What'a up with us...

So I missed my updates over the weekend and it's almost the weekend again! I am just going to tell you know that I am not going to do a tot school or homeschool review post.

We are busy packing and getting ready to move. We will be staying with Nathan's parents. Hopefully we won't drive them crazy too quickly! Everyone is excited to be going "home" though! I think we have all missed Arizona although Nate says he has enjoyed the weather here. I am, for one, tired of being cold! Of course today is warming up to the high 50's and the sun is out and the door is open. It feels nice. I have been able to put Ellie in cute summery outfits and feel her skin when I pick her up. ahhh At least there will be nice weather while we pack everything up.

I have also missed our family and friends a lot. I guess I am not a homebody type that doesn't need interaction... I do! Not having family around is hard too, especially holiday time. Meghan has missed her friends and cousins too. She is excited about going home and has asked if she can take ballet/dance classes. I will have to see if I can find some. It's something she has wanted to do for a while and out here there was no where to take her. Of course she wants to keep up with riding lessons and would like to go back into swimming lessons too. I would like the swimming lessons too. Maybe for Kaden also.

So Meghan had a riding lesson last Saturday. She will have her last on in OK this Saturday. She has been keeping up with her schoolwork and helping me by playing with Kaden and Ellie while I pack. Kaden is still working on potty training. He is doing great! We went on two different short trips to town, (short being 3-4 hours which is how long it takes us to do anything in town) and not had any accidents. Then on Sunday we had our little party for the girls and we bravely took him out in undies. I took him through the day and he went all day, no accidents! I was so happy. I had extra clothes of course in case but he didn't need them. So I am very happy with his progress. Some things that worked for us...
-using undies all the time (no pull ups, except at night)
-taking him to the potty every 30-60 mins.
-staying home for 5 days straight to work with him

Now he is back to holding #2 though so we are working on that. We give him medicine every day because he already had an issue with it. So I am hoping he has a breakthrough here soon. I think that if he will just go on the potty once it won't be such a struggle afterwards.

Ellie is doing great as well. She actually slept all night last night! Woohoo. She has done that, hmm I think this makes 3 times total. My other two were sleeping all night, all the time by now so it's a little different. She still wakes sometimes because she is a light sleeper, so noises wake her up. We put a radio in her room with a classical cd though and that seems to have helped some. She also still wakes up for a bottle, which like I said the others were done with by now. She also started climbing last Saturday. She had gone past me to the table and I was talking to Nathan. So I finished my sentence and turned around and she was up in a chair. I was so surprised I just went and grabbed her. Of course then I thought why didn't I take a picture first. Well 3 minutes later she was back in the chair. I took a few pictures and got some video of her getting up.

I think she was after those pancakes.

Needless to say I have gotten busier!

Here are a few pictures I got of Kaden working on some of his activity bags. Meghan wanted to help him with some too.

 

color matching and button scene

 

Famous homeschoolers

We have been pretty busy here so I have gotten behind again! I have a post about the girls little birthday party coming up, a post about what all the kids have been up to and learning and a couple others I hope to share soon. Maybe today even.
This post I thought would be fun. I saw this quiz posted on facebook and thought you all might be interested in knowing about some famous homeschoolers.

A famous homeschooled artist (also an inventor) who had 17 half brothers and sister... Leonardo da Vinci

A famous homeschooled composer (from Austria) who began composing at the age of five...
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

A famous homeschooled educator who went on to become the President of Stanford University...
Fred Terman
(Each of these former homeschoolers became president of a prestigious university in the US)
John Witherspoon
Frank Vandiver
William Samuel Johnson

A famous homeschooled General fought in World War I, World War II and in the Korean War, AND was one of only five Americans ever to rise to the rank of General of the Army...
Douglas Mac Arthur

This famous homeschooler is the inventor of the telescope 30x... Galileo

This famous homeschooler was the first American women in space... Sally Ride

This famous homeschooled writer is the author of The Chronicals of Narnia... C.S. Lewis

Famous homeschoolers who recieved a Nobel Prize...
Gabriela Mistral

Albert Schweitzer
Winston Churchill
Albert Einstein

Famous homeschoolers that became president of the United States...
Theodore Roosevelt

Woodrow Wilson
James Polk
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

A famous homeshooler that started the Red Cross... Clara Barton

I know there are a lot more. If you know of any post them in the comments!

Muffin Tin Monday

Here is what we did for Muffin Tin Monday this week. (We missed a couple weeks.) The theme this week was orange. We were able to use the silicon muffin cups I found at Target this week. :)


They had...

