Tiny Talk Tuesday- August 17, 2010

Lion Cub has his first official addition to our Tiny Talk posts this week!  Not so much from the words he is saying but his attempts at words!  We are finding that he is very good at grunting syllables!  He has very distinct grunt patterns that we clearly recognize as "Thank You," "Hear You Go," and "Roman."  He says "Ny Ny" before bed now and refers to both Jer and I as "Mama" (okay- he occasionally says "Dada")!  He even sneaks in a little "Nana" every once and a while to my mom! He says "Uh" sometimes for up and if he could just unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth I think he could probably talk our ears off!

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Rhythm: Mom, I'm very proud of you for just not spanking me. :-)
hmmmm.... then perhaps that's an indication that I should have!

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The other day we began reading Winnie the Pooh, and of course I had to read it with an English accent!  After a few sentences Rhythm turned to me with a silly and quizzical look on his face and said, "You are just making the voices."  I asked him if he liked them, which of course he did, and now if I am not reading with an accent he just doesn't think it sounds quite right!

A few days after we started Winnie the Pooh we were at my parent's house and my mom started talking in an English accent to him, out of the blue, just for fun (a common occurrence in our family.  What can I say- I grew up in the theatre!), and he said, "Hey!  Mommy talks like that too!"  Pretty cute and funny!

Check out other funny kid sayings at the Tiny Talk Tuesday linkup over at Not Before 7!

First Day of School!

Today is the day!  Our first day "back" to school!  Rhythm went to bed last night with his special nice outfit all laid out and mounting anticipation in his brain from all the hype I have been placing on this first day of PK4!

So here he is- the back-to-homeschool boy himself!  The thing he is the very most excited about is his piano lessons, so this seemed like an appropriate picture.

And of course, his little bother brother who is just along for the ride!  I know, horrible picture, right?  But in all honesty, this is what he spent most of the time doing!

Go snag this freebie!!

Hey everybody!! I just wanted to share with you all that this week on Simple Schooling Classroom they are offering their last weekly freebie of the summer and it is an interactive unit study all about Fall!!  This is one of the units we will be working on this year and I just wanted you all to know about it so you can snag it before it's gone!

Just head over to the site and look for the "Grab the Weekly Freebie" section to download this unit for FREE!

Our New School Room!

So in reality this room is our School Room/Toy Room & Mama's Office/Studio.  Maybe I should just call it multipurpose!  Whatever we call it, it has been evolving for some time now and this last week or so I have been putting in the final push to get it done.  There are still some things I would like to add to the walls and a few things I would like to tweak and possibly move around, but those things are going to have to come later.  So here is my little tour (mind you it's small, and very full!)...

This is our main learning area.  We have our calendar and calendar board, our Raising Rockstar's Board, one of our pocket charts with schedule/workbox cards & calendar elements, supply drawers, kid table, bin with all of the main components of our curriculum for this year, and Rhythm's Workbox. We will most likely start our day out right here with our calendar time and introductions to our RRSP lessons for the day and then move Rhythm's workbox out to the dining room table as I think it will be easier to keep Lion Cub occupied if we are all sitting out there together.

This little corner is all mine!  I have my "desk" (yes, it is a sad little card table but someday it will be something fabulous!), my handy clipboards that I am still in the process of jazzing up (they hold my routines, immediate forms or bills that need my attention and other random information), my trusty computer (ok- it's not in the picture right now but it's usually there!) and that is really all.

On that same wall I have a bookshelf that houses all of my sheet music along with the books that we will be using with our units.  Above that I also have more of our workbox cards since I plan to use the top of this shelf as a sort of filling-station.

This crazy side of the room houses our massive (but wonderful!) food dehydrator (hoping to get a better stand for this soon, rather than the box- eek!), our changing table turned diaper and toy storage, and of course the toy bins that I think just about every family in America has, but hey, they work (and they were free- thanks Grandma!)!  My plan is to flip their car rug up over the toy bins during school time to help minimize the distractions.

Then, turning to the last wall, you will find our piano (which we are so excited to really start using this fall) as well as a cozy little reading corner tucked away in an otherwise unusable space. 

