Refined Metals Academy

TOS Review: Kinderbach

2012-01-27T18:55:00.001-08:00

Kinderbach is a video session program that uses fun characters to teach children how to play the piano, they offer their videos online, on DVD or even vieweable on your IPad. Kinderbach is set up into weekly lessons with 4 sessions per week, that your child can go through at his or her own pace. The sessions are kept relatively short (10 minutes or less most of the time). They use fun characters to introduce notes and musical concepts, and promote active participation (like clapping along or moving around) from the viewer.

In addition to the video sessions there are printable books and that some weeks have coloring pages, worksheets or games to go along with them. Obviously having such a multi-sensory approach is crucial to teaching piano skills and helping the child retain what he is taught. Kinderbach is a creative and inexpensive way to expose your child to piano and learning musical skills, recommended for ages 2-7.

According to Kinderbach’s website “The best time to learn a language or to begin playing a musical instrument is 3 - 6 years of age.”

We enjoyed playing around with this program and learning in the process!!

To Purchase:

To try a free trial go here to sign up

Monthly Online Option: $19.99
Yearly Online Option: $95.88
Single-level DVD: $40.45
DVD bundle options available as well

Kinderbach offers a NO RISK 30 Day Money Back Guarantee! Which makes trying their product out much easier.

To See What Others are Saying Visit the TOS Crew Blog.

Disclaimer: I received complimentary access to the video sessions as part of my involvement with the TOS Crew the opinions expressed are my own.

(Week 22): Adventures Week 18

2012-01-23T21:05:00.001-08:00

State Studies: Tennessee

We reviewed all of our states up to this point. Alexa is working, simply on identifying and placing where Wisconsin is on the map, while Treyton is reviewing most of the states that he’s learned this year and last.

We added in Tennessee this week. Treyton already knew Tennessee which was nice, while he’s still mastering the older ones.

Eli Whitney: We also learned about Eli Whitney this week.

We placed him on our timeline, I never realized that Eli Whitney lived in/near the time of the Revolutionary war.

Coincidently, a few weeks ago my mom had given me a cotton blossom from my Grandma’s things. It was fully intact, and had seeds in it, which the kids were able to identify easily.

Because I didn’t want to destroy my own cotton blossom, we went ahead and made our own cotton with cotton swabs and tiny pieces of paper. Treyton loved the challenge of removing the “seeds”, and was really excited about his pile of seeds Alexa however was not as big of a fan… except the cutting the paper part :)

Treyton made a notebooking page for Eli Whitney. All week, the most important thing Treyton thought Eli Whitney did was make nails. :) I kept telling him it was the cotton gin that made us know who Eli Whitney was, but I’m not sure if he ever really got it. ;)

Alexa made one, too – I obviously wrote her narration, and she drew a picture of Whitney.

Read-Alouds:

“A Band of Angels” by Deborah Hopkins
“The Inventions of Eli Whitney: by Holly Cefrey

Reading:

Treyton read “Daniel’s Duck” this week on his own. He really enjoyed it, and even told Tim what the book was about. He also read “Eat” – a book about different types of animals and bugs eating styles and strange diets.

Treyton is becoming a more confident reader every week, he has always loved reading to Alexa, but I am noticing him doing it more and more…. not much warms my heart more :)

Math: Subtraction to 100

Treyton strengthened his subtraction skills this week, while working on subtraction up to 100. He was not really understanding my explanation of subtraction on his own, but once he started writing the problems himself he really seemed to “get it” and just took off with it. I am really proud of him and his efforts to understand math so well.

(Week 21) Adventures Week 17: Wilderness Road & Kentucky

2012-01-23T18:06:00.000-08:00

We were lucky enough to have my niece Shayla staying with for a week, who did school with us. It was so much fun for all of the kids, and somehow, I’m not sure how, but we managed to get more school done with an extra kid, than when it’s just my three blessings.

(Side Note: my camera broke this week so I have no pictures from during the week only the very beginning and the very end, since my mother in law was gracious enough to let me try hers out while we’re shopping for a new one).

Bible

I have Treyton working on memorizing the books of the Old Testament now. It’s a part of his AWANA program, it’s going to be a while before he needs it memorized, but I thought we would start it now. So far he’s gotten to 1 & 2 Chronicles.

American History and States

We read the story of a family who traveled the Wilderness Road to Kentucky in our American Pioneers and Patriots book. Every story we read in this book makes me like it more. Seriously, the stories are adorable and they are able to make history really come alive for the kids.

In the first story we read, we learned how they made their clothes, from shearing the sheep, to making their own yarn to actually sewing the fabric. It’s amazing the process they went through back then, that we completely take for granted with our drawers full of clothes, some we don’t even wear. Coincidently, we also read about Sheep Shearing in Farmer Boy.

This week for our state studies we learned about the state of Kentucky. Treyton loved the Cardinal state bird, he said he wished it was ours :)

Spelling

We’re on step 3 in level 2 of All About Spelling. We learned about using the level y at the end of words instead of i. This was a pretty easy level for Treyton and he breezed right through it. (I love these weeks).

