Homeschooling 9/22/09

Every morning we wake up and get dressed but I've noticed recently that I've never talked with the girls about how to sit in a dress so that they don't show their panties. So this morning like all the other mornings we did "Circle time" where we all sit on the kitchen floor together. We talked about how to sit on the floor in a dress so I can't see their panties. We talked about how panties are private and we don't show other people our panties. Such a funny thing to talk about in school but very necessary!!


So in our "circle time" every morning we do a little saying with hand motions that I remember doing when I was in Kindergarten every morning. It goes "These are grandma's glasses and this is grandma's hat, this is the way she folds her hands and sits like that, these are grandpa's glasses, these are grandpa's hat, this is the way he folds his arms and sits like that!" Then we say 'straight and tall right hand on our heart eyes on the Christian flag' and we say our pledge to the Christian flag, American Flag, & the Bible. We talk about the days of the week, what day today is, and we open up the blind on the window and look at the weather outside and say if it's sunny, cloudy, rainy, or windy.
Today we learned about the Letter C, for Cow, and Caterpillar like we made last week, and C for our Uncle Chris!! A- said " OH I LOVE UNCLE CHRIS!!" hehe. It was cute. We talked about the color Yellow again, and our shape is still a Circle.

Last week we learned the verse 1Peter 5:7 "God Cares about you..." the week before it was John 1:3 "All things were made by him..." both girls have memorized last week's verse and still remember the verse from the week before!! So today we wrote out 1 Peter 5:7 and the girls were able to put it in their hearts. We also learned a new verse for this week Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning, God Created the heavens & the Earth...."


For our bible lesson today, "Taco" came and told us a story about David, and how he was a shepherd and took care of the sheep. We talked about how "God made things for us to feel" so we made a sheep of our own today, I cut out a picture of a sheep and we glued it to a blue piece of construction paper, then the girls took cotton balls and glued them to the sheep. we talked about how the sheep has wool, and the wool feels nice and soft.

We've slowed down the last two weeks on school, I started off doing it every day, A-is a very strong willed child who has to have structure in her life daily. I've had a hard time doing school daily and I know that most of the time for preschool they only do 2-3 days per week, but in order to structure their day I decided to do it every day. However with us doing that it will cut out any play dates we can attend, or other activities we can do. So this week we are going to try doing school 3 days Monday, Tuesday, & Thursday. Then Wed we have A's dance class and church that evening, and Friday will be left open for play dates and field trips. This way I don't feel so bad about missing a day or two during the week and their days are still structured.

A Day Off 9/16/09

Wednesday's are so hectic for us since my husband works for the church. So this week we slept in a bit, then A- had dance class in the afternoon, which she is LOVING! After dance class I ran by the bank and the baby got hungry so, I'm sure they appreciated me sitting in the bank parking lot nursing. Thanks to my handy nursing cover I got from my friend Stephanie at "Ooh Baby"

(check out her things they are amazing! So cute!) it makes it so much easier now days to nurse in public! Anyways, after that we met Papaw at McDonald's for lunch. The girls were SO excited, even E-! They all loved on him, then took turns feeding him fries which was so funny! They had a blast!! I think some of my favorite memories with my dad when I was a little girl was the times he would take me to McDonald's for lunch, just me & him. I remember when we lived in Ohio I was maybe 4 years old, he took me to the McDonald's over by the mall I even remember the exact booth we sat in. We talked about how I'm almost big enough to eat a big girl sandwich and maybe next time we came I could order a Big Mac. Then I remember walking up to one of the workers there asking them when Ronald McDonald comes in. It's so funny how exciting a simple trip to McDonald's is to a kid, not to mention how a simple memory like that one stays with you. I'm so thankful that my children are able to spend this time with my dad, and are able to have these precious times with him as children just like I did with him. My dad has always been so important to me! He has always been very supportive and encouraging to me. I thank God everyday that he is here to pour that same support and encouragement into my girls. He is definitely well loved by all of us!! You can totally tell by the pictures!

Homeschooling 9/15/09

Today we took some time out to learn about worship. We talked about how when we worship God we can dance, or sing, but whatever our worship to the Lord we need to give our all! We talked about raising our hands and how that is a symbol of surrender to the Lord, and giving God all of ourselves, all our hearts, and lives. We talked about how we always want to give God our best! And best we did, because the girls tired me out! We danced for the longest time worshiping God. Their favorite worship songs were Chris Tomlin "How can I keep from singing your praise" & Kari Jacobe "Revelation song".

After worship time, we read the book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle. The girls loved it I had to read it to them twice! And almost a third time until I told them we were going to make our own caterpillars now! This was a GREAT craft for them this week since the shape for this month is a circle. They also were able to practice with colors as well.

