Maggie-isms #2

Thursday was Gran's birthday so last night Gran, Nana, Aunt Laurie, Uncle Jeff, Ella, Maggie and I had dinner to celebrate. Ella is going through a testing boundaries phase and Maggie was super tired so they were immediately at odds. Ella would mess with Maggie and Maggie would get SO mad. (It's actually so funny to watch; Ella will put something she knows Maggie wants right in her face and jerk it away; she is so mischievous :)) So finally Maggie yelled at Ella, "You look dumb in your shirt but I look stylish."

Maggie-isms #1

Maggie doesn't like wearing, well, any clothes. But she particularly doesn't like wearing pants or shoes. I don't mind the shoes thing but she has to wear pants when we're not at home or at a relative's house. This morning she had to put on pants which she was unhappy about but she did.

When we got to Jeremiah and Kandice's house she said, "Mommy, these pants are really making me exhausted."

Hi!!!

Ok, I'm sorry. I will try to post more often. I lost my camera cord for a while and now I need more batteries. So no pictures but. . . here I am.

We've been so busy. She is starting to actually read and it's so awesome. She can sound out little words and knows several sight words. We have a couple of sight word readers (they use the same words over and over and one original word with a corresponding picture per page; i.e.. You can go on a boat. You can go on a plane.) and she can read them. It's crazy!

We are continuing to read chapter books and she is definitely able to follow the story. Once we finish the Magic Tree House series, I am going to start reading good books like Charlotte's Web and Swiss Family Robinson. I can't wait; I love children's literature.

We are also still listening to audiobooks in the car. She really likes the Little House books (she calls them the Laura books). We tried The Hobbit but the guy who reads it does scary voices and by the time she heard Gollum's voice, she was done. So I guess we'll save that for a few years.

She can write much better now. She can write her name fairly easily. It takes her some time but she knows how it's spelled. We work on it often.

Our Spirit Builders co-op is awesome. I've been out of the loop for a while now because I have Jake with me and he usually needs to be in the nursery with me. We always come out for lunch. :) I still try to teach Story Explorers every day but it doesn't always happen.

We had a Halloween festival and played amazingly awesome games, had a Halloween parade and had a feast. It was so very cool.

Yesterday we had a Thanksgiving feast. It was awesome too.

Today, we had our little co-op with Lauren and her kiddos. Lauren was having the kids do writing and she asked Maggie what she wanted to write about. Maggie didn't know so I suggested listing the animals she likes. Lauren asked her what animals she likes and Maggie said, "Dogs, cats, birds, butterflies and, of course, bunnies." Of course. :)

Then Kyrie said she didn't like birds because they pooped on windows and cars. Jonah said it was an accident and Kyrie said, "No, they don't even say they're sorry."

School

We just did reading today. We did our usual phonics work and read another chapter in our book. 

This is a sight word game. Basically, you hide a treat under one of the cups (they each have a sight word written on them) and she guesses which cup by reading the word. She wasn't ready for this and after ME getting frustrated, I switched games.

To a jerry rigged BINGO. I just laid out her cards and then called out a word, which she identified. Between sets we reviewed her words. She actually liked this so much, we wanted to play it again tonight before bed.

We hung out with Aunt Laurie and Ella today. Poor Aunt Laurie was very sick with food poisoning. Uncle Jeff got home and we got to see him a little too. It was pouring rain all day but still both girls kept asking to play outside.

Looking for love

Maggie and I were driving home and listening to Carly Simon. The song "Me and Jenny" came on. The chorus is: Two hot girls on a hot summer night; they were looking for love.

Maggie asked, "Mommy, can we go out on a hot summer night and find love?"

Pancakes and the Zoo

We met up with Aunt Laurie and Ella today for breakfast and a trip to the zoo.

These are Maggie's pictures. She loves taking pictures.

While we kept a very fast pace (Ella kept saying, "More."), we actually got to see a lot. It was so nice being there and it not being packed. One of the many benefits of homeschooling.

Where is that monkeys face? Creepy.

Can you tell Maggie dressed herself?

At this point my camera died. :(

Lauren's and my co-op

This is the template I pre-prepared for the kids to do the geography/map skills project I had planned.

First the kids ate, including hummus as our food from ancient Egypt. 

Maggie was already wearing her tutu so Kyrie went and changed and they danced in the living room while Lauren and I got things ready. It was so cute.

First, writing and spelling. Lauren took the girls and did a map lib-like activity with them. I helped the boys do harder mad libs. It was quite entertaining. Then the boys wrote stories. 

The girls did spelling with Lauren. She had each girl be the teacher for the other. 

Then we started geography. We wanted to cover map skills before we continue going over places so I got a cute Dr. Seuss book that discusses maps and read it to them. Then we practiced cardinal directions on a real map. They all seemed to get it. We'll definitely review it every time we do geography.

For their project, I wanted them to understand how they live in one place that's in another and on and on. This book has a picture of each kid in front of his/her house that says "My House." Then I printed black and white pictures of Keller, Texas, USA, North America and Earth to show: My City, My State,  My Country, My Continent and My Planet. I think it'll be easy in the future to refer to it. It turned out great!

Next was history. We were learning about ancient Egypt this week. There were so many cool projects to do but NOT enough time. I wanted the kids to "write" their names in hieroglyphics. I pre-printed the girls' symbols and just asked them to color, cut and glue them. But the boys had to find the symbols and draw them.

Notice a lack of Maggie there. Yeah, she was DONE. The girls started getting tired and it was just too much. Not sure what we're gonna do about that.

Then we made pyramids. The kids painted the template and we added salt to give it a similar texture to sand. We didn't actually put them together because by this time ALL the kids were done. They were swinging between angry/acting out and BOUNCING OFF THE WALLS!!!