Letter L and Solar System Preschool

It was my turn to host preschool this week, and I had Letter L on Tuesday, and Solar System today. It turned out awesome, because I already had all the Letter L stuff saved in a file on the computer, so all I had to do was hit print, and go buy a few lemons and my lesson was done. For details on our Letter L stuff read this post we did all the same activities today as we did in there, except I added a letter L Do-A-Dot sheet. I think our lady bugs turned out cuter this time. Just as I suspected, the kids' favorite activity was making the lemonade. :) Here are some pictures.

Today we learned about the Solar System. First we painted a piece of paper that had all the planets printed on it. And also an astronaut. That was quite an undertaking with 7 kids. So while the paint dried, and while they ate snack, I turned on The Magic School Bus Lost in Space. I'm usually not a fan of watching videos during preschool time (and by not a fan I mean I highly discourage it), but there are a very select few that I think are worth showing, and that introduce a topic better and more efficiently than you could in person, and The Magic School Bus Lost in Space is one of those. It covers the sun, and all the planets, giving interesting details about them all, the asteroid belt, and just a very good over-all introduction to the solar system in 20-ish minutes that are jam-packed with excitement and information in such a way that kids, even very young ones, stayed interested the whole time, and come away knowing quite a few things they didn't before.

After the show, we glued together our solar systems onto two pieces of card stock that I'd taped together so that everything would fit. I really like they way they turned out.

"I Throw My Hands Up in the Air Sometimes..."

So the other day the kids and I were in the car on the way to Costco, it was a beautiful sunny day, and things were working out perfectly, I'd gotten everyone fed and dressed and in the car with a decent amount of time to spare before Ollie's nap. I was in a fantastic mood. I turned on the radio, it was a song I like, so I turned it up and started singing along and bobbing my head...

"I-I-I-I-I-I
I came to dance, dance, dance, dance
I hit the floor 'cause that's my plans, plans, plans, plans
I'm wearing all my favorite brands, brands, brands, brands
Give me some space for both my hands, hands, hands, hands

Yeah, yeah
'Cause it's goes on and on and on
And it goes on and on and on
I throw my hands up in the air sometimes
Saying ayo
Gotta let go

I wanna celebrate and live my life
Saying ayo
Baby, let's go

'Cause we gon' rock this club
We gon' go all night
We gon' light it up
Like it's dynamite

'Cause I told you once
Now I told you twice
We gon' light it up
Like it's dynamite..."

And then I looked in the rear-view mirror...you would have thought I'd grown horns out both sides of my head, from the looks my kids were giving me. Haha! I tried to get them to dance too, but they were having none of it. And I just thought, "Man, we need to get out more."

I used to really enjoy driving around, windows down, music cranked, singing at the top of my voice. I'm a terrible singer to boot, but with the air blowing in your face and the radio drowning you out anyway, who cares? It's such a stress relief.

Then I became a mom, and little by little I think a lot of the fun has been sucked out of me. Why is that? Is it because I feel a need to be responsible? Maybe I feel I should set a good example? Be mature? I don't know. But it sucks.

You know what else I miss? Country dancing. Aaron and I used to go all the time when we were dating. We weren't pros or anything, but we could bust a couple of good moves; back flips and stuff. And we had a blast.

On a completely different train of thought...Aaron and I have developed a minor addiction to Lost (thanks Wynter!). We are only about half way through season 1. Yes, I realize we're about eight years behind the rest of the country, but hey, what can I say? TV is not our big thing. All I have to say is What the freak John Locke? Something is definitely up with him. Don't tell me though. But I knew I recognized the name from somewhere in American History, so I looked it up...John Locke was a philosopher and scholar that the Founding Fathers based a lot of their political ideas off of when they were framing the Constitution. I'm pretty sure it's not a coincidence that the Lost character has the same name and seems to be super all knowing and philosophical. And I know Sawyer is supposed to be the bad guy, but he's one of my favorites. I think he's so funny. But I do have quite a few sarcastic bones in my body, so maybe that's what's ringing true. But it's great.

I just finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It won a Pulitzer Prize. I've been wanting to read it forever. So now I've read it, and I'm not sure what to make of it. I didn't "get" it. And it's bothering me that I can't figure it out. It won a Pulitzer Prize, right? Which means it's probably deep, thought provoking, and has some kind of message it's trying to convey to humanity...and I cannot for the freaking life of me figure out what. I need it to mean something. It's a huge blow to my literary analyzing ego. It reaffirms my belief that I'm getting dumber. I used to be able to do this kind of thing.

