Homeschooling in the Rose Garden

7 lies about homeschoolers - debunked!

2012-01-18T10:59:00.001-08:00

Ll is for Lego and Mm is for Monsters

2012-01-14T14:38:00.001-08:00

I haven’t been taking pictures of our preschool curriculum through the holidays. Things just got overwhelming and keeping up with the pictures was just more than I could do for a while. We have been plugging along through the alphabet and we are now happily on Ll and Mm just in time for Logan’s Monster 5th birthday party!

There are SO many resources for curriculum that has to do with Legos and Monsters for the letters Ll and Mm that I couldn’t help but post for your enjoyment, even if I didn’t take pictures of our lego and monster adventures for this week.

Ll is for Lego resources:

Lego Lapbook from Walking by the Way

A great lego counting idea from Pinterest

This great starting early addition and subtraction worksheet from The Kent Chronicles (If your child isn’t there yet, you could possibly make your own using lego blocks and a scanner.)

Here is an awesome set of Lego Bingo cards from BigDandMe.

Lego.com has a new set of instructions for a cool project that they post each month!

Mm is for Monsters resources:

Blow paint monster idea from Pinterest.

We used a ton of the pages from this free Monster unit study pack at Oopsy Daisy.

Here are some instructions on how to make your own monster toy from Fiskar Crafts.

How to make a Monster Bean Bag Toss from Lil Luna.

Wonderful ideas from Primary Graffiti for having the kids make their own monster and working with descriptive words.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Enjoy!

Advent Around the World is going nicely

2011-12-05T08:45:00.001-08:00

If anyone would like to see all the fun things we are doing this year for Advent, please pop on over to my other blog Collecting the Moments for the details!

A moment with the weightless…

2011-11-18T09:28:00.000-08:00

I just love this picture. Of course, it’s horrible quality, and it’s on the wrong setting for the light source… but the looks on Logan’s face is completely “Logan”… and Cyan is SO proud! It’s just an adorable capture of a sweet moment with my two middle kiddos.

Letter Ii is for Ice Cream!

2011-11-16T21:25:00.001-08:00

Box #1: Some worksheets from Thanksgiving Pack from Our Little Monkeys.

Box #2: ABC Notebook using worksheets from various places but mostly from Homeschool Share.

In those was an idea from Pinterest that I modified for what Logan is working on. I punched out 5 big circles and a triangle which I made into an ice-cream cone. I put the numbers 5 - 9 on the circles and then had Logan put them in order on the cone in his notebook. After that we had some fun and put “sprinkles” on the ice cream with glitter.

Box #3: Beginning Sounds Bingo.

Box #4: Dot to Dot Count to 10

Box #5: More from Thanksgiving Pack from Our Little Monkeys with patterning cards and matching shadows.

Box #6: Number Apples worksheet.

Once again it was the numbers 5-9 I was concentrating on. 1 - 5 he has down.

Box #7: A Thanksgiving Puzzle from Thanksgiving Pack from Our Little Monkeys

Box # 8: Number Memory Game.

Box #9: Two books today. I Spy Spooky Night and Thanksgiving Is Here! by Diane Goode.

Box #10: Get Ready for the Code pages.

It all seems so repetitive and simple… but I can tell you that this way of learning is working VERY well for my little boy.

Tonight he brought me a magazine he and Cyan had been looking at. One the back of it he wrote ‘L-o-g- upside-down V (for an Aa) and a messy Nn’. Then next to them he wrote a ‘s - I - n’ He said “This is for me and Cyan.” Now I know in text that looks strange, but we pronounce my daughter Cyan’s name like Ryan. Just with an Ss sound at the start. So when sounded out it would be Ss sound, long Ii, and then Nn! He sounded out the word, wrote it the way it sounded, made completely recognizable letters, and knew what they meant in the right order! That’s just blowing me away. The level of comprehension that is required to make sense of language that way should be far beyond him, and yet……

Kaya - The American Girl

2011-11-16T09:04:00.000-08:00

For the last 9 weeks Cyan has been studying the books about Kaya with a class at our co-op. She has read 7 chapter books and the book Welcome to Kaya’s World (above) from cover to cover and answered questions about each chapter of each book. For a girl, who just a year ago was getting rewarded for her first chapter book I was thrilled with the accomplishment!

For a final project (and for her week off from co-op last week) I had her do a Kaya Lapbook to add to her Co-op binder. All of these foldouts and minibooks minus the coloring sheet on the front of the lapbook were found at Homeschool Share.

It starts out with a picture Cyan colored of Kaya and her sister playing. Above that is a fold out booklet of Kaya’s Favorite Things.

The next page is a two page spread of different parts of Kaya’s World.

On these pages are where Kaya’s tribe lived in America, vocabulary words in Nes Pierce language, facts about the characters from the book and life with the Nes Pierce (called the Nimiipuu, which means ‘pierced noses’ in French).

This is the vocabulary fold out:

And facts about Kaya and her tribe:

The last page talks about the series and Cyan’s opinion of the stories. Her favorite book, what she learned, and facts about her favorite parts were all there. The biggest part of this page for Cyan was the PLOT booklet. She got a quick course in what a plot was and what parts were the conflict, rising action, climax, and resolution.

For this portion of the book Cyan chose “Changes for Kaya” as the book and we had a great time talking about the story. I had no idea she was retaining so much information from the things she had read! It was super exciting for me as a mom to see this all take place without much effort from me at all. Cyan LOVES her co-op classes and I have to say, this one has truly impressed me. After the lapbook we placed all of Cyan’s co-op work from the chapters there. Then we placed two more card stock pages… because Cyan said she had to do a lapbook for Josephina and Kirsten too!

They move on to Josephina next week.

And so we have entered that phase….

2011-11-14T10:37:00.001-08:00

Logan: "Mom, how long ago was it when those guys started the war by crashing planes into buildings?”

Me: "A long time ago honey. Cyan was a baby. Younger than Luke."

Logan: "Like one hundred days?"

Me: "Many more than that."

Logan: "Like 60? Uh... 62? Um... 70?..... Mom! One hundred IS a lot!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When no number, no matter how high, is bigger than one hundred. I remember this phase with Cyan especially. Because my best friend Sarah’s kids were both in the same phase and the three of them had a high number all their own. 155! We would hear conversations when they were about 5 that started like this:

“There were so many! Like 10!”

“No, there were more than that!”

“How many?”

“Like a million…. no… a thousand… no, I know!” Hushed and reverent tones ”Like, one hundred and fifty five.”

Conversations like this happened between the three kindergarteners for about a year. Sarah and I would laugh and joke that one day they would realize that 155 was NOT the biggest number and their brains would explode. Of course, some time in first grade they were taught place value and the hundreds and thousands were put in their place as the rightful top of the list. But we have talked about that phase fondly for years now.

Now I have another one in that phase. And it sure is fun!

The start of the month of Thankfulness and the letter Ii

2011-11-03T13:28:00.001-07:00

Box #1: Get Ready for the Code

Box #2: Worksheets for math and the letter Ii from Homeschool Share.

Box #3: the beloved Ecojournal! Today in the adventures of Trickle Creek we read about feeding the birds in the fall and winter and when a full grown turkey came to Trickle Creek and got chased by their cat!

We decided to fill up our bird feeder and count how many birds visited in the next 10 minutes:

Box #4: Cutting practice from Thanksgiving Pack from Our Little Monkeys

Box #5: a glue and grains activity to make pictures with beans and split peas from the pantry:

Cyan and Logan:

Box #6: Beginning Sounds game! He loves it… the orange level was a bit hard for him (contains Ss and Zz on the same list!) but the other three are loved and played often.

Box #7: Nomenclature cards from the same Thanksgiving Pack above.

Box #8: Handwriting activity with Hh and Ii

Box #9 Dot to Dot count to 10. This time he did it with a yellow highlighter and a ruler! It was fun.

Box #10: Feeling Faces board game and a piece of Hh is for Halloween Candy!

We are traveling around the world for Christmas!

