Day at the Creek

We had such a nice day today. Melissa (fellow homeschooler extraordinaire) and I took our kids to a local park for a picnic. They had a blast on this beautiful day. Here are the pics:

Sam, enjoying a sunny swing:

Jake, at lunchtime:

The creek:

Barefoot:

Jake and Andalen:

Getting soaked:

Sam, the explorer:

My boys at play:

Jake didn't understand why he couldn't get naked, lol.  Had to explain a few things to him....  Settled on losing the shirt:

Love this one:

Sam loved it:

Finally got a look:

The kids were so funny.  They thought they saw jellyfish.  We discussed how jellyfish live in saltwater and the kids decided what they thought were jellyfish... were really WALNUTS!?!?  Too cute.  Thanks guys, for an awesome day!

Tot School

 

Poor Sammy keeps getting left out of the mix. He's my incredible 13-mo-old baby boy. He's wonderful... sleeps like a dream and is always happy and sweet. But boy is he BUSY! Gets into everything! Jake wasn't like that. We didn't even have to childproof our house with him.

Anyway, I gave Sam some Disney paint samples to put into a wipes container.

He did great at first, but then got impatient...

So we made it a bit easier....

And then it turned into a new game....

(Side Note:  We buy TONS of paint and stain from The Home Depot, so I don't feel guilty about taking some of their samples)  ;-)

We also tried something else that I saw on http://mamato3blessings.blogspot.com/.  Thanks, Nicole!

He did okay when he wasn't eating the pompoms!

Here he is placing gears....

He and Jake both love that little corner of our learning room.  They love to snuggle up on that sleeping bag and play, look at books or listen to stories.

Adventureland

Yesterday, we covered two Adventureland (Magic Kingdom) attractions -  The Jungle Cruise and the Enchanted Tiki Room.  In the morning, we used this old Walt Disney World Explorer software that I have (like 1998 old) to look up the Jungle Cruise.  This has been a great program for helping Jake get used to working the mouse.

Then we looked up the 4 rivers featured in the attraction (Nile, Congo, Mekong and Amazon) on our maps and read The Great Kapok Tree, which is a tale about the Amazon Rain Forest.

Jake wrote the names of the 4 rivers (he's gotten lazy with his writing, so we're squeezing more in) and drew a picture of the Jungle Cruise attraction.

We moved on to the Tiki Room in the afternoon.  We used the software to look it up and then listened to the song by the Sherman Brothers.  A lot of Disney attractions feature songs by the Shermans:  It's a Small World, Carousel of Progress, Journey into Imagination with Figment, Winnie the Pooh, Great Movie Ride, etc.  So we've discussed the Shermans and have been listening to their music throughout our Disney unit.

We read about Hawaii and the most commonly known islands that make up the state.  We discussed traditions and various terms like "Ohana".  We also looked up the Polynesian Resort on the WDW Explorer.  And poor Jake got to practice some more writing....

We made a Tiki Bird puppet to sing along with the song.  I suggested finger painting.  Jake wasn't too keen on the idea at first....

It didn't take long for him to change his mind....

The finished product.  Jake named him Zazu ;-)

Then we made a Lei....

Jeez... you never know what state my child will be in here on my blog.  One minute he's wearing one shirt, then he's shirtless, then is sporting another shirt with boxers.  That's my boy!

Wordless Wednesday

My boys... playing together?!?

Rare behavior in an area that we rarely play in, the upstairs hallway.

Behind the Facade

http://mamato3blessings.blogspot.com/

People always comment about how organized I am and I always respond with the same thing: "My brain is such a mess, that if I wasn't organized on the outside, I'd be a complete DISASTER!" I basically have no choice. Cabinets and bins/boxes are great because you can hide stuff in them (just like my messy brain!). Here's what's lurking behind the facade in our homeschool room....

Our manipulatives and some games:

Various puzzles:

Arts and crafts stuff:

Stuff we'll recycle into art:

Some of my stuff that used to be really neat and spread much more thinly:

Remember "This is your brain....  This is your brain on drugs"?  Well... this next pic is just my brain:

We're taking over!  Even though we have a large, wonderful homeschool room, we've begun to leak out into the rest of the house.  Here's a bulletin board in the hallway:

And here's our guest room closet, lol!  (Hey, you never know when you're going to need all that stuff!)

So there you have it.  The (almost) complete picture.  See ya next time!

Our HomeSchool Room

http://mamato3blessings.blogspot.com/

I feel so blessed to have a room dedicated for homeschooling.  It used to be “mommy’s office”, but now we call it the school room or the learning room.  It was my craft room and I had all my crafty stuff spread all over the place.  It’s amazing how little space I was able to squeeze all my stuff into when I decided to turn this into our homeschool room.  I used to have scrapbooking crops and rubber stamping classes here, so I already had a wonderful table (8’) and chairs and tons of storage (mostly IKEA).

Forgive the pics... still getting used to my fancy-dancy new camera!

Here’s our library.  Most of our books are from Goodwill and yard sales.  Most of our science books are in the left case.  Social Studies/History books are in the tall case on the left, Language Arts, Reading, Math and Misc books are in the tall case on the right and reading books are in the far right case.

There's our board book case.  I picked it up at a yard sale for $4, yippee!  On the left is our little reading corner for Jake and play area for Sam.  They love that sleeping bag! The sideboard cabinets contain all of our puzzles and manipulatives.  The drawers house our paper, cardstock, crayons, coloring books, etc.  Our larger maps, books and puzzles are stored underneath.  

Here's the opposite wall.  There's some homeschool stuff there, but most of it is scrapbooking and paper craft stuff like Xyron, Cricut and Cuttlebug cartridges... which have come in really handy for homeschooling!

Here's my rubber stamping station.  It's one thing that hasn't changed much.  It's my space... my domain.  No touchy touchy!

 Here's my computer station.  A lot of my craft stuff remains, as you can see.  Ignore the V-day decoration I picked up at Goodwill last week for $0.50, lol!  (and the hamster bedding on the floor, lol!)

Wow... this pic came out SO dark, yuck!  It's really much brighter and cheerier.  Anyway, these fabric bins (which are actually more pastel-like than this) are new.  I hide most of our craft supplies and stuff like egg cartons and milk jugs in there.  Also games, flash cards, cleaning supplies, etc.  The drawers have pretty much stayed the same, filled with paper crafting supplies.  The bins on the bottom are filled with toys for Sam.

 Oh, and that's Eva, our classroom pet!  She's a dwarf robo hamster and we love her!

Well, that's about it and my husband is finally home from work (at 9:30 pm).  Glad I finally got to post this.  G'nite, y'all!