Tasty Science

Last week Josiah and Quin were doing Science and working on "God gave me my tongue so that I can taste." To distinguish between various tastes, we had samples. Coffee for bitter, lemon juice for sour, sugar for sweet, salt for salty and hot sauce for spicy. It was fun. Even little Ry broke from his lesson to jump in even though he already did this a year ago.
Josiah decided to taste bitter first... not much of a coffee kid. :-)
Quin went straight for sweet! Surprise, Surprise!!
They all like lemon anyway... so sour was actually fun for them... YICK!!
The hot sauce was SPICY!!
More science adventures to come!!

Till later... Nic!

Ry Jr... Budding Photographer!!

So, my first born believes he is good at taking pictures. Yes, Ryan is 7 and knows how to use a digital camera better than his mother!! What is weird for me is that he KNOWS what a digital camera is....

But he actually wants his own camera and I know he will be good at it. A couple of nights ago he asked if he could take pictures of me and Asher... I just got home from work and was tired, but I must remember to encourage their talents always... yeah right! Well he had Michelle's camera handy so went ahead with it and they came out OK... so below is his first "photo shoot"

Asher was definitely game... check out his expressions...
We called dad up to the room and he sat for a few shots too.
Daddy got the camera and tried to get a shot of me and all my boys... Quin felt he needed to show off his flexibility.
But we finally got a shot with everyone looking... well almost everyone.
And alas... Josiah got into the action and took this shot of us... sort of cut out Quin there...

...but it was a fun photo shoot none-the-less and I think little Ry will be a fine photographer if he ever wanted to pursue it.

till later... Nic

School is in session

So September rolled around... and with that the start of "school time" for the boys again. They were supposed to be catching up from last year over the summer, but with the baby and busy work schedule, that was sort of put off and the boys enjoyed their free time!

What has been great is that they have attacked the work and are just about caught up in less than 3 weeks! About a week and half ago I rearranged my dining room to be their classroom. With all 3 doing work now, we needed a more structured area. So we have 3 stations now: The computer, The Desk and the Art table. The art table also doubles as our dining room table :-)



Praise God for our new house that will have a designated "school room", until then I'm happy they have their own space now.

Till later... Nic

Enforcer of Conformity

My Josiah has shown me a piece of how his mind works...

I've been working with him on writing his name neatly and in a straight line. The straight line thing is big, because Josiah doesn't really feel he needs to put all the letters in the right order or even next to each other. I'll have to take a picture to show you what I mean. Well needless to say, he has the neat part down... but if he feels like writing the "J" in the upper part of the page, the "O" in the lower half of the page, the "S" in the left corner somewhere, the "I" huge and smack dab in the middle of the paper... and so on and so on... HE WILL! And it is different each time. All the letters are there, just not in a straight line.

He's creative!! Yes, I know.... so here I am the enforcer of conformity... will make sure he writes left to right and within two parallel lines... But he does have plenty of art expression opportunities so I don't feel horrible at all. :-)

Anyway... we were in Red Robin a couple of weeks ago and Josiah out of nowhere says that's an "R" mom. I looked at the picture and yes, the words "Happy Birthday" were written out in cursive. I was surprised because we haven't even touched cursive writing yet, not even with little Ry... so I asked him which letter he was referring to. There was a lower case cursive "r", but I couldn't imagine he knew which one. So he points to a letter "y". Ry and I smiled and said "Oh, Jo, that's a 'y', good try".

Well he got indignant and said "No it isn't. Its an R!". So we went back and forth for a minute or two and he finally jumps up frustrated with us and traces the "y" with his finger. "See its a 'R'!" and sure enough... an upside down cursive 'y' does look like an upper case "R".

To say I was stumped is not an exaggeration. I turned my head to look at it upside down and my baby was right. I just laughed and said, Josiah you are a smart young man and a very creative thinker! Definitely a little artist in the making.

Little tid bits like that are giving me a great insight into how his little brain puts things together. He can see things right side up, upside down, in the correct order or not. AND he's just as happy either way. Makes my job fun. So I am working on creative ways to teach him during school time...while still being the enforcer of conformity!

I am also signing him up for art classes next month (smile).

Quin is a truckin' along...

Well Quinny has been doing well with his school time. He has picked up quickly and is now working with Josiah on phonic blends! Everyone works at their own pace, and our Quin is extremely self motivated. Jo and Quin will join up on a few lessons next week, but here is pics from school time on Tuesday when he finished up on his first level and moved on. I tell ya... he'll be reading by the time he is 4!

School Time

Ok... so we are all in school except daddy. Mommy has homework mainly on Tuesdays and Thursdays when I work from home (which still needs to be done today, but I'm not thinking about that) and the boys are doing their lessons one at a time because they tend to distract each other. So instead of school time taking 2 hours. It runs me about 5 hours to complete all three of them. I'm sure I need to be more disciplined with them and make them concentrate on their own subjects at the same time, but it isn't all that easy. We use various tools to accomplish their educational goals. Our main tools are Hooked on Phonics, Kumon books and Mommy's self made blend of curriculum based in Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) principles.

Just in case you wanted to know... School time is laid back around these parts. They get up around 9:00 AM, eat, watch a couple of shows and school time starts around 10 or 11 depending on how much e-mail I'm answering . I try to switch up who goes first usually. Quinny is the shortest session so sometimes its nice to get his stuff out of the way, but he is still my late sleeper, so sometimes he still groggy from sleep. Since Ry is the oldest and has more subjects to cover he usually goes first because it takes about 3 hours for him alone. However 50% of this is work he does on his own. Josiah is usually 2nd. His school time is mostly phonics and counting, proper order of things, discussion on stories. He's a thinker and wants to know cause and effect more than the others it seems. So he likes to put all the pieces together in a story till he understands it.

Little Ry is doing well with word recognition. He is working on confidence in his knowledge when he is away from his books, but he's getting there. It makes me happy when he cognitively understands the meaning of a word and how it interacts with other words, applications and uses. He really is a bright little boy. One of the words he seems to struggle with is "The". Though he knows the word, he can't pronounce it like me. I think it is a carry over concern from when his 4 front teeth were gone and it was really difficult for him to sound it out. So now he just says "Da" but he doesn't like to say that because to him "Da" begins with a "d" and obviously this word begins with a "T". And with his little perfectionist attitude, he doesn't like to give up. With math he is building on his addition. Subtraction is obvious when using objects, but as soon as the problem is set before him in print, he draws a blank. I'm hoping to move past this next week. We've been doing symbol recognition this week to reinforce what a "-" really means.

Science is a different thing for me. Understanding the world around us is a daily discussion topic. I initially started on obvious things like directions, space and movement. Animals, days of the week, weather and seasons etc... are things we talk about daily. I'm leaning towards using ACE science books for him since they are strategic in nature. We also got a membership at the children's museum in Bellevue because they have a great science program and a homeschooling session for science too.

What are their equivalent grade levels??? Quinny is 3 so he started his official school time last month after his birthday. Josiah is 5, and is working through kindergarten subjects. He sort of started this back in October. He is ahead of where he should be because he listened to do what Ry was doing last year, so he picked it up early. Technically he should be entering Kindergarten next October. I don't mind him being early though. Ry is working on 1st grade lessons. He has had to do some brush up on word blends and penmanship seems to be our constant little battle. I'm determined to get him out of the stereotype of "writing like a boy." I firmly believe everyone has the ability to write neatly.

All in all it is hard and challenging to home school three active little boys. None-the-less, I get great joy seeing them "get it" in various areas of learning. It's like I have a personal front row seat to their discovery of the world.

Till later.... Nic