20010 Republic Gunship - Brickmaster

My son's first installment of his Brickmaster club arrived this week. He was delighted to receive a kit in the mail! He put it together all by himself as a newly six year old. So, if you're considering the club, don't let the suggested age of eight deter you. I think my son will be long beyond these type of kits at age 8. I'm sure he'll still enjoy them, but don't wait until age 8 to sign your child up if you're thinking about it.

On another note, we had a fantastic Thanksgiving yesterday. I will share more about that another day because right now I'm off to put up the first Christmas tree in my house with my kiddos!

Cheers!

Long A Theme Week

It has been a super fun week here at my house! We have had our first ever Theme Week - inspired by Katherine over at http://katherinemariephotography.com/blog/ . I've taken pictures to document our fun but mine don't begin to compare to hers. Maybe someday but for now you'll have to live with snapshots.

I'm going to attempt to recall everything we did this week and link you to the sources. Most of them were free if you decide you want to use any of them for your own theme week or supplemental schooling or fun time - whatever you decide to call it.

While my daughter was in school (second grade) the boys (Kindergarten and age 4) and I did most of this. We did include Ashlee in the theme week too but I'll get to that later. First we made this Turkey. You'll notice his head is made with an acorn cut out. I found him here -
http://www.first-school.ws/activities/crafts/animals/birds/turkey_oak.htm
He seemed fitting for the week before Thanksgiving. Plus it gave us a chance to go for a walk, practice our cutting and our gluing. Good stuff.

While your at that site, check out the long A mini books you can print off there. http://www.first-school.ws/theme/alphabetp2.htm#a2

My boys thought it was super fun to make them! Actually, I was surprised by how much they enjoyed that project. Seemed so simple to me but they pulled them off the board a couple times this past week to go over them again and recall the words and show off their work. They were very proud of these! I'll be doing those again.

While Case was at Kindergarten one day, Mason and I made a capital and lowercase A with crayon, then glue and then rice. Why rice? Because it's what I had in my pantry! No more rhyme or reason than that.

Gave his little hands a chance to practice more skills.

We also discovered the Starfall website this week. Wow. My kids think this site is super fun! I took them there to see the little video about the letter A and they have gone to that site repeatedly this week for other letter videos, matching games and other fun stuff. All of it is free and it's all geared to learning to read phonics style. Click on the letter A at the following link and see the cute little video yourself. At the end, your child gets to sort the letters from the tree into the basket for uppercase or lowercase.

http://www.starfall.com/n/level-k/index/load.htm?f

While I was at that Starfall site, I went to the download center to see what worksheets they had for the letter A. When you click the link, you'll see 4 pages in pdf come up associated with the letter. We used the second worksheet and let my 4 year old color the letters (pictured above) and glue on a bunch of long A themed die cuts I have left over from my scrapbooking stash. (See the picture below for the finished version.) You can't see it in the picture but he also practiced writing his upper case A along the bottom of the page.

http://www.starfall.com/n/N-info/abcprint.htm?n=abc

One of our favorite activities was Ankle Art. I had some tattoos and we applied them to our ankles for a little more fun.

In addition to all the things pictured, we colored in Angels (something I had on hand from another source), we colored Anchors (http://www.first-school.ws/t/cp_transportation/anchor.htm) and we colored another Acorn. (http://www.first-school.ws/t/cp_seasonal/f_acorn_mouse.htm)

I have the first three books in the Core Knowledge Series (What Your Kindergartner Should Know, First Grader and Second Grader - available at Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/What-Your-Kindergartner-Needs-Know/dp/0385318413/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258856958&sr=8-1) and I included some things from those books for my Kindergartner and my Second Grader. On the Acorn coloring page above, I explained the saying, "Great oaks from little acorns grow." And we discussed a little about Abraham Lincoln. We discussed Aesop's Fables and I read them three of them while my daughter read one aloud. We talked about Asia being one of the 7 continents and discussed some aspects of China - creatures that live there, the great wall and looked at a map.

The boys made Jake's Tale book from Starfall (http://www.starfall.com/n/N-info/onlinebooks.htm?n=downloadcenter) and worked on two worksheets from the Long A pdf under Level 1 Reading and Writing Journal. We only did page 31 and 32. (http://www.starfall.com/n/N-info/level-1.htm?n=downloadcenter)

Part of the curriculum I bought from Little Hands to Heaven included a book called My ABC Bible Verses. (Available at Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/My-ABC-Bible-Verses-Hiding/dp/1581340052/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258855690&sr=8-1) I read them the two pages on the letter A and we made Proverbs 15:1 our verse for the week. We repeated it daily and my 8 year old memorized it. The 6 year old has it pretty much memorized too.

