Loving This Homeschool Blog!

Haven't posted in quite awhile (to be exact almost 3 months), but we had our third baby girl the day after my last post on October 5!! Needless to say, with 3 young girls, life is busy! But I had to make a quick post to up my chances of this great giveaway on this blog. Check it out:

http://www.hsclassroom.net

Sensory Exercise

I came across this blog post that had sensory exercises for children with autism--exercises that help with sensory integration, kind of like "a warm up for your fingers" is how I explained it to Isabelle (she now likes to do this activity before practicing her handwriting, something that she dreads doing). I went through the house and found all sorts of small trinkets and placed them in a container filled with beans and rice. I told both girls the object was to find the trinkets and place them in their bowl but leave the beans and rice in the original container. To my surprise, Melina follows this rule better than Isabelle does.

Another exercise the above blog post mentions, is to hide beads in silly putty and them have the child find the beads as a way to strengthen their hands (I haven't been this brave yet, as I don't know how it will work with Melina, unless I do it during her nap time).

I love our backyard! Thank you, Jeff!!

I'm sure I moaned and groaned about the remodeling that went on at our house last summer (of course in my defense we did have a newborn baby), but this morning, I realized how grateful and blessed we are to have this large cement pad for the girls to play on with their toys, sandbox, playhouse (thanks, Uncle Mike), and swing set. Both girls love to be outside, and now that beautiful fall weather is upon us, they will be outside more and more.

I thank you God for these simple things in life!

Isabelle has a cold, so we took off the morning from homeschooling. Now I had to take a moment and calm my anal OCD self down (no, we didn't have to complete today's lesson--that's what homeschooling is all about after all), and we played outside, fertilized the roses in the front yard, and created a play house out of an extremely big box we had sitting in the garage (forgot to get pictures of that though). It was a great morning!

Homeschooling

We haven't "officially" started homeschooling yet for Isabelle's kindergarten year, but Sunday night I reminded Isabelle that "regular" school was starting the next day. I asked her what kind of schedule she would like to do when we started our school, and she decided she would like to homeschool after breakfast while in pj's and be dressed with hair done, teeth brushed, etc. before Jeff gets home from lunch. She wanted to start on Monday (the next day), and while we don't have her kindergarten curriculum yet, she has many workbooks to choose from, so we have maintained this schedule for 3 days now and it has worked out very well. Melina gets a little trying at times, so I will need to come up with things to occupy her with when Isabelle needs my full attention, but that will come with time (hopefully!).