August 22, 2014

I am going to try to do a weekly wrap-up to keep up with what we are doing school-wise. I keep it all in my planner, written each day in red pencil, the observations I make and what Levi picked up or asked or a new skill he achieved...but I plan to transfer it over here as well, to keep it archived in my "memory" along with everything else.

I am in love with Sonlight P4/P5 and my revamped plan. In love!!! The curriculum itself is easy to "knit" into our day, and if 'all' I do is our Sonlight stuff, the daily commitment is 20 minutes.  But man, it's a rich 20 minutes. Some of the books that come with the set at first blush may seem kind of blah and and maybe even hokey - but boy was I wrong about that!  One of the books we read on a fairly regular basis is Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes...something I would not normally just pick up and read to Levi. He knows plenty of nursery rhymes, but I don't normally read them to him.  But these are the full-length, original proper-English rhymes. We read them during snack time so Luke can hear them too...and I have to stop several times during each one to explain a word or a sentence that was structured very...properly.  And then we read the whole thing again.

The book we read at breakfast each morning is a book of favorite Bible stories.  We read Levi his Jesus Storybook Bible each night so he knows all the stories, and the one that came with Sonlight was kind of...hokeyville.  Or so I thought.  Levi loves it.  It condenses the stories into one page and then follows up with three comprehension questions that, surprisingly, Levi answers thoughtfully (he usually resists stuff like that).

There is a book that is a full chapter book with no pictures.  Levi likes stories enough that I figured he would at least pay attention for a little bit.  I took an idea from another friend and gave him a notebook and colored pencils and told him to draw (scribble) and color while I read to him.  This book, again, had pretty high language in it but was a very amusing little story.  Levi colored quietly (again, shocking) next to me while I read, and then asked for another chapter.

Another book contains folk stories from around the world.  I love them!  I am having so much fun learning through these kid's stories!!

I could go on and on about each book.  There's a pile of them.  I would honestly recommend this so highly that even if you AREN'T planning to homeschool or even hate the thought of it, but love to read with your kids and are tired of Berenstain Bears, get the teacher's guide (so you can follow the easy and well-laid-out schedule) and grab the book titles off the Sonlight website so you can check the books out at the library.   They are just wonderful, deep, insightful books that gently introduce science, history, language arts, social studies, and the Bible.

This week we focused on the verse Proverbs 4:20 - Pay attention, my child, to what I say. Listen carefully. We talked about what attentiveness means. One morning Levi came into the kitchen and asked what his verse was. I recited it for him.  He said, "I know. So what's my verse?"  I guess I must say things like pay attention and listen carefully frequently enough because he didn't notice that I was actually reciting his verse. hahahahaha

I did not feel the pressure to print off reams of papers, come up with Pinterest-y activities, or cobble together manipulatives.  I had a loose plan for each day and am learning to see the learning that takes place during their imaginative play.  Levi pretending to take everyone's ice cream orders at the park (yes, to all the kids that were there) and then 'serve' each of them ice cream and water and making sure they all 'had' what they needed...and then finding a huge branch to drag through the park pretending he was a farmer and it was his plow was WAAAAAYYYYY more important than making him stay home on a beautiful morning to practice coloring/writing skills on a stack of worksheets.  Which is something I may have done last year.

So here is what I observed this week:

Levi focused a LOT on puzzles.  He pays very close attention to his puzzles and works hard at them.  He received a new floor puzzle that was a map of the world, and was very eager to put it together.  We talked about different countries, distance and travel, continents, and how to differentiate land and water on a map.  This was a ten-minute break from cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast.  Not a huge planned-out thing.

He has not been able to use scissors, which is not a big deal. He just was never interested.  When he told me he used them in Sunday school, I handed him a pair and told him to prove it.  He did!!! Ha!

Josiah's favorite game is the alphabet version of Sequence.  Ergo, Levi wanted to learn it too. So I taught him how to play, and then he taught Luke.  Luke just stuffed all the pieces in his mouth.

He drew quietly while I read from his Mr. Wiggly book.

One morning I set out a bucket of popsicle sticks for his morning project.  He grabbed Scotch Tape and spent the better part of the morning creating things.

He has a list of chores to do each day and gets paid twenty cents each evening.  He was very enthusiastic to do his chores now that he gets something for them, and he was terribly proud to receive his allowance.  He will save 10%, tithe 10%, and keep the rest.  He wants to stay in the church service with us on Sunday so he can put his money in the offering plate.

We harvested a ton from our garden this week.

He has been asking SO MANY questions about God lately.  Where is God, where is heaven, etc. And he listens very carefully when I have the radio on - and asks questions about news reports (which means that even on a Christian radio station listening to the news, I have to turn it down frequently because I'm not ready to field questions about birth control, abortion, homosexuality, and mass killings) and Bible verses he hears quoted.  Being "prepared to have an answer" has taken on a whole new meaning. He's a deep thinker, this one.