Mac 'n cheese, Natural Cheetos, orange slices, cheese chunks, carrot sticks and Kaden had a couple peanut butter crackers too. ( hey it was close in color.. :)

To see what others did for MTM click on the button to the right!

Homeschool Week in review 2/15-2/19

Meghan did great this week. We were out a couple days as I mentioned previously and when we are out it takes a looong time. We live 30 minutes from town and if we go to a bigger town, which we did, it takes even longer. We usually just decide to get a bunch of things done at once. So she was able to either get her work done early or double it up on the days we were home.
She did great on her spelling as usual. Math is going great too. She has been getting a page a day done in her Horizons book. Then she also has a book that reviews math facts and a book to review telling time. She only has to do one page a day but sometimes she just wants to keep going. It's an easy book and it's review so I don't mind. We read through our chapter in Farmer Boy. She learned about how they spent their Sundays back then. She is keeping up with her chapter a day reading as well. She wanted a book about ocean life when we were at the education store last so I got that for her and she has been reading that as well. I plan to do a study with her on that while she is interested. She is doing one to two pages in her Handwriting Without Tears book. She will be done with this book soon. The next book begins Cursive. I am not sure is I will have her go right into that one yet, we'll see. We got a placemat that is a wipeoff board with Cursive writing on it and she wanted to practice with that this week. She actually did really well with it. She came up to me and asked about how to connect the "o" in a word at one point but the rest she did on her own by looking at the mat.
She also had her 2nd riding lesson this week. She was very excited. I didn't go to this one but her teacher said she was doing great. She said that usually they need to be led around a bit longer but Meghan was ready to ride on her own after a few times being led around. So she spent most of the time riding on her own in a circular pen and gaining confidence with the horse. She was very proud and can't wait for next week.
Not many pics this week but here she is working on her computer on Spellingcity.com

It seems that we are probably going to be moving back to AZ in March. I think Meghan will be very excited. She misses her cousins and her grandparents and her friends. She'll be upset about the riding lessons maybe but (shh) I found some in AZ too. I have to contact the lady and make sure she can do it but I have her information and will work on that this week. We're also going to plan a birthday party for Meghan and Ellie. Meghan is 8 years old today! and Ellie will be 1 on March 10th. We are going to go to a little thing here with my sister in law and brother and their girls. Their daughter Matty will be 1 on March 6th so we want to do something with them before we leave. But once we are in AZ we'll have a big thing with all our friends and family. I'm excited although it's going to be a rush to get everything done. Now I have to ask Meghan what kind of party she would like to have. I have some sugestions. ;)

Tot School 2/15-2/19

Kaden is 34 months old

This week we have been pretty busy. Our main focus is potty training right now. We've had a couple days where we went out. He wore pull ups on those trips. Sometimes he will use the potty out but most of the time he won't. He's not comfortable on the big potty even with the little fold up seat we bought to put on them. At home: he has good days and bad days. Today is a good day. I would love to hear any tips and tricks you might have! The main thing seems to be taking him all the time. He still doesn't tell me when he has to go, he tells me after he's started or he just goes to the bathroom and it's too late, He still hasn't done #2 on the potty either. We have revisited him holding it a little as he didn't go for 3 days. SO still working on that and because he is running around in underwear all day I didn't take a lot of pictures. ;)
Other things he did this week...
- played with lego's
- used the wipe off book, tracing lines
- sorting pom poms
- playing with large blocks
- watched the Leapfrog Letter Factory DVD
- reading books

Here are the few pictures I did get and this is the hat he wore this week. :)

Kids: Their always sticky! Most noticable in boys. HA

 

To see what others did this week check out 1plus1plus1equals1

Valentine's and Cousin's

Here the kids are opening their Valentines from Mommy and Daddy. They each got a new book. Meghan and Kaden also got a little notebook (Meghan turned hers into a diary, she loves notebooks), Kaden got stickers and Meghan a mini coloring book with stickers.

The beautiful flowers Nate got for me.

Nate holding the little people.

Kaden and Ellie hugging.

We went to see my brother and sister in law one day. I snapped a couple pictures. (This is where Kaden

was getting in the doggy pen).

Look at all that hair Matty has! She is 4 days older than Ellie but was suppose to be 10 days after. haha

Lily is getting so big!

Unsocialized Homeschoolers??

Many people question how homeschool kids gets learn real life skills. For some reason the general public thinks that you need to have your kids in a school setting so that they can learn how to deal with hard situations. Well WE know this isn't true.
I want to share this site. Please read the blog post here, on Smrt Lernins, about exposing our children to tough situations. It is just an amazing post and I completely agree. I just had to share!