Picture number one (top left) and picture number 5 (bottom right) are our adventures with Mat Man. (Mat Man is a little game in the Handwriting Without Tears program, that teaches the kids the names of the different shapes they use in their curriculum to teach handwriting. The shapes include big lines, little lines, big curves, and little curves. For more on HWT see their website http://www.hwtears.com/hwt) We've been doing Mat Man the last few days to gear up to start Handwriting Without Tears, and the kids have been really excited about it. I've decided that Ivan is going to join in with Lincoln and I for this part of the school day. A lot of the activities each day are building the letters with the shapes, and finger tracing, and tracing in the air, and only just a little actual writing. So I think Ivan will be able to do almost all of it. Adelia can pretend to follow along too. I'm hoping handwriting will be a fun part of our day that all the kids enjoy.
Pictures 2 and 4 are Ivan's art projects from Letters Y and Z day. I don't really feel like posting the details of these letters days. They were good. And while we have thoroughly enjoyed Letter Day this go around, I have to admit that it's going to be nice to have a break from it.
Picture 3 is a picture that Lincoln painted for me, which in and of it's self isn't unusual, he draws and paints me things all the time. But I wanted to save this one because it's the first time Linc has written something on it all on his own without any help from me. He was up having quiet time and brought this down to me. He was very pleased with himself for having written on it all by himself. And I was pretty pleased with how well he did. It says, "Mom the is u renbo" (Mom this is a rainbow). I love watching my kids learn things and seeing the progress that they make...and really, even though it's tough some days, I love that I get to be a big part of that progress. I wouldn't trade homeschooling for the world.
Speaking of homeschooling, these last two weeks we've taken a break from some of our regular school activities so that we can do some different things. Swimming lessons being the big one. We'll call it P.E. Lincoln and Ivan have had swim lessons every morning for the last two weeks, and they've been loving being back in the water. We've also been hitting up Seven Peaks Waterpark once a week, and plan on continuing that for the rest of the summer. My kids take such great naps afterwards. And we've been taking advantage of all the awesome programs the library has been offering for the summer. We've been doing the summer reading activities, where the library puts on some kind of little program, and then has an art project and a snack for the kids after. And starting next week, they'll be giving once a week presentations on different animal habitats, and I think they're going to bring real animals. Cool, we'll call it Science!
This weekend we're scheduled to go on our first camping trip of the season...to Dinosaur Land. I remember going to Dinosaur Land as a kid and having a great time. So I hope our kids do too. And I really hope it's not too hot. Lincoln is convinced we're going to Dinosaur Island (out of the book My Father's Dragon) so he might be a little disappointed at first, but hopefully he'll get over it.
Aaron and I have spent a lot of time working on our raised garden bed lately. I won't post any pictures until it's done, but we're almost there. First we built the bed out of decorative cinder blocks. Then we had to fill it with dirt. That's what's been taking us forever. We're trying to use the extra dirt from around our yard that just got piled up in corners when the guy came to flatten the yard. We don't own a wheel barrow, so instead we've been using one of my 20 gallon plastic buckets and putting it inside our wagon, as kind of a make-shift wheel barrow. It works but it takes a long time. I think we're finally at a point though, where we're ready to buy a few bags of really nice top soil to spread on top, and then buy our plants. I'm hoping that if we get big enough starts that we still have time to get some decent produce out of the garden by fall. We'll keep our fingers crossed on that one.
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