life schooling

I had a moment today where I realized how much I enjoy doing "schooling" my children and how smart they really are (yes, I am bragging but whatever:). They have an enormous innate desire to learn and discover their world. It is interesting to see their natural strength and weaknesses. Josiah just got interested in reading and can now read at a basic level. This is exciting for me, my first child to read :) He is very interested in Star Wars (even though he has never seen the movies, lol) so I wrote a bunch of my own Star Wars stories for him to read and he caught on easily. He is also very good at math related things and has a good memory. Annah loves drawing and drawing and has excellant fine motor skills. Her printing is very neat. This is one thing I like about homeschooling is that I can just expand on their natural interests and we can look into it as little or as much as we want. Everyday they are excited about the world around them. Here are some things we did today. (I think they learn with most everything they do but here are the more "school-like" stuff)

Most mornings we spend some time together doing what we call "school". We start by reading some Bible stories and a few other books. Then we do a calender and the weather. Next we do some games learning or memorizing letters, sight words, and the like. Then we usually do a page or five (if they are focused we do more, if not then we put the books away. I like having a very relaxed almost unschooling approach right now). In the afternoon is when we tend to do bigger projects. Also after "quiet time" Josiah and I have a reading lesson together.

Annah spent about an hour today drawing our family. Everyday she draws and colours. Usually Samuel will join her and scribble or peel crayons.

This cute rascal is the biggest problem when we want to do a more complicated or bigger project :) he gets into everything. Here he was trying to swipe my camera as he says "Mine. That is mine, Mom." LOL, everything is his these days according to him.

Here is an almost finished birdhouse Josiah has made. Well it may not be piture-perfect, I think it is pretty good for a five year who made it al alone. He has some basic tools in the basement and all by himself he designed, hammered, and sawed this. No help from Tim or I. Today Annah and him started to paint it.

This evening I printed off some free mazes from the Internet and they spent half an hour doing mazes together. (Anyone know of some good free sites you can print off games ect for young children?)