Too much or too little?

I really cannot believe that we have been officially doing pre-school with Karis for over a month now! It has been such a fun and exciting experience for all of us. Even when we are not "doing school," Karis is constantly asking me, "What schoolwork can I do now?" And Karlie has utterly amazed me by doing absolutely every. single. thing. that Karis does. She wants to count backwards from 20, learn to read, and do worksheets right along with her sister. The whole process has been a blessing for our family and I am so happy to be teaching them at home this year.

But I still struggle with doubts a lot. I daily go back and forth between "Am I doing enough?" and "Am I doing too much?" I know that sounds contradictory, but I just want to be honest here.

I read my friends' blogs about their children going to pre-school and all the fun crafts they are making and hands on activities and what they are learning and it just makes me want to do more with my girls. I start to second guess myself and wonder if there is an aspect of her education that I might have left out of my plan. Plus, chasing around my suddenly-crawling, short-napping almost-eight-month-old definitely limits the amount of individual instructional time I have with my big girls. We primarily try to do our school work during her morning nap because my big girls have their own rest time when she naps in the afternoon. But Abbi's morning nap used to be our best reading time and now that we have started more formal schoolwork, I am finding it hard to make time to read at other times. When Abbi is awake, she either wants our attention or wants to eat our books :) So I am finding it hard to squeeze in as much educational time into our day as I had hoped.

But on the other hand, Karis is only 4 and I want her to have plenty of time to play outdoors, pretend with her baby dolls and doll house, and make up her own artwork. I struggle between wanting to plan out lots of fun crafts and activities for her and at the same time wanting her to be free to use that wonderful, blissful imagination that God gives to 4-year olds. I want her to have time to be a kid! So at the same time that I wonder if I should be teaching her more, I often wonder if I am actually doing too much and need to just let her play more.

I would definitely say that although we have had a wonderful 1st month of pre-school, I am still struggling with balancing it all. But I love every minute of it and it is so worth it! It thrills me so much to be a part of Karis' learning and being there to see things all of a sudden "click" in her mind. I taught her how to sound out words for the 1st time yesterday and I cannot tell you who was more excited -- Karis or myself!

I've been trying to think of what I might change for our second month of school and have come up with a two main goals. They both involve personal sacrifice but will be good for me, HA!

1. I need to get up earlier! Ever since Abbi's hospitalization, she hasn't gone back to sleeping through the night again and I haven't had the heart to make her cry it out. (Yeah, I'm a wimp, but once you see your baby cry/ scream for almost 2 days straight, it is a long time before you can stand to hear her cry again!) I've used her multiple wakings as an excuse to stay in bed longer in the mornings to get as much rest as I can. But I'm going to start getting up an hour before everyone else again. I need to have time to read my Bible and start my day right, as well as get breakfast all ready and unload the dishwasher so we can jump into schoolwork more quickly and have more time later on in the day to play or read.

2. If one of my big girls does not fall asleep during nap-time, I am going to allow her to get up early to read books with me. I posted a while back about our nap-time solutions, and the plan works wonderfully as long as both of them fall asleep or both of them are awake. But it seems that a couple times a week only one of them falls asleep while the other sings and plays until Momo's eyes open. This new addendum to the plan will allow me to have special one-on-one time with one of my big girls and add in some extra reading time as well. I'll miss that 2-hour chunk of time to myself but since my girls are all usually in bed by 7 each night, I should have plenty of time to finish up my housework, blogging, e-mail, etc. after they go to bed.

How has your first month of school gone? Is there anything you plan to do differently next month?

