I've been using bath time to help teach the kids their writing skills. I use foaming soap and cover the walls of the shower for the kids to write. They will spend tons of time writing and erasing letters, numbers, shapes and drawings. Devlyn is showing an interest in writing his name but only during tub time. I couldn't get him interested in writing at all. He said it was no fun so I had to come up with a better way for him. I think he thought it was no fun because Trysten kept correcting him when we wrote on paper. In the tub, Trysten is too busy drawing on his side to be concerned about Devlyn being 'wrong.' Devlyn is just learning how to connect lines to make 'things' so as expected, his letters are a little 'off'. Trysten doesn't understand that Devlyn is a year younger so he needs time to learn just like Trysten had to learn and he picks at what Devlyn does. I have to separate them for now when it comes to certain types of things so Devlyn doesn't get discouraged. Devlyn and I work more on those 'harder' things when Trysten goes to Grandma's house. [More]

Well, home schooling came much earlier for Trysten than originally planned. We went Thursday to his Meet The Teacher night to find out who his teachers would be and to make sure everything was setup for him to start school. We were misled by everyone at the school so today when we took him in for his first day, they turned us away saying we had to fill out enrollment paperwork. We received that paperwork in the mail and sent it in with copies of his birth cert, proof of residency, and other stuff. At the time, we thought how stupid it was to have to provide copies of all the stuff again since he was only transferring within the district and they already had copies of all his stuff. But, we sent it in anyways and just thought they are too dumb to realize he’s coming from their preschool and were treating him as a first time student. We had various run ins over the phone with very rude front desk staff in the past so this run in was just like the rest. I was also very ticked that all the paperwork they tried to hand to me was in Spanish which last I checked was against state law. When they attempted to hand me the paperwork, I just said ‘Don’t bother. I will home school him before he goes to this school’ and walked out. I told Trysten quite loudly that he will never have to attend this horrid school and I was sorry for making him get up early for this waste of time. Oh, and another thing that got under my skin was his bus route. He is 5 years old and they want him on the bus at 6:25 but school doesn’t start until 7:55. He would be on the bus, bored out of his mind, for 90 minutes. That is like an eternity for him and he would either fall asleep and be a grouch when they woke him up or he would become super hyper and want to run around the bus. Either way, he would be a bear for them and I’d hear about it over and over again from them. [More]

It's back to school time all over the place and deals are abundant on everything related to school. We picked up some workbooks for the kids to take along with them when we're out and about. The boys each got new backpacks, new pencil cases, sharpeners, markers, pencils, colored pencils and more. [More]

Here fonts that I have used or plan to use for the kids school activities. I'll update this as I create more. [More]

Can be printed and traced once or printed to be reused as described here. [More]

When Trysten was enrolled in a public special needs preschool, his teacher sent reports home to every parent with the activities the child did that day. Typically, this would be time consuming and expensive to print out this report daily. However, the teacher used a very brilliant method to make it less consuming and expensive by ONLY 1 sheet of paper per child. You might think "How did she reuse the same paper over and over without ruining it?" Simple. She used page protectors and dry erase markers. I thought the idea was brilliant and could be applied to so many other worksheet type things that young children will need. [More]

I reorganized their school area to make it easier to keep up with their activities and to keep track of what they do. First, I setup both art tables for the kids and gathered all their art supplies near the table. Above each table, I put up a paper size magnetic dry erase board for them to use. Next to the art table, I put the kid's bookcase with all of their books. I gathered most of their toys and organized them into a few different storage areas. We are working at getting their entertainment area in order where their computer, tv and video games will all be located. [More]

Subway contest turns down home schooled children in their recent writing contest with their official contest rules stating "Contest is open only to legal residents of the Untied (sic) States who are currently over the age of 18 and have children who attend elementary, private or parochial schools that serve grades PreK-6. No home schools will be accepted." As a parent of a home schooled preschooler, I find this strange. Scripps National Spelling Bee contest winner was a home schooled child and other contest winners have been home schoolers. I agree with many of the comments I have read about how simple it would have been to include home schoolers. In fact, as one parent mentioned, it would have been great media for Subway and home school if the winner was a home schooled child who donated the equipment to a charity, school, or park. [More]

The boys are really good at identifying most of the standard colors so I thought we'd start working on the non-standard colors. I found a car colors book at http://www.earlylearningactivities.com/PDF/carcolorbook.pdf and it has some non-standard colors in it. The boys are familiar with all of the colors except beige so this would be a fun book to do with them. I printed it out and made the book. We'll do that later today. Right now, they are having 'recess' and nap time. [More]

Today, Devlyn wanted to do his nature walk so Daddy grabbed his camera and we took one of our two dogs with us on the walk. We made a circle around our home which leds us through the wash behind our house. [More]

Devlyn loves to walk so I thought when the animals are out more frequently, Daddy could take Devlyn out for a nature walk. I thought afterwards, Devlyn and I could make a book from his nature walk. Daddy could take pictures of everything they see. We'll put the picture in the book and then look up info on the plant or animal he found. [More]

Today we reviewed colors, shapes and learned some new social skills.

Devlyn surprises me with how many colors he can name. He even puts light or dark in front of colors if the marker/crayon/image is lighter or darker than the standard color. We haven't really concentrated on shapes so he knows quite a few for not really "teaching" them. [More]

Angi (mom) is the primary teacher, author of the blog, and Tim (dad) assists with certain subject and fills in when needed. Grandma (Angi's mom) watches the boys 4 days a week for about 4 hours and assists with homeschooling when needed.

Here's a little about the kids... [More]