ALLLLLLL of this to say....let me be clear that life ain't perfect here.  We have dealt immensely this summer with (typical three year old but not necessarily diminishable) discipline issues.  I won't go into detail, but suffice to say some of the things we've dealt with have surprised us, shocked us, and left us literally in tears.  It seems like we have exhausted every sane form of discipline, loss of privileges, tone of voice, being firm, being gracious...and usually seem to be hitting our heads against the same wall.  I don't say this to be disparaging to Levi - he's a normal kid!!!  I just don't want to paint the picture that we're singing hymns and finger painting and having a grand old time here every day.  It's hard being three, and it's hard to be a parent to someone who's three.  Oh- and throw in a little brother who screams, kicks, bites, and pinches all of us.  Some days - this week included -  I'm ready to stick a fork in myself and declare "DONE" before 8am.

BUT - I do see a significant shift in the attitude issues this week when I'm being intentional about setting aside some time for each boy.  So that's a score.  So far.

Lukie J. - he started pairing words this week, and once he started he took OFF with it. We are likely the only people who can understand him, which I'm sure is normal.  He says stuff like more please, more cheese, more (of a lot of stuff), bye-bye mama, etc.  Today at the farm he pointed to the tractor that was broken and said, tractor broke now.  He deletes most of his end consonants so most of his words are only half said.  He really likes to sing and was actually trying to sing a verse of a song from VBS (I am a!  I am a!  I am a indecipherable garble chi' o' Godddddd) and the end of the ABC song (Now I indecipherable garble sung in the tune of the end of the song).  He turns 2 three weeks today and Levi starts school the same day and I think I'm going to be a bawling hot mess on that day.

August 20, 2014

Mary and I have been trying and trying to plan a beach day this summer, but summer just hasn't shown up very much in these parts (no complaints about that here!).  Well, summer showed up today and it just happened that we had planned a beach day! It was a smashing success, the perfect pre-polar vortex celebration. You think I'm kidding.

When I was single and working nights I used to go to the beach a few times a week.  Since I'm not much of a lay-out kind of person, I would quickly get bored, grab an ice cream cone, and walk the beach a few times, read my book, and honestly feel a little envious of the people who had something to DO at the beach...like moms who had kids to dig in the sand with.  Now, I rarely go to the beach because taking kids to the beach is like taking a pile of CATS to the beach and trying to keep them sort of corralled.  And I nearly weep with envy at the singles/moms with older kids who are setting up their little beach chairs and snacks and books.  But not TOO much, because we do have some pretty funny little cats to herd.

We went to the state park in Grand Haven.  Such a nice beach.  We were there early enough that we had a lot of the beach to ourselves for a bit.  Even when it filled up it still felt like there weren't many people there. The water wasn't terrible - about 70 degrees.

                                        

These two. They are so funny together.  Levi and Josiah had so much fun.  We brought our beach toys in a large 3 or 4 gallon bucket.  Josiah took that bucket and doused Levi a few good ones. He knows how to get a party started, that kid. ;)

                                       

They laughed their pants off, as Levi and Nana would say.  You could probably hear them clear up the beach.

                                      

Luke hung by me and dipped his toes in from time to time.  He gets really into being by the water about one minute before we leave. 

                                     

Josiah's post-beach tradish is going out for ice cream.  Little known fact: I am very, very easy to convince to go along for ice cream.  And I sure don't want to let a little boy down.

Levi and Josiah telling the girl at the window over and over and over again that they are besties.

                                     

Oh my word, what is NOT TO LOVE about this picture??

                                     

Or this one?

                                   

August 15, 2014

I have a heinous amount of pictures that I have yet to post from this summer, but time so rarely presents itself, so I just need to keep it current.  If I could, I would post about leading the three-year-olds at Vacation Bible School (summary: lots of play dough stuck to the carpet and an alarming amount of hot dogs consumed by very small people):

and a rockin' cookout we went to with some buds from church a couple weeks ago.

I unceremoniously axed my zucchini plants, partly because they were starting to look kind of sad, and partly because I have more zucchini than I can handle emotionally.  And cucumbers.  Huge cucumbers. And squash.  Conclusion?  Organic manure straight from the farm produces freakish results: plant money next year.

So, random "stuff" - we went to the new Splash Pad in downtown Zeeland...last week?  A couple weeks ago?  I don't remember.  It sure was fun though for the bigger boys.

                                     

                                     

                                   

Josiah loves to hold Luke. :)

                                    

I don't feel like we've had a crazy busy summer, yet at the same time it has felt as though there is something - something! - going on every day. Even if it's just playing with friends, or something fun I set out to do with the boys, it's still something.  I noticed a couple weeks ago that all these somethings were wearing down my household and the boys' behavior was spiraling downward.  So we had to pull waaaaay back and circle the wagons, as my friend would put it.  Maybe that's partly why I haven't posted much lately, we've just been pretty low-key.

