Dates Are Back In Session

I use to take my kids out on "dates" with just mom and kid all the time. Summer before this past I had 7 kids in the house (my 4 and 1 foster, and 2 summer cares) and well...dating got pushed aside. Last Tuesday 6th grade and I went out for dinner at Applebees and enjoyed the 2 for $20 deal. Today 2nd grade, Pre-K and I went to all-you-can-eat-pizza at Cici's.

They are all individually planning our next date!

Y

Usually, Friday is "Y" day, but we went today because the rock wall is open in the mornings on Wednesday... or it is suppose to be. We were disappointed that they could not climb today, but we had a great time in the pool. The water was very warm today and I enjoyed jogging. I even got a chance to sit in the whirlpool for 2 minutes. (I get nauseous in them so can't stay for very long).

Ok... I got a weird e-mail today from the author of the book that I mentioned in Monday's post. It looks like she googled her own name and then on page 5 found my post mentioning her book. She states that she liked the skeleton that was made and said she was glad "that Pre-K enjoyed the book."

Princess Puppy posted today.

Dem Bones

Pre-K is studying bones and skeletons in science class this week. For science this year I am kinda using the Little Otter Science for preschoolers by following the suggested weekly themes and borrowing the suggested books from the library while making up our own worksheets. This week we are reading the book, "Young Genius: Bones" by Kate Lennard and Pre-K really likes the book. Today he cut out a skeleton and used little brads for the head, arms and legs. The skeleton's name is, Woody.

I do joint compressions and massages with Jackson. During this time, I have started naming parts of the skeleton along with the names of body parts that are not mentioned as often such as ankles, wrist, hips and jaw, etc... I am surprised at how well he is learning the names of bones and I find I have to do my homework to keep up with what he can learn. ~Smile_

Maybe You Know Her....

Lisa over at Life In the Grateful House is looking for a young lady by the name of Elisabeth (Liz) that may live in the Kansas area.

Lisa writes:

"Wondering does anyone read my blog from Kansas? In 2007 I made several inquiries about a girl named Elizabeth (Liz). She was almost 16 then and she wanted a family. I sent my study several times, filled out paperwork that was sent to me and never heard anything back. I assumed that we were not chosen for her and they had found her a family. Friday night I found out that she aged out of the system without ever having have someone claim her. It just about broke my heart. I would really like to find her. If nothing else to let her know that there was a family that wanted her and that tried their very best to be her family. To show up, to be a touch stone, to have someone to count on. I tried sending an email to her worker and leaving a message on her voicemail. Email was returned and the voicemail didn't work.If anyone has any connections in DCFS in Kansas please email me. lisaamos@payco.org Please. I'm begging shamelessly. If anyone would link this or put out requests on their blogs I would be so eternally grateful. The more people that read about her the greater the chance that I may find her or someone to talk to in Kansas. Praying so anyway...."

Lisa is a wonderful mother that has a big heart for children. If you don't live or know anyone from the Kansas area, would be willing to link her post to your blog. Working together...

Peace

Chugging Along...

It was a good day. It got really quiet for a minute and I looked up to see everyone working really hard and being very focused.

So we finished what we were working on and ended early.

The Three R's

Relaxing while Reading his 'Rithmatic.

Okay... I guess the last R was stretching it. ~Smile~

Google Earth

I have always liked to "travel" using Google maps. Last week, Corey (A very inspiring woman with a HUGE heart) over at Watching The Waters ran a marathon at Disney and I was on the site to see the route of the marathon and they used Google Earth to show a 3-D view of the route. Well I got hooked. I downloaded the program from Google and the kids and I have virtually traveled all over the world. It's use of 3-D models is very fascinating and the ability to see mountains and valleys has been very cool, especially since 6th grade has been studying the mountains of North America. I recommend it.

Reflections...

With thoughts and prayers for the people of Haiti...

We had a pretty good week. This was the last week of our first semester so we did some make-up work and just a little testing.