Read Alouds (Treyton & Alexa)

A Regular Rolling Noah by George Ella Lyon
Meet the Drakes on the Kentucky Frontier by Loeper
Mammoth Cave by Brad Burnham

Math

We continued to work on our addition and subtraction flashcards, and through his math book completing subtraction under 100. He’s doing great. As we’re getting back into the swing of school his math skills are significantly improving, and by improving I mean recalling basic math facts. Which is a big relief, I was getting a little worried that he may have forgotten them all. :)

Language Arts

We started Explode the Code book 3, which focuses on long vowel sounds, adding a silent e at the end of a word. This is mostly review for Treyton, so he’s completed 2 lessons this week without much help from me. I like that we are doing a little bit more phonics work, sometimes Treyton tries to take short-cuts when reading, all this review is teaching him to slow down a bit.

I made some printable –ed word flash cards (planted, worked, jumped, etc.) and then made three columns (d, t, and ed). We talked about when a word ends in –ed it could make one of these three sounds, as he read the words he sorted the three words into one of the columns.

In Language Lessons we are learning about subjects, predicates, nouns and verbs. Individually he does good “worksheet work” but now that we’re trying to distinguish them a little bit, it’s a little bit tougher for him. The problem, like with most problem-areas for Treyton is the word-recall and not a lack of knowledge. He struggles remembering words/names, so he may “learn it” but without the ability to remember the word “subject” the knowledge doesn’t do him much good. With lots of repetition he eventually learns what he needs to learn, and so that’s the plan… repeating these concepts, often so he can remember them. I may want to slow down a little bit and find some hands-on, game like things to ensure mastery.

Snow Days

Finally we got a little bit of snow this week for the kids to play in. They spent every day outside this week. Strangely enough Wednesday was 40 degrees, Thursday it was snowing, so it was quite the swing in temperature and playing experience.

(Here is Treyton “warming up” both himself and the outdoors) All bundled up….

… and working hard.

Next week is Eli Whitney and Tennessee….

Letter Bb: Bugs & Butterflies

2012-01-16T19:43:00.001-08:00

Alexa is LOVING LOVING LOVING her new preschool program. I thought that she would, but you know there is always that possibility. I am so happy that she’s not only enjoying it but learning a lot.

She learned the letter B this week, the hardest thing we covered was writing the letter b, she really struggled, but by the end of the week she was a pro!

(Side Note: my camera broke this week so we have very few pictures :()

Letter Activities

We used a lot of Confession of a Homeschooler’s printables this week. She did the letter search, pre-writing practice pages, matching upper and lower case Bbs.

Alexa is loving the Explode the Code book a. She grabs it first thing in the morning to start working on it. I think it makes her feel like a big girl.

Read-Alouds

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
Little Star
Jesus Loves Me
Sky Boys
If I Were a Ballerina

Writing her Name

Alexa started writing her name on her own this week without tracing. She’s writing it backwards (AXELA) so we started practicing writing it right to left.

We also started writing the letter x, a little bit more, because her’s looks more like a t than an x. The diagonal line is a little tough for her.

Beading

Alexa loves beading. We talked about how it started with the letter B, and she was off. She made three necklaces this week.

Cranium Cariboo Island

Alexa’s favorite game, she refers to “the Island game”. It is a letter, shape and number game, Alexa loves to play it with others or even by herself.

Math

I have been having Alexa do dot-to-dots up to 20, she’s getting pretty good at them. At first she would just draw the line where she thought they went, and now she is getting better at paying attention to what she’s doing and actually counting.

She liked putting Erica’s butterfly numbers (1-10) in order. Even though I had printed them I was actually going to skip the activity until she started begging me to do them… of course she got to do it.

Snow Day

We finally got some snow this week and the kids have loved playing in it and shoveling.

Butterfly Sizes

Butterfly Puzzle

Busy Farm Game This game is a little simple for Alexa, but she still likes it. I add in some of my own directions to make it more to her level.

Next week… the letter Mm.

Letter F & The Story of Jonah

2012-01-06T21:19:00.001-08:00

This week Alexa started her “new” preschool program. It was AWESOME, the only negative was that I couldn’t seem to come up with enough – and I came up with A LOT! Explode the Code

The ETC workbook went even better than I though. Alexa feels like such a big girl doing them and she loves showing off her work to dad at the end of the day.

Find the letter Ff

Alexa has been doing these worksheets from Confessions for a while and has really liked them, so I decided to keep doing them even though I think she’s got it down pretty well.

Letter F says /f/

I really emphasized the sounds of the letter Ff this week – I used Homeschool Creation’s Alphabet Cut and Paste page for the letter f, to give her some hands-on practice. I had her point to each picture, say what it was and tell me what sound and letter it started with. Our ETC workbook also has some practice with this, so by the end of the week, I think she thought she knew ALL of the /f/ words. :)

File Folder Games (Color Matching)

Alexa LOVES the file folder games I made for her, she wants to do them every day. I am trying to hold on to a few so that they stay appealing to her, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to. (Numbers 1-20, put them in order)

(Shape Matching)

Jonah and the Big Fish

We read the story of Jonah this week, which Alexa was not well acquainted with yet. Unlike Treyton, she needs to hear Bible stories SEVERAL times before she remembers it, which is great, because we like reading them :) After reading the story, I had a small craft for her to do, but come to find out all three of the kids wanted to do it – so I quickly cut out enough fish and Jonah’s for all of them out of cardstock. I love watching how different and unique they all are in their crafts. Audrey still hard to tell, because of her age, but she has her own method of working that’s her very own. I love homeschooling… :)

For the craft, I cut out two pieces of cardstock for each project, had the kids paint one side of each fish. We then partially stapled them together, stuffed in some tissue paper to give it some “body” and cut out “little Jonah’s” which the kids pretended the fish would swallow and spit back up.

