More Chinese New Year pictures

This is T with his mask on.

This is ME. It isn't one of my best pictures. T wanted to take a picture of me in the mask.

This is D with her mask on. Sorry it is blurry she was moving a lot! This is the best picture of her with the mask I could get.

Chinese New Year catching up with stuff

We did celebrate Chinese New Year but it looks like I forgot to post pictures. This is our Chinese paper lanterns.

Our Dragon masks this is T's mask.

This is D's mask T colored it and I added the paper to the outside for her.

This is one of the many pig crafts. I must say that we are BIG into pigs right now. We have done 3 little pigs, this little piggy, farms, Chinese New Year (year of the pig), give a pig a pancake, and next week is pig day. We are getting a lot of use out of our pig crafts. I will have to see if I have pictures of all of our pig crafts from the last 2 weeks.

Can you tell D did her pig all by herself? LOL! She drew on her brothers pig! See all the scribbles between the eyes? T is OK with it because she just drew on it today and this craft isn't new. After things are a day old he is no longer attached to his stuff. LOL!

Some of my favorite teaching tools

First let me say I am sorry for not taking more pictures of our school days. I will get back to that on Monday. My hubby was off yesterday and today so things got a little off track (normal for us). I thought I would take a minute and share my favorite teaching tools. I LOVE EASTER EGGS!! The cheap plastic ones! I have used them for years to make up games to teach my son. You can teach colors, sort them by color, make patterns for the children to copy then add to it. You can count them, add, subtract, multiply, divide, put letters on the outside with a permanent marker, put numbers on the outside to make math problems. put words to read (like sight words) inside them, use them to toss, catch, pretend play (bird studies, or cooking in kitchen). Use them for a treasure hunt. I can go on and on about the fun things to do with plastic Easter eggs but I guess you get the idea. I wanted to write about this now because they have them in all stores right now and after Easter they are HARD to find. I am so excited because my hubby bought me 2 large bags yesterday. I think they cost about a dollar a bag. Target wanted a LOT of money for the ones they had. My hubby just told me we bought them at Big Lots for 1.25 a bag they have 36 eggs in a bag.

Another favorite thing of mine is Easter grass. Toss a lot of it in a big box and let the children jump in it. I remember when my son was little he once pretended to take a bath in a tub of Easter grass. You can hide things in Easter grass. I like to hide things to count, read or letters to learn in the grass. My children think learning is fun if you get to dig in grass. Use the grass for playing farm. It goes wonderful with something like a fisher price farm set or even a paper farm animal set. You can toss it like confetti. It makes silly pretend hair on crafts. Children can have lots of fun for HOURS with Easter grass. Buckets and baskets are another thing I love to use for teaching that are in all stores this time of year. I am short on time tonight so that is all for today. I will try to post the pictures of stuff we did this week in the next day or two when I get a few free minutes.

Pictures of the children playing tonight.

Mardi Gras

Some of the crafts we made yesterday for Mardi Gras. I will try to post more of the silly stuff we had fun with over the last 2 weeks tonight or tomorrow. It all depends on when D falls asleep tonight. She is still cutting teeth.

Our Jester hats. We made a band and attached triangle shaped construction paper around we then curled the ends. I couldn't find our bags of bells so they don't have bells yet.

Our masks. Mine is the purple one. T's is the yellow and blue one. D's is the purple yellow and red one. She painted it herself I think she did a good job! OH! I couldn't find my bag of dowels so I used my son's Knex on the sides of them.

Some of our crowns. We made 5 but I could only find a picture of 3. I will try to find a picture of them all and our necklaces that we made later.

PANCAKES! Regular pancakes, pancakes with white chocolate chips, pancakes with chocolate chips, and the dark ones in the back are pancakes with bananas.

Spelling Class

My pictures on this all went away. I hope that if I hit the button to publish this again my pictures will show back up. Sorry all! I am clueless with computers!

I'm sorry I didn't post anything yesterday. Our power was out for most of the day so I will post today's spelling class. I will also try to post our pictures from our Fat Tuesday celebration later in the day.


Spelling today was UGLY! D tossed a HUGE tantrum! She wanted a lolly pop and when I said no candy she threw herself on the floor and cried, slobbered drool on the floor, and pounded her fist on the floor. This lasted for several minutes. Once she realized that tossing a fit wasn't going to get a pop she calmed down and wanted to join us at the table again.

This is a picture of T doing his spelling page. D is writing with a pencil and playing with stickers.
She played with her magnets for only a minute. Most days she loves to do this. I was surprised she didn't want to today.

This is D getting into trouble. She is tossing puzzle pieces at her brother! I gave her a firm warning that if she did it again she would not be allowed at the table she would have to go play in her play room.

Here she is looking cute behaving for a minute after her warning.

Right after this she got down from the table and climbed up on the kitchen counters! I gave her one warning that if she did that again she would have to go into the play room (other side of fence). She did it 2 seconds later and had to go into the play room. After 3 minutes of her SCREAMING as loud as she could (thinking that we would bring her back in if she screamed loud enough) she found something to play with in her play room and T could finish his spelling in peace.

Her tantrums is a new thing she decided to try today. I know she will try this many more times before she realizes that I will not give her what she wants because she screams or pounds the floor. T got a little upset during it I told him that I knew it is hard to think and do his work when she is screaming but if he pretended it didn't bother her she would stop. He ignored her screams and they did stop quickly. I gave him a few goldfish crackers as a thank you for staying calm when his sister was fussing. Spelling took a few extra minutes from the screams but we are all happy now and back on track with the rest of our school day.

