Jaker's Pumpkin Patch

There are quite a few fields that grow pumpkins in Springville, so it's no surprise that we have a real-live pick-it-off-the-vine pumpkin patch just two blocks from our house. In the spring we watched the farmers plant the pumpkins, and marked the progress as the pumpkins grew. These last few weeks we've been watching the tractors driving down the rows, while the workers harvest the pumpkins and stick them into big cardboard boxes, probably to be sold to the local grocery stores.

My children have been begging for weeks to go the Jaker's (the patch by our house), and today was the day. Aaron's sister Stacey and her family are in town this week, so we've been spending a lot of time with them Today we decided we'd take the kids to the pumpkin patch. It was a good choice. The weather was beautiful, and the kids had a great time. I think we spent just over two hours there going through the straw bale mazes, looking at the animals, taking a tractor ride, playing it the corn kernel sand box, and of course, wandering through the rows and rows of pumpkins, deciding which ones to take home. I took a lot of pictures. :)

Ivan came and grabbed my hand and lead me over to the straw pyramid and asked me to climb up with him and take his picture. He so rarely wants his picture taken that I had to comply, and I think we got some great shots of him.

These two on the other hand, are far from camera shy, they kept coming up with silly things to do in the corn kernel sand box and wanting me to take pictures.

Peter and the Wolf

Today we took the day off from book work for a little cultural education. The Covey Center and the Utah Valley Symphony was putting on a free production of Peter and the Wolf for school children, and we were lucky enough to score tickets! So we spent the morning at the symphony. I love homeschooling.





























The kids were pretty well behaved, I thought. They were at least as well behaved as the third graders we sat behind. I think Ivan was the most interested in the production. He seemed to follow the story really well, and when the musicians would change instruments he'd lean over to mean and say, "That's the wolf Mom." or "That one's the grandfather. He's mad." Lincoln was very interested in the stage lighting, and kept pointing out to me when the back ground light would change, and kept wanting to show me how the light was coming from the back of the auditorium. Adelia was very curious about her folding seat. :) All three were a little bit frightened by the wolf.

In the afternoon, we watched the old Disney version on youtube. I remember watching and loving this as a kid.

Schedule and Organization

(Amy, at your request, here is our schedule -ish-, this is probably a lot more info than you wanted!)

When I was first looking into homeschooling our kids, the most daunting task for me seemed to be how to schedule and manage a school day, school week, and school year. All the examples I could find seemed to be in such contrast with each other, and I was having trouble determining the "right" or "best" way to be organized. Some home school moms are uber organized. They can plan an entire year for 8 children in one sitting, and rarely deviate from the master plan. Other moms like to go with the flow, they have a plan but it's very loose and fluid and they feel comfortable about changing it last minute to do whatever feels best when they wake up in the morning. Most are somewhere in between, but still with a lot of variety. Some families do all their school in the morning. Some focus on one different subject each day of the week, while others do all subjects every day. Some families only school three days a week, and others school seven. Some stick to the "typical" public school year, and some school all year round. Some families take off an entire month for Christmas. Add in all the different curricula out there, and you'll soon notice that very few families are studying the exact same thing in the exact same way.

So it finally dawned on me, that I wasn't going to be able to copy anybody's routine; but rather, I was going to have to go through a trial and error process to see what would work best for me as a teacher in combination with my individual children and their needs and interests. It is a work in progress. And I think it always will be. I think we will always be adjusting here, and tweaking there, to make the right fit for our family.

For me, the first major priority was deciding what curriculum we were going to use. I have a Kindergartener, a Preschooler, a toddler, and a bun in the oven this year. So it took some time to decide what I wanted to teach, what was going to be best for each child, and what was going to be realistic and do-able as a whole. For example, my personality is more inclined to put together my own curriculum, as opposed to using a scripted one. But this year, time, energy, and patience are big factors. So I opted to go with a more scripted Kindergarten, while still putting together my own Preschool agenda. In a nutshell, that's how our current curricula came to be. Some day maybe I'll do an entire post on it, but not today.

