School Update

14 days in to the year and we are doing better than expected. I thought that it would be much more difficult but God's grace IS SUFFICIENT! The common question I'm hearing is, "What are Ethan and Hannah doing while I'm with Andrew?" That answer varies by day. In my great big playroom that is now housing our "little schoolroom" in the corner, the kids are occupied by all their toys. I also have to think like a teacher and set up stations for playing. For example, I'll get Ethan and Hannah playing with the train table for a while, then move them to the school table with us for puzzle time, or building blocks, etc. It's keeps them occupied, content, and out of trouble.

What's THEIR favorite thing about school? Playing the kindergarten games with us. In Andrew's language arts curriculum, there's a BINGO game that is called Sound-O. You have to know the sounds of the letters to play. Also there's a Go Fish card game where you have to ask for the letters by saying their sounds first. This is making Ethan work HARD to catch up with us. It's also a great exercise for Andrew to help his little brother by telling him the answers so he can play with us. One day Ethan was playing a computer game while Andrew and I played the games, and when he discovered that he missed playing Andrew's games he actually started crying. He loves them as much as Andrew does.

Here's a fun picture of my three kids playing Sound-O this week.


Their second favorite thing is Field Trip Thursdays. We've been trying to go see some local attractions every week that ties in with our science lesson. Instead of Field Trip Thursday this week we are going to have Family Day Saturday and go to a dinosaur museum in Pigeon Forge to further talk about dinosaurs. Our fun project yesterday was to take a tape measure and sidewalk chalk and measure out the length of some dinosaurs. We drew out the 70 ft. Apatasaurus (in front of my house and my neighbors), 40 ft. Allosaurus, 23 ft. Stegasaurus, and 6 ft. Protoceratops.