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 :)