Friday, August 30, 2013

SUPER DAD!

I've got to hand it to Chad.  He is SUPER DAD.  He is SOOOO good about taking the kids outside to play.  If it were up to me, we would only go outside when its in the 70s.

Chad takes them out at all times and temperatures.

I hear the lawn mower.

Strange. 

Our grass doesn't need mowed.

Then I see this.....


This is probably a 10-15 year old lawn mower that we 'borrow' from Papa Hoyt.

It has 3 people on it.

Going S-L-O-W......





What's he doing in the field?




Here's a good one.
























I'm not real sure what they're doing, but the kids are loving it.

Super Dad!

My Father-In-Law

I'm pretty sure this is how my father-in-law gets business done now that there are no boys on the farm!!!!





Love Ya Papa Gary!

Thursday, August 29, 2013

I mean SERIOUSLY.....

As I was going through my emails, I came across this Groupon.

I've got some AWESOME Groupons in the past, but this..........













Yeah right. 

And notice they didn't even offer a Dog Toilet-Training System.  Can you imagine Zoey doing this/?

Ummmmmm........no.

What has this world come to?

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Big Brothers, Smells, and Frogs

Daddy was outside mowing today.  He said the other day he said there were a ton of baby frogs, but today he was actually able to catch one!




Look at it's feet!  You can see the webbing and stuff!

I ran inside to find Macey.  (Josh was already on the porch looking at it.)  I couldn't find her! 

I noticed Josh's door was shut, so I opened it.  The lights were off and no Macey.  I yelled for her again, but no Macey.  Then I heard a muffled sound.  It was coming from Josh's closet.  MACEY!  I knew EXACTLY what happened.  Josh has a horrible habit of locking her in places.  You see-she can't open doors yet.  Mean big brother.

So I took her outside to see it.  

Chad was very kind to it.  I know it's just a frog, but he's setting an example of how we treat animals.  Not only animals, but everything God created.  It may be just a frog to us, but to God, he even cares about the frogs!  (Okay, I know He said something about a sparrow, but the gist is small stuff.)

The frog didn't look so happy, but the kids were thrilled!

Josh ran to put on his boots.  


Daddy walked over to put it back.



Josh ran over with shorts on and boots.  Yes, those boots are snow boots.  But....they're boots.

He was looking for the rest of the Frog Family.

As we were over looking for the Frog Family, I said to Chad, "Man it stinks over here!"  I thought it was the trash can wafting over.  Then I got a wiff of Macey.  Yep, that explained it.  "DIAPER CHANGE ON ISLE 6!"


But she was happy to see the frog 'ribbit'.  It hopped away!

















It was something small, but I guarantee you the kids will remember it.  

For a while at least!!!

Monday, August 12, 2013

Counting Game

Remember how in the last post I said I'd been having to get creative in teaching Josh?  Well, thanks to Pinterest, which led me on a goose chase to a great website, I made up this counting game!


It's a piece of colorful scrapbook paper with AWESOME shiny dinosaur stickers.  Place as many as your child is learning to count.  (Josh can currently count to 12 with no problem, but has trouble after that.)  So, I thought we'd aim for 20.  Then I got small wooden cubes and made one into a dice.  I debated back and forth on just using a dice, but I wanted him to learn to count higher than 6 or 9.  And....my thought was if I bought a bag of more than one cube, then I could switch up the numbers!  Then you have to have counters.  We're using some colored foam shapes that I found at Michaels.  You roll the dice, then place that many on each dinosaur.  So.....if you roll an 8, then you cover 8 dinosaurs with the shapes.  (Practicing number identification, one-to-one correspondance, and counting.)  I know that Josh has trouble counting to 13, so that was definitely a number on the cube.  I also included the number 0 because some kids don't understand that means NOTHING.  Then the other numbers are smaller numbers that I know he knows, such as 8, 3, 2, and 4.

We started to play the game and he was actually interested.
























OK.  I got a little hopeful.

He wanted to keep playing.



Getting a little more excited.  Rolled a 13.  He was actually willing to tackle that number WITH me without too much encouraging!  Getting more excited.....


And then he was REALLY excited!  So I got REALLY EXCITED!  He wanted to keep playing even tough I had to go shower.  He WANTED TO LEARN!  He wanted help with the number 13!  He wasn't giving up! 



VICTORY!

WHO'S YO MAMA! 

YIPEE!!!

Homeschool......Sort Of

OK.  I am an educator by trade.  I have a bachelors and a Masters degree in Education.  (Toying with the idea of a Doctorate, but that's after we win the lottery.  Have you seen how much those things cost?!?!?)  I am all of the above, but in no way am I cut out to be a Homeschool Mama!  I try to teach Josh things, but most of what Josh has learned has come by 'accident'.  Now...those 'accidents' may or may not be planned by Me.  What I mean is, Josh does NOT do well just sitting down and learning.  Some would say that is to be expected-he's only 4.  That being said.....most of what he has learned I have snuck into his life.  Some examples:

Super Why - This is a reading show on PBS.  It has letter identification, the alphabet song, letter sounds, blending sounds together to form words and some rhyming!  Hmmmmm wonder how the TV always know to go to Channel 8 when Super Why starts EACH AND EVERY MORNING!!!

Counting - We've worked on this since he was old enough to understand.  Counting how many triangles his sandwich is cut into, how many grapes he has on his plate, how many cows we see on the side of the road, how many cars he got taken away, etc. 

There are many more ways that I sneak in learning, but now I'm having to get even more creative!  Not necessarily creative, but learning needs to catch his attention and mean something to him.  (This is a MAJOR reason he knows so much about and loves dinosaurs.  Ask him!)  

I've started sitting down with him after dinner but before bath (and while Daddy takes Macey for some one-on-one time) and working with him for about 10-20 minutes.  We go as long as he lets me (frustration point) and we are currently working on numbers/counting.  (Starting with something he's really good at.)  The current book was only about $3 on amazon.com and works on things such as identifying the numeral, identifying the written number word, writing the number and counting the number as well as circling a set with that number.  They even throw in sets that aren't that number!  Here's one of the first pages he did:

















Notice at the bottom right where it says "Color 2 circles." he started to circle them.  We had to have a talk about why you need to do what it says otherwise the teacher might not think you understand or are smart!  It's hard to deny the inner instinct to just do what you want, but do do what you're told.  4 year olds struggle with that and so do 30 year olds!  It is also very hard for him to write.  Duh, I know.  So I've been trying to come up with fine motor skill practice to strengthen and train his fingers.  

Here's a page he did more recently:

















Notice how the writing of the numbers 5 are much better.  That's because I didn't want him to get so frustrated writing that his attitude tanked the rest of the lesson.  So.......I write the numbers all the way across and then he writes with a crayon on top of my numbers.  This lets him 'write' the numbers but doesn't let him get as frustrated as if he had to form the numbers on his own.  Also notice that his coloring the circles at the bottom left isn't as goosey as the before!  And he has the incredible ability to sometimes just look at the sets of objects and tell if it has the correct number.  And he's learning and perfecting the skill of one-to-one correspondence (saying one number as you count and not just counting out loud and that not matching up to the pictures.)  He is really getting good at that!  

So proud.  

Except.......that means he's getting bigger.  

Teardrop..........