The Sweet Life of Reagan, Emmy, & Max
This Is Our Happy Place
We took the kids bowling for the first time back in April. We kicked off the night with dinner at Mama’s Kitchen…
Max brought along a green plastic pitcher from home for the night’s activities. (only him!)
The kids had a great time. They loved the loud music, black lights, etc. It was stressful trying to keep up with them in the dark, though!
Here’s some unedited video footage from the night. Nothing spectacular, but something to remember the night with…
We started off this week by going to The LaFollette Public Libary’s storytime. We have gone to Caryville’s storytime several times (which is wonderful, by the way), but thought we’d try LaFollette’s since it is more convenient. We love both libraries and visit them weekly! The girls enjoyed getting lost in crafting and creating things.
It happened to be Earth Day so I colored this while they crafted. I was also thankful that the storytime lady talked about Earth Day a little bit since I didn’t plan anything. (oops!)
I braved up and took the kids to the zoo again by myself! You might as well call me Super Mom! haha
Our hands-down favorite part of the day was some up close interactions with the baby chimpanzee George.
He pressed his mouth (full of food) against the glass for a funny face. You should have heard the laughter erupt in that moment. It was priceless.
He held the pose for me to get a shot.
And a smile-
After some playtime, he went up and began to nurse! We didn’t even know it was his mom or that he was still young enough to be nursing. It was incredibly sweet and funny altogether. The mother kissed him and groomed him while he nearly nursed himself to sleep. I’m not sure that we will ever witness anything as cool as that was ever again at the zoo. Lucky us!
Rea playing vet! The “Wee Play Zoo” is awesome for open-ended, hands-on play!
A nice evening outside at Gran & Papaw’s riding-
Meanwhile…..Reagan was enjoying some cake batter-
Online spelling test (super cool at readingeggs.com)
Me trying to figure out what curriculum I want to use with Reagan for 1st grade next year! You would never realize how many choices are out there until you start researching! I’m still not completely decided, but feel like I’m almost there…
Slowly, but surely enjoying my time reading One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp-
I found a new, fun way to help Reagan lean her blends/chunks on Pinterest. I say the sound and she throws the ball at it. She loved it.
2 kids + 2 dogs = 4 bodies altogether in the spaceship (now that’s some math!)
One things that I’ve done with Reagan to practice sight words is using this spiral bound index card book. Each card has a word. If she gets it right, she gets to add a sticker. She mastered her first book of words so we just started another one a few weeks ago. We might do this once a week. She almost knows all the 2nd list now!
One afternoon, she passed this note to me during homeschool. She said, “Mom, this is for you.”
Wow. I didn’t know whether to be offended or proud. haha
Bedtime reading-
We got each of Reagan’s teachers a fabulous cupcake from The Cup for teacher’s appreciation day! Yum. Best cupcakes EVER. These are the ones we picked out for us.
A little lipstick and blush application before we go in at the zoo-
“Hey, Mom! Take my picture!” (She’s starting to enjoy seeking out her own photo locations!)
After having this rental car that we named “The Red Tomato”, we sadly had to return it for my explorer. The girls were sad to let it go.
The Legals’ 1st win!
Who knew the trampoline made for such good pictures?!
Reagan doing some language arts on the trampline. LOTS of distractions as you can see.
Reading on the porch swing-
Monday making pizza time-
Reagan having daily reading time with me (one of my fav parts of the day)-
I have used a pretty well-rounded approach to teaching her to read, I think. Here’s one of the tools that I have used to teach her phonics- Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann. It is one of the less colorful and fun tools that I have used with her, but it has helped her a lot. She is over half way through the book and gets excited every time she successfully reads a harder/longer story.
Here’s a video of her reading the story portion of her lesson (a new story)-
I have a good friend who is teaching Kindergarten in our public school system. She has been an encouragement and good resource during my homeschooling moments of weakness! She does a “Daily Fix It” with her kids every morning to help them with simple writing rules (first letter of sentence capitalization, ending punctuation, etc.) I started doing this with Reagan to give her an opportunity to work on these skills. Keeping the skills learning time separate from her personal writing time has lessened her frustration with writing and allowed her to do her own thing. I write a sentence with mistakes and a picture. The picture is probably unnecessary, but she enjoys seeing what I have come up with! She has to re-write the sentences and fix the mistakes. Sometimes, she will color my picture or add to it (like the sad face heart in this one! haha). I have kept the sentences pretty easy and basic so she can easily read them.
Home school on a nice Spring morning on the deck-
Reading Junie B. Jones to her while she colors- she LOVES Junie B. I admit, I do, too.
