One of my goals for this week was beginning preschool with the littles today. After two temper tantrums from Genevieve and one from Isaac, I can safely say that we did preschool today.LOL We worked on the letter A and did a theme of Apples and Ants. I had a book that I bought from Kate from www.handsandhearts.com called Jumbo Fun with the Alphabet and I primarily used this today. Evie had a good time learning about apples and ants today. First we started our Alphabet Caterpillar with the letter A, then we put an apple together and I cut open an apple so that she could see what it looked like inside. I cut up the apple and that was her snack. We read the book The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons. We learned how to draw an ant and we drew them going up and down an ant hill. Then I brought out the paints and had Evie paint her own apple tree and ant. She used a lot of creative license in her drawing.lol We did a couple of other activities in the book that Eric copied for me on Sunday and then I ran out of things to do! Yikes! She's so gung ho that we tore through all that in less than an hour. She kept asking for more but I finally called a recess and let them in the back yard.lol My desperate hope is that some of my books that I reserved at the library will be in soon. I may have to do more than one letter a week just to keep her happy, which means Isaac will not be able to keep up. I guess that'll be o.k. it's not rocket science and the review from the books should help Evie to remember what she learns. My plan was to use this book along with the on-line curriculum from http://www.letteroftheweek.com/ to give her more to do but it looks like it still won't be enough. I'm thinking about joining http://www.enchantedlearning.com/Home.html to fill in her learning. I'm really surprised that I'm having this problem. When I tried preschool with her a few months ago she just couldn't keep her attention on anything, now I have the opposite problem.LOL Tomorrow we are going to do the Letter of the Week curriculum and also Little Hands to Heaven day one and two. I still want to go slow and let her guide me in how much to do each day. I'm thinking she may slow down once we establish a routine. We'll see. Isaac was happy to just go with the flow. He liked the markers the most and has the stripes to show for it.lol

While I was running around like a crazy person trying to keep these two busy, my older kids started a fresh week of school themselves. I checked their work from the last two weeks early this morning, then wrote out their schedules for this week. I'm having some accountability problems with the kids lately. It's really discouraging but I'm hanging in there. When the littles were sick two weeks ago, the older kids just quit working even though I didn't take them from their work. I really think they did it because they knew I was focused on the littles and they figured they could get away with it. Now they are paying the piper and it isn't fun for any of us. I'm really tired of these games.

I am trying to find a balance between home and school, littles and big, inside and outside activities, really, life in general.lol I've got the house figured out, now for the kids.lol

Well, that's it for now. I'm making QB's porkchops right now and I'm starving! I'll let you all know how they turn out.

Blessings,

Lisa