100!!!

I set up a reward (or bribe, whichever floats your boat) for G a couple of months ago; when he showed me that he could count to 100 without help, we would go out for ice cream. He was excited about the idea at first, but as time went on, he seemed not to care about our little deal. I was even thinking about taking that deal off the table and trying to come up with something a little more enticing. Lo and behold, last night I caught him practicing his counting in bed when he should have been going to sleep. I knew he'd be able to count to 100 soon, and today he did it! He's so excited that all his practicing has paid off, and I'm so proud of him. :-) It's Baskin Robbins for dessert tonight, baby!

Speaking of The Magic School Bus...

I found a site where you can watch Magic School Bus episodes online. I think we'll be getting some use out of this!

Sunday Morning Creativity

Yesterday morning G (being the Magic School Bus fan that he is) watched an episode of the show about spiders. Next thing you know, he's asking for yarn and a pair of scissors so he can make his own web. He covered the couch in "web", then made a bug out of a pipe cleaner and acted out the way a spider catches its food complete with tiny, high-pitched screams for "help, help" from the bug who was caught in the web, and the sounds of the spider sucking its blood. It was hilarious...and a fun way to learn about spiders! And the best part is that he came up with this idea on his own. :-)

The Museum of Flight

Today we visited the Museum of Flight and it was amazing! I'm so glad we did a little background reading beforehand. It was exciting to see G's face light up when our tour guide mentioned that the Wright brothers came up with the idea of "wing warping", since he had seen that on a video we had watched during the week.

It was so amazing to see how quickly airplanes evolved. They went from gliders to actual jet airplanes within 45 years! I got lots of pictures of the different airplanes they had on display:

This is Leonardo da Vinci's glider design:

Here's the Wright Glider:

And here's the Wright Flyer. They made the engine themselves at their bicycle shop since nobody would do it for them because it wasn't worth the time to make just one engine. Engine makers didn't anticipate the flyer being a success. The engine is off-center on the flyer so they made one end of the wings 2 feet longer than the other end to compensate for the extra weight of the engine.

This is the first Boeing passenger plane. It had seating for 18 and was the first to have the co-pilot feature. It also came complete with flight attendants.

They also had a section on space where we saw a command module,

a replica of the lunar rover,

and a replica of the inside of the space station. Oh, and we also saw a real moon rock!

Next, we got to board the Concorde and a retired Air Force One!

Last, and this was Daddy's favorite, the Harrier Jet:

We had such an awesome day! We'll definitely have to visit the Museum of Flight again someday!

Seeing Double

Ok, how often does THIS happen...seriously! Today must be my lucky day!

Health Website for Kids

I just found this site that has doctor-approved articles, animations, games, and resources to help kids learn more about their bodies and staying healthy. It looks really cool! http://kidshealth.org/kid/ I can't wait to play with it more when we do our All About Me unit in a couple of weeks.

The Glorious Flight

This week we are reading The Glorious Flight for our FIAR book. We are also reading about the Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, and Amelia Earhart. All this learning about famous people in the world of flight is leading up to our trip to the museum of flight this weekend. I think G is going to LOVE it!

Fed Up with Verizon!

Ugh! Have I ever mentioned how frustrating it is to deal with Verizon Wireless' Customer Service? Let me just see if anyone here can understand this scenario: There was one account with 6 phones on it. We wanted to split it into 2 separate accounts; one with 4 phones on it, one with 2 phones on it. Still with me so far? In addition to THAT monstrous change, we wanted one account to keep its current mailing address and owner name. We wanted the other one to have a new owner name and have a different mailing address (essentially, we wanted to open a new account and transfer two of the six lines from the old account to the new one). If you are still with me, you are WAY too with it to work for Verizon's Customer Service, either their help line or at their store. Why is it that it took us 6 MONTHS to get it through to them what we wanted to do? I think we finally got it ironed out today, but we'll see. It's highly likely that we'll still be getting bills with someone else's name on them.

I hope it IS all sorted out because if it is, I NEVER want to have to talk to them again! It's THAT irritating and frustrating. The actual phone service is fine, the customer service is horrible!

James and the Giant Peach

We began doing read aloud books last year, I believe. We kicked it off with Charlotte's Web. Since then we have read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Chocolate Fever, The Chocolate Touch (do you see the theme here?), How to Eat Fried Worms (ok, end of theme), and Alice in Wonderland. We are now reading James and the Giant Peach, and G is LOVING it! It's so much fun to read to a child who bursts into laughter with each silly thing that is said. G is constantly begging for another chapter. He never wants to stop! It is so great!

Noah's Ark

We've been reading the story of Noah's Ark this week, and I thought it would be fun for G to paint a picture to go with the story. He loved the idea!There's a dove in the sky, then left to right we have a turtle, Noah, an alligator, a giraffe and an elephant.

What Do You Want For Breakfast?

That's what I asked G this morning, and his answer was a new one...and a yummy one! He suggested we go outside, pick some blackberries and make blackberry pancakes. I had never done this before, but it sounded good. So he went out and picked a few berries, and we made the pancakes. He really got into the chef's role, apron and all! We also took the opportunity to play with the measuring cups and get an introduction to fractions.

Sugar Crystals

Our science project for this week is growing sugar crystals. Here is our jar of sugar solution with a string hanging down into it for the crystals to grow on.

And here are our sugar crystals 2 days later:

Jugglers

Today we made these juggling balls to go with our FIAR book. We filled balloons with rice, then cut off the neck of another balloon and stuffed the first balloon inside upside down to secure it. We then practiced our juggling skills...Daddy proved himself the Juggling King!