2011-11-02T09:04:00.000-07:00

This year we are traveling around the world for Christmastime! I am excited to see what types of traditions happen in other cultures during this magical time of year. For some (Northern Hem) it is the coldest darkest portion of the year, but for others (Australia) it is mid Summer! The traditions are just as varied as the weather this time of year and I am excited to share that with my kids.

Our Christmas Around the World advent list:

1. Put up lights with daddy

2. Pagoda Manger & Fried Wonton cookies (China)

3. Fish tree ornament (Japan)

4. Metryoshka doll Christmas card (Russia)

5. Pamander oranges & put your shoes out for St Nicholas Day (Great Britain)

6. *Small gifts left in their shoes overnight* Christmas Party Crackers & Wassail (Great Britain)

7. Straw Ornaments and hidden bean cake! (Scandinavia)

8. Gingerbread Manger Scene (Germany) *only cooking and cooling*

9. Gingerbread Manger Scene (Italy) and making a St Lucy Wreath

10. Getting our Christmas Tree

11. Journey to Bethlehem!!

12. Shopping with daddy

13. Write love notes to parents to open on Christmas Eve (Greece/Italy)

14. Make a Christmas drum (Africa)

15. Make Christmas Stars out of whatever we can (sticks, straw, beads and wire... all kinds. Philippines.)

16. Celery Rose print wrapping paper & making S’mores (Australia)

17. *This starts the weekend of lights that leads right up to Hanukkah* Zoo lights w/ hot cider

18. Fantasy Lights w/ cocoa

19. Driving through Gem Heights looking at lights w/ warm honeyed milk

20. *Happy Hanukkah!* Dreidle for Chocolate coins and Challah bread. (USA)

21. We are sending a Christmas tree to a friend! (Canada) *cookies to neighbors*

22. Making paper poinsettias (Mexico)

23. Sawdust Ornaments (Guatemala)

24. Family Christmas Movie

25. Open Stockings!!

We got some ideas from our curriculum “Children Around the World” from Winter’s Promise, but many other great ideas come from free websites. My two favorites:

http://www.whychristmas.com/cultures/

http://www.teachingheart.net/worldmas.html

Swamp final project

2011-10-27T11:42:00.001-07:00

The final project for Cyan’s swamp unit was a diorama of the swamp. She spent hours on it and it looks amazing!

I asked her about each part of the background and the she explained each bit with perfect clarity… at one point she even grabbed a reference book to show me the Mangrove tree “knees” during a flood. It has been a great study!

I am hoping that sometime soon we will get back to Nisqually Wildlife Refuge to see the changes that have happened over the last 6 wks since we started this unit, but for now, I am really happy she got so much out of it.

Hh is for Harvest Leaves and Horses… and Moose??

2011-10-26T14:18:00.001-07:00

Box #1: Pages for the Alphabet Notebook for Hh!

Box #2: The same books that were in the box yesterday. We only got to read one… so the second one was today!

We collected leaves from our yard and photocopied them to make a page similar to the one in the book:

They even got labeled:

And we had a little fun along the way:

Box #4 was Get Ready for the Code book. This lesson in on the letter Mm, so it is kind of like we are still doing two lessons at once.

Box #5 was wipe off ABC handwriting worksheets. Idea from here. He did Bb, Hh, and Mm today.

Box #6 was a sheet of color wonder paper with pens! He made “A Man” which looks more like a potato with legs, but it’s stinkin’ cute!

Box #7 was the current issue of ‘Big Backyard’. And I kinda ran with the Mm thing today as well so we read two articles on Moose!

Box #8 was Beginning Sounds Bingo. This is borrowed from a friend and it is a really neat game! Logan loved it!

Box # 8 Hh is for Horse lacing card.

Box # 9 was strips with our names on them to match to clothes pins with the same letters. It is really great letter recognition work!

Box #10 was to assemble all our Hh work into our notebook. We won’t be officially done until tomorrow, but I want to do Hh is for Halloween and have a bunch of things centered around that instead!

Hh is for Harvest!

2011-10-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

Box #1 was some math worksheets to do with mom. Our current focus in Math is the numbers 6-10. He has the others down really well now.

Box #2 was Get Ready for the Code and he is now starting to get the format of the book. The pages go faster and easier and his handwriting is getting better all the time!

Box #3: I used this as a timed number recognition tool today. I held up a card and he said what it was as fast as he could (he could count if he needed to). I made the third round the “Lightening Round” and he got a Skittle for each number he got correct on the first guess (he got 7 skittles out of 10).

Box #4 was a handwriting activity.

Box #5 was a Montessori Practical Life activity with lacing, velcro, and buttoning.

Box #6 was my beloved Ecojournals. We took a little walk outside and collected leaves for an activity tomorrow.

Box #7 was an Eye Spy jar I made for him years ago. But this time I made drawn little cards of objects to find in it.

Box #8: Favorite activity of today! We made our own Dot-to-Dots! I wrote the numbers 1 - 10 on stickers and he placed them on a piece of paper. Then he and I followed the numbers to make a picture. These were the masterpieces we came up with!

Box #9 was a letter matching activity with our names.

Box #10 was a Fall Harvest book and going out and gathering the very last of our summer tomatoes!

Swamp field trips

2011-10-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

Cyan’s wetland study is coming to a close. This biome is so diverse it’s amazing! You can have a wetland with alligators, or a wetland with tigers, or a wetland with flamingos. It just depends on where you are.

Most of the larger wetland areas we have around us are deltas that are generally brackish water (or a mix of salt and fresh). The one we studied specifically for her wetlands unit was Nisqually River Basin. At the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge sight it runs into the sound about 5 miles from the drive/walking areas. There are several trails that you can walk in most seasons (right now the ones farther out are closed due to hunting) and you will see TONS of birds of all kinds. Geese and other water fowl, herons and other waders, and tons of tiny birds are all abundant right now. In the Spring you can watch as a great horned owl hatches her young and they fledge from a tree right above the short loop trail. They will even let you rent binoculars for the occasion! It has been a really wonderful study and I am sad to see it go.

Our last biome of this unit is the desert. None around us so that will be interesting. I plan on getting lots of library videos for her to watch for that one.

It’s great to be a homeschooler!

Workboxes for the older child

2011-10-21T08:09:00.000-07:00

Cyan - who is currently 10 - also uses the workboxes just like Logan and just like Logan, they have been very successful with helping her be more independent with her work. I wanted to show an example of a typical day. Her’s is a bit different due to the fact that I use an actual box curriculum and I have to break it up into workbox sized pieces. But the concept is the same.

Cyan is working in the Science Curriculum Habitats & Homes from Winter’s Promise. This is how her workboxes look most days:

Box #1: Decorate with mom (same day as Logan got that in his first box.)

Box #2: Explode the Code book 6. She does one lesson per session.

Box #3: An observation page from her curriculum. It requires her to find information in the unit reading and write it down under the questions. Because this requires quite a bit of work, I only put one sheet in the box along with a clip board and anything she would need to complete the work.

Box #4: One Small Square: Swamp. One of her reading books for her curriculum. She reads 3 - 4 heavy word pages each day.

Box #5: A logic worksheet. This one is from “Think-a-Minutes”.

Box #6: Zoobooks: Ducks, Geese & Swans. She reads this and does the activities in the small book.

Box #7: More required reading for her curriculum. It tells which pages to read with which lessons.

Box #8: A recipe to make. Today it was gingerbread cake.

Box #9: Take a look at flamingoes! His is an information page that goes with one or two worksheets. This is all directly out of the curriculum. I copy it so I can keep it for my other children. I also put her finished pages into her Animal Science Notebook.

Box #10: A division review worksheet. This is easy to her now, but I have her do as many as she can in 10 minutes.

Box #11: Write a letter. Today she wrote to her friend Abbie who is at her grandmas for 10 days while her mama goes to meet her newest niece.

Box #12: Math 4 from Teaching Textbooks. She does two lessons per day right now. As it gets harder she will slow down to one, but this early in the year it is review and she can move super quick.