Ashlee and I spent some time together one evening playing Watson's Word Wall with letter A words. I found this game at pbskids.org. (http://www.pbs.org/parents/lions/educators/activities_printable.html)

In addition to all that, we spent time working on homework assignments from school including counting by 10s to 100, roman numerals and talked about palindromes. Mason worked on writing his first name on each item he did while Case worked on his first, middle and last name with capitalization and lower case letters. We did art, we built with Legos and had a terrific time with each other!

The kids enjoyed the week so much that when I went into our little room to take a picture of the filled up board for this blog post, I found my kids in there working in workbooks that they had each dug out! I promise, I had nothing to do with that!

I know this all sounds very heavy on worksheets and perhaps a bit like I worked my children over this week - but that is really not the case. It was all fun! It also sounds like it was really, really time consuming but it wasn't like that either.

We are all looking forward to more theme weeks in our future. Won't you let me know if you try a theme week at your house?

Cheers!

The Elf on a Shelf

Have you ever heard of this book? I want to read it and I think it's just the cutest idea. However, it's $30 for the book with the elf. Ummm.... I don't think so. Being the frugal woman I tend to be about these things, I wanted to read a friend's book and just buy an elf somewhere to convey the same idea to my kids. After all, that's what the author's mom did when she was growing up. She made up the story and used an elf they had, right? Unfortunately, when I see the book in a store it is sealed. Smart publisher. Surely, I'm not the only one who thought about doing that. None of my friends actually have the book. Bummer.

So, on a recent tour of the web, I found this poem. What makes it even better is that my Mom (who had no idea I wanted to do this Elf on a Shelf thing) called me about two weeks ago and started talking about the book. She had the same reaction to the price I did and put the book back on the shelf. But then she was in a craft store and saw some elves for less than $10 and she was calling to see if it was a tradition I'd like to start. Isn't it funny how these tendencies run in the family? Anyway, she picked out an elf for my children and I printed off the poem.

Total cost to me? Free. I {heart} free.

I found the poem at Blissfully Domestic. See, I'm not the only one who had this idea....

http://blissfullydomestic.com/2008/mr-peeps

Cheers!

Homeschool Your Child for Free

This week is my first week actually attempting Theme Weeks here at my house. Let me give you a little background about me before I tell you why I bought this book and what I think of it.

As you know, I have three children. Preschool through 2nd grade. My first two children attended preschool for three years each. My youngest attended preschool for two years. With my husband's blessing, I decided to keep my youngest child at home with me this year instead of sending him to preschool twice a week. I have nothing against preschool - my kids loved it when they were enrolled. However, with one child getting on the bus at 7:30 am, preschool beginning at 9:30 am, my kindergartener getting on the bus at 11:10 am, preschool pick up at 1:30 pm and the bus dropping off the older two at 2:50 pm, I didn't really feel like spending my days racing around. Additionally, it'd be nice to save the money from preschool. But the very most important reason of all - this is one of the few chances I have to spend one-on-one time with my youngest child. If he heads off to kindergarten next year to begin his career in public school, this is my last chance to do this. Part of me would rather spend a lot of time focusing on my business (www.achallphotography.com) but realistically, I can focus on the business at any point. If I miss this opportunity this year, I can never have it again. After making this decision, I spent less than one month's preschool tuition to purchase a preschool curriculum recommended to me by a friend. Little Hands to Heaven from http://www.heartofdakota.com/index.php. I actually found mine for less at Amazon.com.

Another thing you should know about me is that I've had a leaning toward homeschooling since my first child was a baby. However, I'm also nervous about the responsibility of having their entire education on my shoulders. I love the idea of bonding with my children and watching them grow and learn. I love the ideas about helping them make educational crafts, science experiments, art, family reading time, family bible studies... all of that. Even though I live in the homeschool capital of the world (Homeschool Legal Defense is literally across the street from my house) with a lot of friends who homeschool quite successfully, I'm still nervous.

So, I decided to Supplemental School. Basically, I do the parts I think are fun and let public school do the rest. Ha! My most recent inspiration came from a blog I visit often. Katherine Marie Photography (http://katherinemariephotography.com/blog/) often posts pictures of her theme weeks that she does with her kids. It looks like so much fun, I had to try it myself!

