one clicknkids lesson
Hooked on Phonics- 15-20 minutes of review, new words and reading stories
read a library book (currently Thanksgiving, Colonial America, maps or the Soundbox series) Going to do “Five in a Row” selections soon.
some other sctivity such as a few workbook pages, Between the Lions, dictating something for me to write down, writing or tracing practice, a craft
I plan on adding Math-u-See Primer as soon as I can purchase it.

10/18 While we were eating at a restaurant, a guy that looked a lot like Gene was standing right outside the window. Andy turned around, saw him, and yelled out “Papa!!!”. He was so excited. Haha. He also said “bye bye”. Andy now hums along to the radio.
Bren’s stomach is his “stom-lick”.
“Mama, give me a problem. I need a water in the frigerator.” (wanting me to get it for him)
10/21 Andy mimics me putting a fist to my mouth pretending to drink a bottle. First pretending!! Said “moon” and for the first time in many months “Dada”. Also reached out for some birds on the ground and said “birrr”.
We ordered pizza and Brendan remembered from a few months ago us putting towels down on the carpet and having a picnic. He kept telling us we were going to have a picnic. He is also over the moon excited about Halloween, pumpkins, costumes and trick or treating. We are literally counting down the days til our first Halloween event on the 25th.
10/22
We’re sitting in the car driving home from a lengthy grocery shopping trip.
Bren: I want a cookies
Me: Sorry Bren, we didn’t buy any cookies
Bren: (a bit later) I neeeed a coooookie!
DH and I: LOL!!!! (He sounds just like me on a bad day)
Me: (smelling something sweet) Bren! What are you eating?!
Bren: Candy
Me: Where did you get candy? (He points to a bag of skittles on the floor leftover from DH’s trip to Houston a few days ago) Okay. But next time you ASK first.
Bren: Okay. Give me a cookie and we’ll call us even!
DH and I: LOL!!!!!!
Brendan (tired of waiting for me to make lunch) is sitting in the recliner, bored. He sees me look over at him and says, “Just click on a cheese sandwich!” LOL.
11/1 Fully on sippy cups for a week now- the Nuby soft spouted ones
11/7 Andy just loves to play with a bag of potatoes and to crawl into the space where my legs are under the desk.
11/9 Andy knows HOT from me teasing him about touching the light in his room. Tonight he said “hot, hot” in reference to his hot fish sticks. 🙂
11/10 Andy pretended to take tic tacs out of the box and “fed” them to himself and me! Second pretending!!!
11/13 Brendan washed his own hair without me even asking. Andy asked for bubbles- he said “bubbles” and pointed to the bubble blower.
Grandma DIane is visiting and Andy now says “grandma”. He also learned “you blow”- playing a game where grandma and Andy were blowing at each other through a hole in a toy ball.
11/14 Andy’s passions: various beverage containers and cups, the stuff in the recycle bin, climbing onto chairs and tables.
He now will drink from his Avent sippies- his yogurt milk combo isn’t working so well any more. He drinks maybe 2 sippies a day of it max.
Bren’s: Chritmas colored and shaped marshmallows, playing with the pecans on the ground out back, games on websites like pbskids.org & nickjr and Donkey Kong 64
Bren’s first Japanese word- “Hoo-na-na”. (bye) We have started watching Sakura.
11/18 Andy pointed at eyes and says “eye”.
Shred cold cooked brisket in food processor and add to country gravy. Serve over hot biscuits = best ever S.O.S. ever!!
Andy will now drink out of my favorite sippy cups- plain ole gerber hard plastic. Thank goodness because these are super easy to use and do not leak!!!
11/19 Called Papa Don “Papa” on the phone.
11/20 DH’s story:
DH: Bren bumps my butt with his head. “Thanks for that klunk!”
Bren: “I’m not a klink, I’m a boop!”
LOL!!!

We have been enjoying Grandma Diane’s visit. She’s kept me busy making her annual family calendar. I’m glad my boys have gotten to know her once again. Once a year is hard but I am thankful for it.
We gathered at my grandmother’s house yesterday and baked cookies and made pecan pralines. Yum! Brendan loved putting the candy corn feathers on these cookies! It was the perfect activity for him. He insists they are chickens though. 😉

Today I attempted to teach Bren what Thanksgiving is… kind of hard when he doesn’t really understand being thankful. Forget the whole pilgrim and Indian thing… lol. There’s always next year. I focused on a big happy family meal where everyone says thank you and is happy. This is what Bren says:

I’ve been having a rough time motivating Bren to do school things. He hasn’t wanted to do anything requiring brain power. I took a break from the Hooked on Phonics for a week and just let him do the clicknkids.
But then today he was great! We practiced the 4 HoP stories he knows so he can read them to his 2 grandmas who are both in town. He flew through them. So I pressed my luck and had him read the _ad words (K pg 21). We had only done them once or twice before and not in 10 days or so. Once we established they were “ad” words he had no issues. He read the rest of the review sets on the page as well.
So then I really pushed my luck since he was participating so well. I turned the page and… uh oh. It was the review page for ALL 3 letter A words and the words are NOT presented in sets according to their endings. And he did great! He didn’t fly right through them and he needed some coaching but he read them all!! Wheeeee! It’s CLICKED!!!
So, was it the break? Was it that he has been spelling and sounding out words in the car (all by himself) this past week? Was it the clicknkids (I believe he is on level 9 @ 1 game a day)? Or was it just that he’s finally had enough practice at sounding out 3 letter A words to be getting somewhat proficient at it?
Brendan read all these words:

Now he’s on to _i_ words!!! 😀

Let’s see… yesterday was the coldest day so far so when I got there only 2 or 3 other mothers were there (and I was 15 min late). Brendan shot off to the play area and Darrell followed with Andy. The play area is a little too far away for my young kids- I am glad DH was there with me. It also had some high slides and a merry go round that shouted “Kids get hurt on me often”. I found out later that the parents of the really young just meet up down there.
They welcomed me well enough but I was uncomfortable. As time passed more families crept into the park. Several I seemed to jive with and I talked to most of them by the end. Brendan played a lot with a boy named Ray and I liked his Dad a lot. Mom and Dad both work from home so they tag team homeschool.
I got to talking about math curriculums with another lady named Diana (I wanted to know if others had video lessons like MUS and she had used Saxon and SIngapore) and I inadvertantly complimented her on her two kids because DH had just told me he liked them. Haha.
The facilitator of the group- Linda- is very UNSCHOOL. Exuded it like oil from every pore of her body. She has a nine year old boy (who is a bit wild or at least he was then) and she has never opened any sort of schoolwork book or curriculum for him. They play or act out everything. He wants to play bank teller and customer? Let’s fit in counting money… that sort of thing. She exhausted me. I think she was trying to impress me but she wasn’t. If anyone just mentioned something about public school and she was quick to pipe up with “but we don’t really care what they are doing”. She was okay and nice but very opinionated and sometimes abrupt.
Another lady in the group was very big on how she used to be a board member of the PTA and when she dropped out she thought perhaps her kids were being unfairly treated at the school because of her so she pulled them out too. And then Child Protective Services started coming after her. Yeah.
It was good to get out and socialize. Bren LOVED it. Andy had a good time. DH tolerated it. I enjoyed myself- it was nice to be among adult women.
The park is 30-35 minutes away though. Smack in the middle of a work day.
The best part for me was they were talking about a homeschool convention that is held each summer at the university where my DH works. Apparently it is a big one. One lady had brought huge bags full of (like 25 pounds!) of homeschooling curriculum ads and resource books and a lot of stuff left over fromt he convention and gave me and another newcomer one. I’ve been having fun with it! I’d really like to go to it- too bad it just happened a few month ago. There were a lot of workshops I’d love to go to and a lot of presentations on what different places do for homeschoolers here in San Antonio.
I should now have admittance to their online forums. Field trips links and stuff are posted there. Hopefully I’ll get some positive ideas from there. It was an interesting day and in the end maybe 15 families showed up. A very mixed group but I have to remind myself that, while it’d be nice, I am not really going to these groups to learn about how to homeschool- just to learn about what’s going on around town, field trips, sports, etc. to join and for my kids to play and have friends.
In those respects it was great.

I just bought a lifetime subscription for Brendan to an online phonics game called Clicknkids. It’s space/robot themed!! Completing the game is supposed to be an equivalent of K-3rd phonics. Brendan tried out the free level and really liked it. The antics of the characters crack him up. 😉
If you are interested, put my email address in the promotional code box for $10 off. JHoberer @ hotmail.com I love that it is for life and not monthly fees! And better yet, Andy will be able to play it too!

I was never able to take a picture of DH myself (he immediately undressed when he got home… something about his bra cutting into his skin and his shoes killing him?? lol) so these are pictures from his work. The first one is a good face shot but I wish his hair wasn’t coming out of his wig. The second shows his whole costume. I wish he had turned to the side a bit because his hoozits (water balloons- he was peppered with people who wanted to squeeze them all day! LOL!) were rather impressive. Completely changed his body figure!!



Brendan was really fantastic trick or treating. He was prepared with what to say: “Trick or treat! Thank you!” but he was nervous so if anyone devitated from the script he sort of stood there silently until they did their part. For example, if they held out the candy bowl to him instead of putting candy in his pumpkin he just waited. And after a few houses of people asking him who he was (and getting no answer) I coached Bren a little. So he added to his script “I’m the Avatar!” if asked. Darrell and I would say “Happy Halloween” and wave after he said his thanks and he caught on and started doing it himself (totally cute!). So he ended up with some pretty positive experiences with strangers and learned to adapt some. It was really great! At the end we didn’t even have to go up to the doors with him. 😀