Sunday, October 30, 2005

Almost November

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I decided to take part of today and do a little prep for November. I made a thankful tree, which you will see below - try not to laugh too hard at my lack of artistic skills. Trees have never been an easy task for me to draw for some reason. Anyway, each day in November, the kids will choose a leaf in a fall color and label it with something they are thankful for. By the end of the month the tree will no longer be bare and hopefully the kids will have a little more insight to just how much they really do have just in time for December and the commercialism of Christmas. I will be sure to post pictures of the tree again at the end of the month.

I also have a unit study on Thanksgiving that I picked up at Chamblain's Bookmine. I love that place! Their website does not even begin to touch what they have in their store, which now includes two buildings. There is always a treasure to be found there. It's really a homeschooler's second best find (after the library of course!).

So, without any further rambling from me, here is our thankful tree:

Friday, October 28, 2005

Homeschooling - an educational experience for the kids AND me

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All that know me know that I have mentioned before how I received little to no history education in my years in the public school system. The only history class where I learned about history was my Western Civ class during college. I have never been so lost in my entire life! Everyone else in the class had some form of history in their past. Not only did I have to try and learn all of the new info, I many times had to try and find some sort of knowledge everyone else was taught in high school to catch me up to what we were learning in high school. How I walked away with a C in that class, I have no idea. I think that my professor had mercy on me and wanted to just get me out of the class and not repeat it. LOL

Well, here I am homeschooling my children, and where elementary math and reading are a breeze to teach Jacob, history is a challenge since I don't have the background I should have. However, I am learning so much by teaching him recently that I am enjoying it as much as he is! It seriously is becoming one of my favorite subjects to teach each day. We are currently studying the discovery of America and I have learned quite a bit this week. I feel so smart! LOL

I think we are going to do a unit study next week on Indian tribes. Jacob is interested and I have developed an interest as well. Should be fun! So, off to prepare. LOL I love it when I come up with something that was not in my original plans for the year. :)

We also did our first pumpkin carving. Jacob helped me choose a face to use and then I had all of the kids help scoop out the insides. Cassie was the only one that truly seemed to enjoy it. Jacob didn't like the icky feeling (I think I need to start doing the sensory activities with him again) and Joshua wanted absolutely nothing to do with scooping it. Elena enjoyed pretending to help. Mainly she held the spoon and looked cute. :) Here are some pics of the kids with our creation.

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Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Great therapy and Halloween prep

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Today's therapy was a total success! We decided to again try putting the OT before the ST, though for most kids it seems to work better the other way around. joshua is an exception though, just as I thought a month ago when I suggested it may be the case. There was a really positive buzz around the OT area...just a feeling of happiness and excitement, though I have no idea why really. Mindy set up an obstacle course...Josh had to go up the steps, down the slide like a snake, get on the scooter board and sccot over to the tunnel, go through the tunnel, over the bridge that was three very thin boards, then while on those boards and without falling, bend down to get a puzzle piece off the floor (this was the most challenging), jump across 3 steps, up the ramp, back up the steps and put the puzzle piece in place. Whew! Then he's start all over again. It was bustling with activity today and he had some trouble concentrating which at times caused him to totally get off his path, but Mindy was patient and got him right back on track in no time.

After OT, we went to speech. Jessica let Josh pick a truck out from the storage room. He wanted a "scooper truck" and after finding one we were off to the room. Jessica had several activities planned for today. For the past few weeks, Joshua has been quite aggitated when we get in the room, but today was great. He sat on his chair with no trouble and did all of the work he was told to do. They began with a book about pumpkins and the goal was to be able to identify emotions - one of his big challenges that we have been working on outside of therapy sessions. He did fantastic! We then moved onto a 3 piece puzzle game where he would choose an outfit for the bear and tell Jessica what the bear was dressed as. Next came a card game that went over opposites. This is something they have worked on in therapy, but we have been working on at home as well. He did wonderful, getting all but one correct. I was impressed, and I think Jessica was as well. She mentioned again that she wants to re-evaluate him because he is not nearly as bad as the first therapist seemed to have decided he is, and then we can get a better idea of what to work on. She plans on doing this on about 2 weeks. I am so relieved that we will finally have a true estimation of where he is and what he really needs help on. I really love our speech therapist!

In other news, we have been preparing for Halloween. We never have really done much on Halloween, other than dressing the kids up and going to my grandparents house to let them see the kids in their costumes and then go to some of their neighbor's houses so the kids get some sort of trick-or-treat experience. Well, this year that is obviously out, so I haven't decided what we will be doing. There are plenty of activities around town, so we're bound to find something. Anyway, Elena will be Sleeping Beauty, and Cassidy is wanting to be a princess. I am going to be working on her costume the remainder of the week. Jacob can't seem to make up his mind. He wants to be a Transformer, but I am not feeling all that creative right now, so we'll see what we come up with. And my dear little Joshua informed me yesterday that he wants to be Pocahontas. LOL I'm not sure what we are going to do about that one...maybe he'll choose something else by the weekend. LOL

Monday, October 17, 2005

Sharing more pictures

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Ok, I received an email from Sarah letting me know I need to share some more pics. Geez, I can't please you people! LOL Since it has been requested, and I love sharing pics of the kiddos, I thought I'd go ahead and make a second post today. :D Enjoy!

