Monday, April 11, 2011

The Legend of the Easter Egg

This week, after we are done with our Three "R's", Turbo and I will be reading a book called, "The Legend of the Easter Egg". I found a Lap Book Unit on www.homeschoolshare.com that offered free printables and short lessons. They chose a verse from the Bible as the memory verse for the week, but I decided to have Turbo work on a different one, found in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried and He rose again on the third day, according to the Scriptures." I found a song that goes a long with this from Songs for Saplings that I downloaded the entire album for that has a verse from the Bible for each letter of the alphabet and special holidays like Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. They even have a verse about honoring your mother and father. He listens to that one A LOT!

Anyways, this morning while looking at the verse written, I had him listen to the song. He knows the song because we listen to this album in the car quite often. But I took a video of him singing it, and when he realized I was recording him, he really hammed it up! Take a look!

Monday, April 4, 2011

TOT School: "NANANANANANANANA" (aka BANANA)



Tank finally said a word that resembled the object that he was wanting/pointing to!!! Although he says the word without the "B", he certainly has the "NANANANANANANaNANANANANANA" down pat!

The GRRR Factor


This morning, after a few days off of school, Turbo struggled getting back on task...as if I didn't expect it. We started out pretty good using our BOB books, and handwriting practice. When he chose to either do spelling or math, he chose math. When I opened the page, he immediately was turned off. Screaming, "I CAN'T DO THIS!!! I HATE IT!!!" Expected. "I don't feel good". Expected. "I'm hungry." Expected. "I don't like school!" Expected. Everything that was said and done was expected.

I sent him to his room to figure out how long he was going to argue about doing school. When he figured out that it would take longer to argue then to actually do the work, he gave in and came out to do his school work.

The cycle started over.

And over.

And over....

The proceeded for 8 cycles of this. GRRRRRRRRR!

Finally, in frustration, I sent him to his room. He was SUPER ANGRY at this point. I sat at the table and prayed...."LORD, TIE MY HANDS AND HOLD MY TONGUE CAUSE THIS BOY IS GONNA GET IT!!!!!!!" Then I heard the most peculiar sound. He was jumping on his bed. But not in fun, but in frustration and in anger! He was jumping HARD! After 30 seconds it stopped.

He exited from his room breathing hard and was visibly out of breath. He sat down and said, "May I please have a snack while I do my math?" I quietly got up, peeled him an orange and put it in a bowl while he went to work on using the number line for addition and subtracton facts. He completed 19 problems in 4 minutes flat; without a peep.

When questioned about him jumping on the bed, he said, "I knew it would make me feel better." (Proprioceptive impact)

Now, he playing on the kitchen floor with his new Lightning McQueen car in a happy mood. Disater averted. The Grrr Factor eliminated. Ideas on how to reinforce his bed frame commencing.

Friday, April 1, 2011

TOT School: Sick Day

Yesterday was an easy-going day as Tank was down with a fever. Pretty sure it was teething, but a sick-day was declared, nonetheless. A bit of brotherly love while enjoying a movie. Poor lil' Tank. A bit of a fever. But nothing a bowl of fresh raspberries and apple juice can't take care of. We couldn't let the day go by without a bit of playing. Tank is intrigued with Connect 4. He will happily sit anywhere and rhythmically put in the playing pieces. Fortunately, we had some entertainment out of our window for most of the morning. The complex is cutting down some cottonwood trees outside our place because of the destruction the roots are playing on the pipes. Watching the huge trees come down with the trucks, lifts, chainsaws and machines was mesmerizing for Tank.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

A Day in the Life...

It is difficult to post EVERYTHING we do EVERYDAY for our schooling. It is really quite boring. We use games, windows, computer, pencil & paper work, and crafts.



Practicing handwriting in a book that Tank must have thought was a coloring book.



Using the window for our math problems of the day (of note: this is out of a book for 1st/2nd graders). Turbo could not sit still and asked if he could write on the windows instead to help him keep focused....THANK YOU THERAPY!!!



Spelling is not his favorite thing. The workbook we have offers super small lines for him to write on. Instead, we take it to the window. I copy a bigger version of his lesson onto the window for him to work on. Here, he is focusing on ending sounds. It is funny how the maintenance people who are working outside will often wave to him through the window. He gets a kick out of that!


When we first started using Boggle Jr., he wasn't at all happy about it. He didn't like it. Mostly because he struggled doing it. We walked away from it for awhile and worked more on his letters and their sounds. He began using Hooked on Spelling and found that he COULD do spelling. When we came back to the game just yesterday, he did fantastic and mostly without any help!


This is his workbook that he has been working out of for math. Turbo has a brain for math. He just "gets" it. He gets the patterns, the numbers, the grouping, the spacial aspect...oi...I'm gonna have to learn some higher math here shortly just so I can teach him!!

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

LAND AHOY!!!


In addition to our daily school work, Turbo and I have been studying about pirates. We are fortunate enough to have the local Nature and Science Museum offer a fantastic exhibit featuring a REAL LIVE PIRATE STORY! So of course, we had to visit!

So this week we have been building pirate ships from a cardboard box, battling over treasure using our homemade treasure maps and fighting with a cutlass. One morning we even took the day off of school to watch Muppet Treasure Island! Seriously, it is the best movie EVER!!! The only thing that would make it better would be to eat a Pirate Hat Cake!

Enjoy our week of PIRATES!!!
Click to play this Smilebox scrapbook
Create your own scrapbook - Powered by Smilebox
Make a scrapbooking design