Treyton went with the more colorful, random spotted style with his fish, while Alexa neatly striped her fish with specific color choices, and Audrey laid it on nice and thick, in smaller sections :)

Sort Upper and Lower Case Ffs (Confessions)

Build a Letter

Fish Patterns (from Confessions)

Alexa is not so great with the patterns, but with a little bit of help, she is slowly getting it. I think next week (for the letter B) I’m going to try to use beads…. Writing Numbers

I wanted Alexa to start learning to write her numbers as well, at least tracing them, this week we worked on number 1 and 2. She loves writing, so this was an easy filler for her after she finished everything else I had for the day.

F is for Fingerprints

F is for Fish (Tanagrams)

Number Bingo

I focused on numbers 11-20, as she is just now learning to recognize those numbers. This was a stretch for her, but I think I will keep it up for a few weeks (at least), because she did enjoy it and asked for more.

Writing the Letter Ff

One of the main areas of focus for Alexa this semester is learning to write her letters. We adjusted slowly into this – Alexa would trace the letter F f, every day before writing it.

Then she practiced her pre-writing skills, and straight lines, and then traced the letter to learn the process of writing this letter, and finally on to writing the actual letter with no assistance. So proud of her good work!!

A B Seas Game

We played the AB Seas game, where you go fishing for the alphabet fish. We would name, make the sound of the letter and then match to it’s lower case letter.

Rainbow Fish

We read several Rainbow Fish books this week, that Alexa really enjoyed.

She made her own rainbow fish from this DLTK printable and different colored tissue paper (which she cut herself).

It turned out really cute.

Tot School for Audrey (22 months)

Audrey is becoming more and more interested in school, but does not prefer to do anything I direct her towards – she only wants to do what Alexa or Treyton are doing.

I did manage to entertain her for about 3 minutes with the Melissa and Doug Shape Puzzles. She loves do-a-dots and coloring, so I’m doing the best I can to entertain her with those things, because when she’s not entertained…. it doesn’t go well…. for any of us. Of course, I’m not giving up, we have lots of toys and games to keep her busy, but if the “big kids” are at the table working on “school” no matter how awesome the toy is, it just doesn’t cut it.

(Week 20) MFW Week 16: Rhode Island, Vermont and Daniel Boone

2012-01-06T19:51:00.001-08:00

We learned two new states this week: Rhode Island and Vermont. We kept our studies basic besides spending a little bit more time learning about maple syrup (and of course enjoying a little taste test) which Vermont is known for.

Syrup Videos

When we learned about Vermont being known for maple syrup, we were also reading about Almanzo and his dad collecting maple sap and boiling it down for sugar and syrup. I found some fun maple sap collecting and syrup making videos which were very informative to watch. I’m actually inspired to try and make some syrup of our own, during the sap season (whenever that is :)).

Daniel Boone

Treyton was really interested in Daniel Boone this week. I think it helped that his friend H, has talked to Treyton about him before, I guess he watches some Daniel Boone show (…?).

Knowing that there was some kids show out there, I decided to search for a youtube video – I found this one – Treyton and Alexa LOVED it. They watched it every day.

In addition to American Pioneers and Patriots and the Story of Us, I found this Daniel Boone book at the library. This one was a fun one. After I explained to Treyton what exaggeration was, he had a lot of fun picking out the parts of the book he thought might actually be true and what might be an exaggeration.

My Dad and Me Book

On Tuesday night Tim has Bible Study. This week Treyton really struggled with Tim being gone. Several times he mentioned how much he missed him when he was gone, then he came up with the idea of making a book. He wanted to make a book about his dad, that he could look at whenever he was away at work or Bible study. I thought it was a really sweet idea, so the next day we started working on it.

I pulled out some recent and older pictures of the two of them together as well as a few pictures of Tim by himself. Then we went through a simple writing process discussing his possible audience, the importance of explaining why he was writing this book, and what the book was all about.

I asked him what types of things he wanted to put in this book – which I wrote on pieces of scrap paper, then I had Treyton put them in the order he wanted to put them in his book…. Finally, we got started on the actual book.

I explained to Treyton what a title was and we made one for the book cover.

For the first 6 pages (day 1), I had Treyton word and write everything himself, without me writing it and him copying. He doesn’t do this a lot, as it can easily frustrate him, so we took it slow and he far exceeded my expectations.

He isn’t quite finished with his book yet, so I’ll be posting more pictures next week as well.

Phonics: Blends

We focused on learning blends this week, in both our All About Spelling, Level 2 and Explode the Code book 2. After focusing this week so extensively on consonant blends, I have decided to skip the rest of ETC book 2, and we will start book 3 next week. Treyton did really well with the blends, and more than the consonant blends he seems to struggle more with distinguishing the single short vowel sound, which I’m not sure what to do about.

