Building the alphabet one letter at a time

All 3 students have been working on their letter books and are at the letter "Ii".  I thought this would be an easy one...always jinx myself!  Yesterday we built houses out of H by cutting and pasting.  Today we were in kind of a hurry, so I thought we'd just practice writing the letters since we spent so much time on writing yesterday.  Unfortunately, it turned out to be so much harder!  Ruby wanted to write the capital I was one line which made it look more like a Z.  She did not want to pick up her pencil to make three different lines!  Her lower case i, though, was excellent!  Ford did okay, but he was more concerned with getting on to math where he already knew that 4 + 4= 8 and 5+5=10.  In fact, he wanted me to know that he already knew that 10+10=20 and that doesn't come for a LONG time in our book!!  Rachel made such a messy row of upper case I that she told me herself how bad they were!!  Her second row was much better and her little i seemed just fine.  She started her final lesson in her math book today.  Crazy!!  Rachel and I together talked about the parts of the plant and colored a sunflower and labeled the main parts.  We'll look at each part more closely over the next few weeks.  She wants to plant sunflowers this weekend like she did last year, so I think that will be a good project for her.  We've also been doing poetry together.  We talked about alliteration today and she wrote her own, "Rachel reached for a rainbow."  I was so proud!  I seriously taught 8th graders who couldn't grasp that concept!!

We played a lot of Peter Pan today...did a little iPad time so they could check on their Littlest Pets...took some books back to the library...and had some errands to go run.  We're on Hollilfield Baby Watch as Vanessa nears her due date.  Every day when Rachel wakes up she asks, "Did Vanessa call in the middle of the night?  Does she have a new baby?"  That girl loves a baby!!!  

I can't believe tomorrow is May!!!!

April showers, bring May Flowers...

We are plugging away at Ingram School.  Rachel and I started her unit on plants this week.  She has been looking forward to this all year.  The Core Knowledge Book suggests starting Science with plants but I decided to put it at the end so that we could investigate plants as we grow a garden.  We have planted strawberries, cucumbers, green peppers, and zucchini.  We also have a blueberry bush that we planted last year and we are trying to grow a Magnolia tree that we transplanted.  On top of that, I think I mentioned back in the Fall that Rachel took some seeds out of an apple she was eating at snack time when we were talking about Johnny Appleseed and she  Allen has been growing apple trees.  It's been pretty amazing to watch.  Tomorrow we're going to do the old trick where you put celery in food coloring.  I can still remember doing that as a child, but I have no idea where I was when I saw it.
Ford is coming along in his Bob books.  He does not like to figure out new words.  He fights with me every day about the sounds that the vowels make (to him, they all should sound like short o).  At the end of the story, though, when I've made him press on and sound it all out, he's so proud of himself!  I love watching him light up!
Rachel has one more lesson in her Alpha math book and then a review of telling time.  I think that will take us through May and we will just do math review through June and some of July.  I don't want to start on another book until we officially start First Grade in August.  We are going to have a busy summer and I don't see any reason to rush ahead.  She still needs to do a lot of review of her addition facts before we move on to things like adding double digits!  She has really started to figure out subtraction, though, and she just has a few more facts to learn.
Ford loves adding and can do it faster than Rachel can read.  Definitely two different learners here!!!
I looked back through some older posts recently and realized that apparently I had been teaching Ruby how to write some of her upper case letters.  I see now that I was totally in a fog, but really, she has taught herself most of this writing stuff!  I am impressed that she can spell Rachel with no problem because that's a lot of letters to remember in a row.  Today she wrote her "grocery list" by herself when they were playing and it has "FORD, RACHEL, RUBY" on it all spelled correctly.  Rachel couldn't believe it!
The weather has been great to let us get outside more and shake some of this cabin fever, but it looks like the next few days could be filled with those April Showers!!  Thank goodness our neighbors helped us out with planting grass, so the rain will keep the kids out of the yard while it grows.  We are looking forward to the May flowers and the timing will be completely appropriate with our Science unit.  I can't believe we are almost done with Kindergarten for Rachel and I think she actually learned a thing or two along the way!!  It's taking us some time to get in our groove, but we're making it.  We know that Mondays are always the worst and Tuesdays are usually pretty awesome.  Then Wednesday and Thursday usually involve an activity away from home and Fridays are fun.  Baxter's crying showers keep us from getting work done sometimes, but his flowery naps help :)  Our best work of the day seems to happen during his morning nap, so I'm trying to not leave the house while he's asleep!!  Speaking of sleep...I don't want to jinx myself, but two nights in a row, I've put him down around 7 with everyone else and he's woken up to eat at 10 and then not again until 4.  That works for me!!  If I could just not fall asleep in the chair in his room while I'm feeding him at 10, I'd get a much better night's sleep.  Maybe another May flower in our world will be that he sleeps through the night :)

The Zoo

For my birthday my Mom renewed our zoo membership, so we can visit free for another year.  Our zoo has added lots of cool things for kids, so we like going even if we don't really look at the animals.  We knew the new Kid Zone would be open today, so we started at the opposite end and walked all the way through, stopping at a few different places.  Here are the highlights:

I thought the elephants were cool but the kids like the helicopter you can climb on and the Safari Tent better (the cot in the tent is an excellent diaper changing station!)

