The Boy's First Story

For school this week, The Boy wrote his first story. I thought I'd share. (Daddy was the transcriptionist.)

October 14, 2011


There was a little boy that was called *Jim, and there was a big tractor. And Jim had a little car. And he drove it to the big tractor. 
The big tractor was a crane and it picked his car up with him in it. And it turned and put him down, down, down, down, down, into the trash dump.
And he was trying to get out before he reached the fire. And he got out when a magnet picked him and his car up. And he told the magnet to drop him. Then the crane came again, and it was looking for him. It looked everywhere and it's gas ran out, and it couldn't move any more. The End. **Twelve Bucks.
*Of course The Boy named the main character after himself, so I've changed the name here.
**Do you know who Brian Regan is? 


Barring the fact that he borrowed quite liberally from Toy Story 3, it's pretty good for his first story ever, no? We will have to work on his over-usage of conjunctions, but maybe we will wait for a few months before explaining the parts of speech. :D

Bragging

It's totally bragging, and I don't even care.

My four year old is just a few requirements shy of passing Kindergarten according to the Arizona State Standards. We worked on one of them today. He totally aced it in 5 minutes.

The rest I think he doesn't have the brain development for yet, so we'll try again in a few weeks.

Until then, I think we will play with math and writing stories. We might also blow some stuff up do a little science.

LOVE LOVE LOVE teaching my own child. :D

PS My little girl is pretty much the best at puzzles. She especially loves those geo blocks which you can manipulate into your own picture.

Holy Smokes. Home Schooling is awesome. =D
We are done with school by 9am and can play for the rest of the day. How cool is that? Seriously. And how neat is it that I can delay a skill he's not ready for, or add in ones that wouldn't be "allowed" if he were taught in a group? I'm not gonna lie, it takes a good part of my brain power coming up with ways to teach him, since I'm not a teacher by nature, but it's so much FUN I don't really mind.

I'm sure we will have more speed bumps in the near future but for now, it's fantastic!

The Boy and Zsa Zsa

I'm seriously considering renaming this blog, "Brilliant Things My Son Did".
He's getting to the clever stage and I'm constantly amazed.

For instance, the other night he didn't want to go to bed, so he formed a coherent argument instead of just whining like he'd normally do. "But Mom! Some people are NOCTURNAL." Upon recounting this conversation the next day to my friend within his hearing, she asked, "Well, The Boy, do you know what nocturnal means?"

Accompanied with a sigh and eye roll worthy of any teen he replied, "nocturnal is when you're awake at night and sleep during the day." We were both impressed. I was less impressed when I found out he learned the word from TV. I'm trying so hard to get rid of that thing, I hate when it has redeeming qualities.

Another argument he made this week was early in the morning. Like 5:30 in the morning. He came into the parental unit's room and said, "Since you're still really tired and sleeping, can I watch TV?" (I told you I hated that thing, right?)

Also this week we were working on math sentences, specifically the concept of "greater than".
He decided he wanted to write his own sentence to go along with our manipulative math lesson so he wrote this: "10>5?"
When asked about the question mark he said, "They go at the end of sentences!"
Thus began our lesson on punctuation. He was fascinated, I swear. =)

Zsa Zsa continues to be a bright spot in my day. She's so eager to agree to anything I propose, it's such a refreshing change from some other children I could name. I dread the day she figures out doing the dishes, or pretty much anything Mom suggests, isn't really all that fun. "Mom, I want to play a game wiss you." "OK! Let's play 'Clean the Oven'!" "YAY!"

I also love her little half lisp. I kind of hope she doesn't lose it for a while because it's so endearing.
"Mama, I want to snuggle wiss you" is my favorite thing to hear.

She's my naturally optimistic child, and I get a kick out of her sunny disposition. It makes me all warm and fuzzy on the inside. :)

Zsa Zsa is a perfect study in how modern toys aren't any better for us than the sticks our multiple great grandparents had. Her current favorite toy is a shoe lace. Yes, I'm totally serious. Sometimes she uses it with the lacing card horse it came with, and sometimes she uses it without, but it's in her hand nearly the entire day any time we're home. Battles ensue at bedtime when mama (wisely) insists strings do not make good bedtime toys. She is awfully stubborn, though. I can't think where she gets it...

Pre School, Gearing Up

Tomorrow is the first day of our schooled at home preschool.
Our letter is going to be 'A'. (It seemed appropriate.)

So at 7am today the children and I made "acorns" to take for dessert to family dinner.
Because we live in Arizona, my kids had no idea what an acorn was, which kinda proves the point that you're always learning. It wasn't even a school day and we got to have a conversation on where acorns come from and what their purpose is. Fun times!

The original instructions call for doughnut holes, but Fry's didn't have any so I got cream puffs instead. I know, giant improvement!
Anyway, you dip the end of the cream puff in nutella and then in chocolate sprinkles. The stem is 1/2 a pretzel stick. You could cut your sticks in thirds but I'm really lazy so I just shoved the 1/2 stick in further.

Because I'm so awesome, I also made waffles for breakfast and let the kids eat them with nutella on top. They were having a hard time not licking the acorns. Maybe we should have made breakfast first?