A Break For Me! Hallelujah!!!

 This sweet lil guy LOVES school! After 2 weeks of finishing 1st grade he begged & begged & begged to start up 2nd grade. I really did NOT want to, I needed a break! This past year was a whirlwind adventure in opening up about my past & the Lord opened many doors for me to travel & speak. As if being a full-time homeschooling momma didn't keep me busy enough, I was off doing events & press conferences a LOT! 

Now I completely loved every bit of it, even when it was hard, & depressing, because I know the Lord had me doing exactly what He had called me to do. But I'm tired. Worn out. Spiritually, emotionally, physically, & mentally exhausted! I had prayed & asked God to give me a break, some rest to regroup, refocus, & just be. Then my precious Brady comes begging & begging to do school again & I caved in. We started a little, but things kept coming up, knocking us off track & then he & his middle brother got very sick for almost 2 weeks. 

So in the midst of my tiredness & wanting a chance to relax I overloaded myself with more schoolin, not fully prepared & then stuck in the house with sick kiddos. I was at a breaking point. I cried out to God to show me what to do, where to go & He gave me peace, stillness, time to reflect. I asked Brady if we could please hold off on 2nd grade, Momma needed a break. And his reply?

"Sure. I just wanted to be in 2nd grade so I could be in class at church with my 2nd grade friends before they went to 3rd grade. But my teacher told me I couldn't change until August."

I died out laughing! So now, praise the Lord, I get a break! We are still practicing his math facts & reading of course & doing fun stuff with Rylan because I'm still doing preschool stuff with him. I must say I am so relieved! This summer we have a lot of fun stuff planned with VBS, play dates, & this will be Brady's 1st year to go to church camp! Lots of fun adventures await us.

I pray you all have a great summer as well!!

Fun @ the Children's Museum

Today we went to the Children's Museum with some friends & had a blast! I of course took a ton of pics, but I spared from looking at ALL of them & decided to just post a few from our day.

They all had a blast dancing & grooving in the music room!

 My kids love the Muppets & Rylan begged to have his picture taken with this pic! Creator Jim Henson is from Mississippi.

Brady's favorite part is the Digestive System! You enter through the mouth go down the esophagus to the stomach, run around all the intestines & slide into a toilet! How hilarious is that!? And to top it off it makes burping, gurgling, squishing, & pooting noises as they travel through!

 

And we ended our day with a yummy picnic!

 

Sicky McSickens

Oh my word! Cabin fever has set in on us. Last week my precious middle son same down with a fever that never came down. Rylan was miserable. His fever ran as high as 104 & even with alternating Ibuprofen & Tylenol every three hours it wouldn't fall below 101.7. He even missed his last King Singer performance at church for the year. It was not a good week. After taking him to the doctor all he could say was that it was a severe sinus infection, hooked him up with an antibiotic & sent us home to recover.

Each day Rylan seemed to improve & then night time would come & so would the raging fever once again. After 5 days of this he finally woke up Friday morning feeling better, but his big brother did not. Brady ended up getting a viral infection & was having trouble breathing & his fever was scorching hot as well reaching almost 105!!!

So here I am a full week later & I'm still locked inside my house with a sick kiddo. I have enjoyed the extra cuddles & snuggles that sick lil ones need when they don't feel good, but with that has meant missing the fun of swimming & play dates we had planned. Brady has had to miss baseball practice & now a game. I don't know who's more bummed about that, him or his daddy ;P

I have been able to use these days to reorganize some homeschool stuff, do some deep cleaning & getting rid of stuff. Overall I must say that I am ready for everyone to be well & to get back our normal routine of things.

Wishing you & yours many WELL wishes & prayers for all the sickness in this house to leave are VERY appreciated!!!

What's in the Box Wednesday

Today instead of having a snack box I put small pieces of candy in some boxes for Brady to eat after he completes that box. Hopefully this will go over well! Today's boxes are a bit more "loaded" than normal, but we took off a couple days last week & are playing catch up this week.

 Box 1: Write a story about tornadoes. Use the pictures in the book as inspiration.

Box 2: Linking verb worksheet.

Box 3: Manuscript handwriting practice.

Box 4: Review fact cards.

