Free Pattern Blocks

I've been using swagbucks for almost a year now, and am finally starting to turn in my bucks for prizes. I've been using my points to buy $5 amazon gift cards, and had enough in my amazon account to buy the kids a few things.

This is the first part of our order that arrived. A whole bucket of pattern blocks! I've decided to buy things for the kids that aren't necessary, but nice to have. Were still waiting for the pattern cards to come, but the kids are super excited about using them. I can't wait for the rest of our order to get here too!

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 :)

Letter C and caterpillars

After being sick, we had to condense a weeks worth of school into 3 days. I did some rearranging, and took a lot out, but we fit it in.


Last week the boys were studying insects, so I thought it would be a good idea to order some bugs we could observe. What better than caterpillars! I ordered a butterfly garden from amazon, which came pretty fast, and ordered the bugs online. Our caterpillars came in on Wednesday, and we've been observing them since.

Bunny worked on the letter C, which gave us a chance to read Caps for sale. She made a monkey mask, and loved it! A few other things she did (that I didn't get pictures of) was a cupcake number matching, a hat game, and monkeys in a tree, and sorting big and little C.

We also read Cat in a hat, and made our own hats. We went shopping for Halloween costumes later in the day, and she wore the hat out :)

Schools cancelled, the substitute has work

We took a week break this week, because this weather has done a number on us. It started with a trip to the emergency room at midnight, because my Boo Boo couldn't breathe. He has asthma, but never really shows symptoms until the weather gets bad. His inhaler did nothing for him, so off we went.


A breathing treatment, some steroids, and a few hours later we were home. We got home at 5 in the morning! Needless to say we were tired, and slept most of the day. Next thing you know we each got hit with bad colds, except for my Bunny. I got it so bad that I didn't want to eat, and so I didn't... for a few days. By the weekend, I couldn't stand up and my husband was ready to take me to the emergency room. I took some cold pills, and was finally feeling well enough to eat. We hate being sick!

B week

The first few weeks of school have been hard for my Bunny to adjust to. Yeah, that's why were barely on the letter B, and number 2 :) I think it's partly my fault too lol, I was giving her too much work. I had to tap into my days of preschool teacher and remind myself of the short attention span (when not watching a movie), the lack of writing skills (when not writing on my walls), and well.... everything preschool again!

I found some learning games, and mixed it in with some stuff I already had, and this is what came out of this week (highlights really):

We (alright, I) finally got around to putting together her morning board. I still have a few more tags to make for the months, shapes, letters, and numbers, but I ran out of velcro dots :) Some of the stuff on our board came from homeschool creations, while others I just typed out the words and made them different colors. I have to double check where the song came from though :(


The big B, little B sort from Creative Learning Fun. She loves this game so much, she ended up doing it three times!

Lacing the letter B. Please ignore the fact that she's not wearing pants, it was hard enough to get a shirt on her lol. For the life of me, I can't remember where I downloaded them from, and they have no writing on them, sorry.


A bee made with her own hands. I glued a popsicle stick to the back of it, and she flew it around the house, hence the ripping. This came from dltk-kids, I love that site!

So that's what we did on the preschool front this week, mostly anyway. I promise I'll get better at this and remember to take more pictures while their working, and hopefully next week second and fourth grade will be added on too!

Ballet and Tap

My Bunny started a new ballet and tap class today. She has a recital at the end of November, although I know it's not going to be as huge as the last one she did, I'm still excited.

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!