Homeschool, MDO and Rainbows

Since I work from home, Knox is typically inside all day long.  That makes for a slightly "cagey" 2-year old.  He'll be starting MDO on Fridays next week, but we needed something else.  I researched some different homeschool curriculum ideas online and found one that I thought would work.

The curriculum works off of the public school calendar, so this was the first week.  The theme for the first month is "God made the world around you and me."  We were focusing this week on day, night, sky and water.  The shape was circle, and the color was red.

We started by identifying the color red.  He's pretty good at most colors, so he knew red right away.  We went around the house on a "color hunt," finding different items that were red.  He loved this activity, but really loved painting the red apple.  I wanted something really bright to hang as a reminder of the week's color.

My lefty.

His "cheese" face.

Knowing we would have a lot of handmade items week after week, I needed another solution to hanging them, other than the shadow box that holds his random art.  My friend Abbi has canvases for each child to display their art hanging near their playroom.  I thought this would be a great idea for us, too, so we ran with it.  

Knox loves pointing to his designs and telling us "I made that!", so I knew he would love a giant homage to his work in the kitchen.  I moved the shadow box to the living room and added this gem to the kitchen:

Easy peasy.  I bought the canvas, used paint that I had around the house to get the perfect gray, and then used painters tape to make the diamonds.  It's not perfect, and definitely not symmetrical, but who cares?  You don't see all of the design when his art is hung, so it really didn't matter.

See?  I think it's pretty cute!  His art is, too!  He colored the sun and stars to represent day/night, and he used watercolors for the water and sky.  Then we glued cotton balls for clouds and goldfish for the fish in the sea.

He had a great time, and loved the first week of homeschool.  I'm not a Duggar yet, but we're getting there :)  I'm loving being able to do 30-min lessons with him, and getting to teach him the stories of the bible while incorporating art is right up my alley!

I mentioned MDO earlier in this post.  We're so excited for him to start, and am looking forward to the growth and "away time" on Fridays.  We went to "Meet the Teacher" yesterday, and he loved it.  So much he didn't want to leave his classroom...and has been asking to "go to school" all day.  

While at the information meeting, everyone else in Dallas (my hubs and Knox included) got to enjoy an amazing rainbow!

I was told by Stephen and a few friends in the 'hood that it was the brightest and most beautiful rainbow they'd seen in a while...sad I missed it!  

I'm thinking I'll start a "Weekly Wrap-Up" on Fridays to go over what we did in homeschool every week.  I might bore you guys, but it's our family journal...so hang in there and feel free to scroll down!

Birthday Party Fun!

Knox is blessed with a lot of friends, and all of them are around the same age...so that  means lots of parties at once!  This past Saturday we celebrated two, Blair and Madison.  Next Saturday, we have three!  It's so fun to celebrate all of these sweet kids, and Knox loves singing Happy Birthday and eating cake.  It's a win-win for everyone!

We see Blair every day.  Since we run almost every morning, he wakes up talking about her until we "run and feed the turtles."  They did soccer together last season, so Jessica decided the location would be a fun place for party!  She did such a great job with the decor, and she and her mom did a fantastic job on the cake!  The party was perfect...the kids ran around and chased each other, kicked their soccer and beach balls and played until they were wiped.  It was a perfect way to spend the morning and get a great nap!!

Knox was in heaven with the spread--goldfish, kolaches and donut holes!  Yes, Please!

What's funny is we would have probably talked about what we were going to wear on our run that morning, but since we skipped to avoid being sweaty at the party, we wore the same thing.  What are the chances?  Ha.

Happy 2nd, sweet Blair!

Once Knox had a good nap, we headed to Jump Mania for Madison's 3rd birthday party.  Madison is so sweet with Knox, always helping him out and babying him...he secretly loves the attention.  Once we got to her party, she helped warm him up to the slides:

He was timid at first, but then jumped right in and enjoyed slides.

Dad even got in with him...I'm not sure who enjoyed it more!

Blowing out the candles!

Happy 3rd, Madison!

We are looking forward to celebrating our friends next weekend, too!

Papi's Birthday

I've slacked a little in the blogging department, but it's only because we've been so busy.  Lots of things have been going on in the Dotson household: parties, trips, grandparent-loving, new toys...once I have a minute to sit down, I'll post them all here!