Box 5: Fill in the missing numbers on the 100 chart.

Box 6: Cut & paste language.

Box 7: Review pages in HOP workbook.

Box 8: Pronoun worksheet.

Box 9: Copy spelling words 3x each.

 

Box 10: Addition & subtraction worksheet.

What's In The Box Wednesday...on Thursday

Well yesterday was Wednesday, but it was quite hot & the pool at our gym was open so we skipped school & went swimming! This is just a perk of homeschooling! So today we are back in action & here Brady's workboxes for today.

Box 1: Verb worksheet

Box 2: Review new words in HOP book.

Box 3: Read through addition facts.

Box 4: Draw a picture about the weather.

Box 5: Snack

Box 6: Addition & subtraction worksheet.

Box 7: Trace each spelling word with all three markers.

Box 8: Read a HOP book.

Box 9: Write the Bible verse.

Box 10: Complete the puzzle.

Workboxes are going well for Brady! I moved them back til during nap time. Some days Rylan doesn't need a nap, so while the baby is napping, & Brady is doing workboxes, I'll let Ry play on the computer or the iPod & some days I'll do extra school stuff with him if he wants. Luckily for me today he wanted to nap! 

Weather & the Letter W

Last week began a unit study on weather & Rylan focused on the letter W.

Brady read to us about how Jesus calmed the storm. Living in the South we can have some pretty nasty thunderstorms & I want the boys to know they don't have to fear them, that instead they should pray to Jesus & trust that He will protect them. We also read about Jesus walking on the water & how Peter was able to walk to Him as long as he was looking at Jesus, but once Peter focused on the storm around him, he would sink. I told the boys that no matter how scary things seem all they have to do is trust Jesus & they'll be OK.

Whenever I introduce a new letter to Rylan we sing the fun LeapFrog song "Every Letter Makes A Sound." Then we'll talk about words that start with that letter. Ry loves doing magnet pages & using Do-A-Dot markers to form the letter.

Rylan moves on to practicing the letter formation & then to tracing the letter using a dry erase crayon so he can practice over & over without me having to waste paper :)

 

We also reviewed the W word cards as he traced the W on each one. His writing is improving so much!

 

Rylan also does a great job matching the Scrabble tiles to the letters on the rain drops.

 

He also practiced coloring by number & cutting & pasting pictures that start with a W to his paper. We will add this to a mini Alphabet Picture Book we are putting together.

I also introduced him to Starfall & I couldn't pry the child away!

Rylan used the straw to make Wind to blow the Water (tempura paint) over the Ws. Afterward he dabbed it with a paper towel to make it look like Waves.

 Rylan did lots of counting practice & is doing great recognizing many of his numbers. We counted raindrops & made a counting book by coloring raindrops & tracing the number & the number word. Have I mentioned how thankful I am for the other ladies out there that make such cute learning printables?

 

For Science we reviewed various things that are hot & which are cold His favorite cold thing was a red Popsicle & his favorite hot thing was my coffee.

I checked out a Weather Theme Box from the Resource Center & let the boys explore it all. We reviewed various kinds of weather maps & the different types of weather. We looked at pictures & observed our local weather each day. Most of days were clear & sunny, but we got lucky & got a huge thunderstorm with beautiful lightning we oohed & ahhed over from safely inside & once it passed we saw a beautiful rainbow! 

They loved playing with the different weather instruments that came in the box, especially seeing how fast the anemometer went around when the wind blew. We also watched YouTube videos of weather storms. The boys were AMAZED! We practiced our tornado drill for safety & briefly reviewed the water cycle.   

 I found this cute idea on Pinterest to put shaving cream on top of water to represent the clouds. Then we added blue food coloring & waited for it to "condensate" & then "precipitate." It took a while, but it was worth the wait to see their happy faces when it did!

If you like the printables we used this week you can find them all here: 2 Teaching Mommies, Homeschool Creations, 1+1+1=1, Our Little Monkeys, & Living Life Intentionally. You can also check out my Pinterest board to find lots of other ideas for weather.

We are continuing our weather fun & hope to get another blog up next week about it! I hope you all have a great week! & if you have any fun weather ideas please ship them my way!