Reagan on first base and Emmy playing in the dirt-
Max enjoys climbing on the bleachers at Rea & Emmy’s baseball games-
I introduced Max to abcmouse.com. He learned how to use my computer mouse.
Early AM Thursday morning- “I-75 and Hardees”
They barely stay awake to eat there breakfast-
Rea’s art from Miss Margaret’s class – “GYOTAKU”
Some things I like about this class is that Reagan learns all sorts of art methods, is exposed to a variety of materials, and learns art history! Miss Margaret crams a lot of material into a short period of time every Thursday.
Here’s the scoop from Miss Margaret on this piece-
“Gyotaku (gyo = fish, taku = rubbing) was invented in the early 1800s in Japan by fishermen who wanted to record their catch. This was their livelihood (not sport fishing as we have today) and the print allowed them to document the size and types of fish caught and still take them back to be sold or eaten. Also, because certain fish in Japan are revered, the fisherman could release these fish back into the water after taking their rubbings. Japanese fishermen took newsprint, ink and brush out to sea with them. It has also developed into an art form; many now create prints for their beauty and artistic elements.
Our artists used their choices of printmaking ink colors to paint life size fish cast from real fish. Students chose one of an assortment of species, Blue Gill, Star Fish, Flounder, Piranha, Angel Fish, Trout, Perch, Bass, or small Walleye Pike. They then placed their paper over the fish and rubbed for a monoprint.”
Emmy and I had some zoo time while Rea was in class. I like getting opportunities for one-on-one with her. I feel like she needs more of that being our middle child! Here she is putting on some lipstick before we go in at the zoo.
Girls playing DDG with friends at TC…
My air conditioner or windows wasn’t working on this super hot day so we had to make a pit stop at Walgreens to buy some of these water bottle fans. They helped, but we were still pretty much miserable.
Some of our library books Reagan read-
I got to photograph my cousin’s newborn- Corban. He was so good for me. We’re happy to have a new little on in our family.
We painted our playroom/classroom. The last of our yellow paint (from when we moved in our house) was covered up. Bittersweet.
A selfie by Rea- She has really got into texting lately. She texts the same few people all the time with a picture or herself. It usually says “I love you. To U.” She just asked me the other day if she was old enough to have her own phone. She justified the need with educational reasoning- she has to spell to text, right?
The girls first baseball game of the season at the brand new White Bridge Field. This was the first game ever played on the county’s new baseball field. “History in the making!” With Daniel helping coach, my full-time position at the games is to keep Maxie Man under control.
The next day, I noticed that make took literally about 50ish pictures like this with my phone during the baseball game.
Here’s a video by local sports coverage guru David Graham about the game-
Here’s a video with some highlights from their first games of the season-
We planted some flowers. We had great expectations on this day, but I sadly report now that nothing grew. I’m not sure where we went wrong, but we are creating a game plan for another round of planting flowers….
Lunch on a nice spring day-
The kids were at Gran & Papaw’s to help put their garden out…
I’m so thankful that my parents are around and healthy enough that my children can enjoy them and experiences like these. It is like pure gold.
Day 2/watering flowers…… we were still excited……
I consigned and shopped at the Duck Duck Goose Consignment Event in Knoxville. I would have actually profited from the event had I not tacked on this horse (now named Ginger) to my bill. Oh well, it is hard to find this toy and the kids really wanted her. She is pretty cool if I do say so myself.
Thursday Morning.
Rea’s art from Miss Margaret’s class “Eric Carle’s Grouchy Ladybug”
Face painting at Duck Duck Goose-
A stop by the LaFollette Public Library-
Here’s a fun video of the kids chasing a butterfly together in Gran & Papaw’s yard. The sound didn’t record well, but I was still tickled to have captured the moment.
Map Learning at www.time4learning.com
A photoshoot with my dog cousin Rambo-
Our doggies look like twins (almost!)
Max was three on April 12th! My baby, my wild baby boy growing up so fast.
The whole three fingers thing was a struggle…
My brother titled this “Day 1 and Day 1095”
I guess that would make this “Day 9 and Day 1095” haha
My boy and his sleeping positions-
Since Max’s party was a couple days after his birthday, we gave him part of his gifts on his actual birthday. He was pretty tickled.
I took a Saturday off to have some time with the kids for Max’s birthday. I RARELY have a free Saturday so I wanted to do something really special. I loaded the kids up and took them to the Knoxville Zoo by myself! Crazy? For sure! They were soooo very good for me. It was a wonderful time with them. One to go down in the books.
Our favorite part of our visit was definitely watching the otters swim and play. There were lots of giggles.
