Fabulous Four!

I am home-preschooling Cara this year. She missed the cut off for starting Pre K by 3 days and because I still feel like her speech is delayed some, I wasn't going to fight to get her in school anyway. We have set up the dining room as the classroom. It is separated from other rooms so it is cozy and we can make it as "schooly" as we want. I spruced up a Science Fair display board and hung a desk calendar pad on it. I also made little cutouts of types of weather and different activities that we might do that day such as walking, grocery shopping, homework, feed missionaries, or have a doctor appointment. The side flaps display her work and I am in the process of putting a felt board underneath the calendar section.

She has made excellent progress! She can write/spell her name correctly, hold a pencil properly, cut/paste, knows colors, shapes, we do sorting activities and letter matching (big A to little A). She can recognize and write the letters (big and small) C, A, R, M, O. She also knows the sounds they make and will recognize things in daily life and say "hey, that starts with C." etc. Her homework time is on the computer doing Starfall while Merilee and I work on her homework. It is difficult to stay on my daily schedule so that we have enough time for school. Sometimes we skip the "learning" part and just do a craft of baking activity. I enjoy watching her perfect her skills and see that she is proud of herself.
Here she is on her first day of school!

In other news....Cara had a birthday!! We celebrated all he September birthdays in my family on Cara's birthday. So we had Cara's on the 4th, my sister, Morgan's on the 5th, and mine on the 29th. Here is Cara opening some gifts....

She wanted a pink and blue sparkle birthday. I made her decorations and the cake/cake balls. The cake was strawberry and the cake balls were a mix of strawberry covered in white chocolate or covered in milk chocolate. I've never made cake balls before and will not make them very often because they are TOO yummy and TOO bad for my figure;)

We enjoyed the day with a house full of family and food. September went by really fast and we are getting ready to leave on our vacation to Disneyland tomorrow. We have a construction paper chain helping us count down the days and we are super excited for this adventure.