New Items @ Soaps, Stitches & Such

Soaps, Stitches & Such is a favorite Etsy shop of mine. The soaps, body butters, and other items are made from skin-friendly and safe ingredients.
I chose a variety of soaps for Christmas gifts and had a fun time deciding who would get which scent. I really wanted to keep the lemongrass soap but I resisted! And I was also tempted to eat the chocolate mint soap because it looked so fudgy. And my niece actually did lick the cupcake soap (currently unavailable, but more cupcake soaps are coming soon).

One of the new products that I would love to smell is the grapefruit body butter. Our family just finished eating our way through a case of yummy grapefruits and I am missing the smell already.

The soaps and body butters look like great gift ideas for end of the school year teacher appreciation, Mother's Day, or Earth Day. If you are in the Tri-Cities, WA you can arrange for local pickup to save on shipping.

If you would like to be alerted to special offers from this shop, you can sign up for their mailing list and get a coupon for $5 off a purchase of $10 or more. In case you are just skimming at this point, I re-awaken you with the word COUPON. Enjoy!

26 Weeks of Kindergarten

Tobias confused a neighbor lady the other day when she asked what grade he was in and he said "done with Kindergarten but not in first grade yet". Finally she asked "well, will you go to school tomorrow morning" (it was Sunday) and she figured out he is home schooled.

I've declared summer here and we've shifted into a less formal daily routine of "just" reading, chores, piano, outdoor play, and one special thing each day like baking on Mondays, teatime on Tuesdays, etc.

We were blessed to cover a lot of material in 26 weeks of Kindergarten that I will list below, but more importantly, I see a lot of things "clicking" for Tobias, academically and in maturity. He follows along when solving math problems with Nate such as "how many hours until tomorrow starts?", enjoys curating many musical playlists, and is getting to be a help with chores around the house.

In addition to the books and songs already listed in the first 18 weeks, we focused on these things this year:

Hymns:

All Creatures of our God and King

O Worship the King

Folk/Children's Songs:

Oh, Susanna

Short'nin Bread

Wheels on the Bus

Bible:

Vos Story Bible:  Jacob buys the Birthright - Joseph's Dreams Come True

The Jesus Storybook Bible:
    The Singer - A dream of Heaven 
    (Sermon on the Mount through Revelation)

Math:

Counting by 2's, 5's and 10's up to 100 or more
Miquon Math continuing through E-12
Khan Academy: mastered 35% of the Early Math skills

History:

Pioneering on the Plains (Edith McCall)

Handwriting:

finished lowercase letters from Delightful Handwriting

Piano:

Music Tree: through page 41

Reading:

Daily reading (he made it to 100 books and we went out for ice cream!).

Literature:

The Old Man and his Dog (W.G. van de Hulst)
Roxaboxen
The Lost Photograph (W.G. van de Hulst)
The Borrowers
Pinocchio

Other highlights included a trip to the Planetarium, hike on Bateman Island, ECHO end of the year program, building electronics things, and many other projects.