Farm Animals

Julia:  "Farmers have cows, horses, sheeps, baby dolphins, and baby sharks.  Because we live on a farm, we should get all of those. Especially baby dolphins because they're cute."

Photo courtesy of Uncle Jeff

Back to School!

Last week, we jumped back into our regular school routine.  We took Monday off because I wanted to make sure I was ready to go, and we started on Tuesday.  I began introducing Grant to cursive writing.  To go along with the new cursive lessons, I gave him a fountain pen.  He really enjoyed using it during the week.  Throughout the week I had him practice upper case letters.  For right now, I am going to teach them pretty much the same as the print upper case letters (just a bit fancier).  Later on down the road, I will probably teach him the way I learned how to write them. Next week he will begin working on lower case letters.

We also started every day off with math review of some sort, penny whistle lessons, spelling and reading.  During French lessons we reviewed everything we had learned up until Christmas, and will begin learning new words next week.

Grant is now back into a Language Arts block.  Last week we used stories from the time of Abraham.  I told him a few stories on Tuesday about King Nimrod, the birth and boyhood of Abraham, and the Tower of Babel.  Once I was done reading the stories, Grant and I used blocks to build our own "Tower of Babel".

I also introduced the form drawing for the week.

Later on in the day, Grant decided to draw a picture of the Tower of Babel on his own using block crayons. It's so great when they take the initiative and do something like that!

After Grant and I finished with the usual daily activities on Wednesday, he re-told me the stories I read yesterday, and then we summarized them together and he copied the summary into his lesson book.

On Thursday, I told Grant some more stories about Abraham.

I told him about the journey to Canaan, Lot's move to Sodom,the visit from the three angels, and the birth of Isaac. After I was done reading the stories, Grant and I drew a picture of the birth of Isaac in our lesson books.

Mom's Drawing

 Grant's Drawing

On Friday, Grant copied the summary we came up with from the stories into his lesson book.

He also drew the form drawing in his form drawing book.

Last week for Johanna, we focused on stories and activities to celebrate Three Kings Day, or Epiphany.  On Tuesday, I read her a poem about the Three Wise Men, and then we sang "We Three Kings".  Johanna also drew this picture of the three wise men:

On Wednesday, Johanna and Julia did some wet-on-wet watercolor painting while Grant was doing his copy work. 

Once the paintings dried, I cut them out into crown shaped and the kids decorated them with glitter glue.

On Thursday, Johanna helped me make an Epiphany cake.  We were going to put a bean in it, and whoever got the bean would be the King for the day on Friday, but Grant thought we should put three beans in the cake.  When the cake was gone, Johanna, Grant and Dad were the ones who had gotten the beans. Being King for the day, Grant and Johanna got to choose a few things, but Grant was upset because he didn't get to choose not to have school.  "What's the good in being the king for the day then?" He asked me. 

Johanna also got a book about tying shoelaces for Christmas, so we began working with the book so she can learn how to tie her shoes.

Next week Grant will continue with the language arts block, and he will be hearing stories from the life of Isaac.

Christmas Morning

The kids woke up on Christmas morning to find that Santa had filled their stockings with toys.  They could hardly wait to go through them and see what he had brought.

Once they had finished getting all the goodies out of their stockings, they opened the presents from Mom and Dad (and from our very generous pets, too).

With the help of a friend, I managed to get Julia's baby clothes quilt done in time for Christmas.  Julia's quilt was the third, and final, one to make.

  

Grant was excited to get a new Hapkido shirt from Dad and wanted to put it on right away.

Boji discovered the piece of cookie, and little bit of milk that Santa left.

Later on in the day, we headed back over to Grandma and Grandpa Hedberg's house and Cory, my brother, and I got away to see a "Christmas movie" while Grandma and Grandpa watched the kids.  Afterward, we had dinner and then headed home.  It was a busy, but very nice Christmas holiday.

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve, we celebrated with the Hedberg family.  We had a wonderful meal, lots of yummy cookies (again), and of course, more presents.