We started this week with the theme of Long A. I can't believe how much FUN we've been having! In my search to come up with suitable theme ideas for the Long A theme of the week, I was running across a lot of sites that offer ideas but cost money to join or subscribe to. I knew there had to be free options out there but I just wasn't looking in the right spots. My search led me to Amazon to see if I could supplement the few ideas I had found. There I came across this book and downloaded it to my Kindle. What a fantastic resource! Since my kindle is fairly new, I'm not sure yet if I wish I'd purchased this in traditional print format but I also didn't want to wait for Amazon to send the book since we'd already begun our theme.

For week one, here is our daily schedule....

Ashlee gets on the bus for school.
Mom has some coffee and the boys have free play.
We do a little "school" according to our theme.
We eat lunch and then Case gets on the bus for Kindergarten.
Mason and I spend some time doing some fun things associated with our theme and a few items from the Little Hands to Heaven curriculum.
The bus brings my two older kids home, we have snack and everyone plays. Free play.
Then it's homework time. Any homework from the teachers is done now. Then we all pull back together to do more theme items among the four of us.
Then dinner, reading, free play, baths or whatever for the evening.

As week one is coming to a close, I'm loving this! The TV and Wii system are on less. We are all spending more time together. I'm sharing their world more effectively and I'm teaching things that I think are important - like bible verses and bible stories. Most of all, it's been FUN! I'm delighted to have the FUN back in motherhood.

So, as usual, a blog that was starting out about our love of Legos is turning into a blog about my kids, how we learn, how I mother, things I'm learning and any information I can share to help someone else.

Thanks again for stopping by!
Cheers!

Little Kits

Remember how I told you that I let each child pick out about $10 in mini kits when we were at the Lego store? Ashlee picked out a kit of Lego City mini figures so there isn't much to see there but here is what the boys picked.



What, you think I should have wiped his face before I took his picture for the blogosphere? Nope. I gotta keep it real and show you how it really is....

Mason was so pleased to be following the instructions with some assistance from Mom. I love these little kits for this age. They are learning to follow instructions and to build without it being so much "work" to teach them.

Very proud of his castle.

And here we are about to launch a catapult at the castle! Bombs away!

Cheers!

Y-wing

The ship was put together the Monday after our big trip. Grammy left that morning to go back home and we began the task of putting it together. The birthday-boy-to-be started acting a little tired. Then about 2/3 of the way through the project he asked me if I could finish the ship while he went to take a nap. Wait, WHAT?! You know the boy is sick if he walks away from a Lego project to take a nap. Turns out, he had the swine flu. Then I got it, hubby got it and little brother got it. The only person unaffected was our daughter! Thankfully, she was spared.

Since the completion of the ship, our boy has thoroughly enjoyed flying it everywhere around the house and creating many grand adventures for it. A few pieces have fallen off, but that's okay. Since then, he had his actual birthday where he received the Spider Droid set from his other grand parents, the anniversary set of The Battle of Endor, a membership to the Lego club and the Lego Star Wars Visual Dictionary. Lego heaven if you've just turned 6.

Just two days ago, little brother asked me to teach him to read. So sweet! Since he's not enrolled in a preschool program this year, I've been brushing up on a bit of curriculum for the little man. Earlier this year I also got the book, "What your Kindergartner Needs to Know" from the Core-Knowledge series along with the same book for second graders. In addition to all that, I had previously purchase the Little Hands to Heaven preschool curriculum. With all that in place, I started today to work on theme weeks here at my house in our supplemental schooling room. (I can't claim to be homeschooling but I like the idea of covering all the parts I think are cool. Ha.)

Today went extremely well. Big brother is in half day Kindergarten so during the morning we started off making a turkey craft where they cut out pieces and assembled a turkey with leaves and a head made to look like an acorn - thus keeping it with my Long A theme for the week. Big guy is working on writing his whole name while little brother is working toward just his first name. After Big Brother went off to school, we worked on a few more items together because he wanted to "do school". It was fun! I love this idea because it's fail safe. If I completely fall off the wagon, they are going to public school and will be no worse off. If I find that we are thriving and loving it, then I know that I have the skills to do this if it should become necessary at some point. Win, win. Right? And we're making good memories doing stuff together. You'll surely be seeing more about this here on our little blog.

Thanks for stopping by! Cheers!

Lego Store!

We made it out for our adventure to the Lego store this weekend! We had no idea but during the hour that we arrived, they were having all the Star Wars characters in the store for shoppers to meet to help launch the Lego Star Wars Visual Dictionary. Too bad they had sold out of the book by the time we arrived. Still, it was a total highlight for the kids!

