Merry Christmas 2014 Video

Wishing all of our family and friends a wonderfully merry Christmas and a blessed new year! 

Enjoy this video of our 2014 adventures: 

Five In A Row - Owl Moon

Each time we finish a Five In A Row literature unit, I declare that book to be my newest favorite. I love each and every story we study. J does too. Aside from Bible, which is his current most loved school subject, our story time and activities with FIAR are our most anticipated during school. E and J really get into the stories, and love to act them out and explore them more during the week.

This week we "rowed" Owl Moon. 

After reading the book, we had to dissect an owl pellet. Owls can't digest bones so they cough them up. We used a bone identification chart to help us figure out what our owl had eaten. We found a rodent skull & jaw, shrew skull and many leg and rib bones. J loved this activity and repeated it several times!

E had the most fun with painting a winter scene on canvas. I simply taped off the shape of two snowflakes and then gave her blue and white paint and some glitter. 

Our big adventure for the week was to go 'owling' just like the little girl in the story. I found a nature center nearby and we set off. The center houses raptors and other birds year round, so we were able to see some big birds up close before we took our hike.

Along the way we saw several deer tracks! 

After our owling adventure we were lucky enough to catch the volunteers working with the birds. We got a private lesson on how to care for a bald eagle and even got to help feed it a rabbit head. The kind lady even took some of the eagle pellets out of the enclosure and gave them to J to inspect. It turns out that eagles can digest bones, so their pellets simply consist of fur and feathers from their dinner!

We spent one day learning all about the moon. J's favorite part of this learning adventure was making the moon phases out of Oreos. :)

The kids used animal track stamps to make tracks in white playdoh and we read 'Who Pooped In the Park?'

We also studied similes and metaphors, how to measure time, perseverance and patience as part of this unit. What fun! 

1st GRADE!!!

I can hardly believe I have a first grader now. J is super excited to continue homeschooling. We've decided to school year round to give us a consistent routine and to allow us time to travel throughout the school year.

With a 2 year old and a 6 year old, I know we will keep busy. :)

Oh, yes, and our first *hairy* pets - Gerb and Squeak (the gerbils) will be joining us as well!

Bears - Roar!

Our first thematic unit of Kindergarten was all about bears (or "roars" as E says). We began with a trip to the Denver Zoo - on a photo safari to capture images of all the different bears they had there...

Luckily, the polar bear, black bears and brown bears all were very active so J got some great pictures!! We sorted the pictures into a graph. Then, we described the bears by writing adjectives on a word wall.

We also read lots and lots and lots of books about bears. Some fiction and some non fiction.

One of our math activities used 'Teddy Bear Math' and manipulatives. This was probably J's favorite thing... he played with the little bears and pretended they were real as they hopped across the bear pages and he sorted/counted/worked with them. :)

We did a variety of science experiments, but by far the best was when we learned about how polar bear fat insulates their body. I told J to stick his hand in a bowl of ice water for as long as he could stand it. (He lasted about 7 seconds!) Then we wrapped his hand with plastic wrap and smeared it really well with LARD. Then we put another layer of plastic wrap over the fat and I told him to put his hand in the water again. He couldn't even feel the cold! It was such a neat way to illustrate how an animals skin can insulate the animal from the elements outside. 

Incorporating writing, reading, math, and science into our day within the context of this theme was really fun! I think J learned a bunch about bears and we both looked forward to the activities. YAY!

Working on Workboxes

We started using workboxes back when I first started preschool. Now that J is doing Kindergarten, he has 9 boxes just for him! There are LOTS of different ways to use the workbox system. The original method was created by Sue Patrick. You can read more about it here. I also really like how Confessions of a Homeschooler set up her workbox system. See details about it here. Anyhow, here is a little bit about how we are going to use workboxes to keep organized. 

 On the left are J's boxes, in his favorite color - yellow. :) Each box has a label so that he can read and I can easily tell which subjects we are covering. The red boxes on the right are for baby E to explore.

Each day I change most of the boxes and the labels to match what I have for us to cover for the day. I have J work through the boxes one at a time in order. No skipping ahead to the game or box with a snack!! 

After breakfast, calendar time, and some singing and dancin' we work on our first box - Calendar...

where we have our calendar binder, a dry erase marker and eraser. 

Next is our bible box. We are working through the Gotta Have God Devotional For Boys right now, although sometimes I'll put in our Beginners Bible and do some reading from that.

