New Year, New Things!

I love new year.  It's just such a fresh start to things sometimes...

Plus, it's also the day that the Spawn turns 8.  I'm still trying to figure out where the heck the time went.

Speaking of new things, there's a new goober on the way.  We finally feel comfortable enough to announce it.  We had a miscarriage at the end of May 2010, that both the Chef and I struggled with.  Something that was so unexpected, but so very wanted.  But, we are expecting one last goober in the beginning of June of this year.  Sweet Nut is so very excited for his early birthday present (since our EDD is exactly one week before his birthday).  All 3 of our goobers are hoping to be blessed with a sister, but will also tell you they will take what God has chosen to give them.  I think that Spawn got them all saying that.

In other gooberish news:

Spawn has turned 8, and is doing much better in 2nd grade.  His teacher is a great fit for him, strict but understanding.  He still has some struggles which are normal at his age.  He had also stopped going for his biweekly visits with the social worker at school (yay) and only saw her on occasion, but I did get a permission slip for him to join the lunch buddy group that meets every 1-2 weeks.  He's come a long way with dealing with his feelings and I know his worker plays a big part in it.  He asked to see her, and he'll even tell you that she helps him figure out how to handle things.  Ideally, we'd like him not to need her anymore, but we're happy that he has the option there when he needs it.

Sweet Nut is also doing great in school.  He's right on track for most things, but is a bit social and a bit silly.  Nothing we didn't know before :D  He's made quite a few friends, and lost his first tooth finally after it was loose for like 3 weeks.  He's working on writing sentences, so there's lots of storytelling at our house.

Cute Boy is doing great as well.  We're working on letter recognition, and thanks to big brothers learning to read, he can tell you some letter sounds too.  He's also practicing writing letters, and counting.  He loves that he's got me to himself a few times a week, and loves that Ma-Ma (my mom) takes him out to lunch every Tuesday.  Which also usually includes a trip to the bookstore.  Just to show you how much he loves books, he had asked one day after lunch if he could get an ice cream.  We told him yes, but then we weren't going to be able to get a book.  "Um, that's ok.  I want to get my book."  So did not expect that out of the 3 year old.

So it's been a few months...

Life has a habit of getting in the way sometimes.

My computer has been out of commission. I need to get some memory cards for it. But money is really tight right now, and I picked up another part time job. I hate being away from my gophers so much, but we need the income.

Speaking of the goobers, they are doing great. The older two are loving school and we're looking at prek options. Not that I want to put him in prek, but we shall see what is in store for us.

Anyways, sorry for the downer post. I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Snacktime!

So we had our second Muffin Tin Monday (really Wednesday, because I work on Mondays).  The first I didn't get pictures of, but today I did!

We had mango slices, chocolate chip cookies, Toy Story cheese crackers, some fruit salad (melon, pineapple and strawberries) and some dried apples and strawberries.

They gobbled it up in no time, and were thrilled to eat out of their special "dishes"  I found pirate and monkey cupcake liners in the grocery store, and picked up the silicone feet cups in Marshalls.

Ready...Set...GO!

So, it's official.  I'm a homeschooler!

After lots of praying and debating, we're headed full steam ahead into homeschool for preschool this year.  We've decided to use the Letter of the Week program from Confessions of a Homeschooler for the most part, with some Raising Rock Stars Preschool from 1+1+1=1.

I'm in the process right now of going through everything, and figuring our schedule etc.  The plan is to start on Tuesday.  We're going with a 4 day week (Tuesday - Friday) due to my work schedule.

I'm also making a list of some things I need to pick up while I'm out and about.  Like I need an excuse to go to Michaels and shop? :D

I'm getting anxious about the big goobers and school too.  They start on Sept 7th, and I still haven't heard whether Sweet Nut is going to AM or PM K, and who the boys got for teachers.  I can't go school shopping because, for Spawn anyways, the supply list is teacher specific.  I guess I'll be calling the school on Monday morning to see when they are going to inform me of my kids teachers and school info.  I'm still waiting to hear when the K bus run and orientation is going to be.  It's usually in August.

Sigh.  At least I know that Cute Boy is pretty much ready to go.  I can't wait to start on Tuesday!

