Homeshool: Kindergarten week 7

The boys raking leaves in the back

Today is only Monday, but I can't let the day go by and not jot down some notes. If ALL days were like today, we would surely be living in School Heaven! Hands down this was our best day of school ever!

The boys and Miss S. all got a long beautifully. There was little or no bickering and lots of team work. We accomplished A LOT and had LOTS of fun doing it.

Honestly, if I can squeeze even one more day like today out of this week then we will be at least 3 weeks ahead in Charlie's curriculum and we won't have to do any school work right after baby comes. Even though I plan on doing some work with him during that time, it will be a relief to know that he won't fall behind if we don't get to his lessons for a week or two.

Charlie has really been working on his handwriting and spacing of his words. Just recently we started having him write not only his first name, but his last name as well on all his worksheets. Within 2 days he could spell his last name from memory.

One area that I know we need to work on is Charlie memorizing his phone number and being more confident in knowing his address. He knows his address but needs lots of reminders or questioning to recite it. I want him to be able to write and say both of these important pieces of information and do it without hesitation. I think I am going to make up a daily sheet that he needs to fill out with this information to practice reciting it and his writing.

This week Charlie worked on the sounds /u/, /ch/,/y/,/sh/, and /aw/ in phonics. He reviewed many lower and uppercase letters. One of them being the lowercase letter "q". He also learned that q is always followed by the letter u, and that they are called "glue letters" because they don't like to be alone. He is starting to learn different rules like this and is doing well remembering them.

He also continued to finger stretch out words, divide words by syllables, made complete sentences and learned about sound subtraction.

Charlie continues to be ahead in math. In the curriculum they have moved away from identifying shapes (thank goodness!!) and now have him counting to 10, which is still far below his skill level. I am supplementing his math curriculum with Singapore Math and other fun ideas that I find. I have also started to teach him how to tell time to the hour. He uses his Kumon book for practice. We are also moving on to the value of money. I plan on talking with his "teacher" from K12 and see about moving him up a bit in the math program. I think at this point it is needed.

We also had lots of fun this week since Halloween is right around the corner! For science we started to learn about our bodies and our skeletons. I choose this lesson to coincide with Halloween. Charlie did a
skeleton dot to dot,
worksheet, we watched a video/song on youtube about bones, and made a skeleton art project out of pasta noodles.

We all had fun making our skeleton!

We learned about joints and bones and why they are important to our bodies.

We also bought some different pumpkins at the store and Grandpa brought us some pretty cool gourds that we dissected and compared the insides. We then painted with the pumpkins and some apples.
Charlie colored and wrote in a pumpkin life cycle book that I made for him to complete, and practiced his handwriting in another Halloween book.
We also watched a pumpkin story on Starfall.com and made a cute little foam pumpkin that Miss S. gave to us for Halloween.



The kids also made these fun monster cupcakes out of snowballs and candy.
and then had fun eating them

We read the book Five Little Pumpkins

and pulled out our felt board and Five Little Pumpkins felt set that I made last year. The boys loved playing with it and we have read it a bunch of times during the week.


Charlie also made a replica of the Empire State Building out Legos. He got his hands on the Lego Holiday catalog (thank you Suzi :) and hasn't put it down since. There is a HUGE set for the Empire State Building that he wanted but it cost BIG bucks, so he opted to build his own. I just love how creative he is!



It was a nice week, we accomplished a lot. I am happy with Charlie's progress at this time and feel comfortable taking the next 1-2 weeks off of our daily routine after baby comes.

Homeschool: Preschool Letter L

Tommy had a good week of preschool. He is just starting to build with little Legos and loves to make things with Charlie.

He worked on his foam ABC puzzle, hammering in the letters.

This is only the 2nd time that he has done the 1:1 cards and I was really impressed with how well he did this time.

He helped empty the dryer. He LOVES to clean and do laundry :)

Charlie helped him work on a new "to him" puzzle. Team work and helping little brother at its best!

Working on the Letter H glue and cut project. Not one of our best moments of school, but he finished it and moved on to his ABC's as he calls them (Starfall.com) and was a happy camper again.

Tommy asks to do ABC's every.single.day. And he would literally do it for a whole afternoon if I let him, which I don't. I limit it to about 20-30 minutes. But I am really impressed with how quickly he has mastered the basic computer skills on both the laptop and the PC. Here he was matching the shapes and spelling words. He doesn't "know" how to spell the words but is learning the letters and their sounds etc.


