Author: Ashley
•3:59 PM

that my daughter doesn't speak with a lisp anymore! Hallelujah! I was concerned that we would end up having to do speech therapy but I've been listening for 2 days and haven't heard even a hint of it.

In school news--handwriting is the bane of my existence. Little Bit's handwriting isn't "bad" but isn't quite right either. It tends to lean and she definitely doesn't hold her pencil correctly. So now we are moving onto that. The difference is AMAZING when she does hold it the right way but it requires a constant reminder.

She has read me 3 books this week that are not part of our school curriculum. That is awesome too! I just help her with the words that she definitely doesn't know (i.e. overerjoyed). My new rule is she doesn't get a book until after she reads it to me (I have a secret stash) and the cool part is when I hear her reading it to herself. I think it is helping her self confidence in reading. Prior to this rule her excuse was "but that's not a learning to read book." Now I think she realizes that a book doesn't have to have that little "level" stamp in order for her to read it. Tonight she said she wanted us to read her a book but didn't want to read it herself. I wonder how long it will be before she doesn't want me to read to her. I get a little sad thinking about that.

So to lighten the mood: in the car tonight Little Bit asked if she had obeyed this week so far (the requirement for a Friday night sleepover). Unfortunately for their sleepover  plans, she slammed her brother's foot in the car door yesterday and lost that privilege (and might I add that the door-slamming-in-the-face thing has been an ongoing battle AND I was telling her not to do it as she did it anyway). Little Monster was minding his own business and coloring during this conversation but without skipping a beat (or a crayon stroke) told us "I always do the correct things." I almost wet myself laughing. Thank you, 3 year old angel. His language cracks me up. A few weeks ago I was taking somethin to goodwill. He wanted to know what it was so I told him coffee cups and he said "those are fragile." I really don't know where he picks this stuff up.

Author: Ashley
•4:08 PM

that artist woman! I love her ideas for teaching art to little ones. Most of her stuff seems geared toward ages 7+ but I can adapt it for my little ones too. So we are skipping our "formal" art lesson this week and talking about the fall leaves.

We started yesterday with watercolor backgrounds and continued today using ink and a straws to make our trees. Little Bit's is on the left and Little Monster's is on the right. I like how Little Monster follows directions (i.e. "don't paint blue below the line" and yet somehow we have a small pond that blossomed on the right side of the paper). After the trees were dry, we followed up with acrylic paint and q-tips for the leaves. I did one of my own and honestly, I like the kids' versions better. I don't have a picture of the completed work but you get the idea.




Author: Ashley
•1:37 PM
This weekend has been really great! I have enjoyed some time to do things that need to be done (clean out our office space), want to be done (nap), and have to be done (daily life with 2 children). The weather has been awesome and the kids are LOVING the new deck! I think they would move out there if the weather would stay like this all the time.

Now for the random:
*Crayola's colored bubbles are on clearance for a reason. They were a lot of fun but made a HUGE mess. It did wash out and I wasn't too stressed about the mess but if we had been at home on our new deck or in our driveway, I might have had a panic attack.


*This is how we found Little Monster yesterday morning. They had a sleepover and Little Bit woke him up before the sun. He decided he needed to hide from Mommy and Daddy and fell asleep waiting for us to drag our lazy booties out of bed (at a VERY late 8:40am). He was behind the curtain and all you could see were his feet...too funny!


*This is how we found Perry (who Little Monster will now tell you is his best friend).






*Oh my mirrors!! I love them. Some advice to anyone attempting this project: The liquid nails is amazing but works FAST and is thick. It will mush around (for lack of better terms) when you press it on so it is essential to put it low enough on the trim that it doesn't push to the top (see 2nd photo). Otherwise you will see the reflection of it in the mirror. A wet rag is also good to have on hand in case this happens. And speaking of reflection, it is also important that you paint the edge of the backside (also see 2nd photo). Otherwise you will also see that reflection. Oh yeah! and a miter box (sp?) is also essential. The circular saw cuts too much of the wood because the blade is thick and it causes your corners to be misaligned. Of course, caulk will fix that but...
Author: Ashley
•4:09 PM
After learning time and greater than/less than, we have moved on to measuring. We haven't started with a ruler yet but are using our centimeter cubes. And with measuring comes graphing.  Seems weird to think about graphing already but I remember using graphs a ton in school.

For all you pinterest lovers--I have completed several projects over the last week and have several in the works. I love that I have found easy, cheap things to do tray make my house look better. I will post pictures soon.