I wanted to show you all the fun things we do during spelling class but that didn't happen today. Spelling is a fun happy subject most of the time for both my children. Today wasn't fun or happy but this is a real look at our day so keep it honest I shared it all. Homeschooling with a almost 7 year old and a 19 month old will always have small ugly parts in our day. Right now the children are laughing and playing having a wonderful time. I was hoping that Spelling would look like that for you all today but maybe Grammar will look that way tomorrow. LOL!

Our schol day wrtiting class in action.

I copied my sons writing page so D could have one like his. This helps keep her from writing on his book.

This is a picture of T sitting at the table ready to start school. He is drawing pictures.We had a BAD start! I put D in her booster and she SCREAMED! She did NOT want to sit in a baby chair. She wanted to be in a big chair like her brother. I knew if she sat right next to him she would draw all over his book (I have already learned that one the hard way). I had him move to the end of the table. T cut out a person from his drawing and gave it to her. That made D happy and we could start school. Here she is finally happy at the table.

You can see she went right for the markers! This is about 30 seconds into our writing class.

Orange hands!All of this is about 30 seconds or 1 minute into our class. This is how far T has got on his writing page. 1 line done 5 to go.D. LOVES Santa pencils. Her brother got them for Christmas and she has stole them all from him. She is now doing her writing page like her brother. It doesn't look at all like letters but LOOK at the BEAUTIFUL pencil grip she has! It took T. YEARS to get a good pincher grip with a backwards C around the pencil. His grip still isn't nice as it should be. D's is WONDERFUL! It is all natural for her. I should say that T wasn't able to hold a pencil at this age but he was starting to read at that time. I think it is neat seeing how children develop as such different rates.

She is stacking her crayons.

Wonder how far T is on his writing?Back to more Santa pencil play. She takes off Santa....And puts him back on yelling HO, HO, HO! LOL! It is cute but distracting to her brother whom is working hard on his paper.

She then moved on to her plastic animals.

Then on to stickers.

She moved to the other side of the table to use her doodle writer.

Painting was her favorite thing to do today. She spent more time doing this than any of the other things I had out for her.

Look they are both working quietly! A wonderful moment of peace!

T working hard on his page still.She has dumped all her cereal on the table and is now walking across the chairs.

I was afraid she was going to fall off the chairs so I put her on the floor. She ran over to her sensory table (we have oats in it this week). She fed oats to her animals then had it snow oats on them all.

T finished his writing. 1 subject down 8 or so more to go!

LOOK at this MESS! We have never had a table after our first class get this messy! I think it got this way because I was busy taking pictures and didn't pick up as we went along.

That is a VERY REAL look into our day. It was only about 15 minutes. Most days when this is going on I am washing breakfast dishes, starting laundry, keeping D off the table, and picking up some of the mess on the table. I couldn't do that and take pictures. I will try to take pictures of Spelling class tomorrow. OH! If anyone has ideas or suggestions to help homeschool with a wild 19 month old PLEASE SHARE!!!!

Our school day. Writing class. part 1

I am going to try to show you all one class at a time each day. Then in a week or two you all will see a clear view from inside our house (good and bad). I hope that someone might see this and be able to share a simpler way to homeschool with a 19 month old. If you have something that works well for you PLEASE SHARE! For people who have children under 19 months old well..... I guess this can show you how I cope and how ugly it can get! LOL! My son does get all his work done even with his sister trying her best to distract him. I will start with our first class today then move on tomorrow to our second class.

In the morning, after my children wake up, get dressed, wash faces, eat breakfast, and brush teeth we do writing class. This was so EASY up until last month! My son would sit at the table or a desk and write a page or two in his book and my youngest would play with her toys alone or with me. Now my youngest doesn't want to play with Mommy or her toys. She wants to be with her brother. So this is how I have been doing school over the last month.

I cover the table in paper. I set out markers (they are in coffee cans) for T to draw when he is waiting for my help or to doodle between subjects. We also set out our pencil box both children share that.

This is some of the supplies I use with D (19 month old).

Montessori insets. She is just starting on them. The circle is the one we are working on right now.

Markers this is one of her favorite things to use right now.

Stencils, the kind of toys you get from a pinata. Most children run to the candy when the pinata breaks but every birthday party at our house my children run to grab the plastic animal stencils. LOL! My daughter will try to trace around them but she hasn't got the hang of it yet. She will use her muffin tin crayons to make rubbings of them if I put paper over them. She likes to just play with them say the animal name and make the sounds. She will often walk them across the table.

Crayons we use for the rubbings and some jumbo preschool crayons.

Regular crayons like her brothers. She will sometimes scream to have crayons like the ones her brother has.

Preschool writing stacking crayons. She likes to build and write with them.Some paints. I put a drop or two of water in each color before we start school so she can paint with them without my help.

colored pencils for the Montessori insets and for writing when she gets bored of the other stuff.

Another pack of markers.We have several other things to keep her busy when we do writing but this is what she used today. Other things she used today are stickers, magnetic doodle board, sensory table with oats and animals in it, cup of milk, and dish of Cheerios's cereal. Often she likes to draw on the floor or use the chalk boards but they didn't interest her today. I will make another post showing our writing class in action. I am worried with dial up if I make this any longer I might loose all of what I just did!