Super Reader!

Luke finished Hooked on Phonics a few months ago.  (I took his picture, but apparently forgot to post it.  I just found it as I was scrolling through my photo book.)  I'm so proud of him!  He is officially reading on a 2nd grade level.  Not too shabby for a kid that doesn't officially start Kindegarten until next year!

Crayons!

Eli has discovered the joy of school.  He was quite pleased to know that he could explore an entire box full of crayons if he sat at the desk with Luke.





Look at how excited he is!








He was amazed that his crayon left color on the paper.  (Luke was busy eradicating a poorly formed 6 on his math sheet.)




Eli's happy squeals prompted Seth to join them at the table.






Then, they realized I was taking pictures, so they decided to do the following:



(Luke:  Hey, Ma, take a picture of me!  Seth: *Robot Dance*





(Luke:  Take a picture of my pencil!  Seth:  *Vogue*)





(Luke:  Look!  I'm a MONKAY!  Seth:  Hmmm.  I'm not really sure what he is doing.)





(Luke: playing the drums   Seth: making fishy faces at Eli)





Seth left, but I think Eli was oblivious to the fact that he was ever there.  He was completely enthralled with the crayons.

What Luke Said...

I don't sleep at night because I have a job to do. I have to protect the house and stuff. I make sure there are no snakes. If I find one, I squish it with my butt.

Let's go to Mexico so the hurricane doesn't hit me on the head.

Roses are my favorite flower. They smell like poison.

God's got the whole world in His hands. He has really big hands.

I don't want to go home.  I want to stay here for 40 days so I can watch Food Network.

The Many Faces of Captain America

Headphones

Sometimes it can be distracting when a baby pushes buttons on musical toys and laughs hysterically less than 5 feet away from you when you are trying to do math.

Studies have shown that some kids are more able to concentrate on school work when they are listening to classical music, so we decided to give it a try. I gave Seth noise canceling head phones and let him select a composer.



He is pleased with his selection, and I anticipate that he will get much work done.



And then he does this



and this



and this



He thinks he is quite funny and decides to laugh at himself.



Then, I make him take the headphones off because it seems as though he works better with the baby squealing than he does listening to music.

audio tapes...

A few months ago, Luke was rummaging through his Hooked on Phonics boxes and found an audio tape. He was quite curious and instantly began unravelling it. As soon as I saw him, I started yelling at him to stop and tried to explain what he was holding. He was a bit confused, so after I used a pencil to fix the unravelling, I located a tape player and stuck it in. He was AMAZED that he could listen to something other than a CD.




I showed him how to use the fast forward and rewind buttons on the tape player, and he entertained himself for quite a while with it.

Math Fort!

Seth did not enjoy math when he was in 1st grade. The only way I could convince him to actually do his work was to make a secret fort that could only be used for math.



The fort was actually really dark. Here's a picture of it with the flash off.



Luke doesn't dislike math the way Seth did, but he gets to make a math fort everyday anyway. His fort actually serves a dual purpose. 1. He thinks it's really fun to do school in a fort. 2. It hides him, so he and Seth can't distract each other.

Here he is working diligently in his workbook.



Meanwhile...



Seth entertains himself with totally random thoughts about astrophysics and time travel while he works on his handwriting.



"Mommy, I'm so glad you homeschool me and I don't have to brush my hair every morning. You are the greatest mommy ever!"