For example, spend – he would spell spind. It doesn’t help that I don’t say my /e/ and /i/ very differently, so I try to emphasize the /e/ better, but then it kind of gives it away (I’m not so subtle) ;)

Either way, I’m proud of the progress he made with the blends in this past week.

Farmer Boy: Planted Potatoes

In addition to the syrup video we watched this week, Treyton also wondered about growing potatoes, like Almanzo’s family.

Lucky for him, sitting in our pantry, just waiting for something better to do than sprouting in the dark were some small red potatoes.

We cut a potato in half, and planted them both in a planter.

Math

This week we introduced subtraction of numbers between 1-100. At first we did simple problems like 58-5=, which he did fine with. But then we stepped up to 55-8=, type problems. Once we did the harder problems he stalled in a major way. It seems as though he forgot many of his (1-20) subtraction math facts over our extended Christmas break…. no biggie, I just made him some fancy flashcards and put them in a book for us to do some fun review with.

As he answers the addition and math facts (up to 20), he gets to put a sticker on the flashcard (HUGE incentive for him). Within two days of this extra practice, he was right back to where he was in his math textbook.

I-Pad

I got an I-Pad for Christmas, which the kids are digging in a major way. They love watching PBS videos, playing the games and watching the many education youtube videos I pull up for them…. even Audrey loves it :) This was the fullest week of school we’ve had in a long while, it feels so good to be getting back to a routine. Sadly, next week we will be back to a some what unpredictable schedule, as my sister is scheduled to have a C-Section on Monday, which I am going to be there for, and then I may have my niece come and stay with us for part of the week as well, either way, it’s going to be a busy week – but we still plan on doing school…. hopefully.

What’s Next for Alexa?

2012-01-05T18:35:00.001-08:00

We are a week past being halfway through our school year. As I sat down to plan for the second half of the year, I needed to evaluate what Alexa has learned, thus far, and what my goals were for her during the rest of the year in order to properly plan for her in the upcoming semesters.

Currently Knows:

Recognizes most of her letters upper and lower case
Knows most of their sounds consistently
Can count rote to 14 – can put numbers 1-10 in order easily
Recognizes basic shapes including: triangle, square, heart, diamond, circle, rectangle and oval
Cuts very well with scissors
Can glue and follow simple craft instruction easily
- She hardly needs (or wants) help when assembling simple paper crafts
Understands general cause and effect
Can sort by size, color and shape
Can memorize verses up to 7 or 8 words with reference
Tells a story by looking at a picture
Can match two like pictures in a set of three
Can spot simple differences in two like pictures
Can put like items together (example: rain and umbrella, boot and mittens) out of three.

For the second half of preschool I plan on focusing on the following:

Writing letters – capital and lower case
Writing her first and last name without help
Count by rote to 20 – put numbers 1-20 in order easily
Recognize more complex shapes: hexagon, pentagon, octagon
Identify letter sounds at the beginning and end of the words
Listen to a story without interrupting
Identify rhyming words
Learn more Bible Stories
Complete simple patterns
Match upper and lower letters easily
- She may already know this, but I’m not sure
Make simple predictions
Ordinal numbers first-fifth
Learn to recognize her state (Wisconsin)
- If she can get this, I would love for her to recognize 5 states on a US Map at the end of the year, if it doesn’t prove to be too difficult for her

When I ask Alexa what her favorite thing to do in school is she says, she likes to play games. So I have made lots of file folder games for her to play with me as well as on her own. I will be switching her over to a workbox system (which I will try to post on later) where I plan on incorporating the other learning games we have on a more regular basis.

She says she prefers games to crafts and writing to reading, which seems pretty accurate. Though I have to say – she seems to love crafts too. She is independent, and prefers to learn on her own, compared to me “hanging over her shoulder” too much. She does like my attention, but does not like my interference, if that makes sense? Playing games, having fun and keeping school as unstructured as I can seems to be the best teaching approach with her.

Right-Brained

Alexa has always been a natural, easy learner, which has been a great blessing but I wanted to be sure that I still made a point to reach and teach her where she was to keep school fun and personal. I really wanted to find the approach that would work best for her, not just trying to use what I used with Treyton. During my research I learned that Alexa is a right-brained dominant thinker.

Here are some of the right-brain dominant characteristics & learning tips that I identified from/for her:

Strong music appreciation

Learns well with some music in the background though you have to be careful that it’s not too distracting as right-brainers tend to lose focus easily

Expresses feelings and emotion easily

when they feel like they’re in a safe environment

Spontaneous

They do not prefer routine and can sometimes be hindered by one
Usually late to things

Creative
Strong relationships
Often have a song-like tone to their voice (this is sooo Alexa)
Looks at (and can see) the big picture rather than pieces
Can have difficulty completely completing tasks
Loves sharing feelings

They usually talk a lot but in short scattered thoughts

Prefers to move while learning
Impulsive

This has helped me a lot plan an individualized approach for Alexa’s schooling this upcoming semester.

Curriculum and Ideas

I have purchased the Explode the Code books a, b and c for Alexa to use as her “core” curriculum. We are going to do a “letter of the week” style approach as we go through the books. I will be adding in Confessions of a Homeschoolers printables. ETC focuses on the consonants in these three books, which means Alexa will have 21 more weeks of school (which will probably get shortened at the end as we combine some of the final letters, like I did with Treyton).

