Creative Outlet

Shay has always encouraged me to find a hobby and I have tried a few things, but never found anything I really like, until now. There is a book store downtown San Jose that has some English books and yesterday they had a big sale. I found this watercolor painting set and it came with a how to book, paints, a brush and watercolor paper. So last night I tried my hand at it. It took a few steps, they have a picture and then a grid is over it so you can figure perspective. So you trace it onto the watercolor paper with a pencil then you paint it in layers, some of my layers were heavier than they were suppose to be. Being my first time I think it came out pretty good. There is a new student here that is an artist and he is going to do a class on watercolor. I know it looks like a 3 year did it, but I had fun and surely I will get better!

The Earth's Core

We are studying about the Earth and the planets and Damie made the earth out of play-doh. It turned out pretty cool just made a small ball then wrapped anther color around it etc...

God Speaks to little ones

Damie and I are studying the 7 wonders of the Ancient World and yesterday we studied about The Lighthouse of Alexandria. When we got through he said "Mama, do you ever feel like God is talking to you?" I said "Yes." He said I think God is telling me when I grow up I am suppose to go to Egypt and rebuild that lighthouse (it was destroyed by an earthquake around 1480). He told me three of four times that day, "Mama I really feel like I am suppose to build that lighthouse, do you think God is telling me that?" I told him anything was possible and he just needed to always keep his ears and heart open and God would tell him what to do. It amazes me that at such a young age that he is really thinking about the future. I hope he is always that quick to hear God's voice and respond! Tonight the kids were playing outside and Sierra comes running in and says, "Papa, come look there is something in the sky." So Shay went out it was the sun shinning through the clouds, we call it the Glory.
Jesse said, "No, Papa it is God talking to someone!" Mama said, "You could be right He is always talking to someone!"
I love seeing things through my kids eyes!

Good Friends

Sierra has a good friend at school named Isabelle. We call Sierra Si and Isabelle's family call her Is. Is made this drawing for Sierra and I thought it was really cute and then we noticed their names were opposites, isn't that funny! Sierra has made some really good friends at school!

Just like his Papa

Jesse came in yesterday with this stick and said I want to make a thing that throws rocks (slingshot). I said you can talk to Papa when he gets home, that's his field of expertise (making something out of nothing). He came back a few minutes later and ask me for one of my scrunchies, I told him where he could get one and he came back with this!! Thank goodness it won't throw rocks too far, but he still had fun with it. I used to love to play with my Papa's (my mom's dad) slingshot!

Our little tiger!!!

Our little tiger!!!
Originally uploaded by shayngrin

Jesse came back from church like this last Sunday. He is spoiled rotten at church. He is usually the only child in his class and his teacher is a young girl that thinks he is the cutest thing ever. Needless to say we never have a problem with Jesse wanting to go to church.

Another lost tooth

This is a first for Sierra! It was barley loose yesterday morning and by the time she got home it was out. She said her best friend told her to just twist and pull and she did ALL day. Unfortunately this speaks to Sierra's impatient streak, oh well, I'm sure that persistence will come in handy one day!! She was very excited!!!!

I LOVE HOMESCHOOLING

If you would have ask me about homeschooling anytime in the past, I was always "If God tells me to I will", but now, I am loving it! I believe God puts the desire in your heart for the things He has called you to and I am so grateful. I hope Damie is learning, but I am learning so much. I'm sure I learned some of this stuff in school, but I wasn't very interested I guess, now it fascinates me! I am doing this as sort of a record of our schooling so I can look back next year, but I also thought the few people that read our blog might like to hear what Damie is learning. This is a typical Day: He loves to listen to music while he is writing.
We read a short devotional from his Bible
We work on our memory Verse - right now we are learning Psalm 23
Math - we are working through his workbook from school - he also loves to work with a calculator and so I print out these huge problems and he does them on the calculator.
Spelling - also working through his workbook from school-He writes them a lot, we make sentences with them and we have a spelling test every Friday
Spanish - Rosetta Stone - 30 min. It is amazing to me how much he is learning and even reading in Spanish almost more than in English????
Reading - we are doing Hooked on Phonics and I am sold, his reading has rocketed since we started this program, he still gets frustrated, but he pushes through and is really getting excited about reading.
History - We are going through the 7 wonders of the world and learning about the places, people and time that surrounded them. Who knew there were so many wonders of the world, but I think we are going to do them all: Ancient, Natural and Modern Wonders of the World. We are making a lapbook out of it. We read about it on Wikipedia then we print out some pics for the lapbook and we also look it up in our ChildCraft Set (What a blessing that was - Shay comes home from school one day and said they are cleaning out the library and have a lot of free books do you want some (dumb question) yes, get them ALL! He came home with a FULL set of ChildCraft Books these are from 1965, but most of the information is still accurate and they have the best stories in them. This is such a testament of how God always provides, we were struggling with having books to read, because most everything here is in Spanish, but as always God provided!)
Science - This and Art are Damie's favorite - we were going through his science book from school (BORING!!) So I decided to let him decide what he wanted to learn about and make a lapbook. He has always been fascinated with Eagles, so we are learning about the Bald Eagle and making this Lapbook.
Art - This changes from week to week - So far we have made a city, a 3-D box (he wrote a story to go along with it. He cut out a picture of Shay's face and glued it to the scuba diver-how sweet!)
We also have made a game - it is a game we saw an old man playing in Downtown San Jose and we loved it. So sometimes this goes with what we are learning and sometimes it's just for fun!

Shay had a friend tell him one time that he always wanted to do a pull up and so he just started trying one a day until he could do it and then would do more and more. So Damie is doing that he is trying a pull up a day.

He is also responsible for water the flowers everyday since we are in the dry season.

Shay is also reading a chapter from the Narnia series to the kids before bed each night - We finished the Magician's Nephew and now are on The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

Sierra and I are reading Little House in the Big Woods and doing this Lapbook - I am excited about this too! I never really liked Little House on the Prairie (sorry Kelly) but reading the book is really changing my mind, to bad they don't show Little House on the Prairie in Costa Rica.??

Well that's our homeschooling - next year when there are 3 to home school I'm sure it will be a little different.

Races

At the picnic Jesse found a great partner! He did a great job for such a little fellow!

trip to the pool

Today I took Jesse and Sierra to a local park with a pool it was muy devertido (lots of fun)!

So are these 3 trees pictured alike or different?





They are quite different!
The only thing which changed was MY perspective!
In life it is often not our circumstances which need to be changed, but rather our PERSPECTIVE!

Art Attack

Damie's favorite TV show here in Costa Rica is Art Attack. We decided to do a project from one of the shows. We built a city! Damie has always loved making stuff out of boxes or anything else we would normally throw away. So we kept every box we had for a few weeks and started making it last week. It took us about 2 weeks. First we glued (actually we resorted to duck tape because the glue just wasn't holding) all the boxes and then we made some roads out cereal boxes, then we covered the whole thing with glue and paper towels and another coat of glue, then we painted it. I think we did pretty good even with a mom that is very challenged in the craft area. Once it dried it was hard enough for the kids to play on with their cars. I hope it last at least for a week!!!