For the last couple of days I've traded my voice in for a sore throat. Talk about a frustrating experience. But hey, at least I went three days in a row without yelling at my kids, right? :)

We finally did letter V. I got really behind on our letter of the week activities when Ollie was born, and I'm still struggling to catch back up. But we've done letter V, so now there are only 4 more letters. Maybe I can finish them before summer is over.

For V we studied volcanoes. I read the kids the National Geographic Kids Volcanoes book. And for reading lesson, I had Lincoln read me Hill of Fire by Thomas P Lewis, it's one I found on the Son Light reading list. Linc liked it and didn't have any trouble reading it, even though it's kind of long. We made volcano V's to go in our alphabet train. And we watched the Magic School Bus episode on volcanoes.

I've been spending a lot of the thoughts in my head trying to figure out what we're going to do for school in the fall. I had a plan, for reading at least, and I even bought a stack of books, but Lincoln's ability has taken a huge jump forward, and he's already read 2/3rds of the books I was going to have him read aloud throughout all of next year silently to himself, and given me satisfactory summaries of them all. So I need to come up with a different plan. Or at least more reading material. But I've found some really cool book series. One that I like particularly is the Usborne Young Readers series 1-3. I actually came upon the series by accident when I was browsing through the library's selection of easy readers. But I'm glad I did. Lincoln likes them too because they have comic-book-like pictures where the characters have little speech bubbles coming from their mouths.

One thing I'm really excited about is this. I'm putting together a big unit study on the history of flight. We're going to do a timeline and everything. Starting with the Chinese flying kites that could carry a human and then hot air balloons in France, and taking some time with the Wright Brothers and Amelia Earhart, we'll talk about the Candy Bomber of WWII and then move on to Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier, and end with rockets and space travel. It's going to be so cool. I'm so pumped. I've started collecting books for it already. And at the end of the study, we'll go up to Roy and visit the Hill Air Force Base Aerospace Museum. I have no idea how long it will take, we'll probably spend as much time on each section as the kids are interested in and go from there. But even if it takes the whole school year, it's going to be awesome and well worth it.

I could probably do a whole post on what I want to do for school next year, but it's going to have to be another night. Aaron is home from Elder's Quorum meeting and I haven't seen him all day.

Peace out.

Consumed

Oh, hello there...Remember me? I used to write on this blog. But thanks to Kyle Lemmon - who, on our last trip up to Hooper, convinced me that I needed to finish a book series - I have been consumed with reading for the last while.

No, really. Since I last published a blog post I have read 3,293 pages; otherwise known as the last three books in the never ending Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. And it has sucked up every spare second I could muster, and quite a few that I couldn't. When I was in about 5th grade my dad started reading this series out loud to me, and we read about the first six books together (all that were published at the time). Then when I was pregnant with Lincoln, and stuck in an apartment in AZ by myself all day, I reread the first six and then up through book eleven (all that had been published at the time). Then Robert Jordan, the author, died. And I figured that was it. But a few years later they announced that Brandon Sanderson was going to take over and finish the series. But still, I waited to finish. The last three books came out, and I never got around to reading them...until now.

What a ride. Have you ever spent 15 years wondering how a book was going to end? I'm not generally a big fantasy reader...I tend to lean towards historical fiction, but this series has a sentimental aspect to it, because I can remember reading and discussing it with my dad over the years, speculating how it was going to end. My dad is gone, but it's been fun to pick up that speculation with my brother Kyle. And as I've been reading these books, he and I have been texting back and forth about the parts we liked and didn't like, or the funny/awesome things that happen. The characters themselves are like old friends from my childhood. And although I loved the ending, I'm a bit sad to be finished.

So what else have we been up to? Well, Lincoln and Ivan had two weeks worth of swimming lessons. Lincoln passed level 3. The funniest thing he learned to do was jump off the platform into the 12 feet deep water and swim to the side without help. And Ivan passed level 1. The coolest thing he learned how to do was do six bobs in a row, and put his head all the way under the water. Ollie and Del got to learn the beauty of being spectators. Ollie passed his time mostly by being cranky, and Del passed hers trying to see how many times she could convince me to take her potty in the "swimming potty" (the bathroom at the pool), before I got fed up with her and told her to hold it.

