And the year begins

We started school Monday. Jacob is in second grade, Joshua is in kindergarten, and the girls are "preschool". I had these great plans of how things would go and my schedule was worked out. Everyone would have something to do throughout the day. The boys would take turns entertaining the girls and the girls would love every minute of it since they adore their brothers. During naptime for the girls I would work on things together with the boys. Life would be nice and school would be fun. My schedule looked so good on paper that it was frameworthy.

Well, as we all know, life has a funny way of taking your plans and laughing at you. Half an hour into trying to get the kids to listen to what we were going to do first, I realized the joke truly was on me. I overhear Jacob mumble that he thought second grade was going to be fun. Uh oh! That's it. Time to rethink this whole thing.

So, with a huge sigh, I proceded to tear up my beautiful, happy schedule and go into my room to rethink the entire thing and how I need to work it out to everyone's benefit, all the while being serenaded by Joshua's drumming on my door. I gave that idea up quickly, and told Joshua he could play in his room while I worked with Jacob. Sweet Joshua actually peeked out his room about 10 minutes later and asked me if I wanted to play Legos with him. WOAH! This is one of our goals that we have been working on - initiating play by asking someone to play a specific thing with him. I was excited, but there was no way in the world I could just drop Jacob's school. So, I came up with a solution and explained that I had to do school with Jacob, but could play later. Until then, would he like to play with Cassidy? Oh yes! Great idea! Score one for Mom! And even better, Cassie was chomping at the bit to get in the boys room and help make a mess.

I decided to try easing into school a bit this year. So, Jacob worked on his Bible lesson and some Math. We are using an old 3rd grade Holt Mathematics book and supplementing as necessary and for the Bible lesson I am using Calvary Chapel Children's Ministry Curriculum. It's nice. It has mazes, crosswords, true and false, fill in the blanks, and word searches. I also have been getting "Keys for Kids" which is a free daily devotional for kids that we receive in the mail each month.

Joshua worked on several things so far. We have been sorting some magnetic letters by color. My letters come in 6 different colors, which is a lot for Josh to concentrate on at once. I had him sort about 100 letters into their proper place and it took him a few tries before he fully seemed to understand what I was wanting. While they were up today he asked me if some of them spelled car. So, I showed him the c, a, and r and explained that they make the word car. He giggled. So funny to see him get excited over something so simple. LOL I then decided to take it a bit further and took away the c and added f. I went over the sounds again with him, and explained the ar sound and how to put the f sound with it and make the word far. Ok, not impressed. So then I did a couple more and came to the letter t. I asked him what sound the t makes, he told me, and lo and behold he actually told me tar spells TAR! He didn't know what tar was until I explained it to him, but he smiled a little when I told him how proud I was that he just read a word by himself.

I also discovered this week that Joshua has a great sense of rhythm. He was playing a Reader Rabbit music game and actually enjoying it. All of the rhythm exercises that he tried, he did awesome on! So, that was exciting. :) Maybe there is a musical future for my little guy. He has always been able to hum and sing a tune amazingly well compared to other kids his age. I remember when he was only one and we were in the car and he was humming. I thought it was Jacob because of how accurate it was. Just amazing.

And he can use a computer mouse. Another thing that amazes me given that until this week he always prefered to watch others do the computer. Now he has one of his own and he seems to have completely taken to it. I'm really glad, because I think that he will benefit a lot from using it.

We did some drawings in shaving cream yesterday. Joshua hated it, but with guidance and my convincing him to draw some cars, we made it through. Even the girls enjoyed that one, though I learned next time we will probably try using whipped cream. Elena was way too tempted by the look of it and kept trying to taste it. Yuck!

So, that brings you up to date for now. RAKScraps has just started releasing their August Mega Kit and the theme is school days! Woohoo! Run over and join the message board to get the links to this awesome kit, and while you are there, why not say hello? Everyone there is great! I plan on trying to scrap a bit this weekend as time permits. I want to get the first day layouts completed ASAP and try to stay up on them for the end of the year, especially since Joshua's portfolio is going to be made up of a lot of photos. :)