Fallbrook Academy, here we come!

It has been a while since I blogged. Four kids does that to you, especially when you are homeschooling, working and trying to maintain the house. Well, we've made some minor changes and that is the reason for this update! The kids are officially enrolled in a Charter School, Fallbrook Academy. We are still ironing out the details with Rylen but so far the kids love it! PLUS, I am getting a little bit more time to manage the rest of the house.

Graysen Walter - 2 months

Graysen's 2month appt today! 10 lbs 13 oz! Doing everything crazy 2 month olds do! wink emoticon According to his ped..... its now "Gerber Time".....the months if smiling, cooing and happy baby slobbers that makes us want to have more babies

Graysen Walter - 1 month

Hard to believe that this little guy has been with us for 4 weeks already!

Happy 1 month!

Graysen Walter Robbins

We are introducing a NEW baby Robbins to our family 

this Palm Sumday!

Graysen Walter Robbins

March 29, 2015

2:27am

7lbs 9oz  /  20 inches

Robbins Academy - Letter G

LETTER G WEEK

Rookie - 6 years

Ace - 4.5 years

Ladybug - 2 years

In reference to ages, all of my kids are "young", born in the months of May and July.

Welcome to Letter G! This week we talked about Moses and the 10 Egyptian plagues while turning water red and learning our memory verse: "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." We also gave our "G" goldfish glittery yellow sand. Glitter is always a high point.

We had some new rhyming puzzles that Ladybug played with every day. Our Seek and Find "G" was a big hit as well. So much so that a turn of my head and Rookie got to spend quite a bit of time vacuuming up all the rice. We have a rule about our sensory bins, however sometimes we have a lapse in judgement. Luckily this lapse didn't happen until friday.

Q-tip painting was another fun activity, one that EVERYONE could do and make it their own.

Our little "g" craft was quite a sight when finished. We colored, painted and glued feathers on a goose. Rookie finished his Foundations 1 book as well! We BOTH were so excited. I will need to get his second book ready to go for next week. It will start out with some review (though we don't need it) and then transition into some harder material. I know he will catch on quickly. Ace really does a great job with his letters and I know that he is ready to do writing and reading, however he doesn't have much of a desire for it and so I am going slow with pushing it. I don't want to kill his joy so early. We have time.

The weather had not turned cold just yet, so we were still able to do quite a bit of playing outside. We did hit the park this week and had some chalk play outside as well. I don't think dot painting will ever go away. The kids love to use them. Ladybug loves to "color" with them and Ace enjoyed the challenge of a maze. He always asks for more. We also brought out a NEW to us toy. the gears. This was another toy that everyone could play with and explore.

Rookie enjoyed two days of speech this week aside from our school work and I really think I am seeing some progress. We only have one day next week because of the holiday, but hopefully our time at home will make up for it. 

Robbins Academy - Letter F

LETTER F WEEK

Rookie - 6 years

Ace - 4.5 years

Ladybug - 2 years

In reference to ages, all of my kids are "young" born in the months of May and July.

We had such a good time with Letter F! I'm sure it had NOTHING to do with the fact that there were firetrucks involved. HA! I really thought we were going to have to take two weeks to exhaust our love of them, alas, Sunday came and I decided to go ahead and move on. However, we had a FULL week of "F"UN! Our letter basket was full of F stuff. Sometimes I think the letter baskets focus on the same words, but this week the picture cards had all kinds of different objects. Our shelves had themes for Farm, Firetrucks, Football, Feelings, Frogs and Fruit! We also pulled out our LOTW "fish" spelling game. Once again, Sunday was full of discovery after nap and I didn't snap any pictures. However, the week still progressed with lots of other activities. 

 I picked a crazy hard craft that Ace and Ladybug were determined to do. I had to do a lot of the peeling and actually completed Ladybugs. Ace was a trooper and managed to stick every single square on his frog. I was impressed with his endurance. I let them do a lot of free water color painting this week which they enjoyed and as always, Rookie plugged away at his INP. He is almost finished with his first foundations book. I am really antsy to get him started on the next book. He seems to have made some pretty big leaps all of a sudden and I think he is ready for the next level. However, I have a hard time NOT finishing. I'm sure I am going to need to get over this hangup....eventually.

 We read lots of books together this week. I am hoping to make some more trips to the library to expand our book reading. We are stuck with a lot of young reading material. I broke down and purchased some more audio books for Rookie. I hated buying them, but they were only $1 each and I figured a handful of new stories would do us good. I guess they were brain work because he fell asleep a couple of times listening to them during quiet time.

Ladybug did a lot of dot painting this week. I was able to convince her to do some tot school as long as she could dot paint. She likes to color the pictures in with the dot markers after she dots the circles, so that left quite a few pictures drenched in paint.

The best part is sitting around the dinner table when Daddy asks them what they learned and to hear them sing the songs for him, or recite something you talked about. They are so excited to be able to perform for him even though sometimes it is like pulling teeth to get them to do it during the day with me. They love to show off what they know!

