December 5, 2016

Wild Kratts upon waking because I just get tired of saying NO.  'What's in the Bible' Christmas edition before breakfast because, well, it's hilarious and informative.  Practicing Christmas program songs at breakfast that involved a heck lot more noise than necessary because Luke busted out the musical instruments - he can't NOT bust out musical instruments, it's just his thing.  Fighting during bed-making and getting dressed; lots of character training on treating others the way that YOU want to be treated.  Handwriting lesson got changed to copying 1 Corinthians 16:13 ("Be watchful. Stand firm in the faith. Act like men. Be strong.") and standing in the kitchen shoulders back, hands out of pockets, clear and strong voice reciting it over and over again because you're a Gouveia, you're created in God's image, and you are being raised to be of strong character. 

Advent lesson on how Christmas actually started with creation; Luke won't sit still or pay attention or stop interrupting.  This happens every morning during our Bible lesson and I'm tired of it.  Levi reads our read-alouds haltingly, which makes 'The Grinch Who Stole Christmas' much longer than normal and Luke's not pleased with that either - and sounding out every third word is daunting but at least Levi is learning to read.

Because the boys are fighting again they must serve each other by making each other's snack.  This actually goes pretty well.  Practice new Spanish words over bowls of Honey Nut Cheerios.  Haul out Levi's math materials and begin the next unit.  New math concepts on Mondays makes the lesson go more slowly and he keeps writing his numbers backwards.  Finish math and pull out the paints; they are going to paint Christmas trees that we will hang our advent symbols on.  Levi splooges paint all over the table.  Luke pitches a fit because his tree didn't turn out the way he saw it in his mind, so he refuses to paint anymore.

Round everyone up to head out for errands.  They are put off because we aren't going anywhere 'fun'; I remind them that if they want to watch Wild Kratts and fight and goof off when I give them their chores and slide off their chairs when we are doing lessons, we run out of time to do fun things.  Pouting ensues.  Luke wants a bath while I make lunch and both get in the tub.

About two minutes in, Luke socks Levi a good one and I haul him out of the tub and dress him again while he screams in my face with tears streaming down.  He's sent to his bed to lie down and think about being in control of his body when he's angry.  He perks up after he's eaten and retreats to his room to play with Duplos and listen to his favorite worship CD.  Levi wants to read chapter after chapter of 'A Tree in the Trail.'  We look up the Santa Fe trail on the map.  We read about Christmas around the world.  The dishes are piling up.  The paint brushes are drying out.  The mail is spread everywhere.  Duplos are breeding in every room including the bathtub.  The bathroom faucet won't stop dripping.  I never rearranged the Christmas ornaments after the boys decorated the tree.  Baskets of laundry are hidden in corners.  No makeup is on my face. Dinner is still in the deep freeze.

But.

We read about Jesus and how He spoke everything into existence but KNIT us together with His hands.

We practiced reading and did it well.

We practiced writing and did it well.

We did a math lesson.

We painted.

We read some more and did some geography.

We busted out instruments and danced and worshipped.

We reinforced the same character lesson over and over again.

We served each other, apologized, asked for forgiveness, and extended it.

This is life and school and church and learning how to love others and my house is a mess.

March 22, 2016

I realize that I need to just use this blog as a Doogie Howser-style online diary, because I don't have time to load pictures and spin the tales of each day that I so badly wish I could remember.  Since I do want to remember them, I need to just sit down at the end of each day and just list out the highlights, even if that means that I can't weave it with witty prose.

Teaching these two to obey is going to be the end of me.  I am writing about it because I know I will have a chance to read this one day, someday in the future, and I will laugh...either because A) we are well past that, they are very obedient, and it's all water under the bridge. Or B) we have far bigger problems than obedience and I wish I could tell my younger self to enjoy these "little kid" problems.  I offered the boys stickers for each time that they obeyed the first time I told them to do something.  This resulted in significant improvement in their turnaround time because they now have something to motivate them. I offered no other reward than the chance to show Papa how many stickers they earned all day, and how proud of them he will be for being such good and helpful boys.  For the most part, it worked.  They did silly things like take the tracks off their toy bulldozer and throw them up on the roof of the garage, and then try to get them back down using all of our yard tools with long handles...but that was more comical to watch than anything.

