A lot of good things are happening right now, though. I need to keep that in mind when I’m feeling beat down! I made a little list:

1. I hear my three oldest boys outside having a BLAST on their trampoline.

It’s technically time for lunch period to be over, but how do you call in three brothers that are getting along so well together? The giggling is pure music to my ears. Of course, if I wait too long, someone will inevitably fall on someone else. Then they will wrestle, and soon someone will get angry from that. Wrestling pretty much always leads to fighting.

So I will go and drag them in, while they are still happy. It’s time for me to read to them.

2. “Teacher Reading”

We have always loved that time of day that I read to the kids, and being their teacher has allowed me more time to do this. Here are a few of the titles we have been reading lately:

Our American Heritage may be the only textbook that we actually finished this year!!  Keeping the history geek gene alive and well! 😉 They even enjoyed the story about Louisa May Alcott.

Do any of you (grandparents) have a copy of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn? I think those would be a huge hit here.

Then at night Alan is reading this to them:

Joshua read it back in December, but he never gets tired of Greg Heffley. I think Alan is enjoying this book as much as the boys are. There was this part where the dad bought a boat and the home owner’s association called and told him to put it in the backyard……haaaa!  Been there!!!

3. CC Mom’s Night!!!

This has been such a blessing to me! I can’t tell you how much I have learned from these women!!! I learn so much more from other moms than I do from books! And you know I love books!

My favorite tip from CC Mom’s Night:

This Science Curriculum:

I haven’t decided yet what to order for the geology portion. Ideas, anyone?

Pre-School Time with A Beka games!

4. A Beka Preschool Games

Daniel, JD, and I have been learning the sounds that the letters make, using A Beka games. These have been a hit with all of my boys. These are all the same materials I used to teach Joshua and Caleb!!

JD’s participation is unsolicited and unappreciated by the Dan man.

“No, JD! No, JD! NO!”

“Mom, him have my cow!!”

But it can’t be helped. JD insists on joining, and it is really cute to hear him occasionally say the sounds with us. “Uuuuuuu”

I don’t make Daniel do any worksheets, but seeing his brothers work makes Daniel want to work. Therefore, Daniel does a ton of “work.” By work, I do mean coloring and tracing letters. He’s learning to write his letters in cursive, like his brothers, which is weird to me. I’ve never done it this way before, but we’re just going to roll with it.

Daniel whipped through all of the K3 workbooks in 5 months, so he is now on “Lesson 23” of the K4 workbooks, which he isn’t technically supposed to be in until August. That’s all Daniel.

5. Poppies!!!

Orange poppies bloom around our house in abundance, and Caleb and Daniel keep my window well supplied. I love this.

6. Big boy!

What a difference a few months makes! JD learned the word “no.” This week. He mostly uses it when I got to put him down for a nap.

“Nooooo!”

🙂 But once I lay JD in his bed, he always kicks back happily. He puts both hands behind his head, and he’s asleep in no time. While he is still master of the scowl, we are very pleased with JD. You can tell him to “stay with mama,” and nine times out of ten, he will actually do it.

We get wonderful reviews on him from childcare workers.

“Oh, he is just precious. I so enjoy your boys.” This is medicine to my soul.

7. Trying to eat healthier! 

We are truly making a team effort here on the healthy foods, but it can be very difficult, especially with breakfast. Eggs are a hit with some boys, but not others. Eating sugary cereals or pancakes sabotages their school morning. You wouldn’t believe how much better they behave when we replace their sugar breakfast with a protein one.

Unfortunately, Joshua has informed me that eggs are bothering his throat again. *GRoAN!* I’m running out of ideas on how to feed this *always hungry*but *allergic to everything* boy!!!

8. Playdoh!

9. Word searches

10. CARS!!

If you want to keep JD busy for an hour, give him 10 cars, a ramp, and this Mac Carrier. He is in love.

If you want to see a really good JD/Daniel FIGHT, let them “share” Lightning McQueen, the King, Chick Hicks, and Leak Less. *shudder* Apparently, I now need two sets.

