BFIAR: Caps For Sale

I officially started homeschooling this week!! It's something I've dreamed of since we got married ten years ago, and probably even before that.  I've researched, planned, shopped, organized, and planned some more. I knew with Anchor being born in September it would be best to wait until January to start school with Joshua.

The first day of school finally arrived... with a hitch.

Maverick needed to see our pediatrician because we were concerned his testicles had not descended. I freaked out and wanted him seen ASAP.  Turns out everything is fine... his testicles are descended, they're just up in the canal. They still have time to drop, but if not there's nothing we can do until he reaches puberty. Oh the joys of boys.

That took up all of my morning and I watched my cousin's kids while she and Kenny went to work on a job. So the day I had been so eagerly anticipating came and went with no homeschooling to be found.

(As a side note, we also decided to transition Anchor from sleeping swaddled in his Rock n Play to sleeping on his tummy in his crib... this meant four nights of little to no sleep either listening to him cry it out or getting up to give him his pacifier and rock him back to sleep. Needless to say, I was extremely sleep deprived at the beginning of the week, so it's a true miracle that any homeschooling was accomplished. Thank You Jesus for Your grace!!)

On Tuesday, January 5, we began rowing our first Before Five in a Row book: Caps For Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina.

Joshua has been so excited about this book! Our companion books were:

• Circus Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina
• Monkeys by Valerie Bodden
• Do You Really Want to Meet a Monkey? by Cari Meister
• Spider Monkey by Dee Phillips
• Five Little Monkeys Reading in Bed by Eileen Christelow
• Five Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree by Eileen Christelow
• Stormy's Hat by Eric Kimmel

First we practiced walking with lots of caps on our heads.

We talked about how the peddler fell asleep under the tree "for a long time" and that's when the monkeys stole his caps. We read Proverbs 6:10-11 and talked about how sleeping for too long can be troublesome.

Next we learned about the different ways to make fifty cents. He loved learning the names of the coins and especially the coin rubbings.

On Wednesday, we colored and glued caps on the peddlers head in the same order they were in the book.  Then I let him buy caps from the tree. He did a great job counting out his money.

As a special treat, we made banana split cookies. I *hate* bananas so I can't comment on how they tasted, but the boys sure loved them!

On Thursday, we played a game where he graphed the number of times each coin was rolled. He LOVED this and keeps asking to play it again. He thought the gold Sacagawea coin was super cool and lit up every time he rolled it.

On Friday we painted a tree and practiced making the letter A. He knows the upper/lower case and two of the sounds /a/ makes. I'm so proud of his hard work!

Today we put thumbprint monkeys and leaves on his tree.

We also did a mustache photo booth. We talked about different kinds of mustaches and how the peddler had a handlebar mustache.  GrandDaddy even showed up for a picture!

We've learned a lot about monkeys and even about how the railroad hat was invented. I've been amazed at how much I've learned this week too.

I am LOVING Before Five in a Row. My mother-in-law used it with her kids and spoke so highly of it. She said it taught her how to incorporate learning throughout the day and how to tie everything together. This is not natural for me, as I am such a structured, scheduled person. But I know I can learn how and truly feel it will be the best learning environment for our family.

I'm looking forward to next week and need to get busy planning!