Trevor taking his phonics assessment

Trevor takes phonics assessments about weekly. His k12 lessons are broken down into about 4-5 days of lessons. The lessons right now mainly go over what he has already covered. Recently, he started in on sentence structure- capital letters, periods and question marks. Here is is reading his sentences and punctuating them. He's always pretty fidgetty when we do school work and yes, it's usually even noisier in the background. Rachael was making the fart machine fart at the cat, Ariel had on the Hullabaloo game and she was chatting away with herself.

A much needed update!

Here's pictures from a couple weeks ago. We are members of Baltimore's Port Discovery children's museum. We go about montly, at least. It's a cool place. They recently opened a Wonders of Water exhibit. The first hour was RSVP members only so we got to experience it while it was pretty empty. Here's pictures!


Spraying water at instruments. The cymbal made the most noise.


Making "container ships" with legos. They had to balance them just right or the boats tipped.


There was a big river thing in the middle that had different buttons to push that created spraying water, or activated water things. They also had ways you could dam up the river, or divert it elsewhere. The girls loved the rubber ducks and mainly floated them down the river.


This was an area where you could see whether or not various objects floated.


"Mommy, I love these boats!" Ariel claimed every small plastic boat in the place and carted them everywhere with her until another littler kid wanted one.


Making a huge bubble!

Our day was lots of fun. We played all over port discovery, however, my pictures all seem blurry or the lighting is off. I think I had the camera on the wrong setting. None of them are really worth posting. We finished the day with lunch at Panera Bread. All in all, quite a nice Saturday!

A lesson in archaeology

So today we did the activity part of SOTW history. The activity was supposed to be an "archaelogical dig" however, it snowed yesterday and it's below freezing here today. The ground is a big hard rock to dig in. So, instead of burying objects outside to dig up, I put them in a bag and pretended I had dug them up and brought them back for further study.

The point of the activity was to dig up objects and look at them and hypothesize what humans did with the objects and what importance they held to people. We decided we were green aliens from the Planet Z and humans no longer existed on earth anymore. We were making explorations to earth to discover more about the people who used to live there. So I had a ceramic bowl, a metal spoon, a pencil and a toy car. We looked at each item and discussed why we thought it was used for the purpose the kids chose. We realized the spoon was really too small to be a shovel, and it made a bad mirror since our reflection was upside down (I guess that would be a science lesson. heh). We noticed writing on the bottom of the bowl and realized we could go back to earth to search for books because humans must have had a system of writing. The toy car not only showed us that cars were probably a form of transportation, they were an important part of our culture since they were decorated (this was a funked up hotwheel car) so we must take pride in our transportation and also it was valued enough to become a toy for children as well. I kind of asked leading, open ended questions for them to come to some of their conclusions. We actually found out all kind of stuff about humans based on what we found- from our use of metal to make the spoon, to the paint on the bowl and the perfection of its manufacture (it must have been made with some sort of machine rather than handcrafted?). All in all, we had lots of fun and learned a lot. I was planning on taking pictures, but there really wasn't anything to photograph, since we were just sitting in the middle of our carpet and holding rather mundane objects.

I'll take pictures of our science experiment tomorrow. We'll observe several things close up and make conclusions based on our observations. We're learning that everything is made up of atoms right now. We started the Chemistry curriculum yesterday and read the first chapter of our textbook and talked about how everything was made of atoms. Ariel spent the whole day walking around pointing to things and saying "That has atoms in it!" It was cute.

A day at the zoo!