And that’s one day! We get a ton done in a short amount of time with the workbox system. She usually is done with all of this work in 3 - 4 hours and is able to have time for creative pursuits (of which she has MANY). Today she made a house for her Littlest Pet Shop animals out of cardboard, complete with a fence, pumpkins, and a street lamp. She gets to be a kid most of the day and still gets a ton of learning done. I consider her having free time to be amazingly important so if the day seems to be long or she stops enjoying school then I adjust, but this is what works for now.

Other things I add on a regular basis:

Knitting work

Art supplies

Coloring books (Usually from Dover)

Wet on wet painting supplies

Blank postcards & coloring supplies

Games

Logic puzzles

Needle felting supplies

Cursive writing practice

Copywork: Prayers, poems, or quotes

My camera to take pictures of a field trip

field trip notes and pictures to write about

journal

current interest activity

post it with a webpage like BrainPop or National Geographic Kids

The Letter Ff & Gg - take 3

2011-10-20T17:39:00.001-07:00

Box #1: papers from LOTW and the Alphabet Notebook on Homeschool Share

Box #2: A repeat of the gumball number activity we loved so much.

Box #3: Montessori sandpaper letters and writing practice with Get Ready for the Code.

Box #4: A gumball color by number from LOTW.

Box #5: Montessori dropper coloring activity.

Box #6: A matching numbers game!

Which he loves playing with anyone who will sit still long enough. He usually wins.

Box #7: a Gumball puzzle from LOTW.

Box #8: a Montessori activity with Matching Keys.

Box #9: Writing practice on a wipe off board.

Box #10: putting all his paperwork into his Alphabet Notebook.

Being as far as Gg now the notebook looks really wonderful! And really full. We will need to full 2 inch binders at least. Here are some pages we did this week:

Happy Homeschooling!

The letter Ff & Gg

2011-10-19T16:58:00.001-07:00

Box #1: Decorate for Autumn with Mama!

Box #2: The Waldorf Alphabet Book and the Leapfrog Fridge Letters.

Box #3: Get Ready for the Code and Montessori sandpaper letters.

Box #4: a Ff is for Fish coloring page from LOTW.

Box #5: 1 - 10 Dot to Dot

Box #6: Gg is for Gumball cutting practice from LOTW.

Box #7: Gg is for Garden. I put books in there for a child’s garden and we sat and looked through all the amazing professional gardens out there!

This was the favorite:

Box #8: Gg is for Gumball worksheet. This I made with some inspiration from somewhere on the web (if I find it again I will link it.) I made this sheet with shapes from Word and then left the space under the gumball machines blank so I could fill in how many gumballs that he was supposed to put in each machine.

He loved counting out the gumballs and stamping them onto the paper with a pencil eraser and a multicolored stamping pad. It was the favorite activity of the day!

Box #9: Gg scavenger hunt… Find 7 things that start with Gg! (It was really hard. I ended up helping him because he kept finding things that started with Jj… Poor kiddo!)

Box #10: Wedgits. My kids love playing with this open ended toy!

Picking up speed ~ Ff and Gg

2011-10-18T21:02:00.001-07:00

We have started moving at a higher rate of speed because my boy is somehow picking up this stuff super duper quick! So I added in Gg to our Ff lessons and away we go!

Box #1: The Gg and the Ff Lakeshore Letter Tubs along with the Waldorf Alphabet Book. For this box I did something I NEVER allow the kids to do. I dumped the tubs out together! Yes I did! And then I had him sort the things into their correct spots. He did everything perfectly, except for “Fence” but when I asked him why “Fence” was in the Gg tub, he said it was a “Gate”. So it was correct after all! Smart boy!

Box #2: Something else new. I added in actual workbooks! Get Ready for the Code is the first book in the Explode the Code series that my other two older children have worked their way all the way through. It deals with basics of hand movement, starting sounds, and word beginnings… basically a bit of what I am already doing. And it made him very proud when Cyan said “Oh I remember those workbooks!” lol…

Box #3: This was the project he worked on with Daddy while I was at the dentist. The leaf cutouts that they pasted to the tree.

The exercise is a gratitude tree! It’s all the things he is thankful for. At first he was saying things like “candy” and “toys” but as he went through he started to get SO cute and creative! “Going to Gunner’s House” was one, and “Winter Snowballs” was another one. He is getting so big! Last year it was nothing but things like “I am grateful for food”.

Box #4: Wipe off worksheets for the letters Ff and Gg!

Box #5: A few sheets for the Alphabet Notebook.

Box #6: Time to get up and Move! Yoga!!!

Box #7 was the favorite of the day.

The Ff is for Feelings game! I got this idea handed down from a friend and I thought it was great!

He wanted to make the faces on the board as we talked about the times he has had those feelings and what he has been able to do about it… it was cute… and a great teaching moment too! (I just love ‘tired’… Haha!)

Box #8 was a patterning activity from LOTW.

Box #9: Dot to Dots!

And Box #10 was his Alphabet Notebook so we could add all his new stuff in and get to work on his Lapbook pages for Ff and Gg!

Stay tuned for tomorrows “Gg is for Garden!”

Letter Ff

2011-10-13T20:27:00.000-07:00

In honor of the first day with the Letter Ff we had DAD do school (I had a dentist apt. Best morning ever! ) I set up the boxes before I left and they went ahead and had a really nice school day. Dad did a great job!

Box #1: Waldorf Alphabet book with the letter tub from Lakeshore Learning

Box #2: Worksheets from LOTW

Box #3: Beginning Sounds Bingo with daddy.

Box #4: Dot to Dot Count to 10 book.

Box #5: A few review worksheets

Box #6: Cut out activity from last year that I saved because I loved it so much! You’ll see what we do with it next time.

Box #7: Colorwonder sheets from Grandma Kathy. (Wonder what to do with all those educational Christmas gifts? Workboxes!)

Box #8: More worksheets from LOTW

Box #9: Wipe off writing practice (idea from here)

Box #10: a new pack of Mary’s Play Clay with essential oils for calm and clarity.

ASL for the oldest

2011-10-09T11:18:00.000-07:00

Alex has been wanting to learn ASL for about two years now. I have been getting him all kinds of materials and working with him (I have limited knowledge of the language) as much as I can, but he was still hungry for more. This year I set him up with a co-op class that does ASL on Friday mornings.

He has just poured his energy into this and to add to it I set up a ‘final exam’ for him to do a complete interpretation of The Napping House by Christmas. Yesterday was his first day working on the project and I don’t think it will take him more than a few weeks to do the whole book. He was AMAZING! I have never seen him pick up anything so fast! It is as if physical language comes naturally to him.

And it was pretty amazing to watch his first attempts yesterday during school.

I love seeing that type of success for my children. I don’t mind that it doesn’t happen often because the feeling is so sweet when it does! He was positively vibrating with excitement that he could do this so quickly and so well. I’ll have to record the final draft with the camera so you all can see it as well. It’s pretty great! :)

It’s great being a homeschooler!

Review day - This lesson was brought to you by the numbers 1 - 10 and Aa - Ee

2011-10-01T21:09:00.001-07:00

We have been sick. It wasn’t bad, just a cold, but it was one after the other after the other and then Don, me and the baby all at the same time which ended in a cascade effect of tired, grumpy mama.

We are finally past that now and everyone is on the mend, but a full week of school was missed. So some review started off our week this week. And for Logan that meant numbers and Aa - Ee!

Box #1: A tracing numbers activity from LaTeeDah.

Box #2 is a matching numbers game which he loves! Can find it here (it was on the clearance table at Barnes and Noble last week).

Box #3 was a letter matching game that helps him remember how to spell his own name. This time I added in “Mama” too. Inspired by this pin.

Box #4 was the LeapFrog fridge letters.

Box #5 was a measuring rice Montessori activity.

Box #6 was a counting down from 10 book called “Ten Dogs in the Window” and even though it was not supposed to be for me, I cried! The last page with the doggy all alone in the window just made me tear up something fierce. My oldest came in and asked what was wrong. lol!

Box #7 was a Ee tracing exercise inspired by this pin.

Box #8 was a “Rough and Smooth” Montessori exercise with a blind fold. Those are still not his favorites but he is getting better and better at them!

