Welcome Christmas, come this way!

Well, it's finally December and guess who's excited!?
I found the Santa hats, and they had at it

They both won their class spelling bees this week, so a little Grinchly trophies seemed in order. They will compete against each other and the entire school 12/16....that should be fun!

They were a little bit happy :-)

Jack doing his best Grinch impersonation...

....and our gappy-toothed Harry with his very own Max!

The (original) Grinch Movie

This Little Light Of Mine

After a lot of wishing he were Star Student last week but giving it up for his brother's sake, Harry has had a few big thrills this week....he lost his third tooth Tuesday nite, and....

He won his class spelling bee today! He'll get to go to the next round, which is on the stage with all the other classes in the school....I guess all those silly spelling games we played in the car were worth a lot more than just fun.

Congrats and good luck, little man!

We love you homework, oh yes we do

At the end of the first nine weeks, the homework machine is primed and working pretty well. Jack is much more excited about it than Harry, but Harry's teacher bumped him up to a harder group of word study words and he was thrilled today (we'll see how long it works, but I'm liking it so far!).

Harry's new word study

Jack has been in a loving-homework mood of late and actually let me take a couple of pix today. He has taken to giving me his opinion about which pix are best, but I still get to overrule him, since it's my blog ;-) I loved this one of him working on a sun-kissed fall afternoon.
His good friend Kai is transferring to a new school and gave his friends a cool collection of things at his goodbye party today, including Jack's favorite new 'stick pencil'

This was Jack's favorite picture of the afternoon "I'm saying YEAH, I love homework!"

And this was my favorite. Later in the day, he was talking about how much he dreams of going to NYC - what does he want to do most? Touch Lady Liberty's toes. How can you not want to make that dream come true??

The afternoon was a good one: Jack and Harry talking about how smart Harry is and actually getting along fairly well, all homework done, a little Curious George, sharing a sub and dreams at Subway, and soccer practice where Jack scored a couple of goals in their practice game before taking a pretty hard tumble. He's ok after a good talk with Daddy about how to work thru the pain. These are some good times!

Bye Bye Birdie

Is sometimes fertile soil

The boys got pansies to plant for now and daffodils for the spring at a fair a couple of weeks ago....and we finally took a moment yesterday to see what will grow

They practiced for their spelling tests today....with their six words of the week (Jack corrected that C when he reread them this morning),

and their word study words. Harry had SC, SN, and SW words while Jack's class worked on long and short vowel sounds. His teacher commented on how improved his writing is - the boy likes to follow a plan :-)

It was a busy week, but a good one. I started volunteering at the local library, and went on a tour of the local food bank and community services, hoping to get involved in doing some good. A friend and I are coaching the Destination Imagination team, which starts in a couple of months. The weekend is going to be a wild one!

Kathy Matea's Seeds

Say the word I'm thinking of

The boys have started 'word study' activities each week; they sort and categorize a series of words thruout the week and have tests on Fridays. They also have 'words of the week' - so far, 5 site words that also test on Fridays. It's kind of cool to have two different classes so that they have more exposure and see different ways to work with words.

Harry is working on consonant blends: sk, sm, sp. He found out that those are harder to find in story books - he went thru three on Wednesday nite before finding examples of all of them, but he did learn that sh and st are REALLY common in kids' books ;-)


He thinks he's ready for both test today, as well as his first reading test on The Mixed-Up Chameleon (and, no, I didn't find this in time for him to watch it, but think he'd dig that!).

********************

Jack's word study this week focused on long vs. short vowel sounds. His final word study activity last nite was sorting and gluing the pictured words.