I am incredibly proud of myself today. I made it all the way into the DC zoo without once getting lost. The weather the last couple days has been amazing- 70 degrees, sunny. just perfect for a midweek zoo trip to beat the normal crowds. The zoo was not busy at all and we got first class looks at some of the animals. We got up close to the Komodo Dragon, and we got to talk to the volunteer about the Spiny Lobster. The man was passionate about the spiny lobster and really attached to the one at the zoo. The lobster was older than spiny lobsters usually got and he had hidden himself and wouldn't eat. The man told us he was afraid the lobster was dying, but hoped he was molting. It was nice to be one of only a couple people in the invertabrates building. We went into the think Tank, which talks about the way animals think and Rachael was intrigued by the casts of the animals brains. They had a whole row of them, from little to big and we talked about the differences in the brains. Then we went around the room and looked at other things. About 15 minutes later we passed the brains on our way out and Rachael ran over and listed which brain belonged to which animal. She remembered them! We finished the afternoon with an ice cream break while the girls ran around. Unfortunately, Trevor has a cold and was feeling pretty run down after 2 hours of meandering the zoo. So he lay down next to me while the girls ran around. All in all, it was a wonderful day! If this had been a weekend, the zoo would have been PACKED!


New homeschooling supplies! I got my Rainbow Resource order today. It is fantastic! I can't wait to start. Story of the World (top right) is a classical style history curriculum. The small book I read out of and the bigger book is the activity book which outlines different activities, supplemental reading, crafts, narration, etc I can do based on what we have read in the smaller book. It goes through history chronologically, which I like a bit more than his current curriculum. Top left is a Grade one math book which has geometry, fractions, etc in it. We'll work that but mostly in Developmental math (in the middle top). Bottom left is our main science curriculum which was I really impressed with. It's Chemistry and there's a hardcover textbook, with a teacher's guide and a student's lab book. Lot of experiments. The first chapter talks about atoms. It looks really neat and very kid friendly. I have two other Singapore science books- very supplemental. They are definitely not complete. Finally, we'll do Spanish once a week with our other curriculum, which I hope is good.


Trevor on the bears during our zoo trip.


Looking at the lions, which, oddly enough, i can't see in the picture now. Most of the enclosures were empty and guys were working on the "moats" around them. But there were two lionesses in this one.


All three of them fit in that T Rex skull!


The Komodo Dragon spent a long time studying us from the middle of his cage. We were the only ones by his cage. Suddenly, he lumbered right up to the front of the glass and sat there, head high, flicking his tongue in and out at us. He was soooo cool. I think he was our favourite part, just because he was so close.


My favourite animal EVER.. LEMURS!!!


Taking an ice cream break.


Girls playing ring around the rosy. Trevor didn't feel good, he has a cold, so he was laying beside me on the bench. Rachael picked her pretty outfit today. :)

Making a dinosaur....

Trevor got an Eyewitness Dinosaur kit for Christmas. The kit included a plaster mix that we poured into moulds (hm) and allowed to dry. Then we popped them out and pieced our dino together while reading about how dino bones are found. Trevor drew a dino scene on paper to make our bones look cool. However, we didn't actually realize how big the finished product would be. We ran out of room piecing him together and left off the end of his tail.


Contemplating the puzzle that needs to be put together. All those bones did look pretty confusing.


Starting to piece it together. He needed a little help.


We glued the pieces to the paper and then he painted it.


Almost done! I have to admit, we haven't completely finished it yet. Trevor got distracted because the girls wanted me to read to them. So he moved back and forth between his dinosaur and being read to. Then he moved onto another activity with a promise to finsh this one. We'll finish it this week and find a place to display him. He's pretty neat! I liked this kit, we learned lots and it was fun to do. I would definitely get more eyewitness kits.

Our vacation is finished

Today was our first day back at formal seat work. I think Trevor was kind of happy. We reviewed his sight words and he remembered everything. We talked about Betsy Ross and the American Flag, and did math. I am adding three subjects a day onto our lessons, so we'll do science tomorrow. I am about to take a look at the cool dinosaur kit from grandma and we'll see if we can do that tomorrow for science and talk about what we know about dinosaurs.

I ordered a bunch of stuff from Rainbow Resources- my splurge purchase being a cool Grade 1-3 focused Chemistry curriculum. It looks very neat and I am eagerly awaiting its arrival, probably not for at least another week. *sigh*. i also grabbed the Singapore science books because they are inexpensive, Developmental math because it's basically what we're doing now, it's inexpensive and it follows a format (unlike what I follow now). My main purchase was Story of the World, which will be our new history curriculum. I'd like to start with ancient history and move our way to the present and SOTW gets good reviews. I hope it lives up to it's reviews. It's story based, so it will appeal to my children who love listening to me read.

