Adding Another One

So throughout the holidays we did very little actual planned out "school" time. Between being incredibly sick with our third baby and all the Christmas festivities, I figured we had enough going on. I found it very exciting to start the new year with school and new ideas for BOTH of my little warriors.

All this time Jayce has been doing school while Josiah naps, but Josiah is moving closer and closer to not needing a morning nap. Some days he does, some days he doesn't. So, I was challenged to see how school time would go with little Josiah joining us! LOL it was not easy to say the least but it was definitely entertaining!

I also realized how easy the K-3 curriculum from A beka was for Jayce so I decided to try a little of the K-4 curriculum which focuses a little more on tracing letters and writing and reading. I wasn't sure how he would do, but I was pleasantly surprised :)

This is Jayce stamping his name. I also had him trace his name everyday of the week and then try to write it on his own.

Daddy got a little time to do some learning time with Josiah. They focused on the letter A and the color red. We got these pages from http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.net/

As we started learning how to write letters, we learned that letters live in houses. Here's Jayce doing the "upstairs" motion.

LOL, downstairs...

And basement! He loved doing the motions everyday before we started our writing time.

I wondered how Jayce would do learning to hold his pencil correctly as we started to learn writing, but he has done VERY well learning this.

Here's little Bug doing his school time all by himself in his high chair.

 Whatever activity I gave Siah to do, Jayce was eager to watch and help him.

Especially when it came to putting stickers on a piece of paper, one of Jayce's favorite things to do.

Jayce has learned LOTS of sight words and we pulled out his TAG reader and I had him tap on any of his sight words that he could find on each page. He did GREAT!

Josiah didn't always stay nicely in his high chair. He threw his "learning" toys all over the floor and climbed on the table while Bubba was writing. But Jayce did very well and kept working :)

 

 

It has definitely been a challenge trying to teach two at once, especially when Josiah is SO wiggly and still needs so much help and Jayce is not big enough to do all his work without supervision and help as well. But it is such a delight to watch both of them learn and grow! I think my favorite thing is watching Jayce teach Josiah, he is very eager to help and wants Josiah to know all kinds of things. He is also very patient with him. A scene from one of our school days...Josiah throws his shape sorting cupcakes all over the floor. Me:"Josiah, why did you do that?" Jayce:"Because he's a baby Mommy, that's what babies do." LOL, a good reminder that we're ALL still learning! Thank you Lord for my sweet boys and all the things you are teaching us everyday!

Catching up



   Okay, so obviously I'm just not that good at keeping up on a week to week basis on this blog thing. I'd really like to, but chasing after two little boys doesn't always give me the extra time I need to sit on the computer. (I know some of you mommys know what I'm talking about.) So, here's my attempt to catch up on all the highlights. Currently we are on letter G, so I'm posting about letters "C" through "F" and a few Bible Stories. Here we go...

 

 

Letter C



 

Of course, we made sugar cookies for the letter "C"

 

They both thoroughly enjoyed them! :)

 Auntie Googie brought over a belated birthday gift, camping sticks with hot dogs and marshmallows. How fun! And appropriate for "C" week!

 

Letter D

We put lots of different things inside his Snoopy house that start with the letter D. He pulls each one out and then tries to guess what our letter of the week is.

 Tracing letter D. He thought it was so fun because we'd say "Big letter D has a stick and then a BIG belly." He loved drawing the BIG belly.

 One of their favorite D books from the library was "How does a Dinosaur Get Well Soon". We read that book so many times we all had it memorized.

 Here's his Letter D writing. He did these all on his own (except the first one on each line). I found that he did MUCH better trying to write the letters on a paper rather than on a white board. He also enjoyed it much more. Thanks Kara for the writing pad! Jayce LOVES it!

 

My sister found these folder games at a yard sale and we gave them a try. Jayce did AWESOME! The first one, we would look at the picture, say it, and then figure out which letter it started with.

This one was matching the Capital Letter with the little letter, again, he did GREAT!

 

 

Letter E

Jayce learned about England, and Big Ben, and soccer!

 We made Ellie Elephant

 We circled the pictures that started with the same sounds.

 Here's his "E" tracing! (We get these practice sheets from http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.net/ They have them for every letter, and after we print them off, we laminate them so we can use them over and over again.)

 We found this really neat Leap Imagination Desk that talks, sings, makes animal noises, and lots of other stuff when you color. Jayce really enjoyed this. It also has games that helps with counting and letter sounds and stuff. Very fun!

