Raising a Rockstar -Noah's Ark

I have been a consistent fan of Carissa over at "http://1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com Recently, we had a discrepancy at church that left Lollipop quite upset, and I finally found the perfect opportunity to use her Raising Rockstar's program in its entirety! This is our first day, of the first week doing this, and I hope for Lollipop's sake that it is fun enough to make him not miss sunday school.
First, we picked up a few books from the Library:
Monday:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Sunday:


We are coloring pages for each day, from www.coloring.ws/t.asp?b=m&t=h
we are making a totbook from carissa's totschool page www.
we are making a rainbow project from http://www.first-school.ws/activities/bible/rainbow.htm
We also have a few puzzles and a sticker book to go along with the theme!
I'm looking forward to posting more pictures as the week wraps up!

My Musicians

I, admittedly, am way behind on blogging! No, its not because my house is clean, or even my kids for that matter. I think its because I do so much better at reading other people's blogs than creating my own! Some day maybe I'll be more consistent! ;) But, school on the other hand, has become very consistent! We are very much looking forward to starting our "real school" in august! I will be introducing a lot more projects to go along with our history program, and more live books! But, here is a day after all the planned learning has been put away, and we just play and have a blast! Enjoy! I sure know I did!


**i can count this as team-building, right? and music class


** riding on elmo surfer


** oh, all the things you can learn from a ball! We put a bunch of toys in Sweet Girl's room, so they are practically new to her, even though we have had them for a long time. She is finally starting to use them as intended! She played with this polar bear toy for a 1/2 hr! She liked to tease it, pretending to put the ball in, and then not. then she turned it into a race, to put the ball in, and catch it before it went all the way down the slide. I have never seen a kid so interested in a toy before! It was an excellent show.


** some loving time! i can never get too many hugs or kisses!

We are very excited for Sweet Girl's 1st birthday coming up! She's having a butterfly themed party! I know she has no clue whats going on, but I am overwhelmed at how fast this first year flew by! I am attempting to come up with some Montessori type of activities to start Tot School with her when she turns one, but nothing looks interesting enough for me yet! If anyone has any ideas, i'd love to hear them! So, for now, we'll just keep playing, and reading!

Number the stars

So, In my last post I said I was reading, and would review 'Wuthering Heights' but, the library wanted their book back on time, and I couldn't get interested enough past the 3rd chapter to be willing to pay a fine... So, I did an on-the-spot shop at the library, and came up pretty far off from my list.... Got a few Harry Potter books, and 'Number the Stars'. The two Harry Potter books were just nonsense, so I'll review 'Number the Stars'.
I loved this book as a little girl, and I still do! I have been to Germany, and lived there for almost 5 years as a child. I'm sure i've been to Copenhagen, even though I don't remember anything (sad part about being in the military when your soo little.) I love the faithfulness concept through out the book. The Danes faithfullness to their king, no matter what, and then to their friends when they were attacked, and then later to the nation of Jews on the whole! Loyalty, faithfulness protecting eachother... what awesome concepts to teach our children. I also love how in one of the worst times in history, these concepts are taught! What a great way to look at the Holocaust!

1 of 52

Book 1 of 52 Review: Little Women

I always loved this movie as a child, and my mom told me this was her favorite book as a child, and that she thought of the character Jo when she named me! I went by Jo for awhile, and find a lot of her characteristics in me at that time. Although, I feel a lot more like Meg now that I'm all grown up and have a family. The book was awesome, and makes me want to watch the movie again! I like the small little moral lessons through out the book, and have Pilgrim's Progress on the list to read now. I almost teared up at Beth's passing, even though I knew it was coming, it was so eloquently written, and such a loving, clean story! I recommend it to any woman or girl!
Next up: Wuthering Heights

I was just re-reading my old posts, and realized I never updated about the zoo! How unbelievably forgetful of me! The Zoo went awesome, as well as the small Unit Study we did in corroboration with our other normal workbooks. We found a cool lapbook project on the book Goodnight Gorilla (oh how I wish I remembered where it came from, I admit, I need to start working harder at giving credit where it is due, but I am still getting the hang of this) It went very well with our zoo trip!


















