E is for Eyebright and Elizabeth Ann Seton

Here's how our "E" week looked:

Monday
P.E. - Brian - t-ball
Religion - Talked about St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and colored her coloring page
Literature - Read E is for Eyebright in Along the Alphabet Path
Explode the Code -completed a couple of pages

Tuesday
Reading - Discussed different words that start with the letter "E" colored a book of "E" words
Religion - Brian attended CCD - learned about the seasons

Wednesday
See "And E is for Emma"

Thursday
See "And E is for Emma"

Friday
Made an egg word wheel with different "E" words
Looked for more "e" words - including words that contain an "e" also

Saturday - yes we did school on Saturday since we went to Disney a couple days this week :-)
Math - Cuisinairre Rods Letter E pages
Poetry - Learned the Eyebright Fairy song
Explode the Code - worked on 2 pages
Music - Early Music - discussed what Early Music is, listened to some examples and talked about Bach and Vivaldi

And E is for Emma

When I was a teacher, before Brian was born, I became friends with Joelle. She and I taught together, went through our first pregnancies together and delivered within 16 days of each other. Despite the distance, when she moved to PA, and when we eventually moved to FL, we have remained close friends. We share the same values and are even homeschooling our children together - just 1000 miles apart! E week saw us take a break from our studies for a couple of afternoons to meet up with our friends Abby, Emma and Baby Ian.
So when I heard that Joelle and the family were going to be in Orlando, I just knew we had to take advantage of this opportunity to get our kids together.

I'd like to say we went to Epcot to go along with "E" week, but we didn't. On Wednesday we met up at Disney Hollywood for some Disney fun. We began our adventure at Playhouse Disney where "Casey" introduced us to his friends, Mickey, Minnie, Daisy, Donald and Goofy.
Colin loved pointing out "Mouse" every time he saw either Mickey, Minnie, or mouse ears - which are plentiful at Disney as you might imagine!
Sean, taking in the "city" scene. There were a number of cool visual effect (ooh, look - an "E" word!) sets around Disney Hollywood.
Normally Brian, and even Colin, are freaked out by the characters at Disney - but not by Lighting McQueen and Mater! This time Sean was not so excited (see, another "E" word!) about meeting these characters.
We went into the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground. Everything in the playground was larger than normal so it gave the effect ("E" word) of being small. Brian and Abby loved playing by the big Play-Doh, because it would shoot out water at them!
Then we tried to find a place to eat (another "E" word - see we were still learning!). We stopped by the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater, but they were booked for the rest of the night (by 6 p.m. nonetheless). We had to get a photo op in the old-time car outside before we headed to the ABC Commissary.
We ended our evening in front of Mickey's Fantasia hat and were counting down the hours until we met again on Thursday.
Thursday afternoon we met up with our friends at their resort, Shades of Green. We parked the car and waited to take the bus over to Magic Kingdom. The kids ran around while waiting.
Once we got dropped off we got one more picture of kids (except the littlest guys). It was a good thing I got this picture since a couple hours later 3 of these 4 children were covered in chocolate ice cream!
We headed over to AdventureLand where we took a magic carpet ride.
Afterwards we headed over to the Enchanted ("E" word!) Tiki Room where Emma spent the entire show in her mom's arms - she's not a big fan of "mean" characters, and all of the loud noise scared her. We met up with Joelle's husband, Brad and headed out to Mickey's Toontown Fair where Brian, Sean & Emma rode Goofy's Barnstormer not once but twice - Abby went the first time around, but decided she didn't want to go on it again. This is how I left Colin when I went to take the bigger kids on the roller coaster. Can you say tired little man?
After a fun day at the park, we made our way to the special seating area to get ready to watch the fireworks. We had some time to kill, so the kids hammed it up.

It's kind of hard to tell, but that swishy-swirly light on the right side of this picture was Tinkerbell as she flew from Cinderella's castle right over our heads. I told you these were special seats!We watched an amazing fireworks display set to Disney music. We oohed and aahed at the light show that took place over our heads.
At the end of the night we said good-night to Mickey and good-bye to our friends. Abby and Emma skipped over the letter "E" week and did the letter "F" for Florida. Maybe we can go see them when we study "P" for Pennsylvania!

C Week

This week we begin cruising down the Alphabet Path with the letter "C". Here's what we will be accomplishing this week.

Monday -
T-Ball/Playground
Talked about "cat" care
Did "construction" puzzle
Read Caps for Sale, The Mouse, The Cat & Grandmother's Hat, The Carrot Seed, and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Tuesday
Religion - read Sunday's gospel and discuss word of the week "eternal" - talk about their ideas of heaven
Math - Cuisinaire Rods Alphabet Activities for Letter C
Along the Alphabet Path - Read C is for Columbine and An Alphabet of Catholic Saints (St. Cecilia), and our faith activities
Handwriting & Phonics - Explode the Code pages, HWOT posture & grip
American History - read pages 21-25

