Start of the school year

Today was our first full "official" day of homeschooling. I couldn't be more pleased with how it went. Last year, when I took out the phonics book, Zack would pracitcally fall asleep in his chair. Now, he wants to do two or three lessons a day.

I'm also fairly he's more of a kinesthetic learner, since both last year and this year, when given the choice between using objects, or number lines to work out his math problems, he always goes with objects. Here's a pic from my phone of him using the abacas for his addition today:

Snowmen in January shouldn't be a bad thing right?

Unless it's the living room and the snowmen have been drawn in marker! This is one of three snowmen the boys drew on the living room carpet. The largest of which was about Mia sized. Washable markers thankfully. I think they figured if they Xed it out, I wouldn't notice......and here are the little angels cleaning it up.

Fall photo shoot

I've spent the last few days trying to get some good photos of the kids...a little tricky when the lighting changes so fast, and the sun is only out for 5 minutes at a time. I still want to get a couple more of Zack and Tasha...

Mia breastfeeding already!

So Mia decided she was going to breasfeed (BF) a doll at a playgroup yesterday. Well, she tried to get me to BF it first. Brought it over and held it up to me saying "Nummas!" I thought she wanted to nurse, so I started to pick her up and she said, "No. Baby nummas." I said, "No honey, Mama's nummas are just for you." She thought about that for a second and then unzipped her sweatshirt while saying, "My nummas!" She pulled up her t-shirt and "latched" the doll on with the BIGGEST grin on her face. I was so proud!!

The boys are doing really well with the homeschooling. Dominic has discovered "color by number" activities and is fascinated. He also really likes the "letter chips" we use to practice spelling. I bought some cheap poker chips and wrote letters on them. I made capital letters on the white ones, and lowercase letters on the blue. I thought about doing vowels on red, but then couldn't decide what to do with the "y"...sometimes a vowel, sometimes not...?

I found that Zack was horrifically bored with the first phonics program we were using. We switched to the Kumon series, and he is much more interested and engaged with it.

Everyone is healthy with the exception of the usual sniffles for this time of year, let's hope it stays that way!

Kids...

I love it when Mia picks her clothes. Today she is in a bright pink sweatshirt with a dog on it, a light pink flowered skirt, and rainbow striped leggings.

The things kids do...

so Dom just comes in from outside and says "Mom, I peed in the tree!" OK...he was playing and didn't feel like coming in. The really funny part is I look outside and there is Mia with her panties down and skirt up trying to do the same thing...good thing our backyard is privacy fenced.

The first fish...

We got the kids fishing poles and went down to the lake for fishing off the pier last week. Dom has a "big boy" Spiderman pole, and Zack has a "bigger boy" pole. Mia's is Barbie.
Mia lost interest rather quickly...

...but when I caught a fish on her pole, she was ecstatic about reeling it in. The boys had a blast and each caught several fish. Dominic was really funny when we were taking pictures of Mia with her fish...he wanted to touch it, but freaked out every time it wiggled on the hook. All in all they had a great time and can't wait to do it again!