Pre-K

• can read and write color words
• knows 24 high frequency or sight words
• can spell first and last name
• still working of recognizing lower case letters

2nd Grade

• completed unit 4 of Lifepacs
• learned to count quarters and dollars
• can add and subtract 3 digit numbers
• still working on capitalizing

6th Grade

• did 2 lapbooks this week: one on cats, the other on The Ten Commandments
• completed a huge project on the countries, mountains, and major rivers of North America
• moved to the section of Home Economics that teaches house cleaning (not thrilled LOL)
• still working on changing decimals to fractions

We really like to travel so it always seems like we are planning our next family vacation. For spring break this year we are planning a trip to either London, Ontario or to Niagara Falls. While I am not sure about driving what would be 10 -12 hours to Buffalo, NY, we are leaning towards Niagara Falls.

We have Monday off from school. Have a great weekend everyone.

6th Grade Language Arts & Blogging

This week for Language Arts 6th grade has been doing Mad Libs. We have had some very funny stories.

Also, check out the new post at Princess Puppy.

TTT #12: Get Your Cheap On!

Essie over at The Accidental Mommy has given us another Too True Tuesday assignment: Tell us how "cheaptastic" you can be.

I was happy that many of the things on my list matched other people's list, so I will admit and add on...

1. I too use rags for my Swiffer mop (I still have the old original one that screws together and does not use the bottled cleaner)
2. 98% of my kids clothes come from E-bay and 100% of those gets passed down until they are rags
3. Old clothes become cleaning rags and Swiffer mops. LOL!
4. If the boys get holes in their jeans/pants, I will use duct tape to slow the growth of the hole (just put a piece of tape on the inside and on the outside of the knee)
5. I use the envelopes from daily mail to make grocery and other list on the back instead of regular paper.
6. Also, since I pay most of my bills on-line, the bills that come in the mail and have return envelopes with them... I use those envelopes by using label paper or black marker to cover up the company's return address and just add my address.
7. When we go to hotels, we bring home all of the little bars of soap, shampoo and lotion that they will leave in the room.
8. I never purchase Christmas, birthday or other holiday cards. I use e-mail. If you don't have e-mail or are not a reader of my blog, ya don't get nothin'. ~smile~ And the one I was ashamed to share....
9. If the kids have non-messy lunches of sandwiches, chips and carrots, I make them reuse the paper plate for snack or tomorrow's simple lunch.

Okay...that's all I'm tellin'.

Drawing a Crowd

I so wish I had pictures. I had my camera with me, but just blanked on taking pictures.

On Saturday, the boys went to their very first All-you-can-eat-pancake breakfast at our church and if you read/remember this, it was an event. First off, the pancakes were delicious. They were some body's grandmother's recipe and they were good. Second, James is very thin, but that.boy.can.eat! If you watch him eat, you can tell that he like his food as his feet get to swingin' and he is licking any morsel of food that dares to attempt an escape onto his lips or fingers. After a while, the servers and people started commenting on how nice it is to see a child with such a good appetite, but this soon turned to comments of "Where is he putting it all?" and "He's like a bottomless pit." and soon, there was a small crowd of watchers, mostly grandmotherly type women, proud to see a boy enjoying the breakfast that they had prepared.

The cost of the breakfast was donation only and I had just a small amount of cash on me at the time. After watching my kid eat, I felt like maybe I was gonna have to pull out my checkbook. LOL! It was a great time of fellowship and a hearty breakfast.

Fowarded E-mails

I get a lot of forwarded emails and usually delete them without reading as I just can't handle the volume of them. If I do happen to open one... I rarely/hardly ever/ almost never forward it on to others. But today my Godparent sent me one and I opened it and thought it was cute so I will share it here.

I can't respond to any emails today.Something has crashed on my computer...

And the mouse is missing.

P.E.

Today was Bounce House day with our homeschool group.

We usually have P.E. at our local Y and it is a really fun and beautiful facility, but of course, this is a favorite.

For the last 2 weeks James has been having nose bleeds. It happens every winter after I turn the furnace on...the house gets so dry. Today he bumped his nose with his knee and that started the blood a-flowin, but he reacted very quickly and got off of the bouncy toys before it dripped. Good Boy!

It was a smaller crowd this month, but the kids still made good friends and had loads of fun. I think this weather had something to do with it...

Very slick and lots of black ice.

