Sense of style

I'm trying to pull together pictures to do a calendar for a Christmas gift (act surprised, okay Mom and Dad?), and I'm finding so many pictures I should have posted and didn't because ... well, life gets in the way. But this one just makes me laugh - Ben decided he should have a necklace, and made himself one out of paperclips. See how nicely he matched it to his shirt?

October Highlights - Benny

Benny is a busy boy, like most almost-four-year-olds. He has been listening in on most of Alex's Five-in-a-Row stories and tagging along for the activities, but he's also been busy building forts, playing with the Playmobil toys, making Zoob guys, and throwing all the dress-up toys on the floor. He's quite frequently a cowboy, complete with his trusty steed, but sometimes he decides to be a super hero just to change things up a bit. He's also not napping except for maybe once a week, so he's been a regular ray of sunshine the last couple of weeks.

After Alex used the counters to add up Ping's relatives, Ben tested which would float.

Marker! Glue! Paper and scissors! This is heaven!

Woohoo! Sour!

Ben challenges me and keeps me busy, but I can't imagine life without him! I'm kinda glad we have two more years before he's officially in school.

October Highlights - Alex

Alex has been enjoying school, and has done something of a turn-around when it comes to some of his written work. He is flying through Explode the Code and is suddenly fascinated with math concepts. He's been carrying around a small whiteboard, a dry erase marker, and a container of counting bears so that he can devise (and write out) his own equations.

In October we "rowed" the books The Story About Ping, Madeline, and Lentil. He loved learning about China - he can now find China on a map and a globe. He counted out all of Ping's many family members (68!), learned about the way cormorants fish, and made a paper duck just for fun. France was almost as interesting, and he discovered that he loves coloring flags and doing mapwork! (He requested the mapwork because he sees Ethan do it.) We'd never read Lentil before, but he enjoyed it tremendously. He played the harmonica in the bathtub, colored the Ohio flag because the story is set in Ohio, and tasted lemons to see why they made everyone's mouth pucker up.

Oooh, sour!

~Falls dramatically to the floor to demonstrate how icky the lemon was~

We're enjoying Five-in-a-Row so much. It's a perfect fit for my wiggly, active little boy, and it's the perfect balance of planned-out-for-me and flexibility that I want from my perspective. So thankful to have found it!

I do have more pictures of Alex, but it's HARD to get good pictures of him because he never is still long enough. Here he is doing his after-dinner chores ... apparently it's easier to sweep with your arms pulled into your shirt!

October Highlights - Ethan

So the week-in-review posts haven't really been weekly. (Why yes, I do have a masterful grasp of the obvious! Thank you!) I am a bad mommy blogger, because I can't seem to manage *doing* things with the boys, taking pictures at the same time, and then blogging about it. (These people I live with think eating and clean clothes to wear are more important than blogging! Can you imagine?) Maybe if I conquer my time management issues, I will go back to the week-in-review posts. We have been doing school, though, so I thought I'd do a highlight post for each of the boys for the last month or so.

Ethan:

**decided that the middle of his spelling test was a good time to target practice with his dart gun. Mom was thrilled.

**is taking a break from doing his CLE math every day to do some intensive work on addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication. He understands these concepts just fine, but he needs to build some speed and automatic recall with them. He's improving quickly, but if you have any good (fun) drill ideas, please leave us a comment!

**finished the first book in Geography through Literature (Holling C. Holling's Paddle to the Sea). He gave a presentation to the whole family, narrating the book and demonstrating the route that Paddle (the wooden canoe and Indian) took out to the sea. Note the laser pointer - that was Dad's idea. He's a cool dad - I would never have thought of that!

He's also been making great strides in his writing, both in content and willingness to complete his assignments - especially when compared with last year. He's been writing various types of paragraphs - how-to, descriptive, comparative, and persuasive. (He is sad to report, however, that his persuasive paragraph didn't convince us to let him get a poison dart frog for a pet.) This week he took a break from the paragraph writing and wrote some poetry instead! He wrote a funny one about penguins and then this one about one of the Transformers.

Soundwave

Warrior fast, warrior smart

Evil robot with no heart. 

Warrior silent in the night,

Soundwave, ruling in the fight.

(I probably would have chosen one of the paragraphs or the penguin poem, but he's pretty proud of this one and asked that I post it instead.)

He's been reading a bunch. He enjoyed Hatchet, has finished the Redwall series, realized that the library carries Calvin and Hobbes, and discovered the Mysterious Benedict Society series.

He would also consider the two squirrels he shot to be highlights of this month, so I'll leave you with a picture of Ethan and Grandpa and the dead squirrel. Because really, doesn't every blog need at least one picture of a dead squirrel?

Tucking Daddy In

Luke usually gets home from work shortly before 7:00 am. He eats something and is in bed within an hour or so most days. This day he was waiting up to see Ethan, who had stayed with Grandma and Grandpa over Sunday night, but he decided to rest on the couch for a bit until Ethan got home. Alex and Ben decided to bring him pillows, blankets, and stuffed animals to make sure he was tucked in nice and comfy.

It's not every day I get to see him cuddled up with a snake and a penguin, so I was careful to get a picture of it.