Next, I had to decide how to accomplish all the schooling I'd taken on, and still squeeze in some time for house work, errands, down time, play dates, and some personal space for me. It's not always perfect (ok, it's very rarely perfect!), but here is what is currently working for us.

First of all, I needed to plan and write the plan down. But I found that I feel too confined when I schedule things out very strictly. Planning for an entire year at a time is not an option I can do. It stressed me out, and I find that I don't stick to it anyway. The ideal amount of time for me to plan in advance is a week. Usually, I know within a week's notice what kind of doctor's appointments or field trip opportunities, or weather, or holiday I'm going to have, and I can plan around them. I also discovered, through trial and error, that I am not able to stick to a schedule where everything has to be done at a precise time of day. I am unable to say that we'll start math at 10:00am sharp and finish at exactly 10:30 so we can move on to handwriting. Doesn't work for me. My life with young children doesn't fit nicely into half hour blocks I'm afraid.

My wonderful husband bought me a weekly planner (with monthly calendars too!) at WalMart, and it has literally been a life saving device for me. A typical week looks like this:

 (If you click on it, it will get bigger)

What I do, is make a list of everything I want to get done for school that day, divided into who is supposed to accomplish what. Every day is divided into All, Lincoln, Ivan. All being what I want all three children to be apart of, Lincoln being what is specific to Linc, Ivan being what is specific to Ivan. Then if there is anything else going on that day, it goes either before or after the "school block" depending on where it would fall in our day. For example, on Wednesdays Ivan has preschool co-op starting at 9:30am, so I write Preschool 9:30-11:00 before our school stuff, because I take Ivan to preschool before we do any school work. On Thursday of the week shown above, I had a doctor's appointment at 3:00pm, so I write that below the school block, because we'll most likely be finished with school before I leave for my doctor's appointment.

Now, I'll do a run-down of a typical week. I can't really do a typical day, because the days can be so different depending on what day it is. I'll use the week above as my example week.

Monday and Tuesday- These two days are about the same.  And they are my best days for school because they are uninterrupted and we don't generally need to leave the house for anything.

We wake up sometime between 7:00-8:00am. The boys have to get dressed and clean their rooms before breakfast. We eat breakfast. Read scriptures and have prayer with Dad before he leaves (some time between 8:45-9:10). Then I usually try to finish getting ready for the day and/or clean up the kitchen so it doesn't drive me nuts while we do school. But sometimes we start school even if the house is a disaster.

I try to start school around 9:30am. I start on my all list, because it's easier to keep the kids all together and interested very first thing. Under the all list looks like this:

All
Devotional
Read Aloud
Handwriting
Story of the World

Devotional- For devotional each child gets to pick a primary song to sing. My kids like to lead the music with pencils while we sing. I let them, because it helps them hold still. Then we have a prayer. Last we read a chapter out of the illustrated scriptures for kids. 

Read Aloud- Then we read a chapter from our family read aloud book. Right now we're reading George's Marvelous Medicine by Roald Dahl. Some we've read in the past are Peter Pan, Dr. Dolittle, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, James and the Giant Peach, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, etc.

Handwriting- Lincoln and Ivan are working through Handwriting Without Tears. When we finish with the Letters and Numbers for Me book, Lincoln will move on to the next one, and Ivan will repeat this one. While the boys do their handwriting, Adelia gets to sit at the table with us and either scribble on a paper with a pencil, color in her coloring book, draw on the white board with a marker, or use scissors to cut a scratch paper into tiny bits. She thinks she's doing her handwriting. And in a way, she is, since the things she gets to choose from help her fine motor skills.

Story of the World- The last item on our All list is Story of the World, which is our history curriculum. But we don't do that every day. I have it on audio CD and we listen to it whenever we're in the car. I call it multitasking. And I am amazed what kinds of facts the kids pick up from it. They prefer listing to "stories" as they call it, over music almost all of the time.

The All list takes us anywhere from 15-35 minutes, depending on how cooperative my children are, and the length of the chapters in the books we read aloud. Then we start on the Lincoln and Ivan lists, which look like this:

Linc
EtC
Math U See
Funnix
Writing w/Ease

Ivan
Cutting
Name
Letter of the Week

EtC- Explode the Code, we are 2/3rds of the way through book 3. Lincoln does one page in this every day (unless we miss a day, then he does two to make up). He can do this mostly on his own, so I let him do it independently while I help Ivan with his cutting.