6th Grade...

has a new post at Princess Puppy.

Guess Who's Reading!!!

Pre-K is reading!!! I am excited and happy for him as he is so happy and enjoys reading. This is the first time I have ever used the Harcourt Reading Program. All of my other children learned to read using a phonics program that was developed by a group of nuns that had a small private school years ago in our town. They had a “learn to read guaranteed” program that I purchased. It focused on learning by rote line letters, clock letters, two, three and four-letter phonograms by watching a video. Once you learn all 70 phonograms, the sounds can be put together to read words. Jackson has an auditory processing disorder which makes hearing and repeating the sounds with the teacher on the video very difficult. The Harcourt program teaches high frequency words and uses pre-decodable, decodable books and short early-reader books. I did not intend for him to read this year, but once I showed him the books, he.wanted.to.read!


We started by learning the sight words: a, my, the, I, like, go, we, on, to, you, have, do, what, no, see, look, come, for, me, one, little, are, here. He learned these very quickly as I have noticed that if he sees something he can remember it very well and for a long time. I am almost tempted to think he has some degree of photographic memory. Once he learned those words, he started just flying through the pre-decodable books which slowly introduced decodable words.
He received the book, “Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See” as a gift and I used “Tot Pack” to print the “Heads and Tails” cards.




He was just doing the cards and looking at the book when he just started reading the book. Earlier this semester he learned to recognize color words. I snuck and video taped him from behind.

Well...stink.... the video will not load tonight. I will try again later

Back in the Saddle

We had a good first day back to school. We started late and that was good because it was so cold this morning it was hard to get out from under the warm covers.

Both boys got recorders for Christmas, so we have started lessons during music. I already had a very nice one that I purchased years ago that never got used. At first, I could not find something simple enough for both boys to use, but then I found Musicteacher44 on YouTube and she gave a good visual that both boys could see. So today we just started with holding, finger placement and steady blowing. Look at those faces (I first typed eyes and then realized you could not see their eyes. Ha ha)...concentrating so hard. ~Smile~

I also started Pre-K on the use of Tangrams today. I have had little foam ones for a couple of years, but never took the time to use them. This past weekend, I printed off this sheet and actually printed off paper tangrams and laminated them. This kid is really good at puzzles and now I know...tangrams

Mean Mommy Strikes at Midnight

First I must admit...I can be somewhat of an extremist (Ha Ha - somewhat) and I try not to drip too much of that in my parenting, except in this area. Whew...confession is good.

My mom survived a house fire when she was little and the story of the fire always impacted me. When I was a Social Worker several years ago, I had a client family that had a huge house fire. Their children's bodies were found under the bed and in the closet. Again, huge impact.

I make my kids practice fire drills in the house. We talk about the importance of getting out and not hiding. They learned that they should not leave anything in their path, should feel the door for heat before opening, and how to open their windows if the door is not available. Sometimes I make them practice while wearing backward hoodies (with the hood tied) to simulate the heat, difficulty breathing and darkness. Most drills are after they go to bed. They HATE it! HATE HATE HATE it! But my hope is that they will automatically drop to the floor and crawl out as we practice.

We had a rough summer and had not practiced in a while. Tonight was the night. So at midnight, I sat at the end of the hallway and held the tester button. Lets just say...they did not make good time tonight and there were a few strewn items on their floors that kinda got in the way and boy did I get some *stink eye* looks (and I cannot wait to see what our respite care kid tells her therapist about this one), but they did all get out and....




I heard people putting their shoes and other toys away on their way back to bed. Ha Ha!

Ready to Start Up Again...

I think... We have already decided to have a late start on Monday.

It has been an interesting 2 weeks as we have been doing an emergency respite care for a 13 yr old girl. I usually will not take any children older than my 2 older kids, but this child is pretty delayed and really does not displace my daughter. She has however brought issues to the table that actually gave my kids an opportunity to see some of the behaviors that we often talk about... which I have found to be a more effective way of teaching sometime. Being a foster parent is so very rewarding for me and 1 of the bonuses is that my kids learn empathy and have an opportunity to care for others. They also develop vision for what behaviors may look like to others.