School- Our First 3 Weeks

We have completed three weeks already! Yay! It is so fun to watch your children learn. I think Jonah even enjoys having more one-on-one attention from me. It's funny, but I genuinely believe he has become more affectionate toward me and he says "I love you" out of the blue more than ever. This is going to sound crazy, but even as a toddler, he was never lovey-dovey, he didn't like hugs and kisses from anyone, not even me. At bedtime I'd feel awkward even, just trying to give him a kiss on the forehead because it seemed like there was a wall there, a weird vibe he put out and I knew he didn't want hugs and kisses. I thought something was wrong with me, but as he grew, I realized he just wasn't the affectionate kind. I always still hugged him and gave him smooches on the cheek no matter what, but it was obvious he didn't like it. Thankfully, Nathan has more than made up for that. He'd make out with me if I let him! Ha ha!

It was actually so bad that last Christmas Jonah asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I told him all I wanted was a hug and kiss from him! He balked all day and Raymond actually had to tell him to do it before he went to bed that night. :s Yeah, it made me feel like a million bucks. :sigh: But something has happened in these short three weeks. Now he's giving me hugs and snuggling on my arm while I read to him. Was I missing something for the last almost six years he's been here? I have no idea, but I'll take it.

Anyway, that was a much longer tangent than I intended...

I must confess though, after our great first day, the second day was not as fun and exciting for Jonah. Then Wednesday, before our third day even started, Raymond woke up the boys and told them to get ready. Jonah was a grouch and Raymond asked him what was going on. "I don't want to do homeschooling anymore!" was the answer. After Raymond told me that, all I could think was, Oh my word, I have a very, very, very long year ahead of me. I think it was just the newness of our routine, it was rather a shock for all of us. The next couple days were better and so far he has not complained like that again. Thank You, Lord! All Mamas need grace, but I think I'll need an extra portion now.

On Monday we decided to celebrate "Not" Back To School and so instead of staying home and doing schoolwork, we went to a local museum and met up with friends. It was really nice and we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

Our group of kids!

Then we all went to a pizza place for lunch. It was such a fun day!
Jonah is learning to read and it is really cute to hear him sound out words and read simple sentences. I kept saying I would work with him over the summer so he'd already be reading a little but I never did. He has picked it up quickly though and I really hope and pray he learns to love to read and wants to devour books on his own.

He hates handwriting. I think that is more of a boy thing. But he has even said that he wants to write better so I keep encouraging him and telling him all he has to do is practice and it will become easier. I hope he at least learns to tolerate it, ha ha.

He's already been decent at math. We're still doing easy lessons and mostly review so far, but we're sometimes doubling up on lessons and he has not complained or seemed bored with how easy it is. His lessons have also required learning to write numbers, which he does need to practice. Hopefully math will come easy to him for a very long time!

I wanted to have some read-aloud time where I read to the kids. I chose "James and the Giant Peach", but I wasn't sure how well Jonah would follow along since I had never read a longer story like that to them before where we had to break it up and read a little each day. I was pleased when we started the book and he seemed really interested in the story. He asked me to keep reading a lot longer than I thought he would. We finished the book in a week and a half and we rented the movie from Netflix. I was rather disappointed that the movie version is quite different from the book (aren't they all?) and I will never understand why movies will completely omit scenes and add totally different ones when the book version was interesting enough! Jonah however loved the movie and has watched it about 5 times already.

Going along with our story, I decided to make it a little bit like a unit study. We read the book, watched the movie, read up in a book on insects we already had to confirm little facts we read about in our story. Things like how short-horned grasshoppers have their "ears" on the sides of their body, while the long-horned grasshopper and crickets have their "ears" on their front legs. That added some Science to our studies. I found a really cute craft idea online. I love the Internet! We made our peach today.

It's okay to have the TV on when we're doing a craft, right?!

It felt like I cut up a million pieces of tissue paper...

Nathan's is on the left, Jonah's is on the right.
To wrap up our "James and the Giant Peach" story, the boys helped me make a peach dessert this afternoon. I took a bunch of photos to document it.

Three easy ingredients is all you need to make this dessert- a stick of butter (I used slightly less since I had a stick with only a tablespoon or so already used up), a large can of peaches in syrup, and a box of yellow cake mix. (I only used half the cake mix because I didn't want a huge pan of it and I like it really moist!) It is my kind of dessert, simple and easy. I am not one to spend a lot of time in the kitchen...

Taste testing the dry cake mix that had spilled on the table.


And yes, Nathan is quite often found without a shirt on... I can't keep clothes on him still!



The best part about it is, you can rest easy when the kids want to taste the batter in the bowl because there are no eggs!
I caught Nathan licking the table multiple times but he was too quick for my camera.

Our finished product!We let it cool for a bit and then served it with vanilla ice cream. We only ate a little so there is plenty more for when Daddy comes home later.
Nathan immediately cried when I scooped the peaches onto his plate. "I don't LIKE peaches!!"
He ate around the one lonely peach slice I left on his plate and cried again when I asked him to try it. It went in the trash. Ugh!

I think unit studies can be really fun, but they are time consuming, and knowing myself I'd be sick of a certain topic if we used it to teach every subject. But that's the beauty of homeschooling, you can pick and choose based on your likes and interests!

Well, that's a glimpse of what we've been up to lately! I have barely cooked all week because I've been so tired. On top of homeschooling we've been busy running around doing various things. My house is not exceptionally clean at the moment either, but we have been learning. =)