I've been working hard trying to remember to water our garden. I think it's coming a long ok. I found this little yellow bell pepper growing. About half of our bean seeds sprouted, and about half of our pea seeds too. Lincoln and I went back a couple days ago and planted more bean seeds where the others hadn't grown in yet. We also planted some cucumbers, zucchini, radishes, carrots, watermelon, and cantaloupe seeds. Some of those have sprouted but not many. Aaron's mom gave us some zucchini starts, and I haven't killed them yet. And we have about 10 tomato plants of various kinds, and they are doing well. If I think about it, and get around to it, I'd like to find a pumpkin start and plant it in our last little patch of garden. Oh! And our grapes have come back from the dead, and are actually doing really well. Hooray!

We had the patio poured, and we love it! The kids thought the cement truck was about the coolest thing there ever was. And it just about killed them to have to wait 48 hours to walk on the patio. I think it's the perfect size for our needs, and I can't wait until we can afford some patio furniture to go on it!

We also planted two more trees, Red Maples. One on either side of the Linden. We'll be getting another Linden one of these days to put on the left to block out the neighbor's giant shed. The maples will turn a pretty bright red color in the fall. And the Lindens sprout these pretty yellow flowers in the summer time that smell like heaven. Our back yard is going to be awesome! And it's kind of cool because I'm starting to be able to see it all coming together, with the patio and the trees, and the garden and fire pit. All we need now is some grass...and a fence...and... :)

This is the view I have when I sit on our patio and look out at the back yard. The trees are kind of hard to see with the neighbor's house in the background. 

Ollie and Linc hangin' out in the family room.

Oliver has spent some time growing like a weed. I swear I just barely got out the 3 month size stuff, and now I'm scrambling to find my 6 month sized summer stuff. He's started grabbing at toys. AND, the little stink is rolling over! Not for me though. I put him down on his tummy and he waits until I'm not looking to do it. But if Daddy is around, not only will he do it for him first try, but he does it a second time so that Aaron take a freakin' video as well. So, I have yet to see this development with my own eyes, but Aaron's got me covered.

More pictures of the cuteness:

Somewhere in there we celebrated Father's Day. I tried to make it a special day for Aaron, even though he's not my father. I got up early (that right there should be enough to let you know how much I love this person...I don't get up early for just anybody) and made whole wheat waffles from scratch, with bacon and orange juice to boot. The kids made cards and helped me put together a candy bar poster. After church, we had Aaron's dad over for dinner. Aaron chose to have Cafe Rio chicken burritos with tomatillo dressing (thank goodness it's an easy crock pot meal) with apple crisp for dessert. Aaron's dad is always telling me how much he likes my homemade bread, so for Father's Day I made him four loaves of his very own, plus I threw in a jar of homemade strawberry jam. :) Hopefully he was happy with it.

Here's my five loves on Father's Day 2013:

Ivan, Adelia, Aaron, Oliver, Lincoln

And  a shout out to my own Dad. I couldn't find a picture of he and I together, but this one of he and Jackson is really cute. Sure do miss you Stew Lemmon. Don't worry, I read some Wheel of Time in your honor: 

Also, Lincoln and Ivan have been playing kickball a couple nights a week, through the Springville Rec department. They are loving it! Technically, Lincoln was old enough to play T-ball, but I thought it would be easier to keep him and Ivan on the same team this year, so that we were only going to one place every week instead of two. And it's probably a good thing. There are a lot of rules that I'm realizing I haven't taught Linc yet. So I'm thinking kickball will be a good foundation for T-ball next year. Lincoln is #2 and Ivan is #9

Adelia had been on a pirate-princess kick. Every day during quiet time she strips down, and puts on her sparkly red Christmas dress (backwards, because she can't zip up the zipper unless it's in the front). Then she put on a pirate hat. She completes the ensemble by carrying around a wand made of K'Nex. She calls herself pirate princess, and claims that her wand makes rainbows and changes the color of things all around the house. I suppose this is preferable to just a regular princess, right?

We've done a couple of letters for our alphabet train. T and U. For letter T we did trees, and read Be a Friend to Trees by Patricia Lauber, and A Tree is a Plant by Clyde Robert Bulla. The first book talked about all the things humans use trees for. How they grow food, make wood and paper, and the different kinds of things we can make from tree sap. It was pretty cool. The second book was all about how trees work. What the roots, bark, and leaves are for, and how they use sunlight, soil and water to grow. We took the opportunity to observe our own trees, especially our apple and peach trees, because they have fruit on them this year! And we each took turns taking care of the trees by watering them and pulling out the weeds that had grown around their trunks.

