June - Tractor Tires and Sneetches

Is this a picture of the rare and elusive star-butted sneetch?

No.  Just a toe sucking baby.

Micah decided he'd like to have a tractor tire to workout with while training for the Spartan.  A helpful friend delivered this. 

The boys were excited.

Merrick is enjoying cereal, takes a bottle, and can sit up a bit.

Micah ran a 10K.

Chef Boy R Xav helps in the kitchen.

May - Maine and a birthday

Christian Friday School graduation was warm.  It seems like graduations are always hot and sticky.  It's *May*.  It shouldn't be that hot yet.  But it's always a joy to have time together with the Friday School families without worrying about classes and running araound.  I like to "do the chatting" with the other Moms.  This is a Mal's eye view of graduation.

Our Friday School trip this year was to Acadia National Forest in Maine.  We took an extra day to visit with Micah's college friends, Mat and Jen.  Mat wowed the boys with his model steam train.  That train turned out to be their favorite part of the whole trip!

We really enjoyed exploring the mud flats and tidal pools with our ranger guides.  It was a gorgeous day.

Merrick had his first bath in the tub.  He is just too big for the kitchen sink!

We were thinking he might end up being a redhead.

The boys signed a birthday card for Dave and I had to laugh when I saw what they wrote.  Completely unprompted and unassisted, Mal let Dave know that he loves him.  Xavier signed his name in "wizard writing" which just means curly letters.  He picked that up watching Disney's The Sword and the Stone.

Sharing this shot of Xav, just because he is adorable.

Yard clean up is still moving along.  Micah takes such great care of our home and yard.  I am so blessed to have this family.

Self Portraits and the Pox - April

Mal loves to get his hands on the camera.  I often transfer pictures to my computer and find a few shots he has taken of himself. 

All the boys had the pox this month, including Merrick.  They all took it pretty well.  The baby didn't even get sick.

Growing boy.  {{LOVE}}

Lego creations.

Third tooth gone!

March

Monkey and Monkey's Daddy had birthdays.  {love}  Mal is seven.  It's hard to believe.  He chose a confetti cake, but of course he wouldn't eat it.  He had a donut instead.

Merrick started enjoying his bath.

And tummy time.

We made a goody basket for the wonderful nurses who made our week long stay at the birthing center more bearable.  They are a fantastic group of ladies.

February

Let's see.  We celebrated Groundhog's Day.

We finally got some decent snow.

Merrick grew.

The boys made butter (and buttermilk).

Xav and I tried this easy "fudge" made from chocolate and mint chips with frosting.  It was quite good.

Mal was raptured.  Or Obi Wan Kenobied.

Xav Turns Five

Becoming a big brother right before your fifth birthday can be wonderful.  It can also mess up the week like crazy.  Merrick was born 5 days before Xav's big day, but spent an entire week in the hospital nursery.  The only time I went ANYWHERE that whole time was the few hours I spent with my family and my visiting mother for Xavier's party.  He, of course, chose chocolate cake.  He always chooses chocolate.  :)

Time4Learning Review

Last month I found the opportunity to use Time4Learning free for 30 days in exchange for my honest review.

The Basics:
Time4Learning is an internet based curriculum for grades PK-8. Lessons are offered in Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies.* The cost is $19.95 for one child and $14.95 for additional children. That's per month. Online Progress Reports are also available for you to view.

A parent forum is available, but I found the amount of content to be somewhat lacking. I don't think the traffic there is high. After a quick look around, I surmised many parents were left hanging without answers to their homeschooling questions.

They offer a short, free guide, "Welcome to Homeschooling" which offered some good helps including sources of information online, advice such as getting familiar with your state's homeschool laws and your child's learning style, and planning your day. I found the disclaimer " NO program, either online, video, or text-based should be the sole homeschool curriculum, especially for younger children." in the guide and I certainly agree. That includes Time4Learning. While they offer worksheets to print and use, I thought it was lacking as a complete curriculum, at least in the lower grades.

I liked that once you assigned a grade to your child, you could access the grade above it and below it. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to determine where to place either boy. I decided to guess low and put Xav in PK and Mal in K for math and first grade for language arts. Xavier definitely was capable of the K work, but I had no way of knowing that ahead of time and I felt that he wasted a lot of the time I allowed doing activities he was (mostly) more than capable of doing. One thing he was clueless about was syllables. I had no idea you are supposed to teach 4 year olds hand claps (or in the case of T4L, drum beats) to represent syllables. *shrug*

Xav *loved* doing school on momma's computer. We used Time4Learning twice a week during our month long trial. He completed a good deal of the PK offerings online as well as some of the Kindergarten activities. Mal was not as big of a fan. I really thought he would especially enjoy it, but was wrong. His first activity involved bugs launching a rocket. He was captivated by that and was very disappointed to find out all of the activities he would be doing didn't involve bugs and rockets.

I had intended to check out the science section during the trial, but never got to it. Maybe with the science and social studies added, I would have felt differently about it. I still don't think I would pay for the service. I've become pretty good at finding free or nearly free educational products that do basically the same thing, so I doubt we would ever purchase Time4 Learning.

Bottom Line
It was a fun way for the boys to pass the time and a more exciting way to learn than bookwork. The activities were quite cute at the lower grades. The progress reports and printable worksheets were handy. I didn't think the website qualified as a complete curriculum on it's own. If you have the money to spend and your child enjoys that type of learning, go ahead and use it. You certainly can't go wrong if your child is captivated by the characters and learning is made fun.

You can see some screen shots of the activities here.


*Science is only available in grades 1-6 and Social Studies in grades 2-7.