And Pictures of the Lapbook to go along with it!



The Front with a Gate and "What a zookeeper does"

The Inside, with flaps. The left has the large animals, and a book of the animals we saw when we went to the zoo, and the right has the animals colored, and the letters of the animals written out by Lollipop. The Center has cages of different colors with keys to match, and animals to go in the cages.

The Back says Z is for Zoo and on the inside Lollipop wrote out z Zoo... not bad if I do say so myself. We are pretty proud of our very first Lapbook!

Let us know what you think, any encouragement would be nice.

Some New Projects I'm taking On!!

I found this pretty cool blog http://operationreadbible.blogspot.com when being lazy, and spending time at my favorite past-time... blog-jumping. They should totally make it an olympic sport! You know, in between checking on my needy children every other 2 minutes. I get pretty far considering how long I actually get to play on the comp! Well, i found this Operation Actually Read Bible. It intrigued me. I decided to give it a go! My brother has also decided to read the bible in a year, and I figure, if he can do it (hes 5 years younger than me, and could really care less about reading, to be quite honest) so can I! So, I am pretty much only putting it on here, so I can hold myself accountable to doing it, and give myself a better reason to hold to it!

I also want to try something else i found on several blogs too! 52 in 52. Read 52 books in 52 weeks. I don't have as much faith in myself in this project as I do in reading the bible... but im going to try. As I already have a summer reading list, and a 10 page list of books I would love to buy, I don't think that reading will be the problem, as much as doing it in 52 weeks. But we shall see!

On to more important matters: The Children! As I type this, Sweet Girl is turning sour, and refuses to be put down practically always. And Lollipop is in that annoying age of arguing over every word I say. Constant challenges to learn patience, and kindness! But, they are both super adorable... Here are some pics!






Next post: Week 1: My bible verses, and a Book Review on Little Women (1 of 52)

Update

I have no pictures to update with, because my camera has been missing ;(. School with Lollipop has been going well. We picked up the Rod and Staff workbooks, and he is feeling very confident in his colors, as well as numbers. For some exciting and strange reason, he loves counting numerically to 10. How is that odd you ask? Well, after 10 he counts by 2's. I never taught him this, and am so surprised, but would still prefer him to count to 20 numerically, since he doesn't do that! What a fascinating little boy I have!
Mother's Day should be exciting! We are going to the Zoo on Wednesday, so DH has to work on my day! But, its okay, because we are so excited and anticipating the trip! Lollipop surprised me the other day, by telling me all the animals we were going to see. He has never seen an elephant, or zebra etc. But he could tell me all of their names, and then proceeded to entertain me with the "i like to move it move it" song. He picked up all the zoo animal names off the madagascar cartoon! I love innocent children's tv!
Lollipop is also half-way done with his kindergarten workbook for Hooked on Phonics. He doesn't like doing it, but he does well, and his favorite part of the curriculum is putting the star on the board! :)
We are implementing a new reward system that I found on my tlt yahoo group. I love those sweet women! I honestly don't know what I would do without them, they give me insight, encouragement, ideas, and plans. I doubt they even know I exist thought.
We are planning on buying a cute see-through cup, and marbles. Every time Lollipop does something rewarding (ie: completes work cheerfully, puts 100% effort into work, comes when called, does something when asked, responds politely, etc) he will remove one marble from the cup. When it is empty, he can pick a reward from the Reward Box (ie: pizza for dinner, "date with mom/dad", movie before bed, or a fun new trinket)I'm really hoping this new system will create an accountability for him to want to be responsible, and have a better attitude. That seems to be the character trait we have been working on a lot lately.
We also have been reading in our adult classes an amazing book, that i could probably read about 20 more times! Its called 'Raising a Generation for Success' by: Dani Johnson. It is so amazing, and I desperately want to be able to incorporate all her points RIGHT NOW! But, i'm a work in progress...
Thanks for reading my ramblings. My goal recently is to try to be more consistent, in everything I do, and not so scatter-brained. It seems like I haven't finished a project ever! So, this is one thing i'm going to try to stay more consistent in, along with school stuff, reading the bible and working out everyday are good ones too... but, lets start one thing at a time here :) wish me luck!