Life with my Cowboys

There's been a bit of a gap from my last post to this one. We had Monkey's birthday party, then went to Missouri to visit family, and just returned home. I will have some picture posts coming along as soon as I get the pictures uploaded. During the trip, I was able to review the wonderful curriculum I've already purchased and have figured out what we will be using for our math and phonics curriculum. For phonics, we'll be adding Reading lessons . I love this site, I watch the video on how to teach the lesson the night before, then weave the lessons throughout the day. Monkey has been picking up a lot and it's a free resource! For math, I'm working on getting a used copy of Rightstart math level A . It's a kinesthetic math program that's based around Montessori and how they teach math in Japan. I read some lesson samples and reviews, and it seems like it will be a perfect fit for Monkey, whose brain already works the way the program is designed. W...

It has taken me YEARS to decide on curriculum. No lie. The decision to homeschool was discussed while my hubbie and I were still dating, it was something we were both very passionate about, and the hidden teacher in me loved the prospect of gentling guiding our children along the path of learning. Then, after marriage and having our first child, we knew that me staying at home and homeschooling was just the natural next step of life. From the birth of our first son, I taught him the names of everything around him, body parts, and sign language. I used Letter of the Week for awhile, and started using a conglomeration of many free resources, thinking that I would never have to purchase a curriculum. Why do that with so many free resources available? While pregnant with Froggy, I discoverd Montessori started researching everything I could on it. I fell in love with everything about it- except the costly materials. Montessori at Home was a life saver, Montessori can be effectively an...

What a strange school day! We started the day by playing outside since it was going to rain later on. Seeing what was heavier  We made mini calzones for lunch, and did Calendar time and our daily board while they were baking, then had lunch, after which both boys took a two and a half hour nap! When they woke up, we went through our daily notebook, had classroom time, did our counting stick work box, alphabet bag, magnet pages, bible time, and were starting to read when Froggy got out of hand and we stopped. Daily drawing Monkey told me Froggy farted and imitated the sound. Boys. Monkey's tree train circling sight words finger painting "sauce" on our "pizzas" Monkey informed me he needed to wash his hands Adding toppings "baking" the "pizza" Magnet pages

I really enjoyed the GHEA conference. We had free tickets this year since it was our first time attending. The only thing that wasn't so great was the fact we had Froggy with us and he was teething something serious, so the majority of the time we were there, he was crying. So, I didn't get to go to any of the speaker events, but we did enjoy the vender booths and used book sale. Being able to actually flip through books I've been looking at really helped me make decisions on what to get and what not to get. I wish we had more time at the used book sale, we were both so frustrated and worn out from Froggy that we left after an hour, but we did get some really great deals, and got a lot of things I had been wanting to get for our school. Scale $2, Cuisenaire alphabet book with rods $5 Base 100,1000 $2 $2 $2.50 $7 Science with water $0.25, Starting point science $1, Sunshine makes the seasons $0.25 $0.25 Weaver bible early reader se...

Here is Monkey's daily notebook. Cover from here . Pre cut drawing paper The first page is his daily message. We read it together, he circles words and numbers that he recognizes, and then does the activity on the bottom. Today he is supposed to draw me a picture on the back. We use this for daily counting . Daily color review . He's known his colors for a long time, but he is the kind of kid that gives you the wrong answer on purpose because he thinks it's funny. I started having things like this for him and it has him used to telling me the right answers when I ask him. Shape reviews . This is in here for the same reason as the color review sheet. Sight words , this page is for playdough, yarn, wikki sticks, etc. Sight words , this page is for playdough, yarn, wikki sticks, etc. Monkey can practice writing this page if he wants. Circling sight words in sentences. Sight word word search. Finding sight words in di...