In the ETC books, she will learn how to write the letters, get lots of letter sound practice as well as simple direction-following practice. I really liked these books when Treyton went through them, and I know that Alexa will like them as well.

For math we will primarily be using the file folder and board games as well as a few worksheets.

Additional Games & Toys

A B Seas by Discovery Toys

Busy Farm by Discovery Toys

Stacking Blocks

Alphabet Puzzle

Number Puzzle

Alphabet Bingo

Play-Doh & Cutters

Geoboard

Cuisenaire Rods & Alphabet Workbook

Melissa & Doug Magnetic Pattern Blocks

Uno

Dominos

What About FIAR?

I am really looking forward to our next semester. I am going to add in as many FIAR books as I can as we go through the letters, but I’m not going to be focusing on them as much as I have this past semester, mostly because she just isn’t as interested in the stories right now as she was before.

I’ve always believed teaching the child where he/she is at, and right now, for Alexa, it’s not with story-time.

Looking Forward

I am excited for the next half of our school year. I have planned in detail the next 6 weeks, and am waiting to see how this all goes before I plan too much more.

Week 19 (Adventures Week 15): New Hampshire, Virginia, New York and North Carolina

2011-12-28T21:05:00.001-08:00

Books We Read:

The Statue of Liberty by Lucille Recht Penner
My New York by Kathy Jakobsen
The Story of the Statue of Liberty by Betsy & Giulio Maestro
Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall
G is for Granite: A New Hampshire Alphabet by Marie Harris

We went through our state books and atlases with each state, but otherwise we kept it really simple this week as it was the week before Christmas. Which was a nice change of pace.

Statue of Liberty:

Treyton was really interested in the Statue of Liberty this week – we measured different parts of our body and compared it to Liberty. Liberty’s nose is 4 ft. 6 in. long, her mouth is 3 ft wide. When Treyton colored the picture of the Statue of Liberty he had me write the measurements on there so he could remember. Alexa did a statue of liberty dot-to-dot, she just started doing these, and seems to like them.

State Pages:

Treyton continues to do state pages for each of the states, as well as his passport, coloring page and state cards (in order).

(New Hampshire)

(Virginia)

(North Carolina)

(New York)

I really admire how hard Treyton works to add his own creativity to his state pages. He likes routine and to know the way he’s supposed to do something. Creating pages like this with their own unique style and twist for each state, but having the same basic pieces is exactly the kind of activity Treyton does well with. He knows what is expected and he takes the initiative to do it.

Farmer’s Boy:

We started reading Farmer’s Boy again this week, I wasn’t sure if we were going to be able to finish it or not because it was a little tough to read with all three kids during story time, the girls really don’t pay attention during it, and cause quite the disturbance. However, Treyton begs to read it so we are. Next week, when we actually are a little more motivated with school, I am going to ask Treyton if he would like to complete the lapbook I found on Homeschool Share.

Spelling:

We finished Level 1 in All About Spelling, and moved on to Level 2. Treyton was SUPER pumped about his accomplishment, he’s been marking off his chart step by step looking forward to the finish.

Reading:

He insist on continuing to read the Magic Tree House books, though I was willing to back off of them a little bit after he finished the Revolutionary War (#22). I think they are just a little too tough for him yet, but I don’t think he’s really willing to admit it, so I’m going to let him continue to read them and just offer a little more assistance which he doesn’t seem to mind.

He did discover that the series is written with a book order. I tried to explain that you don’t have to read them in the actual numerical order, but pick which topics you liked. He’d have none of that talk. So we went to Barnes and Noble and picked out the first 5 in the series, to add to his Reading Chart reward basket. He will be starting with book 1 next week :) (He is so his mother’s child).

See You Next Year!

I had planned to do school next week (the week between Christmas and New Years) but we got the stomach flu – AGAIN – so it seems best to just wait until next year to start up again.

Hope you all have a Happy New Year, and we’ll see you next year!

Artist Study: Claude Monet

2011-12-14T20:19:00.001-08:00

Paintings Studied

The Water Lily Pond

Impression Sunrise

Waterlillies

Red Poppies at Argenteuil

La Japonaise

Quotes

"What could be said about me -- a man to whom only his painting matters? And of course his garden and his flowers as well."

Activities We Did

Impression Sunrise Re-Creation

We attempted to recreate the Impression Sunrise on canvas with oil paints – we talked about how these paints are different than paints we’ve used before, they take a long time to dry (which we saw first hand after 24 hours and they weren’t dry AT ALL) and are hard to clean. We also don’t normally paint on canvas, but Claude Monet did, so we talked about the difference between canvas and paper.

Treyton rushed through it a little bit after I warned him about getting it on his skin. That it would be hard to get off: for my “clean kid” this is not his idea of a good time :) But it turned out nice I think.

I painted it too – I really enjoy doing the artist recreations.

For the record, we will not be using oil paints again for a long, long time (if ever) – I still have blue paint in my sink I can’t get out!

The Water Lily Pond – Bridge I got this idea from the crafty classroom.

