Thursday, May 28, 2009

Reading, Books and the Library

One of the best things about homeschooling so far has been my ability to play such a vital part in teaching my kids to read...it is so exciting!

Jenessa has learned how to read over the past year and in the past few months she has really improved a lot in her reading skills. Lately, she will pick up nonfiction books and tell me random facts that she is reading about. It cracks me up because some of the things that she tells me are facts that she already knew but it's like she is learning them for the first time! It has been fun to see Jenessa turn into another book lover like Kessiah.

We went to the library today to sign up for the summer reading program. I told the girls last night that they needed to do a few things before we left this morning. They carefully took note of what needed to be done and Jenessa asked Kessiah to wake her up (Kessiah is the early riser in our family). Ryan got up about 5:45 (he has been waking up early lately as well, probably due to the sun rising earlier) and found the girls up already working at their assigned tasks! He told me about it more than an hour later when I came to conciousness! Crazy kids...but we did get to the library almost as soon as it opened this morning. I am thrilled to have kids who love to read and are excited to go to the library.

After we got home from the library, Kessiah and Jenessa were anxious to get started on their reading logs...so it has been a rather quiet day for me. I'm going to have trouble keeping enough reading material available for them! Jenessa read 27 books today! After she read 3 Biscuit books I told her she could continue to read those but they were too easy for her to write down on her reading log.

Does anyone has any book suggestions for a 1st to 4th grade reading levels? I'm going to need some this summer!

Sienna (who is always trying to keep up with her big sisters) loves to pretend to read books and sometimes tells quite the stories to go along with the book she is "reading"

Logan is the first child I have really had to watch carefully around books. He tends to tear pages or draw on them. So, we try to limit his book handling to board books!

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Shoes Revisted

So, I figured out how to deal with my Logan/shoe problem. I just have to keep Logan's shoes on him all day and then he can't put anyone else's shoes on! I know that may seem obvious to some people, but we are in the habit of not wearing shoes in the house. My girls take off their shoes practically the second they walk in the door. Anyway, it seems to be working very well. Logan will still come to me a few times a day and want his shoes off (especially when the girls are putting shoes on), but I don't take them off.

Ahh...don't you just love simple solutions!

Monday, May 18, 2009

Shoes

I know, strange topic...but I had to do a little venting about shoes in our house!

For the past several months Sienna has been giving me fits about finding shoes whenever we leave the house. She cannot seem to put them in the coat closet that is right inside our front door when we get home. So...when it is time to leave to go somewhere she cannot find her shoes! It has been driving me crazy...at a time when my patience level is already down a few notches!

Now the problem is only getting worse thanks to Logan. One of his favorite things to do is to put on his sister's shoes and walk around the house/backyard with them. I'm sure he picks his sister's shoes since he can reach them (unlike Mom and Dad's shoes) and he can put them on by himself (unlike his own shoes).

So, now we not only have trouble finding Sienna's shoes when we are in the process of walking out the door...we can't find shoes for Kessiah or Jenessa either! Lately when they go in the backyard they don't even bother trying to find a matching pair of shoes...they just find a shoe for each foot! Unfortunately, that isn't acceptable when we are going out in public!