Birthday Take 2

We made a last minute decision to take a day trip to VA to so that we could be with GraceAnn for her birthday celebration. Since GraceAnn and Jonathan were born within days of each other we made it a double birthday party. 

The cousin twins

Minecraft cake!! 

And we have more legos! What else would you get an 8 year old boy?
Fun times!

Jonathan's 8th Birthday

I cannot believe my 3rd child is 8! Please stop the clock! These precious children are growing up so fast! Jonathan is such a spirited little guy. He is strong willed, stubborn, full or energy, and he loves reading the Bible. He has a wonderful 8th birthday and here are some pictures of what we did that day!

Of course - we opened presents as soon as everyone was awake! He got lots of legos, a new dinosaur, and a new Bible. His old Bible was barely hanging on even after repairing it with duct tape. He was so excited to receive a new one!

Camouflage is Jonathan's favorite thing to wear and he got this very awesome camouflage jacket!

Martin lit the candles of the cake that Jonathan helped decorate!

For those of you who follow our family traditions…
This year, Jonathan chose to have a birthday breakfast instead of birthday lunch with Daddy. He went to the Waffle House. He also chose Ravioli and Sauce for his birthday Dinner at home. 

Curriculum Choices for 1st grade and Pre-K

I have thrown Rosalie into our crazy homeschooling schedule this year for several reasons. First, she is able to identify all of the letters both capital and lowercase, she is able to write most of them, and she is so enthusiastic about being a student in the Holland School! Secondly, it's easier for me to include her than to hold her off for one more year. Thirdly, by starting her now, I am able to combine her with Jonathan on History, Bible, Science, and other activities making it easier for me to implement our family schedule. So, we are calling it Pre-K and getting this show on the road. If at any point she shows signs of not being able to keep up with the work, we will slow it way down and re-evaluate. She will be doing the orange Handwriting Without Tears workbook, Singapore earlybird Mathematics, and a couple of Rod and Staff workbooks that will help her with her fine motor skills. (tracing, cutting, pasting, etc.)

Jonathan will be doing the yellow Handwriting Without Tears workbook,  Singapore Primary Mathematics Textbooks and Workbooks 1A and 1B, and a couple of Rod and Staff workbooks that will continue to work on his fine motor skills.

I am using the Heart of Dakota's Little Hearts for His Glory curriculum guide this year with both Jonathan and Rosalie. So, they are combined on all the history, science, Bible, and read a-louds. However, as you saw above, they have different levels of handwriting, reading, and math.  
History - History for Little Pilgrims, 101 Favorite Bible Stories, History Stories for Children
Science - The World God Made
Bible - The children work on a memory verse each week and have Devotions scheduled throughout the week using Devotions for the Children's Hour
Reading - The Reading Lesson pictured above is the reading curriculum that they are both using, however Jonathan is almost finished with the book while Rosalie is just starting. Once Jonathan finishes The Reading Lesson he will begin reading a large set of emerging readers so that he can continue to practice his reading skills. I did not take a picture of those readers. Even though he hasn't finished The Reading Lesson, he has already started reading the first book in the Emerging Readers set. You may have noticed that the Heart of Dakota Beyond Little Hearts For His Glory is also pictured above. I am using that guide to follow the hands on math plans, the light grammar plans, and the spelling plans with Jonathan. As much as he has struggled in learning how to read, I am surprised at how much he LOVES spelling!

My highest priority for Kindergarten and 1st grade is not reading, writing, or math, it is teaching the children how to listen well to read a-louds, and be able to retell/narrate back to me what they heard. This is a pretty difficult skill to learn! Rosalie is not getting the gentle introduction to it that the others got since I have combined her with Jonathan, however, she is getting the idea from listening to Jonathan retell the readings back to me. She is going to learn a lot from him this year. She is already a pretty good listener and probably doesn't need as gentle an introduction to it that Jonathan needed. I started slowly with Jonathan using books that were smaller and had pictures, and eventually ended the year reading chapter books to him ... and he was able to narrate back to me in excellent detail. I love having the two of them together this year. They are already used to doing everything together anyway that it seems perfectly natural for them to do school together too.

Jonathan - August 2013

What can I possibly say about this kid that could even come close to describing him accurately?