 Lincoln and Ivan's T trees, with roots. 

Our apple tree

We also did letter U, and talked about things that are under the ground. For this, we read the Usborne book called Under the Ground by Anna Millbourne. It was a really cool book. It started off with the obvious things that are under ground like roots, and ants, and animals; then, it talked about water pipes and electric wires. Then subway systems and sewers. Then it went even deeper and talked about fossils, and mines, and lava and the center of the earth. My kids were fascinated. We made letter U's underground. Then one day during quiet time, Ivan used his Trios to make a model of underground water pipes. I was pretty impressed when he brought it out to show to me.

Ivan has actually been really into building lately. He's been building all sorts of little vehicles out of legos. He and Lincoln have been using the K'Nex to make ball ramps, and the other day, he brought down this robot to show me. I think it's the coolest thing he's ever built to date.

And of course we've been spending a lot of time outside. The boys have been on a bike riding kick. Sometimes they pretend that their bikes are get-away cars for their super hero selves. It's pretty amusing.

We've also visited the splash pad plenty of times. Mostly Springville's, but today a friend invited us to come up and try out the new Provo one. It's nice. My kids had fun.

Of course I had to bribe them with a Sonic Slush to get them to stand together for a picture. It was worth it though.

Rainy Day Photos

It's been really rainy the last few days. And we've mostly been hanging out at home, doing school work and trying to catch up on the laundry. I think all the excitement from last week tired us out a little bit (especially Oliver). But my kids are still begging to go visit their cousins.

Yup, his arm is to that stick-out-the-side-of-the-cradle stage. I'm not really excited to put him in his big crib yet, but it's looking like we're going to need to get on that soon.

While I was snapping pictures of Oliver sleeping, Adelia kept asking me to take a picture of us. So here it is.

I've been playing around with some new photo apps on my iphone. I really like pictapgo. It has a lot of editing options, but it's super easy. So that makes it all the more fun. :)

For Math today, Lincoln was learning about all the different combinations that add up to make nine (9+0, 8+1, 7+2, etc). To show the combinations, he built a nine-fort out of his number blocks. He was excited about it, and asked me to take a picture.

Ivan and I have been doing letter S this week and learning about snakes and spiders. We made our letter S craft into a snake. Ivan told me that his snake is a python rattlesnake. It lives in green dirt and shakes it's red rattle while it squeezes you. Sounds delightful doesn't it?

I can tell we've watched a lot of magic school bus, because Adelia informed me today, "At my old school, we never let it rain!" To which Lincoln replied that rain was good for our garden, so he was happy it was raining. Then he drew me a picture of the rain watering our garden and the plants growing. This is our garden according to Lincoln:

Quiet time was a huge success today! My goal for quiet time has always been to transition it into a quiet reading time. Sometimes my kids like to look at books, but a lot of times they just play. Today I poked my head in to check on Lincoln and saw him sitting there quietly reading to himself! Yay! I'm definitely going to encourage him to keep passing his quiet time this way. Maybe someday we'll all be able to just spend two blissful hours quiet reading in the afternoons. That would be my ideal.

Our read alouds have been going really well too. We finished up Little House in the Big Woods awhile ago, and are now almost all the way through Little House on the Prairie. These are the first books we've read out loud together that my boys beg every time for "just one more chapter"...which is music to my ears. I remember being a kid, and listening to my parents read to us, and thinking I would do just about anything if only they'd read us another chapter. :)

Oliver is starting to be semi-predictable. He generally takes a long morning nap from about 10am til 1 or 2pm. I'll take it. That gives me enough time to get school done, as well as a few other chores. If he misses his nap, or if it gets interrupted too soon, then he gets cranky. But otherwise he is a happy camper. I just love this little bug.

Today the kids got a little bit restless about 30 minutes before Aaron came home. I had a pool noodle on hand, just waiting for such a moment. I cut in in two, and wha-la! Instant marble track. The kids were thrilled.

Letter R is for Rainbow

We have gotten really far behind on our letter of the week since just before Oliver was born. I realize we've had more important things to do, so I haven't been worrying about it. But this week I felt like we could give it a go. We did our letter R craft. I decided to do rainbows, because one of the boys was asking Aaron some questions about light and prisms the other day, so it seemed appropriate. :)

 I bought a cheap prism and let the kids play with it. The shined flashlights through it, used it to magnify things, and held it up to the window. Even though I was a little bit disappointed with the quality of rainbow this particular prism created, the kids had a blast with it, so I'll chalk it up to a success. I might even think about purchasing a little bit of a higher quality one.