Luke called Levi an "old lummox."  Only it came out "old wummox."  I had to look up 'lummox' and then I laughed when I saw the definition.

We had Levi's parent-teacher conference with Mrs. D this evening. Of course he is doing fantastic in preschool. He writes his name, knows all of his numbers and letters, etc.  He counts by rote to 100. He asks great questions and encourages other students and plays with a variety of friends. He prays and sings and praises God and shows his love for Jesus.  Wow.

Tonight I tucked the boys in and did our usual singing routine.  Luke picked "Moon moon moon" and Levi wanted to sing Rend Collective's "My Lighthouse" and then we landed on "Awesome God."  I don't usually talk much to them after singing, but felt compelled after singing Awesome God to tell Levi that that song is so significant to remember because he is going to see a lot of changes in the world during his life - even as a kid - and it's going to feel like God isn't there, let alone in control. But he is...and he knows what's going to happen, and he's going to use even the bad stuff to show that he IS the One in control, he truly is our awesome God.  Without missing a beat, Levi said, "Yeah, like this one time, Jesus was out on a boat with his disciples and this HUGE STORM came up, and the disciples were like, 'Jesus, don't you CARE that this storm is happening?' and Jesus just said 'hushhhh' - and the storm stopped. Just like that."  My eyes were filled with tears.  My precious boy has the faith of a child and he ministered to ME tonight.

November 23, 2015

I am going to tell you a tale of two mornings.

In the first morning, you will see split nanosecond snapshots of my children behaving as upright, eager, bright children always shall.  

I didn't get a picture of it, but they began the day reading together on the couch, snuggled under a  blanket.  Levi loves to 'read' to Luke, and usually Luke is happy to oblige. Seeing the two of them, I was pleased to be a mom.  I popped Ego waffles in the toaster and whipped up a tasty smoothie complete with power greens, coconut water, and organic berries for my darling children.  And yes, they actually consume it without complaint.

We did our morning breakfast school routine.

Here is my sneaky not-much-space-to-spare trick: that board with the numbers on it? It's a picture that hangs over the table. I taped those numbers on the back of it.  When it's 'school time', I turn the picture over. When it's not, I hang the picture back up.  To quote Matt - who actually said this of himself yesterday: "I am a living Pinterest page."

So we did our calendar time and practiced counting up to the date with our magic wand.  Levi worked on his handwriting lesson (loving our Write the Bible, Junior handwriting curriculum).  They are cracking up here because I was using a very exaggerated falsetto British accent to demonstrate the proper strokes for writing the letter B.  (Laughter motivates Levi.)

We did "Mama Bible time."  Mama Bible time has two purposes: to read and teach straight out of Scripture as well as work on a memory verse - AND - to teach them to sit still.  If they sit still and keep their hands in their laps, and recite their memory verse, they get a piece of candy (thank you, Erin Southwell, for THAT key component!).  So they will sit with their hands in their laps, quietly, with their eyes RIVETED on the fruity tootsie roll bag next to me, like a dog with its eyes trained on a spoon filled with peanut butter.

Luke is still working on sitting still - and oddly, he's the one who is actually pretty good at it.   He interrupted a lot today and acted like he couldn't speak when he needed to work on his verse (he has a bad habit of acting helpless), so he only got half a piece of candy.

Tempting as it is to read the fun stories, like Jonah and the whale or Noah's Ark, I went straight to Romans.  Because....Romans.  I mean, that's there's some strong theology.  I started getting uncomfortable with references to fornication and whatnot, so.....we started in Phillipians today. LOL You can see that Luke is still not very pleased.  I will add, however, that THEY are the ones who ask repeatedly for Mama Bible Time, and if I delay it till after lunch or forget, they are very quick to remind me, set up their chairs and (of course) get out the candy. Levi told me, though, that his favorite part is to practice his verse.  Luke freely admits his favorite part is the candy.

