School Lately

I mentioned a few posts ago that I wasn't very excited for Valentines Day. You'd never know it though, if you saw all the festivities being prepared for around here. We've been spending a lot of our school time doing various Valentines Day activities.

This year it was my turn to host the Valentines Day Party for the kids Lincoln's age in our home school group.   And with Lincoln's help, we planned quite the event.

Linc really wanted streamers, and lots of them. So last night Aaron helped him get those ready. The plan was for all the kids to come over, then decorate brown paper bags and exchange Valentines. When I host, I let all three of my kids be involved in the activity, because it's easier than trying to keep them out of it. That meant each of my kids needed to bring 16 Valentines with them to give out at the party. Lincoln gave out pencils with a heart stuck on each one that said, "You're just write for me!" He wrote his name on each one, hole-punched it, and stuck it through the pencils all by himself. Ivan had his preschool Valentine Party this morning as well, and since I was making treats for him to give out at that anyway, I just made enough for him to give them out at our party too. Rice Krispy Treat hearts drizzled with chocolate and a note that said, "It's a treat to be your friend." Ivan signed his name to all his notes as well. Adelia gave out little miniature heart-shaped slinkies. She scribbled on the tags, and I wrote from Adelia on them. The kids were really excited to give out their stuff. I had every intention of taking pictures during the party...but  things tend to get very chaotic with so many 4 and 5 year olds. They made their bags, exchanged their Valentines, played, and then we made candy and heart shish-kabobs for an activity. Then everyone left, and I hadn't taken a single picture. But I did get one of my kids enjoying going through their bags afterwards.

Another project we did for school were these heart maps. Basically, you take a heart, and inside of it you draw little pictures of things you love and color them. I think I was the most excited about the project, and I definitely spent about three times longer on mine than all the kids combined. :) Lincoln at least caught on to the idea though. And I thought they turned out cute. I hung them on our sliding glass door.

And we've spent quite a bit of time writing love notes to each other, and to extended family members. Hopefully those get out in the mail sooner rather than later, but in case pregnancy brain kicks in, all family members should know that they are loved, that my kids made them Valentines, and that my kids' mother has an extreme mental handicap right now called pregnancy that might get in the way of the mailing process.

We've also done a little bit of Letter O. O Octopus craft, finding the letter O in the ocean and dotting it with Do-A-Dots, and gluing the right number of Cheerios onto the octopus's legs.

And some letter P as well...my kids love pirates, so we did a lot of imagination play and reading stories for this unit, but we did get our Pirate P craft in. We also watched a Magic School Bus episode where Ms. Frizzles class learns all about coral reefs while the hunt for a treasure left by Ms. Frizzle's great-great uncle Red Beard the Pirate.

Ok, so our school has been really low-key lately. But I at least get some reading and math in every day, and I feel like my kids are doing well. Lincoln's reading has just exploded lately...he reads everything we drive past in the car, and all the things on the grocery store shelves, and tells me the street numbers and stores we're passing, and food labels, and all sorts of things. He reads Adelia books, and brings me his Frog and Toad stories and asks me if I'll listen to him read them.  And Ivan's handwriting is coming along phenomenally. He's really made a huge jump. I don't have to draw dots for him to trace anymore, and he, of his own free will, brings a paper and pencil over to me and asks me how to spell words, and then he makes the letters. He still doesn't use spaces, and there are a few letters he gets backward, and he still prefers to write in capitols...but he's made so much progress. In other words, I feel like we're right where we should be with school, so I haven't been stressing myself out or running myself ragged over the extra things we were doing before. If it's a good day, we do them, if it's not we don't. We'll get back to doing those things consistently after the baby gets here and we adjust to having  him in our schedule.

We've also been doing a fun read-aloud. I started reading Little House in the Big Woods to the kids a week or so ago, and so far they love it. In the book it explains the process of how the family makes a lot of the things they use, so it talks about Ma making butter, and how Pa makes bullets, etc. And my kids think it's fabulous. Lincoln wants to know why we don't make our own bullets. :) I bought the audio CDs as well, so that during their afternoon quiet time they can listen to the audio CD of the parts in the book we've already read together. They seem to like that too.

And actually, we've been going through audio books like crazy lately. We got a bunch of them from the library on our last trip, and the kids have been flying through them. We did a few Magic Tree House books, Wind in the Willows, and some poetry by Jack Prelutsky. I think it's a great quiet time activity, and if I can keep new material circulating (meaning they've heard it less than a hundred times, because they do like to listen to things over and over for awhile) it seems to hold their attention and keep them still and "resting" during their allotted time frame. Their love of audio books is good news for me, because lately I've been lying down and taking my own nap during quiet time. :)