Tuesday, August 30, 2011

The Letter Cc - Day 3

The last day on the letter Cc went great. 

Box #1:  Oops & Oopsie yoga kids game.

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Box #2: Book: My “C” Sound Box and the Cc tub from Lakeshore Learning.

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Box #3: Leapfrog Letter Sounds (fridge magnets) A - C along with the video “Leapfrog Letter Factory” to watch after school.

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Box #4: Cc is for Caterpillar dice game from LOTW (just like the Butterfly dice game.  And he loved it just as much!)

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Box #5: Uppercase C and Lowercase c color by number from Education.com.  (I called it “magic hidden picture”.)

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Box #6 was a counting objects page from Let’s Explore (*Favorite of the day*)

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Box #7 was the Boggle Jr game.  I don’t use the word cover yet… I just have him use it as a matching game for the letters.  He does quite well against the timer.  :)

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Box #8 is the Cc is for Car coloring page.

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Box #9 was the matching game again from Storytime and More.  He was able to do the whole thing on his own this time (I removed the 10… it’s too confusing!)

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Box #10 was a set of Aa - Cc Montessori sand paper cards.  He is really starting to understand how to write these letters from this tactile reinforcement.  :)

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Wednesday, August 24, 2011

I want to learn…

My friend has this yearly tradition of asking the kids what they want to learn at the beginning of each school year.  I skipped last year, but I have picked it up this year again and am happy to say my kids came up with some wonderful things to learn!

This was Logan’s first year being involved in this conversation.  His goals (in his own words) were quite cute.

Logan:

I am interested in learning about the letter Bb.  I want to swim! And learn how to baking a cake.  I want to learn about metal - the inside.  And about big metal dinosaur robots!

Cyan was enjoying telling me about how she ‘loves what we are doing right now and doesn’t want to do ANYTHING else’ but with some prompting I got this:

Cyan:

I want to learn about the woods.  Violin and singing and maybe the thingy you did, cello.  I am interested in fairies and swimming.  I want to still do more horse back riding but if we can’t then that’s ok.   And cooking!  I want to learn how to draw and learn about drawing.  Gardens, planting, canning peaches and about babysitting; and maybe how to mow the yard.

This was a phone conversation for Alex.

Alex:

Math, sign language (ASL) &some sort of cooking (I don’t really care what it is).  Wood working.  Like tree stump wood working making faces in trees and stuff and thick blocks like 3D pictures out of wood.  Driving - haha - stick figure art, like comic books, or flip book arts.  And mechanics - like fixing things that are hard to fix.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Letter Cc - day 2 and what happens when drop a huge jar of buttons

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My sweet boy wanted to help set up todays lesson, so I asked him to get me the jar of buttons… off the shelf above the dryer.  Yeah.  Not the best idea ever.  The warranty on our washer and dryer runs out in 5 years.  We may very well still have buttons under there when the things die.  lol!

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Box #1 was a set of matching cards from here.  Hungry Caterpillar of course!

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Box #2 was his worksheets for today.  He had quite a few.  It also had the Lakeshore Learning letter Tub in it. 

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One of his worksheets was super fun!  The little caterpillars have numbers by their heads and you are supposed to make the caterpillars out of something… like buttons!  Once we got the buttons cleaned up this activity was the best of the day.  :)

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There were a couple more activities based on the same ‘number value’ concept.  He is actually getting his numbers down really quickly!

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Box #3 was the Leapfrog Fridge Letter set again.

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Box #4 was a rice pouring activity.  After his fun with this yesterday I decided to fill the pitcher with rice and see how he did.  At first he moved really fast and spilled the rice.  I showed him how to clean it up and his movements became more fluid, less jerky and fast, right before my eyes.  That is exactly what Montessori intended when adding these things to the classroom but it still puts me in awe every time I see it work.

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Box #5: Another Montessori idea.  Sandpaper letters.  I just have him run his finger along these textured letters in the same way he would write them.  It’s reinforces tacitly the directions and form for writing the letters.

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Box #6 was a sequencing activity based on the Very Hungry Caterpillar from here.  After we had it all set up I had HIM tell me the story.  He loved that!  I almost wish I had it on video it was so darned cute!

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Box $7:  Another sequencing activity.

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Box #8: a few coloring bits from his ABC Notebook Lapbook Pages.

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Box #9: a cutting activity from LOTW.  (He LOVES these BTW.)

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Box #10: Day 1 on StarFall!!  All my children have used StarFall when they start reading.  It’s fun and free and they really enjoy the idea of being able to play a ‘video game’ while doing school.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

In honor of Cyan’s “Woods” study

My Aunt Pat sent me this adorable video of a baby fawn being rescued.  It had fallen into some really large rocks in the back of some peoples yard and the mama kept circling the yard frantically looking for the sweet baby.  The baby was calling to her, so the people knew the babe was down there and alive.  They employed several different tools including the Jaws Of Life to get the baby out and it immediately ran to it’s mama and started nursing. 

http://www.wimp.com/fawnrescued/

This last week we have studied quite a bit about deer and the woods.  We even went on a camping trip and Cyan was able to recap her adventures in her woods section of her Animal Science Notebook!  Here are a few of the resources we have used:

Deer LapBook from Homeschool Share

Caribou Page from National Geographic Kids

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

This post is brought to you by the letter Cc

Today we started the letter Cc!  Some of this stuff I have been saving for months to try out. 

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Box #1 the Very Hungry Caterpillar book along with the butterfly’s life stages out of plush, sweet, little softies.  Luke wanted in on this one… and then he wanted to nurse.  :P

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Box #2 was some letter Cc pages from LOTW.

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Box #3 was a caterpillar craft.

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I thought it turned out extra cute!  I love the second one where Logan took some ‘artistic license’ and made his second caterpillar in different, funky colors.  :)

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Box #4 is a lacing card with Cc is for Cat.

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Box #5 is a set of matching coins (American currency this time) to match and a couple of “Cc is for Calculators”.

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#6 was a Montessori pouring activity.

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He REALLY enjoyed this one… loved the idea of being able to pour me drinks.  Luckily the pitcher wasn’t too big or I’d be swimming away.

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Box #7 was a coloring page with “Cc is for Cat”

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Box #8 was the Waldorf Alphabet Book.  Logan loves to find all the things that begin with each letter in the pictures as I read this to him.

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Box #9 was the Leapfrog Fridge Letters again… but this time we added Cc!

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Box #10 was an idea I got from Pinterest

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These sheets are free to print and when you put them in sheet protectors it makes a wipe off free handwriting workbook!  Logan thought it was the coolest thing ever.  Even Cyan wanted a turn with this fun new workbook idea.  (I’ll have to make her some with cursive phrases… that’s what she’s working on right now.)

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