After Calendar and Bible - we do a CHORE!!! I've been trying to figure out a way to get J (and myself, honestly) to get motivated to do routine chores around the house. Solution: chore bucket. I simply filled a green cup with these adorable dry erase frog markers from our local teachers store. On each stick, I wrote a chore that we can all do together. (Pick up toys, dust, outside tidy, vacuum, dishes, clean bedroom, clean bathroom, etc. I even stuck one in that says to play with sister so that momma can get something accomplished!) Each day we pick a stick and do that chore together. It's then removed from the cup so we will get everything done before we start over. So far, it's working really well!

** Usually we take a little school break at this point until baby E goes down for a nap. It's just easier to get the rest of the work done without a small helper! **

Next we tackle reading, math, writing and our thematic unit. I typically do two boxes that focus on reading, one on writing, and two on math. Of course, they are often disguised as other things...

Here is the first *reading* box on this day. Water balloons+chalk=fun!! I simply wrote our sight words with chalk on the back patio and J had to smash each one he could say with a water balloon. :)

I was impressed at how many words he remembered from Pre-K. Next we took the words he read correctly outside and he wrote each one on adorable animal diecuts he chose from the teacher store. We were able to post those on his sight word wall for future reference. This was our next reading box.

On to math... 

with a little snack to keep us going.

In one math box, I placed a worksheet. In the next, we did a tangram puzzle and counted shapes, discussed colors, etc. After all that seat work, we needed to get moving again, so it was time for *P.E.* (Again, a box that mixes in lots of fun with learning.) Josiah had to run around the house and collect ALL the teddy bears that we have. I think he found nearly 20. (Yes, I'm aware we may have way to many teddy bears... at least they all came in handy for this unit on bears!)

We sorted them - first by color, then type and finally by size....

To wrap up, the 9th workbox is usually something fun/extra I try to incorporate into our day. I had J help me bake some delicious muffins!

 So, we managed to eat, play, watch a show, get to swimming lessons and back on our bikes, entertain little E, get all our schoolwork done for the day, and visit grandma - before 3pm. :) I LOVE how homeschooling is working out for our little family. Time to fill up the boxes for tomorrow!

J's FIRST DAY!!

Here he is...

On his very FIRST day!

He picked a shirt that says, "I'm awesome."

Perfect. :)

He was so proud to be having a day of school with me.

We both loved every minute of it. 

Eleanor did too!

J's Kindergarten curriculum

When I led a preschool group out of our home, I used the Christian Homeschool Curriculum Horizons, published by Alpha Omega. It worked great for my little ones. I really liked how it was all written out and how easy it was to use! I found the bible lessons - walking through the 7 days of creation - really fun, and the worksheet pages thorough. I also liked their suggestions for songs, games, crafts and letter introductions. 

HOWEVER...
I kept recreating the lessons to make them my own. Because, for some reason, I really enjoy reading and creating curriculum. 

So, for Kindergarten I decided to use a mixture of some things I purchase, and some things I create! I know... more work for myself... but it's what I really love to do - - so I might as well!

READING - 
I felt like we needed a strong reading program. One that would combine phonics and sight word reading and help my little guy learn to LOVE to read. I purchased ALL ABOUT READING Level 1 by All About Learning Press. You should have seen my excitement when I opened the box!! Great workbooks, a fabulous easy to read teachers manual, little hardcover readers for J! J gave a little smile and continued playing Cars, so maybe he's not as excited as I am....

Either way, I've had a chance to read through it all and complete the first five lessons and we both really like it. I highly recommend the program, and by using it, I feel more confident I'm not going to miss something important in his instruction.

MATH - 

I fully intend to finish researching and find a great comprehensive math program for J to use by December, but for now we are going to finish using a program called Math Mastermind that I found for him at a local clearance bookstore and we started when he was doing preschool. I love how it's designed, first with an activity using provided manipulatives, then with a simple workbook page. It also included a great software and worksheet printable CD for the computer. 

BIBLE - 

If you have never checked out Hubbardscupboard.org for character building - you need to! On the main page click on Christian Resources, then choose character. She has an amazing library of activities, printables, crafts and educational games connected to bible verses sorted by character traits. I absolutely love all the choices, and we will be working through the traits all year long. In addition, I purchased J Fun Devotions for Boys - Gotta Have God ages 2-5 by Legacy Press. Each days devotion features a bible reference, story, questions, prayer and activity. They are short and simple, but (I have found) makes a big impact on my little guy. 

I'll work in handwriting each week with various activities, as well as science, social studies, art and P.E - primarily through integrating them into the different themes we will cover. With all of that going on, plus All About Music class, Spanish lessons, drum lessons, our library reading club, soccer at the rec center, and meeting with our homeschool co-op, I think we'll keep plenty busy!