The Dollar Store for Homeschoolers

Do you live near a Dollar Tree? I LOVE our dollar store and I find so many great things for homeschooling there. Looking around our homeschool room, here are a few of the items I see that came from the dollar store:

1. Workbooks. I have an unhealthy obsession with the workbooks from Dollar Tree. They are just so great and so cheap. My boys are not coloring book kids. They don't enjoy sitting down and coloring or drawing. But I've discovered they will sit down and do a worksheet. Some of the ones we work on aren't really that challenging to them (draw a line between the two matching Care Bears, for example) but it is great pencil practice for them. And I always make them write their name at the top of each worksheet (front and back). This has been great practice for them. Some of the workbooks are more at their skill level and they enjoy cutting, writing, and doing mazes.

2. White Boards & Dry Erase Markers. I found these great framed white boards for $1/each and a 3 pack of markers for $1. We use these boards to practice writing letters and to draw Mat Man (from Handwriting Without Tears). I used white boards a lot as a classroom teacher and I can see us getting a lot of use out of them when drilling math, practicing spelling, etc.

3. Card Packs. This was a 6-pack of card games for $1. I have these in our Busy Bag Box and can pull them out when we need a fun activity to break up our school day.

4. Puzzles. Each of the boys picked out a Disney Cars 48 piece puzzle the last time we were in Dollar Tree. These also live in our Busy Bag Box for a quick activity. The boys can practice teamwork and turn-taking when working together on the puzzles.

5. Magnetic Alphabet Sheets. I found this cute sheet of alphabet magnets the other day. I bought two sets so we would have doubles. The boys worked together right away to lay out the alphabet and spell some words. Also, I didn't buy these yesterday because we don't need them, but Dollar Tree has Wooden Magnetic Letters. These would be a super cheap version of the Melissa & Doug letters.

I also love the Target Dollar Spot, especially when they put out their back to school items. Here are a few of the items I picked up this year:

Do you have any great Dollar Store items that you use in your homeschooling? Please share! I'm always looking for new ideas!

Our First Weeks of School

This is Will's desk that used to belong to Jacob and his brothers. He loves it! Our table was getting too small for both him and Adeline to do work on. 

I can't believe that we have completed 6 weeks of Kindergarten already! I'm relieved that our days have routine now and planning isn't taking me as long as it did in the beginning. I'm ECSTATIC that Will is actually learning and loves to do his work (most days). We have only had a few stand-offs where he did not want to do something.  But he has learned pretty quickly that I'm not messing around and his school work is not optional. :) 

Our days generally look like this: 

7:15am - up and dressed, playtime (or tv if I'm being honest) 

8:00am - breakfast

8:30am - chores and clean up breakfast

9:00am - start school! 

10:00am - snack break (this has revolutionized our morning. many rough moments can be avoided if he gets a snack!)

12:00pm - lunch and read aloud time

12:45pm - finish read aloud time 

1:00pm - nap for Adeline, quiet time for Will (or nap some days still!)

3:30pm - play/errands/etc until Daddy is home!

Obviously I have to stop often to feed Anna or put her down for nap. In addition, sometimes we have late mornings and don't start until closer to 9:30 or 10. Those days sometimes mean that Will and I finish up some school work during the first part of naptime. Tuesday mornings Adeline has dance, so Will and I bring some work with us to do there. 

We use a drawer system (modified workboxes if you can even call it that...) with each of our tasks for the day in an individual drawer. We work through the drawers in order, so its easy to stop and start as needed. Will also knows the things he can do by himself while waiting for me to take care of Anna (color, puzzles, math games, etc.)

Sonlight is our core curriculum that covers history, read alouds, some science and bible. We add our own Language Arts (Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading, Explode the Code, Handwriting Without Tears) and Math (RightStart Math). We are also getting ready to add a few science units in and Will is very excited about that. 

Here they are painting with feathers as the first people might have done inside caves long ago.

Will LOVES math. He begs for math every day. Here he is making shapes on a geoboard. This was not part of our official math curriculum, but my effort to include more math for him.

Some crafts we made! The fish was part of an art kit Will got for his birthday, but worked great when we learned about mosaics in Ancient Greece. The "coats" are from when we read about Joseph's coat of many colors.