Treyton was very methodical with the entire process, he had a reason for every color he used and how he used it. I love to watch his creative juices flowing.

Treyton’s project, drying:

Alexa loves painting, and really enjoyed this activity, but no matter how many times i asked her, she would not cover the entire page with paint :) Needless to say, it didn’t reveal much of a bridge…. but she had a lot of fun. Treyton and I’s finished projects. Books

We read lots of books this time, while studying Monet.

Katie Meets the Impressionists by James Mayhew (not just about Claude Monet)

Katie and the Waterlily Pond by James Mayhew

The Magical Garden of Claude Monet (Treyton’s favorite) by Laurence Anholt

What Makes a Monet a Monet (We didn’t read the entire, but used for pictures and I skimmed a few pages with Treyton)

Claude Monet the Painter Who Stopped the Trains by P.I. Maltbie (haven’t read yet but we will)

Usborne First Book of Art (pages 38-39)

Usborne the Children’s Book of Art (pages 28-29)

Spot the Difference: Art Masterpiece Mysteries (page 40-41)

Links & Resources

Claude Monet Craft @ The Crafty Classroom

Monet Coloring Page @ Enchanted Learning

Olga’s Gallery of Monet Paintings (over 200)

Monet Artist Study on Squidoo

TOS Crew: The World’s Greatest Stories

2011-12-14T19:56:00.001-08:00

Product Description:

A series of Bible story CDs taken directly from scripture for children. Creating a fun, easy-to-listen to story time for children by causing fun changes with his voice. Parents can choose from either KJV or NIV. There are currently 6 Volumes available:

The Prophets
The Life of Christ
Beginnings
Joshua & Esther
Joseph & His Brothers
Defeating Giants

Product Review:

My kids are just starting to get into listening to stories on CDs, so when given the chance to review the World’s Greatest Stories I jumped on it! What better stories to listen to than scripture?

Treyton thoroughly enjoyed listening to these CDs. By changing his voice at different times, the speaker really kept his interest. He has listened to this CD over and over.

As a teacher and even more particularly a parent, I love the fact that these stories are not altered in any way but taken directly from scripture.

These are great quiet and travel time activities for kids (or adults) of any age. This is a great product!

To purchase your own or listen to a sample visit the Worlds Greatest Stories online. Each volume cost $7.95 each.

To see what others are saying visit the TOS Crew Blog.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary CD for the purpose of my review, as an affiliate of the TOS Crew, the opinions expressed are my own.

MFW Co-op: Pumpkins

2011-12-14T17:17:00.001-08:00

Last month we studied pumpkins with our co-op. Ms. Amanda planned lots of fun activities.

She had the kids make paper pumpkins. They started by marble painting the paper for their pumpkins. After they dried, we cut them into strips, attached brads on one end, and pipe cleaners on the other end for a stem and leaf.

Pumpkin Life Cycle

My favorite activity was a life cycle pumpkin the kids made. Amanda printed off the life cycle of a pumpkins (there were 6 circles with the different stages).

The kids colored them, cut them out and then attached them in order to a piece of yarn which they then inserted into a paper pumpkin. Measuring Pumpkins

The kids each got to cut yarn the length they thought they needed to wrap around a small pumpkin and a large pumpkin. It was a great estimating game for the kids.

Preschool Group

The preschoolers read a pumpkin book. The got to wash their own little pumpkins in water. They then made pumpkin prints. And decorated their pumpkins with foam stickers. I’m thinking that I might be missing a few activities, but it was several weeks ago that we actually had this co-op and I haven’t had time to write the post, I’m going off my memory (not my best asset) and the pictures I took.

Week 18: Thanksgiving

2011-11-30T18:51:00.001-08:00

Cranberry Thanksgiving

To celebrate Thanksgiving we read the book “A Cranberry Thanksgiving” and watched this video on Youtube to go along with it.

To learn more about cranberries we watched Dirty Jobs, the Cranberry Farm episode (Season 3, Episode 11) on netflix, on the recommendation of the Almost Unschoolers blog. We had picked up a bag of fresh cranberries from the store for this week, so I had the kids practice wet harvesting like we saw on the episode using a glass pan and colander.

Next, we talked about why the cranberries floated to the top.

I cut one open and asked the kids if they could see anything on the inside that would make them think that the cranberries would float… after a few guesses, they finally figured out that it was the air pockets that caused them to float.

The kids really enjoyed scooping and playing with the cranberries in the water.

Fine Motor Crannberry Activity

While we had the cranberries out, the kids used a spoon to take one cranberry at a time from the bowl to a bucket. Alexa recalled that it made the same sound that the blueberries made in “Blueberries for Sal.” She filled the entire bucket up!

Treyton was a little bored with this activity, but he filled the bucket.

Worksheets

I printed off several turkey and thanksgiving printables – all of which you can find on my pinterest Thanksgiving board.

Alexa ate it up!! She loves worksheets.

I had some age appropriate ones for each of the older kids.

I wasn’t sure if Alexa could do the color-by-numbers/letters yet, but I think this one was her favorite because she was doing something like Treyton.

Thanksgiving Tree

Every year we make a thanksgiving tree, normally out of the kids handprints. This year we decided to use our Jesse Tree branches and our cricut to make our leaves.

