Update

We have been really busy so I have been a little slow updating over here. Routine seems to settle in and I have a hard time pulling myself away.

This update is basically a run down of what we have been doing.

Daily morning routine:

• Prayer - looking at prayer list from church and any others we want to add
  
• Bible story from Arthur Maxwell's The Bible Story
• Verse (We just learned Isaiah 55:3)
• Review Character poem "Attentiveness"
  
• Read Making Brothers and Sisters Best Friends (The other day we were in the library and Jonathan randomly told the librarian "I love my brothers". This fact, to me, is a big deal. It is something we are praying for openly with the boys) .
• Read excerpts from a Childcraft encyclopedia I got from the thrift store. Right now we are studying about doors and how different doors work. Jonathan said his favorite door would be a bed door. I can imagine them locking each other in one of those!
• If I remember, we exercise.
  

Then we separate. Justin goes to the table for seat-work (writing, spelling words, worksheets) while Jonathan comes with me to my bedroom. We prop up on a bunch of pillows and cuddle on my bed while going over his assignments, math & phonics drills, and reader (Jonathan especially loves this, and complains if I suggest sitting anywhere else or doing it any differently).

After that we switch. Jonathan goes to the kitchen table to do seat-work/papers while Justin comes to my bed to cuddle and go over his assignments, read, & do math and phonics drills.

For Justin we are doing a lot of drills for multiplication. I am also going through a really neat book I got for him from the library called Marvelous Multiplication: Games & Activities That Make Math Easy & Fun. He is thrilled with it.

Here are a few games we made have played to learn Math:

From the book :

*With "Can You Eat Just One?" & "Pair It Up" we used grouping(and eating) raisins
and pairing socks to learn times tables.

*Using Flashcards:
One day we played "golf". I used the flashcards and pretended they were "Rook" cards. He had to recite/answer them correctly to get points.

Yesterday while saying his drills, he used a car with batman sitting in it to go to the next level each time he said a number family. Frankly, he would never get very far if he were just sitting and drilling. He wiggles and jumps the whole time he drills and I think it actually helps him to concentrate (wiggling). It's amazing how much better he learns if he is allowed to move!

During all of this Ryan either joins us in the bed, plays with puzzles, colors, or builds blocks. If he wants (it's entirely up to him), I also invite him to the bed to read just to him or learn some type of preschool thing. Some days he is for that; other days he just wants to play.

Hopefully if there is time, the boys do their chores. This is something I am working to get better at. Some days we do this and other days I end up trying (the key word being trying) to do everything myself.

Justin does a lot of free-time reading after seat-work. My goal has been reached, in that he picks up larger (100-150 page) books and reads them without being told. His current choice is a biography about Abraham Lincoln. He told us last night that... back then, people got "milk fever". He went on to explain to us what milk fever was.

Thursdays look completely different than other days of the week. Since we are way ahead in Language arts (we do 2 lessons a day), we use that day to study extra electives (science, history, physical education, ministry, etc). We do study science & history during the week, but Thursdays we take more time for it and our historical time-line.

I hoping to start a music study in KONOS soon for Thursdays. It is very intense and you actually make instruments while you learn them, learn orchestral position, etc. I could learn a lot myself from this!

Well it has taken me forever to write this post in an organized way, so I will end for now.