Mason was scared to death of Darth so he would NOT get in this picture to save my soul. The other kids were quite pleased though. I think this picture is going to be framed for a certain little boys room. (After I figure out where I went wrong with that light balance.)

Despite the look of some of these pictures, the store was PACKED! I was actually pretty glad we were there toward the end of the event because it was physically difficult to move around and look at the products! Once the hour was winding down, it got easier to go find what I was looking for.

Here is the one character Mason would appear with - as long as Grammy was in the picture too. (That white balance thing again - no one was actually sick even though they might look it in these pictures.)

I thought it was fun to see some of the creations the store employees had created. Some were from the kits but several were freestyle and pretty inspiring. I thought a Lego pumpkin was a great idea! If I had more orange bricks, I might attempt one. Maybe we'll have a collection by next year.

Since the store is about an hour away, I won't be going back too frequently. That's why we loaded up on some items for our collection. I had a list of things we needed and then I let the kids pick out $10 worth of kit stuff each.

Case is celebrating a birthday next month so Grammy went ahead and let him pick out his birthday present while we were there. The boy is so excited to put it together! Pictures to come of the finished creation.

Organizing Legos

This week we (read I) spent two days sorting and organizing legos. I only did a basic sort because - let's face it - the kids are going to mix them all back together tomorrow.

However, I'm hoping to take them to the Lego store this weekend so I wanted to have a good understanding of which items we had plenty of and where there were gaps in our collection. It was good to see because I would have guessed wrong in a few areas! I decided to sort our legos by basic size and function. Since my kids aren't going to be designing fabulouse 'scapes (yet) where the block colors are relevant, I decided to sort them according to basic sizes while they are learning to build. I'm sure the sort method will change eventually but this is where we are today.

First, I pulled out all the big one-of-a-kind type bricks that obviously came in a kit when owned by the previous owners. All those (and some smaller ones that I didn't realize I should sort out) went into this big ottoman that we use as a seat around our big red table. We have three of these and previously all the legos were in the three ottoman storage units. I found them at Kohl's during the back to school season and they were being marketed to kids going to live in a dorm. Whatever! I knew they'd be perfect for our little room!


I found these little trays earlier this week in the dollar spot at Target. Although I likely wouldn't feed my kids anything off them, I knew they'd be great for holding bits during craft time. Turns out, they also make great devices to sort legos! Four drawers of my 9 drawer Sterilite tower have legos stored in them like this - temporarily until I find permanent storage bins for little bits.

Then the bottom four drawers hold basic lego sizes. Bottom one is plates, next is long and lean (all the legos that are only one across), next drawer is wheels and the top drawer of the four is all your basic block sizes.

Next I have to show you Ashlee's latest creation. Here is the front.

Here is the back. I thought it looked pretty awesome.

Then there is Case. I spotted one creation the other day and thought it looked awfully cool. It looked to me like he'd created himself a hamburger. So I mentioned to him that I thought that was mighty cool. He replied, "Yeah, it's the Krusty Krab burger!" Then I walked in to the room today to see the burger in this little vignette. Love that!

Modest beginnings

Welcome to our adventure. I am the mother of three children. My daughter is turning 8 next month, my son is turning 6 next month and my other son is 4. My middle child received a lego kit last year for his birthday and my youngest child received a big tub of legos in May for his birthday. And that was the absolute beginning of their love of these little bricks.

Two months ago, some older boys in our neighborhood passed along a box full of their legos that they had outgrown. What a gift! Thank you to Zack, Jeremy, Evan and Alex. We have been playing non stop ever since. So much so, that I recently turned our livingroom into our homework and lego room. It is where we spend the most time these days. Between craft projects, homework, Girl Scouts and the never ending lego creations, we are all quite happy there.

Currently, I'm looking for ideas that would be appropriate ways to run a lego club for the age group we are in now. I looked at Jr. First Lego League and it's a little more advanced than we are. Besides, if I'm going to spend $25 related to this hobby, it's going to be on BRICKS! LOL.

My plans for this blog are to share with other parents of young children anything I learn that might help you along with documenting my children's creations. I'm sure they will be elementary at first but hopefully the skills and creativity will grow and they will become quite talented at something that is both educational and keeps them out of trouble! It seems to me that everything I've found thus far on the web are too advanced for the fun-yet-educational aspects of what I'm hoping to achieve. So, if you know some simple ideas for stimulating creative play for children these ages, please share. I'd love to know about them.