We read the book All the Colors of the Rainbow by Allan Fowler. I actually wouldn't recommend this book. I thought it did a poor job of describing why rainbows are the way that they are. There were a lot of points that I had to have Aaron clarify for us later. BUT, this book did bring up the idea of the color wheel, and Lincoln got REALLY into it. I probably wouldn't have given the color wheel a passing glance, but Linc insisted that we make one, that it be able to spin, and that the colors on the one he made match the one out of the book exactly.

So we did. We strayed from rainbows a bit, but ended up talking about the color wheel, and how mixing certain colors together will make other colors. The kids also really liked the concept that white is made up of a mixture of all colors. (You can test this out by making a color wheel and then spinning it quickly, all the colors blur together and look white. It's really cool.)

Lincoln pretty much took the reins with this project, and I was very proud of him. He decided he wanted a color wheel that would spin, so it was his idea to use a brass fastener to hook the wheel (made out of a paper plate with the edges cut off) to a piece of card stock. He was also very particular about the order of the colors on the wheel, and the order of the colors in the rainbow he drew underneath his wheel. He had to make sure that red was on top and that violet was on the bottom, because that's how it goes in real rainbows.

Ivan was happy to follow Lincoln's lead. He wasn't as intense about it, but he did color his wheel to match Lincoln's. And he did come ask me how to spell color wheel because he wanted to write it on his paper. I am really pleased with how his hand writing is coming along. It's like one day it just clicked for him. He decided he wanted to write something and bam, suddenly his letters were legible and he was willingly making them correctly.

And Adelia, she was just happy to be participating. She was as proud of her color wheel as the boys were of theirs. :)

To finish up our letter R unit, we watched the Magic School Bus Makes a Rainbow episode.

Letter Q is for Quiet!

Today I hosted preschool co-op at my house for the last time before the baby comes. Having some "lasts" to cross off seems to be helping the time go by, a little.

For preschool today we talked about letter Q. At first glance Q seems like a hard letter, but really it's quite easy. It's a great letter to work on opposites with, for example. And today I chose to mostly focus on quiet and loud. I have the book Quiet Loud by Leslie Patricelie. It's a really basic book, probably geared toward babies and young toddlers, but I've found that preschool kids LOVE it. On every page is a quiet thing and a loud thing. So for example..."Fish are quiet." (and when I read this to the preschoolers, I have them make a fish face) "Doggies are loud!" (And then I have them bark like dogs. And so on, for all the pages in the book. They eat it up.)

When I finished reading them the book, we went over to the table and did a quiet/loud sorting activity. I had taken pictures from the book, black and whited them (mostly just to save myself ink), and printed them. The kids had to cut out the pictures and glue them in either the quiet or the loud category on their chart.

Another fun Q opposite to  do with preschoolers is quick and slow. Play a version of red-light-green-light, except have them do certain actions, like hop or crawl, and hold up either a quick or a slow sign, and the kids have to do the action at the speed of the sign you're holding. They love it.

Today we did Q-tip painting as well. I found a cool website that had a couple of templates for Q-tip painting, that had the circles on the pictures (kind of like a do-a-dot sheet, only smaller) so that the kids were encouraged to dot their pictures instead of slide them. It worked well for Q day, it would also be a good activity if you ever studied the artist George Seurat (the one who painted in dots).

We also sang the Five Little Ducks song, because quack, of course, starts with Q. The song goes like this:

Five Little Ducks
Five little ducks went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack,"
but only four little ducks came waddling back...

Four little ducks went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack,"
but only three little ducks came waddling back...

Three little ducks went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack,"
but only two little ducks came waddling back...

Two little ducks went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack,"
but only one little duck came waddling back...

One little duck went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack,"
but no little ducks came waddling back...

But when the Daddy duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack,"
and all five ducks came waddling back.

I had also planned to do a quarter toss, but the kids were really antsy today. I blame it on the weather and cabin fever. All they really wanted to do was play. So instead of quarter toss, I let them have the last half hour as free play time. They played really well, and seemed to have fun together, so I'm hoping that it was exactly what they needed.

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. :)