Occupying Ethan

What does Ethan do while we do school? A lot of time he'll listen to whatever book we are reading. Or I'll try to get him to trace or cut paper. Those things only really happen about 30% of the time though. Shockingly when Belle is having a spelling test that she has to write on paper, he'll sit very well with his own paper and wait for me to call out a letter for him to write. I'll alternate calling a word for Belle and then calling a letter for Ethan. He does really well actually and gets most letters right. Mostly I just try to go with what he's into and right now he's into writing letters and drawing pictures, or running around and destroying everything.

Deep in thought trying to conquer the "W". Every time he'd try to write it, it would end up as an "M".

But, what do you do when your 3 yr old wants to participate in school/or play with sissy when she really needs to focus on her work alone? You get him his own Macbook. Lucky for the kids, I upgraded recently. It wasn't able to handle the load of all my files anymore and it was just showing it's overall wear. So the kids got it, it's perfect to run their games.

Ethan will play on zoodles.com (which is awesome because it is absolutely kid proof), starfall.com, and readingeggs.com (which is still a little advanced for him). He's doing all educational stuff on there so I sort of count it as preschool. Today he was playing a game where he had to find different shapes in a picture. And another he had to use some logic to try and get a ball into a pond by moving sticks around so it fell in the right way. Win Win! Now the only problem is Belle wanting to play on the computer when I need her to be doing her work. Lucky for her, she has her own readingeggs.com and zoodles account. She just discovered that she can send video email on her own through zoodles.  So Mimi may be getting daily video ramblings courtesy of Belle.

100th day of school!!

Ok, so technically I have no idea if it's the 100th day of school. I haven't been keeping track because I don't have to until Belle is 7 (or 6 if the new law passes). But I've been reading about some fun 100th day of school projects and thought we'd have our own.

A couple friends from my June 06 baby board did these tshirts for their kiddos to wear to school. It's 100 googly eyes on a tshirt and then made into a monster. Easy enough and pretty cute! We headed to Hobby Lobby and the kids picked our their tshirt colors.

When it came time to make the shirts Belle counted out 10 rows of 10 for me. She started helping me glue the eyes but then got bored. When it came time for me to do Ethan's, he helped me count maybe two rows of 10 and then was done. However when it came time to glue the eye, he probably would've done them all if I had let him. I then let the kids pick their monsters features. Belle chose fluffy fur and heart antennas. Ethan got spikey fur and circle antennas.

We started our 100th day at the dentist because the kids had cleaning appointments. Belle loves the dentist, but Ethan was not so sure. They were able to count his teeth and polish them, but once the spit vacuum came out he was done.

With their sparkly teeth we then headed to the Children's museum to check out the new Mr Potato Head exhibit. Of course that exhibit was packed, so we headed out as soon as I could get the kids going in that direction. We enjoyed the rest of the museum for a few hours before coming home.

While I started dinner the kids attempted to glue 100 cheerios to a piece of paper. Belle got maybe 50 before she gave up. Ethan gave up about the same time. It atleast bought me a few minutes peace from them.

Cheer

Belle's cheer class practicing their routine for the recital. The class is made up of girls 5-8 yrs old.

Homeschooling - The second semester

Well the start of the new year meant back to school . . . again. The holidays really did a number on our school routine. And to top it off Belle was SO not into it. I'll admit I had a lot of days where I wondered "why am I doing this?" "is this going to work?". Well and the truth is, I'm still not convinced that I'm doing the best for Belle. Will I ever know? Is that the constant question every homeschool parents has? I'll constantly think "is Belle on the same level as she would be or better, had she gone to public school?". I know homeschooling families don't hold themselves to the same standards as public school, but I feel a certain obligation since I haven't completely committed to homeschooling yet.

I've decided to start the new year off fresh and try to get back on track with school. I felt a lot of our problem was our schedule. I felt like we were constantly rushing during the week to different activities. Our activities during the week were BSF (Bible Study Fellowship), MOPS, and co-op (that won't start up til Feb). MOPS was the easiest to cut, but it was also the least time consuming. It is atleast a place to start.

When it all boils down, Belle is still doing great academically. She's struggling with reading because she doesn't like our curriculum, but I feel she's still on par with her age. We are starting to find some things that work for her. She loves Piggie and Elephant books by Mo Williams. She'll be the Elephant and I'll be Piggie and we read back and forth. She's loving a free website I discovered, Progressive Phonics. Again, where she doesn't have to read the whole thing and I read a portion. I think she was just getting overwhelmed by the volume of words on a page that she was being asked to read.

Handwriting is another struggle of ours. What would seem to be an easy activity is usually met with many groans and fits. And really I think she has pretty decent handwriting for a 5 year old, so I don't usually ask too much of her.