Cutting- Ivan is using the Big Skills for Little Hand I Can Cut! book, he does one page per day and we're about half way through it. When he's finished with it, we'll move on to one of the other books in the series, either I Can Paste, I Can Draw, or I Can Trace. Ivan usually finishes his cutting before Lincoln finishes EtC, so then Ivan moves on to writing his name.

Name- I have Ivan write his name 3 times, we're working on trying to make the letters as big as the lined space, getting the letters in the right order, and putting them close enough together that they look like they go together. Depending on Ivan's mood we are more or less successful. When Ivan has finished the first two things on his list, I let him have 20 minutes of screen time. He usually chooses to play Fungooms on the computer, but sometimes he'll watch Signing Time or Letter Factory. Adelia usually chooses to watch with him. By this time Linc is done with EtC, I check it and make him fix any mistakes he's made, and talk about the ones he did really well, then we move on to math.

Math U See- Math U See is a curriculum based around using manipulatives to solve the problems so that you can "see" the answers in front of you. I probably wouldn't have picked this curriculum if left up to my own thinking, but I felt VERY strongly that this was the right curriculum for Lincoln, and so far that is proving to be true. We are 3 lessons away from finished the Primer, and I will be ordering Alpha soon, so we can keep going with it. Each lesson is divided up into sections A-F, a section being a front and back of a single page. On Mondays and Tuesdays Linc does two sections (eg. A and B) and then Wednesday-Friday he only does one section, unless we miss a day, then he does two to catch up. Math usually takes us anywhere from 10-40 minutes depending on 1) How cooperative Lincoln is, and 2) how hard the material is that we're working with. Sometimes, if Linc has the material down pretty well, I can stand at the sink and do dishes while he sits and the kitchen table and does math. When he's finished, I go over all his answers and make him fix the ones he missed. Generally speaking we are done by the time Ivan's screen time is over.

Depending on what time is it after that, we either, let the kids take a break while I make lunch, or start on our Letter of the Week activity.

Letter of the Week- These are meant to be preschool activities so I gear them to be on Ivan's skill level, but the other two are allowed to participate with us, and usually choose to. I plan on the Letter of the Week activity taking around 20 minutes, but it most definitely depends on what it is. On Monday I usually try to do a letter craft, which is a fun craft that looks like the letter of the week, and apple pie A for example, that way we can hang it on the fridge all week to look at. Some activities are food activities, and depending on the food, we'll eat it at a meal time instead of during letter of the week time of day. If it's an outing, then sometimes we do that in the evening as a family. Sometimes we'll do a couple letter of the week activities in one day, and none on a day when we're busier or tired. I generally try to include a craft, story, math or science something, and a food item of some sort into Letter of the Week, but the activities do vary topic to topic.

I try to eat lunch by 12:00 so I can get Adelia down for her nap by 12:30. Sometimes it's earlier, sometimes it's later. Also around 12:30 Ivan goes down for quiet time. He may or may not sleep, depending on what he feels like, but he has to stay in his room with a stack of books and a bucket of legos, listening to a Jim Weiss CD and being quiet while Adelia is sleeping. I use the first part of quiet time to finish up Lincoln's list.

Funnix- Funnix is the reading program I just started with Lincoln. It's on the computer. It takes us about 30 minutes to do a lesson. It's not my favorite program, I like it, but I don't love it. If I ever find anything I like better that is on Lincoln's level I'd switch with no regrets. That being said, there are a lot of things I like about Funnix, and Lincoln is currently enjoying it. After his reading lesson, we finish up his school day with writing.

Writing With Ease- I like Writing With Ease a lot! It's probably my favorite piece of curriculum. It's written by Susan Wise Bower, the same lady who wrote Story of the World. And I just really agree with and like her approach to teaching children to write. I like that she uses examples from classic children's literature. Lincoln calls it his "story book writing" or his "writing with all the stories in it". He does one section out of the work book every day Mon-Thurs. and takes a break from it on Fridays. It take him about 10 minutes or less to complete a section.

