Where we break out the paint brushes.

Boxes make the best toys. Whenever we get a big box I let it sit around until there's too much fighting. (sometimes twenty minutes, sometimes two days...) The boys made up a little game this morning.

After we finished the regular school books, I decided to be brave and bring out some paints. Valentine had been given this acrylic paint and canvas set a while back. The paints went on nice and thick, and covered up the pre-printed pictures. They didn't mind.

Edmund says "my favorite color is black" and used two paint brushes at the same time. That way he can get out of there sooner. Surprisingly he painted the entire canvas.

Valentine is more of an artist, taking her time and painting multiple pictures.

That last picture is her and Daddy. Holding hands. (awwww.)

My art teacher would love her. Too bad the school she's teaching at is so far away. There is a school closer to us that offers and art class once a month. I'm going to look into that a little more for next school year.

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!

Turtles

Baby was awake while we did school this morning. First he hung out on the floor, playing.

Edmund's "Sticker and Paste!" book finished up the stickering part and we've moved onto the pasting. I think this is his favorite book, because no coloring is involved. And he likes glue.

Somehow his glue stick is now a white glue, instead of the color changing purple he had before. He said, "can't see any glue on it!" as he rubbed it all over. Yep, that purple stuff is great. We traded Valentine's purple one for his white.

We went over our "Touch and Feel" Farm flash cards. Edmund likes them, I like that they have suggestions on the back of the cards. Today we just identified everything on the cards. He did really well with the vegetables. The broccoli was "rice", the lettuce was "salad", and he doesn't know what a pea is. Pea's aren't my favorite, so we don't eat them often. And when I cook rice, it has a handy steamer tray on the top of the cooker. I like to make things easy and throw broccoli up there to cook at the same time. But I'm pretty sure he knows the difference.

Valentine read her first book, start to finish. It's the first in the "Bob Books, Collection 1: Begining Readers and Advancing Beginers". They have a simple drawing with a few easy words on each page. This one is about Mat and introduces his friend Pat. Mat sat. Pat sat. Mat sat on Pat... We've been reading two pages a day, adding on each day. Most of it's from memory at this point, but she's getting the idea of how sounds go together to form words. As you can tell from the picture, she's just thrilled. Not. Maybe I should have given her the award stickers that come with the set before I took the picture. Because she was thrilled about the stickers.

Baby has since moved to his jumper and is getting tired.

Our devotional was on baby turtles. I cut out turtle pieces from green paper and they glued the pieces onto the "shell" to make turtles. From the looks of it, Edmund's is IN its shell. Valentine's has a face. She's a big fan of coloring.

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.