First thing we did was take a piece of poster board and cut it in half. I then cut out a bigger circle for the head, and then two smaller circles of each color. The girls talked about what color circles they had and as I was cutting them and handing them the circles we counted how many each of them had. Then mommy glued them and put them on their sheet, and then they got to glue on eyes and ears.


fter we got the caterpillar together we took little pompoms that were the same color as the circles and the girls got to glue them to the matching color circle. This way their caterpillar had a more real feel to him.



And this was our finished product!! They loved their caterpillars!!

For our bible lesson today, we continued talking about how "God makes wonderful things to eat." We had a visit again today from "Taco" our hand puppet and he talked about how God gave us wonderful things to eat like Strawberries, grapes, apples, and oranges. The girls loved getting to taste all the yummy foods that God created for us. They learned again today that all their favorite foods were made by God, and they had an even better time tasting them all!

Homeschool Monday Week 2

Today was a great day, very productive so far. We started our day off with circle time as we do every day. We did the pledge to the Christian flag, and the bible, and the American Flag. We talked about the sunny weather and went over the calendar. We also started learning all about the Letter B. We learned the sound it makes, and that B is for Bear, and we colored a Bear coloring page. We also went over our bible verse we learned last week which was John 1:3 "All things are made by him" since the girls memorized the verse, we wrote it on a piece of paper and they got to put that verse in their hearts today since we now have it written on our hearts! They were very excited to put them in their hearts!!
We learned our new bible verse for this week which is 1 Peter 5:7 "God cares about you..." I made up a little song for them to remember it with and was singing "God cares about you, God cares about you." When I would get to the "you part" Alanah would say "AND ME!" It was so cute! We got out some wooden spoons and made music on the table to our bible verse song, they had a blast!!

Also for our bible lesson today "Taco" our hand puppet told us the story of the Isrealites and how they had no food, they went to sleep and God rained down Manna from heaven!! Taco told the girls to close their eyes, and when they opened them again, there was Manna on the table in front of them for us all to eat!! They LOVED it! They really got the picture that "God gives us wonderful things to eat" and that ALL food comes from God!

First week of Homeschool

So our first week of homeschooling is going fantastic!! This week was also A's first Dance Class! She had a blast, and was SUPER cute in her outfit! She was so excited she came home and was hopping all over the living room showing me her dance moves! They did 1/2 hour of ballet and 1/2 hour of tap. Everyone in her class are Christian homeschoolers! It was even a great time for myself to be able to meet other Christian mom's who are also homeschooling.


We also started the book "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons" It took us 2 days to get through the first lesson, but we made it through. We will probably have to go slower than I anticipated although I knew that was going to probably be the case. The first lesson talked about the sound for the letters M & S. We also practiced writing the letters too!

Today our devotional was about getting to know God by reading his Word, and praying. We did a HUGE heart craft, where we cut out a heart, and made a pocket on the front. We put the verse "Thy Word have I hid in my heart" on the front and the girls got to decorate it. At the end of each week we will write their bible verse on paper and stick it in the pocket of the heart, and hopefully they will have the verse in their heart as well.

Our Theme this month is ALL ABOUT ME! Family, friends, pets, etc.....We are starting that off with a Family tree. One day we did the tree branches and tree trunk. One day we did the leaves, tomorrow we will probably do more leaves and then paste the pictures on top of the leaves as we talk about our family.

1st Day of Homeschooling

Today was our first day of homeschooling. It was so much fun! The girls did such an amazing job! We started a little later than I had planned around 9:30 or so and finished up at 12:30. For a 3 & 2 year old they have a great attention span! We started out the day with the Pledge to the Christian Flag, Pledge to the American Flag, and the Pledge to the bible. Went over the days of the week, the weather, what time it was, and the color, letter, and shape of the day. We did a few worksheets on the color and shape of the day, and then the letter. We went over our bible verse for the week (John 1:3) and then did our bible lesson, and started our family tree project.
We made a new friend as well, his name is "Taco". Taco tells us our bible story which this week we are learning about how "God makes everything we see!" Taco was a huge hit!!
Part of our bible lesson today we talked about chipping away the yucky stuff around our hearts and giving them to God so that we can have a pure heart. I found a recipe online cortices of www.impressyourkids.org of how to make a rock with treasure inside for the kids to break away at. It was a combination of Flour, Sand, used Coffee Grounds, Salt, and water. I mixed it all up and stuck little heart beads inside as the "treasure" then baked it on low heat 170 degreese until it felt hard. I let it sit overnight and they were ready in the morning for the girls to break apart and look for their treasures! They had a blast!! So excited about tomorrow and A's first day in dance class!