His practice test was a big success because he only misspelled 'vowls' once and mixed up the date a bit....he did, however, remember to put his whole name and student number at the top along with the crazy date ;-)

He finished his practice test and was waiting for Harry, so he asked if he could turn the page over to write his sentence like in class...sure. Nice sentence(s), sweet boy! We love you, too! Thanx for the reminder about all the good things in life ~

Jack was a little enthusiastic about writing, and I dug out this old book (30+ years). I had this book as a kid but somehow lost it. A co-worker gave hers to me when I joked about toting it around as a kid. (Funny how I remember these things as I'm typing - thank you, blog.) Jack thinks he hit the jackpot and can't wait to 'read all those words - she is so smart to know 35,000 words!' I think 'she' is my friend, who wrote her name in the front - thanx, Doris, for setting another generation along the road to loving words :-)

The Beatles' The Word

And it feels like the very first time

Jack brought home his 'first good citizen test' today - they are doing a round of assessments before diving into groups. He got 100%....
and it looks like he had a little extra time to draw some scenarios: the teacher giving a student two "Jimmys" (thumbs up to non-parrotheads) on the left, and one student is saying 'blahblahblah' while the teacher is telling the class that she has the best first grade class.

Nice way to start, little man!

Harry took his AR quiz this morning, only scoring 2/5 possible - not bad, considering it was a long 4th grade book and he was so excited, but I'm recommending that he work on some easier books until he gets better at taking the quizzes....hate to work that hard and not have it count - he can't re-take the quiz since it gives him the option of finding out the correct answers. We're still working on him remembering what he misses so he can learn from his mistakes ;-)

He was excited to get to write his homework assignment in his agenda. These cool books are based on Coach Wooden's strategies for success, and he's loved reading them but hasn't really 'used' the pages until today :-)

and he did....

There are 25, but I must have copied it down wrong ... he reminded me that he already got 100% and doesn't have to take the test anyway, and I reminded him that he needs to practice writing - it's gonna be a fun year ;-)

A couple of the activities he completed today - the drawing was done during library time, and the graphing was during math. So far, he seems to be enjoying it all!

Foreigner's Feels Like The First Time

I think the spell is working

The boys brought home their first spelling tests today...yay for 100%! Makes all those spelling bees in the car mean more than just giggles ;-)

Alphabeat's The Spell

SuperCaliFragelistic

Yesterday's car talk...

Jack: Mommy, did you know that 'bike' has a silent E at the end, and 'bicycle' does, too, even though it sound like el at the end, it's an E. Bicycle is just a longer word for bike. Does it sound like he's getting ready to compose his letter to Santa? ;-)

As I'm driving home from a little post-patch adventure and trying to find the shortcut we took during t-ball, Harry: I don't think we're going to find 619 for a while. What?? I asked Dean and neither of us can remember calling his attention to the road number, but he was right....think I'll start calling him TomTom

If you use Reader, thought I'd let you know I've added a Word-of-the-day feature to boost my own vocabulary....wonder if they have an Orienteering helper? LOL

Happy Thursday!

Mary Poppins

Family Style

Jack made up a couple of word family sentences this morning, and we introduced a few new words, so I thought I'd blog about it since I think this is the first time he's heard some of these words (I know I'm weird, just ignore or play along)

Jack: Let's do some -AT words.

Hey, RAT where'd you get that HAT? (aha moment when he realized THAT is also AT)
I got it when I SAT on the MAT.

Let's find some other words that rhyme with mouse, mouse is like rat so what rhymes with mouse?

HOUSE! (then he got stuck about the same time Dean walked in the room and I was saying 'you probably don't know these words, but DOUSE'....Dean adds in BLOUSE, GROUSE, LOUSE. I decided to stop after I came up with SOUSE and didn't want to define it ;-) )

Vaughn Brothers

Monster Boogie

This picture is from June and has been sitting in a blog dump folder - tho I haven't gotten around to posting it, it just always makes me laugh...maybe it's not as fun if you weren't there for the motions but he's been doing this sort of silly dance since he was a teeny. Somewhere I have a shot where he looks all gangsta with one arm and like he's Rocky with the other - I think he was about 5 months old.

This funny LB song was a favorite, especially once they heard the word 'hairy' and said, hey that's not right - Harry's not a monster!