So, at about 1:45pm or so, Lincoln goes upstairs for quiet time, he usually chooses to play Legos or make cards for people. Then I have from 1:45-3:00pm all to myself. I usually take a break, as opposed to house work, because I need a little down time too. I read, or blog, or get on facebook, or answer emails, or make phone calls, or lately take a nap. :) This is my time.And I'm cranky if I don't get it!

Nap time ends at 3:00pm or right around there. I try to have this be fairly unstructured time for the kids. We either play outside, go to the park, visit Grandma Swan, or have play dates. Sometimes we run errands in the afternoon. Or, if we took the morning off for any number of reasons, then we'll do school in the afternoons, but we aren't as productive when we do that.

If we stay home, I usually turn on a Magic School Bus episode at about 4:45pm so I can either start on dinner or clean up a little before Aaron gets home. Aaron gets home anywhere between 5:00-5:45 depending on what time he left in the morning. We eat dinner around 6:00. Then the kids get some Daddy time, or we go somewhere as a family, or to a soccer game or swimming lessons if either of those are in season. Bed time for the kiddos is 7:30 (ish). Bedtime for Aaron and I is 10:00pm (ish).

Wednesdays

This is my crazy day. Ivan has preschool co-op in the morning, so we don't do the All or the Ivan list on this day. While Ivan is at preschool, Lincoln and I can usually complete his whole list. If it's my turn to teach the co-op (once every 5 weeks ish), then we bag school entirely for that day. Ivan gets home from preschool at 11:00, and I give the kids free time from 11:00-12:00. At 12:00 we eat lunch, and get ready to leave the house, because on Wednesday afternoons we have clubs with our home school group from 1:00-2:30. We get home from clubs around 3:30ish and the kids have to have quiet time for about an hour. I am done and usually frazzled by this point, so when they get up from quiet time they can do whatever they want until Daddy comes home.

Thursdays
By Thursday, I'm usually tired, and don't have as much energy for school as I did on Monday and Tuesday, so we take it a little easier. We still have the same basic schedule as Mon/Tues but I'm not quite as adamant that we finish it all. I try to schedule less book work, and more art projects, games, etc. This is the day I usually run errands, or schedule Dr. appointments.

Fridays
Fridays are about the same as Thursdays. We do some school in the mornings, and then we have Park Day with our home school group. As soon as our group starts Friday Fun Classes (at the end of October) I won't schedule any school at all for this day.

This is How She Actually Eats

Meet my messiest eater. Really Del? Make yourself comfortable or something, I guess. And yes, getting more food on the front of her than she does in her mouth is pretty typical. She won't leave a bib on to save me from more laundry either, no matter what we try. I guess it's just another one of those subtle reminders that we parents aren't as in charge as we think we are. I keep hoping she outgrows this before she starts dating...

Home School Humor

I saw this article on Latter-Day Homeschooling, and it made me laugh, because this totally happens at my house too.

Me, Myself and I

By Jana

When I was contemplating homeschooling I worried that my children would miss out on the benefits of having a variety of teachers. In my public school education I encountered the wide spectrum of educators, learning important lessons from each: tough ones who taught me hard work, sweet teachers who helped me believe, new teachers that taught me patience, mean teachers, old teachers, male teachers, silly teachers, etc. 

I wondered, "With only little ol' me as home room teacher year after year, how will my kids learn those varied and valuable lessons?"

Well, now that I have been homeschooling a while I no longer worry about my kids getting too used to the same teacher day after day. Surprisingly, my children are experiencing a rich variety of teaching personalities right here at home.

Let me introduce this week’s homeschool staff:

Mrs. Monday wakes up before the sun to ready herself- body and spirit. She greets the day with a song, sings to the birds, and hugs her children happily. She includes learning opportunities in everything they do and has a platter of themed treats to match. She is the happy hybrid of June Cleaver and Mrs. Frizzle. The children are learning so much!

Mrs. Tuesday is all business. She is overworked and underpaid, but she believes in what she does. Even if she is a bit tired from staying up late washing dishes from Mrs. Monday’s themed treats she will be on time and on task. She wants to have fun, but Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic must come first. The children are learning discipline.