 We've also learned about the Vikings. Here is the awesome picture Will drew of a Viking Longship! The ONLY thing I drew was the very basic shape of the boat and shape of the sail. He added everything else. Do you see the anchor, the waves, the shields lining the boat, the dragon head at the front, the patterned stripes on the sail, the vikings (Will and Dad) with swords and shields...

His very first math worksheet! Our curriculum actually does very little written work at this age. He had to draw tally marks for each set of shapes. Will did a very good job but was greatly disappointed to learn about how do corrections in math. :) The sticker he earned for corrections helped his motivation somewhat.

This picture made me laugh so much! In reading, he is now reading paragraphs and short stories! But he is still learning to read with the fluency necessary to really comprehend what he read. So our reading book suggested he draw a picture of the sentence/paragraph he read. The sentence was something about a person "in the sun." Will literally drew a person IN the sun.

Here is our map where we mark all of the countries we learn about in history. So far we've learned about the Ancient Egyptians, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece and the vikings of Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Will is also very into maps so we've had to mark a lot of other things on our map. Including where we live, where all of our family lives and many of our friends overseas. He also understands directions and the different climates (colder closer to the poles and hotter at the equator). 

This is Will's handwriting book. I am so impressed with how much this has improved his letter formation. Look at that last B he wrote! We used the pre-k book last year so I'm sure that helped too, but I've seen improvement even in these few short weeks of the K book.

This is an example of what Will can read. Of course, this takes us a while and this particular story was the entirety of our reading lesson for that day. He is enjoying reading and making words!

I cannot leave out Adeline. She won't let me. :) Her "work" mostly consists of activities centered around our letter of the week. We've only made it through D so far. She has her own set of drawers that she does most days Will does school (but not all). She will often do dot markers, puzzles, sorting activities, prewriting practice, letter sound activities, etc. Some goals I have for her are to recognize the letters and know their sounds, write her name, improve her puzzle skills and increase her attention span. (I don't know which child had the normal attention span, but she can sit still for a far shorter time than Will did at age 3!)

One of the things we are doing is making her own alphabet book! She enjoys this and looking at the pages even though we have only done four.

This last picture is something Adeline did at our homeschool co-op. We've only been doing it for two weeks, but so far we love it! It's Friday mornings from 9-12. Adeline's preschool class is learning about fall - including apples. She did apple prints, tasted different apples and lots more. Will's two classes are Continents and Music. He especially love the Continents. This past week, they were in Asia and ate rice with chopsticks.

I am so thankful for the opportunity to be home with and teaching my kids. Even though there are enough difficult moments for an entire separate blog post...seeing these pictures and writing about our successes helps me see the bigger picture of how great it really is going.

I wrote this for our family blog. Not to brag about all we've accomplished because it is only by God's grace that we've accomplished anything! I wanted to remember how far we've come and document our days during this new season. Our focus in September was Back to School, so I thought I'd share here too. Whether preschool, public school, homeschool or even college or seminary...How have your first days back to school gone? 

Giveaway! Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

Since we're talking a lot about schooling this month on POH, we thought it would be appropriate to host a giveaway for the Curriculum Clean Out over at Homeschool Creations (one of my fav homeschool blogs).

There are LOTS of giveaways, so go check it out and let us know if you win one!

Now, about our giveaway...

 

We're giving away a copy of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons! Free! All you have to do is leave a comment including your email so we can contact you. We'd love to have new readers tell us a little bit about yourselves (old ones too!). 

We've mentioned this book before and Leah P is going to write a post later this week comparing it The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. You can read this post to find out why I chose to use OPGTTR (that's the abbreviation I use in my lesson plans. Ha!). While we chose something else, this book is still an AWESOME choice for teaching reading and I've known many who have used it very successfully. 

Remember, leave a comment with your email address so we can contact you! The giveaway will end at midnight on Friday, September 30th. 

