Hello N !! - 7/19/11

We started the letter N today! After  free-playing for awhile with some color tiles, letter tiles, and a Number Train puzzle we all took Scout up to the theater to drop her off at camp. She is doing a 3-week day camp starting this week. After that we headed over to the store to get some Noodles.  When we got home we put them in baggies and dyed them. Unfortunately I couldn't find any rubbing alcohol, so we used hand sanitizer instead! It seems to have worked! Anyway they had fun mixing up the colors. We laid them out in the sun to dry and they were ready to go by after nap time.

 

 After all of that, we got down to school business. This weekend I did some bookkeeping I guess you could say in regard to what the big kids have left to accomplish from this school year. I wrote them all up checklists for each subjects of everything they need to get done so they can be done with school for the summer. They can take as little or as long to do it as they want. The boys have the added incentive that Dill only has 3 weeks left with us, and we wanted to do a fun "camp" week on his last week where we would just do fun activities like bowling, public pool, movies, etc. So they really need to get cracking and get done in the next two weeks. That only gives Dill about 7 more days to get his packet done and finish reading The Boxcar Children.  Not sure if he's going to make that one. We'll try. 

As you can see, getting the boys to focus at this point in the summer is an ongoing battle!!  :)

For preschool we did our intro to Letter N activities using the Handwriting without tears materials first and then some things I pulled from Raising Rockstars and Confessions of a Homeschooler. 

They both did well with all the materials. They are becoming experts by now :) 

After that it was time for me to work with Jem and Dill on their reading and Dill on his summer worksheets, so the little kids were anxious to get out their new "workboxes."  I found some $1 plastic containers at Target and put their names on them with the foam letters (also $1 from target) and then filled them with little individual things they could work on on their own without much help from me. We tried this last week but they were sharing one box and had to sometimes take turns with the materials. Today they each had their own boxes and their own things to do. They loved it! 

The morning seemed to fly by and it was time for lunch and then naps. While they slept the boys and I read another chapter of Mr. Popper's Penguins. We are determined to get it read so we can go see the movie! 

We had to wake the "babies" to go pick up Scout from camp. When we got home, they helped me sort the Noodles by type. We did this because 1) It was just a good sorting activity, and 2) some of the Noodles are good for making Necklaces, and some are better for collages. We had a huge bowl of Noodles and they both stuck with it until we got them all sorted. 

While we did it we talked about rhyming words which went right over their heads :),  and nursery rhymes, and things that start with N. Freddie taught me the Narwhal Song! Now, I realize this has some inappropriate stuff in it for a 4 year old, but it cracked me up. I didn't teach this to Freddie, he taught it to me! I'm assuming his 15 year old brother was playing it at home.  BUT, since he didn't seem to know most of the lyrics other than the first line, I figured it was pretty innocent. Anyway N is for Narwhal!