Mrs. Wednesday is a tenured teacher who would rather be [insert any hobby here]. If there was a paycheck, that’s all she would be interested in. She believes in ‘educational programming’ and uses it aplenty. She usually asks, “Are we done yet?” before the kids do. The children are learning independence.

Mrs. Thursday is a frustrated genius. She was meant for more than this hum-drum, but how can anyone aspire higher surrounded by small crazy people? She has a short temper and a four letter word on the tip of her tongue. Mrs. Thursday throws a better tantrum than the toddlers. The children are learning dramatic arts and public school playground language.

Mrs. Friday gets credit for showing up. Luckily, she is just the substitute filling in until Mrs. Monday can return. (Pleeease come back soon?!) She sits with her eyes glazed and mouth ajar while paper airplanes and spit wads bounce off her forehead. The children are learning sympathy and good aim.

Aren't my kids so lucky? I didn't even mention Mrs. Viola Swamp's regular monthly appearances and the occasional cameos we get from dear old dad. V-A-R-I-E-T-Y! Staff meetings can get a little crazy, but since there are so many of us I'm thinking we could unionize and strike for better pay. ;)

Who is on your homeschool staff?

Columbus Day and Fall Themed Preschool Week

For preschool this week we took a break from the alphabet to do a unit study on fall. I love everything about the fall. It's my favorite time of year. Before I start on our fall unit though, I'll explain about Monday.

Monday was Columbus Day, and fortunately, I remembered before the day of, and was able to do some preparation. We took the opportunity to study Columbus. First I let the kids watch a fun cartoon from the Animated Hero Classics series. I found this on youtube. It's 20-ish minutes long, and was easy enough for both my preschooler and Kindergartener to understand.




Then we did an art project. I used this pattern for our ships and sails and Columbus, but our project is different than hers.

Lincoln was very adamant that his ships be sailing west, so I showed him how to draw a compass, and then he copied it onto his paper to show his ships going in the right direction.

Now back to our fall unit. It was my turn to host the co-op preschool this week. When the kids arrived, I had little fake dollar store leaves taped up all around the room. They had to collect them, and then we graphed them by color and talked about which color had most, and which color had least, etc.

We talked about fall colors. And then we did an abstract fall color painting using marbles. Basically, you put an 8 1/2x11 piece of paper into a 9x13 pan, the higher the sides of the pan the better for preschoolers. Then you put the marbles into different colors of paint, in this case we did orange, brown, red, and yellow. Then each child gets one marble of each color in their pan, and they roll the marbles around and around, and it makes a pretty design.

Next we had sliced apples and Pumpkin Spice hot chocolate for a treat while we talked about the fall harvest, and how fall is the time of year to pick all the things that were growing in your garden all summer long.

Then we practiced writing our names. If you look closely you can see that Ivan got all the letters of his name in there. We're still working on getting them to be in the right order and not so microscopic. :) Then we glued some foam leaves onto our fall trees.

Our last activity for co-op was to go outside and work on our fine motor skills. Each child got a small pumpkin with their first initial on it, a golf tee, and something they could use to hammer with. (I only had 3 hammers so one of the kids got a meat tenderizer and another got  a wooden stake, but they got the job done.) They hammered holes into their pumpkins to trace the letters. This was their favorite activity by far.

We made sure to go on plenty of fall outings this week to enjoy the leaves, the crisp air, and a pumpkin patch or two.

And for our last project of the week, we made hand print and tissue paper trees.

We read a lot of great fall books to go along with our theme this week. A few of my favorite are:

Wild Child by Lynn Plourde













Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper













Leaves by David Ezra Stein
















When the Leaf Blew In by Steve Metzger
















Why Do Leaves Change Color? by Betsy Maestro

Hurry, Hurry, Mary Dear by N.M. Bodecker

Pumpkinland!

Yes. This will make the third pumpkin patch activity we've gone to this month. And no, it's not the last one we have scheduled.

