Links We Like

I added a few links to my sidebar today to share with all of you - Sing, Spell, Read & Write (SSRW), Mark Kistler's Draw 3-D and Math Mammoth. I've been using SSRW for a little while now with J and he's been really taking off with reading - at the same time, S has been picking up a lot of I'm teaching and the other day I heard the two of them singing the alphabet together! She also is familiar with a lot of the letter sounds, and when we go through the chart of letters together she echoes the sounds (think "a, a, apple... b, b, ball..."). She surprised me the other day by counting to ten, and again tonight while playing hide & seek she did it with Daddy but instead of echoing the numbers he was saying it was Daddy who was echoing S! I'm pretty impressed with her lately - she's a bright one!

We've been using Mark Kistler's book, Imagination Station (which we loaned from the library and will most likely be purchasing at least one copy of) as part of our art lessons lately and it has really been a HUGE hit in our house. Not only are they learning how to draw, they are learning to be positive and self confident! We also watch Mark on PBS when we get the chance, but we often aren't home when he's on the air so we use his YouTube channel a lot - can't recommend it enough, especially for those of you who are convinced you can't draw (I know you're out there!)

I'm planning on purchasing the 1st Grade math from Math Mammoth for J soon, and I'm going to use it with a couple of books I just ordered from amazon.com: Family Math for Young Children, Comparisons and Family Math, Equals Series because I'm hoping to keep it interesting, both for his sake AND mine! :)

I ordered two other books with those Math books, Games for Writing and The Beginner's Bible, which J insists on carting around everywhere and "reads" CONSTANTLY: he love love loves the pictures and the stories are brief enough that he keeps asking me to keep reading and reading, this is such an awesome thing to hear, "Mommy, can we read my Bible now?" I plan to choose a story or two a week and really focus on it, maybe finding coloring pages or other crafts or some other information like maps or anything I can find... I'm excited to have a good jumping off point for our Bible lesson part of school. Even S will sit and listen to the stories, they're well written and are quite engaging. I can't wait until J can read through one on his own, it will be great to have him "teach" some of school to his Sis.

I know I generally don't get too wordy, but I guess I'm making up for it today! :D