Friday tradish: a drive out to the farm to pick up our milk.  We are so thrilled to have this experience for our boys, to learn where some of their food comes from, what is involved in the process, to see that there are people who work hard to provide it and that it's an all-day, every-day thing.  It's so cool to see Levi understand basic biology - such as how the cow eating grass and producing waste is what creates more healthy grass. On our way to the farm today we had a fun talk about the four seasons, and how as we make our Friday drive through the country, we see how the landscape changes from bare ground and bare trees, to plowed fields, to seedlings and new leaves, to tall, tall corn stalks and green leaves, and soon the corn will be harvested and the leaves will change color and fall off and the ground will be bare again.  And we talked about how the cycle of seasons show that we serve a God who created order and consistency, and nature reflects His character of order and consistency.  Levi is at an age right now where he is soaking things like that up, and to see his heart start to understand who Christ is...is remarkable.

On our way home from the farm we LOVE to stop at the Corner Cone Cafe. This place is a dinky little cafe plopped right in the middle of farm land, along one of the main roads that all the trucks take to the farms and out to Allendale.  We sit on the front porch and eat our lunch and yell "WOOOOOWWWWW!" at all the trucks flying by!

                                      

                                      

The other day we went for hair cuts and ran a bunch of errands.  Checked out Hobby Lobby's Christmas display. ((gulp))

                                     

Since the boys were so patient during their hair cuts AND all the unbuckle-buckle-unbuckle-buckle of numerous errands, I surprised them with a trip to Windmill Island on the way home to check out the new playground (I just found out that City of Holland residents get in for free?!). I didn't realize we could do all the other things at Windmill Island too! Like the merry go round!  Levi did NOT want anything to do with that at first, but as soon as he saw other kids getting on he changed his mind.

                                     

Beautiful playground - actually designed and built by TLC's Carter Oosterhouse last summer. It's right along the Black River and the railroad tracks are on the other side of the river, so Luke got to see a train go by. Kids in rear-facing car seats don't get to see trains, you know. ;)

                                   

Shooting into the sun, but the train's there

                                   

Luke loved seeing the peacock and the "cocka-doodle-doooo" as he says it (he won't say 'rooster')

                                  

There's a children's garden there, too.  Kids can take a little plastic watering can and water the plants.

                                 

                                 

                                 

I can hardly believe that next week - yes, NEXT WEEK - I am going to start up school with the boys again.  We did enroll Levi in threeschool one day a week at a local Christian school.  It'll be a ton of fun for him, and we want him to get the context of a classroom setting.  There are SO MANY good schools in our area - we are very fortunate - and some of them offer hybrid homeschool/traditional school programs, so a blend may be what we choose to do in the future.  Every year will be a reevaluation of where the boys are and what they need, I'm sure.  At least two other days of the week I will do preschool/pre-K with Levi, and Luke will just have the advantage of going along for the ride.

This week in preparation I have started to cycle our "school structure" back into the day.  Morning projects came back out before breakfast.  Levi is VERY into puzzles and will put them all together, tear them up, and put them back together.

                                    

He's just now becoming interested in games.  I taught him how to play Candy Land and Memory. He LOVES Candy Land.

                                   

Luke, just like Levi at this age, is very into water.  This was a peaceful moment of water play...that quickly turned into a flood in the kitchen.  I filled the tub with about an inch of water and both boys stripped and moved their good time there instead.

                                       

Levi received this Melissa and Doug patterning set for Christmas and was SO not interested in it...until the other morning when he went downstairs and brought it up and played with it for much of the morning.

                                     

I originally had what I thought was a fantastic plan for schooling this year - Sonlight's pre-K curriculum (which Levi and I are very excited to begin), Handwriting Without Tears, and a beginning math curriculum that I had purchased.  I was about six weeks into planning and realized that it was not sitting well in my gut. It was overly ambitious and setting us up for a grand amount of frustration.  It took a couple weeks of thinking and researching and doing a good amount of reading before I threw up my white flag and decided to blow up  my plan and rewrite it.  Long story.  We will still work with Handwriting Without Tears and the beginning math concepts as well as our Sonlight curriculum, but it will be at a much slower pace than I had planned, and I am adding in a LOT more play-oriented learning vs worksheets and instructional learning.  This week I have already started to implement our focused play and I can see that BOTH boys are going to thrive with it, hopefully over the next couple of years.  I did print off a comprehensive list of preschool/pre-K expectations as well as Common Core standards and highlighted the areas where Levi needs the most work - even if I heartily disagree with much of Common Core, I still want to keep abreast with what the latest expectations are.  Criminy, if they want me to teach my four year old how to gather data and graph it, I will, even if I think it's a bit much. ;)