Is it a chrysalis yet?

We've watched for almost a week now, as our itty bitty caterpillars have nearly doubled in size overnight, every night since we've had them. The kids are loving this, but driving me insane in the process, because they aren't changing fast enough for them. This morning their all hanging on the top of the container, so hopefully soon we'll have some chrysalis pictures to show.

Everyday the kids fill out an observation page, by drawing a picture and writing about what they see happening. Then we do some sort of butterfly craft (sorting life cycles, making caterpillars, painting butterflies, etc.). See the little container in the middle of the boys? Yup, those are our bugs!


Here's what our observation sheets look like. I can't find the link, but I got them from the scholastic website, in a section with butterfly resources. This is Orion's page, and forgive me because I can't figure out how to turn my picture, so sideways it stays :)


From right to left, Orion's, Raymond's, and Olivia's water color painted butterflies. They had fun doing this.
Boo Boo is still loving hooked on phonics, and I really feel like it's helping him. He does still have a hard time remembering sound blends and guesses at words a lot, but I think that's due to the dyslexia. Were still working out some details to have him tested for it.

Bunny is working on the letter D and number 4 this week. I really need to get better at taking more pictures as the kids work. We started with big and little D sorting, letter D lacing, reading Dinosaur Roar, making a dinosaur egg, watching the movie Dinosaur, and some number 4 grouping.
She also loved doing the paint brush color matching with this awesome file folder game. Ignore the Pomeranian under the table, he was chasing the cat :)

Hooked on Phonics

I know I've mentioned it before, but I firmly suspect my Boo Boo has dyslexia, and possibly some other type of learning disability. He has the hardest time reading, and it breaks my heart when he cries because he can't read his schoolwork. This week were starting hooked on phonics. I got a great deal on it, and I'm crossing my fingers that it helps somewhat. I know it's not going to help him read the way it's supposed to, but I'm hoping it'll make the phonics a bit easier for him to learn to break down. I also picked up some Kumon books, and I'm going to be using those along with some of the file folder games I printed out.

He loves having computer time, and how fast his phonics time goes by with it.

I'm giving up on our Abeka spelling for now, because I don't think it's doing him any good. I still like the language, and the letters and sounds books, so we'll stick with those. I don't think I'm going to push those lessons though, maybe a mixture of all of the stuff I have for him, at least until I see what really works for him. For now were going to concentrate back on phonics to help him enjoy reading again!