School lunch Ideas

What are your favorite foods to pack for your kids? Whenever I have a picnic with my girls or have to be out around lunch-time, we usually go the "snacks for lunch" route: some combination of dairy, nut, and fruit. For instance, a lot of times we have cheese, grapes, and almonds or yogurt, apples, and pecans. The girls love it, but I've been excited to find several good articles lately about new ideas for school lunches. I thought I would share the links in case you are stuck in a lunch-time rut like me and eager for some healthy new ideas.

Balanced School Lunches for Picky Eaters

The Art of Back to School Lunches

Tips for Packing Affordable School Lunches

A free lunch box planner printable to keep you organized

Back to School with Food Allergies

Nut-free school snack list

21 ways to plan ahead for school lunches

How to pack a "real food" school lunch in 10 minutes

10 ways to switch up your kid's lunch

5 Tips to outsmart lunch menus

Breaking Down School Lunch Box Ideas

Homeschool Blindspots

A friend recently linked to this post on her blog, and I am glad she highlighted it. I think the blindspots the author mentions apply to all parenting, not just homeschooling, and his thoughts deserve a read. Please take a chance to read the article and chime in with your thoughts in our comments! Homeschool Blindspots HT:Joy

Books for the Beginning Reader

Samuel is just beginning to read. We've been working our way through Wise & Buffington's The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. We just completed Section 3 "Short Vowel Words". Samuel has also been memorizing a lot of sight words by watching the Meet the Sight Words video series. Both he and Joel can pick out a number of sight words throughout the day after watching these videos. I am really glad that we have paired the two together. The combination of knowing how to read consonant-vowel-consonant words and many sight words has opened up a whole new world of reading for Samuel.

When I tried to teach Samuel to read a year ago, I used the Bob Books by Bobby Lynn Maslen. We stopped and started a number of times, but never progressed out of the first set of books. Samuel just wasn't that interested and I didn't want to push it. The appeal of the Bob Books for me was the phonemic progression and control. If you know the sounds of letters, you are ready for these books. But they are a bit dull and I can see how a child would get bored easily.

This time around, we are still building bit by bit with the Ordinary Parent's book, but the supplement of the sight words has made a big difference. I am able to pick out books from the Easy Reader section at the library that Samuel can read. He feels so good when he is able to read a whole book by himself! And it is a good encouragement to me too to persevere.

The first book he read on his own was Cats, The Sound of Short A by Alice K. Flanagan. This is part of the Wonder books series.

Another series we have read is called Flip-a-Word. The series includes titles such as Crab Cab and Quack Shack. They aren't much for stories, but they practice rhyming word families and are much kookier than the Bob Books.

The second book Samuel read on his own was The Bug in the Jug Wants a Hug. This is Book 1 of the Sounds Like Reading series. This is a great mix of sounding out and sight words. Without the sight words, he wouldn't be able to read this book. But memorizing just a handful of sight words helps so much. We are on the cusp of reading Dr. Seuss. I have had Samuel read some sections of Hop on Pop and he was successful. I think once we cover the next section of Ordinary Parent's, Two Consonant Blends, he will be even more successful. If you are in the beginning stages of reading, I encourage you to add plenty of sight words to your reading lessons. You will be pleased with the number of easy readers it will open up to you.

Are you teaching your child to read? What easy readers do you enjoy? Do you memorize sight words?

Homeschooling questionnaire

My friend Krista (who has written many posts for POH) asked me to answer a few questions about our home-schooling plan for a workshop she is facilitating. I thought I would share my answers here in case it would be helpful to any of you and I would love to read your answers as well. Feel free to answer them on your own blog or in the comments if you have time!

1. What books and resources do you consider the most important/invaluable as you’ve prepared to homeschool as well as while homeschooling? The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and The Core by Leigh Bortins. They totally changed my perspective on education and I know that I will reference them over and over as we progress to higher grades. I also reference Sonlight's read-aloud list and 1000 Classics Book list each week as I request library books.

