Week In Review

The countdown continues!  One more week down, 5 to go!  The summer itch is hitting us hard, I am so anxious to be done.  Part of that might be the fact that my parents will be here in about 3 weeks and there is much to do to prepare!  You saw my house the other day, that is not parent ready!  I have always been one that works well under pressure though, so it will get done just probably not until the last minute.

This week's preschool theme was Monsters!   We had a great time doing our monster activities.  This little pack I got from 1+1+1=1, and it was just perfect for my little guy.  I had a horrible time finding appropriate books to go along with this theme though.  So we ended up just reading some cute little stories and using some books we had.  The books I chose this week were Go To Bed, Monster! by Natasha Wing, Animal ABC by Marcus Pfister, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff and Dr. Seuss's ABC.  He loved all of those books!

For Noah this week I had to get a little creative.  All About Reading includes fluency sheets after almost every lesson.  We really slacked on them this year because they were so daunting for him, but I realized recently just how important they are!  So I spiced it up a bit for him, using some ideas from All About Reading, we did a Feed The Monster Game!  He loved this!  It made the reading fluency sheets not so intimidating for him.

In geography we have been in Russia this week.  For a fun craft we made Russian Nesting Dolls.  I was a little behind in my planning and wasn't sure how the boys would like the doll craft, but I didn't have any other ideas.  So I found one on Pinterest and went for it.  Only Noah took part and he really enjoyed it!  Elijah didn't want anything to do with it, but he really isn't into crafting much, and only wants to color when its something he's interested in.

Finally here a few more shots from our week:

Week In Review

Hello again!!  We are wrapping up another homeschool week!  We are down to about 5 or 6 weeks left in our school year.  I can't believe that we are almost done, and at the same time I can't wait to be done!!

Our preschool theme this week was The Farm.  This pack I got from 2TeachingMommies and I think she collaborated with 1+1+1=1.  We read three books each day, they were Animal Hide and Seek from Usborne, The Farm Book by Jan Pfloog, and Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown.  He loved all three of them!!  Here is a look at what we did this week.

First, on day 1 we worked on a Lauri Farm Puzzle, the he did another barn puzzle, we worked on size sequencing with tractors, he colored the farm animals, we did a Melissa and Doug farm puzzle, we practiced the animal sounds using Melissa and Doug farm animal magnets, and last we counted the farm animals.

On Day 2, we began with heads and tails animal matching, then we did the tractor size sequencing again, we played a farm animal matching game, and we also practiced the animal sounds again and worked both puzzles.  In that last picture in the left hand corner I caught him reading a Curious George book to himself, he said the whole story almost perfectly!!  

Noah this week has worked really hard on his reading, he learned that 5 letters make more than one sound!  I was surprised at how quickly he caught on to it.  I am also moving towards him picking books on his own to read to me.  We went to the library this week and I had him pick out three books that he would read to me.  He came home with four!  I am so excited to see his enthusiasm pick up towards reading.

Another area that we are working on, is him writing his own sentences.  I haven't pushed him too hard in this area because writing has been a struggle but I feel we are to the point that he can be pushed a little bit.  Plus I told him that if he wrote his own sentence he wouldn't have to do a handwriting page.  So he has been writing his own summary sentences for our Bible story time.  He dictates it to me first and then I write it down, then he copies it.  Soon we will move on to him just writing it himself.  I wanted to give him a boost of confidence first before I just threw him into writing.  

Here he is copying some letters of the Greek Alphabet.

Elijah has been moving forward in his Spelling, and I was able to catch a few photos of him this week.  He tends to hide from the camera and doesn't care to have his picture taken! Especially while doing school work!  

We are continuing studying about Japan this week, and we wrote some Haiku poems.  The kids had fun with that, and it was a great day to be outside.  Unfortunately I forgot to get the camera out and photograph them!  Oh well they came up with some cute ones!

We also used our last Book It coupon this week, actually it was the only one we used this year!!  Some how the year got away from me and we never used the coupons that they earned!  

Yes, they are playing checkers with the sugar packets!  At first we were using
the straw wrappers but the waitress suggested the sugar packets!  What a
great idea!!

