Mom needs to have a quick big picture view of the year's math curriculum. Here it is, three pages that covers the whole year's worth of lessons. Click on the thumbnail to see it full size.

  Number Strand

 Geometry & Measurement

Page 3 coming soon - 'Statistics & Probability' and 'Algebra'

After learning about bats yesterday, today we turned our attention to frogs. We have a big leopard frog in our dissection box. It is a male because the tympanum is large. It was helpful seeing it on a real frog instead of just in pictures. Something else I enjoyed was hearing the different calls of frogs. I was mostly interested in the leopard frog because that was the kind of frog that we had in our dissection kit. The sounds of southern leopard frogs are a lot like a cackling laugh. It made me laugh to hear them. I attached a sound file to my e-notebook page. When my e-notebook is finished and I publish it as an e-notebook, it will play.

Here is my e-notebook page on frogs that mom helped me with. Just click the thumbnail to see it bigger.

Even though we have moved on to frogs, I am still enjoying bats. Today I wrapped myself up in a sheet for wings and played I was a bat. I saw how baby bats cuddled up with their mommies, so I liked getting into Mommy's lap today with my baby bat wings all tucked up around me. I also parcticed making bat noises to do echolocation. It was fun.

For my e-notebook for Sound I watched an episode of Magic School Bus and we did a sound lab. Both showed me how sound is vibration. Here is my e-notebook page on today's activities. Just click the thumbnail to see it full sized.

This morning we discovered a bat on our porch. One of the cats got him. Probably Oreo because she is a very good hunter. Finding the bat was great because one of the things we are studying is animal hearing. For bats hearing is very important. Without their good sense of hearing, bats would crash into everything at night. Read my e-notebook entry that mom helped me with to learn more about our 'batty' day. Just click on the thumnail below to see it full sized.

I helped dad to wash the car and Fang's tires today. Fang is what we have decided to call the car that Dad is fixing up for Gregory to drive to college. It is a 1972 Maverick. Here is a picture of me helping Dad wash Fang's tires.

It is funny. While we were working hard to wash the cars, look at what our cat, Lucky, was doing.

I had Vacation Bible School June12th to June 16th. On June 16th I 'prayered' the Lord Jesus to come in to my heart. I was at home with my dad and he and I talked a long time in there on his bed. He wanted to be sure I understood. When he knew I understood he 'prayered' with me.

It has been a few weeks since that happened and I have been such a happy boy. I tell my mommy and my daddy I love them all the time. I love Jesus. I am so happy.

Some of the kids from Vacation Bible School also accepted Jesus in their hearts. They were baptized today. I am going to wait to be baptized until I am a little older. The water kinda scares me. Mom and Dad said that was OK and that Gregory and Melody too waited a little while from the time they prayered to the time they were baptised. Mom says that the Lord will make me ready for the water part in His good time.

For now, I am very glad to have Jesus and I think He is very glad to have me.

We have a new neighbor. For a long time a house close to us has been empty. It finally sold. Mom and I walked over to welcome them to the neighborhood. I was glad to see that they had a little girl. Her name is Abby and she will be 5 in a few weeks. Mom invited Abby over to make stained glass cookies with us. Here is a picture.

In the picture we are separating the hard candy into different colors. Then we put them in a ziplock bag and crushed them with a hammer. We used cookie dough for the 'lead' of the windows and filled in the spaces with the crushed candy. When it is cooked the candy melts to make what looks like stained glass - tasty stained glass.

It is all finished now. My loft bed is made and painted and my toys are organized again. Here are some pictures.

This is the view from the 'window' between my room and the dining/computer/school room. I really like the window because at night when the lights are turned down I sometimes get scared. But I can lay in my bed and look through the window and see mom working at her computer. Then I am not scared anymore. Next thing I know it is morning and I see her sitting at the computer when I open my eyes. Sometimes I wonder if she stays there all night and never sleeps. During the day, mom often puts up a whiteboard on the wall over the window. Then she uses the whiteboard for our school time.

Here is my reading nook. I like how it is under my bed. Sometimes I read up on my bed too. Actually that little red chair is a cat bed. But our kitties are big enough now to live outside. We had to let them get big because the hawk would have eaten them. The chair is perfect for my size though. I like that it is red.

Mom and I went through all my toys and got rid of many of them. I like how easy it is to get to the ones I want now. The two shelves in the front are on wheels so I can move them to get to the boxes of toys behind them.

I LOVE my room!

Today we worked some more on my bed. We painted everything with white paint. Mom calls it Kilz. That is a strange name for paint. She says it means that it kills stains so they don't show through the paint we put on. Here are some pictures mom took of Tim and I while we worked.

The first one is of me up on the platform of my new bed. We painted it, let it dry, sanded it, and painted it again to make sure I couldn't get any splinters from it. It made my room smell funny.