Stylized Trees and a bit of Korean

This week we are reading The Clown of God for our FIAR book, and we made stylized trees like the ones in the illustrations out of play-doh.

We also made a model of a little juggling man. :-)

Totally unrelated, but later we ate dinner at a terriyaki place, and the woman who works there taught us how to say thank you in Korean: (com sah mi dah).

Saturday School?

When G woke up this morning he said, "I feel like doing some kindergarten". I told him that it is Saturday, our day off.

"What?! Why? We can't do any kindergarten today?" He was shocked that kindergarten wasn't on the list of things to do today. I suppose I could put something together for him; a little handwriting practice or a science project. :-)

Week 2: Storm in the Night

This week's FIAR book was Storm in the Night. We talked about storms and clouds, and oddly enough, there wasn't a single cloud in the sky all week. They will roll in soon enough, and when they do we will be there scoping them out and identifying them by type. We also reviewed onomatopoeia, discussed story setting, and talked about what grandparents were like as children. We even made our own cloud for science!

Our Bible story for this week was the fall of man. We learned that Adam and Eve brought sin into the world when they disobeyed God.

Explode the Code Online

I just signed up for Explode the Code Online through the Homeschool Buyers Co-op. I think it'll be a nice alternative to book reading for phonics. G seems to like computer games, so hopefully this will be one he will enjoy. I'll have to post an update on how we like it after we start (our start date is September 22, I believe).

Free Time with Colored Pencils

Colored pencils are probably the most exciting thing about starting kindergarten in G's world. He asks to use them almost every day. Today he drew a picture of himself in a hot air balloon with Mommy, Daddy and Uncle Erik looking on. As he explained his drawing to me, he pointed out that he had used the cross-hatching technique to make the hot air balloon basket look like a real basket (you can see it best on the right side of the basket). We had talked about cross-hatching last week while we were reading A Pair of Red Clogs, and I was impressed that he remembered that.

Funtastic Frogs

We did Funtastic Frogs for math today, which we haven't done in months. G did really well with it. I think having the manipulatives to work with helps a lot. That's one of the big reasons I'm planning to use Math-U-See when we start up with a hardcore math curriculum. :-)

Fair Day!

After a little bit of school in the morning, we decided to drop everything and go to the fair! The weather was beautiful, it wasn't crowded, and we had a great time! G went on several rides (the kiddy ones), we tried new foods (Piroshky, Caramel Apple and Scones), and saw farm animals up close. G even got to spin wool into yarn! What a wonderful opportunity for him to learn how sheep contribute to mommy's stockpile of knitting yarn. :-)

Handwriting

G wrote a letter to his pen pal today for handwriting. He is so excited about his new colored pencils!

Kung Fu

Today was G's 4th Kung Fu class, and he's finally coming out of his shell. He listened really well to his teacher, tried really hard, and did a great job! He's really catching up to the other kids. We are so proud of him!

Homeschool Group

We had a "Not-Back-to-School" potluck at the park today with our homeschool group. This was our 3rd meeting with them and they are such a great group! I think we're going to have lots of fun times with them! As we discussed homeschooling, parenting, and just LIFE, I realized that I had found what I was looking for: homeschool families we can relate to.

Week 1: A Pair of Red Clogs

This week we read A Pair of Red Clogs for our Five in a Row book, so we took the opportunity to learn a bit about Japan. We did lots of fun activities to go along with the book:
1. We found Japan on the world map
2. We colored the Japanese flag and added it to our flags of the world banner
3. We read about Japanese culture
4. We learned to count to 10 in Japanese
5. We read Haiku poetry
6. We did some origami
7. We read about sumo wrestling and had our own sumo wrestling match
8. We ate at a Japanese steak house and visited with Japanese people and saw real kimonos
9. We visited Uncle Loren who showed us his bonsai trees
10. We listened to Japanese music

Here is a photo of what G and Grandma made during origami time:

For Bible time this week, we read the story of creation and our memory verse was Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

In science, we did a couple of nature walks in different areas and found plant life like blackberry vines, huckleberry bushes and ivy. We also saw animal life such as birds, a snake, grasshoppers, squirrels and rabbits. A walk by a local lake turned up lots of empty snail shells.

We also worked with phonics, history, Spanish, math, and handwriting, and we had a fun day at the park with our homeschool group too! We had a fun first week of kindergarten!!

1st Day of Kindergarten

Our first day of Kindergarten was a good one! I was up at the crack of dawn (better known as 8AM), exercised, ate, showered, dressed and was ready to go. I had to finally wake G up at 10AM, LOL! Hmmmm...I wonder where he gets that! I got his breakfast of Cookie Crisp and Froot Loops mixed together ready (he got to choose anything he wanted for his first day). Surprisingly, he ate it. I thought he'd take a bite and discover it was gross, and want a re-do.

We did calendar time, then G was so excited to get out his new colored pencils that he drew while I read him the story of creation. Then he drew a picture for his pen pal, labeled it and got it ready to send.

Next we took a nature walk. We saw all kinds of plants including blackberry vines, and huckleberry bushes (the most exciting plants were, of course, bearing food). We also saw a tiny tree frog, a grasshopper and a little snake. Very exciting!

We played readingeggs.com for phonics, checked out livemocha.com for Spanish (which I realized probably won't work for us at this time since it didn't keep his attention), and did our Five in a Row.

We did a bit of grouping for math, then we went to the racquetball court to play. Our school day took almost exactly 2 hours, not counting the nature walk or racquetball. G had fun, so I guess that means we had a successful day.