He's strong willed

Must be in control

Longs to be in charge

Understands on a deep level that he has parameters and that he must obey

But struggles on a deep level with not being in charge of those parameters

He is the child that I will put in time out and tell him that his time out does not start until he stops crying. He understands that completely, but doesn't want to stop crying because I suggested it and he wants to be in charge of when he stops crying. He finally stops crying. I tell him time out is beginning now. I let a few minutes go by and tell him that he can get out of time out. He stays in time out. Why? Because he wants to be in charge of when he gets out of time out. He wants that to be his decision.I love this boy to the moon and back. He has so much spirit. He has some amazing God given, very natural leadership skills that I pray will be used for His glory. I pray that Jonathan will devote his life to following after the Lord as fervently as he plays his soldier games right now. As long as Jonathan will submit to God's leadership, I believe that Jonathan will one day get to be that leader that he longs to be... one day he will get to be in charge like he wants to be. I tell him all the time that in order for him to be an excellent leader then he needs to learn how to be an excellent follower. 

I have to share some pictures that I took of my Jonathan that so perfectly captures what I tried to describe above:

I don't want to have my picture taken!

Come on Jonathan, just smile so we can get this over with!! Can you see that he is putting his fingers on his mouth to keep himself from smiling? Crazy kid!

Not going to smile! (he was still trying hard not to smile) So, I gave up. I told him to forget about it and that we would just work on our lessons.

After about an hour...once he had done most of his lessons for the day. He picked up the sign and told me that he was ready to have his picture taken. (his decision - not mine)

Wow. I could use an instruction manuel for this child ... anyone have one?

Go Play Outside Now

We love this place! It's called Go Play Outside Now and we had so much fun! We went with a group of good friends and had a blast! 

They have a beach area with pools of water and tons of water guns and barriers for fun water gun battles. They have 2 big slides and they hook one of the slides up with water and make an incredibly fun water slide!

Rosalie wouldn't go down the waterside, but she had fun going down the slide without the water.

The chickens came begging for some lunch.

They also have a huge area set up for laser tag. They had so much fun playing laser tag! 

If you haven't had the chance to visit this great place. You'll have to make your way down there. We were there for more than 5 hours and my children still didn't want to leave when it was time to go!

A Golf Club to the Head

While we were in Kentucky, my Uncle Jeff took my boys outside to practice golfing in the front yard. They were using real golf clubs with small plastic balls. Jeff went to get something out of the garage and while he was gone ... Aaron swung the golf club right as Jonathan was walking toward him. Smack. The golf club made contact with Jonathan's head.
(I was combing the back yard for plantain to put on a bee sting for one of Mackenzie's friends when this happened)
I get back inside and someone told me that one of my boys was bleeding. Great.
I ran outside and found Jonathan crying and blood pouring out of his head and Aaron was sobbing very loudly.
I immediately started telling Aaron to stop crying because it wasn't helping Jonathan. To which Aaron replied, "But I didn't mean to hurt him!" Okay, clearly, I needed to be more compassionate.

My cousin put a wet towel and an ice pack on Jonathan's head to stop the bleeding, and I hugged Jonathan and told him it was going to be okay. My cousin said a couple of times that he thought he would need stitches, but from what I saw, I thought he'd be fine without them.

My aunt called her next door neighbor, who is a nurse, and asked her to come over and look at the wound for me. She came and confirmed that he didn't need stitches. The bleeding finally stopped and after about 20 minutes of watching Scooby Doo and relaxing while getting lots of attention ... he perked back up and was back to normal Jonathan. Whew! So glad we avoided the emergency room on this trip!

Jonathan's 6th Birthday!

Oh yes I did! I made another tank cake!  A cake like this one is quite memorable and Jonathan announced a few weeks ago that he wanted his cake to be an army tank. Since I'd tackled it before, I figured I could tackle it again. 

Front View

Other side view

Jonathan opened up his gift from Nanny and Pupup first thing after he woke up on the morning of his birthday!

It was PERECT for Jonathan! It doesn't get much better than army stuff for this boy!

A little later he was off for his annual birthday lunch with Daddy. He chose the mexican restaurant ... this is a boy who loves tacos!

Then it was home for a house full of friends to celebrate his birthday. We chowed down on tank cake and ice cream and then opened gifts!

I loved that as he opened his gifts he had friends surrounding him and even up on the chair with him!

It was a special day from start to finish for Jonathan and I cannot believe my youngest son is 6 years old!