That was our crazy week!  I hope you enjoyed this little peek into how our schooling went this week.  How was your week?  Has spring fever set in yet?  I know we are going crazy and ready to be done with school and play outside all day!

Week In Review

Whoo hoo!!  Here is my SECOND post on our week in review!  I am on a roll!!!  This week Zach was on spring break from preschool so it gave me a good chance to work on his home preschool set up.  I kept with his theme of transportation that we did last week.  He loves all things that move, trains, cars, buses, you name it!  If it has wheels he's all about it!

Just a reminder that he is 3 years old, and we are just beginning to do preschool at home with him.  He also attends a preschool program two days a week.  I used the Transportation Preschool pack from Homeschool Creations, which is where I also found the cute idea for the paper tube train!

For Day 1 he did shadow matching vehicles, word cards, vehicle words, and an alphabet train puzzle. We also practiced tracing his name, but he needed lots of help with that so I wasn't able to get any pictures.

On Day 2, he again did the shadow matching, he practiced his cutting, we did our first try at 3 Part Cards, and we finished up a paper tube train craft.  Last Friday I had him do the painting of the tubes so that it would be dry to work on this week.  

Our final day this week, Day 3, he was really not into school at all.  I finally got him to do that train puzzle, and then we also did a worksheet on B is for Bus.  As you can see I am not pushing him at all and we are taking it slow.

Noah worked really hard this week, and we were able to get 4 lessons completed in his All About Reading!!

He also did great on his math this week.  It was tricky for him, but he worked hard and finally got it!

In Exploring Countries and Cultures we are learning about China.  Last week we made a cool initials stamp using an eraser and an ink pad.

This week we made Chinese Lanterns!

In Science we have been learning about the Ocean and we did a fresh water verses salt water experiment.

We also watched a Torchlighter video about Amy Carmichael.  We finished reading her book last week and I thought it would be a fun way to end.

That has been our week!!  Whew!  Now to get our house in order for the Easter Holiday!  I am praying everyone has time to reflect on the reason we celebrate easter!  He is Risen!  He is Risen Indeed!!!

Sanity Saving Advice for Your Homeschool Week

I have found that when I fail to plan for our week things don't happen!  School work doesn't get done, housework doesn't get done, and meals don't get cooked!  In order for these things to happen I have to plan out our week.  I use a homeschool planner, chore charts and a menu to make sure that our life runs smoothly.

The homeschool planner is just merely our lesson plans written out.  I made copies of our lesson plans from the teachers manual, that way I can write in extra stuff we do and I can check off what we did accomplish.  They are then divided by which child its for, so I have one for Elijah which is Exploring Countries and Cultures and then one for Noah which is his 1st grade work.  I also have a yearly schedule printed up and that is where I keep track of our field trips and how many days we have done school.  We are not required to keep this information in my state but I still like to have a record of how many days we have done school.  I keep all of this in a 3 ring binder.  Every Sunday night I get all our papers and things set out for the week and I look over lesson plans.  I prefer to do this on Sunday night rather than say on Friday afternoon, because then come Monday morning it's still fresh in my mind of what we are doing for the week.

Our menu board is really simple!  Its a small dry erase board that is hanging in our kitchen. I tried other "systems" and never stuck with them, they all seemed too complicated and all I really needed was something simple.  I change it out every week.  I grocery shop every two weeks, so I meal plan for two weeks at a time.  I typically just plan for dinners.  Breakfast in our house is either cereal, cereal bars, frozen pancakes/waffles, or Elijah likes to make himself oatmeal in the microwave.  For lunches we will either do PB&J or deli meat sandwiches, hot dogs, spaghetti o's, or mac and cheese (I know super not healthy!!  I am working on it!!).  So when I grocery shop I just know to buy those types of things, along with items needed to make our dinners.

