Abby the Cheerleader

Ready? O-K!

There's a little girl at the daycare  that teaches Abby all of her cheers. You simply can't imagine my excitement. *sigh*
Well, never let it be said that I don't support my children. Walmart had their pom-poms on sale for $5. Not too shabby.

So, here is Abby in her cheerleading debut! Grammy Pat- you'll have to watch these on your computer, not the ipad.

Cheers with pom-poms.

Cheers without pom-poms: LINK

And a brand new cheer created by Abby!- LINK

Don't worry, I'm sure we can bring the pom-poms to Julia's birthday and Delk Thanksgiving!

Fun Day in Nature ... Excuse to post some fun pictures

OK everyone out there. We have had an ongoing battle in our house over electronics...laptop, Ipad, Nook, Kindle Fire, etc. Isaac has become addicted to video games. I can understand this...but I also understand why my Dad got ticked off at Craig one time over a Gameboy. Craig missed one of the most beautiful sunsets witnessed in the Sequatchie Valley because he had to make it to the next level of Tetris...then wondered where his Gameboy went for a couple of weeks.

The other night we had an amazing rainbow outside our house. Andy and Abby were thrilled with it.

Isaac was ho-hum about it and quickly returned to beat the next level of Plants vs Zombies.

This more than a little frustrated me and Andy is usually more than happy to sit next to Isaac and watch him slay evil zombies with vegetables he won't touch.

So, the past two weekends, Abby and Andy have been out in nature and trying to convince Isaac that it is cool and way better than video games. Abby even says that waterfalls are better than watching Dr. Who. So today we decided to kidnap Isaac and make him enjoy some nature. We took a little excursion to Fall Creek Falls. I would say mission accomplished. Isaac said multiple times that this was the most awesome day ever.

We hiked to the bottom of the Falls and spent quite a bit of time down there today. Isaac got over his boredom with Nature. Andy worked on his fear of spiders. Abby collected wild turkey feathers, although by the end of the day she was saying they came from wild chickens.

We then went to the Nature Center and listened to an informative talk about local snakes. The kids got to pet four snakes today and Abby found a baby Northern Water Snake. I freaked out a little of this one because they look similar to a copperhead. But with the information from our talk...I now know that it was a harmless little scare. But you never know when Abby says she has found a baby snake!







Of course the day was not fraught with Daddy adventures in parenting. Andy decided that he needed to pee pee...in front of everyone at the base of the falls. Here is his reaction to his public nudity...

Abby also added to the fun. She came up to me while we were playing and said she had to tell me something but it would only make me mad. She then said she needed to potty. No problem, we have done this before, she just holds my hand and leans out...but this time she had to uso el numero dos. SO...we had that at the bottom as well. Abby had trouble understanding what she had fertilized the bottom with.

Please note, this was not an actual picture.













All said, there was fun had by all.

I must admit. It was a really awesome day. God creates a lot of cool stuff.













Isaac smiled and said, "It is good."

I am guessing this will be one of the things they won't mind doing again...as long as we don't go across the swinging bridge. Andy and Abby did not like that one.

Better than the original!

Grammy Pat, you'll have to watch these on your computer, not the ipad.

Everyone knows that Abby loves to cheese it up for the camera. Today, she wanted to show off her singing.

Here's the original video, the song was introduced to Abby by Aunt Boo:

And here's Abby!

Now tell me she's not better than the original! :)

Delk summer school- Day 1

I didn't want to start summer school until after the family vacation and yesterday just wasn't a good day for me to start. So, we started "classes" on a Tuesday and that's OK.

Melissa was a genius and reserved the church's gym every Tuesday morning. This way we have a place to go every week, rain or shine. We have invited other mommies and their kids to join us, and today Kayla and Ansley came. I didn't get any pictures, sorry. Also next week we will come better prepared with jump ropes or something. We had basketballs at the gym, but the kids would have liked something more.

I'm also hoping next week is dry so we can play on the playground outside of the church.

When we got home we did some "lessons".  It was mostly a sit down and focus time.

I got a Summer Program book for Isaac to work through. It's a book of kinder-1st grade activities. Today he worked on the kinder assessment pages.

Then Isaac worked on math. One of the second grade teachers had an extra math workbook from this past year, so I grabbed it up and brought it home with me! Lesson 1-1 Writing Addition Number Sentences.

Our vocabulary words for this lesson. We are going to work on these words- recognizing them, reading them, and using them in context. We made some flash cards and attached them to his chair. He can go over them when he's waiting for lunch and dinner.

The twins worked on 3-letter words. I bought 3-letter word cards a few years ago for Isaac and now it's the twins turn to use them. Abby and Andy put the cards in order, said the word, and wrote the words in their journals.

Abby worked very hard on her letters. She's still working on letter recognition, so when she wrote her letters she had to focus on making the letters look just like the letters on the cards. Honestly, she created her letters the way a painter would create a still-life painting. She looked for lines and curves and wrote to match. When asked if she could read the words without the cards, she couldn't. She was able to spell most of the words, but there was no connection from letters to words yet.

