Puddle Jumping

Earlier this week we got lots of rain and the boys took full advantage of the water that had collected on our street. Are they not the cutest puddle jumpers you've ever seen?

See-Saw

A couple of weeks ago James helped his Mammy and Papa put together a see-saw. We later found out that the see-saw was going to come live at our house. Whoo hoo! We like getting new toys.

Weekly Randoms

I've got some super cute pictures from this week and I just love being able to look back over all we've done. One night I took the boys and Terrance's friend, Andrew, to McDonalds to play and eat. Terrance and Andrew spent the majority of the time making swords out of straws and having sword fights. They certainly had everyone in the play area watching. It was hilarious!

 James loves to play with the toys at Target and always puts on every mask. We ended up finding two masks on sale for 50% off that we snuck in the buggy and bought for Terrance's birthday. He may be turning 13 in a month, but he still loves playing dress up and I love a bargain.

 It's that time of year again where the whole neighborhood realizes that I neglect our yard. I've been hard at work pulling weeds, watering, and trying to help things look better, but this big belly doesn't make it easy on me. Thankfully I have helpers.

 Bath time fun!

 These boys happened to be snooping around in Mammy's garden shed and found two pairs of roller skates just perfect for them. They asked to bring them home and have been skating around the house all week. Aren't they adorable?

Hope you've had a great week with your family. 

Weekly Learnings

Our week has been full of learning and even our littlest guy has gotten involved. We brought out the exersaucer for him this past week and he loves it. This boy is growing too fast!

 I've added handwriting to the boys daily schedule instead of just a couple of times a week. James and Remi are so far ahead academically that most of their work is now asking for them to write answers. Therefore we've got to get these letters mastered and our wipe off boards from Lakeshore are so perfect for that. I have the uppercase and lowercase wipe off books and I'm planning to go get the number book as soon as I'm over that direction.

 Both boys are still doing "Words Their Way" for their spelling curriculum and it's working miracles. Terrance does it, too and I just love the results. Here's Remi pointing to and reading his words out loud.

 After a week or two of practicing his words he gets to glue them down next to their matching picture. This is the last step before he takes his spelling test (which we call spell check). If he can write, read, and build all his words he can move on to a new list. He just finished the "short a" family words.

 Their writing journals (which we now call draftbooks) continue to blow me away, too. This is Remi's story about catching a fish on his camping trip. I write in the words under what he has written. You can see that he does all the beginning sounds and even has some words spelled correctly. I underlined all his words that included all the sounds.

On, he, and big are spelled with all the sounds. Impressive!

 This is James' story about helping Mammy and Papa build a seesaw for our backyard. He also has tons of words spelled correctly and is already putting beginning, middle and end sounds in most every word. CRAZY!!!

 I circled all his words that are spelled correctly: the, and, we, on, legs, then, got, up.

 I loved his illustrations so I included two of his pages on here. This is his picture of him and Mammy and Papa. His people are a bit alien like, but I've long known that art is not his thing.

 Here's his little seesaw with the legs put on. The cute thing is that on every other page the seesaw looks just like this but with added elements. He's starting to really understand that your picture should match your words.

You will never hear me say that I like writing. It is by far the hardest most challenging subject for me to teach. It takes time, patience, and diligence and is not independent work. However, it is the subject that I can see the most growth with all these boys. Terrance has grown leaps and bonds in writing and I also do draftbook with him. I will never by a writing curriculum because I believe whole heartedly in the draftbook. Love it!

My Third Arm

 I'm feeling overwhelmed with gratitude today for Terrance. People that know me well know that I call Terrance my "third arm". I honestly, honestly, honestly, cannot imagine life without him. He is kind, thoughtful, helpful, fun, and most importantly my friend.

 When he joined our family 9 months ago I knew I would love him. I knew I would cherish him. But I did not know I would enjoy the absolute socks off of him. There are moments in our day when I have to stop and "parent" him because let's face it, he's 12. But for the majority of the time he is practically perfect in every way.

He has been a huge influence on James and has brought our shy little man completely out of his shell. James adores his every breath and Terrance is completely patient with him and all his 4 year old behaviors. I'm convinced these boys are bonded and attached just as strongly as if they had spent their whole lives together. No one in this world could have been better for James than Terrance. And I don't think anything could have been better for Terrance than him being given the chance to be a big brother. He's wonderful at it!

 

If I were to add up the time Terrance and I spend talking each day it would most certainly equal more than 2 hours. At night when I put James to bed, Terrance and I sit on the couch and talk. We talk about real things. We talk about fantasy things. We talk about school, life, marriage, Jesus, friendships, our plans for the next day, etc. He truly has become my friend and my son and I'm amazed at the way our relationship has unfolded.

 

We are fast approaching the "one year" mark on knowing Terrance and Jeremy and I both would agree that if given the opportunity to change this past year we would not change anything! In fact, we would pay a lot of money to have the life we have now vs. the life we had without Terrance. He's a treasure! Come 9:00 tonight I may be drowsily begging for him to retire to his room and I might forget all these kind things I've said about him, but deep down in my soul I know that he is a gift and I could not be more thankful to my Lord for giving him to me.



Weekly Learnings

We've been hard at work lately so I thought I'd catch you up on some of the things we've been doing during our school time. The boys are flying through all kinds of math concepts right now. One of which is simple addition. They love taking the dominos and writing number sentences with them.

 Ordering numbers has been another thing they've been working on. James tackled all the numbers 0-100 and ordered them in rows of tens the other day and floored me with his ability to understand how numbers work. This is just one benefit I've seen from using the 100's chart during math time.

 Remi knows how to use the 100's chart for everything. He can easily find numbers on there and is beginning to notice patterns. Skip counting is in his near future.

 Here he is ordering his numbers to 20.

More ordering practice. This time he used strips of paper and number squares and ordered numbers from 16-30. Once a child can master 1-20 it's smooth sailing all the way up to 100.

 We've still been adding to our pond. The boys did figure eight dragonfly wings the other day to glue on to their dragonflies.

 Here's James' adorable duck he made for our pond.  

 How the pond looks today. Don't laugh at my clumps of rocks on the edge. My rocks are bigger than most of our animals. Ha!

 Aren't their ducks adorable? And down at the bottom is Sullivan's frog. Yes, 3 month olds can paint, too!

 This is the timeline that I am so proud of. Every day Terrance reads a Bible story and is going through the Bible in chronological order and then briefly describes what happened on his timeline. He's up to entry number 37 now and is into Jesus' life and teachings. It's been a fabulous way to watch how God has worked through his people all the way from the beginning of time.  I just love how much he's learning and could not be more thankful to have him home with me during the day. He's changing and growing and it's so wonderful to watch.

 Here's the sensory tub that's out right now. I had these construction toys left over from James' party and so I put them in with their beans so they can make construction scenes. Sensory tubs are always a hit, but I love it most when pretend play and new vocabulary can flow out as well.

I haven't been documenting school as well as I used to. Mainly because we are in to more of a curriculum now and it's a little boring to post their daily work, but I've already planned through next week and should have some interesting things to post soon. Happy Learning!

Big Brothers Make Everything More Fun!

There on many children in this world that have a blow up pool. However, there aren't many children in this world that have a blow up pool and Terrance as an older brother. Terrance has a delightful way of making EVERYTHING more fun.

 

We blew up this pool Sunday afternoon and the boys spent hours playing with it and each other. Such happy times these two have together.

 Adam enjoyed his time outside, too. He's 24 weeks old and kicking away.

 The boys used this floaty as their goggles.

This is going to be the most fun summer EVER!!!