The weekend before last, Knox got to spend the weekend with my parents while we had a child-free weekend at the lake.  We do this trip every year, and we have so much fun.  So much fun this year that I don't have one picture to show for it.  We tubed, surfed, lounged, ate, grilled out, laughed, cried...seriously, so fun!

When we got home on Sunday, we had a little family cookout to celebrate one of my favorite people...my pops!  He reads the blog and knows how I feel, so I won't gush too much, but he's an incredible man, husband, father, father-in-law, papi and friend.  Seriously, if you've met him, you  know how special he is.  We were so thankful to be able to celebrate his special day!

The kids jumped in the pool right after dinner, and enjoyed some cooler temps.  My mom scrounged around for some candles to put on the cake, but could only come up with random numbers.  We used them anyway!

The kids anxiously awaiting cake and ice cream.

The random cake...tinkerbelle candle and the numbers 2, 3, and 7.  So random.

I just had to capture those lashes while he was mesmorized by the candles.

Watching Papi cut the cake

Yummo!

Love the summer haze, and icing lips!

We sang Happy birthday, cheered for Papi, and then Kiki (my niece) asked if she could like the candles.  She grabbed one and licked the icing off.  Conner (her bro), decided to follow suit.  Guess he didn't realize we were just licking the icing off:

The poor number 7 is no longer...too funny!  We tried to get him to spit most of it out, but I think he swallowed a good portion of it.  Gross!

It's always special to be able to celebrate events like these with family, and we don't take any of it for granted!

Circus Circus!

This past Saturday we took a little family adventure to the Barnum & Bailey Circus.  It was a long, fun-filled afternoon, and Knox has the best time.

The show started at 3pm, however they had a "pre-show" starting at 2pm, which involved the entertainers, dancers, clowns and some animals.  We decided since we were already skipping his nap (gasp!), we should just go early.  I'm so glad we did!  We got up close and personal with the different acts, got some cute pictures and even saw "Asia" the elephant paint us a picture!

She freaked him out...he would have scratched my skin off if I'd gotten any closer!

ASIA!!

Aerial gymnasts

The family in front of the backdrop

Maybe when he's older he'll show a little more excitement over a few pretty ladies!

"There's the elephants!!!"

Tightrope Walker

Knox was really only interested in the elephants.  The entire way to the AA center, he talked about them.  Any time there was downtime in the show, he asked about them.  He was seriously obsessed with seeing the elephants.  Like most shows, they save the best for last...so the elephants didn't come on until the very end.  We were able to see some fun acts along the way, though Knox wasn't always thrilled with them.  He got bored easily if there weren't live animals :)

See...the tightrope walkers/bikers didn't impress him.  At one point he yelled "Stop!"

Popcorn made it all better, though!

The tigers were a huge hit.  He talked about them a lot after the show!

So...as you can imagine, it was 5:30pm and we still hadn't seen the elephants.  We knew they were coming, and couldn't wait for him to see...but he just couldn't make it.

He missed his favorite part...the main attraction.  We were so bummed for him.  We tried to wake him up, but after waking up early, church and a missed nap, he wasn't having it.  Poor buddy.

We had a great time, and he left with a fun stuffed elephant and motorcycle...he thought it was Christmas.

"And they call the thing Rodeo"

This past Friday we went to the Mesquite Rodeo.  A few of our Lifegroup couples were going, and we thought it would be a fun little adventure for Knox.  

He loved it.  There was constant action, which kept him entertained.  No animals were injured, which was also a huge plus!  

When we arrived to the arena, they were out of power.  Pretty funny, actually, but at the time we were a bit annoyed and sweaty.  They got it back up and running right around the start time, so we were able to stay and enjoy the show.

Knox had this serious look on his face the majority of the time.  Just taking it all in.

He also loved (and was slightly jealous) when the kids got to do the "Cash Dash."

They put two strings on a sheep, and let the kids go.  Whoever got the string got $20 bucks.  

Maybe in a year or two he can jump out there.  We'll have to get him some boots and Wranglers to fit in :)

As we were leaving, we paid the $5 for him to have a pony ride.  It probably lasted less than 2 minutes, but it was absolutely worth it!  He did it all by himself, which made me proud and broke my heart, all at the same time.  He's getting so big!

We had a great time, and look forward to going back soon!