Andy is a different story. He recognized every letter on the card enough to write all of his words in capital letters. After writing the words he was able to read most of the words back to me. He already has a pretty good sight word base. The words he didn't recognize on sight, he also wasn't able to sound out. He knows his sounds, but blending them together isn't there yet.

After reading/ writing practice, the worked on tracing their numbers 1-5.

 Andy did a great job of doing each row in order. He started at the top of each number and followed through to the end.

Abby worked column by column instead of row by row. She also worked backwards, 5-1. She didn't start at the top of each number, she did the curves of the numbers first, then the straight lines. Or, in the case of the 4s, she did the side-to-side lines first, then the up-and-down lines.

I can  tell that I'm going to have a real time teaching Abby. She's more of an artistic learner where I'm not necessarily an artistic teacher. Maybe the best way to describe it is that she and I are both stubborn and are both convinced that our own way is the right way. She hated having to erase her letters when I told her they were backward. She didn't see that the "e"s had to be a certain way to be right. This is going to be fun.

Each kid has his/ her own notebook for their work. I am also documenting their progress each day along with anything I notice about their work.

I'll try to keep everyone posted as to the kids' progress this summer!
The twins are really excited about starting Pre-K this coming school year and I want them to be ready for more structure in their lessons.
Isaac was tested and passed the gifted test last year and will start the program next year. I really don't want him to lose any of his learning over the summer. We will be focusing on his working independently, reading and comprehending directions for himself.

I will be working on creating lessons and activities for my class next year. I'll still be in 3rd grade and my administration wants 3rd grade to be departmentalized. I will be teaching social studies and math small groups. Lord, help me.

2013 Family Vacation

This past week, Chattanooga was the host of the Delk/ Davis/ Bradley family vacation! I didn't get a lot of pictures, I'm waiting for Jenny to share, but I got enough to show that everyone had a good time!

Tuesday night- Lookouts game
The Delks, Aunt Boo, and Aunt Dee got to the game early so the kids could get some autographs.

After the first inning Aunt Boo got a game ball from one of the Mississippi Braves' players. I didn't get a picture, but that sure was sweet of the guy! (It really wasn't sweet at all, the guy was obviously flirting and Joanna never gave the guy a second look.)

Since this was also to be Joanna's birthday trip, Joe and I made sure that her birthday was announced on the big screen during the 7th inning stretch. It was a great surprise, especially when the announcer told everyone that Joanna is "young, cute, and single"!

 

 After the game, Boo and Dee took Abby to the hotel with them to have a girl's night. Aunt Jenny was nice enough to let Abby borrow some night clothes. Julia got to join in the fun and it was giggly girls all. night. long. Thanks Boo and Dee!

Wednesday we swam in the morning and had a lazy day around the hotel. The Delks went home for nap time, but came back and stayed the night in the hotel Wed night. We had pizza for dinner at the hotel and then walked around downtown for a little while.

Thursday- Tennessee Aquarium.
Again, waiting on Jenny for pictures. We toured both buildings- the river and the ocean. The kids had a great time seeing all the fish. The aquarium had areas where you could touch some of the fish and the kids freaked out they were so happy. The highlights of the trip were the sharks, the penguins, the butterflies, and the divers (who were cleaning the tanks).

Thursday night we had Joanna's birthday dinner at the house. We had our family along with Melissa, John, and their twins come over for BBQ and cookie cake. I need Joanna to send me a pic of the cake since it was decorated to her specifications. It had Hello Kitty on it. (When Joe went to order it, the lady asked if it was for a little girl. Joe told her the little girl was 28 years old.)

Friday- Creative Discovery Museum.
I got pictures! We started with the dinosaur exhibit. The kids got to pretend to be archaeologists. Really it was an excuse to play in a sand pit.

 The first thing Andy did when we got to the sand was say, "Hey Mommy, can I do this?" And then he dumped a shovel full of sand on his head. I told him, "Well, it's not like I can stop you now."

 Prettiest archaeologist at the museum

 Of course they had a dress up corner

 Isaac liked looking at things through the microscope

Moving on to the art section.

This was one of Abby's favorite stations. The girls loves to draw.

Next were the music rooms. The Delks had a blast!

I had to pry the kids out of the music section. We moved on to the doctor's office.

 Aunt Boo found herself a man. The Braves player was cuter.

Doctor Julia told Boo that she had "Yucky-itis".

We went upstairs to the roof exhibit of simple machines. I didn't get any pictures but it was a pretty day to be outside. While we were outside, we ran into some friends of ours from daycare- one of the other Abbys. My little Abby was excited to see a friend. 

For lunch we went to City Cafe downtown- home of the prettiest desserts you'll ever see!

This is just one of their display cases!

We all had a great time! The only thing that could have made it better would be having Grammy Pat and Papa Joe with us. The Delks will just have to come to M'boro to get our Grammy and Papa fix!

Thanks for coming to Chattanooga everyone! We will have to do this again sometime!