Part two of my morning started with Levi lobbing a metal monster truck off his bed while he was 'making' the bed. It hit Luke in the head.  Levi knows well that he is not allowed to just huck stuff off his bed, and for cryin' out loud, look to see if anyone might be standing there.  I can't even remember what happened following that, but Levi was sent to time out.  Invariably, this tips off a holy fit, and he starts waving his arms and hands in the air and hyperventilating and yelling at me to give him some grace.  I'm like, Um, NO, grace is a gift that you cannot demand, and furthermore what you are asking for is actually mercy and no I will not give you mercy because all YOU want is for me to overlook your poor behavior and give you zero consequences.  Well after that he stopped his hyperventilating and hand-waving and agreed that I was absolutely spot-on.  Heh. And I have oceanfront property in Arizona.

The morning spiraled down.  I yelled.  The boys got sillier and out of control. We left to grab a couple of boxes to fill for the Holland Rescue Mission Thanksgiving banquet and to go to Meijer.  They were atrocious at the Dollar Tree while we shopped for things to fill the boxes. It was an embarrassing spectacle of loudness, a shopping cart repeatedly being flung down the aisle, fighting over who would push the cart, and me plunking their bottoms on the floor in the paper towel aisle and using my best Claire Huxtable voice to give them a quiet but very firm what-for...while they snickered in that "Yeah, Mom - WHATEVER" way.  We forfeited Meijer and went home without groceries because the thought of taking two out-of-control pygmie goats to Meijer on the Monday before Thanksgiving sounded as awesome as rubbing my face with broken glass.  I made them unload the van and then both were sent to their room when we got home - check that, I rethought THAT and sent Levi to OUR room.  Then I sent them outside to play, fed them lunch, and said a resounding YES to their request to watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.  

My point is - and we all know this - but the ridiculous and darling pictures we ALL post on FB and see on Pinterest and blogs are all one tiny, brief, probably staged-more-than-we-care-to-admit millisecond of the day.  You can't smell the breakfast burning on the stove, hear the whining and complaining and sniping remarks, or even get a glimpse of the spectacularly hair-pulling moments that comprise the vast majority of the day. Never have I said while my boys are having an epic meltdown, "Hold on - lemme get a picture of that" - though now that I think of it, it wouldn't be a bad idea!  We are sinners raising...sinners.  It's as simple as that.

November 20th, 2015

Thirteen months.

That is exactly how long it has been since I last posted here.  

And I hate all 390-some days that have gone by, all of which are filled with fun and frustration and stories and moments and pictures, and it's all locked in my memory or my phone - no album or narrative or anything to bring the images significance.  And that makes me so sad. 

In thirteen months babies have turned into toddlers into preschoolers into regular KIDS.  Diapers exchanged for undies, tricycles for bikes, cribs for bunk beds, sippies for glasses, lap-snuggles for sitting side-by-side.  I'm not even wiping sticky hands anymore; they wash their own. I treasure each day, I cry each day, I love each day, I yell too much each day, and I need each day - or every few days - to be chronicled, because even the mundane moments are a JOY to look back on even months later, and the worst days are worth a good laugh if written down with just the right spin.

So.

I'm picking up where I left off, over a year later, as though I never stopped.  There's a significant gap and at some point I'll figure out how to fill it in.  There is nothing exciting about this blog.  A lot of my moments are homeschooling related and even those little things are a treasure to look back on, so I snap a picture.

________________________________________________________________________________

Today.

One more time before the snow flies, the boys got out with bare feet - and it's not even close to warm anymore, but so what....it may be six months before they can walk in bare feet outside.  Something about our home invites children to rip off their shoes and socks, even kids who would not normally be inclined to do so.  I like that.

So Levi has been in preschool two days a week. He's one of the oldest kids in his class, with his late October birthday.  We would not have wanted him in Kindergarten all day every day anyway this year, as we believe there is an immense advantage for a boy to be on the older end of the spectrum at school.  I planned to start full-time home school kindergarten next year, and  have been gathering the pieces of curriculum that I want to use.  Well - he is showing readiness for many of those things RIGHTNOW.  Soooooo.....I have started kindergarten-ing him in the pieces of time that we have at home, which feels fun and haphazard and I'm not really sure, then, what next year/kindergarten will look like?  But - that's the advantage of homeschooling.  You're ready for ____?  Alrighty, let's do it.