Here is a picture of Timothy and I painting the wood that will go on the front of my bed. Do you see the ladder in behind us? We pained it next. Dad is going to use parts of it as the ladder for me to get in and out of my loft bed. I am not scared at all of going up and down it. Mom says she is glad I am not scared, but almost wishes I was a little bit scared so I would be very careful. I will be careful and not scared at the same time.

Next, Dad finishes up by attaching my ladder, rails, and front part. He might not be able to finish until Saturday. It is hard to wait that long! I will be so glad when I get to sleep in it for the first night. 

Mom made this new header picture for me. I didn't want the crayon one any more.

The picture is from when we did our summer study of our creek a few years ago. It was really fun! We tested the water all through the summer and learned a lot about the animals that live in it. Our creek water was usually alkaline. After a rain it would test scidic for two days and then go alkaline again. I liked the test kit. We would get some water and dip the little test sticks in. Then we would wait and check the color against a picuture on the bottle. I liked that job.

In the header picture, I am looking at one of our daily stream water samples. This one had two scuds, a Mayfly, a snail, and mosquito larvae.

We also had two indoor observation tanks. In one we watched tadpoles develop into little frogs and in the other one we had our summer guest, Escapae, the crayfish. We couldn't put them in the same tank or Escapae would eat the tadpoles. We would let the frogs go as soon as they had back legs and we let Escapae go in time for him to get a wife. Crayfish look for wives in the early fall. I think he missed us though. We also had a snapping turtle in the creek. Mom said to always stay back from him. He would give a nasty bite.

Mom has been doing some math classes using a classroom on the internet. It is really neat. I really like the whiteboard a lot. After math class a few days ago, Ethan put some pictures up on the whiteboard. One of them was a picture of their dog Chip. He is really cute. He is a Chihuahua. On Ethan's blog, he has a pet dog you can feed - like my llama. His blog dog is named Chip too. I have added Ethan and Legolas in my friends list. You can visit their blog by taking the link in the friends section of my sidebar.

This is an old picture, but since I have been doing math on the internet, I wanted to post it.

My new bed isn't finished yet, but Dad started on it yesterday. It will be a loft bed. That means that it will be high off the floor. My bedroom is little, so having my bed up high will give me more room. Here is a picture my mom took late last night. I am still in my small bed while my big one is being made.

It is hard to wait for it to be finished. I keep asking to try the ladder. I can go up and down really good on it. Dad will get the plywood for the platform part of it tomorrow. Then he he has to sand and paint the wood. Then I will finally get to climb into my new big bed. I can't wait!

Mom and I have been working on my math wall. Here is a picture of it that we took last week. I have up to the number 9 on the calendar now and mommy needs to make some more numbers for me to tape onto my calendar.

Along the top of the calendar are my mathmen. Mom made these when my big brother was about my age. On the bottom part of each one is a skill that I have mastered, am working on, or will need to begin while I am in preschool. we use little colored flags that stick to them to help us keep track of what skills I am working on and what needs to be done next. I like the math men because they show how much I am learning. But, love Spiderman, so mommy made some new ones that fit in with the theme in my preschool e-notebook. We are almost out of clear package tape which mom uses to laminate them on the front and the back, so I we will wait to cut them out and add them to the wall until after mom buys more. Here are a few of them. Click on the thumbnail and you can see it full size.

Mom helped me make my preschool e-notebook page for the section on telling time. Here it is. Just click on it to see it bigger.

Dad finished making the first computer center on Christmas Eve. Mom's computer was in the middle and Timothy's computer was on the wall side. There was one empty section on the walkway side on Christmas Eve. Guess why. It was a place for me to have my own computer. I got one for Christmas. My very own! Mom is right next to me and Tim so she can help us really easy if we need it. 

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Mom has loaded up so many neat programs on my computer. I have been very busy exploring all of them. Here are the programs I have:

1. Operation
2. Candy Land
3. Blue's ABC Time
4. Micky Mouse Preschool
5. Magic School Bus Solar System
6. Magic School Bus Inside the Earth
7. Magic School Bus Animals
8. Magic School Bus Rainforest
9. Winnie the Pooh Preschool
10. Winnie the Pooh Kindergarten
11. Buzz Lightyear 1st Grade
12. Toy Story 2 Action Game
13. Smart Steps Kindergarten
14. Smart Steps 1st Grade
15. Gizmos and Gadgets
16. Monsters Inc Scream Training
17. JumpStart Kindergarten
18. Reader Rabbit Kindergarten
19. Reading Blaster Ages 4 to 6
20. Revolt
21. Spiderman
22. 1st and Second Grade Excelerator (Smiletown and Letters and Numbers)
23. Treasure Galaxy
24. Reader Rabbit Math
25. Reader Rabbit
26. Study Dog
27. Stories Folder - These are story movies that mom made or downloaded for me: Stelaluna, How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight, Harold and the Purple Crayon, Where the Wild Things Are, Angus and the Ducks, Frog on His Own, Ralph and the Motorcycle, Runaway Ralph, Max's Chocolate Chicken, and lots more.