I looked at this next picture on our way home and went, "Holy Crap!  We have four kids!"

Rachel is way too grown up here:

Mama-Baxter selfie!

I always like seeing the Toirtoises in the desert section eating at the salad bar...

Holy Cannoli!  We've been trying forever to get a glimpse of the Red Wolves and FINALLY a red wolf was out and awake! I don't know if you can see him, but he's there by the fence!

If we were celebrities, this next picture would be all up in People or US Weekly:

I LOVE this outdoor kitchen/mud/dirt play area.  The Ingram Homestead will have one of these even if we don't build a house until our kids are all grown.  I love this!!

There was an awesome wall and sidewalk area with tons of chalk, water, and brushes.  Rachel liked drawing hearts on the wall,



Ford drew a train on the sidewalk,

and Ruby splashed water everywhere...

The last place we played was a shallow stream that was so cool.  There were pipes, tubes, fishing poles, buckets, and more.  Our kids basically ended up swimming in this area.  Even Baxter dipped his toes in the water.  We will be wearing bathing suits an sunscreen next time because we could have played here ALL DAY!

Luckily, we had a change of clothes for almost everybody (Ford had to let his pants dry, but it was worth it).  So we sat in the warm sun and ate some peanut butter tortillas before getting on the tram ride back.

Swing Break

Baxter's first swing at the park

Canoeing at Dr. Ed and Ms Lisa's

Movie morning!

Vacation is awesome!!!

Happy Easter

We had a very Happy Easter Day with a visit from the Easter bunny, an Easter egg hunt at church, a successful day in church with four children, fun in the dirt outside, a family walk in the sunshine, pizza night, and lots and lots of candy...maybe there should be a second Lent after Easter where you give up all the things you eat too much of on Easter!!

What have we learned?

It's been a long while since I've updated what we've learned, so let me give you a quick rundown:

Baxter:  He rolled over all on his own for the first time today!!  Watch out solid foods...coming soon!

Ruby:  Can write her own name.  Seriously, she taught herself.  The girl is a genius.  She traces letters everywhere she goes (on books, on sweatshirts, on signs, etc.)  She can write every single letter of the alphabet and just needs a little help on a couple of them.  It's amazing what a third child can pick up from just watching and listening!

Ford:  He has started to read!!  He really, really, really wants to be able to read, so we got him the Bob Books pre-reader set and once we finished that together, he has started the Bob Books that he will read on his own.  He is already on the fourth book and doing pretty well.  In my mind, I think Rachel just picked up the books and zoomed through, but I know that she had troubles here and there, so I know this will take time, but Ford is doing remarkably well.  He has been doing great with his math.  He can add +1s and can do a few of the doubles.  Adding was so fun for him when on his math video Mr. Steve told him it was just like coupling up trains.  Couldn't have come up with a better analogy myself!

Rachel:  She has almost made it all the way through subtracting with single digits.  We need to go back and do some review, but she's really starting to get it.  Once she figured out that subtracting meant the number had to get smaller, no problem!  She is an extraordinary reader.  She's reading chapter books on her own during nap time (as in almost an entire Nancy Drew notebook each day).  She tries every day to make her handwriting neat so that she can move up to the next handwriting book and start cursive.  She tries all the time to write in her own kind of cursive...so cute.  We've been learning poems and figurative language.  In Social Studies, she's learned about Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt.  In Science she found out about conservation, pollution, and taking care of the Earth.  We've been pretty busy and I'm starting to get my groove back as far as planning goes, so hopefully this Fall we'll have a lot more focused lessons and activities.

Extra-curricular:  Baxter can laugh :)  Ruby is so excited about starting ballet in the Fall.  We use it as a reprimand all the time.  "You can't do that at ballet class."  "You don't want to act that way for Ms. Kelly in ballet class, she'll send you home." etc  Ford started up his Spring Soccer League.  Rachel continues violin and has gotten really good.  She will finish up Daisy Scouts in a few weeks and that will be the end of her girl scout career for now.  It was fun, but it's taking up a lot of time and energy that we can put elsewhere.

It's been a regular old Ingram Roller Coaster of ups and downs.  We spent a lot of the winter with Allen on snow days, so his spring break is very short, but we still intend to make the most of the next few days with him and enjoy our Easter/Spring Break a lot!

Where, oh where, did the Ingrams go?

I've been trying to only use the Internet when I need something (banking, email, school info, etc) during Lent.  It's been a nice break from reading blogs of friends of friends  of  friends and worrying more about useless info than what's going on in my house!  I have missed blogging about our life but it was safer to just stay away!  Lent is almost over and  I have much less desire to just surf the Internet these days, so I may try blogging a little more.  We'll see...  The big news is that I have a new phone and a camera available all the time, so maybe I can figure out how to have more pictures on here soon :)