Meanwhile, Luke and I have three hours together twice a week. 

What I WANT to do with that time is clean the house.  It's an epic disaster on Tues and Thurs mornings and smells like bacon grease (because I love making bacon for breakfast).

What I NEED to do is spend time with Luke and enjoy the cool little person that he is.

So we do Coffee Shop Preschool. :)

How to do Coffee Shop Preschool: Fill a backpack with things a three year old likes to do.  Find a coffee shop.  Buy him a donut.  Play with him.

He LOVES Coffee Shop Preschool, and quite honestly, I foresee us twelve years from now still sitting at a coffee shop with our schoolwork spread out.  We'll spend a good hour to hour and a half doing puzzles, playing with blocks, playing color and counting games, and chowing on his donut.

Levi has been gobbling up chapter books (I read them aloud) - he loves any books that involve adventure and living out in the woods...so we have finished a few of the Boxcar Children, a fantastic one called the Trolley Car Family, he wasn't all that into Charlotte's Web, the Ralph S. Mouse series, and now we are reading the Little House in the Big Woods series.  We do things like pretend to identify tracks and hunt, and today we made tin can lanterns just like Laura's in the book - and we are going to have a pioneer dinner tonight (lights off, using our tin can lanterns).

Sometimes we get out for the heck of it. Because toy stores and Christmas decorations downtown are just plain fun.

Should you be tempted to believe that these days are amazing and filled with glee, let me dispel that thought straight away.  I still feel like I'm raising sociopaths, and actually that has been confirmed by a medical professional with whom I work who has boys the same age: evidently the ability to demonstrate empathy really doesn't develop in the brain until around the age of five. So it really does NOT faze them when I am reduced to a crumpled heap on the floor begging the Lord to give me patience and wisdom.  Luke really does find joy in punching me, kicking me, tell me I am bad and 'tinky (stinky) or that I need to go poop in jayo (jail).  

But I will keep marching, leading my small army of mighty and tender warriors, and goodness gracious I hope I keep up with this blog so I can remember it all.  

October 21, 2014

I have been too busy wiping boogery noses to write on Sticky Hands. :/  Whoops.

Life has felt unbelievably busy on one hand, yet at the same time it's not like we are super-involved in several things at once.  But staying on task with homeschool-oriented things and, to be completely honest, keeping on top of the discipline of a preschool-aged boy (and his feisty 2yr old brother) can completely consume the day, my emotions, energy, and resolve. That funny little meme that shows Frodo and Sam after the Ring has been destroyed and Middle Earth has been saved, and the caption says, The kids are finally in bed? Word.

Today offered a blessed reprieve from way-way-way-way-too-early wakeup times (lately it's been, like, 0530?) and both boys somehow - PRAISE THE LORD!! -  slept in.  And slept hard.  And do you know what?  The morning was so peaceful. They played contentedly together for a really long time.  There were no fights, no biting, no scratching or sitting on faces, screams, nothing. And do you know what I did?  I pushed aside my curriculum binder, listened to a sermon on the radio, and looked at a magazine while they pretended for 45 minutes that their toy box was a boat on the open sea.  We went to Zeeland to drop something off to Matt, sat in a coffee shop and ate a donut, visited a toy store for about an hour, and looked at bikes at the bike shop.  They happily rode their bikes on the driveway.  No one hit the other in the head with a shovel (Luke does that).  For one day (and probably one day only!) I did not feel like crumpling in a heap of tears at the hands of a miniature sociopath. Or two mini sociopaths.  I actually felt like a mom who sort of had her junk together.  Because?  I got up at 5am and worked out and folded the laundry and did my Bible study and took a shower and got breakfast ready and had the preschool stations set up and the housework had been done Monday and I had worked all weekend and why do I feel like I need to qualify that moms who are at home can sometimes spend time doing foofy things without feeling guilty???