Box #9 was a few kid yoga moves with Oops and Oopsie.

Box #10 was the I Spy preschool game. This is the third time we have played this and honestly I think he was way past it when we started. It is now down right easy. I think it has been all that work with the older siblings on their level I Spy books (which they love and we have like 12). Whatever it is, I think this one is getting packed away for Luke really soon.

After school we had a refresher in Wet on Wet painting. Logan LOVED being able to paint as last year this was an activity saved for when he was down for nap. He thought being included while Luke was napping was pretty much the best thing ever…. also, Wet on Wet is just really fun!

First day of the Wetlands Study - SWAMP SODA

2011-09-29T19:43:00.001-07:00

Our first day of Cyan’s wetland study was celebrated with a fun little drink that Alex made for each of us. Inspired by this pin on Pinterest.

Can you see the fish eggs? I was so proud!

Letter Ee - day 2

2011-09-12T16:47:00.001-07:00

In the first box there were several activities that he and I did together. At first we used the sandpaper letters, and Lakeshore Learning Letter Sounds Tub, and several printable worksheets from LOTW.

This one was the most fun of the day. We made the puzzle of the elephant and then I had him dictate a story on the same page. His story was filled with baby elephants getting lost and then being found again by his mother and father… It was SO cute!

Box #2 was a dot to dot that only used 1 - 10.

Box #3 was Beginning Sounds Bingo. He knew quite a few of them and best of all, he won!

Box #4 was the Leapfrog Letter Factory fridge letters.

Box #5 was the Montessori fine motor skills activity with tongs.

Box #6 was a number recognition skills worksheet where he had to cut out the numbers and put them in the proper order. This was the first time that I had him work with scissors without my help. He did really well!

Box #7 was the Fall Ecojournal. Once again, I can’t recommend these books enough! We are not using them every week for this curriculum but I am sure that we will go back to them again and again through out the seasons for some really neat activities.

Today was studying a fall fern and the spores on the underside of the leaf.

Box #6 was a color mixing activity.

These were just old droppers I had on hand that I filled with water and food coloring. Then I added tiny white bowls and he was off and coloring. He loved it so much that when he was done with his work he went back and did this activity some more.

Box #8 was Oops & Oopsie cards for a bit of Yoga.

Box #10 was a counting book called “Ten Dogs in the Window”.

After this last box today we went to the library and got a few more books on the Autumn season. It was a great homeschool day!

This post is brought to you by the letter Ee

2011-09-10T14:56:00.001-07:00

Box #1 was another wipe off handwriting exercise book. (Idea from here, printouts from here.)

I make this one from a handwriting website that I found for some variety in Logan’s school days. So far he thinks this one is great! He likes the line at the bottom that doesn’t have any lines to trace…

Cuz then he can show me how he does the letters ‘all by himself’!

Box #2 was the letter Ee in sandpaper letters and the Lakeshore Learning Sounds Tub.

Box #3 was a set of worksheet we did together from either Homeschool Share, or LOTW.

Box #4 was the Waldorf Alphabet Book.

Box #5 was a Ee is for Elephant cutting exercise from LOTW.

Box #6 was the fridge magnet letters from Leap Frog that I have in there nearly every day. The little song really helps him remember the sounds!

Box #7 was Ten Red Apples by Virginia Miller who writes all the Bartholomew books… what an adorable character! At the end he makes apple pie from apples off his tree. I think I will add this book back into his workboxes in a few weeks when we are ready to make something like that from our apple tree!

Box #8 was Boggle Jr. This time I took out all the pieces that he wouldn’t be using and we timed him using my phone timer. He was THRILLED to have matched the letter to all 5 words in less than 8 minutes. :)

Box #9 was a Montessori Spindle Box activity. He knows this one well now and did it all perfectly the first time he was asked!

Box #10 was “Ee is for Ed Emberley” and we played with fingerprints for about an hour.

I just LOVED watching his imagination take flight as he made sweet little critters!

It was also a great exercise in fine motor skills as it takes quite a bit to add the pen marks to your fingerprints to make them into animals. He did SUCH a great job!

Cyan’s last day on the Woods Unit Study

2011-09-08T19:48:00.000-07:00

For the last day of Cyan’s wood study I bought her an owl pellet to dissect! She spent about an hour and a half pulling it apart and analyzing the bones that were inside.

The sheet that came with the owl pellet kit had a question and answer part that she got to fill out. She figured out that this particular owl only ate about one prey per day. She also discovered that it’s prey that it ate that day was a rodent/mouse. She found most of the larger bones and a few of the vertebrae and was able to put the skeleton together with the help of the diagram pages to see how big the rodent was.

This whole study has been amazing! If you haven’t looked into Winter’s Promise before, I highly suggest it. It is so well thought out and usually a lot of fun involved in the curriculum. This science curriculum has been wonderful so far!

Some of the other resources that she used for this study:

One Small Square - Woods

Winters Promise - Animal Habitats Science Curriculum

Last day of the Letter Dd

2011-09-07T12:19:00.001-07:00

Box #1 was Nature Bingo that we played as a whole family. It was crazy fun! :)

Box #2 was the Waldorf Alphabet Book with the Lakeshore Learning Letter Tub

Box #3 was the Dd pages from LOTW.

Box #4 was a sorting game with shoe laces and colored beads.

Box #5 was the wipe-off tracing handwriting book. Idea from here.

Box #6 was a coin sorting activity. American Currency this time.

Box #7 was the Dd is for Dumptruck puzzle which Logan put together all on his own and was SO proud!

Box #8 was Harvest by Kris Waldherr and In the Garden flash cards with easy words on the back.

After this book we did a bit of “Harvest” of our own in the garden. :)

Box #9 was a new hand-me-down gift from my friend Heather.

It’s called Logico and it has different pegs that you move like multiple choice answers that are self correcting (because each color is only used once). It’s a great addition to my preschool fun boxes!

Box #10 was, once again the Leap Frog letter factory Fridge Letters.

While we were in the garden, we got a little brush up on pollination from our little friend here.

We followed him to the oregano, then to this big sunflower, and then he left our yard. We talked about where he must have gone to make honey for his bee family and then we brought in our haul and made our yummy corn for lunch!

It was a yummy homeschooling day!

Letter Dd - day 2

2011-09-01T14:36:00.001-07:00

If you have noticed, we only do 3 days a week of formal ‘school’. They are long days, and filled to the brim with exciting fun things to do, but there are only three of them. It makes my husbands schedule livable (He works from noon - midnight). Even though our school days are limited during any given week, what Logan and I get done is kind of amazing! He has come SO far in the 4 short weeks we have been doing formal preschool. He is a bright kid… and that doesn’t hurt. He also LOVES being right. Another thing that doesn’t hurt at all. lol… But today I threw a bunch of new stuff into his boxes because he is ready.

Box #1 was the Lakeshore Learning Dd letter tub, and the Montessori sandpaper letters. We used them a little differently this time. When I got into the school room he had laid out all the letter tub and so I had him hold up each item and say “Duh - duh - duh DOG!”.

However… before I even got into the room Cyan had taken on the roll as teacher and had the sandpaper letters laid out on the platform. I listened from nursing the baby as Logan sounded out “Buh - Aah - Duh, B - A - D. Bud? No BAD!!” Talk about starting the day on a good note! He was SOooooo happy with himself, and I was pretty darn impressed!!

Box #2 was our worksheets from LOTW.

Box #3 was the Montessori shapes again.

However, today, after he matched them up on the stand I had him trace around the outside of the shapes and then tell me what they were. He got all of them but trapezoid! I was really impressed!

Box #4 was a Dd scavenger hunt! (Idea from LOTW)

At one point Alex told him that DAD started with Dd. So Logan called me back into the room and this is what I found:

LOL! Under DAD’s foot there was a Ddollar, two Ddice, and a Ddime. Pretty darn good!

Box #5 was a cutting activity.

Box #6 was a 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 activity. He loves this one!

Box #7 was another one that I have put in a lot but now put a twist on it. I handed him the pad and then showed him a letter. He had to guess and make the sound of the letter and then I would hand it to him so he could see if he was correct. He was… every time.