Chore charts are another thing that can be either super complicated or super simple.  I have been everywhere on this scale, from boards that we changed out daily to boards that we changed out weekly, and now we are on a set chore schedule.  My kids each have a list of items that are their responsibility and items that they are paid to do.  For Elijah, age 10, his responsibilities include, making his bed, cleaning his room (including vacuuming), doing his own laundry (wash, dry, put away), taking out the trash in the kitchen, bathrooms, and our school room.  His paid chores are vacuuming other rooms, cleaning the bathroom, and doing his brothers laundry (wash, dry and brought upstairs).  Noah, age 7, his responsibilities include clean his bedroom, put his clothes away, feed the fish, dust, help load/unload the dishwasher.  His chore list consists of doing his laundry, vacuuming, and cleaning the bathroom.  For Zach, age 3, his list is pretty short, his responsibilities are set the table for dinner, put his clothes away, wipe the table after meals, and clean his room.  At this point he doesn't get paid to do any chores.  I just typed up these lists and Noah and Zach keep theirs on the fridge, Elijah has his hanging in his room.  For their chores, they can choose to do them  throughout the week to earn extra money, but every Friday they are required to do them.

Implementing these three things has drastically reduced the chaos in our week.  The old saying of "Fail to plan, plan to fail" is very accurate!

The End is Near

Well here we are with 10 weeks left in our school year!  I can't believe we are almost done!  Its been such a crazy year for us, I almost didn't think we would actually make it to the end!  Over these next few weeks I am excited to see how my kids will have progressed through the year.

So far I have recognized major advances in Noah with both reading and handwriting.  At the beginning of the year Noah couldn't read any words, and now he is able to blend sounds to sound out words, and read some short stories!  He is also making huge strides with his handwriting, at the beginning of the year I could hardly read his handwriting and now he is able to write legibly.  Those were two areas of focus for us this year for him, I am so happy that we are accomplishing our goals,  especially considering all of the challenges we have faced this year.

Elijah has also made great strides in his math.  At the beginning of the year he was struggling to understand multiple digit multiplication and he is now doing wonderfully with division.  Another area that I was wanting to work on this year with him was advancing his reading abilities.  I had a whole stack of great literature picked out for him to read this year, he got through about one and a half of those books and began reading The Hobbit.  At first I was still going to make him read the books I had picked out, but he wasn't enjoying those, so after a bit I realized that it wasn't a battle worth fighting.  I mean come on my fourth grader was reading The Hobbit!  He has since finished that and is almost finished with The Fellowship of the Ring.  I guess I did accomplish my goal though, he has definitely advanced his reading ability!

A few goals I have set for the rest of our year include Elijah being more independent in his work.  Right now he can do Math, Handwriting, and some English on his own.  I would like for him to be more independent next year so I will really be pushing him to gain that confidence throughout the rest of this year.  For Noah I would like for him to continue to grow his handwriting skills, they are improving but still not great.  I would also like to get him to do more copy work and some creative writing.  The kid has an amazing imagination and I would like to capture some of that in writing.

Here's to a great next few weeks and finishing up our school year!!

Back to Homeschooling

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming!  I took a little bit of a break from blogging about homeschool things because I felt the need to switch it up a bit!  I tend to get bored easily!

This week has been our "spring break".  I didn't really have any particular things planned this week, and it has shown!  We have been BORED!!!  We got some snow on Sunday, Monday was just blah, Tuesday we got about 1 inch of ice, Wednesday and Thursday were just bitter COLD!  My husband took Friday off and we planned a family day to a children's museum, which is always a good time.

In the future I realize I really need to plan activities other wise we wind up watching movies and not getting out of our jammies!  Not totally a bad thing, but can get a bit tiresome.

My boys did work on a few creative thing though.  We recently began learning about stop motion movies.  They have had fun working on those.  Here is one that Elijah worked on, there is no sound, like I said we are still playing abound with it.  And yes it's sideways, not sure how to adjust that!

Here are just a few pictures that I have taken lately!

The African Savanna

Silly Big lips boy!

He had Circus week at Preschool!

Building a fortress out of Math U See blocks.

Practicing guitar with his brothers help.

Chocolate chip pancake mouth!

Me and my little guy!

That's a little bit about what we have been up to.  Hopefully I will begin to post more regular updates on our homeschooling journey in the near future.  So stay tuned!

A Really Late Post About our Curriculum

Now that its almost March I thought it would be a good time to share our curriculum for the year.  Yeah, nothing like being a little behind!  Anyway this year we are teaching 4th grade and 1st grade, also with a tag along 3 year old.

