Working out our rhythm...

We've been trying to do "school" about two or three times per week using a little schedule I made for the boys and I. We work on anything from science to handwriting (if you can really call it that :) to just playing with numbers and letters. Of course it is mostly just playing. We work the hardest on Bible study and character building at this point but I try to introduce a few new things to Lincoln academically each week as well. After about two or three months of really trying to "do school" we hit a bit of a wall. Lincoln was tired of having the alphabet pushed in front of him and I think he was a bit frustrated at the pace of things. He likes to take his time but gets easily distracted after only 5 minutes... kinda' hard to work around that ;) So we just take it slow and I have been trying to find new ideas to help extend that attention span without torturing him or having "school" end in a tantrum or poor attitude. Here are a couple of the things that have worked the best!

No mess finger paint;

 I just put some finger paint in a bag and let Lincoln draw shapes in it, letters and numbers.

Hole punch tracing;

I just printed out the upper and lower case letters and let Lincoln punch holes, using a tooth pick, along the letters. We sat the paper on the carpet so he could easily poke through the page without damaging or hurting himself. He really had fun doing this one and after a long week of trying to help him learn to trace I think we might have found our method, for now.

We also got to do a science lab a couple of weeks ago. Levi brought home a star fish for us to look at and I decided to help Lincoln and Barrett do their first dissection! I always loved dissecting stuff so it was super fun for me... Lincoln was done after I cut open the arm and tried to explain the pyloric caeca. Here are a few of the photos I took in case some of you would like to learn about sea star anatomy :) Complete with nerdy anatomy labels!

Pyloric caeca is the digestive organ and the eyes are located at the tip of each arm.

This home schooling thing has been quite the adventure even in just the first few months. I am so excited to see how my boys grow and develop throughout the years to come!