Robbins Academy - Letter E

LETTER E WEEK

Rookie - 6 years

Ace - 4.5 years

Ladybug - 2 years

In reference to ages, all of my kids are "young" born in the months of May and July.

Another crazy week. We are in the midst of speech evaluations and we just browsed through our schooling this week. I always make sure we are doing Rookie's INP and then school just filters in the space that is leftover. We worked on lower case "e" a bit more using the rice and I was thrilled how they caught on to the formation this way. We also did a lot of activities outside because the weather was so nice.

A rare photo of myself with Rookie before his speech evaluation. Looks like we will be going twice a week through the end of the year! We are praying for some more progress. I am dying to hear what he is thinking all the time!

Robbins Academy - Letter D

LETTER D WEEK

Rookie - 6 years

Ace - 4.5 years

Ladybug - 2 years

In reference to ages, all of my kids are "young" born in the months of May and July.

So, I bet you all thought we gave it up! Ha! No, we've been busy little homeschooling Bees.

 We did have a bit of a slow week for Letter D, but my kids had a lot of play time with our setup. I really need to remember NOT to set it up on Sunday afternoons. The kids always have so much fun exploring after nap time and I miss out on a lot of great pictures!

Ladybug is still not into the tot school activities, but I keep putting them out just in case. She definitely loves all the puzzles and pre-k activities I have. Thankfully the letter basket is a big hit with her and she loves to dig through it and find the puzzles and word cards.

The boys asked for the cowboy binder again even though we were no longer in C week. I gave in and let them play. I need to make sure I am making a binder for each letter. These activities seem to be something they ask for and since EVERYONE wants to do the same activities, I don't want to have to print them out over and over again. I'm not always a fan of dry erase work, but for activities like this that they love to repeat, it is easier and less time consuming to put it in a binder.

Halloween and the Fire Station

 We had a GREAT experience at the fire station with our homeschool group! The kids LOVED seeing all the fire trucks and Rookie did really well knowing that the bell could ring at any minute. He was always cautiously preparing himself. They all did a wonderful job listening and keeping their hands to themselves while walking around the truck. Ace was excited to be the first to sit in the driver seat. His face doesn't exactly show it, but I think he was a bit nervous and shy that he was in the spotlight. He grinned from ear to ear when he got down. Rookie and Ladybug didn't want to sit in the driver seat, but were really excited to hang out in the truck. We had quite a group that went!

On another note, Halloween was a big hit as always. We attend our church pumpkin patch and then stay home on Halloween to hand out candy. The kids put stickers on the candy as a way to reach out and touch kids with the word of God. We also TRY to hand out decent treats. We did opt for some chocolate this year as well as our mini popcorn bags. We even had kids remember that we gave this out from last year! A couple of them came by again for a second round. We indulged them even though we knew they were repeat customers.

Ace had quite the assembly line going. Rookie was quick to get his done. Ladybug was very impressive with her ability to peel and stick. Must be a girl thing. The kids loved hearing the doorbell ring and would race to answer it, hand out the treats and then run back to the family room to watch Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin.

Robbins Academy - Letter C

LETTER C WEEK

Rookie - 6 years

Ace - 4 years

Ladybug - 2 years

In reference to ages, all of my kids are "young" born in the months of May and July.

 Letter C Week was a lot of fun and we are getting closer to finding a groove with our curriculum. It always takes a little while to find what works and what doesn't when you start something new. It is amazing how the plans I have change with each child. I THINK I know what they will enjoy doing and they always surprise me!

Jace couldn't help himself this week and was diving into the setup the night before as I was setting it up.  They really enjoyed have their "Cars" theme incorporated this week.

Ladybug really takes to a lot of preschool activities that the boys were really not ready for at her age. I still put out the tot school activities knowing that it at least grabs their attention and sometimes the boys like to do them even if Ladybug doesn't. Sometimes their interaction with them gets her attention too.

We made a table/blanket tent to go along with the story of Abraham and Lot and then a lot of our activites ended up being done inside or just outside the tent.

Ladybug really enjoyed finding the new puzzles on the shelf and would bring me different activities to do with her. We did a bit of q-tip painting this week which was a change up for the kids.

Our outside play was interrupted this week by a moving truck. Oh how we wish it had been OUR moving truck.

We had to get creative with our Abraham/Isaac story, but it definitely stuck in their heads the rest of the week as they continued to build alters out of their blocks.

I loved watching Rookie help Ladybug with her cat book by reading her the sentence at the bottom for her to figure out which color of yarn to glue down. Ace is definitely my creative child and will stick with an activity he WANTS to do for  good amount of time. I was really impressed with his Letter C Beans. The rest of our work is on the wall.

We will be having Rookie's LGS Evaluation the following week, so we will not be taking a break and starting Letter D the following week.