs since the begining of September, and Greyson is facinated by the legends... and bows and arrows and weapons of different tribes.  He wants me to get him a knife so HE can be an Indian too!!!  (uh, no.)

I've hummed and hawed over the 100 Easy Lessons for Greyson.  I love that book, but he's so far beyond it!  This week (having only done a couple of lessons which I knew were review for him) he sounded out "candle flame"... and with flame, he said, "fffff llll aaaahhhh mmmmm eeeehhhhhh  no ... A says Ah ... AY!  fffffllllllAAAAYYYYmmmmmm - FLAME!"  So he figured it out for himself that sometimes vowels say their sound and sometimes they say their name.  The blending is coming along so naturally, it just seems painful to keep him doing the 100 Easy Lessons.  SO, I think - after checking it out thoroughly at my friend's house - I am going to get Explode the Code 1 and 2 for him to work through this year. 

He also has discovered mazes.  He did about 10 of them today all on his own "talking himself through them"    He would ask me, "does the boy have to get to the boat, Mommy?" I'd confirm that, yes, this is what he has to do... so he'd be, "here goes the boy, he is turning, nope, wrong way!  He is going back he is turning, he is turning up, he goes over, he is turning up again, he is going around and YAY!  He's at the boat!" (or along those lines...) then he'd ask me the "goal" of the next maze in the book.  Too cute!

But back on the subject of 100 Easy Lessons, which as I mentioned I really love, I think I'm going to do the lessons with Chaeli instead.  She's at the point where she needs to review the sounds, learn to put them together, and start seeing something more than just random phonics... although she does know all her letter sounds, THANK YOU LEAP FROG!   She knows many of her shapes and colours, but I guess I will review those too... that is about it for pre-school except of course reading a zillion stories!! LOL!  I'm glad the Bigs like to read to the Littles, especially Ev who loves to do all the funny voices for the characters!  *grin*

Chaeli has been growing.  Really growing.  She's a little thing, but I have hard evidence that she truly is finally growing... her winter clothes from last year are too small for her!  I packed them away thinking that for sure they would fit her this year, but alas, so many of my favourites were simply too small.  Oh well, I have generous friends who have endowed her with MANY years of gorgeous wardrobes... so out go the old, in come the new (to her anyhow).

This week, Kenzi took pause from her studies one afternoon to engage the Littles in a creative play of Legos... they built a Lego Car "Hopsital" and spent a good couple of hours "doctoring" cars and bringing the cars for drives in the "amalances".  Kenzi will make a wonderful mother one day... she loves child-play.  I regret not loving that kind of play more or at least engaging it it more when my Bigs were little... but at least the Littles have the benefit of imaginative older siblings to get them through! *grin*

(and yes, we did school in our PJs that day... saves on laundry! LOL!)

Blessings!