Slacking.

Yeah, I'm slacking on the whole updating thing. Not at the schooling. Which was a big concern for me in the beginning! Valentine is moving right along, she can read some simple words if she tries. (it, sit, mom) Edmund is still a pro at stickering and pasting.

It's really comforting when they spout off something that makes you see that they are, in fact, learning. Edmund was watching some TV with me (hey, some TV can be educational! Right??) and at the beginning of the movie when they're showing you the company names they had the earth. And he said, "the earth! That is the planet that we live on!" So not only does he recognize the earth, he knows it's a planet. I did not however, teach him any of this. So no credit to me, but I know that he is picking things up and remembering them! And that's way better than "look, Oreo's! We eat them!" (Which hasn't happened, because I don't like to share Oreo's, so I doubt he knows what they are.) The movie we started watching was "Babies", Ian and Edmund are fascinated by it. And so am I, honestly.

See? We did school today. (It's a paper snake.)

Valentine recently started a new book, Kumon's "My Book of Easy Crafts". It's perfect for Valentine, it has all sorts of cutting and pasting things together. (With minimal mess! And I don't have to plan ahead! And that makes it perfect for me.)

Even if we don't make it to the school books every day, at this stage they are learning just as much from day to day things. (Such as earth is a planet.) Plus they have 12+ years of schooling left, we don't need to burn them out on it yet!

I want to be a butterfly.

We squeezed school into our morning after a trip to the DOL and before lunch. I learned that besides specifying "Stay next to me when we go in", I should also mention "Do not rub your faces onto the seat of any chairs that might also be next to me." I should also learn to buy tabs through the mail or online, rather than in person. Edmund is becoming quite the color-er. For him. When we first started school in September, this clown would have one line through him. Now he's got colored pants. And it takes a few more seconds to complete. He finishes all his workbooks in about two minutes. As fast as it takes me to cut out each sheet.

For his birthday we gave him a "Chicken Sox" Klutz book. They're supposed to be geared towards younger kids. Great idea, great little pom-pom animals... but the glue just doesn't work.

I'm thinking glue dots would solve the problem. We used about half the tube of glue trying to get all the parts to stay on. The bird didn't work any better, loosing it's head, beak, and eyes. Finally we got all the pieces attached, we'll see what happens when they dry.

These are the workbooks Valentine is currently doing, I'm a big fan of Kumon's preschool books. But I like Bob Jones for math. The Kumon numbers was great at first, but progressed too quickly from tracing 1-10 to filling in charts of missing numbers 1-30. Bob Jones has a smoother transition and sneaks in new ideas that they build on later. Like today was addition sentences, using pennies. I bet before the end of the book they go over monetary values.

I also really love "Five Minute Devotions for Children" by Pamela and Douglas Kennedy. It relates a character quality to an animal or bug. Today's bug was a Monarch butterfly. One of the discussion questions was " What do you think you would like to be when you grow up?" Edmund said a butterfly.