(And for those of you who are wondering ... I didn't make him a special birthday dinner on his actual birthday ... the day was just too full of other things to pull that off. So, a couple days later I made his favorite (for now) meal ... pasta, sauce, and meatballs)

Curriculum Choices for Jonathan

Jonathan has (once again) started Kindergarten. I have no regrets about waiting another year for him to mature. He is doing really well this year! He remembers all that we started last year and is going at a much faster rate with no difficulty whatsoever!
I have pieced together a curriculum to take Jonathan through this year that is super easy to implement and also easy for Rosalie to join with us too. (on some things)

I scheduled several books using a 4 day a week lesson plan.  These plans are not sophisticated by any means - they are just a straight forward scheduling of books to use and what pages to do or read. I don't have super fun hands-on projects for them to do like the HOD guides always provide. My plan is to have the two younger tag on with Aaron any time I have the paints, clay, or other type of activities out for him to do. And since I have been steeped in the Charlotte Mason method for the past 4 years, I am able to employ her methods without notes on how to do it and what to say. So, if you need those special notes and fun hands on projects ... my lesson plans won't help you! I use the Little Hearts for His Glory curriculum guide for the Kindergarten Math plans and the Rhymes in Motion plans as well as the handwriting, Do it Carefully, and Finding the Answers. I will use Little Hearts for His Glory in it's entirety with 1st grade options next year with Jonathan. 

I am using The Reading Lesson to teach Jonathan how to read. I love the ease that this curriculum brings to teaching a child to read. I have used a couple of other methods for teaching reading ... but this one tops them all. I will definitely use this again for Rosalie!

In the lesson plans that I provided above, it states that I am using A Reason for Handwriting K. I was definitely planning on using that curriculum with Jonathan and did use it last year (during our first attempt at K) for about 6 weeks. It is the curriculum I used for both Martin and Aaron - and loved! However, it was not working at all for Jonathan. Jonathan almost always shed tears over his handwriting, so I thought I would try Handwriting Without Tears (HWT)for Jonathan this year. We are doing about 1 page per day. This curriculum definitely is true to it's name for Jonathan. No More Tears! I am convinced that Jonathan had difficulty with visual processing with the other curriculum. Those issues have been resolved with the HWT curriculum. 

This is the Little Hearts For His Glory(LHFHG) curriculum guide that I am using for the Math plans, Do it Carefully, Finding the Answers, and Rhymes in Motion. It is an excellent complete curriculum that I plan on using as written for 1st grade.

I have scheduled Bible Stories to Read, Bible Pictures to Color, and Family-Time Bible for the history and Bible portion of our lessons.

I am using Our Father's World for Science. I also found free printables that go with many of the science lessons to supplement the readings. The reason I chose not to go through the selected Kindergarten Science text from Little Hearts is because I prefer the way the K Science book is scheduled in a way that makes each of the units more cohesive. So, even though Jonathan will be 1st grade next year, I plan on taking him through the K Science text next year.

We will use Do it Carefully and Finding the Answers to work on matching, cutting, pasting, following directions, tracing, neatness, circling, underlining, crossing out, rhyming, and basic grammar.

In the lesson plans provided above, I have the Earlybird Kindergarten Math 2A and 2B scheduled. (I use the math plans from the LHFHG curriculum guide.) This particular math curriculum is no longer available to purchase, however. Since I did about 6 weeks of these books last year, I am using Rod and Staff beginning arithmetic with Jonathan right now. I will switch back to Singapore once we get 6 weeks into our lesson plans - but I will continue using the Rod and Staff to supplement. It seems to be a really good match for Jonathan. He's doing really well with it!

I have selected several books for story time. The Story About Ping, Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel, Meet the Orchestra, Saint George and the Dragon, The Velveteen Rabbit, Tornado, and The Adventures of Bobby Racoon.  I will use those books to begin teaching oral narration.
One of the reasons that I prefer not to take a Kindergartener through LHFHG is because the read a-loud selections can be difficult for a 5 year old. I wanted to spend the K year easing into read a-louds and especially easing into oral narration. Last year, when I started the short stories and introduced oral narration to Jonathan ... he had trouble recalling anything that I read to him. This year he is retelling the story to me in great detail! All of my children love read a-louds! Rosalie always joins us for this portion of our school day as well!
It only takes us about 45 minutes each day to complete it and we are having so much fun with it this year.