FYI: a bad week at home must equal no posts because I haven't even attempted to finish this post I started 5 days ago. Yeah. We had a rough week. I think the issues have passed for now, though, and if not my sweet daughter will lose all of her toys on th next go around.

In art news--we talked about landscapes this week. This is the landscape in front of our house. It is definitely a loose translation but that's what art is sometimes.

I ran across some really cool teacher blogs this week and have thoroughly enjoyed learning from their experiences. I know it is a different setting but the ideas that have to be taught are the same. While I was perusing, I ran across a chart showing examples of how to make your coloring work your best. So I made my own. Little Monster enjoys coloring and does try his (3 year old) best. Little Bit on the other hand just wants to get the color on the paper. She doesn't care how it looks when it gets there. I was/am like this but I am trying to help her overcome a little of that. It would have saved me a lot of mistakes as I was growing up.

I also found a Tic Tac Toe game that involves spelling words. I don't have a link to either of these projects but you can google them. Basically, you pick a row off of the board and each space in the row has a different activity to do with your word (examples: write in rainbow colors, write in silly letters, write them 3 times, etc). It was a fun way for her to practice a few words that give her trouble without it being such a monotonous task. I remember having to write my spelling words 10x each. It wasn't the most fun activity.

Stay tuned for a pinterest update. I need to get photos uploaded before I can post them :)


Author: Ashley
•1:22 PM
We are not pushing hard this week. I think the 5 day break we had made Little Bit forget her stuff. We have had to review a good bit this week. We have also run into a severe case of the silly. Well, she thinks it is silly but it just sounds disrespectful to me. So we are working through that too.
We officially have a deck on the back of the house. We unofficially have a mud pit too. So, next on my neverending list of things to do is to go buy sod to lay down.

Pintrest has given me so many good ideas. I bought shutters yesterday and had B cut shelves for them. Those will go in Little Bit's room for her books. I bought 2 windows that I will put pictures in, and I also bought drawer pulls that were on clearance to hang our keys/backpacks/sunglasses etc on. Oh, and I decorated our plastic homeschool drawers using scrapbook paper and modge podge. I love having projects to do :)

Author: Ashley
•1:21 PM
-we are back in the saddle. Or at least sitting sidesaddle. After starting to run a fever Wednesday, I decided it would be a sick day Thursday. It ws a good thing too. I ended up going to the Dr and testing positive for strep.  Needless to say, there has been no school here since last Wednesday. I don't think I've had strep as an adult and I don't wish it on anyone! But I am on the mend now so we are rolling in the notebooks today.
I found a new bible study for kids so we have added it to our week. I'm not sure how often it will be but I am excited about it. We started timelining Esther today and will continue in our next lesson. Here is Little Bit working on that (do not judge me by my timeline drawings. They are actually supposed to be stick figures but mine needed clothes).
Little Monster has had a rough week. He has been sick for over a week now but I just started him on antibiotics 2 day ago. On Friday he pushed himself backwards in our pub height dining room chairs. He had a huge knot on the back of his head and somehow ended up with a really really bad bruise underneath his chin. Maybe he hit the spot where the collar bones join? And the next day I found where he chipped one of his front teeth. Now he is saying that his back tooth hurts so we are praying it doesn't fall out. Then yesterday we went to a local grocery store that doesn't have good weight to their grocery carts.  He was sitting in the top, Little Bit stood up on the bar right in front of him, and down went the cart. He hit his knees on that trip. And last but not least he broke out in some of the biggest hives I have ever seen last night. I think it is from detergent so we will change that and see how it goes.











Art involved looking at a photograph so we can see details that are missed if the subject is moving. Little Bit chose to do these birds eating. It is a pretty loose translation but you get the gist. The watercolors cause the artist to lose a good bit of detail in what they've drawn. You get more blobs of color than details.



Author: Ashley
•1:15 PM
Yay! Art always helps the day go by faster. Today we talked about portraying emotion in our photos.  I don't know if the point was actually made in the pictures they drew but they had fun so whatever. Little bit drew a picture of her as a photographer taking photos of someone (portraying the happiness of the subject).


Little Monster drew Daddy at walmart (I don't think he drew a grumpy face but he probably should have). Note the presence of his tongue again. I've noticed that if he watches me color, he still moves his tongue.











During math we were talking about the number 110 and I was trying to get little bit to tell me what it was. I covered the 1st "1" and asked what was left. She said "10". I uncovered the rest and asked what it was and she said "umm a bajillion?" yup.
And just for fun--here is us looking at Quincy