Our Basketball Season

Yesterday, the kids finished their Upwards basketball/cheerleading program. We have really enjoyed it! In the past, I'd asked Brandon if he'd like to try basketball, but he always just shrugged his shoulders and gave me the impression of "not really" so I didn't push. I like being home :)

This year, however, I leaned on him to give it a try. He agreed and along came Nicholas and Megan to join up too ;)

I've sang the praises of Upwards before; how it's a Christian-based program and they focus more on teaching the game and less on the actual winning/losing part. I really appreciate that. I like that there are kind coaches who don't make a big deal out of things and instead choose to celebrate the victories of each individual based on their skill level. I think that's very important for young people who are learning something new.

So, here are some of my favorite pictures from this basketball/cheerleading session!

Check out Nick's blocking skillz ;)
I love this picture because not only does he have a huge smile but he has friends on the cheerleading squad on the sidelines :) (Margot, do you recognize any of them?? ;))
He did good at staying with his guy.

Our little cheerleader. Megan missed the last game because she has strep (UGH!).
She LOVED the mascot (a lion).
She wants to try basketball next year.

Brandon enjoyed this the most I think. He looked forward to every practice and game and really gave it his best. His age group does keep score but again they really focus on teaching the boys the game. It was really exciting for him to know some of the other players too, even though they were all on the other team! Our first game he and Kyle, who is a very good friend, were assigned to each other:
They had a great time blocking each other!
Brandon learned how to be a bit more aggressive:
I captured two of my favorite things yesterday:

First, they pray before each game. What a positive example for these young men :)
And then, this has nothing to do with basketball, it just happened to happen there:
Nick took a book to Brandon's game ;) He carries books everywhere now! Amazing!

In summary, we will do this again next year! It was a great addition to our winter (although it drags me out)!

Keeping Brandon Busy

Brandon has never really liked his language arts curricula...none of them. If you knew how much reading he does, this fact would shock you. It does me. He's been dragging his feet with his grammar and punctuation book and his writing book all year and I hate when our kids do that. Pulling people through the day is exhausting. Often, I just keep pulling until the end of the school year. Certainly there are things they must learn and one of those things is that sometimes you have to do things that you may not love ;) Like cleaning toilets. (that's my not-love by the way)

But sometimes I run across something that I can change...a way to make learning a bit more fun for them in the hope that they'll learn it better if they are having some fun doing it. Such is the case this week! We've put aside the grammar and writing books in favor of a novel study!
This fantastic book along with this novel study and we have an overhauled language arts program! The study has vocabulary, comprehension questions, events sequencing, point of view studies and several writing assignments and covers the first two books in this series. I just downloaded it and printed it off. We've only just started this but already he is asking to read ahead! (my response was yes! but you also have to do the study questions and vocab before you move on ;))

There are going to be assignments in this study that he doesn't like, but I'm hoping that mixing some of the more unpleasant tasks in with studying a good book that maybe they won't be so unpleasant after all :)

Snowy Fun!

First thing this morning, I told the kids that if they could get their work done quickly we could go sledding after lunch. They did! They couldn't wait to get out there and it was the PERFECT day for it! The temps are mild and I don't think the sun has been so bright since last fall ;)

When I promise sledding, I do not disappoint :) Check out this hill:
Do not make fun of my snowpants! At least I came home with dry clothes ;)
The hill was very steep and the snow was packed so Todd and I took Nicholas and Megan on our sleds the first few times. That didn't sit well with Nicholas! Such a daredevil :) So we let him go it alone:


He headed straight for the shelter (of course ;))
Todd was ready to push him away if needed ;)
He went down the rest of the afternoon on his own. It was only nerve-wracking because of the tree and shelter but he did well!

Megan decided to play for a while in a little cave carved out before us:
She had her own "sledding hill"
She had a great time going down with her big brother though :)
We called my mom so she could come watch these adorable little sledders and, of course, she did!
We all had a great time. It was so nice to be out and enjoy the sun for a while. Seems like it's been forever!

Snow in the Morning

I took these yesterday morning and I loved that they look so blue!
We've had a few little friends at our bird feeder.
I hope everyone is staying warm :)

Unbelievable

I can't believe all the snow we've had! It's really just incredible! Unfortunately, we haven't been able to be out enjoying it as much as our kids would like. We have colds going around our house. Megan and Brandon have good days and bad days but poor Nicholas has had a head full of congestion for two weeks and it's caused all sorts of discomfort for that little guy. Sore throat, coughing, you name it.

I have no idea how long this is going to last for him but he seems to be on the backside of it so we ventured out today :)

They had an absolute ball in all that stuff! they built snowmen:
Megan was so mad because her brothers weren't helping her with her snowman!
All better now!

Nicholas built two. See the ice cycles for arms? Cool!
They went sledding off the deck ;)
It wasn't very big, but it satisfied them temporarily. (I promised to take them sledding "for real" very soon!)
I can't get over how our whole house is covered in ice.
I foresee alot of repairs this summer ;)

The woods in the backyard are so quiet and look like a black and white painting...except this pretty tree:
I can't wait to see these woods filled with green again!

A Sweet Surprise

Tonight is get-ready-for-co-op night. ~sigh~ I told the kids to get their backpacks out and load up! I even told them what to put in there! Notepads, chess set (Brandon), cards with their schedule, and pencil boxes loaded with a few necessities. Of course, no one could find their pencil box for a while, but finally they all turned up :)

After the kids were all tucked into bed, I came back downstairs to get my things ready and guess what I saw on the floor? Nicholas' pencil box! UGH! I unzipped his backpack to put it in when I saw this:
Our boy packed his sketch pad for book club, his note card with his classes on it, and his New Testament. I guess he was prepared after all :)

Changes

Tomorrow is our first day back to co-op! The kids (and I, of course) are very much looking forward to it! I'm finishing packing up the kids' backpacks and my class things but I realized we're hitting a milestone that needs recorded. Megan has moved on to the "big kid" classes! No more preschool for her! That seems like such a milestone to me. Our baby is growing up :)

Finally!

We managed to finally make it out to play in the snow a bit yesterday! The kids have a cold so we've been staying inside, but yesterday I thought maybe it would be OK for them to go out for just a bit and play. They had so much fun! We really didn't stay out very long, just long enough for them to get it out of their system for now ;)
Nicholas found some snow/ice that formed a heart. Isn't that cute?
The kids were making a "snow shelter" under the pine tree in our front yard. They had so much fun and I took pictures (of course!) but, strangely, they are not on my camera. Always something odd.

Even though we weren't out too long, they were worn out when we came in :) Nicholas fell asleep in our bed at 6:00 and slept all night even through being moved to his own bed! He was such a tired guy :)

So Many Ideas, So Little Time...

With Megan, I'm doing a letter-of-the-week program. It's what my kindergarten curriculum is and I think it's a wonderfully gentle introduction to phonics. In addition, I've found so many ideas in blogland that I've tweaked it to suit what we feel like studying ;) For example, my curriculum covers the sun for the letter "s", but on Confessions of a Homeschooler (which I love!) she did "snowman" for "s" and has lots of books and different activities that you can print off for free! How fun! We still end up talking about other words that start with our letter so there's still lots we do with our curriculum, it's just been fun to switch it up a bit.

Another thing we're doing is using a lot of Jan Brett books. She's wonderful! She has a website that has activities for her books and for some holidays. So many cute ideas! I'm currently reserving Gingerbread Baby (as well as other gingerbread books) for our "g" unit. I was originally going to do "horse" for "h" but I've changed that to "heart" for Valentines Day so we can incorporate some cute Valentine crafts! :)