11. Geography

I struck gold when I finally discovered the Classical Conversations iPad app. The iPad now gets used every single day here. For geography, I pull up what I want them to label on the iPad, and they can copy straight to their marker map. The best part: I don’t have to stand over them and say, “This is the Great Plains. This is the Eastern Woodlands……” Anything that takes work off of my plate is a GIFT!!

Caleb loves the regions map so much, he does it for fun sometimes. I don’t know if he learned all of the names for the regions, but he surely enjoyed coloring them! 😉

12. Little Kids are FUN!

I took it down when Chris and Meredith were coming over, so then he drew on the wall. Did I ever mention that Daniel is an awful lot like Caleb? They are happy, fun-loving boys, and when they are tired, they can do some damage!

I have a little good news for you. JD is a lot less happy-go-lucky, BUT he’s also less mischievous. Every kid is so different.

Together, they make the house an exciting place. 🙂 It was funny. A couple of weeks ago, we had Chris and Meredith over. Our two families combined makes 7 children! And yet, it was perfectly quiet in the house! The big boys were out jumping on the trampoline. Their little girl sat nicely at the table with us, and the little boys (Daniel and his best bud) were playing costumes and cars and just having a wonderful time.

I’ll tell you a little bit more about Dan and his best bud on my next post, in which the boys go camping with their friends and the dads. A ball was had by all. 🙂

One last thought…..

13. Marriage Class!

Alan and I just began attending a marriage class at a local church, not our church. We are plumb giddy about this! We were invited by a couple that we met through CC, basketball, and our neighborhood. When you keep running into a family, it’s a good sign that you should be friends!

This family has five children, has been living our same transient, patriotic lifestyle for even longer than we have, and they are leading a marriage class on Sunday nights. Childcare is even provided! We went for the first time tonight, and even the kids had fun!

First, we drop off the kids, while we attend a 30 minute class. The kids are all in one big group together, so that went a long way to ease JD’s seperation anxiety! Then they dismiss us to go on our own 2 hour DATE!

I know!!! It is that awesome.

I had a sad week. It doesn’t really matter why.

Date night was something I have literally been praying for. God is always so faithful to answer our prayers. Things are looking way up, and I’m going to bed hopeful tonight.

I hope you all have a wonderful week! Just think, summer is almost here!

“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.”   Hebrews 10:24

“May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”  2 Corinthians 13:14

The post 13 Wonderful Things That Are Happening at Our Homeschool appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Some days it’s best to wear your pants a different way.

I stepped outside to take out the recycling. Joshua, Caleb, Daniel, and a neighborhood friend were all playing in and around the trees on the hill behind our house.

I heard Caleb ask, “Master Joshua, how much longer do we have to train?”

Gracious.

Two new seven-year-old boys have moved onto our street in the past few weeks. Joshua and Caleb’s world keeps getting happier and happier.

********

Right now it’s recess time at “Yawn City Elementary School.”

Daniel keeps running in my room, holding the Batmobile, giggling, “Save me, Mom! Save me!” with Caleb, half-heartedly chasing him, holding a Skylander statue. These two make such adorable playmates.

Joshua is still downstairs finishing up his seat work. He had a day dreaming problem this morning. He has three new books arriving in the mail in the next few days, and that is all he can think about. Joshua is an obsessor, another fine quality inherited from his mother. (Sorry, kids.)

I warned him this morning, “Joshua, you will not go to recess until you finish that seat work. It’s not my fault that you’re sitting there daydreaming about books.”

“What did you say I’m daydreaming about?”

I figured that meant that he thought I was wrong, so I back-tracked, “Well, whatever you are daydreaming about. You need to do your math paper.”

“But what did you say before?”

“Your books..”

“Oh, yeah, you were right. I’m daydreaming about my books.”

We love books around here. At least I handed down ONE good quality!!  You’re welcome, dear world.

That has been one thing I have loved about our A Beka language arts curriculum. They include such quality novels and stories. Granted, Joshua hated Swiss Family Robinson and Pilgrim Boy,  but all of the reading material has been chock full of great stories, almost all of them with morals that are hard to find just anywhere. Many of the stories in the third grade curriculum are from centuries ago. They have points I had never even thought of.

