Every Friday is Donut Day!

     This last year Sage has been working through her 2nd grade homeschool curriculum  Adventures in My Father's World.  This is the first year we have used this curriculum and so far we have loved it! This year we were able to travel back in time and explore U.S. history and patriotic symbols from a Christian perspective with fascinating stories, hands-on activities, a timeline, and a student created history notebook.  I absolutely loved the math curriculum we chose this year.  We also studied some U.S. geography, Bible, science, art, music and more. This year for math we chose something that I think is super exciting!  The curriculum is called Teaching textbooks and it's great because they were designed specifically for independent learners, which with two other busy little guys on the run its great to have something that Sage can sit down and do pretty much by herself, with the occasional help from Mom or Dad.   We have already purchased the next years worth of curriculum through MFW and as soon as Sage finishes level 3 of her TT we will purchase level 4.  We are looking forward to digging into that as soon as we get back from our EPIC road trip to Texas this summer. 
  
     So as we grow in our ability to motivate our children to get their school work done we have sought many different methods to help them get their work done in a timely manner.  This year we found having our fridays to focus specifically on building our family closer together and closer to God was a hit.  One of the ways we do this is by having a special date with the kids every friday at the local donut shop.  Von takes Sage early and they spend time reading a chapter of a special devotional book together.  They talk about the week and generally just get some quiet time together with no other interuptions.  Here is a pic of Sage on one of her Friday trips to the Donut Shop. 

Sage 8yrs

 After Daddy and Sage have had some time together at the Donut shop, the boys and I head over to join them.  Usually after donuts we split up again and Sage heads off with Von for another hour or so to tackle errands that need to be done before church.  The boys and I find a local park to play at and occasionally we take a craft to do while we are there.  Here is Toby enjoying some Donut love as well :)

Tobias 3yrs

 Toby is finally Potty Trained!  What a joy it is :)  He is a hoot and still a giant kid for his age.  He is surely long and lean.  The 11lb 9 oz baby he was at birth has continued to rock the growth chart at his annual visits to the doc.  He has another one coming up next week so we will see what they say as far as if his growth has continued on that same curve or not. 

Malachi 5yrs

This May Malachi turned 5!  In our house that means its time to start learning to read.....  The curriculum that we love is called T.A.T.R.A.S. which stands for Teach America to Read and Spell.  We used this with Sage and she has been an amazing reader ever since.  It is a very holistic reading program.....teaching all the sounds that every letter and blend of letters makes in order of their most common use....(hopefully that makes sense?)  So the child learns to decode a word starting with the most commonly used sound of that letter or blend and then works through each of the other sounds until they find the appropriate match.  Malachi has mastered about 31 of the letter sounds and blends also known as Phenomes I believe.  He is about halfway through the list and we are working on them very very slowly.  Usually I try to find natural reading opportunities for him throughout the day that highlight the sounds he is working on.  He is definately not as interested in reading as Sage was but with some fun incentives such as stickers and game time he is progressing and is able to decode the words in some typical early readers with some help and motivation from Mom!  Anyone who wants to check this program out......I stronly suggest talking to someone who has used it.  It is a great program but the instructions are not as simple to use as I think they could be.  We have taken it and morphed it to fit each childs learning styles as needed. 

Well that was a doozy of a first post.  I'm hoping to start blogging more regulary about what God is doing in Tomasini house.  It is a wild ride on a daily basis but we are loving life and learning more about who God is calling us to be every day. 

Blessings today and remember to focus on what you CAN do not what you Can't!~

Ashley :)