Friesencold

It started on Friday when I went for the second round of color on my tattoo. I went primarily to have some work done on the greens throughout, but my tattoo artist is a major perfectionist so he went to work on everything, adding depth to the colors, touching up in places, and finishing off the color around the words at the bottom. That was another 3 hours of work, bringing the total to 11 hours! Look at the difference between the two.

This is before Friday….

And this is after….

On Saturday morning, we went to the Farmer’s Market, where I picked up the market basket I won from the previous week’s raffle that a local business called Monogram Madness sponsored to get the word out about their new store.

Later that day, we did some major cleaning out in the garage, but the funny thing is, it was mostly empty boxes weighing us down with clutter! TJ has an empty box fetish that he’s working on overcoming. It’s pretty cool, though, when you go to sell something on ebay to be able to say that you have the original packaging.

On Sunday, TJ took Bauer to a Kids Fishing Derby…

and Bauer caught his first fish, a 5 1/2″ blue gill. That was one happy boy (and one happy daddy).

We wrapped up the Letter O over the weekend, and the only picture I have to show are the O books we read. But here’s a funny story for O: I printed out a coloring page from Enchanted Learning’s website about President Obama and was teaching Bauer who he is and just telling him a few basic facts. Later in the day, we were reviewing who our President is, and Bauer said Barack Opossum.

And last, we are having a blast lately grilling out in our backyard. We got a grill for an early Father’s Day present so that we would have it on Memorial Day when friends came over for a cookout. It’s been great having lots of grilled veggies and eating outside at our picnic table.

It’s been really rainy here the past few days so we didn’t actually get to grill out over the weekend, but we’ll be starting back up this week. We decided to invite some friends over each Wednesday to grill out and hang out in the backyard. I’m looking forward to some fun (and crazy with the kids) Wednesday evenings this summer.

I had a great visit with my friend Gretchen who lives in Texas. We first became friends when we both lived in Orlando several years ago. I went to visit Gretchen primarily so I could talk with her about homeschooling and see her and her boys, ages 6 1/2 and 4 1/2,  in action in the classroom. Well, that and because she is one of my favorite people in the world and I wanted to see her and celebrate her birthday with her like she did with me last summer.

At Gretchen’s house, they turned one of their bedrooms into a classroom and it’s lovely!

Besides general fun and catching up, Gretchen and I spent a good deal of time going through all the details of her homeschooling experience so far, including the different curricula she has chosen, how she lesson-plans, where to find materials and resources, how to be structured yet flexible, what a typical day of school at home looks like (and what the remaining hours of the day can look like), and what kinds of things to do with the younger sibling to keep him entertained, happy, and learning at his own level. I loved learning about all of this and Gretchen was a great sharer of information. My biggest thanks!

I came home super-excited to begin some things right away with Bauer. We are starting with something Gretchen did during this past school year with her younger son Jack who is Bauer’s age. They made a “My Alphabet Book” in a 3-ring binder, filled with various activities, games, pictures, etc, all pertaining to each letter of the alphabet.

We are off to a good start here with Bauer’s ABC Book. I emptied a 3-ring binder and yesterday afternoon Bauer decorated a page to slip in the front cover.

We made a colorful page for each letter of the alphabet with some simple supplies and now we are working on the letter A.

I plan to spend 3-4 days per letter, meaning we will finish in a few months’ time (hopefully by end of summer). I won’t push us to do it every day, just a few times a week as our schedule allows, and probably anywhere from 10-30 minutes/day will be adequate.

First thing this morning I spent a few minutes reading to Bauer two “A” books I got from the library last night: I Want to Be An Astronaut by Byron Barton and There’s an Alligator Under My Bed by Mercer Mayer. Then this afternoon, I helped Bauer look through a couple of old magazines for letter A’s and words starting with A (we found apples, almonds, and angel), which he then glued onto construction paper to put in his notebook.

After that, I made a little fill-in-the-blank exercise for Bauer to do using the “A” Bible verse that he learned last year when we were learning a verse for each letter. I thought it would be a good way for him to review all the verses and would give him practice writing a few simple words. I know it would be hard for him to write out an entire verse, so I wrote most of the words and just had him write in a few of the easy words and stick on number stickers for the reference. He seemed to really enjoy doing that and adding it to the A section in his notebook.

The only other alphabet-related thing we did today was talk here and there about what sound the letter A makes. I have not previously worked on this at all with Bauer, although I do think he knows most of the letter sounds from watching some of the LeapFrog DVDs we have checked out from the library over the past year.

My goal is to go through each letter like this: doing simple activities, playing games, taking pictures of objects or finding them in magazines, reading a couple books, practicing our Bible verses, eating special snacks that start with some of the letters (for A, we’ll do an Ant Hill made from crushed graham crackers for the mound of dirt and raisins for the ants – an idea taken from PreschoolExpress), talking about each letter’s sound, and maybe even doing some memory work (maybe a poem starting with one of the letters?). It may be mostly review for Bauer as I honestly don’t know what all he knows or what he has learned at the Parents Day Out program he attends a couple times a month, but at the very least it gives us something structured, yet fun, to do together on a regular basis (sort of like when we did all those Christmas activities and crafts last December). Once we complete A-Z, then I am thinking Bauer will be nice and ready for me to begin teaching him to read, which I’m very excited about. The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise is a great resource for knowing how to teach a 4 and 5 year old (not that it stops there). I can already tell this book is going to be a new best friend.

For now, I won’t officially say I’m going to homeschool, but I am definitely leaning in that direction. Over the next few months, the alphabet book is going to be a little experiment of sorts, to see how Bauer does with it and how I do. If yesterday and today are any indication, I must say mine and Bauer’s time together seemed to have brought out the best in both of us.

Or maybe it’s the tattoo.

I got this done a week and a half ago at a great tattoo shop called Tomato Tattoo. I go back in May to get the color done. I am very happy with how it’s looking and how it’s healing.

I think it’s healing me, in fact.