Today I noticed a concrete mixer pull up across the street from us. When I got to the window, I noticed that there were three city trucks out there as well. Last week the city had done some work under the street and hadn't repaired the hole in the concrete yet, so it didn't suprise me. I told the kids that we were taking a break from school and we all threw shoes on and stood on our front walk to watch the concrete work. The whole thing took about eight minutes, 7 city workers, three city trucks, one concrete mixer truck, two concrete rakes, four 'hand held smoother things', some white liquid in a sprayer, and a piece of heavy white plastic. All to fill a piece of street about 4'x6'. My tax dollars at work! :)

The kids thought it was pretty neat. (even though I should have grabbed jackets on our way out the door, so we were all a little chilly.)  :)  And as the whole caravan drove off, the last truck (the one with the only lady worker in it) honked and the people inside waved to the kids. It was a nice little distraction and a learning opportunity besides.

Hope you all had a productive school day as well! :)

Last night as I was getting the kids ready to pray, before bed, my oldest asked me when he could do some "first grade stuff."  This was a bit confusing to me, because he already reads the science book to the two younger ones and has started reading a children's history book (no pictures) about 5-7 pages a day. And he may do the same math as his sister, but it is technically the first grade level. We don't want to make a big issue out of grade levels, though we do say that he is in 1st grade and his sister in kindergarten, but I would like to continue to do some of their subjects together without someone feeling bad because they think they're "behind." 

So,  I said that we could talk about it in a minute and went on to pray with the kids. After I sent the other two up to get in their beds (I was nursing the youngest, so we had prayed downstairs), I turned to him and asked what he meant by "first grade stuff." Did he think that the work he was doing now wasn't hard enough? He said that he wanted to do something harder than phonics. "Well, on the days that you have that page full of sentences that you have to write, how many phonics pages do you think you should do?", I said. He thought he should only do one page those days (that's what I thought!), but on the days that he had easy phonics pages, he thought 6 or 7 pages would be good. :)  So he and I talked a little longer about what he would like to do, and we figured out that he really likes informational type books with pictures. you probably know what kinds of books I'm referring to, the kind that has the different pictures all around the pages and has lots of little words telling all kinds of cool information about the subjects in the pictures. He has a book kind of like that on dinosaurs, one on alligators and crocodiles (both have some pretty heavy information in them and he just drinks this stuff up!) and recently we were given a book called My First Atlas. Because of this newest addition to our book collection he now knows what most countries flags look like (and those are just the the pages inside the front and back covers).

We decided that he would start reading through the atlas book (it teaches not only about different parts of the world, but how to read a map and a lot more) and after he gets done reading the page for the day, he would come to me and tell me 5 things he learned. One thing I talked to him about, was that if he has another book for school, he'll be doing school longer than Jenna. He thought that'd be OK, "'cause it would be more like first grade." We'll see how all of this goes. :)   

We've been at school now for a week and two days. Definitely not flawless school days and maddeningly enough we've had two days off of school already this year!

I'm officially teaching both of my older children (relative, I know) kindergarten this year. The curriculum does differ a bit in that my 5 yr old can read and my 4 yr old cannot. School has been fun the days that we've been able to do it and it has actually kept my house cleaner and my days more scheduled. Yay!

We're doing My Father's World, sans the phonics section, for the unit study part of our day and Making Math Meaningful for math (I'm really excited about that one!). The couple of other things I've thrown in include a phonics book that is no longer in print (but I love), so I (my mom) found it on Ebay and Trevor has enjoyed it immensely (so far!). I'm also using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons for my four year old. Trev only got through lesson 36 (of 100) and was bored of it because he caught on that quickly! I'm also throwing in the Rod and Staff pre-school books at the end of the (school) day. There tends to be a lot of coloring included in the activities, so the kids look forward to doing those pages when they're done  with their 'real schoolwork' (my thoughts, not anyone's voiced words).

What has been interesting is actually trying to convince the kids that they're in school. I asked the kids the other day if they liked school and they went on to rave about sunday school. I said, no the school we've been doing each morning. Oh, they said. Of course they liked it. Still, if I say anything about school, they want to know if I mean at home or at church!