First went to Big Red Barn with our old neighborhood group. Then we went to a pumpkin patch party on Monday night that was put on by our realtor. For some reason, because he helped us buy a house he also invites us to these awesome free events every couple of  months. We'll take it. And today we went to Pumpkinland in Orem with our home school group. It was really fun. Unfortunately, it's a big place and there were several school there, so I spent most of my time trying not to lose my children, instead of taking a lot of pictures. But here's what I did get. 

Letter E is for Egg

Last week we did letter E and focused mostly on eggs. This week was a bit different than other letters we've done, because we we pretty heavily focused on science, and didn't have as many art projects as usual. But we still had a good time.

We used three awesome books to tie our theme together. And I will highly recommend all three of them. First, a favorite at our house, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss.

Second, a new favorite that I hadn't read before, but I will highly recommend it: Chickens Aren't the Only Ones by Ruth Heller. It's mostly in rhyme, and has lots of colorful pictures. It starts with a chicken but as you continue to read you find out that chickens aren't the only animals who lay eggs...all birds do too. But birds aren't the only ones either, reptiles and amphibians lay eggs too. And then onto fish and insects, and there are even a few mammals that lay eggs too. Anyways, I thought it was a fantastic book, and I will definitely check out the other books in her World of Nature series.

And third, after we learned all about the different kinds of animals that can lay eggs, we read this fun guessing book called Guess What is Growing Inside This Egg by Mia Posada. The kids really like this one too, because it's a guessing game. The first page shows a picture of an egg up close, with a little bit of the animal who laid it's habitat, and the text gives you some clues, and you have to guess what's inside the egg. Then the next page gives the answer and some great facts about the animal.

Our activities were fun too. Throughout the week we tried eggs cooked in different ways. Scrambled, boiled, sunny-side-up, in a sandwich. It was fun, but I forgot to take any pictures.

Of course we did our Letter E craft. The E is supposed to be a chick hatching out of it's egg. The kids enjoyed adding the feathers. This is probably not my favorite letter craft, but it gets the job done. :)

To go along with our reading of Chickens Aren't the Only Ones, I gave the kids a paper divided into 4 sections and told them to pick 4 animals other than a chicken that lays eggs, and draw one in each square. I ended up drawing some on Ivan's while he drew some and colored some, and Linc was on his own. They had fun flipping through the pages of our books to find the animals they wanted to draw and to see what their eggs looked like.

And to top things off, Daddy came up with a couple fun "egg"speriments to do. Experiment number 1 was to take a raw egg, a boiled egg, and a raw egg covered in tooth paste and put them each into a glass and cover them with vinegar. We're still observing to see what's going to happen, but supposedly, the vinegar is going to eat away the shells of the first two eggs, and we'll be able to see what an egg looks like without it's shell. The third egg, the one covered in tooth paste, is supposed to be protected by the fluoride in the toothpaste and not lose it's shell. If it works, I'll be sure to insert a plug for brushing your teeth! :) Read more about this experiment here.

The second experiment was to create a vacuum that would suck a peeled boiled egg through a small opening in a vase. Ours sort of worked, but we determined that the bottom of our vase wasn't wide enough, and didn't allow the oxygen to stay in long enough to really suck the eggs all the way down to the bottom of the vase. But it did work a little bit. Enough for the kids to be impressed. (The kids are mostly impressed with anything Aaron does.) Read more about this experiment here.

For more E ideas that we didn't get to, check out my Pinterest board. This week we're taking a break from the alphabet and instead learning about Columbus Day and Fall!

Conference Picnic

We stayed home for Conference this year, and I really wanted to start some great Conference traditions of our own. However, most of the weekend I felt awful (just pregnancy stuff), and because of that Aaron was doing double duty, and was therefore, exhausted. So Saturday wasn't a very good start to our Swan Family General Conference Traditions.

Today went a little better. We got up and had a big pancake, bacon, and egg breakfast while we listened to Music and the Spoken Word. Then we sat down and watched Conference together as a family. We let the kids bring in their various Lego and building sets, and told them they could play with them as long as they were quiet. They did pretty good, considering the session is two hours long. 

After the first session, we decided that the kids needed to get out and run around a little bit. So we packed up a picnic lunch and drove up to Bridal Veil Falls in Provo Canyon. It was a slightly chilly, but beautiful day up there.

