I seriously cannot believe I have been doing something I said I never would for 7 weeks. Okay, so maybe to you that is not a very long time – but for me it is no minor miracle!Just the idea that we’ve all had enough patience with each other to make it this far is amazing. No, not every day has been great, but not every day has been bad either.

This week we welcomed fall with the letter Ll for Leaf (activities from 2 Teaching Mommies) and also Ladybugs (activities from LOTW here).

Found fun glitter leaves at Walmart and used them for counters instead of the paper leaves which were a part of this activity. Made it a little more fun – I think.

Again, loving the number order puzzles because he can do them without help or the frustration of regular puzzles – he just has to count to 10 or 20! Starting with 11 is kinda confusing at first (11-20 puzzle) but I think he is starting to get the pattern of numbers now.

Ladybug puzzle

Thing Two is super good at his size ordering (no help!).

I added a challenge of color words to his size sequence Ladybugs.

Thing One might have mastered lacing (at last!) He did this Ladybug without any help this week.

My scholars hard at work (or not!) Thing One is actually counting, but Thing Two is playing with our Counting Bears.

(above) Thing Two has a future in teaching it seems…or maybe he just wants to tell his Big Brother what to do? You can see our little “school room” really well in this picture. It is just our dinning room! I gave up my decorations to make way for school decorations. For the time it is working just fine (not many options in a small 2-bedroom apartment!)

You can see I have a file cabinet and drawers on top of it for storing stuff. Then I also gave up a cabinet in the kitchen for school supplies as well (the cabinet is actually on the dinning side of the counters so it worked well to use it for school). Then I am using two 3-drawer carts (sans wheels) for our Workboxes. We had all these storage items around the house or garage and I “stole” them to use for school (and this is why my socks are now in a pile on the bedroom floor…and our bills and taxes are now filed in a cardboard box…lol). Mostly because I didn’t know how permanent this school arrangement would be, so I didn’t want to put tons of money into things we might not need later.

…Didn’t?! See, I am alreayd so into this previously stated as “never-EVER-even-possible-I-would-consider-it” adventure! AH!

Painting out “tree trunks” for a really awesome craft I found on a blog, which now I cannot seem to find again. But it is very simple: paint a paper towel tube, let it dry and then cut “branches” to about half way down the tube. Thicker is better, one of ours looks more like a Japanese Maple because it’s so droopy. Glue leaves (paper or craft leaves) onto the branches!

TA-DA! These came out great (and yes, I helped!) They are making a nice fall center piece for our table now.

Shadow Matching Leaves (he did this perfectly alone – his skills amaze me! Especially when his brother watched him do it and then when he tried, he had a much harder time matching the leaves.

Spin & graph Leaves – Thing One thinks of it as a “race” to see which leaf will win.

We learned about the parts of a leaf.

Ladybug Building

Some Leaf Counting Cards – and he counted these (all but one) perfectly and on his own! YEA!

A fun game we’re borrowing from my friend who is a Preschool Teacher. It is a Cactus Balancing. First time we pulled it out, it is tricky, but fun.

Playing with little plastic “pipes.” I found these in the check out line at our grocery store for a couple bucks. So random – but so much fun!

Nesting boxes which make a town (also borrowing this from my Preschool teacher friend!)

The boys had to go up and get their cars to play with these, it was funny to watch! …Until it ended in a fight and tears and was put away. Ah, the joys of raising children.

And so ends our 7th week of homeschooling. Now all I have to do is go cut and laminate and cut some more to get ready for next week…one of these days I will figure out how to make myself get ahead in preparations! Letter P for PUMPKIN is on the way! Should be a fun week ahead…