Not SNOW Much

Living in Mississippi seeing real snow happens maybe once a year if we are lucky! My poor sweet 6 year old, Brady, has been praying for snow since July, but today our temperature is 73 so I doubt he'll get it this year! Although we still pray for it everyday! :) Since we've started back to school we have been studying Creation for our Bible studies. Rylan has been learning about the letter S with a snow theme for preschool & was so excited when I found this cute devotional by 2 Teaching Mommies that tied the 2 together!

Our other printables came from Confessions of a Homeschooler LOTW. Rylan enjoys these activities so much! I honestly don't get the fascination with the magnet pages, but he loves them so I print them out & even made our own magnet pom poms for him to use. When we start a new letter I always go over the sounds & sing the sound songs we learned from LeapFrog & have him trace a textured letter with his finger.

Then he traces the letter using Do-A-Dot markers. He loves this too & has gotten very good at it! The next day he practices tracing various kinds of lines, curves, & shapes using pages I laminate & a dry erase crayon. I'm amazed at how well his handwriting has progressed! The next day I have him practice tracing the letter. He doesn't hold the crayon correctly, but he does an excellent job staying on the lines.

He really enjoys the different kinds of puzzles & matching games that come with the various packs I print. I'm really proud at how well he can differentiate between capital & lower case letters.

Rylan's cutting skills are still rough, but I think I'm going to give him smaller pieces of paper to cut to see if that will help. I constantly have to remind him to keep his thumb up. Please tell me he'll eventually get it! :)

Since we took our Christmas break Rylan all over sudden started saying 18 & 19 instead of 8 & 9, & he starts out counting like this, "1, a 2, a 3, a 4..." I have no idea why he started putting "a" before his numbers. It's really funny to hear; sounds like he's about to rock it out!

I print the number cards 4 to a page to save paper & ink instead of a full page for each number. I put the numbers in a circle & Rylan marched around counting in order 1-10, then I mixed them up & he had to jump to each number & called. He wasn't paying attention, but he did have fun jumping LOL! Our other counting activity we did was saying the number on the card, then Ry would have to count out that many mini-marshmallows to put on the card.

Of course he enjoyed counting them as they went into his mouth better!

Of course big brother Brady did too!

My sweet 1 year old Keller loves to color. This day he didn't take a morning nap so I put him in his high chair to color away.

Brady enjoyed practicing spelling snowman. He always asks to to the preschool packs with Rylan because let's face it, they look so cute & are so much fun. So when he finishes his morning stuff I let him come & do which ever ones he likes.

For our crafts, the boys decorated foam snowflakes with gold & silver glitter glue & then used letter stickers to put their name on them when they dried.

Then they cut out a snow man & glued him together on construction paper. Well, I cute out Rylan's, Brady did his own. Then they used a white crayon to make snow & more glitter to make the snow sparkle!

During Christmas I found this Magic Snow kit at Walmart & thought it would be fun to try. 

The boys did so good at following directions & measuring the powder & water! It didn't feel like real snow, just kind of looked like snow & the boys were pretty bummed, & so was I. :(

So instead getting our snow "fix" we went outside & played in the spring-like weather. Silver lining I guess :)

We also read some books about snow & winter, & the Resource Center carries these alliteration books based around each letter. They are so cute & so much fun! The boys LOVE them!

Hope you all have had a great start getting back into the groove after the holidays! If you would, please pray for a miracle & that Brady will get REAL snow this season! I believe in miracles & really want my fella to be happy!

Blessings!

What's In The Box Wednesday & Catching Up w/Brady

I planned a long time ago to do a weekly post on our workboxes, a la Erica at COAH, but I would forget! :) So hopefully I can start now! Today's boxes are pretty light because we went over some new things together & I ended up helping him with some stuff I had planned to put in the boxes.

Box 1: Put Bible verse cards in order & copy verse on paper. (Biblestoryprintables.com)

Box2: Make the picture with the correct tangrams.

Box 3: Math-2 digit addition

 Box 4: Listen to The Snowy Day on tape while you read along.

 Box 5: Write a sentence about your favorite part of The Snowy Day & draw a picture.

Box 6: Take a break & enjoy some Skittles!

Box 7: Types of nouns worksheet.