Box #8 was a coloring sheet from his ABC Notebook.

He has decided that coloring ‘hurts his arm’ and so I have to color with him to have him do it at all. I colored the dolphin while he colored the diamonds. As we sat there he started saying “Duh - duh DIAMONDS!”

Box #9 was a set of blocks with only the letters we have covered so far. I would show him the pictures and ask him what the starting letter was. He would say the sound, then the word, then the letter. It was quite amazing!

Box #10 was a fun “Dd is for dumptruck” puzzle! I was able to teach him the first lessons of puzzle making (find the corners, color matching, etc) and he was able to put the whole thing together himself.

I have to admit to being slightly blown away today by my super smart boy! He was so ready for this information. I have never had him sit down to do any schooling before and at first it showed, but now… he is FLYING through this with no issues whatsoever. I waited for a while to present formal information with my olders as well, but you just never know when a child is really ready. It’s always so nice to get past that hump of misunderstanding and have them just fall into the flow of it.

It’s great to be a homeschooler!

This post is brought to you by the letter Dd!

2011-09-01T09:05:00.001-07:00

For the start of the Letter Dd I had some fun things up my sleeve!

In box #1 he had a dinosaur bingo game that I made up. He got to play it with his sister this time!

Because of the age difference, their pages looked entirely different. His had numbers to identify while hers had simple division and multiplication problems to solve for the same numbers.

I am going to be doing this again. This was great for both of them and they loved having something they could do together.

In box #2 there were the Montessori sandpaper letters and the letter Dd sound tub from Lakeshore Learning.

Box #3 was a set of number recognition activities with little Dd is for Dinosaurs!

Box #4 was a bead sequencing activity from Lakeshore Learning.

Box #5 was a Dinosaur mat! On the back of this mat there is a spot to invent your own dinosaur! He loves anything with dry erase markers so this was a hit.

Box #6 was a metal Montessori shape matching activity.

Box #7 was a letter copying activity using the idea from here.

Box #8 was a coloring activity which will be turned into matching cards as soon as I can get my hands on a laminator.

Box #9 was Boggle Jr. Once again, I only use this game as a matching activity, although this time he enjoyed using the timer.

Box #10 was the Leapfrog Letter Factory fridge letters with the letter Dd added in and then he got to watch the Letter Factory in the DVD player.

It was a good school day!

(All these dino printouts have been in Logan’s file for school since long before we started this curriculum, so I don’t have any links. I’m sorry! I do know that finding dino stuff just from a simple Google search was all I did the first time and I found all I used here and more! )

The Letter Cc - Day 3

2011-08-30T13:08:00.001-07:00

The last day on the letter Cc went great.

Box #1: Oops & Oopsie yoga kids game.

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

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

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

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

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

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. :)

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

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!)

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. :)

I want to learn…

2011-08-24T06:43:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2011-08-20T05:16:00.001-07:00

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!

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

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

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. :)

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

Box #3 was the Leapfrog Fridge Letter set again.

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.

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.

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!

Box $7: Another sequencing activity.

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

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

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.

In honor of Cyan’s “Woods” study

2011-08-18T06:27:00.000-07:00

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

This post is brought to you by the letter Cc

2011-08-17T14:02:00.001-07:00

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

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

Box #2 was some letter Cc pages from LOTW.

Box #3 was a caterpillar craft.

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. :)

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

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

#6 was a Montessori pouring activity.

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.

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

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.

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

Box #10 was an idea I got from Pinterest.

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.)

Last day with the letter Bb

2011-08-16T12:20:00.001-07:00

We got back yesterday from a three day camp out with the squad and so we are taking today very easy. The rest of the day will be filled with movies from the library and naps. :)

Box #1 writing exercise from LOTW

Box #2 was the Bb tub from Lakeshore Learning. We went through and sounded out all the Bb words.

Box #3 was a frog matching paper. The frogs were pretty similar. It’s just more to establish that critical thinking that goes along with seeing the differences in the letter shapes.

Box #4 was a Montessori Practical Life activity. Just to keep it with the Bb theme I had him do ‘buttons’.

Box # 5 was a lacing and color sorting activity.

Box #6 was a number recognition activity. He is really getting his numbers down! He did this perfectly.

Box #7 was the Butterfly Number Game from LOTW. Dad played with him today. It was the best time ever!

Box # 8 was the clothes pin number match game.

Box #9 was the Leap Frog Letter Factory fridge letter set. (He was singing the song while we were doing box #2. It made me very happy!)

Box #10 was the I Spy preschool game! He loves this game! Today started out playing with me and then I had to go and get the baby and he didn’t even wait… he just did the rest of the puzzle pieces all by himself!

Proud boy!

ABC Notebook for preschool

2011-08-08T21:26:00.000-07:00

Logan’s Notebook is very much like Cyan’s although he needs a bit more guidance for early ed and he is also eager to go along with whatever I am doing. His notebook is going through the alphabet and learning all the numbers 1 - 9 this year. The first page is all about the letter Aa! It has a poem and activities from Alphabet Notebook pages from Homeschool Share.

(These cards are brilliant and have made something like them for each letter we have gone through. Identifying different fonts were a very hard thing for Alex and Cyan, so with Logan I want to make sure he has an easier time with this skill. They fit in the little pockets on each of the lapbook pages in the notebook.)

Another handwriting activity minibook for the letter Aa.

After the cardstock portion of the notebook there are his worksheet pages for each letter. These ones work on patterning and handwriting. Many of these pages are the Letter of the Week curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

The letter Bb is set up pretty much the same:

These are font cards that I made myself in Word for the letter Bb.

These are more materials from Homeschool Share for his Lapbook page.

Working on writing the letter Bb.

And uppercase and lowercase Bb recognition.

After this are the pages from LOTW and other sources that I find that center around either the letter of the week or the featured words (Example: for Bb it was Banana, Bird, and Butterfly (and Bear, and Buzz Lightyear)).

The worksheet pages get put into his notebook and at the end of the 26 weeks he will have an amazing little book that not only shows all the letters along with activities for him to do in the lapbooks, but a record of his improvement throughout the year. :)

Letter Bb week - day 2

2011-08-06T21:49:00.001-07:00

Box #1: writing pages that he and I do together. He is getting really good at these! His handwriting is going to be great by the time he knows his letters. :)

Box #2: the game from LOTW. Oh how he loves this! It is helping him so much with number 1-6 recognition that I have put it in every day this week. You just roll the die and then find the next number on the line that matches the die until you get to the end. It’s simple and also easy for him to win… which he loves of course!

Box #3: another fun hand-me-down from my friend Heather. Lacing cards! Just for continuity I put in ‘bear’ for Bb.

Box #4 I added in the Leap Frog fridge letters again. He has started to really get the song down and I can use that when he is starting to get more letters. I may add this in at least once a week. This is not a work with mom, so while he was playing with this around the house, he also magically transformed into Buzz Lightyear! ;)

Boz #5 was a size sorting game from LOTW. He is way beyond this and I won’t be printing this part of the curriculum again. It took him all of 3 seconds to grab these in piles and put them where they went. No skill building there.

Box #6 was more sequencing and patterns. Both printed from LOTW. These are harder for him to grasp and very worth doing for us over and over again.

Box #7 was the clothes pin number match game. This was made so much easier today by the number roll dice game in Box #2! He hardly had to ask about any number between 1 and 6.

Box #8 was a butterfly coloring sheet.

Box #9 was a Montessori activity in matching keys that we have done before but he loves. He likes that he can now do it completely on his own.

#10 was once again play dough. Both Cyan and Logan have loved finishing their day with play dough. I added in a pizza cutter and a pie serving spatula today and he just thought that was the coolest thing ever!

Quite a few people have asked me about the workboxes. This is what I have done. My children’s workboxes are not the ones from the Sue Patrick system although the system I used is directly based on hers. They are two of the Ikea Trofast shelves put together to make 12 boxes. They take up quite a bit of space but are so incredibly easy to use and fill that I haven’t minded that a bit. Plus, if I end up not using them for this, they can easily be used somewhere else in my home (I have them in each of the 3 children’s bedrooms right now already.)