Rachael has decided she wants to take piano, soccer and ballet on top of her gymnastics. I just laughed and told her she could pick one more class. Ariel piped up she wanted to take soccer (this was a conversation at the park today as we kicked the soccer ball around in the 50 degree December temps). Rachael will take gymnastics and ballet- at her request. I just need to find a decent ballet class. Trevor was signed up for this really cool sounding homeschool science class that was once a week for an hour and a half at a regional park. Alas, like many homeschool events in my immediate area, despite being advertised, Trevor is the only person signed up. They called me and warned me his class would probably be cancelled. This happened to the last class I signed him up for. It's hugely frustrating to me. My biggest issue is the lack of classes for HOMESCHOOLERS in my area. Most classes at a reasonable price (through the parks and rec) are not homeschool classes and are offered at 'after school times". This wouldn't be such a problem if they weren't in places like Alexandria or Arlington or even near Tyson's corner. These areas have huge amounts of rushhour that I would hit coming home. I'm not willing to sit in over an hour of traffic just to get him home from an hour long class. So the search to find closeby classes for Trevor is still on. He's kind of at an in between age, too, and many classes are for 8 yr olds, or 3rd grade level. Or for preschoolers. So this won't last forever, just for now. At least we have a small network of people we see now, but I so wish I could get him in some classes in subjects/sports that interest him.

We did buy a season pass to Port Discovery this year. It's always worth it. And the kids have gotten old enough that I feel more comfortable driving out to Baltimore during the weekdays now, and hitting PD when it won't be so crowded. We went this Sunday and had a blast. They have an exhibit on Japanese life for kids and had a school room, houses, kids stuff set up everywhere. It was realy interesting. Of course they have the huge climbing area the older two love, the Oasis full of books, etc for all of us. All in all, lots of fun.

We finally got Rachael's Webkinz working this morning and spent a while playing on that and answering science questions. Rachael earned herself 200 webkinz dollars. Go Rachie! We've started The BFG by Dahl and, as with the other books we've read by him, it's a big hit so far. We'll start the Spiderwick Chronicals (maybe) next since I saw the trailer and it makes me want to read the books! Trevor continues with his obsession over Mario Galaxy and we played it tonight. Including a nap, time at the park, running errands at Target, school stuff this morning, we had a pretty busy day! I think I will go join Ray downstairs now.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Christmas Day!

Here's for mainly those in the family that couldn't join us for Christmas. I hope everyone's Christmas was as lovely and relaxing as ours was.

The Playmobil Pirate ship set Trevor got.


The Schleich Animal nursery with like many many "neighs". It has a roof which is not on it right now.


Rachael latched onto her little Barbie dog. It makes cute little puppy noises and has a heart that lights up when you play and care for him. The little dog also comes with items to take care of him like a vet would. She LOVED the puppy!


Possibly Trevor's favourite gift was the MArio Galaxy game. He spent a great deal of yesterday playing it.


Cool science book my mom gave him, I put the photo in because it looks like it's glowing. Cool. heh


Girls playing with a wooden barn set. My in my kitty jams that I ADORE that Ray gave me for my birthday a month ago. :)


Ariel looking like she did most of Christmas morning, a little confused and overwhelmed. She is playing with her new Thomas dominos game. Not just Dominoes, her fav game.. but THOMAS! Her fav train. heh. Sorry the picture is sideways, no time to go and flip them and import them to flickr right now.


Trevor in the army santa hat from his Nc grandma. Trevor poses for all his pictures just like his daddy. heh.


Ray defied gravity and built this sideways block tower with Kappla blocks! heh. Sorry the picture is sideways. Trevor built one just like Ray's today. it's as tall as he is.