Playdough Mat, finishing up letter L

L is for Lion

This is the book that we are using for RRSP. I love this book and how it applies scripture verses to every day scenarios in a manner that little kids can easily grasp.

5 Senses Experiments with Charlie

Touch

Taste...too funny!

T-ball with Daddy....he is going to be a great athlete someday!

Painting his papermache pumpkin

Working together with Charlie to make the color orange

I had him mix red and yellow paint in a ziploc bag to make orange. He really liked doing this, squishing it with his hands and seeing the colors mix.

We also spent a good deal of time outside this week. I am taking full advantage of the mild, yet wet weather we are having, even if it means we do less school. I know that in a few short weeks the weather will change and we will be able to spend less time out for long periods of time. Here Tommy is making "hot cocoa" out of mud and water...yum!

Tommy is really doing great with his school. He is quickly learning to recognize all the letters of the alphabet, can sing the entire ABC song, can count to 20 and we are working number recognition as well. We are focusing primarily on ABCs and numbers right now. Reading lots of books and just having fun. He is so eager to learn and be like his big brother Charlie!

Homeschool: Kindergarten week 5

Charlie making a kite out of a leaf, string and a stick. We love his creativity!

We are back into the swing of things, finally!

Charlie worked on his basic subjects, Math, Phonics, and LA. We also did a few science lessons, supplemental hours in Health a handful of fun projects.

Spelling words with Boggle Jr.

Making mazes with marker tops

Crafty ABC: L is for Lion

Charlie is reading!! I am so proud! He has read his level 1 Phonics book to me almost every night for the last week. It has basic CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words in them like, Sam, Pam, mat, bat etc. They also contain a handful of sight words that he is easily memorizing. Did I say I was really proud of him???? :) This week we will move on to the next book of the series. I plan to keep it slow going and FUN!!! I also want to pick up some phonics/reading games and books at the library on subjects that he is interested in.

We finished our paper mache pumpkins. We all just loved this project!

I took plastic grocery bags and made a bunch into a ball. Then I took yarn and tied it around the bags to make the sections of the pumpkin. Afterward, the kids took toilet paper and dipped it into a mixture of Elmer's glue and water to make a papermache. They layered the toilet paper on the pumpkin until the entire surface area was covered. It took about 2 full days for the pumpkins to dry and then the kids painted their pumpkins.

Before we painted them though we did a lesson on mixing paint. We didn't have any orange paint so we made our own.

I first drew two overlapping circles on a piece of paper and put a dot of yellow on the far end of one circle and a dot of red paint on the far end of the other circle. I had the boys spread their color around the circle and then meet and mix together in the overlapping section of the circles to make orange. It was a great hands on way for them to see the colors mix and to work together to do it.

I also put 2 dots of paint, one red and one yellow in a plastic bag and had them squish the bag and mash it until they mixed the colors together to make orange.

We did a lesson on our 5 senses using the book

We put different things in a bag, had the kids close their eyes and try to identify the objects but just using their sense of touch. We did the same thing for sense of taste and had them taste different foods and then tell me if it was salty, sour, sweet etc.


Charlie tasting his lime and feeling in the bag for items.

The boys also spent last Saturday at our local hospital taking a Sibling class since they will both be big brothers here shortly. We spent about 2 hours, touring the hospital, learning how to care for a baby, diaper and hold a baby, we watched a few videos, picked out a project to make at home, had a snack and looked at pictures of new babies. Our boys had the whole room laughing when they looked at a picture of an African American baby boy and asked why his penis was black....and then looked at a naked picture of a baby girl and asked where her penis was. The teacher (who was nice enough but clearly NOT a teacher for small children) quickly flipped through the remaining naked pictures of the babies and moved right along. Ha ha!

Charlie also did several lessons on Study Island that is a review computer site for our K12 curriculum. It has games, worksheets and then quizzes the kids on what they have learned. He really enjoys working on the computer.

The boys worked together to build lego trains and trucks. Charlie also helped Tommy learn how to put a new puzzle together. I encourage them to do an activity a day together to "help" one another and do team work.


I am also having the boys help out in daily chores. Charlie was asked to clean the base boards on the first floor. He ended up doing ALL of the base boards in the house!!!!


Another great week under our belts!

Homeschool: Kindergarten week 4

We have "officially" been homeschooling Charlie for a month now. It has gone really well, despite having a "set schedule" like I would like to have. We are still supplementing the curriculum and tailoring the lessons more to Charlie and his knowledge of subjects. I am still enjoying having the bulk of the lessons prepared for me and now able to focus my attention more on the planning of the "fun" activities that we do.