On the front I have two small circles of Velcro. The first one is for the box number (which is also helping with him recognizing his numbers!) and the second one is for a ‘work with mom’ card. I used nice fonts and graphics as I wanted mine to be aesthetically pleasing for my homeschool space but Sue Patrick sells her sets inexpensively and I would have found them completely worth it if I hadn’t wanted to make them myself.

I have really put aside some of my homeschool issues this year. We are doing school in the morning no matter what the schedule is. We are doing school every day that dh is working except for Thursday and Sunday… which is always the third day in his work week. (Thursday is shopping day and Sunday is church.) I have put their workboxes together before I go to sleep at night every night. I have not worried about what the rest of the homeschool room looked like. I work better in a clean area. That is true, but waiting for the area to be clean when that is where all of our mess is - school, art, and now (with the baby crawling) small pieces play - like Legos - it’s just not rational that I will be able to keep that space clutter free every single day we need to use it. So I have started to put that aside. Hopefully we will get our days streamlined and get a real rhythm to our days so that I can discard whatever isn’t being used efficiently… but for now, I am just plugging away with school and it seems to be working really well!

How I use tools like lapbooks and worksheets

2011-08-06T06:15:00.000-07:00

Over the last few years I have learned that we are primarily a unit study family. I have found it easy over the years to teach everything around what the child is interested in at the time in one ~~obsessive month~~ - ahem - ‘unit study’. I like following the children’s interest and then making their studies center around that interest until the interest runs out. I have tried various curriculum’s over my years as a homeschooler and have basically decided that a curriculum is a backbone in which to play with… not a strict guideline. I take what I want, add what I want, and then leave the rest.

I wanted to show you how I use Lapbooks and Curriculum to make the kids Interest Notebooks.

This is Cyan’s Animal Science Notebook. Our backbone is Winter’s Promise Animal Habitats curriculum and Homeschool Shares Animal Lapbook pages. Everything (pretty much) stems from there. I don’t follow a dated guideline… for example, this year we started at the end. We were going to the beach and Cyan was currently obsessed with the beach. So we started our year with a beach study… which happens to be the very last unit study in the Winter’s Promise curriculum.

This is what that looks like:

This starts off our Ocean “Lapbook” pages. I punched two pieces of cardstock and placed them in her notebook to start off her unit study. Then I had her pick a post card when we were actually at the ocean to decorate the front of her lapbook section. After that I used the lapbook idea of minibooks to bring some interest to these pages and some variety to Cyan’s daily work.

I printed minibooks about sharks, albatross, and sea stars. As she was studying these creatures she would fill out the lapbooks minibooks and paste them inside her lapbook pages.

This section is just filled with fun factiods she discovered from trips to the aquarium, our beach trips, and her readings tucked inside neat little minibooks!

The second section is her World’s Oceans Montessori Nomenclature cards. I had Cyan sew this pocket set on the sewing machine. It was super simple and a fun way to store the cards in her notebook.

This particular set of cards were from ETC Press Inc eductaional materials. It was in the free section. The control cards are the worlds oceans in words and images so the kids can correct their match ups themselves. The holder keeps all of the cards nicely together.

The next section in the notebook is mostly the pages that she works through from Winter’s Promise.

The various reproducible pages have so much variety that we can use them for whatever we want. At one point she really loved reading about dolphins. So I copied the blank Animal page and she wrote up a page about what she loved about dolphins and put it in her notebook.

Another time we spent a week at a beach house and I was able to give her a page and print outs of pictures from the trip that she could use to talk about what she saw next to the ocean.

By the end of the year, she will have an accurate representation of her studies this year. She gets to see how much better her handwriting has gotten, and what types of trips we took…. right next to finding out cool facts about the animals and places she is studying.

The next section of the notebook is where she is working on now. She has been very interested in harvesting and hunting this year. She has even expressed an interest in fishing. For my sweet, nature loving girly this has been an interesting turn of events… and has started a unit study on deer and the Woods. And for that unit study, we have two pieces of cardstock in her Interest Notebook ready to be filled with lapbook facts, and the three rings after it with neat worksheets… one after the other.

I have started using this general plan for each of the kids. Years past I have always taken their best work and put it in a notebook for them to look through at years end, and I am sure that something like that will still happen… but I am guessing that most of it will be in this one large notebook they work on all year.

Bb week - day 1

2011-08-04T17:18:00.001-07:00

It’s our very first day with the letter Bb! I am not sure how long I am going to keep documenting his workboxes, but I figured as long as your not sick of it and I can keep doing it (ie: it doesn’t interfere with my teaching) then why not? Box #1 today was above… it was two handwriting worksheets that I helped him with and then the Lakeshore Learning Bb letter tub which we worked through together sounding out the different words that all start with the letter Bb.

Box #2: A butterfly game from LOTW.

Box #3: Montessori activity: Jars and Lids activity

Box #4: Bb is for Birds coloring page.

Box #5: bird match up

Box #6: Clothes pin number match

Box #7: blind button matching (Montessori by touch, sensory activity)

Box #8: Tad’s Alphabet Fridge magnet set with only the letter Aa, and the letter Bb sounds. The little songs are easy for both of us to remember and foster great memory skills.

Box #9: Rhyming words cards. I only threw in 10 sets.

Box #10: Same as yesterday… we didn’t have any more luck finding clouds today as we did yesterday.

So we looked for more pollinators instead. We had some luck with that! :)

We counted 52 happy bees on my lavender patch!

Happy homeschooling!

Preschool - The end of Aa Week

2011-08-03T14:18:00.000-07:00

It’s the end of Aa week! Today in the workboxes we have:

Box #1: work with Mom, we did the Montessori guessing game with the letter sounds tubs from Lakeshore learning again.

Box #2: we did a handwriting activity from the Homeschool Share’s ABC Notebook.

Box #3: we did a color tone matching game that I made up with paint chip punches and clothes pins.

Box #4: Logan did a Montessori pouring rice activity.

Box #5: we worked on number recognition with our sand paper numbers that my friend Heather made and passed down to me.

Box #6 was a Aa = Acorn coloring sheet

Box #7 was a Aa = Apple and Aa = Acorn pasting sheet. This one also worked on numbers (specifically the numbers 4 and 6)

#8 was a cutting activity from the Letter of the Week Curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Box #9 was also from the LOTW curriculum, however, instead of having him write the numbers I gave him number stickers so he just had to find them.

Sometimes I try to reduce the number of skills any child is doing at one time to keep them from getting overwhelmed. This was one of those times. I wanted him to concentrate on knowing what the numbers were instead of trying to work on finger dexterity, number recognition, counting objects, and early writing skills all at one time. That sounds like the fast track to educational frustration! ;)

Box #10: The last box was kind of funny.

I had this cute little activity to do with him in the backyard having to do with mapping clouds and finding different kinds of clouds. We got our blanket, and went out back and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky! AT ALL.

We looked for several minutes and then we went inside and I put it back into his workboxes for tomorrow. Perhaps then we will have better luck.

Happy homeschooling!

Preschool - Day 2

2011-07-30T13:40:00.001-07:00

Box #1: WWM (Work with Mom) handwriting starters and a letter jar

First I had him do the handwriting starter (from here).

Using a triangle pencil he traced the dotted lines.

Then I played a game with him.

The letter jar was introduced yesterday and so he knows what’s in it. Today I brought out the ‘secret box’ and I put the items in it one by one and he had to guess which Aa item was in the box without peeking!

Box #2: sequence beads

This bead sequencing kit has been super fun! It was a neat variation of sequence theme.

Box #3: Textures. This was a Montessori activity.

He felt the bits of fabric while blindfolded and matched them up. He didn’t like being blindfolded at first, but once he got a few down he really enjoyed the game. :)

Box #5: More sequencing (from here).

A variation on pattern and sequencing where he gets to use glue is always welcome!

Box #6: free Coloring sheet of an apple tree

After he was done with this he got to file it away all by himself in his ABC Notebook. He LOVED that!