The boys love any sort of fort or tiny place they can sneak into, so this corner just screamed of opportunity to play on that love theirs!  I often times walk in to find a blanket suspended from the piano to the toys to just complete the fort-like feeling!

So that's it!  Humble and small (thus why it was so difficult to capture more complete shots) but I am so thankful that we have a space at all to be able to set up our school stuff in!

To see take a little peak into the school rooms of other homeschoolers just head on over to The Heart of the Matter for the Not Back to School Blog Hop!

A little summer fun...

I have a lot of catching up to do on the boy's blog to record all the fun and not so fun interesting things we have done this summer!  If I don't start somewhere I will never get it done, so here goes with a little post about our water trampoline.  Or, well, I guess I should say our former water trampoline.  You see, my husband and I purchased it when we were newly married- 6 years ago- and only used it that summer.  In light of our current business status (in between jobs but it's supposed to get better!) and the fact that the trampoline has actually increased in value since we purchased it, we thought it would be wise to sell this piece of water equipment that hasn't seen the light of day since that first summer.

Well, of course we had to get a picture of it to sell it on Craig's List.  So, my husband pulled it out to the front yard and blew it up- thus causing a bit of frenzy with the kiddos.  Of course we would decide to sell it right about the time that Rhythm is old enough to actually possibly use it and have a grand old time (if we ever got around to taking it to a lake!)!

We wrestled over the decision for bit but ultimately decided that we did, indeed, need to sell it, but not before both boys (and ok- I admit, even mama!) got to have a little bit of fun on it for the whole neighborhood to see!

Top 5 Favorite Homeschooling blogs

This morning I got together with an old friend so that we could do nothing but let our kids play and talk about curriculum!!  Our oldest kiddos are only about 6 months apart, so we are in close to the same stage of planning.  She is one of my few friends who really "gets" how interesting and fun it is to talk about curriculum- and let's face it, the hubs is pretty "over" hearing about my latest and greatest homeschooling find!  It was such a nice day, full of lots of sharing and learning as we got to peer into each other's plans in person, hands on!

One question she asked me, which of course spurred this post, was which are my five favorite homeschooling blogs.  Wow- that is a task to narrow down!  However, there are a few gems that I do end up spending most of my time gleaning from.  Are you ready- you don't want to miss this- here they are:

 This has been my most frequent stop as of late as I map out what our Kindergarten and First grade curricula will look like.  I love her eclectic style that seems to emphasize true emersion into the subject matter.

Aaaaa- my old trusty standby!  I have been following Carisa for years and just love everything she has to offer!  And, of course, she is the creator of our preschool curriculum for the next year- Raising Rockstars.

Big family, great homeschooling perspective and lots of helpful advice from a mama who has lots to offer!

She just has lots of great ideas and I like the way she organizes!

A great hub of homeschooling happenings and link-ups!  Plus, don't you just LOVE her blog title?!

There are a lot of other favorites and some homeschooling sites that aren't blogs that I will be posting about soon on my Favorite Homeschooling Sites page up top (but there aren't any there yet so don't bother looking!), but all in all, these are my favorites!  Do you have any homeschooling blogs that you just can't get enough of?

Tiny Talk Tuesday- Summer so far edition!

Mama: Let's go ask the girl if she will open the fitting room for us.
R-Man: That big girl over there who is having the baby?
She wasn't having a baby!  Oh the humiliation- for all of us!

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R-Man:  Oh Mom!  Look at all those beautiful flowers!  I just want to go pick some of those beautiful yellow flowers for you!
(they were weeds, but so sweet of him to think of me!)

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Lately Rhythm has been talking a lot about being a prayer warrior and the whole concept has really inspired him to pray more on his own, which is so sweet to see!  The other night before bed he was saying his prayers and one of the things he prayed for was "all the babies," which means that he wants us to have another baby.  However, right after he prayed, Lion Cub climbed up on his bed and whacked him on the head!  He quickly changed his mind and said, "Oh!  I don't want another baby!"

For more funny and sweet things kids say, check out Tiny Talk Tuesday at Not Before 7!