Wednesday
Religion - read about St. Peter Claver, read Sunday's Gospel, prepare for Sunday's Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross - color vestments red, read the 1st reading and have kids illustrate what they hear
Math - Gnomes & Gnumbers Roman Numerals
Along the Alphabet Path - Language - play "c" games (find the "c", what starts with the letter "c", , make "c" collage, have a crawling contest
Handwriting & Phonics - Explode the code pages, HWOT wood pieces
Fine Arts - C is for Conductors - color a picture of a conductor, watch conductors conduct online, and practice conducting to music
American History - read pages 26-30, do activity from If You Lived in Colonial Times

Thursday
Religion - Talk about St. John Chysotom's name, make a symbol for him, read Sunday's Gospel, make crosses and narrate to mom a prayer of thanks for everything Christ has done.
Math - Cuisenaire Rods - page 9, Building & Storytelling with the Rods
Along the Alphabet Path - Nature study - look at/color pictures of columbine flower, make cloud pictures with cotton balls
Handwriting & Phonics - Explode the Code pages, HWOT letter "F"
Fine Arts - C is for Conductors - read about and listen to Beethoven music
Science - read about creeks and pond, look at/color animals that live in creeks and ponds

Friday
Religion - read Sunday's Gospel, learn the "We adore you..." prayer
Math - Cuisenaire Rods - page 12 Follow the Leader
Along the Alphabet Path - Art - color the Columbine Fairy, read and look at "C" art in Museum ABC book
Handwriting & Phonics - Explode the Code pages, HWOT letter "F"
Fine Arts - C is for Color - read about Matisse, color wheel (primary & complimentary color), make a Matisse-like painting with hands, use the Crayola pages for color study

History Comes to Life

I am really enjoying watching Liberty's Kids with the boys. They are running around saying "The Regulars are coming! The Regulars are coming!"

My dear friend (and Twin Star - if you're a Theta you know what I mean), Cathy whom I just reconnected with on Facebook, pointed me in the direction of Schoolhouse Rock for some educational fun. And with flashbacks to my youth to boot!

Kindergarten - Day 5

To see what Brian, Sean & Colin did on their 5th day of school, check out their substitute teacher's blog.

ETA: Here's a video of Brian and Sean singing the Apple Blossom Fairy song.

Kindergarten - Day 4

As I wrote about last week, Chris' car is out of commission, so we started our morning out by taking Daddy to work. After a quick run through Dunkin' Donuts I took the boys to our favorite park to have our nature morning. Brian, Sean & Colin all ran around the park and had a ball. Brian and Sean pretended that they were waiters at Cracker Barrel and took my order, put it in to the "kitchen", and then delivered the meal. Colin, just ran around getting sweaty. We only lasted about an hour before the sweat was pouring off all of us - let's just say summer is nowhere close to over!

After we got home and cooled off, we went upstairs and said our Morning Prayer and got started with school. Today was a lighter day. We talked about the apple blossom and what comes after the apple blossoms fall off the tree. They boys colored in a picture of an apple blossom. Okay, Brian meticulously colored his picture and Sean colored his all brown. I read Meet Mrs. Applebee again while they were coloring. Colin is very cute, because he comes up to the folder I have the Alphabet Path Storybook in and points to the picture of Mrs. Applebee and says "bee". See, even Colin is listening!

We alaso reviewed this Sunday's Gospel reading. Brian actually sat in his chair and told me he was going to pray while I was reading. I changed up my reading, and paraphrased the Gospel and really talked about what it means to deny yourself something.

We worked on more pages in our Explode the Code books. I swear, I think Brian would just work straight through that book if I let him. Today was not as good a day for Sean when it came to doing work. He put his book away and went off to work with the movable alphabet. Sean hasn't been napping at all this week while we've been schooling, and it was starting to show.

Finally, I had the boys pick out some books and bring them in our room and we all laid on the bed and read books to calm ourselves down. Afterwards we had some lunch, and then I decided that there would be naps, at least for Colin and Sean. I told Brian that he could play in the playroom until I got Sean to fall asleep, but Brian didn't want to be alone. So instead, Brian, Sean and I took a nap together in my bed. It really made the afternoon go so much better.

Our final activity today was to make aluminum foil "A"s. I found a template of a capital and lowercase letter a and we took glue and tore up some aluminum foil to make sparkly "A"s. The boys really had fun with this project.

Like I said, today was lighter on academics. Tomorrow I have to help out at church in the morning, so maybe Daddy can lead some lessons!

Rain Forest Narrations

I forgot to put these up yesterday. The rain forest is really entrancing both Brian and Sean. Yesterday afternoon I heard them playing rain forest. They were each a different animal that we had learned about - Brian was a toucan, Sean was an anaconda, I was a kinkajou and Colin was the tapir.

Here are some stories that Brian and Sean narrated to me about their Animals of the Rain Forest Book.

Brian’s Rain Forest Animal Adventure

Once upon a time there was an anaconda and toucan who were looking for food. And then the anaconda found some food and they were walking and walking to share the food. Then they found the blue morpho butterfly, and then the anteater and poison frog and then the big gorilla and then the kinkajou and then the tarantula too. And then the capybara and pirahnas. And then they ate food and then they had a stomachache. They went in their cozy homes and went to bed.

The End.

Sean’s Rain Forest Animal Adventure

The toucan was looking for anaconda and then he found him and then a morpho butterfly then a howler monkey and a giant gorilla and a poison arrow frog and then an anteater and then a tarantula.

The End