Box #6: Color matching game. (Idea from here.)

This was super fun because we got to go outside. He started finding things just so I would take pictures of them. This sweet boy is going to have a documented life! lol!

Box #7: Spindle box

Another Montessori activity made by my friend Heather. Today we only did the numbers 0 - 4. You have to recognize the numbers without dots or lines etc, so this was challenging for Logan. I thought 5 numerals would be plenty. After he understood what to do, he did just great!

Box #8: Ecojournal. Ahhh… the Ecojournal. Beautiful illustrations, fun activities, great stories about simple life on Trickle Creek. The whole series is a win and completely worth owning!

Cyan went through this whole series in her first grade year and although I am not ready for that type of weekly commitment with Logan yet, it was SUPER fun to play with this today. August 1st’s activity is to dissect a poppy and become a pollinator!

We currently have no less than 5 different types of poppies in our yard. Some in the flower garden, some in the garden pathways (volunteers from last year I am sure), and even some in with the tomatoes and beans. We spent about an hour between watching the bees (natural pollinators), using a paint brush to pollinate some ourselves, and dissecting the different parts to see how the flower was built.

I think this was his favorite part of the day.

Box #9: Scavenger Hunt from Confessions of a Homeschooler Letter of the Week Curriculum

I was smart, because we spent so much time on the ecojournal, I decided to limit the number of things to find (after all, we are working on numbers too). I hid two huge ants and one alligator puppet in his room.

I then gave him a sucker while he matched his last box (box #10, number matching) and he was all done!

Another successful preschool day!

It’s official - I’m teaching preschool!

2011-07-29T11:16:00.001-07:00

I finished Logan’s workbox set up last week and he was so excited about it that I decided we are going to start school… right now. So this morning we woke up, got ready for our day, and started preschool! I am mixing Montessori and traditional preschool with the workboxes… I wasn’t sure how that was going to work, but I have to tell you I honestly think they compliment each other really well! I wanted to let you know the resources I am using along with the workboxes because it seems like it’s going to be a wonderful system!

Box #1

This is a print out from a curriculum I purchased from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I have already found this curriculum well worth what I paid for it. It filled in a lot of the little holes that I wasn’t sure what to do with and has lots of great activities and printouts to play with!

Box #2 is a pick up game with tongs.

Not strictly Montessori, but pretty darn close. You roll the die and whatever number is up you put that number of bananas into the monkey’s mouth with the tongs. Apparently this is the funniest game EVER! Lots of laughter and giggling. And it wasn’t a ‘work with mom’… so the giggling was loud enough I heard it from changing the sheets in the bedroom. (I have made this same activity with bamboo tongs from World Market, two bowls, and cotton balls or marshmallows. Monkeys are not required… just fun!)

Box #3 was a cutting activity.

Very simple, but for his first activity of this kind I made it a ‘work with mom’. (monkey scissors added fun, but not required.)

Box #4 was a matching activity. I don’t remember where I got it as it was months ago… but if I do, I will edit this.

Matching and sequencing are such an intricate part of learning to read, so activities like this bird matching game are going to be a running theme in my teaching for the next 26 weeks. When we first started this activity I only gave him half the birds (one sheet of paper) and now he is up to matching all 20 birds at once in about 4 minutes.

Box #5 was a sequencing activity. This also came from the Letter of the Week curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler. The theme this week is the numbers 1-9 and the letter Aa. So this week we will see a lot of apples. ;)

Box #6 was a number matching activity. This is one I made up.

It’s super simple. I just bought a set of clothes pins and wrote on them in sharpie marker the numbers 1 - 9. Then I made a table and printed out the numbers on a sheet of cardstock. Cut them out and have the kiddo match them up. Today I only did four numbers.

Box #7 was another matching activity. I got this the same day as the bird one. Once again, if I find where I got it, I’ll edit this post.

It is a matching game with uppercase letters and lowercase letters, but I just had him match the pictures. With a mention of the letter Aa and the apple that it was associated with, we moved on.

Box #8 was a coin matching game.

The coins had been scanned on the scanner and then the page laminated. The real coins were put in a small Tupperware and kept with the sheet. You just have to have the kid match them up. These all happened to be coins from other places, but you could just as easily do this with American currency.

I added in some extra fun by throwing two chocolate coins in there for him to eat when he was finished with the activity.

Box #9 was an activity from Homeschool Share’s ABC notebook file. (More on the ABC notebook later)

We added 9 red ‘baby apples’ to the big apple on his A page with glue. He LOVED being able to use my glue!

Box #10 I put in his playdough and playdough mats.

I also added in the best playdough toy ever!

And that was our first day of preschool. The whole thing took about two hours and he giggled through it all.

More Montessori Preschool fun

2011-07-26T14:18:00.000-07:00

More fun with the scanner.

My friend Heather made these for her kids and then passed them down to Logan. She put a bunch of neat keys on her scanner, laminated the sheet and then kept all the keys in a little pouch with the sheet so that it was a matching game! There are many of these types of activities in a Montessori preschool. The matching shape and direction helps build early reading skills. It is brilliant! And Logan just loves it.

Cold Summer Button Art

2011-07-21T13:52:00.000-07:00

This summer has been cold. Like REALLY cold. And so we have been spending more time inside than any other summer I can remember. I have been trying to keep perspective, but a lot of time it’s hard to not be depressed with such a cold wet season that is supposed to be the warmest we have all year. We have all enjoyed crafts… but the joy to post about them here has just been gone. I decided that I needed to get over that.

This morning we were playing with buttons and the scanner. And it turned out to be tons of fun that started my kids on a drawing-fest that has lasted all morning long. We put buttons on the copier in the fashion of Bloesum Kids… but without the color matching…. we used far too many buttons! We just had fun!

Logan, age 4 1/2

Cyan, age 10 and 8 days

and Me! :)

I think we will pop these in the mail for our family down in the sunny southern CA. Perhaps they will have time to get out of the sun and play with buttons too!

Moments in Homeschooling - Practical Life

2011-06-30T15:21:00.001-07:00

Researching the Albatross

Making granola with Mom

Rhyming words

Moments in Homeschooling - Ladybug Release

2011-06-24T04:37:00.000-07:00

For the last 4 wks we have been raising our own baby ladybugs. This morning we realized that our bugs were starting to die. We were not sure why, but a quick release into the wild seemed necessary. We wanted to find the best possible place for our little spotted friends so we searched out our most mangled flowers and tried to spot lots of aphids. The daisies and roses were the ones that had the highest population of food for our friends and so that is where we let them go.

They immediately started eating! The kids were out there for quite a while watching them.

Just after we placed them on the flowers, we noticed that there were already ladybug babies there! I think our ladybugs will be pretty happy with the new digs!

It’s great to be a homeschooler!

Muffin Tin Monday ~ A beachy tin

2011-06-13T18:19:00.000-07:00

Top Row: Tuna sandwich, pineapple/apricot juice with lifesaver straw ornament, cantalope fish with raspberry jellyfish

Bottom Row: Sea Weed (Fruit leather) with chocolate shark, goldfish crackers, and another tuna sandwich

A game of hide and seek with Iroquois camouflage – SOTW lesson 15

2011-05-20T22:00:00.001-07:00

The Iroquois Native Americans were masters of disguise. The craft for today was to make our best disguise we could… and then test them out!

“Is my makeup scary enough?”

Ready for action!

Get ready, get set….

Testing our camo with a game of hide and seek!

“ONE! Two! Three!”

“Hey! I got you!!”

Home free!!

Rest after the game.

Links for Star Wars Unit Study

2011-05-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

Online Games

Star Wars games online free

Star Wars Trivia Game

Online Star Wars Word Search

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How to Draw

How to draw R2D2 (easy)

How to draw a Jawa (Med)

How to draw Chewbaka (not so easy)

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Printables

A whole slew of Star Wars coloring pages

A printable Darth Vader paper box craft

Jedi Printable Word Search

Printable Star Wars Masks

Make Luke and Leia paper dolls

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Books

Star Wars Crafts

The Star Wars Party Book

Wookiee Cookies: A Star Wars Cookbook

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Food Crafts

Star Wars rice crispy treats

Han Solo in Jello-ite

Star Wars Week ~ Day 3

2011-05-10T21:33:00.001-07:00

More snap circuits, with friends this time!

