{this photo has nothing at all to do with Dinosaurs but I am going to post one of each of my favorite blue bonnet pictures until they are gone, darnit}

One of the coolest advantages of homeschooling is that we get to steal away in the middle of the week to do things that the masses flood to over the weekend, usually for much cheaper.

Walking with Dinosaurs is touring here right now and we just had to go. My boys are all dinosaur fanatics. When Dalton was 5, he knew more dinosaurs than anyone I knew. When Teegan was 2 & 3, he could barely talk but he could name dinosaurs by looking at their skull bones alone. Eventually they fell out of interest but in the last year or so they’ve sort of jumped back into it all in some collegiate level that I can hardly follow most of the time. So it was fun for all of us to go check out the animatronic dinosaur show.

We scored some really good tickets - 3rd row - for the “student” rate of $18.50 a ticket instead of the outrageous $50+ ticket price. See what I mean? Homeschooling pays for itself, right?!

Let me just say that it did NOT start out well. I think every kid under six in the entire place was horrified. One mother in our row had to leave with her son immediately becuase he was inconsolably terrified. Several kids surrounding us, including Addison, kept their hands over their ears pretty much the entire show. But it opened with some adorable little eggs hatching tiny cute babies who were then RIPPED out and DANGLED into the mouth of a carnivorous predator before being swallowed alive.  Gosh - easing into that kind of drama might have been nice!

That was about as bad as it got but there was a lot of ominous LOUD music and ominous LOUD sound effects and ominous lighting. Addison actually didn’t mind the huge horrifying dinosaurs or their loud and vicious growls. She WAS very sensitive to the change in tone of voice of the storyteller, the change in music and lighting. She is probably not going to be a horror flick fan!

Noah spent a large chunk of the show, off and on, burying his face in our laps. He was not a fan of the fighting dinosaurs. No amount of telling himself that they were just robots seemed to help. He was just freaked.  But afterward he said he had a really good time. My bigger two boys had an awesome time, they totally loved every minute of it, even Teegan who had been completely adamantly opposed to going with us.  I’m so glad we went.

Addy, like I said, either covered her own ears are made US cover her ears for her while she sucked her thumb and peaked out at the show from under our arms! It really didn’t seem like she had much fun but she has talked about it all day. At dinner she spontaneously said “I had fun chocolate” which after some further back and forth that involved her wildly saying “Baby!” and “Growl” and various other words to describe the show, we deciphered to mean “I had fun dinosaurs”.  I asked her if that was what she meant and she said “Yeah! I had fun chocolate! It cool! Baby!”. She really REALLY liked the eggs (prior to the carnivorous homicide) and the baby dinos and the mama/baby love scenes

So it was totally worth the $18.50/ticket if it comes on tour near you. Probably not worth the $50/ticket unless your kid is REALLY into dinosaurs and over the age of 5!

Addison has not attended co-op, namely, because she is 1. Also becuase she naps during co-op every week so she stays home with Daddy. But we both wanted to attend the last day festivities this past week so we took her along this time. Suffice it to say Addison LOVED co-op, despite being very sleepy.

The teacher in Noah’s yoga class did a sort of sample class for all the families to watch. It was adorable:

(triangle pose)

I was busy taking pictures when I glanced over and noticed Addison doing all the poses right along with the class:

(triangle pose)

She was so intent and adorable. Suddenly she burst into the class and grabbed Noah for this huge hug:

She hung out and tried to join in. She was transfixed on the instructor:

We pulled her off because she was getting in Noah’s way but she kept on trying to join in:

(butterfly pose)

(butterfly pose)

And after awhile she just couldn’t resist:

Later that night we went to see the Houston Rockets kick the butts of the San Antonio Spurs. Addison LOVED the game, she clapped so hard I’m surprised she doesn’t have bruises! She screamed, she yelled, she cheered. She was absolutely hilarious and adorable, her love for basketball. It was only out-measured by her love for the dancers that came out on commercial breaks. She watched every second with the awe and exuberance only shared by the drunkest of fans! haha.

She also enjoyed her first taste of popcorn (which she stared down some poor strangers for! How embarrassing!) and her first taste of cotton candy (which she was SURE was really polyfil at first but the look in her eyes when she realized it tasted good was priceless - she did a very excited sign for “candy” when it all made sense! Very cute).

But unfortunately Addison is a Spurs fan, so she was not happy with the loss:

But Noah was there to cheer her up:

Really Addison and Noah are the best of friends. This past week Addison perfected her pronunciation of “Noah”. I’m hoping to get it on video. She is VERY proud so she says his name incessantly. They have also been playing together a *lot*. This makes me very happy because he always wanted a sibling that he could be “best friends” with because Dalton & Teegan have always been very close and sort of exclusive. He lets her torment him but they also play together too now which is really awesome. Sibling love, especially when it is mutual, is the best thing ever!

I don’t claim to be a very good educator. There are some things I’m good at but a lot of things I’m not.  One of the things I’m good at is finding resources to help my children learn the things I’m not good at teaching them. One thing I’m not good at is teaching my kids to read.  I’ve always been really mystified at how other parents do it without any effort or thought, seemingly. To me, the learning-to-read process boggles the mind.

When Dalton was “of age”, he was in public school so I didn’t have the shoulder that particular burden. I still felt pretty obligated, though, to prepare him for public school by cramming reading skills down this throat. It wasn’t fun or pleasant for either of us. And it was particularly successful.

Teegan was a self-taught learner which is a good thing because I was still burnt out from my bad experience with Dalton.

But Noah is a different character.  This fall we started homeschool kindergarten and I thought I’d give it a stab one more time. I found a great curriculum I thought would work really well with Noah’s personality. After the first week I was pretty sure it just would not work out. He has no attention span, I have no patience. He seemed to be retaining nothing, I hated the program. He was asking for math and asking to skip reading.

But at some point we turned a corner and things got easier and easier. I tweaked the program to make it faster and rearranged the lessons so they made more sense to me (and Noah) and suddenly he started asking for reading lessons instead of math. I started seeing signs of success outside our little lessons and Noah’s writing (small motor) skills also took off.

Yesterday, weekend and all, he asked to do his final lessons. He finished learning the last of the alphabet letters. At the beginning of September he could not recognize any of them on site, he knew none of their sounds and he could not even draw a very good circle. Now, just two months later, he knows them all on sight, he can draw each one and he knows all of their noises, even the vowels. His penmanship is amazing. He’s finished the kindergarten curriculum for reading. If you would have asked me what the likelihood was that we’d get this far by Halloween I would have said it was impossible.

To say that he is proud would be an understatement. He got a certificate yesterday for finishing that he proudly carried around all day. He called his grandparents to brag and his Grandma S~ told him that she thought if he puts his certificate under his pillow that the Reading Fairy will come. Boy she has all the good ideas, huh?

So last night the Reading Fairy DID come by with some new books. Who knew?!

I’m so proud of his success and mine. For some kids this stuff just comes naturally but Noah’s not that kind of kid. To see him thriving makes me feel so good about our homeschooling.

Next week we move on to the *real* reading lessons. Let’s hope they are as easy and fun as things have been so far.