Live, Laugh, and Learn with the Silva's

So it has been a while since I posted. I kept telling myself that I should just sit down and do it but didn't want to find the time. I was frustrated with the way things were going and feeling like I was totally our of control.

But the last week and a half have been great for me. I have received a lot of answers to my prayers as well as direction of what I should and want to be doing for my kids, my family, and myself. I feel very renewed. I feel more in balance and feel like the kids are getting in to the schedule.

I've started using trays with activities for my tiny tot, a lot of the ideas came from http://1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com. I also found a great blog with awsome ideas and inspiration at http://confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/ I've started using the work box system to a point with my 4 1/2 year old. He loves it and I feel a lot more organized.

We have started some fun Christmas activities this month and the kids look forward to something new each day. I've been trying to plan my curriculum for Jan to May and finding some great ideas as well as taking some inspiration from my kids on what they want to study. My husband is a little sad he will be missing some of the fun while he has to go to work.

My husband has also been helping try and design my blog so I like it. It's coming along great so far and I'm feeling better about all the decisions that I have made recently.

Last week was the first week that I felt like things didn't go very smoothly. We had a lot of other stuff going on and we even missed a day of studies.

We did a lot of Halloween crafts and games which the kids enjoyed. I tried to take more one on one time with Mason. I feel like the alphabet is not clicking for him. Caleb and I looked at different vegetables one day, we listened to and looked at instruments with percussion sounds in mind. He is loving out time to sit down and read. Especially the math books that we have been reading lately. We did the color orange last week which was perfect for Halloween. So even though I felt like things didn't go as well. The boys still had fun and learned through there play and our reading together.

I haven't posted like I wanted to every week. But our last three weeks have been great.

Caleb has studied sorting, counting to high numbers, and a leap pad math movie that I got. He loves the book "How much is a million." by David Schwartz. We have read it every day since I introduced it to him.

We went on nature walks to find leaves and flowers to put in contact paper. We played with popcorn, and made lots of different kinds to taste. We have done apple prints and cut shapes in apples for stamps. We read more about cowboys and started on Indians. We even made a Teepee with the boys hands prints and names on it. We have danced around to lots of different kinds of music and studied slow and fast, high and low. We even watched the Nutcracker, which the boys surprised me about because they wanted to watch the whole thing.

We made glue ghosts for Halloween, egg carton bats, trick or treat bags, cards for grandparents, and whatever else they feel like making.

Mason has done the letters b, c, and d as well as green, yellow, and purple. Both the boys really like the book "Harold and the purple crayon" by Crockett Johnson. They have been picturing all the places that they can draw to go to.

We have had lots of fun so far and are looking forward to a week full of more fun things.

Week 2 went fairly well.  One of my struggles this week was my 2 1/2 year old.  He is grumpy, doesn't want to nap, wants to do what the 4 year old does, and decided he didn't want to be potty trained anymore.  So I have been trying different nap schedules.  Letting him join us and playing it by ear.  I was really excited about Friday.  I had our Cowboy stuff all planned and thought that they would both like it a lot.  Well they did but they had there own agenda and ideas.  Which was OK but nothing went as planned.  We did get through the whole week and I felt it went well.

Monday we read Bunny Money by Rosemary wells and talked more about money.  They got to go to the candy store and buy a piece of candy or two with the 15 cents they had.  Tuesday we did a sound walk all about the sun with Caleb.  We did a pattern sun ray game that I made and watched a science movie about the sun.  (He loves those)  Wed. was red day.  We ate lots of red food and all wore red.  Even Mike is trying to wear the color of the day so he can be involved.  We made red mobiles and played with red water.  Caleb and I talked about recipes.  We followed a rebus recipe to make baked apples, perfect after picking lots of apples the Saturday before.  Thursday the kids had a lot of fun.  we talked about loud and soft in music and how certain music is "sleepy" music and other is "dance" music.  I got some different types from the library and we had fun dancing around the house with scarfs to the different music.  I also got a older Disney movie with cartoon to music that they enjoyed.  Mason and I made oobleck and he enjoyed playing with that.  Friday was Cowboy day.  We watched Disney's "Pecos Bill" and dressed like cowboys, tye died handkerchiefs and played a game with a felt cowboy that I made.

So my first week homeschooling went better than I thought it would.  We had a lot of other things going on including family and just getting back from vacation.  I wanted to start out with a clean, organized, home with little extra things to do.  After the week I realized that that will probably never happen.  I was impressed at how fast our review went of writing and reading.  Caleb is already reading pretty well and loves that part of our day.  I decided to to reading/writing and scripture study daily with him.  Then on Mondays we do math.  Last week we talked about money which he enjoyed.  Tuesday is science, we are talking about weather right now.  Wednesdays is food stuff.  Thursdays is music/art.  Mason wanted to join us for this part as well.  We listened to CD's of lots of different sounds.  On Friday is history.  We started with the Erie Canal since we live right near it.  Mason has been wanting to do activities with us as well as his own.  We will see how this week ends up.

I've been contemplating beginning a blog about my homeschooling experience for a while. I've been teaching the kids a home for a while with lots of different activities that we do but felt like I'm "starting" more official this year with preschool for my 4 year old. We will see what this becomes and how things happen with our "homeschool."