Slices of Life

I love that when I asked my boys where they'd like to go today that they all asked to stay home and play more Wiffle ball.  Spending simple days around the house can be so relaxing; especially when everyone is getting along! They all headed outside and played on the swing set until I could join them outside.  Ian and I played Wiffle ball alone for awhile since the younger two boys were busy playing Skylanders in the woods.  They used the poster that came with the game as a map and assigned each other roles and attributes.  They joined us eventually and then we all played Wiffle Ball together, though Alec did start working on drawing his own map on the back of the poster.    No one argued over batting order, which bats to use, or anything else the whole time we played.  They all got along great. Alec drawing his map of Skylanders We had so much fun and the weather forecast was wrong-- it was a beautiful sunny day.  I even managed to go outside in a tank top and pants today.  Finally

Is there anything better than getting outside and enjoying the sunny weather?  We just love being outside and try so hard to enjoy the nice weather whenever it shows up.  Especially when we've had some cold and miserable spring days.  Ian decided to take advantage of the sunny weather to go outside and work on creating a whole new world on our beach.  He took out some paper, sketched out what he wanted his road to look like and started getting to work on construction.  Evan eventually wandered outside and asked if he could help.  Ian put him to work using the shovel and the dump truck (the two tools Evan really wanted to use) and they worked together very nicely for quite a while. Alec locked himself in his room, opened his blinds and laid in the sun reading an entire chapter book in just a few hours.  Though it was finally sunny it was still rather chilly since it was only in the upper 40's in the morning and I have to say I could feel a definite temperature difference when I

My boys love to build! They build with Legos, with blocks, in video games, and even on the beach with sand and pails. They just love to build.  I love to see them building and encourage them as much as I can. The boys got some new Minecraft books and today they pulled out both of the Kindles and spent the morning working side by side and looking over one another's shoulders trying to find and create bigger and better things in their worlds.  The boys asked me to look up how to connect the Kindles and asked me a bunch of questions about their program that I could never hope to answer. I'm just not at all tech- savvy. I was able to find some instructions on Amazon and after three or four tries we got it to work and linked the kindle Minecraft worlds together!  The younger two boys then spent the rest of the morning playing together in Minecraft land.  They thought it was hilarious to be able to see one another and work together to build or destroy things.  We talked about respect

Today ended up being a day filled with reading!  I hadn't planned on how our day was going to go but all three boys were really motivated to read by Barnes and Noble's Summer Reading Program. The boys all settled down to watch another episode of The Little Travelers; British Isles.   As they ended that film they decided to watch The Little Travelers: Bali too.  I was not all that sure where Bali was located other than knowing it was an island country but Ian told me he thought it was one of the islands off the coast of Australia (and he was right! It's part of Indonesia-- I'm always amazed at the extent of the geography knowledge my kids have). After, the boys ran off to their rooms to read.  They really want to finish filling out their Barnes and Noble summer reading list so they can get their free books . Last year, though we finished our lists super early, we waited until the end of the summer to redeem our reading lists for books and they had hardly anything to cho

The boys were playing with the stomp rockets and my husband offered to help them get their real rocket up and running. They had received a rocket and a few small engines from my brother in law as a Christmas gift but we had yet to get around to assembling it and setting it off.  The boys were eager to help but soon became frustrated at how complicated the instructions were (to them especially) and how difficult it was to snap pieces together. They helped here and there but mostly they played on the swing set and watched my husband assemble it. When it was finally ready to launch we headed over to a big field and the boys counted down ended with "blastoff!" Unfortunately, the first two or three times nothing happened.  My husband is a very resourceful guy though and soon had the rocket zooming. The boys were in awe of how high it went, how fast if took off and we were all thrilled that the parachute worked! pushing the button; nothing happens It finally zoomed off! Can you see

While I was feeling like we hadn't done much of anything worth sharing this week as I began to write this post I was struck by the amount of schoolwork my kids managed to cover completely on their own! As our first week of mostly unschooling, it was a huge success! Alec has  read over three chapter book this week and I have watched him reading while sitting in the sand in the sun twice this week, reading while eating breakfast, reading while walking around the house, while brushing his teeth, while shopping at Target and the grocery store; He's been reading up a storm! He is in the midst of two different book series-- as well as reading Dragonbreath , he's also been reading the Genius Files by Dan Gutman. The other boys have been reading too, just not as much as Alec.  Ian and I finished Frindle and he read one of his Weird School books this week as well as a book called Skyscraper . He called me into his room and was showing me how long the pages were and all the big wor