Before I get started though, I want to mention that I provided links to the different things we are using only to help you find out more about them.  I am writing this post for fun, and I am not affiliated with these companies.  I simply enjoy sharing what we like and use.  Enjoy!

For our 4th grade curriculum we are using My Fathers World Exploring Countries and Cultures.  That includes Bible, Geography, Science, Music and Art.  In Bible we have been reading through Window on the World and Hero Tales.  Geography is a country based study including mapping, cultures, and people.  We have been "traveling" to different countries including, the United States, Canada, South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia, just to name a few.  In Science, we have been learning about the different ecosystems around the world.  Music and Art have included music and crafts from around the world.

We are using Abeka Language A and All About Spelling Levels 4 and 5 for our Language Arts.  We began the year using the suggested Language arts by My Fathers World but they did not work for us.  So we switched in November to Abeka, it fits our learning style a bit better.  We just finished up All About Spelling Level 4 and began Level 5 a few weeks ago.

For our math we are using Math U See, he just finished Gamma and we have moved onto Delta.  We will plan to get about half way through Delta this year and finish it up next year.  I am still trying to decide if we will stick with Math U See or move onto Teaching Textbooks for a more independent study.

 

Before the year began I had planned on giving Elijah an independent reading list of books I wanted him to read this year, but he got interested in reading The Lord of the Rings.  So that is what he has been reading this year.  He has read The Hobbit, and is now almost finished with The Fellowship of the Ring.  We are also reading Christian Heroes: Then and Now for our read aloud time.  We have read Cameron Townsend, George Muller, Nate Saint, and David Livingstone so far, currently we are reading Amy Carmichael.

                 


Our 1st grade year has been interesting to say the least!  Noah is a total opposite learner from Elijah.  So what worked for Elijah is not working for Noah.  Which is a challenge, but nothing that we haven't been able to work through.  Noah is using My Fathers World 1st Grade, Learning God's Story.  It includes, Bible/History, Reading, Math, Art and Music.  For Bible/History we have been learning the books of the Bible, and making a timeline of Old Testament history beginning at Creation.  I started the year using the reading program in the curriculum along with All About Reading but it was too much and moved pretty quickly, in my opinion.  So we dropped it and just stuck with All About Reading.  In Math we have been working through the Complete Book of Math, learning counting, patterns, and simple adding and subtracting.  Although just this week we began Math U See Alpha as well.  Art has been picture study from famous artists, they also use Drawing with Children, which I hope to use as some point but haven't found the time to really dig into.  Music has been learning about the orchestra and listening to Peter and the Wolf.

We began the first few lessons in All About Reading Level 1 at the end of last year, I really wish we had started it sooner.  We have been moving pretty slowly through it, but as of the past few lessons I can tell its really working!  Noah is really picking up on the concepts and is actually reading!  We are a little over half way through and I am hopeful that we will finish it up this year and move to Level 2 next year.

As a foreign language study we have been using Song School Latin Level 1, we began it last year but it kind of got put off about half way through the year.  So we picked it up again, starting at the beginning because I couldn't remember where we left off!  We are just using the DVD, I had bought the workbook, and teachers manual, but found that it just added too much for my guys to handle.  We just finished up the level 1 DVD and this week began Level 2.  My boys really enjoy it, although I think it has more to do with the monkey story than actually learning Latin!

And now for our little 3 year old, Zach.  Back in August, I began to think about preschool for our little guy, he is just such a distraction for my older boys.  As much as I would try to occupy him he would always find ways to get into trouble!  With our move in October, though, we put it off and didn't sign him up for preschool at that time.  In November I began again think that it would be a good idea.  So we got him signed up and he began preschool in January.  It has been such a great thing for everyone.  He goes two mornings a week, from 9-11:30.  So on those mornings the older boys and I get some good time to work on school work and do some science experiments that we might not have done with a three year old at home.  Its also been good for Zach, its teaching him to be more independent.  He has always been pretty clingy and needy, as far as not wanting to go the bathroom by himself, or not wanting to do anything for himself.  Just in the last month I have seen a huge change in him.  I am really happy that we made that decision.

This got to be really long!  Sorry!  I hope you enjoyed learning about what we are using this year for school.  If you have any questions about anything we are using just ask!  I would be happy to answer them!