I wanted to add this picture in real quick. It is another one of Gabes new Montessori activities. It is a sand tray. He can practice writing in it. Gabe absolutly loves this box, unfortunetly he wants to drive his cars thru it more.

I have been working with Gabe on a few new activities. We are trying to incorporate more Montessori activities for him. So in the top picture is Gabe working on his math skills. I took beads and put them on colored pipe cleaners so he can visualize amounts. He loves working with these. Eventually I am going to move him on to using them for math problems. Such as adding and subtracting. Below I started to practice transfering with him. He is having a good time, but he gets bored of the activity really quick. I have to say that I have been going to a couple of different blogs to get some great stuff on montessori, check them out.

http://happyheartsmom.typepad.com/

http://lapazfarm.homeschooljournal.net/
I will update more on our montessori activities soon.

FATHERS DAY AT THE ZOO

We decided to go to the zoo on fathers day. The boys had an absolute blast with everything there was to do there. I put in some pictures of the boys playing in the giant fountain. They had so much fun playing in all of the water. They even made new friends while they were in there. Here is a picture of them playing in the Bald Eagles nest (not a real one). Gabe is actually upset in the picture because Sammy wanted to pretend that they were eagles. He had told Gabe that he should be the baby and of course that got Gabe upset. Oh well they were still cute.
This is one of them at the homstead in the zoo. They get to use an old style pump to try and get water. They love to play with that.

As you can see there was lots of great things for them to play with at the zoo. All in all we had a really great day.

It was a really humid day out so the boys were a little on the hot side. So to cool down they decided to play with the ice from their drink.

Time for a little monkeying around. All "three of my boys" just make me want to smile.
We went thru the Guatamalan village on display. The boys tried out the bed that they had in there. Sammy was a little nervous that he was going to fall through. As you see tho I think that Gabe was just happy for the little bit of time to rest.
My favorite picture of all. Daddy Decided to give it a try and relax to.
Hope that every father had a wonderful fathers day!

My library stash.
I got some really great books from the library over the weekend, so I thought that I would share. The first book that I got was "Gigi and Zachary's Around-The-World-Adventure". This is a look and find book. If you want to learn about items and cultures from around the world this is really good. I was learning things that I never knew before. LOL. The second book in the picture is "Can You See What I See---Seymour And The Juice Box Boat". This book is made by the same people that wrote the I SPY books. This also happens to be one of Gabes favorites this week.
Here are the books that I got for the education side. We are trying to expose the boys to more art. So I got "Who And When? Impressionism and Postimpression---Artist, Writers, And Composers". Then trying to get more activity into the boys we got "The Ultimate Homeschool Physical Education Game Book". This book has some really great ideas in it and I can not wait to get started on it. Then we of course had to get a science book. "101 Great Science Experiments--A Step By Step Guide". Lots of really great ideas in this book to.
This is the section for just the really fun books to read. First up "Leonardo the Terrible Monster" . This book was really cute. It is about a little monster that wants to scare someone really bad. When he finally finds someone to scare he feels bad and they become friends. the next book is "Alberto The Dancing Alligator". Then I got the "Disappearing Alphabet". This is a great book to introduce some really fun words to the kids. It shows that if letters disappered you would no longer get to say those words. We also got "Pirate Bob". Then the final one was "Who is Driving?" This book is so cute. It is one of my favorite. Each of the pages has about four different animals all dressed differently. They ask who is going to be driving the car and the kids guess by how they are dressed. Of course they find out by the next page if they are right. All right I think I am done about books.

My Goodies

We went out to run errands today and noticed that the local craft was going out of business. So of course we had to stop since the entire store was on sale. so here are some of my goodies that we got.
I got a few wooden shapes to paint and write there names on for my youngest so he can learn to read. I am going to put magnets on the back for him to be able to play with them on his board.
The boys are really into birds (mostly Gabe) So they decided to to get their own little bird houses to paint.
We have decided to try and teach Sammy how to do cross stitch. We thought that it would be good for his eye hand coordination. Gabe thought that he should have the new tractor.
We also got a ton of new brushes and paints. Lots of fun.

I also got these new trays to use with the boys for school. I am going to paint them a bunch of bright colors. I am like a kid on christmas morning at a craft store, so much fun.

This pretty much sums up the way that we all feel around here right now. Over the past couple of weeks we have been dealing with sickness. First Gabe went in to the doctors twice in a week, to find out that he a new ear infection each time. He went on medication for that. We went in for a follow up the next week and the ear infections had cleared but now he had walking pneumonia. So new medicine for that. After a couple of visits to the Walking Pneumonia has cleared but now he has croup. Thankfully he is on the mend finally. So as you can tell this is definetly what we want to say to everything going on here.

I saw this link on another blog so I had my seven year old son try it for fun. He did all on his own and these are his results. There was only 20 questions and he did them all. He was so proud of himself. Which I think he should be, just my opinion :)

You Really Know Your State Capitols

You Got 20 State Capitols Correct You're either a geography buff... or you have an excellent memory.

http://www.blogthings.com/doyouknowyourstatecapitolsquiz/">Do You Know Your State Capitols?

Color Classes

Gabe is learning about mixing colors. So today with daddy he used our new test tubes and mixed color water. He was having so much fun. We gave him some droppers to get the water up and transfer to the other tubes. If you can see there is also color paddles on the table to that we got the other day. These paddles are great. They are translucent so when he puts one on top of another he can see the new color they make.

This morning I thought that the boys were being a little to quiet. I decided that I better check on them. Of course they were being complete angels. As you can see I found them both in their beds reading. Gabe is always trying to be like his Big brother. Sammy though is addicted to reading right now, which is wonderful. He is very heavy into the Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osbourne.. They are his first set of chapter books and he reads up to five a week. Hopefully he keeps up with this reading habbit.

I had to share this picture of Gabe. Yesterday he decide during his free play time that he would get out our bin of foam shapes. I thought that was fine. That was until he threw them all over the livingroom, and I mean all over. It looked like someone had a party in our place and there was colorful confetti all over the place. Needless to say we struggled all day trying to get him to pick it up with out much luck. He went to bed early and Daddy picked them all up. Here is a picture of his brother hiding in the corner so that he does not get covered.

Hello. My name is Rob. I am Heather's husband and I accidentally deleted her posting regarding being tagged.

Heather was tagged by Kate.

The rules are simple…Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

These are 8 facts/habits about me (Not Heather):
I am a tax accountant in a medium sized firm in West Palm Beach:

1. I am a tax accountant in West Palm Beach, Florida
2. I grew up in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, which is a suburb of NY City.
3. During the summer after I graduated from highschool I went with student ambasador program to Europe for three weeks. I visited France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland. I stayed with a local family in Germany and France. The family in Germany took be on a motorcycle ride to Austria.
4. I went to a junior college in New Hamshire for two years. That is where I met Heather. And from there we went to school in New Jersey, Texas, and Florida. Note: We went to three schools. Texas and Florida were the same school but were different campuses.
5. I graduated from Northwood University
6. I am working towards getting my CPA. Kids make it difficult due to the time and money factors.
7. While working a fultime and during certain times a year, all day, I try to help Heather homeschool Sam and Gabe as much as possible.
8. My hobbies are playing all sorts of games form cards to chess.

This is Heather. Since I already tagged a bunch of people any one can play. Just leave me a message and I will check it out.

Well I finally managed to get new batteries into my Camera. I wanted to share the first shots from it. Sammy decided that he had the greatest little brother in the world, so he made him an award. I guess I should say he made him into the award. He stuck sticker all over his belly. So here are the pictures from it.

Now that is an award!!!!