After lunch I gave each of the kids a brown paper bag to collect leaves in. This is a tradition we do every fall. They gather up the leaves and then when we get home they glue them to paper and make leaf collages. The kids were in goofy moods, and didn't want to give me real smiles for any of the pictures I tried to take. But that's ok. We have to remember their silliness too, right? Not just their adorable smiling faces.

Then we drove home for the second session of Conference. Adelia and Ivan had naps, and Lincoln decided he wanted to make a "Leaf Book Research" as he called it, and stayed busy with that. So Aaron and I watched the second session pretty much all by ourselves.

I love Conference, and I can't wait to get our Ensign in the mail so I can read the talks over again and wrap by head around them better.

17 Weeks

As of Monday, I was 17 weeks pregnant. So, I suppose technically, I'm closer to 18 weeks now that it's Friday, but oh well. I had an appointment with my midwife yesterday. Things are going well. We were able to hear the heartbeat right off. I've also been feeling the baby move for a couple of days now, and I'm starting to get kind of excited about having a baby.

My ultrasound is scheduled for October 29th at 11:00am. Which is a week earlier than they were going to let me do it at first. I'm pretty thrilled, that's not very far away! I'm always very anxious to know the gender of the baby. Lincoln and Adelia think it's a boy, Ivan and Aaron and I are leaning more towards girl. We'll see. Either way, I can't wait to start shopping and making plans. I don't have that much to shop for really, since we have practically an entire garage devoted to storing baby clothes, but I'm sure I'll be able to figure out some things that we need.

I'm trying to convince Aaron that we should buy a new crib and a new stroller. The ones we have now that we used on all of the other kids were given to us for free, and were much appreciated; but, the side-rail on the crib is falling apart, and I'm sure it's qualified for at least 5 of the most recent crib recalls, enough said. The stroller was given to us by my mom, it's the one she used 16 years ago for my little brother. It still works, but the wheel falls off sometimes...we've held it in place with a safety-pin for the last two kids. And it's getting really hard to close. We could probably lube it up a bit but I'm kind of of the opinion that we aren't students anymore and we don't need to be cheap frugal cheap anymore. I don't want million dollar cribs or strollers, but maybe just something new and sturdy. Something that we get to pick out ourselves? Is that wrong? I really like this crib and something like this stroller. But we'll have to wait and see what kind of a say the husband has in all this.

The naming department is alive and well....at least if we have a girl. If we have a girl we are 99.95% sure we'll name her Ruby. We think naming her Ruby will be a little bit like naming her after me, since both Krystal and Ruby are gemstones. Plus Ruby is a little bit sassy, and although it's on the top of the charts in England, it's only just making the top 200 in the US, so it's not super popular and we like that. We also love the nickname Rue. She'd be our Little Rue.

 For a boy on the other hand...we enter the realm of big, fat unknown. Nothing is ringing true at the moment. There are lots of boys' names I like, but either I can't convince Aaron that it's a good name, or I can't bring myself to use it because it's already too popular. We pretty much have to rule out anything ending in S because our last name starts with S, and Aaron has just informed me that he doesn't want another name ending in N because we already have Aaron, Lincoln, and Ivan. Also, I'd like the name to be at least 2 syllables because 1 syllable names sound a little bit clipped with our 1 syllable last name. If I'm strict about that criteria it whittles down my previous list to these:

Ezra - Aaron doesn't like, and it's losing it's appeal with me
Talmage - If Adelia would have been a boy she would have been named Talmage, guaranteed. But I don't know if we love it as much now as we did then. We might still use it.
Ryder - Aaron doesn't like it, and I go back and forth with it trying to decide if it's too wild sounding, and if it fits in with the rest of our kids' names.
Arthur - That would make A name number 3 for our family if we use it.
Ajax - Aaron said no way.

I'm not a strict stickler to the criteria though, I'd still consider the names Seamus, Phineas, and Sullivan, among others. But I've decided I'm not going to stress out about it until we know the gender. If the baby turns out to be a boy, I'll start stressing, and checking baby name books out from the library. :) 

Look A-Likes?