Our favorite was this one:

This story of Hilda is relatable, funny, and many of the values in this book are things that we often forget about in our modern age. I’m talking about things like removing distractions from our lives because they prevent us from remembering to pray, not because the distractions are harmful in themselves, but simply because they keep us from what’s best. We never want to accept something that’s kind of good, at the cost of experiencing what is best.

Joshua would probably not admit that he enjoyed this book, but he did, and I did too. He also learned a lot about smallpox and obedience!

Now some of you may wonder why Joshua did not enjoy The Swiss Family Robinson. Oh my goodness. I didn’t blame him. That book really was “boring.com.” If you only saw the movie, you can’t understand. The movie was solid family fun! The book……talks about survival. The book tells you that the treehouse was actually not sustainable all year long. They had to build a house out of a cave for monsoon season.  Okay, that still sounds interesting, but see, the book tells you, in agonizing detail, how they MADE things, how they survived.

Yes, some of you will love it. If you are like Joshua and me, and don’t care how they made the things….it’s a boring book. I really just wanted to read about the animal adventures, meeting the girl, and the shipwreck incident.

Our book love doesn’t stop with Joshua. Caleb was my VOW.

Victory Of the Week!!!

I downloaded a lengthy 2nd grade formal reading assessment from the Ohio State Department of Education, and ……Caleb passed it with flying colors!

I was so excited. That was reason #1 I wanted to home school Caleb: to give him a boost in reading skills. The other formal reading assessments I’d used on Caleb were only lists of words to read, but this Ohio one had the whole nine yards: word recognition and multiple stories, of all different types, to read with comprehension questions.

Here’s a link for anyone else that is interested:

http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Testing/Diagnostic-Assessments/New-Diagnostic-Assessments-List#FAQ1413

Caleb is enjoying reading too. He has always loved being read to, but now he finally has the confidence to read on his own.

Henry and Mudge is my absolute favorite series for encouraging youngsters to read. All four boys enjoy those books. They are sweet, relatable stories about a boy and his dog.

But yes, my boys are still terrified of dogs. Someday, when they are much older, we will get them a dog of their own, and I figure that will take care of that. For now, there is no way on earth that I am taking care of a dog.

Every morning, Caleb and Joshua do a math paper and work in their “seat work notebook”, during the first hour of school. The seat work notebook has varying tasks, but it always includes spelling work and a writing assignment. The other assignments vary, which keeps it interesting. Caleb asked me today, “Mom, when are you going to put ‘Read a book,’ in my seat work again?”  That made me smile. I’m so glad he’s finally enjoying reading.

Here’s what I did to help Caleb enjoy reading more:

1. I ordered A Beka 1st grade readers. Last semester, Caleb read the 2nd grade readers, but A Beka is an advanced curriculum, and those readers were too much work for Caleb. I learned a valuable lesson from Joshua’s teacher, Mrs. DeSatnick, last year. She told us, at Open House, “With young readers, you want them to read material that is just right for their level, or easy for their level. Reading books that are above their level actually hinder their learning.”

Best reading advice ever, and Joshua flourished in reading in her class. He still reads several years above grade level, but he didn’t get there by reading books that were too hard for him.

2. I kept taking Caleb to the library and letting him pick out whatever he wants to read. Yes, he reads Garfield and Ninjago more than Frog and Toad. I am no book snob. There is only one kind of book that does not enter our house:

Captain Underpants:  ew, ew , ew.  Parents, do yourself a favor, and everyone that has to talk to your children a favor, and avoid those books. “Poopy” and ‘stupid’ are about the only adjectives you will find in those books.

Don’t confuse Capt. Underpants with Capt. Awesome. They are two very different series.

We LOVE Captain Awesome.

3. I started letting Caleb do more ‘silent reading.’ I think reading to me makes him nervous because I correct him a lot.

4. I gave incentives. Read 30 books, get a Lego set. Obviously, that was a hit.

I could talk books all day long, but the natives are getting restless, so I’d better run. This will be a big weekend for us. Friday night I’m hosting the moms from my home school group, so I really should be getting ready for that!

Have a great weekend!

The post My Victory of the Week at Yawn City Elementary appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.