We raked leaves in the front yard...to clean them up? No.  To jump in them over and over and over again.  I raked them in a pile, stood back, and the boys played.  Re-raked them, stood back, they played.  There was absolutely no intent to clean up the yard. It was just for unbridled fun. I actually got some great pictures, which prompted me to think, Hey, I should actually update Sticky Hands!  I will let the pics speak for themselves. :)

September 8, 2014

Two things: I canNOT believe that it was already two years ago that I was only a few days away from having Luke.  It was the bloomin' hottest summer ever-ever-ever.  I was dilated to 4cm and 60% effaced for weeks, getting up each morning at 6am to go for a rather uncomfortable 2-mile walk to try to hasten that process even more.  The night before I delivered I said to Matt, "I think this boy is going to be our mighty warrior."

Boy, was that ever true! ;)  A cute one, too.

                               

Second thing: parenting a nearly four-year-old is no joke.  Seriously the most awesomely humbling experience ever. There was nothing even remotely terrible about the two's.  We were warned that the three's were actually the one to watch out for...and now that we are approaching four the truth about that age is coming out too: parts of it ain't pretty.  A resounding AMEN from the Gouveia's here.  Wow. I won't get into any details because it's just too exhausting to even begin describing it...but....just...wow.

He does still have his sweet moments, though. :)  Enjoying watermelon from our garden.  I took him to the front porch and showed him how to shoot-spit out the seeds.  Last week while I was at work Matt texts me, Found Levi spitting watermelon seeds on the floor.  He said Mama said it's fun to spit out the seeds.  My reply: OUTSIDE. I MEANT OUTSIDE. Lesson?  Always be very specific.

                                   

Anyway.  So.  Labor Day weekend we went to our friends' house for a cookout and it was (as always) a bloomin' riot.  As things were winding down Krista says, "I feel like piling into our cars and going out for ice cream."  Of course, practical clock-watching me says, "Enhhh...I gotta get these boys home and in bed."  Krista: "NO!  In the motorhome!!  Let's all pile in the motorhome and go out for ice cream!  It'll be like a party bus!  Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleeeeeaaaaaase?"

Well, why not.  Levi thought it was the coolest thing ever.  So did we.

                                   

As an early birthday gift, Matt took Levi to Menard's and bought him a stack of wood scraps and a few other odds and ends.  Luke and I cleaned up the (janky, dirty, slightly unusable) area behind our garage while they were at the store, and arranged the hand-me-down playhouse on a spread-out pile of sand to create Levi's own construction zone.  Holy moly - best present ever.  Every boy who comes over to play disappears back there.  We have since added a couple of small step ladders and my garden stakes and trellises that I'm done using for the season.  Levi formed "Jason & Jason Construction Company" - insisting that I call him and Luke BOTH Jason (???).  The Jasons take their work VERY seriously.

                                  

Yes, those are garden trellises they are using as ladders.  Risk Management put the kabash on that one.  (He doubles as Infection Control too.) LOLOLOLOL  It's a good thing.

                                 

School stuff. Levi starts one day a week of threeschool on Friday.  His teacher is a wonderful young lady who just graduated from college last year, so she has lots of (definitely needed) energy.  He is VERY excited to go to school!!  I can't believe that this little baby that was JUST placed on my chest after hours of labor is actually going to school.

Meanwhile, we are plugging away as much as we can at home.  So far, pretty good.  We have our little routine and it's working pretty well. As long as the weather is nice our routine is going to be very loose. There will be plenty of time for crafty projects and more focused activities when the snow is flying!

