Weeks 4 and 5 will be spent working on penguins. We're doing penguin activities on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays (again due to Bee's preK schedule). We will do some groundhog day activities on Feb. 1 (I know, not Groundhog's day, but I had my days mixed up and I think it'll work better for them to do it the day before so that hearing about it on the news the morning of will make more sense.). After that we will do a special day on Valentine's day and then go back to workbooks.
The Bug is really doing well with her reading. She has mastered all of her sight word cards, and I'm working on creating new lists of words that seem to pop up in her books a lot that she's a bit slower on. I'm also thinking of making a sight word game similar to one I saw to purchase.
We're also working hard on getting Valentine's ready for friends. The Bug is so very into puzzles, I was excited to find Valentine puzzles to color at Hobby Lobby so she is busy coloring the puzzles and writing her friends' names on them to give them out at her next Girl Scout meeting.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Week 3
Well, here is the rundown on Week 3- Under the Sea week:
This week was actually quite slow after the last couple. I didn't have so many things jam-packed in there, even though I only did the Under the Sea things on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday due to Busy Bee's preschool schedule. I also didn't have all the extra add-ons from other places like I had the past couple of weeks. It really helped that we just did the basics and had a relaxing time though.
Our main curriculum for the week was In the Hands of a Child's Under the Sea Project Pack. We stuck with the activities in the Project Pack and only added one thing: 1+1+1=1's Coloring Ocean Animals book.
I could've found so much more, but we have a pretty heavily packed 2 weeks of penguins coming up and we just came off a very full week with Nemo and coral reefs last week so it worked out nice. We also decided to take a weekend away as a family so I was busy preparing for that amongst other things.
Here are some pictures of our "Oceans in a Bottle" and our sea creature collages:
The Bug hard at work coloring her sea creatures.
The Bird's Ocean.
The Bug's Ocean in a Bottle
Budder's Ocean.
The Bee's Ocean in a Bottle
The Bee's sea creatures, left abandoned while she pouted! She did eventually come around and do the work, but she threw a tantrum when she found a fish bead she wanted in her Ocean but couldn't put in because I'd already sealed the lid shut. Thank goodness Dad was home to help us that day!
The Bird's artwork!
This week was actually quite slow after the last couple. I didn't have so many things jam-packed in there, even though I only did the Under the Sea things on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday due to Busy Bee's preschool schedule. I also didn't have all the extra add-ons from other places like I had the past couple of weeks. It really helped that we just did the basics and had a relaxing time though.
Our main curriculum for the week was In the Hands of a Child's Under the Sea Project Pack. We stuck with the activities in the Project Pack and only added one thing: 1+1+1=1's Coloring Ocean Animals book.
I could've found so much more, but we have a pretty heavily packed 2 weeks of penguins coming up and we just came off a very full week with Nemo and coral reefs last week so it worked out nice. We also decided to take a weekend away as a family so I was busy preparing for that amongst other things.
Here are some pictures of our "Oceans in a Bottle" and our sea creature collages:
The Bug hard at work coloring her sea creatures.
The Bird's Ocean.
The Bug's Ocean in a Bottle
Budder's Ocean.
The Bee's Ocean in a Bottle
The Bee's sea creatures, left abandoned while she pouted! She did eventually come around and do the work, but she threw a tantrum when she found a fish bead she wanted in her Ocean but couldn't put in because I'd already sealed the lid shut. Thank goodness Dad was home to help us that day!
The Bird's artwork!
Friday, January 21, 2011
Update on Week 3
Today we will finish Week 3- Under the Sea. This unit hasn't been the hit I thought it would be thus far. It also has been a terribly crazy week around this house that is getting capped off with a terribly crazy weekend. I arranged this week so that we did our Under the Sea unit on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday due to Busy Bee's school schedule. She's in preschool on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and gets upset if we do fun school stuff without her so when I was scheduling 5 days a week, I was finding things to keep the Bug interested and busy during the day then waiting until after naptime to do the special unit (because Busy Bee NEEDS her nap still!). It's been nice to not be doing school work so late in the day because I really do like to get it out of the way in the mornings as uch as we can, but the timing of everything else this week has been kind of crummy. I most likely will not get my Week 3 wrap up posted until later in the weekend or early next week. It has been a much calmer, less activity filled school week than last week's Nemo unit (and will be followed by 2 week's worth of penguin studies!). Now I'm off to start our last day of the week. Have a blessed weekend!
Friday, January 14, 2011
Week 2 Wrap Up
Well, week 2 is done. Our Finding Nemo week was a lot of fun, both for the kids and for me. I was fascinated with the information I found and with the things the kids picked up. The primary focus of our studies were from In the Hands of a Child's Clownfish Adventure. That would be where the idea for making the anemones (pictures in previous post) came from. We also used some of the printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler's Clown Fish Lapbook and Homeschool Share's Coral Reef Lapbook. We had so many things when we glued it all in our lapbooks today, that it hardly fit! We had our folders folded and added extensions to the top and botto and still had to cram and even trim a little here and there to get it all in!
Next week we'll be doing a unit on "Under the Sea" followed by one on penguins after that and then I think we'll start getting back to workbooks and a little more structured curriculum rather than fun units with learning in them.
Next week we'll be doing a unit on "Under the Sea" followed by one on penguins after that and then I think we'll start getting back to workbooks and a little more structured curriculum rather than fun units with learning in them.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Week 2 Preview
We just started our Finding Nemo unit. Today we talked about clownfish and anemones. We made our own little anemones. Didn't they turn out cute?