Then the two older kids divided the leaves between them and we wrote down (Treyton wrote his own, I wrote Alexa’s) the things they wanted to thank God for.

After we wrote them all down, I had Treyton cut the strings while Lex and I punched holes in the leaves. We strung them and hung them on the tree. I think it turned out really cute.

Cranberry Sauce

Since we already had the cranberries, we wanted to make our own “secret recipe” just like in our story, so Treyton and I made our very own cranberry sauce, using a few pointers online.

It turned out pretty good.

After we made our sauce, Treyton got pretty creative, and really wanted to try to make his own recipe. He told me he wanted to take a piece of bread, put it in the oven and cover it with our new sauce and bake it. I think it was his attempt at making “cranberry bread”. Which was super creative (and cute). So we did it!!

He was so proud, and Tim did a great job of praising his “work”.

For Thanksgiving we took Treyton’s sauce and put it over cream cheese. It was a huge hit with the family!!

Painting Pumpkins

We love painting around here, so of course, the most natural pumpkin activity we could do is to paint them, right?!?

We had Audrey and Peyton (both 20 months) join in with paper painting. It was a fun time for all! Audrey particularly enjoyed eating the paint. Alexa painted her entire pumpkin, while Treyton painted actual scenes. I love seeing their differences come out in their work.

Shape Scarecrow

I can’t remember where I found this shape scarecrow, but I did it with Alexa sometime during the week, she loved it!!

Thanksgiving Puzzles

It was obviously a pretty relaxed week as we practiced thanking God for His many blessings in our lives and family.

We hope your holiday was just as relaxed!!

TOS Crew: Artistic Pursuits

2011-11-30T17:52:00.001-08:00

I had the opportunity to review the Artistic Pursuits Grades K-3 Book 1: An Introduction to the Visual Arts. Last year some of the TOS Crew had been given the opportunity to review this product, for which I was not selected, so when I found out I was selected this year to review it I was EXTACTIC!!

We love art in our house. I mean, LOVE art – artist study, crafts, creating, drawing, painting, play-doh, you name it and we will at the very least try it, so I was really looking forward to seeing what Artistic Pursuits could offer to our family.

Product Description:

This art program is designed to do 1 lesson a week.

Each lesson is broken down into three main parts – an introduction to the new concept, an example of the concept by a real artist, and finally a chance for the child to use the concept in their own piece of art.

In Book 1, the child learns to use a variety of materials including: ebony pencils, pastel sticks, oil pastels, watercolor crayons, colored paper craft, and self-hardening clay. These supplies the teacher will need to have on hand.

There are three primary sections in this book, learning what artist do, what artist see and exploring ancient art.

To view sample pages of two different lessons you can visit their website.

Product Review

I love, love, love this approach to art. The process of teaching a child a new artistic concept and then showing them a real-life example of it from an actual artist and allowing them to create their own original art work is genius!!

We enjoy artist study in our home, and while I appreciate focusing on a specific artist at a time to help the child remember and form a relationship to the artist, I also appreciate this approach which allows the child to learn the different methods and techniques of art in a rich and rewarding way. The kids and I really enjoyed the lessons that we did. We started (obviously) with lesson 1 where we learned that artist compose. We looked at a picture by Pieter De Hooch call The Courtyard of a House in Delft from 1658.

We then drew a picture of something we had seen in our home that day. We used an ebony pencil for the first time.

I gave Treyton a couple pointers and then we got to work – him on his picture, me on mine – and the pictures turned out really nice. Treyton got really creative and was truly inspired by both the picture he had seen of the artist example, and the fact that I was doing my own drawing. It was not only a great lesson, but a nice time spent together, creating.

I plan on continuing to use this product in our schooling as a primary art program.

To see what others are saying….

visit the TOS Crew blog.

You can purchase this curriculum from their website for $42.95, the supplies needed must be purchased separately.

Disclaimer I received a complimentary copy of this curriculum for the purpose of my review. The opinions expressed are my own.

Week 17 (Adventures Week 14): Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland and South Carolina

2011-11-29T09:21:00.001-08:00

This week we talked about four new states: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland and South Carolina. We had a great week, but I’ll be honest, I wish we weren’t doing so many states at a time, I would love to slow it down a little bit and take just a little bit more time with each state.

We followed a very similar process to the one I explained in my post last week. In addition, Treyton asked to complete his Melissa and Doug United States Floor Puzzle.

We read portions of our weekly books for each state and then did our state passports, state pages and state coloring pages.

I try to find a fun activity to go with each state, to help remember it, but we only did two activities (Massachusetts and South Carolina) this week.

Connecticut

We were supposed to make robin nests on this day but we didn’t have the supplies, so we read a robin book instead.

Massachusetts

We learned from reading “The Boy on Fairfield Street” that Dr. Seuss was originally from Massachusetts. We love Dr. Seuss around here, so we pulled out our Dr. Seuss hat, and played around with that for a while.

Next, we decided to pick one Dr. Seuss book to read. Treyton decided on “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” before reading the book I talked to the kids about what antonyms are, I simplified it to Lexa asking her to try and find two opposites to remember in the story. Since then, Treyton has been so proud, telling me all the time the opposites that he finds. He forgets the word “antonym”, an calls it “animan”, but at least he’s trying.