The kids and Silas with my parents:
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JACOB:
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JOSHUA:
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Also see the post below for another. ;)

CASSIDY:
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ELENA:
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What's the latest?

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Ok, so I was informed last nnight that I have been a slacker. LOL Not really, but it was hinted at by April that I needed to update this thing. LOL So, here is what we have been up to.

Joshua turned 5 years old on the 13th. I did slack off there and have not yet posted his birthday pic like I did with the other kids. Here it is though!

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The kids attended their first Circus a couple of weekends ago. My mom got free tickets to see the Shriner's Circus, so all of us, my parents, Willie, Glenn and his grilfriend, Mel, and my grandfather all went and had a great time. The kids loved it. Joshua was very distracted by all of the flashing lights. I tried very hard to get him to notice something other than the lights...he couldn't focus on the trapeeze artists because they were too far away from us compared to the lights, but I tried anyhow. Most of the acts were that way. He did like the horses and they caught his attention because they came out to the rings directly in front of us. We had to sit off to the side a good bit, basically the end of the aufitorium, but where we were turned out to be a pretty cool spot for Joshua. We were the closest people to the act where a motorcycle was attached to a highwire. A man drove it up to where we were sitting, and below the cycle was a long swing hanging down and a young woman was sitting on it. Eventually she stood up and he did as well, and they turned the bike completely upside down. Ugh, my stomach churned watching it, but Joshua was so excited. LOL And in true Joshua form, he later informed me that it was his favorite part of the show. :)

School is going well. Jacob is way too smart sometimes. We have been finishing school pretty early these days. Right now we are going through common fairy tales. It's amazing how many of the details of some of these I totally forgot through the years. For instance, the story of Rapunzel. I honestly did not remember the witch trapping the prince into climbing the braid and then knocking him into thorns and causing him to go blind. Maybe I had the non-violent, rated G version growing up. :P Who knows? I know it has been quite interesting though.

We also have just started talking about the discovery of North and South America. I was trying really hard to hold out until Novemeber to do this, but Jacob has really been enjoying the history and geography lessons. So, we started that today. He was a bit upset about hearing how the Spaniards took over the land that the Indians had been on for so long.

I've been taking a break from science the past 2 weeks. We had such a focus on it so far, that I wanted to sort of sit it out a bit. Shame on me. But he hasn't seemed to mind it too much.

We had a field trip to an art museum since I last posted. Jacob and I will be going back again alone to really be able to focus. Joshua didn't want to be there, Jacob was grouchy and fighting with everyone including me, and the girls did ok. They have a very nice hands-on area for the kids and they really enjoyed it...It made it a bit difficult to do the other "no-touch" parts of the museum afterwards though! LOL Unfortunately, I had never been to the museum before, so I happened upon the wrong area first. I know for any future excursions now though!

This weekend was a lot of fun. Silas, the kids, and I all drove out to Downtown Disney to meet up with a couple of my August board buddies. Hard to believe, but we have been posting on a mom's board since we found out we were pregnant with our August 2004 babies. So that means it has been a year and 9 months! Wow! Anyhow, one of the moms lives all the way in England, and her family was visiting Disney World and staying in FL for 2 weeks. So, another mom from GA had her family come down to meet up on the same day and we had a really nice time! The kids did great and it was so much fun getting to actually meet some people I have been talking to for ages. And all of the kids were wonderful and they seemed to enjoy the meetup as much as we did! The mom from GA and I live so close that we are planning to get together again soon. :) Her oldest is 3 years old, and Jacob said he really enjoyed getting to ride on the train ride with her. LOL Here is a group photo from our adventure...(the men were all behind the cameras.)

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Monday, October 03, 2005

Newest addition to the family

Yes, our family has expanded and we now have a rabbit living in our home. His name is Thumper, and I have to say he is one of the sweetest rabbits I have been around. He is a black and white Mini Rex with blue eyes. I was a bit nervous about this because we had two rabbits before having kids. One was sweet and the other was mean as could be. Thumper, however, was raised by a homeschooling family that includes 4 year old triplet boys and he is litter trained and leash trained. He is going to be not only the family pet, but also Jacob's 4H project.

He did not appear to have any issues with the change in environment. When Jacob and I first brought him home, we cleaned his cage while he nosed around outside in a puppy pen. Jacob learned how to clean the cage properly, helped fill it with bedding and refill the food dish and add hay. We then decided to put the cage down in the pen and see if he'd climb in. At first he wouldn't, but I then told him to go to his cage and amazingly he did it. LOL We then carried him into the house where the kids proceeded to stare at him as if he were the star attraction of the zoo. Even Elena was amazed by him.

After a few hours of him hearing us bustling about the house, we decided to let him out of the cage to explore a bit. He had a blast hiding behind the couches and then bounding between the two of them. And the kids had a blast watching him do it. Every so often, Thumper would decide to come over to someone who was being quiet and check them out. He hopped toward Elena soon after getting out of his cage and she freaked out. She couldn't figure out what this "toy" was coming after her for. She jumped back and cried. After about a half an hour though, she was fine. :)

By the end of the night, after everyone else had gone to bed, Thumper allowed me to pet him. Then yesterday he allowed everyone, including Elena, pet him. Elena tends to not notice him until he is sniffing her leg, and it upsets her a bit that he takes her by surprise, but she usually just reaches out to touch him once she notices and he bounces off. Such little teases. ;)

Here are some pics:
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