Adelia, I feel like she's kind of gotten the shaft in blog posts lately because she's not doing anything school related at the moment. I love this child. She can melt my heart then make me furious and back again in the same 30 second span. It's hard to stay mad at her very long because she's so goofy and silly, that you just end up cracking up instead of being angry. The other day she said to me, "Mom, I count your eyeballs. One...two...three." Three? What? Haha. Not sure what she was counting.

She loves her baby dolls, there are about 10 of them, and she has names for each one: Nora, Molly, Megan, Topsy, Dollie, Little Baby, Christmas Baby, Punzel (as in Rapunzel), Buzz, and Tinker Bell, and then the random Little People person she's always got tagging along too. She likes to change all their "stinky diapers" and rock them to sleep. Sometimes she piles them all up in her little shopping cart and goes to Target....yup, can't imagine where she'd get an idea like that.

Adelia is a smart little stinker too. Besides eyeball, she can generally count objects correctly up to 5. And if she's just stringing off numbers I think she can go to 12 or so. She knows most all her letter sounds too. She struggles a little bit with D, N, V, X, and Z, but otherwise if you say, what does A say, she can tell you. She's not quite as good at identifying which letter is which on paper, but does pretty well for a two year old. And she loves to memorize her favorite books. One of the games we play is that I read the first half of the sentence on the page, and then she finishes it. She thinks it's hilarious. And sometimes while I'm doing my hair, she'll curl up in my Papa San chair with a bunch of board books and repeat them over to herself. It's adorable. Some day I'll try to get a video. Primary songs, are her other favorite thing. She loves to sing, and Child of God is usually the first things she picks, followed by I Like to Look For Rainbows (The Baptism Song, I think is what it's really called), an Iron Rod. I love to hear her sweet little toddler voice singing, "I want to be the best I can, and live with God again!"

A lot of people tell me that she looks exactly like I did as a little kid. So I went looking for some pictures. I don't have very many pictures of my childhood on the computer, but this is what I found. What do you think?

Krystal

Krystal

 Adelia

Well, at least I can venture a guess where she gets her messy eating abilities from, eh? :) I need to find some more pictures of me where I'm actually looking at the camera. I'll try to get on that.

Finished!

Last week we finished Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I'm so proud of Lincoln for getting through it, and I am amazed at the progress he's made in his reading while we've been working with this book.

In the first lesson starts off very slow and simple, not even reading words yet, but going over letter sounds. Like this:

And by Lesson 100 the child is reading full page stories, like this:

What I like about the program, is that everything is very gradual. There are no big skill jumps. Everything is just routinely worked in and builds onto itself nicely and easily, so that you never really notice the new concepts. I also like that there is zero prep work involved. When Lincoln and I wanted to do a reading lesson, we simply grabbed the book, opened up to where we left off and went for it. Everything is scripted out for you, so you can either read it word for word, or, once you get a feel for their style, you can add-lib most all of it.  (That being said, I do highly recommend reading the teacher intro/preface to the book, before starting it with your child, because it explains the method and what they're trying to accomplish. It will help the book make more sense.)

Aaron and I decided that finishing all 100 lessons what a pretty big accomplishment, so as a reward, Lincoln got to go with Daddy and pick out a new $10 Lego set to add to his collection. He picked a firetruck that pulls a trailer, and has some cute (is that word appropriate in this context?) little Lego fireman guys that go along with it. Linc put it together all by himself in about 2 hours the next morning. He was pretty pleased with him self on both accounts (Finishing the reading book, and building the firetruck without help).

So what's next for us as far as reading? Well, we'll be reading a lot of books together. I have a pretty good collection of the Step-into-Reading and I-Can-Read series of books. Also, we're going to try a program called Funnix, which is by the same authors as Teach Your Child To Read, only it's a computer version. Basically, it's a very similar format as the book, only Linc and I sit at the computer together, and I click the mouse to turn the "pages" and a lady voice reads all the parts that I would have read in the book. (That is if I don't just decide to mute her and do it myself :) ) I'm not thrilled with the idea of it being on the computer, I'd rather it be in book format again. But I do like the way the lessons are organized and the way they teach new concepts, so we're going to give it a try.