Monday, August 18, 2008

Baking, shopping, cleaning, laundry, homeschooling, church, caterpillars, painting, reading, beach, dishes...What we've been up to!

Please be praying that Tropical Storm Fay stays a tropcial storm or a LOW grade hurricane. Evacuations are already in place and tomorrow's first day of school has been cancelled. Here's a picture of Fay.


On another note:
I can definately say that the Bates family has been up to A LOT lately!!! Here are just some of the things we've been doing around here: baking, painting, going to the beach, reading, watching a whole, new generation of Monarch caterpillars emerge in our butterfly house (no pics, sorry) - I lost count at 50-something!, we lost our bunny, but found her again, teaching Sunday School, leading worship at church, shopping, replacing our bedroom door, cleaning, LAUNDRY, homeschooling, birthday shopping for all the September birthdays coming up, preparing for hurricane Fay tomorrow, cleaning out bedrooms/clutter, attempting to clean out our garage (Labor Day weekend, we'll be cleaning out our garage, taking things to Goodwill and Rob has promised to make us shelves to keep things organized and neat-you're my hero!), playing in the bathtub, learning how to unload dishes and the list goes on!!! After a two months of having family (from China and England) here, it's bitter sweet to say goodbye. Although it's nice to get back on our schedules here, we miss our family so much and are so glad to have had our time together this summer.

Here is a picture of Sam and Abigail in their disguises they earned from Chuck E. Cheese. Here's Rob helping me clean after our company left. What a sweet huband! You rock babe! After many months of researching local preschools and weighing pros and cons of putting her in preschool, Rob and I have decided to begin homeschooling Avonlea. We're beginningn with preschool and then we'll take it year by year after that. There's definately confidence on my part due to the fact that I used to be a teacher. I have so many manipulatives in our garage that it's nice to know we don't have to spend a lot of money on education this year (preschool can get quite pricey, especially for the good ones!). So here is our School Box. It's filled with her workbook, nursery rhyme books, her alphabet book, my weekly lesson planning book, thematic books for that week, note cards with her Bible verse for the week, etc. She loves her school time with Mommy. :) Here's our letter of the week box. We're starting with letter "A" this week. Avy gets to walk around the house/yard/outings and find things that begin with this letter. Every week, it's a new letter and we go in order. She also has a preschool workbook we're working through. Other objectives we cover each day are: weekly Bible verse, nursery rhymes, what the weather is outside, we read books pertaining to our theme during the week (this week is "All By Myself" and "The Body") and the letter of the week. She also has a book we made where she cuts things out of magazines that begin with the letter of the week. We do a calendar time each day to talk about the days of the week and the months of the year, as well as couting in English and Spanish. Avonlea loves to help me fold laundry lately. Her job is to fold all of the small towels and wash cloths and place them in the kitchen drawer or bathroom basket. It's cute to see how excited she gets to help me. Bless my husband! We needed a new lock on our bedroom door (with the old one, a child could lock themself - which never happend thank goodness - in our room and we didn't have a key), so he began installing a new one, only to find out that it wouldn't work (wrong size). He then had to go out to Home Depot and get a whole, new door! We still don't have a door on our bedroom, but it's a work in progress. :) Lincoln has learned how to unroll toilet tissue (great!). This is what I found yesterday. Note to self: keep all bathroom doors closed! :) This picture reminds me of the front cover of that book "Love You Forever". Baking chocolate chip cookies Shopping at the mall. Avonlea is very much into beads, bracelets, makeup, dressing up, etc. She's becoming quite the little girl. She's not very much into princess getup yet, although she does like to watch the movies. I'm TOTALLY fine if she never gets into it though. I think it's been taken way too far these days. (Just a personal opinion.) Trying yogurt for the first time by himself! It was messy, but he loves his yogurt.


6 comments:

Kelli said...

How exciting about the decision with preschool. There are SO many homeschool networks from what I hear too. You seem like you have a great plan already in place. Can you move to Ohio and teach Jamison?
I will keep you all in my prayer too with the hurricane.

Kelli

Bush Family said...

Looks like you all have been very busy! I am so glad that all is going well. I swear these kids are growing up too fast!

We miss you guys!

Mel

Jo said...

Yeah! So cute!!! Kudos to homeschooling! :) What great parents!
Love,
JO

M. Wurdeman said...

You guys sure have been busy! I am impressed that you are homeschooling Avonlea. I just don't think I could do that.

Kelli said...

Hi Kelli. Just checking to make sure you guys are OK after Fay.

Kelli said...

Hi Kelli. I tagged you on my blog.