This Week's Activities

It's been a busy week around here! Spring Break started for Sawyer on Wednesday, so he was out of school for half of this week and all of next week. Since we're at home (and I'm finally feeling better - yay!) we dove back into a bunch of new homeschool work. I know that most people probably think I'm crazy for making my kids do homeschool work when they already attend preschool (well, one of them anyway...they won't both be going until June)...Isn't that what I pay them for? The truth is that I really, really like doing homeschool with my boys, and they seem to enjoy it too. It gives us something to structure our day around, and having "jobs" all ready set up for them to do helps us avoid the "I'm bored...there's nothing to do" trap.

Honestly, with the nighmare of kindergarten registration looming in our not-so-distant future, I'd truly consider homeschooling my boys through early elementary if I wasn't going to have another baby to worry about taking care of. Last week people camped out in line overnight to try to register their kindergarteners for the school down the street from us! Apparently the schools are so overcrowded that there's not even enough space for neighborhood kids to be guaranteed a space anymore. It's insane! It looks like they're not even close to building the second school that was supposed to open in 2012...so why am I still paying Mello Roos if they're not building schools or parks around here? Ugh, don't even get me started. Luckily I already have my kids on the waiting list for the Montessori Charter elementary school in Rocklin. Hopefully they'll get in there and I'll be able to avoid the kindergarten registration horror story next year. For now, we're having fun at home :)

Sutton and I made maracas from decorated plastic Easter eggs and rice. He scooped the rice and taped the eggs closed all by himself. I didn't really have to do much except sit there and take pictures. His allergies are acting up, and his eyes are super sensitive to my camera flash these days. Out of 100+ pictures that I took this week, there are only about four where his eyes are open!

Sutton loves this egg matching game that I printed from Confessions of a Homeschooler. He has done this activity at least once a day since I printed it out (and he's gotten really fast at it too!). The goal is to match the individual egg cards with their twin on the full size sheet. I have absolutely fallen in love with the Confessions of a Homeschooler blog, and we've been printing and laminating things off of there like crazy. I think I might purchase their entire preschool curriculum so that I have easy access to all their files - they're awesome!

Thursday was International Waffle Day, so the boys requested that we make rainbow explosion waffles with chocolate chips (add a large amount of rainbow jimmies to the waffle mix, and they'll dissolve and turn into colored polka dots in the final product). I even let them top them with powdered sugar and syrup for a sugar bomb start to our Spring Break.

We painted our own Easter jigsaw puzzles

Another one of Sutton's new favorite activities is number matching/recognition. He has gotten SO good at recognizing all of his numbers - he reads them everywhere we go, especially all the price signs at stores - and he loves to count. This activity is also from Confessions of a Homeschooler, and here he has to match a number labeling card to the large card with the correct number of butterflies. I tried to get a cute picture of him doing his work...but the eye thing was at work again...

He may look goofy, but he is having fun - I promise! :)