Personalities Shine Through

The girls practiced their spelling words on the refrigerator with magnet letters yesterday. Abi went first and I had suggested that we arrange the magnet letters on the floor in alphabetical order. She responded "Oh no, color order is much better," and proceeded to arrange them in color order. She happily spelled each word I gave her and used her "scope" to find each letter as seen below.
Emma did her list second and as you can see she prefers no order what so ever to most things in life. Also, spelling is always much better done with a ballet slipper on your hand, your hair in your face and a ballet leotard on your body (better than the naked we were dealing with this morning). I was in the living room reading with Abi while she was working on her list and I could hear her talking while she was spelling so I came to check on her. As she needed a letter she would call out "N, can you please come to the front. N to the front please. You are needed next." Or something rather similar. For each letter. I love her creative mind (most days).
This is just a small sampling of their personalities showing through. If I am asked why we home school, I almost always answer that it is mainly because we do not want them to lose their love of learning. I am trying, as much as possible to honor their personalities and learning styles and help them to grow up accepting who they are. Some days that is easier than others.

Our Week

Our adoption home study is officially approved! The girls and I went to Madison on Tuesday and got the certified birth certificates and marriage certificate. Then we explored down town Madison while we were there. We were able to walk from the government building to the Capital and looked around inside a bit. The girls were quite impressed. Then we went to the Madison Children's Museum. We could have stayed there all day. What a neat place. There was a sensory area on the first floor that I wanted to move in to. Lots of role playing/pretending type stuff and the girls are quite into that right now. I had to beg them to leave when it was time so we could eat lunch. After the museum we walked down State Street and got some lunch and then back to our vehicle which was parked near the lake. The whole thing was quite an adventure for all of us. Then we drove to the adoption agency offices and picked up our official home study packets. So exciting. The next step is sending our USCIS paperwork on Monday and then our Dossier paperwork sometime in the next couple of weeks. Then comes the waiting... It is starting to feel so real. I can't believe that a year ago we were putting adoption on the back burner to buy this house and I had all but convinced myself that it would never happen and now here we are. God is truely amazing. I did manage to take some pics of our field trip on Tuesday so you could join in the fun.

Emma in full construction worker gear. Note the pencil behind the ear, just like Grandpa.
This is called the Dream Machine, sort of a cross between a boat and a plane or sorts. They had bunches of fabric fish laying around and life vests. Much fun.

This was a water feature in the sensory area. They wanted the kids to touch and play in it. I want one in my house. Water flowing over rocks is so great.
Emma playing drums in the Making Music area. She is beggin for some bongo drums now.
Mosiac Floor! I want this too, I told you I wanted to move in.
Giant blue gill that you could crawl inside. The inside was painted to look like what is really inside a fish.
A long table full of pea gravel and construction vehicles. Endless fun.

Back in Time

On Monday a group of the Home schoolers from our area visited a one room school house, where Francis Willard originally taught. My calendar tells me that September 28th is Francis Willard day. If you want to be more educated about who she was, there is a lovely search box at the top of your internet browser that will be more than happy to point you to that information. And now you are more enlightened. You're welcome. Anyway, back to the story. We were encouraged to dress the kiddos in 1850's costumes to add to the fun. So I set about sewing long skirts and bonnets, like the good mom that I am. We all had so much fun. The sweet little old lady, who was playing teacher that day, gave them a good mix of a history lesson and a taste of what school would have actually been like way back when. My girls, being the drama queens that they are, jumped into character and you would think that they had actually travelled back in time. Emma sat perfectly still with her hands in her lap for around 2 hours, which is unheard of around here. The children had to go around the room in the beginning, stand up and say their first and last names. When they got to Abi, she stood up and said "Abi" very confidently. When the teacher asked her "Abi, what?" expecting her last name, Abi said, "gail." Obviously... Abi Gail, duh. Too cute. We had a mix of ages in our group, it felt very authentic. We have since been enjoying "Little House" stories and mommy's collection of old school books ( I have strange hobbies, I know). I am more than pleased that they are taking an interest in this era of time that I have long been fascinated with. I have always said that History was my worst subject, and I still hold that to be true- in that I have never been great at memorizing names, dates and places. I really didn't/don't care. However, when it comes to the social parts of history, I am fascinated. So, as long as I can teach them history in that context, we will all be good to go. My favorite part of this whole experience was the little motto that the teacher helped the children to memorize. It was supposedly the motto that Miss Willard had sitting on her desk. It goes like this...

I am only one,

But I am one.

I cannot do everything,

But I can so somethings.

What I can do, I ought to do.

With the help of God.

Phonics

Abi is learning a letter sound a day in our phonics program. Emma learned them all last year and is reading pretty well. Abi followed along with us last year, but wasn't officially doing school yet, so she is reviewing them all this year. Today we were playing a game where they took turns making words out of the sounds we have learned so far. It is suppossed to give them confidence because they are able to make words already even though they have only learned 12 sounds. So they were making words like cat, hit, pin, pan, red and then Abi grabs the e, h, and c and I am ready to tell her that she cannot make a word out of those letters and she yells out...

Fabulous!

Turtles

This week in home school land, we are talking about Dr. Suess and reading lots and lots of Suess books as last Friday was his birthday and I like to be all themey like that. Today we read Yertle the Turtle. If you are not in the know, this is a story about a turtle king named Yertle, who gets a little big for his turtle britches and decides he would like to see more of the world than his little stone throne allows. So he orders is turtle subjects to stack themselves and he climbs on top of the stack to enjoy the view. This is all well and good until a little turtle on the bottom named Mack decides to complain. This gets him nowhere so he BURPS (I kid you not, that is what the book says, and I cannot tell you how happy Emma was to read that word) and the whole stack tumbles. Yertle lands in the mud and Mack gets to be king and "all the turtles are free as all creatures should be." We enjoyed the book together and then made our own stackable turtles out of paper plates and construction paper heads and feet all stapled together cute like. Pure joy working on them together and taking turns with each little job. My favorite part of the whole process was when the girls decided that all the turtles needed names. These include such creative beauties as Wee-Woo (not to be confused with Woo-Wee), Universal, American, Swirls and Stripes and Zig-Zag. But my all time favorites have to be Darth Vader, C3PO, and R2D2 because as Emma says "ya gotta have a little Star Wars in there." True indeed.


Abi stacking turtles.


Emma stacking turtles.


Our stack of 20 turtles. After this great accomplishment, we yelled "burp" and knocked them down, laughed a lot, and then did it all again. Such fun.


Our little family of turtles. I want to show a close up of each, but you will have to settle for the group.


This cute little guy is named Darth Vader. :)