 

 

Letter F

We made a fish aquarium!

With little Jayce fingerprint fish!

 

 We talked about all kind of different forest animals.

 And we made a squirrel headband!

 And daddy made a fire!

 Enjoying the fire together.

 And we decorated the school room for fall and Thanksgiving!

 

 

Bible Time

I just wanted to share something new that has really put a lot of excitement into Bible time for us. We act out the Bible stories with toys and little people characters. Jayce remembers so much more when we do it this way. I think it helps him to visualize what happened. Here's a picture of us talking about the tower of Babel.

And, I know you can't see this one that well, but we learned about David being chosen as King and how all his other brothers were NOT chosen. Jayce remembered SO much about this story, simply because we pulled out characters and acted it out. We also use the Jesus Storybook Bible which is easy to understand and repeatedly points EVERYTHING to Jesus.

 

Sorry it took me so long to get this up, hopefully it won't be this long again between my next posts! ANOTHER UPDATE...I almost forgot, Jayce received Lumpy in the mail yesterday afternoon. He had been working on not throwing fits, saying Yes Ma'am and Yes Sir and obeying right away, and after he earned enough stickers, we ordered Lumpy from the Internet. You should have seen his face when he opened the package. It was priceless! I asked him, "Did Jesus answer your prayers?" And he said "Yes He did!" Hopefully Darby will be on her way soon! ;)

 

 



"B" is Brilliant

This post is going to be pretty short because I'm several weeks behind with my blogging. We've been learning so many new things and Jayce has really done well with learning all kinds of new skills. And, frankly, I need to catch up!

 

Here's all the worksheets Jayce did for our letter B week and the number 2. There was finger painting and counting, and he did an AMAZING job with recognizing his sight word "they."

I printed out a paper with lots of different words on it and then asked him to only color the word "they" where ever he found it, and to my surprise, he did GREAT!

 We talked about all kind of different birds that God has created. From the smallest hummingbird, to the largest ostrich!

 Jayce was anxious to pull out the counting bears again. I introduced him to a little math. Putting four bears on the table and telling him to take two away, what was left? 2!

 

 Jayce really likes his new find and circle worksheets.

Here are the different books we read for the letter B. Jayce really liked "Buzz Buzz Buzz went Bumblebee" and "I'm a Caterpillar". I'm aware Caterpillar starts with C, but he turns into a butterfly which clearly starts with our special letter :) "Leo the Lightning Bug" was a really cute book, but would even better for the letter L.

 And here he is working on his number puzzle, another one of his favorite things to do!

 We did a lot for the letter C and I'm looking forward to telling you all about everything. We also celebrated the first day of fall with lots of baking with Auntie Googie! This is going to be an exciting season!

My Son's First Prayer

 

     I must begin by telling you that Jayce is a HUGE fan of the show "My Friends Tigger and Pooh". This is an old show that used to be on Disney Jr. back when it was Playhouse Disney! We started getting the movies from the library and he has fallen in love with these Super Sleuths. So, for his birthday, Grammie and PopPop gifted Jayce with Tigger, Roo, Eeyore, Piglet, and Pooh. This was indeed one of his favorite gifts and they all get hugged and played with many times throughout the day, everyday since his birthday.

 

     Tonight while shopping for furniture for our front room at local thrift stores, we found a rare treasure for our son Jayce, a little stuffed "Buster" from "My Friends Tigger and Pooh". His eyes lit up and he hugged him, running immediately to his daddy, "I can take him home?" $1.54 was a small price to pay so that Jayce could have all of his "friends" together at home.



     Now, for those of you who do not know my son, he LOVES for everyone to be together.  If we're going to see PawPaw, he wants to make sure MawMaw will be there. Going to see Aunt Susan? What about Uncle Kris, and Kristian? He always asks about the whole family and wants to make sure they're all together. He is the same way with his toys. He must have 100 dinosaurs, we could dump out 99 of them, he'd look at all of them, and say "Where's the trex?" (Or whatever one was missing.) His memory is amazing and his desire for everyone to be together is touching.

