Rowing: Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel

This week we rowed Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. 



I knew from the very beginning Ethan would love this book.  He is, of course, a five year old boy.  He loves all things dirty, digging and dinosaur-like! 
Here is an overview of how we rowed this awesome book.

Our first science lesson of the week was learning about the stages of matter.  He loved the illistration of looking at ice cubes (solid), melting them into water (liquid), then boiling them to create steam (gas).  He really understood this lesson and took it with him all week.  He would call out at random objects and then state if they were solid, liquid or gas.  I’m beginning to see how much this boy loves science!


You can’t really see it, but he is observing steam in this picture…


We followed the FIAR art lessons this week, which included drawing trees.  I had just purchased some oil pastels, so he was introduced to them during his “tree drawing” lesson on perspective.




His sensory activity this week has been using construction vehicles in his bean box (as we call it).  He can do this for hours.  He also still asked to play in the cloud dough we made last week.



Another first for this week was modeling clay.  He has played with play-doh since he was much younger, but the texture of modeling clay is different and requires a little more strength to mold and shape.  He played with modeling clay for almost two hours one afternoon after we finished lessons.


We made a Mike Mulligan cake and dug the cellar “nice and square”.  He absolutely loved this cake!




We are blessed to have a neighbor just down the road who is also homeschooling.  He and Ethan are a little over a year apart in age, but they love playing together, so we are going to try to get together one morning a week and let the boys play and read to each other.  The weather was nice, so we walked to his house on this day.


They have a blast learning from each other.  We are letting them take turns picking the theme of the activities and which book they would like to read.



In addition to the FIAR activities, we did a few more and one of Ethan’s favorites was making this digger.  He also LOVED watching the Mike Mulligan video on YouTube.  It is broken up into three parts, so be sure to find all three if you plan on watching it.  You can find the links on my Mike Mulligan pinterest board here.


*This, of course, is not a complete and total list of all Ethan competed and worked on, but it is what I managed to get photographed and on this blog.  In addition to these activities, he did the math word problems from Homeschool Share, the FIAR suggested lessons and Bible Study. 

We got the cool printable for the movable parts digger HERE (scroll down to #5).

Creation Study

For our first week of school, we studied THE first week!  Here is a little peek into what some of our week was like!

 

To start each days lesson, we did a little craft inspired by what I found here.  These are Ethan’s days…

Ethan wanted to keep all the days together, so we interlocked paperclips together and hung all the “days” up on the refurbished wardrobe I just finished.  We weren’t finished when this photo was taken, but you can see the progress.

By the way, I LOVE this wardrobe.  My mother bought this for me when I was a little girl, but due to the way the door to my bedroom was positioned in the hallway, we never could fit it in my room.  My mother found alternate locations for it over the years, but I recently begged was given the wardrobe for the classroom.  I wish I had taken a before shot (I know, I know, bad blogger!).  But trust me, it was an old dark wood veneer and it had visually seen it’s better days.  The two long doors had mirrors in them, as did where the clock is hanging now.  I painted the whole thing, replaced one door with a chalkboard and covered the other with fabric.  I covered ever other drawer with modge po.dge and fabric.  The handles and hinges were spray painted and I purchased some new handles for the doors at hobby lo.bby.  It is the future home of all my scrapbooking gear and some school supplies.

 

On day two, we made cloud dough (another pinterest find).  He loves it and still plays with it.  And, just if you’re wondering, it vacuums out of carpet nicely :-/

 

 

To make cloud dough, we just mixed 4 cups flour with 1 cup baby oil.  It’s soft to the touch, but moldable and forms well.  Be warned, the baby oil adds a nice fragrance…as long as you like baby oil smell.  My husband does not like it at all, so he won’t be sharing in this sensory activity with the kiddo.  I love the baby smell, so I joined in the fun.

 

Wednesday turned out to be school in pajamas day and I don’t regret that one bit.  Even if it makes getting dressed on Friday a little harder at first…

 

I love that we were studying God’s creation and one day we had the opportunity to catch and observe a tiny baby swift that had made it’s way into our porch. 

 

 

Of course our week was filled with activities from all subjects, but it’s kind of hard to photo-document everything while teaching/supervising. 

On the last day of the week we shared a muffin tin snack to help us remember the days of creation.

Our muffin tin snack was inspired be this blog post and turned into our own little creation.  I found the chart above the muffin tin here.

For day one, we used chocolate/vanilla pudding (darkness/light).
Day two (the sky) was formed with blue jell.o and whipping cream.
Day three (trees, plants, seeds) was represented by “dirt pudding”.
Day four (sun, moon, stars) was represented by mild cheddar cheese I cut into the shape of a crescent moon and a star.
Day five (fish and birds) was filled with Goldfish crackers.
Day six (animals and people) was filled with animal crackers.

Ethan loved this visual and talked about it for days!

First Day of Kindergarten!

 

That’s right!  We started our first day of school last week and boy are we having fun!  I am absolutely way to emotional over having the ability to homeschool and be with this adorable face everyday!

 

 

We eased into school since we hadn’t done a lot over the summer.  We started our first week studying, what else but THE first week.  We had a week full of creation studies and crafts and back to basics.  We reviewed things he learned last year and started a new memory verse. 

 

 

Something I have quickly learned is that his least favorite thing to do is handwriting.  He loves crafts, mazes, anything science related, he LOVES math and reading.  But when it comes to just practicing writing, he just really doesn’t like it.  But he does it.  And I am open to any suggestions on how to make it not so burdensome for him

 

 

I can’t wait to let finish up a post our week studying creation! He had so much fun and he tells me at least two or three times a week how happy he is that I can homeschool him.  But, the biggest blessing is when he carries around a chapter book just because he wants me to read to him.  Or if he comes to me at 7:30 at night and asks if he can “do more school”.  Actually, I believe the best part is to have him randomly look up from his lunch and say, “I love you so much Mommy.  I’m so glad we get to spend the day together.”  Tears.  I mean wow. 