This one was done by DD#3, Little Bird or simply Bird as we'll call her. She loves to scribble, although it doesn't come through on the picture. She's not quite 19 months old.
This one is DD#2's, Busy Bee or Bee is what we'll call her. She just turned 4 this week and loves the color orange (as I'm sure you'll bear witness to!).
Next up is DD#1's, Bug or Buggie is what she goes by. She's 5 1/2 years old, our kindergartener, and her innocense and love of learning is our primary reason to jump on this homeschooling ride.
And lastly we have DS's. We'll call him Budder or simply Bud. He'll turn 3 next week and is full of 2 year old spirit (and strong will!).
This one was done by DD#3, Little Bird or simply Bird as we'll call her. She loves to scribble, although it doesn't come through on the picture. She's not quite 19 months old.
This one is DD#2's, Busy Bee or Bee is what we'll call her. She just turned 4 this week and loves the color orange (as I'm sure you'll bear witness to!).
Next up is DD#1's, Bug or Buggie is what she goes by. She's 5 1/2 years old, our kindergartener, and her innocense and love of learning is our primary reason to jump on this homeschooling ride.
And lastly we have DS's. We'll call him Budder or simply Bud. He'll turn 3 next week and is full of 2 year old spirit (and strong will!).
Second Semester, Week 1
We started out homeschooling on the fly. We really had no plan other than to get our DD into a safe environment before something terrible could happen to her at school. We had no curriculum, no guidance, no time to plan. We started out with some kindergarten workbooks from Walmart, an online curriculum (Time 4 Learning), and a lot of prayer. We muddled our way through it, and DD has thrived. She gobbled up any information we gave her. She begged to keep going when we said the day was over. So we finished off last semester with a couple of unit studies cobbled together from various online resources and a trip to DisneyWorld! After a relaxing (?) 2 weeks off (so, Mom was sick for a chunk of it, we hosted Christmas dinner, tried potty training DS, but it could've been relaxing!), we're ready to get back to work.
Our first week back, I decided to do a unit study on winter and snow. We had previously purchased the Let It Snow! Project Pack from In the Hands of a Child and did it as a group- 4 kids, 1 mom, and occasionally a dad when he was home! It was a lot of fun for all of us. Unfortunately for us, all the snow we had here pretty much melted on an unseasonably warm New Years Day, but the kids didn't care.
We supplemented our project pack with Itsy Bitsy Printable's Frosty Days unit and Winter Fun unit (sorry, can't find a link right now), this great winter unit from Musings of Me, this fun pin the nose on the snowman game and create a snowman craft from Spell Outloud, and some of the winter printables from the Winter Fun Totpack from 1+1+1=1. On Friday, we finished off the week by using bread heels that we'd saved all week, spreading peanut butter on them and then sticking birdseed to the peanut butter. We have yet to see any birds trying our birdfeeders, but we did have a lot of fun doing it and have driven our dog nuts trying to figure out how to get them down! We then watched the movie Snow Buddies. As movies are a rare treat in our house, this was a huge hit!
Our birdfeeders ready to be eaten!
Since we do still send DD#2 to 3 year old preschool which is Tuesday and Thursday mornings, we used this time for DD#1 to do some work on Time4Learning. This is in addition to the daily work we do with her sight words and reading.
This week we are going to do a week-long unit study on the characters of the movie Finding Nemo. We'll cap the week off with another movie... Finding Nemo, of course! The kids are all terribly excited to learn about Nemo, especially after our December vacation to DisneyWorld and SeaWorld!
Our first week back, I decided to do a unit study on winter and snow. We had previously purchased the Let It Snow! Project Pack from In the Hands of a Child and did it as a group- 4 kids, 1 mom, and occasionally a dad when he was home! It was a lot of fun for all of us. Unfortunately for us, all the snow we had here pretty much melted on an unseasonably warm New Years Day, but the kids didn't care.
We supplemented our project pack with Itsy Bitsy Printable's Frosty Days unit and Winter Fun unit (sorry, can't find a link right now), this great winter unit from Musings of Me, this fun pin the nose on the snowman game and create a snowman craft from Spell Outloud, and some of the winter printables from the Winter Fun Totpack from 1+1+1=1. On Friday, we finished off the week by using bread heels that we'd saved all week, spreading peanut butter on them and then sticking birdseed to the peanut butter. We have yet to see any birds trying our birdfeeders, but we did have a lot of fun doing it and have driven our dog nuts trying to figure out how to get them down! We then watched the movie Snow Buddies. As movies are a rare treat in our house, this was a huge hit!
Our birdfeeders ready to be eaten!
Since we do still send DD#2 to 3 year old preschool which is Tuesday and Thursday mornings, we used this time for DD#1 to do some work on Time4Learning. This is in addition to the daily work we do with her sight words and reading.
This week we are going to do a week-long unit study on the characters of the movie Finding Nemo. We'll cap the week off with another movie... Finding Nemo, of course! The kids are all terribly excited to learn about Nemo, especially after our December vacation to DisneyWorld and SeaWorld!
Welcome
I am a stay-at-home mom, part-time college math instructor, and homeschooling mom of my four wonderful blessings. Homeschooling wasn't in the grand plan, but after some really terrible happenings at the public school and no good private options, we chose homeschooling for now. It's amazing how at peace this decision has left us and how much of a blessing it has turned out to be for our family. This is my blog, mostly for my memory and records, to keep track of what we do here at "Mommy School." If we can be a blessing to someone else, that will just make this adventure all the better!
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