And she's still there! Little Miss Goldilocks climbed into her brother's bunk bed to take a nap yesterday. One would think that falling out of this same bed (twice) would deter her from climbing to such dangerous heights. No such luck.
I've started another new homeschooling program now that Kindergarten Language Arts has been so successful with Child #4 (and they are still getting bored for the rest of the day). This program/curriculum is called Peak With Books. It is very similar to Five in a Row (FIAR), but I know a lot of people using FIAR and I wanted to try something different instead of jumping on the bandwagon. I've never been one to follow the crowd. We read a children's book for five days straight and use it as the jumping off spot for a weeks worth of theme-based activities. For example, we will be reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom next week, starting Monday. The plot is simply the alphabet running to the top of a coconut tree until it falls over. We will be listening to music from Sing A-Z and doing alphabet based finger plays. We will be reading alphabet poetry by Shel Silverstein on Tuesday while taking a closer look at Chicka Chicka Boom Boom: an in-depth analysis of the author's writing style and a closer look at... yeah right, this is preschool we are talking about! Seriously, I will ask Child #4 why he thinks the tree fell over (the answer would be the letters made it heavy). Wednesday we will make up hand movements or a melody to go with the repeating "Chicka chicka boom boom, will there be enough room?" line in the story. And we will make our own coconut tree poster with little letters running up the trunk (it is time to use up my foam letter stickers anyway). Both Wednesday and Thursday will also have "Story Time Extensions" which is a fancy-pants way of saying we will read other books with an alphabet theme. Thursday the kids will write their own version of the book by having the letters go somewhere besides the top of a coconut tree. And Friday will be fun day, where we share (or is it steamroll?) Daddy with what we did this week! The kids will make Alphabet Soup for dinner and Coconut macaroons for dessert! All this planning took about an hour of my thinking time (while I did other things like folding laundry) and every single "story time extension" book and CD and DVD are all at the library on hold for me! Oh, I love that the library's catalog is online.
The best part of this program is that everyone from Child #3 to Child #5, a three-and-a-half year age span, will enjoy participating. I will no longer trek upstairs to see that Child #5 has filled the cup in the bathroom with expensive, all natural toothpaste. Or go downstairs to find that Child #4 has cut up Child #2's latest dragon drawing. Everyone will be together, under control, and not crying!