2. What fun projects, unit studies, etc. have you done (or are you planning) that will make great memories? We just started our home-schooling, but I plan to do many seasonal unit studies (like in late September we will do an emphasis on apples where we go pick apples, do apple star painting, make apple pie and apple butter, read books about apples, etc.) I tend to pick a topic that relates to our current situation and then order tons of books from the library about it (For instance, when we went to the NC State zoo, I requested a bunch of books about zoos, zoo-keepers, animals that we saw at the zoo, etc.) I don't really plan out unit studies, because we always just continue with our normal home school schedule (not a unit-study type curriculum), but I supplement a lot with library books to further study whatever is going on in our life. To make fun memories, I like to do a lot of cooking projects, art projects, and trips to fun places like museums, zoos, farms, fairs, and other outdoor destinations.

3. What websites do you use regularly? This could be blogs and other sites for you as well as kid-friendly sites you integrate in learning. I've gotten a LOT of home school ideas off of Pinterest recently -- more than from any one website. We also use You-Tube randomly for videos of whatever we are studying. My kids are younger, though, so I try to keep them away from the TV or computer as much as possible. I'd prefer to show them things in books right now. I'm sure as they grow older that we will use more student-interactive sites.

4. What curriculum are you using? Briefly, what are the pros/cons for your family?
Homeschooling preschool has been a new adventure for us but we are really enjoying it! My husband and I decided to try to save money this year, so we did not purchase a full-blown curriculum and I'm kind of just compiling my own. Next year I plan to join a Classical Conversations co-op with my kindergartner but for now, my main goals this year are to read as much as possible and get her used to holding her pencil correctly. We are primarily following Sonlight's read aloud list. I can find most of the books at our library (I can't always find all the great collections, but can usually find the individual books that are in the collections). I am also using The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading to give my daughter a solid phonetic background. We are just using some preschool workbooks that I got at the Dollar Store, Target, etc that have mazes, dot to dot, etc, so she can work on her writing skills. I bought a fun calendar at a teacher store so we have calendar time everyday and talk about the weather and also do counting with a number line. I hope to teach her to count backwards from 20 and also count by 10's, 5's, and 2's by the end of the year. We've been using Cuisinaire rods, Pattern blocks, and I'm getting ready to start Inchimals for more math development. A friend gave me the History Cards from Veritas Press so I hope to memorize as many of those as we can this year. And we have map placemats that we talk about at each meal. Other than that, I simply have some fun educational games and puzzles and art supplies that we do.
Pros: less expensive and I don't pay for parts of a curriculum that I won't use. Also, I can totally tailor it to fit my girls' interests and my goals.
Cons: I get a little carried away... since I don't have lessons plans laid out for me, I often plan more than I can accomplish. I get excited about all that I want to do with my girls and then bummed when I run out of time. And I might leave out some things that a full-blown curriculum would include

5. How do you balance home school and ministry? I view my family as my main ministry right now and therefore most of my other ministries flow from my home and include my family. I am mentoring a teenage girl who comes over to help with my girls and learn about being a home-maker. She helps my girls with their schoolwork, plays with them outside, and does art projects with them. I also cook a big dinner once a week for 3 single guys and two other couples in our church and my girls often help me fix it. I try to include my girls in all my ministry opportunities.

6. Could you share a story of a triumph or success or something fun or a creative idea or just something that works for your family? I was really excited last week to hear my daughter count to 43 all by herself and all the way to 114 with just a little help transitioning to the next ten (ex. 50, 60, etc). So far, we have only been working on counting to 20 each day and only for a few weeks, but it all of a sudden clicked for her and she understood how to go further! It was just a little triumph but was very exciting to me.

We have also been really amazed and excited about the way our 4 and 2 year old have easily memorized large portions of scripture. We are trying to learn a new chapter every few weeks (depending on the length of the chapter.) We simply add one verse each night during our bedtime routine (with motions if applicable) and recite all the previous verses. They really enjoy it and I love that they are getting the larger context of the Bible in their hearts.

