First baseball practice

Today was ben's first ever baseball practice. He loved it!! Dad and unkin and ray ray were all able to come!

He caught the ball a few times, was throwing like a champ and even hit the ball and got on base during their little scrimmage!  I must say, so far I'm liking this new phase of life! 

Ben in base!

Miss sassy watching bubba's practice!

Field day!

The first event: long distance run, they were all in for this!

Three leg race! Ben and his buddy from soccer, Luke.

Clara and her friend from church, genevra.

Frisby distance contest

Who can hula the longest? Trick question! No one in their group knew how to do it!! We are buying a hula hoop.

Wheel barrel race. They could not decide who was the wheels! This task was also beyond most of our age group. Ben and sam only made it a few feet.

Gunny sack race. Ben did this one really well and really liked it! Clara got in the sack and then wouldn't hop. I didn't get a picture because I was trying to convince her to hop!

Egg walk. Clara's forte!! She is soo careful! Ben did well with this one too, finished top ten. Only dropped his egg once! Very fun!

Waterballoon toss. This didn't last long, Ben dropped his on the first toss and Clara missed the catch on the first toss! But fun none the less.

After all the games we played a bit on the jungle gym.

We had a great time!! This was put on by a local homeschool group. We are going to join as official members in the fall, really well put together and lots of fun!! 

Nashville zoo April

We finally got to use our Christmas present! Schedules and weather lined up just so and we had a great time at the Nashville zoo! Thanks aunt muggs and Grammy!


Unkin and Ray Ray came as well as Jenny and her nephew, Stephen. Enjoy the photos!

Claraella

Clara spilled some water at dinner last Sunday. Aunt Linda gave her some paper towel to clean it up. As she wiping it up she starts singing "sing sweet nighting gale". Too cute!

GameBoy

Ben is very very into games right now. So for valentine's day I got him a little checkers set.
He loves it! And picked it much faster than I would have expected!
He even tried to teach Sissy to play!

Wow!!

So the test worked!! I am so!! Excited! I take all our pictures pretty much with my phone, now I can just do a quick upload! Though I will need to go back and fill in November, December, January, and half of February from the computer. But this is awesome!!


Pete being Pete! We were getting ready to go to the grocery. She got a purse, but she had it wrapped around her neck. I told her she couldn't take that one. Hence sad face!

Testing: 1 2 3

I just downloaded the blogger app for IPhone. I am hoping this might help me keep the blog current. This is a test run!! Fingers crossed!

School and Books

I have a personal quest to raise readers. There, I said it, OUT LOUD.  Whew! Okay, so to that end I have read books about how to develop a love or reading and books in your children. I have learned/decided that there are 3 main things that you need in a recipe to create readers. 1) Read out loud to them A LOT. Have other people read out loud to them. Even use recordings of people reading out loud! 2) Make books readily accessible to them. Every room, every situation. Books that they can touch and use and enjoy!! It also does not hurt for them to see your books and know they cannot yet touch them ;) 3) Let them see you read to yourself for shear pleasure. Yup, that is it, 3 easy steps.... Well I guess time will tell.....  So, to this end we have done some things to ramp up or book exposure. We have always read to them and they have always had access to books in their rooms. I even took Ben to the library a lot in his first couple years, but it got harder with two and I slacked off. Here is what we have done this summer/fall.

 

We returned to the library story time! That is my two front row all in! Love it!

I started reading this series to them. The book I read encourages "reading up" meaning books you think are above their level, probably are not. They certainly LOVED this one! We are currently in the second one!

 One of the fun things about starting the "Little House" series is that we did it with some friend from church who also home school and a home school group at the library. One day we made these dolls! they are not corn cob, but are corn husk! HA! The kids LOVED it!

In my effort to promote reading, and since Ben is out growing naps but Clara and I are not, I instituted the "quiet box". This is a handy little device that holds books and quite activities for Ben to occupy himself with during nap time a.k.a quiet time. The above box was a temporary, he now has a splendid blue Tupperware!

 

 

When I went searching for the exact "quiet time box" I also gathered various containers to further my book plan. The above is a magazine rack. One of these went into each bathroom, I know that will freak some people out, but it was recommended in the book I read, and it has worked quite well!

The pink passion basket below is Clara Jeanne's very own book basket. It sits by her bed and she keeps her prized books in there and each night when she goes to sleep puts whatever she has been reading into it until morning. Another LOVE!

 In addition to creating an atmosphere of books in our home I have formally started school with Ben. In the Summer we did 12 weeks of preK. We memorized basic personal information, articles of faith, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the like. I also started him with some dry erase writing tools. A book and some strips of lines.  I have done nothing formal with a writing curriculum yet because last fall when I tried him with some writing sheets he got really overwhelmed and I want this to be his idea. Now he asks about writing! Hooray! So, in January, okay realistically more like February, Anyway we will start slowly a formal writing curriculum.

 He loves this book and goes through each page nearly every day during quiet time.

 

October 1 we started Kindergarten, well actually K4. I figure starting with a 4 year old it will probably take us 2 years to really master Kindergarten, but whatever. We are not registered with the school board this year and don't have to until next year. We will determine K5 or First grade then. But this is the basic curriculum outline we are using. So far, we LOVE it. Ben digs the interesting science facts! Math is becoming part of our days, and I am finding SOOO many great things to introduce and use over the next year or two.

The first time I put the memory listening CD in for Ben this is what he did. He really does dig it!

 

This is the most important part of our curriculum and goals for this year. Learning to Read. Ben is doing great, it is hard to learn to read. You get to be 30 years old and you forget, you take for granted that when you look at a page you do not see a collection of lines and dashes and dots, or even random collections of letters, but words! And that those words have meaning. I appreciate this more now, I will never take the ability to read and learn on my own for granted again!! I figure if I can guide him through this one critical skill and give him a love for study, everything else he can learn from a book!

This is Ben's journal. We started this in October also. He feels so big to have a journal! The prophets say to start them young doing this, so we are. It also will serve as a good progress record for our home school portfolio.

 He rights nearly daily. I date the page and write what he is drawing a picture of, he tells me what to write. He does a page about the scriptures we read that day...

 One about the chapter in our book we read....

 And a free page about whatever is on his mind.... This one is the four of us!

 This one was an exercise we did together to help him remember "the" as a sight word. It helped.

 Here is some success from my book campaign:

 This table used to have a fish tank on it. It was usually empty. I decided there needed to be kids books here. Therefore, this is now where our library books live from week to week.

 They often ask me to read to them about Pa while they are eating. Warms my heart!

Books even find their way into the toy room. Clara will often "read" to her dollies during "tea" or to Bubba while he builds trains. I love hearing her little voice!

 Clara's book collection. I pity the fool that messes with a book in that basket! When she is done with it she will put it back on the shelf, until then it is hands off!

Finally this is the shelf in their room. I lowered all the shelves last week so that they can reach all the books, even the soft covered page books. We rarely have an incident of book destruction. They earned this privilege!

 Some other things we do in school....

We are picking our sign language back up. It is fun and they really seem to like to use it.

I made these flashcards for Clara, Ben felt the need to arrange them! Ha! Never a dull moment! 

 I expect there will be a lot of Homeschooling related posts as we go along. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do!