Mom has set up my internet access so that my blog is my homepage and great online sites are in my favorites list. I like www.pbs.org , www.starfall.com , www.scholastics.com , and www.sesameworkshop.com

I have lots to keep me busy these days.

After we took Oreo to the vet this morning, Mom and I spent the rest of the morning just the two of us. One of our first stops was to go to the park, but when we pulled up Mom was uncomfortable. The park was empty because it was so early in the morning. There was a man sitting in a truck right by the play ground. He had tatoos all over his arm. Mom said he gave her the willies, so we went to Burger King for breakfast instead of getting out of the car there at the park. Mmmm. I had cinnamon mini buns, strawberry applesauce, and milk. Mom said that she was glad that they had milk because that was an awful lot of sugar for a breakfast meal.

  Click to see the picture bigger.

After I finished, Mom took me out to the Burger King playground.

The playground was nice, but not as nice as the park. Mom said that she figured that the park would be getting busy by now and that the man would be long gone. Sure enough she was right. There were not any kids at the playground section, but there were a lot of ladies walking around the perimeter and there were various park employees out and about, so mom said that we could stay. Yay!

 Beatiful fall colors. Click to see them better.

Mom kept talking about how pretty the trees are this year. She said that in all the years that we have lived here that the falls have been so brown. This year there are lots of golds and some reds.

After the park, Mom and I went to the thrift shop to see if they had some good picture books. We will be reading lots tonight. Here are the books we found: An Elephant's Trunk; a Sesame Street book; Knights and Armor (A Dover Coloring Book); Bob's Birthday (a Bob the Builder Book); Don't Pollute (a Berentstain Bears book); I wish I had a Dinosaur; and Alistair in Outer Space (Gregory has read this one to me already this morning because he remembered loving this one when he was little from Reading Raindow. Mom said that this was a great place to get books. We got all of these plus a plastic toy Nerf gun all for only eighty-five cents.

I like Mom and Me days! I can't wait for the next one.

This is Oreo. She is one of our cats. She is very pretty, don't you think?

She is the best hunter of all the cats. Usually, we cheer her hunting skills when she brings up snakes and such, but she caught a hampster last week. Mom and Dad were puzzled by that because hampsters are pets not wild animals found around here. We all felt very sorry for the hampster. Mom and Dad said that it was too injured to survive. I felt kinda mad at her about the hampster when I thought about it being someone's pet.

But I am not mad any more. Tomorrow she is going to the vet to be spayed. Mom says that is because we have just the right number of cats. I hope it doesn't make her unfriendly. I heard my sister say she was worried about that since Oreo is so shy already. That is very different than her brother cats. They are very friendly and run to be petted. Oreo loves to follow you to see what you are doing. She is the most curious kitten, but if you reach down to pet her she will lower her back as if she doesn't quite like the feel of anyone's hand. But I don't care, she will play if you have a toy to dangle for her to catch.

Today I had a friend over. She comes most Mondays, and we like to play with the toys in my room. Most of the summer it has been too hot to go outside, but today it was only in the upper 70s. Mom took us outside. After we played in the sandbox for a while, we got curious about what mom was doing. She kept picking things up off the ground and putting them in a fold of her shirt. We went to see what she picking up. They were pecans. We went and grabbed the sand buckets and helped too. Here is a picture of the fun:

It was pretty easy to find them because the leaves from the pecan tree haven't yet been falling to hide them. Even so, she kept finding many pecans and I couldn't see them at first. We were having a race to see who could find the most. I began to feel upset because I couldn't find any. But mom helped me with a few, then I caught on to what to look for. Before long we were not racing any more and helping each other find them and pull a few from low branches. It was fun and very tasty.

Today we had Rocks and Minerals Co-op. I like Co-op days because my friend Maria comes. The older kids did a lot of stuff on the computer, then we all sat down to watch a video. It was a 3-2-1- Classroom Contact episode called 'Crystals: They're Habit Forming. Maria and I really liked it. After the video. All the kids went out on the porch. Maria and I were the molecules for the co-op crystal lattices. Maria and I made our bodies the right shape; the older kids helped us. Pictures were taken and those pictures are being made into e-notebook pages for our notebooks. This one is finished. To see it big, just click on it. Tomorrow, I will show you Maria's Crystal Lattice page. It is not finished quite yet.

After we had our pictures taken, we all went in and made a super-saturated solution of sugar. That is a big word meaning we but half a bucket of sugar into boiling water. This is goinfg to make sugar crystals. Timothy made these two years ago and we still have the big crystal he made. We put it into one of the jars of sugar solution to let it grow wven bigger.

The big kids are working on a lab write up. I will tell you where to find that when they get it posted. You can use it to make your own.