Box 8: Use the snowmen to make the pattern.

 

Box 9: Printing practice.



Box 10: Fun time on the iPhone!



Brady is doing AMAZING at 1st grade! He is almost finished with his Hooked On Phonics for 1st grade curriculum & we are just going to move straight into the 2nd grade one! He picks up very easily in math, but he is pretty sloppy with handwriting at times. He does very well with language arts & spelling too. He is an EXCELLENT learner & I would most definitely classify him as a self-learner. He is enjoys reading The Magic Treehouse Books & is constantly reading, spelling, & doing math EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME! The kid amazes me! I do however wish he could tie his shoes! He still has issues with this & I don't have the patience LoL! So now it's up to daddy to do it!

Brady is an amazing big brother & a great helper around the house! He is still sweet & sensitive, but I can see this silly little boy coming out of him! He definitely makes me giggle! His co-ops are going well, but I am not as happy with some as I thought I would be. You live & ya learn right?

I couldn't be more happy where Brady is as far as school stuff goes! We just began going through the Bible chronologically together so stay tuned for some of that!

Here's my cute boy doing school in his Luigi costume!

Blessings to you all!

Christmas 2011

Every year I take a picture of our Christmas tree on Christmas Eve with all of our gifts surrounding it. I really enjoy looking back over the years to see how it's all changed as our family expands & grows up.

Luckily the boys all walked in together & I was able to snag this photo!

They were very excited to see the gifts, they were patient enough to let me get a cute photo of them all in front of the tree before the chaos ensued! 

Rylan was so excited to get a NEW McQueen in his stocking! (The child has 4 or 5 already, yet somehow Disney managed to make them all different!) Earlier this year he discovered Rescue Heroes while we were the Resource Center & begged to get some for Christmas.

Keller wasn't to excited to open gifts so Daddy of course helped him out. However he did like ripping the paper after it was already off the gifts :) Thankfully he plays with his toys now.

Aside from Angry Bird dolls Brady's big request was footed PJs like his little brothers have. I should've bought more because he requests to sleep in them ALL the time.

I didn't take a lot of school inspired Christmas pics. Like most families we were very busy & I just slacked :P

Here are all of the beautiful Christmas cards we received. Each year we keep the cards & each week we hang one on our refrigerator & pray for that family everyday!

I pray you all had an excellent Christmas! Our Lord & Savior is the best gift we can ever received!!! Have you received Him yet?

Thanksgiving Fun

Over the month of November we focused solely on all things Thanksgiving related. We learned about Thanksgiving foods, Native Americans, Pilgrims, & why its important to always give thanks & be thankful for what we have. Be sure to get the boys' FAVORITE Thanksgiving treat: pumpkin chocolate chip muffins at the end of this blog!!

Though we learned about lots of different Thanksgiving things, turkeys seemed to show up everywhere!

 One of my favorites was a printable book I found at the Resource Center in our town. Brown Turkey, Brown Turkey, What Do You See? parallels Eric Carle's "Brown Bear Brown Bear" book, but full of super cute Thanksgiving things. The boys colored each page & insisted on reading it almost every day!

 Keller wanted in on all the coloring fun! That baby loves to color! Brady made this cute little turkey at church & said he wanted his blue because blue is favorite color.

I found this cute color by # turkey at 1+1+1=1.

And what kind of momma would I be if I didn't have some cute hand print turkeys!??!! :)

  

The boys enjoyed listening to this book we found at the Resource Center.

They really enjoyed painting their Native American vests & making their headbands with feathers, but not as much as they enjoyed running around the house pretending to be Indian warriors!

 

I think over the last couple of months I've made enough pumpkin chocolate chip muffins to feed an army!! My kids LOVE them!!

1st: mix the cake mix & can of pumpkin together. It looks like it won't mix but keep going it will! Add just a teeny bit of water to help moisten it so it'll mix easier, but not too much, a very little bit. I don't measure it, but maybe a tsp. Once it's mixed well add about 3/4 a bag of mini-chocolate chips. Fill cupcake liners about 3/4 full & bake on 350 for about 25-30 min.

THEY ARE SOOOO YUMMY!!!

I hope you & your family had an awesome Thanksgiving!

BLESSINGS!!!