Finnlings' Favorite Books (some of them :-)

In the spirit of Back to School, I wanted to share a list of some of the Finnlings’ favorite books. This is by no means comprehensive! We do not own all of these books, but have discovered many of them at our library this summer. My children and I enjoy books with fun stories and/or rhymes, and I personally look for beautiful illustrations that add to the story rather than take away from it. You will notice that I have both 'car' books and 'princess' books--and both of my big kids love both types! Forgive me for not hyperlinking each book to Amazon—that would have taken way too much time:-)

**Note: I hope to add short notes to each book as I have time over the next few days, like my own "annotated bibliography", so check back if you are curious!**

Roxaboxen –Alice McLerran ---Story of children who make up their own town with a mayor, houses, and stores. My kids played Roxaboxen for days after reading this!

Truckery Rhymes –Jon Scieszka ---Part of the "Trucktown" series, these are classic nursery rhymes reset to truck themes. Kids and adults love them!

The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash – Trinka Hakes Noble ---Fun story about a school field trip gone awry

Barn Dance – Bill Martin, Jr & John Archambault ---The skinny kid catches the scarecrow coming to life and leading the barn animals in a barn dance.

Sunflower House – Eve Bunting ---A home in our neighborhood has sunflowers in their yard, which my kids love. This story about a boy who plants a sunflower house resonated with my children, who know want sunflowers for our yard.

Blueberries for Sal –Robert McCloskey ---Classic story of Little Sal who eats more blueberries than she picks

One Morning in Maine –Robert McCloskey ---Or, as my kids call is "Little Sal grows up!" Sal is older and loses her first tooth.

Make Way for Ducklings – Robert McCloskey ---Another classic by McCloskey; set in Boston around the ducks :-)

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom –Bill Martin, Jr & John Archambault ---Bright colors and letters and fun rhyme make this a classic

Tip Tip Dig Dig – Emma Garcia ---Construction equipment comes together to build a playground. Baxter loves this book "with a digger we can Dig Dig Dig!"

Otto the Boy Who Loved Cars –Kara LaReau ---My son seems to be drawn like a magnet to books about cars (like my daughter finds books about princesses). This one is about a boy so obsessed with cars that he turns into one. The play on words is great (his name is Otto, his friends are Mini, Kia and Chevy, his teacher is Mrs. Dodge).

Pinkalicious—Victoria Kahn ---One of Georgia's favorites, this story is about a little girl who eats so many pink cupcakes that she turns pink!

Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin – Lloyd Moss ---A personal favorite of mine for the illustrations and the rhyming introduction to musical instruments.

Olivia –Ian Falconer ---Olivia the pig is very good at wearing people out. Sometimes she even wears herself out!

Tea For Ruby –Sarah Ferguson ---Ruby gets an invitation to tea with the queen, and has to review her manners before going to tea. The illustrations are by Robin Glasser, who illustrates Fancy Nancy and You Can't Take a Balloon to the Metropolitan Museum--they are elaborate and fun.

The Nutcracker – Susan Jeffers ---Two years ago, we saw excerpts from the Nutcracker and this book was read. Georgia was enthralled and we had to buy the book. It is a favorite year round!

If You Give a Pig a Party & If You Give a Cat a Cupcake – Laura Numeroff

Clifford the Big Red Dog—Norman Birdwell

There’s Wocket in My Pocket – Dr. Seuss

Fancy Nancy –Jane O’Connor

Toot & Puddle – Holly Hobbie

The Napping House – Audrey Wood

The Dress I’ll Wear to the Party –Shirley Neitzel

How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon? – Jane Yolen & Mark Teague

Bella & Stella Come Home – Anika Denise & Christopher Denise

1 2 3 A Child’s First Counting Book –Alison Jay (Counting book using fairy tales—beautifully illustrated!)

