Gearing up for Christmas

Well... with the studio we have to do these things early as advertisement. Daddy was Santa... hence why they kids are so happy. Usually my kids hate "Santa" and scream to the top of their lungs. Oh... the wonders of modern photography. All the Santa, but only his parts!! He (Santa) is coming to the studio by the way on Dec 6. If you want to stop by... check out the business blog (captivatingtime.blogspot.com) for more details.

Fall Pictures

I had bronchitius for the entire month of October, and it got so bad I think it actually tunred into phenomina. However... I adore fall! It's by far my favorite time of year. So I had Mom make the girls some matching outfits and we took pictures when it was literally like 40 degrees outside! We were FREEZING, but got a couple good shots! So thought I'd post our new family photos!

Jemma's came out great too!

And Essa is the only one that would allow me to take an individuals (wonder why)!



And this was from earlier this fall. I LOVE this picture!

Just another picture of Essa's puppy. She is totally addicted to this thing! I had to wash him the other day. That's a lot harder than what you would think. I snuck him into the washing machine, and about 2 minutes into the cycle she started looking for her "puppy". She screamed the entire thing for him, until he was washed and dried. Needless to say, he tumbled in the dryer alone to make for faster drying time! Guess he's deserving of a "real" portrait!

I'm vowing to keep up with this blog better! We'll see how long it will last:)

So... I've decided to start posting what Enoch is doing in school. As you all know, we are homeschooling the boys- and they are in kindergarten this year. Enoch loves it, he is learning so much and having so much fun! So I thought I would post a little of what he's been up to. Currently our unit is "Attentiveness" and will continue with this unit for several months. We started this new unit a few weeks ago. It started off learning all about the ear. They had to learn all the parts of the ear, and draw an ear and label all the parts...

And his memory verse at the bottom from Proverbs...

We made a big ear they had to craw through with and ear "drum", "hammer", etc. He now knows the 3 smallest bones in your body. He will also proudly inform you that the semicircular canal controls your balance- and your cochlea contains hair and water that sends signals to your brain that causes you to hear. At the end of the week we visited an ear dr. and we were able to look in our ears with a machine that was a lot like a magnifying glass hooked up to a big tv screen! The boys got to see their ear-drums and learned that a "healthy" ear will reflect light back to you! The dr also showed the boys all the different hearing aid styles and sizes and even sent us home a ear model. Also included in this weeks lesson was learning about bats and their Echolocation hearing. How they send out signals and listen for the echo back to find food. This just happened to fall on Halloween... which Enoch had already determined to be a bat for Halloween, so this turned out perfect.

The past couple weeks we been learning about orchestras, instruments, and music theory. Enoch had to learn the different musical families and he can now tell you what family all the different instruments fall into- including the Woodwinds, Brass, Strings, Percussion. He also drew the arrangement of the instruments in an orchestra. He drew a violin and labeled all the parts- and we took a trip to the music store and classified all the instruments.

O course, we are still doing our phonics, etc. So I've attached a video of Enoch reading. He is picking it up so quickly... and is getting quite good at it :) We are getting them a Wii for Christmas, and Enoch now knows about it because the Wii box was upside down and backwards at the top of my closet but he read the words and informed me it was a Wii because Wii is spelled "W- i- i" and that's what the box said (he read it even though it was upside down and backwards). He can think backwards. When he writes, it spells the word out on the line. However, if he runs out of space (for ex. if what he is spelling is 2 words) I'll tell him to write it below the line. The first few times we did this he would write the letters upside down and backwards. I was getting onto him at first, until I realized what he was doing. He writes the letters upside down and backwards so that if you were to turn the paper upside down- the word wold fit perfect on the line. Crazy how his little 4 year old mind can think this way! Anyways.. here he is.

He simply loves to draw and write. His new found character he is into is Yoshi from Mario.

I caught him drawing this a few days ago...

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And something else I found. Not sure why he decided to draw a turtle, but he did. Check out the detailing around the shell!

So that gives you an overall of what we have been doing. Certainly there is a lot more involved than what I've mentioned, but you get the overall. Next week we are learning about eyes and vision. He will have to draw and eye, learn all the parts and dissect a cows eye. I'll be sure to post about that one :)