     So, after getting into the car Jayce starts to ask for Darby and Lumpy (the other two characters that he does not have yet from the show). Knowing how rare it was to find Buster, seeing as the show has been canceled for some time, I just casually said "We'll see." Well, it's not that easy with Jayce, once he gets something in his head, he will CONTINUALLY talk about it until the answer is clear. So, again, "I need to get Darby and Lumpy." So, I told Jayce "I think that's something you need to pray about Jayce because it's not going to be easy to find those toys." Well, Jayce closed his little eyes and said his first prayer (this is how it sounded) "Dear Jesus, fank you for bwinging Darby home and fank you for bwinging Flumpy home. Jesus Name Amen." It was THE sweetest little prayer. I mean, he's prayed before, but mostly just by repeating whatever Mommy and Daddy said, this was all on his own. What I loved most about it is that he didn't ASK for them, he THANKED God for them. Almost as if he was claiming that God was definitely going to give him a Darby and Lumpy. He repeated this prayer three or four more times on the way home.

     When our car pulled into the drive, Jayce started falling apart, crying and crying for Darby and Lumpy. Adam and I tried repeatedly to explain to him that it takes time for God to answer prayers. And I have never seen my son so heart broken. He cried, desperately, for quite a while and it was so hard to know that he just didn't understand. We were finally able to calm him down after a bath and a "What's in the Bible" video, but my mind kept going through the whole scene.

     For I am so often like that with God myself. First and foremost, not grateful for the rare treasures He has blessed me with already and focusing only on what I do not have. Then, after I pray for them, I wait SO impatiently wondering why God hasn't fulfilled my request yet. So, this little adventure has been a great lesson for all of us. I'm excited that Jayce has stepped out in faith and prayed to our Lord, the Giver of all good things, for his precious Darby and Lumpy, and I am also excited that Jayce must wait to see what God will do. God has spoken to me through this to show me how to pray with more faith and to wait patiently and enjoy the many treasures He has already given to me.  Also, I think I might just burst out in tears if we EVER do find a Lumpy or a Darby because I'm not sure even if we went to every store in Hampton Roads if we would ever find one!!! So, it would truly be a miracle gift from God!!

     Thank you Lord for my children. Thank you for teaching me more about You, and me, through them. You are good!!

"A" Great Start

We finally received our A Beka books in the mail and I was excited to start our formal school year. Since we moved into a new home, here a few pictures of the boy's new school room.

 We were excited when we moved in to see a room with built-in bookshelves, we knew it would make a great school room!

For the Letter A, here are some books we borrowed from the library. Jayce's favorites were "I Saw an Ant in a Parking Lot" by Joshua Prince and of course, Little Critters "Astronaut". I loved the "Fall Harvests Bringing in Food" because it was great to teach about when to plant and what happens to the seeds and lots of other fun fall stuff.

We read the "Apple Tree" poem and then made a craft.

 And we learned about Ants and how God made them orderly creatures. They all have different jobs and they all work together to make sure the colony is safe and well fed.

 We practiced (and practiced and practiced) tracing the letter A. This is not an exercise that Jayce enjoys very much, but we're keeping at it!

 Then he tried to make one on his own! He did a good job (after MUCH coaching) but there has not been a repeat occurrence. Haha, but it's okay, he'll get it soon enough.

 We used the Bible verse for the letter A from http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.net/ Jayce LOVED cutting and pasting the verse together.

 We also found "A's" outside, here's Jayce standing by one on the playground!

 And we found acorns (I had no idea we had these in our backyard) and collected them in an alligator sand mold. Both of the boys thought this was like finding buried treasure. It kept them busy for quite a while.

We ended our week with an Apple Dump Cake, very easy to make so Jayce helped with every part of it. A very yummy lesson!

 

Warrior Training

We are also starting what we call Warrior Training with Jayce (and Josiah) where every month we focus on one Godly character trait. We teach him a simple definition, we also teach him about different animals that God has created that have that characteristic, take him on field trips to places that we can learn more about that characteristic, and of course, teach him how to implement it into his life.

This month our Warrior Training Characteristic is "Orderliness"

 Daddy taught Jayce about the woodchuck and how he is orderly by the way he makes his home and how he goes potty.

Jayce is showing orderliness by cleaning up his crumbs from his afternoon snack.

 

This school year has started off wonderful but also with new challenges. We're learning how to stay focused even when Josiah is running around pulling books off the shelves or trying to color on our paper and, because of little brother, we're having to stretch out our learning throughout the day. It means abrupt stops during some lessons, and having to stop playing (which isn't always happily done) in order to pick up that lesson later in the day. But it is in these challenges that God produces character in us. It was good to start our school year off with Proverbs 15:1 "A soft answer turns away wrath." :)