Chaos and my parent's staghound, Claire. Chaos put Claire, who is very cat friendly, in her place and they get along fine. Shadow spent the first two days moving in slow motion around our house and not letting Claire out of sight. Now he's a little more ocmfortable with a dog in the house but won't let Claire sniff him. He turns into a big black halloween cat.


Ray's masterpiece... the 23 lb smoked turkey. It's an organic freerange bird from a local farm where I get my milk. It was quite tasty!


Merry Christmas everyone!

The kids had tons of fun, we all got lots of stuff and spent a wonderful day with family. We missed those of you who couldn't be with us! Hope everyone's holidays were as wonderful as ours.

Random pictures

Just some random pictures. I'll bring the camera tomorrow since we will be going to see the Nutcracker! Not the ballet, this is a puppet show geared at the 5+ set. Rachael and I went last year and loved it, though., and she was 3.5 yrs. So i think we'll all like it this year.

Anyway. We've been pretty busy. Rachael had her first playdate yesterday with the sister of Trevor's friend. It allowed me to go to the mall and finish Christmas shopping with just Ariel. Rachael had a blast. She found out her new friend liked horses as much as she does so they had lots to talk about. Trevor, of course, always has fun at his friend's house. heh.


This is my bookshelf where I keep most homeschooling supplies. Of course, many things I use are printed right off the computer, our art things are kept somewhere else, some things are various other places. The boxes at the bottom are what the k12 supplies came in. One has math supplies, another science stuff (even though we no longer use the science curriculum), the other has L/A stuff we don't use at this time. I no longer use k12 math, but i still have the book and supplies so we make use of that and the internet (for printable free worksheets) for that. Currently Trevor is working on subtraction and loosely on how subtraction also means that you can make an addition sentence with the answers (so 5-1=4 also means 4+1=5). I don't know what that concept is called. The top shelf has phonics books and the letter tile box. The middle shelf is math books and my college books for last semester. The bottom shelf has supplies and Ariel and Rachael's workbooks. You can see we're marking off the days til Grandma and Grandpa get here (yup, not Christmas). The black file folder on the floor holds all finished phonics work.



Trevor doing math on a number line.



Ariel has this insatialby fervent desire to pour water from cup to cup. There is no such thing as a cup without water if there is one full of water nearby.



Having completed pouring, Ariel brought me her workbook. She's so little, it's her choice to work on things. She is finding pairs right now.



We rent books on CD at the library. Currently the kids are listening to the fourth Lemony Snicket book. Trevor loves it. We've read the first book together and we listened to a CD of another one (involving the carnival, I forget which number it is). We'll definitely continue, even though the books are as horribly depressing as they are entertaining. heh.

So that's about what we have been doing. I have also been baking. Trevor and I made chocolate roll this afternoon. Rachael and Ariel only ate it, they didn't want to help as they were tossing green ballie around the house (hmmm...). Otherwise, our days have been busy and fun for us, but not much in the way of stuff to write about. Tonight though, was cute; Rachael said "Mommy, I love Grandma, and grandpa and Santa!" So they are right up there with Santa! Of course, Trevor pointed out that grandma gave presents just like santa and Rachael and Trevor had to debate the merits of leaving santa up on the pedestal with the grandparents. heh. It was quite cute.

phonics, 4 yr old style

Yesterday I had a headache of almost migraine proportions. Nothing seemed to be taking the edge off until I finally took some ibuprofen. I put in The Eyewitness Insect DVD we got from the library and told the kids I was going to lay down and they should watch the video, then draw a picture of some of the bugs. I lay down for 30 minutes and felt much better and came downstairs. Rachael was drawing a butterfly. The butterfly has the four wings. At the top of the picture, she sounded out her word "BTRFI"= Butterfly. Isn't that cool!? My little girl is sounding out words!

Also... Trevor started his own blog. He types it himself with minimal help from me. Here's the address..
Trevor's blog

And because Rachael wants to keep up with the information age, she started one, too. She has a little more help from me than Trevor, otherwise all her blog posts would consist of the first letter of the word, only. So I help her sound out the complete word, but I don't correct her letter choice.
Rachael's blog

First snow of the season!!

