Long time, no "sea"

On my "to-do board I have written "blog". It's been there for several months now. All I can say is we're still here and life is incredibly busy...in a good way.

Branna is involved in guitar and taekwondo, Atlie has finished her official reading lessons, and Aisley has now been potty trained. Not to mention our regular homeschool schedule and church activities!

So, here we are...about 2/3 done with school. There's so much to catch up on,  that I'm going to just start here and save the catch for another post, maybe with just pictures.

Currently, we are studying Day 5 of the creation week for science and we are spending sometime investigating sea creatures.

We started out our week with simple ocean sensory bin, complete with sea creatures, shells, and glass marble "water".

Branna and Atlie had lots of fun creating beautiful artwork...

(Atlie drew a happy orca)

We also drew (as best as we could) a scale model of a 60 foot sperm whale.  It was fun to see relative sizes.

Besides our science study, Atlie recently finished How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, which teaches reading through phonetics.  As an extension to this, she has been working on familiarizing herself with high frequency sight words.

And of course, one always learns more when you graduate from student to teacher... in this case, Atlie invited her entire pony crew to class.

Lastly, one of the best perks of homeschool is that we have time after we finish school work for lots of outside play.  For the most part, our winter has been very mild this year, and we have taken advantage of it.  Who needs the park when you have wonderful grandparents, who have provided awesome outdoor play toys, including a princess castle, trampoline, and swing set.  (Well, the girls do still love our neighborhood park, but it's really nice to have all of this fun so accessible!)

Catching Up

It's been way too long in between posts and while I know I don't have a huge reader base, I mainly like to keep my blog up-to-date as a sort of scrap book.  Branna and Atlie have enjoyed looking back at themselves over the years and it's fun for me, too. :)
Since there has been so much in between posts and I really don't even know where to begin to catch up, I'm going to make a quick list of accomplishments and then do a "look" at each of the girls.

As of June 2014:
--We finished Branna's 1st grade year!
--Branna read so many books this year, including most of the Magic Tree House series.  She also loved the Magic Puppy series, The Boxcar Children, and Shel Silverstein poems.
--Atlie has been reading some and we're looking forward to continuing that, as well as handwriting.
--Aisley is talking up a storm and is saying 2 and 3 and sometimes 4 word sentences. There's hardly a word she doesn't know!


Branna's favorites:
Color: green
Activity: Taekwondo (she's currently on her gold belt and will test for orange soon).  Branna also enjoys drawing and writing.  She also just bought her first guitar and is really excited to learn how to play.  She earned her money through selling her books and lemonade sales, not to mention birthday money.
Food: Branna's a very picky eater, so it's really hard to say.  I think she might say anything without cheese.

Atlie's favorites:
Color: She says that all the colors are her favorite, but she always leans towards pink and sparkles.
Activity: Atlie loves anything outdoors, especially catching bugs or snails.  She also enjoys drawing, coloring, and looking through books
Food: Atlie is just the opposite of Branna.  She loves just about everything, especially cheese.

Aisley's favorites:
Color: It seems to be yellow...
Activity: Anything her big sisters are doing.  She wants to get right in on the action with them.  However, she also loves to sing.  Her 2 favorite songs are "Let It Go" from Frozen and "Twinkle Twinkle".
Food: Mac and cheese.  Aisley likes most foods and I hope it stays that way!

Atlie

Atlie wrote her name for the first time this week! And it was a good attempt, if I do say so myself!

Cold weather... Again!

This winter has been unbelievable! It's been colder than usual and on top of that, we've had several days of winter precipitation. (I think the weather man said 7!) So, what do you do when life gives you sleet? You eat icicles!

Super Aisley and her Sidekick Cooper

Snow Day

We actually got a little bit if snow & sleet this year! Although the MayHouse school didn't get an official day off from school, The girls did enjoy getting to play outside in between lessons.  One coincidental lesson Ilanned was Snowman Sight Word and Math game. Atlie enjoyed getting in on the action by rolling the dice and coloring in the corresponding sum.  Branna is such an awesome reader she had no problem winning the game!

Cinderella

I have posted before about how much Atlie loves Cinderella, and especially dressing up like Cinderella. So, I thought it would fun for Atlie to make a Cinderella lap book. She really enjoyed it and especially liked the fold put book with her name.

Cinderella counting cards

Color identification book

Shape book

Aisley at 14 months

New words: boo, see (still signs lots of things and just like with the other 2, this has been so useful for communication)

Milestones this month: Walking alot more (about 60% of the time), Starting to use a fork well

Aisley at 13.5 months

I miss the "monthly" post again, but I wanted to still get something down, so I thought a half month update would be just as good. :)

Signs: apple, daddy, mommy, baby, sleep, blanket, cheese, please, cracker, more, bath, drink, noodle, all done, play, ball

You started walking just before your birthday!  However, before you started walking you were climbing on everything.

You have a very good understanding of what's being said to you.  For instance, if some asks if you're hungry, you will smack your lips or head to the kitchen.  You know when daddy's leaving for work and start for the door and blow a kiss goodbye.

Two of your favorite things are going to play at the park to swing and listening to music so you can dance (aka shake your head).

Jinger Bells

Atlie loves the Christmas season and one of her favorite songs to sing is Jingle Bells.  However, Atlie thinks it is Jinger Bells and as you can see, doesn't really know the rest of the song either. :)
I thought it was cute and wanted to capture the moment, before she figures out the real song.