 

I was in college full-time until Ethan was one year old.  Then I worked full time for three years.  Getting that pink slip was perhaps the best thing that has ever happened to me as a parent.  It forced us to take a leap of faith we were scared to take on our own.  I still am one of the Directors of the local crisis pregnancy center and put in about 12 hours a week there now.  I also work as an adoption social worker, but that is completely on my own schedule.  I love being able to answer Ethan’s daily question of “What are we doing today, Mommy?”  with a, “We are spending the whole day together, Bub!” and then hear his squeals of delight and feel the extra tight hug around my neck. 

 

I have heard how parents can get emotional when their child starts Kindergarten.  I had always assumed I would be crying on that day.  Boy, I was right, but for  a whole different reason than I imagined 5 years ago…

First Day of Pre-K!

We started homeschooling yesterday!!!  We had a great day and I just wanted to share some of the first day festivities (including 1st day photos!).

Ethan woke up to find his "classroom" looking like this:

Each balloon had a little piece of paper with an assignment written on it.  

And he got to pop the balloons to find out what we did next.  It didn't take him long to find out how to just snip the end and then watch the balloon fly around the room like crazy.  

First day of Pre-K!

He decided he wanted to write the names of all his family members and did MOM, DAD, HOPE and Ethan without any help.  He wanted to write Shyla and Jakin too, but needed a little help spelling their names.  Isn't he just the sweetest child?

I am so grateful for camera timers to capture sweet moments like prayer on our first day of school!

Writing letters with his dry erase crayons.  He'd been at his desk for a little while, so we mixed it up and had tummy time :-)

For lunch I thought I would join in with Muffin Tin Mom and Muffin Tin Mondays.  For our first day of school muffin tin, he had ABC's and 123 pasta, grilled cheese cut into A,B,C, cucumbers from the garden, grapes, cheese crackers and his favorite dessert (peanut butter brownie mini's).  He ate it great and I'm sold on this muffin tin meals!

I also got a couple of shots I hope to repeat for many "first days" to come!

My favorite...

We had a great day and I am looking forward to a great year of Pre-K!!!

***This post is linked up here:

Bringing all kinds of Hope home...

This blog is going to be undergoing some changes over the next little bit.  Not only will it document our adoption journey, but it will be our family blog and chronicling our new adventures in homeschooling.

I thought about starting another blog...but I just don't have it in me!

And I figured...there is more than one way to bring HOPE home.  "Hope" not as a person, but as what God gives us.  The new header kind of sums it up.  We are wanting to bring Hope home from Korea.  We want to bring HOPE into our home through the word of God and we are bringing hope back to our home by homeschooling our son and me being home more than not now.

SO...you might start getting homeschool posts in your reader, along with just regular family posts and (of course) posts about the adoption.  So, I hope you hang around as we go through these changes!

Much hope...

Mattie

Changes

Our family is getting ready to undergo some changes.  Not just the kind where you bring a child home from half way around the world.  One major change will be happening next week.  I'm changing jobs.  Well, actually, I got laid off from my current job (due to government grant funding ending) and I will be finishing up my position this week.  Next week I will be starting a new position with the local Crisis Pregnancy Center I have been volunteering at for a few months.  I will be the Client Services Director.  God has really been opening and closing doors for the past three years to get me to this position I believe.  Actually, I believe God has been leading me to this place since I was in my early teens. 

Honestly, at first, I was a little freaked out by the pink slip and what it could possibly mean to our adoption.  Then when I gave it to God, doors started opening and I decided to trust Him above all else.  The position at the pregnancy center isn't full time and is definately not a money maker (but if I were in it for the money, I never would have went into social work!).  This is more of a ministry than a job anyway and I am SO excited. 

Today we found out how much health insurance is going to cost and I freaked out again.  I honestly can't believe how much it costs to insure a family these days!  We have been blessed to both be covered by the state employee health insurance and cross reference our insurance so it has been extremely cheap.  Now, if we keep the current insurance we have it will cost more a month then I will make at my new position...wow.  So I'm totally open to how other families make health care more affordable!

I also have started my own Tupperware business to help bring in some extra money and Ben is mowing for a few of our neighbors and still officiating soccer and doing handy man type work in his free time. 

So, as I mentioned before, this new position is not full time...meaning more time at home!  Yay!  Which leads us to our next big family change.  Ethan will be 4 one week from today and will be starting preschool in the fall and I have to say, I'm pretty thrilled who his teacher will be...even though this will be her first year teaching.  Her heart is totally in it and I know he already loves her...

Yup!  That's me!  We are beginning the adventure of homeschooling in the fall!  Well, technically, we've been homeschooling (teaching with everyday experiences) since he was born.  If your child knows their ABC's, you've been doing it too!  We are excited and nervous at times too, but more excited.  I have many friends who homeschool, but don't know many locally...but just found out one of our neighbors is planning on homeschooling their 5 year old too!  Yay!  Ethan is such a little sponge right now.  He already knows so many things and is SO good at his memory verses (he is up to 14 verses now!).  We have been doing "lessons" for a year, but I am looking forward to being able to start a more structured routine. 

So here we go!  Job changes, income changes, adoption, homeschooling...how's that for a few changes? 

By the way...

I talked to our social worker and our placement agency and our file is going to Korea today or tomorrow morning!!! YAY!!!