Do I have to wear gloves, mommy?


Heading up to the small hill behind our house. They didn't cancel school today so we had the hill to ourselves.


WHEEEEEEE! At one point Rachael went down and lost her glove. Another time she went down so fast she lost a boot! lol.


Trevor after flying down the hill. We had just enough wetish snow to cover the grass. It's not going to hang around, it will probably melt tomorrow. But it sure was fun while it lasted! If you noticed, the sleds are all with the kids. They had piled them all on the orange sled and attempted to go down the hill. They actually did pretty good.


Ariel wouldn't sled. But she did eat lots of snow.


mmmMMMMM... snow.

How busy have we been?

I haven't updated in a while! We had a wonderful trip to the grandparents in NC for Thanksgiving. Lots of relaxing fun, continuation of a fun tradition of Christmas light viewing and good pizza, etc etc. We hit little traffic down and back, which we were very thankful for.

It's currently the end of the school semester for me, which leaves me very busy, a little stressed. Along with the start of the holiday season, many of my homeschooling intentions get sidetracked onto other activities.

On Friday we got to see Justin Roberts and the Not Ready for Naptime group at XM. That was lots of fun, participating in what will be their New Year's show on the kid's station. He was lots of fun to listen to and the kids really enjoyed it.

Trevor completed his first semester of phonics- meaning, we've finished the book and worksheets and have moved on to the second semester. It's not much different than the first one, except the book says "Semester 2" on it. He will be learning blends like "sh", and things like "ck", etc. We've been doing more basic addition and Trevor has demonstrated working knowledge of things like subtraction and adding, especially when he was telling Rachael how old she would be as he got older and how she would never be as old as he was! heehee.. He's also well on his way to buying his covetted Transformer's Bumblebee. it's 80 dollars and he gets 3 dollars a week as an allowance. He's saved 34 dollars so far. He's only spent a couple dollars once when he wanted to eat ChickFila for lunch and I said only if he paid for himself. I think he's doing very well for a 6 yr old and such a lofty, expensive goal. I'm thinking of meeting him halfway once he hits forty dollars. We'll see.

We've been doing some history from k12 but our science is still nature shows, and nature based- like our extensive discussions of space, or finding pretty rocks, etc. Trevor adores the "universe" series on the history channel and actually absorbs quite a bit. I'm learning tons, too- like I never knew water could be so dense that the liquid becomes solid, and yet, the substance is not ice. Weird, eh? Trevor thought so, too. I wish we could do that in an experiment.

Anyway, here's random pictures:

We all went to the stream near the house and came home loaded with pretty rocks.


Daddy reading the kids some of the Christmas books we got out of storage.


Rachael helping decorate the tree.


Our Christmas tree!!!! You can see Chaos sleeping underneath the tree. Shadow is under the buck of the tree.


We've been busy enough to exhaust poor Ariel by every afternoon. She passed out while watching The Universe.

Random goodness in the form of playdough

Just because they are SOOO cute! Ariel let me put her hair in pigtails!


As you can see, Ariel is thrilled with playdough!!!


Rachael kneading the dough to make it more playdoughy. It's pretty sticky until they knead it a bit. It's also pretty hot.


This is Trevor building a chain of dominoes. We just got the dominoes recently and they have been endlessly amusing for all the kids. We play the game TONS, but Trevor quickly realized you could stack them like he is in the video and knock them down. Much to his dismay, we don't have enough to build long elaborate designs to knock over. I think I need to get more dominoes! I lost my voice last week and it was still all hoarse. I was also a bit grumpy because I kept having to start the video again because Trevor shows off for the camera. He just won't act NORMAL! He will build so nicely and carry on a meaningful conversation until I start filming then he gets all silly. So you'll hear me whisper "Act normal!". heh.

Other than that, we've been busy! More pictures will be up later. No more time now. But we went to the Natural history museum yesterday without Ray! I was proud that direction challenged me made it in on the Metro and everything. We met Ray afterwards to go to the Caps game, which was loads of fun, too. Trekking into DC will be something we definitely do more often.