Yeah.. My sanity is still Intact ;)

We had a WONDERFUL day today, especially after the nightmare of a day we had yesterday.. All parents know that feeling, where you want to pull your hair out and could probably scream til your red in the face and it doesn't make a difference? Of course, none of those techniques are going to provide the results you want so whats the point, right?? That's how yesterday was for me.. a very trying and stressful situation for everyone.

Today we had a blast.. Today we felt we accomplished alot..

We started today with doing a bit of fun stuff over on Brainpop Jr.. Since yesterday we started working with the food groups, I found a few videos on Brainpop discussing the 5 food groups, eating healthy and about why sugary foods weren't good nutritionally. Brainpop Jr is awesome. This was our first time logging into it (our school district is nice enough to share their login information with homeschool families in the local community) and enjoyed it alot. The videos are very well done and perfect for young elementary children. They are informative with nice characters, have some humor in them to keep kids entertained and they are short enough for even Garrett, who gets quickly bored with videos, to stay interested. It also helped that the video ties in the MyPlate diagram for healthy eating, which was what we were studying yesterday. The kids quickly pointed out each section of the plate and identified each food group by name. (The kids determined that since my morning coffee is made from beans, its obviously a protein.. LOL)

Annie and Moby teach about Healthy Food on Brainpop Jr

Since the kids absolutely loved the first three videos we watched, we decided to check out some of the other stuff available. I definitely think we will be making use of the availability of this resource. We watched a video regarding dental health and about losing teeth (where was this when my son lost his first few teeth and freaked out and hid them because he was scared he would be in trouble?). The videos are really cute and we looked at a few of the activities they also have available, which I do believe we will be incorporating into upcoming lessons. We even took a quick look at the mathematics section and the kids sat and watched a few videos in regards to basic subtraction, which is what we're currently working on.  Whomever designed the Brainpop Jr website did a wonderful job, it is truly one of the best educational websites for children I have come across.

After playing around with Brainpop Jr, we decided it was time for lunch and the kids demanded food from the different food groups.  Here's hoping learning how each food group serves to help keep them healthy might actually encourage them to eat more veggies (a mom can hope, right?). Ashleigh informed me that her favorite food group was junk food.. Okay, so wishful thinking..  While the kids were enjoying lunch, we worked on spelling drills. I would give them a word from our last few spelling lessons and they would spell them out.  This worked out great as a review and the kids did wonderful.. My favorite was the word hook to which Ashleigh spelled it "H - double o - k".

Finally it was back to actually tackle our paperwork.. The kids actually decided to do their math work first, probably because they watched the video about subtraction. They decided to make a contest to see who could finish their assignment first and Ashleigh completed it without any mistakes. (Garrett missed 4 in his rush to finish before her but he went back and corrected them)..

We ended our lessons today with our typical spelling work, todays works being "Cold, Wet, Will, Car, Can, and Rug".. Each lesson has a sentence building exercise where the kids must use at least one of their list words in order to write a sentence from the prompt included. Today's prompt had a map of the US that showed snow, thunderstorms and sun in various areas of the US. The kids were absolutely tickled to see a

Its legible and has proper punctuation. It works!

map of the US (they love geography) and decided their sentence was going to be "It is cold and wet".  Ash still writes much better than Garrett but I'm not going to complain as this was the kid that last year wouldn't pick up the pencil to save his life.

We received our Spectrum Language Arts 1 book today (Amazon is amazing when you life in the middle of no where). I'm debating if I'll start it tomorrow with them or wait til Monday. Most likely, I will wait as while its a great workbook from what I can tell, it doesn't include any lesson plans so I will be having to make my own.

Dumpy Tree Frog

On a fun note, this weekend my husband went out and bought yet another frog (note to self, do not send husband into the pet store without supervision).  We already had one White's Dumpy Tree Frog that we have since March that we were pretty sure was a female. Hubby saw that they had another one
on sale and couldn't pass it up, especially when he was pretty sure it was a male. Earlier this morning while I was sitting listening to the news, I heard the new frog croaking and told him about it.  He then uploaded a video on his phone of frogs croaking and put it close to the tank and sure enough, the frog started croaking in response. The kids thought was so funny as that was the first time they had heard the frogs croak (the female doesn't croak very often, if at all).. I have a feeling they will be asking alot for us to get the frog to croak in the future.. LOL