Slices of Life

Ian came into my room while I was exercising yesterday morning and placed a few books on my bed.  When I asked him what was up he told me he had already started his schoolwork and had finished reading. He read a book called Near One Cattail: Turtles, Logs and Frogs .  I was impressed!  It was only 6:30 or so and here he was getting his schoolwork done! I had reminded the boys the previous night that they had to get their schoolwork done early since their cousins were coming to play but I figured they would still eat breakfast, play for a bit and try to procrastinate at least a little.  Ian told me he enjoyed the book but it was hard to summarize since it was a book like The House that Jack Built that just kinds of builds on each page. He walked downstairs with me with the intention of pulling out his math book again and I reminded him that he could work on writing using his Draw Write Now book or practice cursive or any other s...

It was such  a nice day that we decided we all needed to take advantage of it and go for a nice walk this morning.  We try to work outside whenever we can in the summer.  We often bring out science experiments, art projects or even just our school books and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine while learning something fun together. We left our yard and went for a hike in the woods.  We saw birds, examined a spider web, talked about deer, scat, deer ticks and the diseases ticks carry, as well as some unusual fungi.  They hemmed and hawed about taking a walk, especially when I warned them that I wanted to do some sort of walking outside everyday but ultimately we had a good time. It's amazing to me that we always seem to find something different on each walk we take; even if we walk in the same places often! This bird was hopping and appeared unable to fly A tree had fallen over and we inspected the trunk to figure out why scat tracks through the woods fungi Once...

The boys were asking to do school today so I put them in charge of what they wanted to learn about.  I don't typically have a lot of schoolwork all planned out for the summer.  We try to work on a bit of math and reading each day while sprinkling in other subjects as the boys I had asked Evan if he wanted me to find him some word and math games or if he wanted to work in his Star Wars workbooks and he chose his books.  He just LOVES them!  He sat right down yesterday morning and completed two pages in his phonics book and two pages in his math book! We looked through the book Flotsam together using the pictures for telling the story aloud as we went.  He then read Goodnight, Gorilla to me and only needed help with the word "dear." He declared himself done for the day and I was fine with that.  I'm finding that getting actual books from the library that he can read with little to no help is helping him see himself as a reader much more effectively than an...

We had a long two day drive back home from Tennessee.  Our first day we picked Maryland as our stopping point and enjoyed watching the scenery pass us by, looking for more license plates to add to our 50 states map, listening to our Percy Jackson book on CD, watching movies, playing video games and listening to music.  We ate dinner near our hotel, after the boys had swam in the pool for a bit to get out some of that pent up energy.  We had a lovely diner at the Olive Garden and I couldn't help but think about all the extra schooling we squeezed in while on vacation.  It may seem silly but even little things like playing mad libs every night using the restaurants kids menus helps me remember that we're always learning-- even when we're just having fun on vacation.  On the final leg of our journey we passed a park in Pennsylvania that had tanks and helicopters by the side of the road.  It had caught our attention on the way down to Tennes...