Star Wars cookies:

Making chocolate lightsabers!

Even ones for the bad guys:

After our friends left we had a last bit of Star Wars fun (for today):

Then we watched Return of the Jedi and had a wonderful dinner.

A week long Star Wars tribute may become a yearly tradition the first week in May (starting with “May the 4th be with you”)!

Happy Star Wars week everyone!

Star Wars Week ~ Day 2

2011-05-07T12:55:00.001-07:00

Between National Star Wars day (‘May the 4th be with you’) and today (National Astronomy Day) we have found some really wonderful resources for Star Wars week. Today was ‘droid day’ and we got to study robotics. There was a robotics class at the library this afternoon from 1 – 3 and the older kids got to make a robot and try to get it to follow the program that was intended.

The library lady told me about the class when I went to pick up all the Star Wars books I had on hold. Perfect timing huh?

It was supposed to go across the floor, pick something up, and then bring it back by remote control. They got as far as getting it to pick stuff up by the time their hour was up! I was impressed! (and they had a blast!)

After getting back home I had them do a little Star Wars Trivia, and then some of their other school work (math, and reading). After they were done with that, they each got to listen to more of Star Wars radio. This time, I had Cyan color a droid coloring page and Alex color an X-wing while taking notes (because the radio story is different than the movies) on the radio version of Episode 4.

Then I had each of them do an online Star Wars puzzle on StarWars.com.

After this, we had a bit more robotic fun with the Snap Circuits. This time it was Cyan’s turn to choose a set and do it:

It works!

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Day 3 is Monday because tomorrow instead of Star Wars day we are celebrating Mother’s Day! ;) Happy Learning!

Star Wars Unit Study ~ Day 1

2011-05-05T20:22:00.001-07:00

We started our school day out with a lunch fit for any Star Wars fan!

Top row: moon of Endor pesto pizza, blue Bantha milk, "That's not a moon!" pizza

Bottom row: carrots (yeah. They're just carrots), white chocolate snowflake from the planet Hoth, "Banana The Hut"

Then we moved on to school work. This is set up as a workbox system unit study. 6 to 10 boxes per day are dedicated to our Star Wars study. The other boxes have their regular school stuff in them. These are the Star Wars bits. :)

Day 1 for Cyan (grades 2 – 5)

1. Star Wars easy wordsearch (Feel free to copy and print the picture for the wordsearch. I still have not been able to figure out how to attach a PDF file.)

2. Story Starter *Moving to Hoth* – This was split between three boxes.

Your mom and you are moving to the planet of Hoth. You don’t want to go but are trying to make the best of it. Your mom says you can bring one pet. What would it be? What supplies would you need to move it to Hoth? What would happen if I changed Hoth to Endor? How would it be different?

a. Hoth = Antarctica
b. Endor = Northern CA Forest
* I printed out three sheets of lined paper appropriate for her writing level from Donna Young and printed the ‘Moving to Hoth’ story starter and stapled them all together.
* Today we were focusing on Hoth. (Endor will be tomorrow) I had Cyan watch the Brain Pop on the Arctic, the Antarctic, and the Tundra. This is what the planet of Hoth was based off of. The movie was shot in New Zealand and so I focused on the Antarctic animals with my examples but she could pick any cold weather critter she wanted. Then I had her pick an animal that was suitable for living in those conditions out of the Animal Encyclopedia. She chose an Ermine.
* After she had picked her animal I had her write out the story. She could illustrate if she wanted (she wanted).

3. We got the copy of the original Star Wars radio show for them to listen to while doing our craft for today. Cyan’s craft was to cut out a Leia paper doll and her outfit from Hoth.

Day 1 for Alex (grades 6 – 9)

1. I printed out a premade word search for this one. It can be found here.

2. Story Starters *Robotic Hand* – This portion was two workboxes.

You wake up and you realize you have a robotic hand. How does it feel to have a robotic hand? As you lay in your hospital bed being looked over by your medical droids, things start to come back to you slowly. Who are you and how did you lose your human hand?

Of course, with Alex being so much older, I required much more of him for the writing assignment portion of the lesson. I gave him the more abstract Story Starter and I also gave him quite a bit more leeway to put in what he wanted. I made it due at the end of the week (Monday for us) and just required that he write it in cursive (something he has been working on). I did have him watch the Brain Pop on robotics and robots to get his mind working in the right direction.

3. Snap Circuits – I had him do the first project in a borrowed copy of the snap circuits game.

4. I gave him instructions on how to fold an Origami X Wing fighter to do while we were listening to the Star Wars Radio Show.

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More fun tomorrow!!!

A long time ago in a galaxy not so far away…. Star Wars Unit Study

2011-05-05T16:09:00.001-07:00

Inspiration comes from the strangest places. This week is the last week of the Pacific Science Center’s Star Wars exhibit. We are HUGE Star Wars fans. I should say Don is a huge Star Wars fan and my children have all followed suit. I like it, but wouldn’t say I am as into it as they are.

So we go to the Science Center, and I am thrilled to watch the butterflies hatch and play with all of the other spaces… my kids and husband are dragging me to the Star Wars area. But once I got in there I have to say I was completely inspired! There were tables of robotics, presentations on costuming, videos on planetary conditions, and real life holographic and hovercraft. It was quite inspiring!

We spent about an hour at the table with the robotics. The goal was to build a robot that would go over various terrain and then turn, and finally go forward enough after turning to get into this box that says “finish!”

I came home with so many ideas on how to do a unit study on Star Wars that I decided right then and there we were going to spend our whole school week (with Don’s schedule that is Fri – Mon) studying all things Star Wars!

The only thing I couldn’t figure out is how my kids were going to keep up on the things they were working on in for writing… then I had a brainstorm idea! Story Starters!!! I wrote some up and now my unit study is complete. The story starters are as follows… stay tuned for more over the next four days. It should be a BLAST!

Star Wars Story starters (language arts)

1. You wake up and you realize you have a robotic hand. How does it feel to have a robotic hand? As you lay in your hospital bed being looked over by your medical droids, things start to come back to you slowly. Who are you and how did you lose your human hand?

2. Your mom and you are moving to the planet of Hoth. You don’t want to go but are trying to make the best of it. Your mom says you can bring one pet. What would it be? What supplies would you need to move it to Hoth? What would happen if I changed Hoth to Endor? How would it be different? This one includes a bit of Science as well, feel free to study the different habitats that are similar on our planet to the conditions of these Star Wars places:

a. Hoth = Antarctica

b. Endor = Northern CA Forest

3. It is your first class at the Jedi League. Your professor is Master Yoda. You walk in and there are two questions floating on the holo-board… The first one is “Your deepest fear, your worst enemy, it will be. What be yours?” What is the second question? How do you answer them?

Look how much you’ve grown!

2011-05-05T05:52:00.000-07:00

That last trip we had to the Seattle Science Center was almost 4 years ago.

Logan at 4 months old:

Look how much he’s grown:

4 yrs and 3 months

Butterflies…

2011-05-03T10:47:00.001-07:00

This year I decided not to hatch butterflies. Instead we are going to study frogs and ladybugs. But I was THRILLED with the little butterfly lesson reminder my kids got at the Seattle Center this last weekend with our trip to the butterfly house.

We got to watch a Blue Morpho Butterfly come out of it’s chrysalis! It was incredible! We watched it come out, and as it started to pump up it’s wings with fluid to make them bigger (from it’s distended abdomen) I got to give my kids a refresher course. How amazing is this??:

What a beautiful little bug!

We also got a great refresher in how to tell an aging butterfly.

This is a young butterfly. See the smooth edges on the wings?

And this is an older butterfly… can you see the torn and tattered wing edges?

It was a beautiful refresher and a really great day!

Lucas’ first 6 weeks

2011-04-25T17:04:00.001-07:00