We have certainly had our moments of refocusing, discipline, and difficulties dealing with a younger sibling in the mix. However, we are learning what works best and when is the best time to do certain subjects. I might prefer to get everything done in the morning in one sitting, but I know that doesn't necessarily work for Charlie. For example, his phonics lessons are best accomplished on the couch with just the two of us working together and no other distractions. Math, science, handwriting and LA can be done at any time and with little brother present. It is all about learning what works for this season in our life.

This week we played catch up a bit after spending last week with family down in the country, celebrating our beloved Grandma's life. We took things easy and did what we could. It was nice to be home and getting back to our haphazard schedule.

Charlie completed the basic lessons, Math, Science, Phonics and LA. And we were able to add in a few other fun things along the way.

He LOVES math and is adding and subtracting up a storm. He is even writing out math problems in his art work...too funny! So we pulled out the dominoes for some domino math.
We did our crafty letter of the week, L is for Lion.

Played dress up

And did lots of drawing of maps.

We also made paper mache pumpkins out of garbage bags and toilet paper

and made pumpkin spice cookies.

Homeschool: Kindergarten week 3

(Charlie making a collage of drawn trains and train pictures he cut out of magazines)

Charlie had another good week of school. He continues to do well with his lessons. I am hoping that within a few weeks of having the baby that we will be able to settle into a daily schedule, for now we are doing school between my doctors appointments etc. So sometimes we are doing school in the morning (which seems to work best for us), during naps (Charlie is usually pretty tired by then and needs a rest as well, not the best time for school) or after naps (which works fine, but Mama is low on steam by then). Mornings seem to be our "good" time of the day for all of us, so we try to sneak school in then whenever we can.

Charlie continued on with his core lessons of Language Arts, Phonics and Math. Charlie also took the KRAL test this week and one online session with his K class.

We have gone back to Explode The Code for Charlie's handwriting practice as well as supplemental phonics. He really enjoys these workbooks far more then the Handwriting without Tears program...which literally brought us both to tears at one point :)

For fun we made Mummy Pizzas for lunch. I used toasted English Muffins, spaghetti sauce, pepperoni, sliced string cheese and grapes (for the eyes). The kids loved them and ate them right up!


One of the craft projects that we did this week was make suncatcher leaves using contact paper and tissue paper. Both boys loved doing this project. Charlie started off by making a pattern with the different color paper and then dumped a bunch of tissue paper over them to fill in the spaces. Tommy placed piece by piece and refused any help. His attention span these days is incredible. I have had both friends and his speech therapist comment on how amazing it is.

After the boys placed the paper down, they rolled out the air bubbles and then I sent them out to the backyard to find as many types of leaves as they could. Charlie brought back 4 different leaf styles that I then traced and cut out of their mosaic tissue paper creations. Daddy and Charlie later identified what kind of trees the leaves came from.

Charlie also did 2 different art pieces this week using pastels, which was his first go with them and he really enjoyed using them. So much in fact that I had to cut him off after he completed 2 art pieces one right after the other. My friend Susana, over at Our Homeschool Fun, introduced me to an amazing new art site for kids. I allowed Charlie to pick out one of the fall art projects from Art Projects for Kids and use his pastels for the first time. He choose the How to Draw a Fall Tree project.
This was the first time I had assigned him to look at a something and then draw what he saw. I think that he did a great job. He smudged the pastels with his fingers and tried to blend colors together to make the clouds. I also sat with Charlie and drew the same picture. We talked about how each of us was looking at the same inspiration picture and yet our pictures were very different and why that was.


Charlie had such a great time that he begged to make another drawing. This time he choose The Symbols of the Season project.

The only thing I made sure that he did was divide the paper up into the 4 boxes. I was really kind of surprised at how with this picture he added more detail and paid closer attention to the actual inspirational picture. He added the lines for the pumpkin and his eggplant had great resemblance to the other picture.


We did a lot of fun things this week alongside our normal studies. However,it was a hard week in terms of scheduling everything we needed and wanted to do. The 4 weekly doctor appointments are truly putting a damper on all the extracurricular activities and fun projects that I would like to do and had planned for the boys. We have had to withdraw the boys from the homeschooling co-op that meets on Mondays for this semester. It just wasn't possible to make it on Mondays until the following session that starts in January. I am really bummed about this (thankfully I hadn't talked about it too much with the boys!), but I know that this is a short season in our lives and in a few months we will be settling into a new routine and will be able to add more back into our daily lives.