Ethan is starting to be a more willing participant in school. He's usually pretty willing to trace anything. Or sit for a story and participate in any sort of craft that we may be doing. I've been considering some school purchases for him, but haven't decided if it's worth the money yet. But one thing I have learned, is that I'll pay the money if it makes the job of teaching easier.

All in all with my ups and downs, I've chosen peace. BSF was great this week. It was our first week back after Christmas and some of the things that were touched on this week hit home and was comforting. It was said that we can easily question God's will when we hit a rough patch.

So I'm going to choose peace in my decision. I was so certain that God lead me to homeschooling and I can't immediately question God's will during every rough patch. So we'll soldier on with Kindergarten. I'll continue to pray for God's leading when it comes to first grade. =)

And if you've read this far, pat yourself on the back. This has got to be my longest post to date.

Nerf guns and blankets

This year is the year of the nerf guns. Nic and the kids have had many nerf gun wars since Christmas. I'm not sure who enjoys it more, Nic or the kids. =)

Last Sunday I had the idea to buy one of those no sew fleece blankets. I've tried in vain to get Belle to even try to learn to tie her shoes. Frankly her fine motor skills were just not there. So I got the blanket thinking we could try to learn to at least tie knots. And knew there could be potential for much whining. I told Belle that we'd work on it til she could tie the knots and that I was not going to do it all for her.

Well she'd try and fail, try and fail. We'd sit it down for awhile and then pick it back up. Finally late that night she finally got it. We got about half of the blanket done together. And then the first thing she wanted to do when she woke up was finish her blanket. I was super proud of her for figuring it out.

I didn't plan it that way, but we were able to apply the character trait we were learning about that week . . .diligence. And now Belle knows how to atleast complete the first step in tying her shoes.

Our January trip to the zoo

It is unusually warm today. All week I had told the kids we'd go to the zoo if they did school without complaint. I had only agreed to the ocean building, but we got lucky and it was unseasonably warm.

It was so nice to have the whole zoo to ourselves basically. There were very few people at the zoo today. Some animals were missing, like those in the Plains exhibit, but there was still plenty to see. The kids even got un up close encounter with the tiger. I just love the new glass enclosures. Its so nice to see the animals just inches away.

Kid free New Years Eve

The Killingbecks and us both ended up kid free for New Years, so we had a nice day of kid-free fun. Jamie and I decided we'd go ice skating, the guys of course had to fit in some shooting as well. So we headed to Atterbury for some trap shooting. I hit all of 2 birds out of 25. I'm pretty rusty.

Afterwards we headed downtown for some ice skating. While it's safe to say Nic kicked my butt at shooting, I totally kicked his at ice skating. And I think we all realized that ice skating is a pretty decent workout.

We finished up with dinner downtown and then on the way back we stopped at Rascal's for some go-karts and video games. Then we went home and the boys had a nerf gun fight. Who knew the nerf guns would be as popular if not more so with the big kids this year.

It was a fun New Years! Looking forward to seeing what 2012 has in store for us.

Ethan is such a sport!

Ethan was such a good sport to let his sissy put makeup on him. Belle had gotten some play eye shadow for Christmas and was applying it all over Ethan's face. Nic walked by and said "great, now I'm going to have to take that boy out and have him kill something".

The kids generally get along so well. Ethan is just as happy to play with makeup as Belle is to play Dragons or trucks with Ethan. It's a good trade.

Christmas 2011

Sunday morning Belle woke up early because her ear hurt. And then she remembered it was Christmas, so there was no going back to bed. I made her stay in her room for a little bit, but we ended up waking Ethan so we could do presents. After presents we watched our church service on the computer and then proceeded to clean up the house before Mimi and Poppy came. Thankfully both kids actually took naps before Christmas round two.

The kids loved all their gifts. They got so many that a lot probably won't even be played with for awhile. They are two very lucky kids. Spoiled rotten.

Christmas 2011

Well before we headed to Ohio, Belle started complaining about her ear. Great, another ear infection. Since Ethan was on ear drops for his ear infection I just gave them to Belle as well, to get through the weekend. Then guess what, I woke up Saturday with an ear infection myself. I was too much a baby to try and make it through Christmas so I went to urgent care. I have much more sympathy for what the kids go through with all their ear infections.

We added a new member to the family this Christmas (not our immediate family). Miss Gemma joined the Hoke family. Could she be any cuter? She is a Goldendoodle. I told Nic I want our next dog to be a "doodle" because I love that she does not shed. Nic refuses to pay that much money for one. We'll see though.

Friday night we had our gift exchange with Brody and Cooper. Look at the face Belle give us now when we ask for a smile. I don't know what she thinks she's doing. =) The kids loved all their gifts and we learned that Cooper LOVES John Deere. If the video works, watch Cooper as he watches Brody open his gift. Immediately following the video he had a meltdown.

Saturday we hung around the house and made food and then later made our way to another family get together. And once again the kids were spoiled with presents before we made our way home for Christmas.