Slices of Life

I couldn't believe it today when I told my boys we were going to be writing and no one complained!  Evan wrote his first and last name twice in his best, neatest, handwriting. He knows his first name very well but it's one of the few times he's had to write his last name.  By the time he wrote it twice he knew how to spell it.  I asked him a few times throughout the day to tell me how he spells it and he got it right every time!  It's such small progress but it feels like a huge leap. Evan writing his name The older two boys wrote a short story (more like a paragraph) about their Lego Minifigures.  I had downloaded and printed off many writing ideas from Homegrown Learners quite a while ago and had forgotten all about them.  The boys are very big into Lego's so I thought they'd enjoy this assignment. They each wrote a cute little story and tried very hard to make sure to use the proper spelling, punctuation and sentence structure.  They...

I couldn't decide if I wanted to make Friday art day or field trip day so we made it both!   We started our morning painting fall leaves.  I cut leaf shapes out of white paper and set out yellow, red and orange paint.  The boys dotted paint onto the leaf shapes and then we used cling wrap to mix the colors together and make interesting patterns on the leaves.   They enjoyed the project immensely and ended up making a lot of colorful leaves.   I can't wait for them to dry so I can put them up in the windows.  I miss all the decorations we had in our windows last fall and winter when we were avidly crafting each week.  I already have some pretty fall apples planned for next week.  Evan adds paint Alec blends the colors together, testing to see what will happen if he puts all the dots in a pattern on his leaf.  some of our completed leaves Once we were done art I had all the boys get ready for the day while I packed lunches for ou...