our week.

Some thoughts to share and what we've been up to this week.

brother boys. love them so.
First off I wanted to share this beautiful blog post I read today. I love reading this mom's blog 71 toes. She blogs about life with her five adorable children; aged teenager to first grade. The youngest one has a rare genetic condition that can cause early blindness. Her blog is so inspiring to me and she encourages with such faith and truly is a remarkable person! Anyway this post is about her youngest daughter who is now in school.. It brought me to tears as I read it; perhaps more so as we have embarked on this school journey with caleb.  If you're interested here is the link to read her post....everyone needs a mrs. twinkle. 

On Tuesday Lucas and I arrived early to pick caleb up from pre-school (not uncommon; I like to be there at the end of the day to sit in on their closing circle time of songs and books)  I watched and was not surprised to see my sweet boy sitting alone in the sandbox as all the other kids twirled and laughed and jumped and ran all around the yard. This didn't surprise me, yet it hurt a little all the same. Mostly I'm not surprised because this is who he is; an observer. He comes home singing songs from his day and tells me about what he did. When I was little I sat alone everyday in kindergarten. This didn't bother me. (Although I know it hurt my mom's heart as she watched me alone everyday from her classroom window)  I always had my sisters to play with at home. Jenny joined me the next year and we had each other through school and year by year I slowly learned how to make friends and had some very close friends in high school who I have stayed close with to this day..  by college (still pretty shy) I wasn't nearly as shy as I was of my early school years. I feel as though my shyness has weeded out those who would not stay long to begin with and I have some truly special friends and people who have seen past my initial quietness and reached in anyway. My prayer for Caleb and all my boys is that they too will have some very special friends who will be with them along the way.

Mostly I'm just so grateful that my boys will always have each other and that they as brothers will always be best friends just as I have always had my sisters as my best friends. This is Caleb's first school experience and he's already made huge strides and I know he will continue to do so at his own pace and that's just as it should be. I'm thankful for encouragers out there and for those who love my sweet boy exactly as he is.

Letter B and fall
At school and at home we have been talking a lot about letter B, doing some fall crafts, and reading books relating to fall and letter B. For our letter B activities we did lacing, poking a B (with push pins), writing, puzzles, patterns, etc. Here are some of the activities below. I'm learning each week what Caleb's most interested in; like lacing and puzzles and art.

Leaves. we collected some leaves on a bike ride and brought them home to paint with. I started with just red and yellow but Caleb really was interested in using his favorite color green and adding in some blue too. To go along with this activity we read a couple leaf stories. Leaf Man and Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf.

 Lucas was more interested in enjoying his yogurt snack :)

Here are some Letter B / alphabet books we picked up at the library this week to read. Alphabet Rescue was really fun and colorful and lucas was really excited about the fire truck. King Bidgood's In The Bathtub is a silly and really fun one to read out loud! ( I love books with a lot of rhythm and colorful illustrations)

 We made a butterfly as one of our letter B art activities. (Caleb drew his own butterfly; I offered him a picture of a butterfly to look at since he wanted help drawing it. And he ripped up and cut some tissue paper and then wanted to use his glitter glue to put on the wings) The ripping of the tissue paper and squeezing of the glue was great fine motor practice.

 both boys really like using the glitter glue.

 

 Letter B bean activity .

 Lucas: top picture and Caleb bottom picture (lucas is really interested in drawing right now as you can see from all the swiggles in his picture) )

To go along with B we put beans on letter B. Caleb's really interested right now in talking about upper case and lower case letters. He likes saying the name (upper or lower case)  and still loves making all the letter sounds for different words he hears or for things he sees while we are driving or walking. I.e. He will say "cow...'c' 'c' 'c' (making the c sound)... c for Cow!" He still loves spelling (out loud) certain words like stop, go, his name and lucas name, etc. (This isn't something we set out to teach him it's more that he is so curious about letters right now that he is asking a lot about them so we just try and tune into his interests and nurture that) Writing letters/tracing is a fine motor skill he is still developing and usually needs more encouragement to stay with it. He gets a lot of practice at OT though and we work on it at home as well doing little bits at a time


blocks, beads, puzzles.

I pulled out some blocks and beads to work on and Caleb's been working on his caterpillar puzzles a lot this week. Both boys are really interested in puzzles right now.

From confessions of a home schooler prek letter of the week curriculum

Letter B

 This is a magnet activity (placing on circles)

 sorting sizes

 puzzle match up

 tracing

 sorting upper and lower case letters

 more tracing

lacing, poking, and my favorite one... number matching (1-10) with clothespins.

Using the clothespins to the corresponding number was great fine motor practice for Caleb and we did it on his therapy ball like he does in OT and he would reach down to get clothespins on either side and then clip them on the corresponding number.


And he wanted in on a picture ;) Sweet boy.

Our sensory bin was filled with beans this week and the boys loved scooping and pouring and making pretend food with some pumpkin/leaf/acorn jewels (from the target dollar bin)

 Just had to end with them. My sweet brother boys. Love them soo!!

Happy Weekend!!

I'll be flying to Minnesota for a wedding/reunion with my Ohana (I will be seeing my roommates who did the Vincentian Service Core in East LA with me back in 2007/08) and I am just so excited. It'll be my first time ever being a state away for two nights from my boys! But they are with daddy so they will be having plenty of fun.

disclaimer! we are just starting out on this 'homeschool' journey so I'm learning a lot and have mostly been using confessions of a homeschooler letter of the week curriculum for letters and fantastic fun and learning     for sensory and art activities. Each day I feel like I just have no idea what I'm doing but providing a little more structure to our day has been helping a lot and the boys are having fun as we take it day by day together ;)
any tips, suggestions, and/or ideas are welcome ;)