I know, I know...

I've been slacking, but it's summertime and we've been having fun!

I've got a Bronx Zoo post coming up hopefully this week, and I think we're going to make a trip the the Aquarium this week or next week to see the baby sea lion.

I'm also wrestling with the decision to send Spawn and Sweet Nut to public school this year.  We've decided to start homeschooling, but Spawn's dad wants him to go to public school again.  We agreed, but only for a few months, to see if some of the problems he had last year will be gone.  And of course, because Spawn is going, Sweet Nut wants to go.

We're gearing up to start prek for Cute Boy.  He'll be homeschooled this year, and is totally excited to do school.

So, we've been pretty busy, but hopefully will get back in the swing of things soon.

Yes...I'll admit it...

I'm addicted to Twilight.

So much so, that when we took the Goobers to see Toy Story 3 last week, I noticed that our theater was having a midnight showing of Eclipse.  So I chatted up a few friends, and I found someone as crazy as me to go.  Chef "volunteered" to watch the kids so I could go drool over some werewolves (Yes.  I'm on team Jacob).

So I'm about an hour away from needing to leave for the theater.  I bought my tickets already, and my friend keeps messaging me on facebook with a countdown.

Brillantly we took the little goobers to a carnival tonight, and got them cotton candy.  So guess who's still awake and bouncing off the walls.  :D  Poor Chef.

Sigh.  I feel like I'm 14 again.

And so the schooling begins.

We're officially in schooling mode over at the Goober House.  Sweet Nut and Cute Boy LOVE learning, so it's been pretty easy so far.

Spawn finished school yesterday, and he was asking for things to work on during the little boys "schooltime".  Chef was working on him with some math review, since it seems like Math is not going to be one of his strong areas.

We hit Target the other day, and scored in the dollar bin area.  We got 2 packages of small foam shapes that we're using for math manipulatives.  They had a ton of workbooks so we got some of those.  They had some weather stuff that we picked up, as well as some small whiteboards.  We ended up picking up a 3 drawer plastic cart that we can use to store school stuff.

So here's the plan this summer:

Spawn:

Math-work on reviewing math concepts learned during 1st grade, review telling time and counting money

Reading-he as a summer reading assignment that we'll be using for this.  He's going to be reading 20-30 minutes for his reading log, and then once a week he'll chose one book he read to use for his Story Quilt piece for school.  It's like a basic book report.

Writing- He'll be doing copywork once a day.  We're going to be working on spacing and neatness.

Sweet Nut:

Letters-We're working on letter recognition.  He wants to work on a different letter each day, but we're trying to slow it down a little bit :D.  We work on writing the letter, practice the sound the letter makes, and try and find things when we're out and about that start with that letter.  We're also making a letter wall using Sesame Street coloring sheets from sproutonline.com.

Numbers-He can recognize all his numbers now and can count to 20, so we're working on writing them and counting items using manipulatives.  We're also working on patterns.  We count when we're out and about, and he's also doing Sesame Street coloring pages from Sprout that we'll hang up.

Colors-We've been playing with color, seeing what happens when you mix colors etc.

Shapes-We've been practicing drawing shapes and finding shapes when we're out.

Writing-we're working on writing trying to get our letters facing the right directions.  We're also starting with some basic sight words.

It seems like a ton, but he's doing some here and there.  We basically write out on his white board what we're working on and he can go to his school drawer any time and pull out the work.

Cute Boy:

Letters-we're working on singing our ABC's.  He's almost had it for awhile, so we're trying to get ALL the letters in there.  He also copies whatever Sweet Nut is doing.  He also has the Sesame Coloring pages.

Numbers-He can count to ten, so we're just working on finding things to count.  He's also been playing with patterns.

Colors/Shapes-  we're working on recognition.

Writing-we're working on some basic writing skills-drawing lines, curves etc.

All 3 boys want to learn more about the world around them and are always asking questions, so we let them pick topics they wanted to learn about.  We'll basically stick with a topic for a week, learning about it.  For the next 3 weeks, we'll be learning about water, trees and cows.  Where they come from, how they benefit us, etc.