He's been playing with words and spelling more and more recently and his recent trick of puposely switching words is driving me nuts (and has me hoping Miss Lisa has a great sense of humor and a lotta patience). For example, he loves to say J-A-C-K Harry H-A-R-R-Y Jack and watch to see what I'll say. The same with on/off and all sorts of words I can't think of at the moment. I think I'm purposely blocking it ;-)

This is his early morning conversation(did I mention that he almost never stops talking lately??) Hey, Mommy, Jake and Joke rhyme! No, they both start with the letter J and end with the letter k but they DON'T rhyme. At this point Jack jumps into the fray and we start talking about silent e's ..... maybe I need to start drinking coffee.

I think this is the first purposeful mnemonic: LAMR was on a sticker he found and he wanted to remember it, so he says "it's like left, radio, right" (radio means AM/FM to him) He's been talking a lot about abbreviations recently.

And they have this blowup microphone they received as a birthday favor several years ago(thanx, Patrick!) It has an 'on' and 'off' label, so he enjoyed turning it over and over spelling 'on' and 'no' with a big ole AHA smile. Sweet, silly boy

Word Up!

Did I mention I love sleep, especially theirs! Restorative powers, and all that - sign me up if today is any indication of how amazing a few good hours of shut eye can be.

This afternoon, they decided to play school again, and somehow Jack's morphed into "Ho, ho, ho, I'm a Santa here to bring you all these things."

Harry just enjoyed the chance to pack his lunchbox with the goodies from their cash register and run around with the backpack and lunchbox.
And they kept it up tonite before bed. I think these may be the first real words they've written completely on their own (insert big smiley proud mommy face)
I was writing words for them to read then they asked if they could write their favorite words, and here's what they did:
Jack started with the S-H then went back to put the W-I in for 'wish'

Harry's been wild about 'to' in all its forms - he loves finding it on signs and in other words (he also found 'cat' in a bug catcher that we bought them Saturday, so maybe he has a future in word games?). This really fits his personality, he always wants to know where we are going!

Cameo song

Hot Water

The kids have been back into the spelling game and amaze me with what they are able to remember, sound out, etc. Harry's decided to put his own spin on it by intentionally misspelling things to get a reaction (I am in some big trouble here, it's true!).

Last nite they were eating ABC's and 123's (yes my June Cleaver images were crushed a long time ago ;-)) ....anyway, they were picking out letters and Harry found the "H" and worked his way to the H is for Hot, C is for Cold idea. When I asked him how he spelled hot, he looks at me deadpan and says H-A-R-R-Y LOL

I was humming that silly Doncha song all nite, but realized that was probably an inppropriate title for this post, so then I've been thinkiing about all the ways they get in hot water, and decided to foget it and just go with the JB and think only happy thoughts today - wish me luck!

Happy Tuesday!

Bank of Bad Habits

Who knows if we are setting the stage for caffeine addiction or great careers as barristas, but one of their favorite activities these days is "making Daddy's coffee" .....

First, it's out with the old....

...then in with the new water....
...and the fresh beans to grind....

...then "O-N spells on!"

We keep telling Harry that a watched pot never boils (or drips) but he likes to watch how it works!

06/07/08 Harry: This is my favorite, EVER! Jack: I already chose, so this time I'll let Harry choose.

I Put A Spell On You

Thanx in part to the computer toy and VTech's Alphabet Town board, they are back in a spelling zone lately: their long-time favorite "E-X-I-T exit" has finally been joined by OFF, ON, MEN, WOMEN, SUBWAY, BOY, and a few others. They're asking me how to spell just about everything that comes up in conversation or signs that we pass. It's pretty sweet, and I hope they keep loving to learn.

CCR, Van Morrison

Welcome To The World

The boys love Word World, a cute little half-hour show on PBS. The characters' voices are pretty grating, but it has really increased their reading!

Jack and I were scouting good sites on the internet today and we happened on the World World website - this is the intro page for parents and teachers:

http://pbskids.org/wordworld/parentsandteachers/index.html

Enjoy!

10CC