Mother Goose – Mary Engelbreit

T is for Tar Heel: A North Carolina Alphabet – Carol Crane

What are some of your favorite children's books?

1st day of DeLong preschool!

Since POH is focusing on "Back to School" this month, I thought I'd share about our first day of school also. I posted HERE about our "schedule" (that I follow very loosely) and my LIST of things to do with my girls this fall. I wrote a very detailed schedule to keep me on track, but I don't try to accomplish every single thing each day. If one activity is going well, we happily enjoy it for a longer period of time than scheduled and cut back on something else. Monday, August 15th was officially our "first day of school" and I had several fun things planned for the girls. So here is a glimpse of some of the ways I tried to make the first day special. I didn't take pictures of all our schoolwork, but just tried to capture the most fun parts :)

The girls woke up to new world map placemats and fingerpaints at the breakfast table! We have had so much fun with the placemats -- the girls love pointing to places and asking about everything on the map. It kind of drives Mark crazy because we have a hard time having a conversation in between questions but I love that they are learning geography without even trying! The girls love to sing the continents and tell me which color they are.

The girls had helped me make special cinnamon rolls for the first day of school and had been eagerly waiting to eat them :)

Of course Karis ate all the icing off first!
And my butter-lovin, change hatin, Karlie Sue wouldn't touch the icing but demanded butter on her cinnamon roll and ate every bite (but only after she ate the raisins first!)
We used our new chore cards to get ready for our day and then headed outside for our morning walk. And of course I just had to get our first traditional "first day of school pictures!" (Do you know what the best part about pre-school at home is? That you can have your babydolls do absolutely everything with you!!)And I have to now confess what a horrible mother I am -- my eldest is 4 years old and had not touched fingerpaint until her first day of pre-school! They had a blast painting with their fingers and have since begged to do it every single day!
We had a very special "healthy" fudgesicle snack after naps! Although usually I let the girls help me make everything, I made these while they were sleeping because if they had seen the green avocado going in the blender, no one would have touched them :)
But as you can tell, every drop was devoured with pleasure!

The girls had fun with a new animal stencil set
They also had a lot of fun stuffing shells for dinner and sprinkling on the cheese!

The read together in the living room while waiting for dinner to cook...

Daddy gave them a manicure before bed :)
And our fun day ended with tickle time!

Don't you just wish you could go back to preschool?

The Finnlings' First Day of School

Our first day of school was a couple of weeks ago, but I thought I would share about our day with our POH readers (this was originally posted on my family blog).

Because Georgia's birthday falls in late October, she is not eligible for Kindergarten until next year, when she will be 5-almost-6. She is old enough now, though, to start doing some 'schoolwork' at home! It is our intention to homeschool our children at least at the beginning, and so when Daddy's classes started back yesterday, we started some homeschool activities as well. I have not invested in a full preschool or kindergarten curriculum yet, but instead am doing a variety of small structured activities to get us into some form of a routine.


After a morning walk, I took pictures of the kids on their first day of school. They had fun 'cheesing' it up!








Georgia needs to reinforce her knowledge of numbers, so I wrote out numbers 1-10 on index cards and had her put the same number of stickers on each card (thanks for that idea, Jennifer S!). It was also a good skill for her fine motor skills, because peeling off the little smiley face stickers required a lot of concentration. Baxter did this activity some as well, but not as consistently :-)










My main 'textbooks' for the first day of school: the Bible (we read Genesis 1), Big Picture Story Bible, and On the Banks of Plum Creek (we are reading a chapter in this Little House on the Prairie book every couple of days).




I wanted to document some things about the kids' lives, so we measured them, traced their hands, and I asked them a few questions. Georgia wrote her own name on the top of her paper--it is not perfect, but she is trying, and I am very proud of her!








All in all it was a great day!


Date taken: August 22, 2011