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. ;)
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