Letter O

Letter O week started off well!  Starting our school time with a prayer directed at helping us learn and pay attention respectfully really was crucial!  This week we studied the letter O, reviewed the number 2 and worked on the story of creation from "Who Am I?".  Here are a pictures of a few of the things we did.

Oatmeal for breakfast!



Ordering numbers....I started out with 1-10 and that was way too easy for her, so added 11-20 and she completed those as well!!!  Go Iz! :)

O is for Octopus puzzle!



Here are "2" halves of french toast...she is apparently delighted with these.

And a few pictures of our birthday celebration for the Virgin Mary on September 8th.  The inside of the cake was a "surprise" (for Daddy) in that it was blue in honor of Mary's birthday.

Letter N starts off Homeschooling!!!

Our first week of homeschooling did not quite go as smoothly as I had planned.  Isabel was not interested in jumping into a somewhat regimented "school day" at home after having the entire summer in which we had not been doing any scheduled schooling.  I was shocked and frustrated that my first week of homeschooling was going so poorly.  But that week I read this quote in an email, "The love of God does not consist in having begun--not even with a lot of effort--but in persevering, in beginning again and again."  Fr. Francis Fernandez

I realized I was not alone in homeschooling, or in my frustration!  God is there every step of the way and He will give me the help, strength, patience and encouragement I need to best teach Isabel!

So I decided to pick up from our alphabet letter of the week review where we had left off at the beginning of the summer with the letter N.  I've been incorporating projects/crafts/ideas/lessons I find offline with the Catholic Heritage Curriculum materials that I purchased for this school year.

We did our usual chalkboard words that begin with N, a Noah letter tracing page, "I can find" this letter which is like a scavenger hunt around the house for things that begin with the certain letter.  We made our letter N out of newspaper, went for a nature walk and discovered nests, and collected nuts which she grouped according to size. 

I was very excited to start the "Who Am I?" program from the Image of God series, which stresses the dignity of the individual as a person made in the image of God.  It came with a preschool workbook, lots of crafts and supplemental ideas and of course some great lessons and more importantly easy-to-understand explanations for preschoolers!  I'm loving this so far....it feels so good to know that she is getting some of the very basics of our faith in a formal but fun way.

There is so much we covered that I can't document it all...I'm so far behind on "keeping up with Isabel" that I've got to move on so I don't get further behind on this blog!! :)  Bear with me!

Water hose fun!

Gone Fishin' September 2010

We went fishing for 7 hours today.  Mommy, Daddy, Isabel and Greta came along too.

We fed the friendliest ducks!

We played with the bait!

The first thing we caught was a turtle (yes! on the hook!)

Then we caught a non-venomous water snake...with a net.

No, she did not pet it, although she wanted to.

As usual, Isabel caught the most fish; although they were all sunfish.  She was still delighted.

(Mommy was the only one to catch a single catfish in this catfish stocked pond).

In the end, she had the most fun with a brown inchworm we found.  She made it a habitat complete with dirt, sticks, leaves, water, an acorn shell, and of course nuts and bolts and a random coffee cup she found.

Getting up-to-date!

Whew!  I am long overdue in updating Isabel's blog!  Let me try to recap the rest of her 4 year old summer.

END OF JULY 2010:  Trip to Florida!

We took a super low-budget trip to Florida this summer to visit friends in three different cities!
First stop:  Jacy & Jay's house in Fort Pierce, FL!  We had a wonderful time visiting them and felt totally at home there!  They treated Isabel to a Disney character breakfast at The Disney Vero Beach Resort with Donald Duck and Goofy!  Isabel was just in awe that they had breakfast with us!  It was so much fun.  We went to fabulous restaurants, played on the beach, rode around looking for manatees on jet skis and just had tons of fun while we were there!

Second stop:  Emily, Josh and baby Landon's house in St. Petersburg, FL!  They have just moved into a big, beautiful home in St. Pete and Isabel loved exploring all the rooms, playing with their dog Grant, and catching lizards outside.  She also had fun with little Landon!  We visited the most gorgeous beach I've ever been to; the sand was white, water was crystal blue-green and so calm....Isabel was able to go out pretty far and we caught some amazing little sea creatures to investigate while we were there.  It was really like paradise!

Third stop:  Dana's house....well Dana, Fozzie and Nugget's house, I should say.  Fozzie and Nugget were Dana's 2 dogs and Isabel just adored Nugget.  She never got the hang of calling Fozzie "fozzie", instead she would call him "fozzit" which was completely adorable.  We caught the best tree frog at Dana's house and had an awesome dinner out one night and got to go to GatorLand!!!  Isabel loved seeing all the creatures at GatorLand and was especially pleased to go into the parakeet cage and hand feed them!

 

I was completely impressed by how well Iz did on the nearly 11 hour car ride there and back....she was just amazing until the last 2 hours when she would start to ask every five minutes, "are we there yet?"  We just had the best time and did it all for an insanely low cost thanks to our great friends with whom we stayed!  Isabel still (in September) asks when we are going to Florida again to visit everyone!

AUGUST 2010:  August was filled with a week long visit with Grammy who came to stay!  We visited with Uncles Mike & Matt,  took Grammy to the Museum of Art and did some shopping.  Isabel was sad to see her leave.  We had several birthday parties to attend, and also Isabel spent her first weekend with Grandma Holmes watching her while Mommy & Daddy attended a marriage encounter weekend!!  They had a wonderful time going to the movies, shopping and eating out, and Isabel talked about her time with Grandma Holmes over and over!

SEPTEMBER 2010:  September has brought the beginning of homeschooling!  I'll be updating about that soon.