One thing that thrills my socks off is this amazing thing that I ordered.  I had read about it on my favorite homeschooling blog several months (maybe a year?) ago.  I tucked the thought in the back of my head and have been rolling over and over it for that amount of time....read every review (literally from around the world), calculated the cost vs. what I currently spend on learning toys and manipulatives each year...talked it over a few times with Matt...and then we bought it.  It's called a Spielgaben set and is basically a learning system of open-ended toys geared to ages 3-12.  I really can't do justice to describing it but it's beautiful in every sense of the word.  It's all about play-based learning, exploration, developing fine motor skills, and play that encourages math skills and logic.  It also comes with hundreds of pages of learning resources, lesson plans, and inspiration cards (for building things).  You could seriously build an entire curriculum on it.   Yes, it was expensive and we had to weigh the cost carefully, but when I considered the fact that I spend at least $50-100 each year on learning toys specifically for homeschooling, if even one boy uses it for just a few years, it'll pay for itself...but it really will probably get used for several years, up through junior high. If both boys use it, even better.  So, we sprang for it.

Levi is NOT one for a lot of open-ended play, oddly. He loves projects and activities with a purpose and a definite goal - like puzzles.  He is all about gross motor movement (like every other boy) and is huge on language skills and development...but not so much fine motor. So I knew that a set like this would challenge him, only mildly interest him in some ways, and then eventually it will be a huge success for him once he keeps gravitating to it.

I'm mixing it up right now as I pick through the educational resources the set came with...mostly I set parts of the set out for the boys to explore and play with freely, which they have really enjoyed doing. I put some out with play dough the other day.  Levi made a sea urchin and a little underwater scene.

                             

                             

I put contact paper on the windows and let the boys stick shapes to it and make their own pictures.  Luke just randomly stuck shapes on, of course, and Levi built a stick person (I just taught him how to do stick people using a fun method suggested by Handwriting Without Tears) and wanted me to build a boat.

Levi's

                              

Lukie's

                             

Here's the first "man" Levi made.  There's a song on our Handwriting Without Tears CD that describes how to draw a person, so modeled it for Levi, and then he built "Mat Man" himself.  I left the pieces out and he kept going back to practice, it was kind of cool.  The next day he drew his first 'person,' which is huge because all he does otherwise is scribble, LOL.

The Spielgaben comes with some pretty cool worksheets and simple activities, so I've been experimenting with them to see what grabs Levi's interest.  So far he's been more take it or leave it as far as engaging with me in playing, but since we've gotten the set it's what he primarily wants to play with. I have to keep a close eye on them playing with it because there are some very small pieces, and Luke does put a lot of things in his mouth still.  So I store it away and pull out little bits at a time for them to fiddle with. 

After Luke went down for his nap today, I was all set to sit down with Levi to read...and he asked if we could play with the toys that I had set out in the morning.  Well, by all means. So we sat down and started fiddling around with the pieces. He pressed some small wooden disks into larger wooden circles and said he was putting money in envelopes to take to the post office.  So we built a post office together and people to work at the post office, and played with that for a while - pretending to send "money" in the mail, counting it all out together, etc.  This is exactly what I had in mind when I bought this set: engaging with each other in creative play, building things, reinforcing concepts, and keeping it fun.

Then he wanted to pull out his tractor and play on the floor.  I thought he was done playing with the set, but he started loading blocks into the trailer, dumping them on the wooden board, and counting them all out (his counting is great sometimes, rough most of the time)

He  brought over a large pile, and got overwhelmed by counting it all...so the next "load" he made much smaller, and he even said he made it smaller so he could count it better (he counts decently up to 12, then gets jumbled up between 13 and 15).  Then he loaded up a huge amount of tiny little matchstick-sized pieces.  I used the larger circles to show him how he could take a large number of items and divide them into smaller groups that would make it easier to count. He caught onto that right away and placed small piles of sticks into each circle so that I could count them all.

We played for about 45 minutes together until it was well past nap time and I put the brakes on it.  I was thrilled because he got practice with fine motor activity, counting, sorting, and probably a few other things that have lofty educational terms that I don't know.  And it was all while playing.  So fun.

Between our Sonlight curriculum and using the Spielgaben and getting more familiar with all that we can do with it, and doing some of the fun Handwriting Without Tears activities, I think it'll be a fun year of 'homeschooling.'  Most days are loose and easygoing, and I write down all the things we do (planned or otherwise) at the end of the day in my school planner so I can see that little things ARE being absorbed along the way.  :)

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.