After we read all about Dr. Seuss and some of his work, I had Treyton use his imagination to create his own animal. He made a chicken with horns, and names him zak, we made a list of rhyming words and used them to describe him.

Because we loved having our Boston Tea Party so much a few weeks ago, I had the idea of reading our Dr. Seuss stories during “tea” time to celebrate both aspects of Massachusetts. The kids LOVED this idea!!

Maryland

Due to our schedule on this day, we simply completed our state pages for this state.

South Carolina

We learned that South Carolina had a problem with pirates for several years in the 1700s. So I found a few fun pirate ideas.

I found this printable patch and pirate hat which Treyton look adorable wearing!!

Next, we made this free pirate glyph from Mrs. M’s blog. These were such fun additions to school this week, it was hard not too get carried away with the idea of doing an entire pirate unit! (I’m still not totally over the idea…. but we’ll see)

Chapter Book Reading

Treyton’s doing pretty well with his reading, and continues to make his way through the Magic Tree House book. I’m not sure if we will continue on with chapter books or not, as I can see his confidence waning a bit.

AWANA Car

For AWANA this week they had drive-in movie night. The kids were supposed to build their own cardboard box car to watch the movie in.

Daddy helped Treyton build the frame. Treyton decorated it. And mom had the idea to add headlights, which Dad engineered.

Treyton was kind enough to let his little sisters take a spin too!

Farmer Boy – Milk and Popcorn

We’re reading the book Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We did the milk and popcorn experiment that Almanzo did as a kid. If you take a cup of milk and an equal cup of popcorn, you can put the popcorn in the milk without it overflowing out of the container. (Our’s look like it overflowed, because we purposely overflowed it with rocks before we started to show that normally the milk would overflow).

We had a fun week of school, and are really enjoying our state studies. We will be doing some fun Thanksgiving activities next week, but then we will be taking about 3 weeks off of school, so you won’t be seeing as much from us for a while.

We hope you have Happy Holidays!!

FIAR: Make Way for Ducklings

2011-11-21T20:47:00.001-08:00

This week we rowed the book “Make Way for Ducklings”. I actually got the Scholastic video of the book being read with the illustrations, for the kids to watch this week. It was nice to be able to change it up a little bit.

Duck Puppets

I found these duck puppets at picklebums.com that I printed off for Alexa to play with. She LOVED them!

Sand Tracing

We focused on the letter D this week, for Duck

Before she wrote the letter D, I had her practice a few times tracing the letter in the sand.

D is for Duck

Alexa practiced writing the letter D for the first time. She preferred for me to write the letter lightly on the paper, and then to copy over it, so that’s what I did for the first several ones. Then I had her write it on her own. She did amazing.

Letter Dd Puzzle

Alexa enjoys the P is for Princess puzzle from confessions on a regular basis, so I went ahead and printed off the 6-piece letter D puzzle from Confessions of a Homeschooler’s blog.

Alphabet Puzzle

Lexie completed the Melissa and Doug Alphabet Train puzzle (totally on her own)…. three different times one morning! She was very proud of herself.

Letter Dd Do-a-Dot

I also printed this page from Confession’s blog. These are always Lexie’s favorites.

Duck Paper Craft DLTK has these amazing paper animal crafts, that Alexa loves. We did the duck one for this unit. Alexa does not like my help with these. She cuts, glues, and assembles completely on her own. By the way, this duck came with wings, but somewhere along the way we lost them.

I kept this unit pretty simple, because we had a pretty busy week, but I did what we could, and Alexa liked it, which was good enough for me.

Next week we will be working on Thanksgiving crafts and activities and then we will be taking several weeks off as we travel and celebrate the holidays a bit.

LINKS

Lapbook @ Homeschool Share

Ducks Lapbook @ Homeschool Share

Duck Lapbook @ 1+1+1=1

Paper Plate Duck Craft @ Enchanted Learning

Paper Duck Craft @ DLTK

Duck Theme @ Everything Preschool

Prekinders Duck Bingo Pages

Prekinders Rhyming Cards

TOS Crew: The Reading Game

2011-11-21T12:18:00.001-08:00

Product Description:

The Reading Game is a fast-action memory card game. It includes a series of six beautifully illustrated storybooks. The Cards & Books work together to make learning to read exciting and enjoyable. Game sessions are fun-filled with a winner every few seconds. After completing the first memory card game, the student has thirty words “hardwired” into memory. The Skunk story, Book One in the series, is told using only those thirty words. On completing the series, the student has a reading vocabulary of 180 words. Almost half of them are among the one hundred most commonly used words in the English language.

Product Review:

Created by the author of Wordly-wise, I was interested in what this game had to offer. It’s no secret that I love using as many games and hands-on fun in our school as I possibly can and the reading game fits right into this philosophy.

To be honest, when Treyton was learning his sight words, I made a game very, very similar to this one, but not quiet as cool and certainly without all the prettiness and levels that this one has!

Treyton really enjoyed this game and I had no problems getting him to play it, which helped motivate him to read the books. Her preferred to play longer memory games rather than the shorter fast-play rounds, which was fine by me. He thought the stories were fun and asked lots of questions (for Treyton this is a good thing).

He particularly enjoyed creating his own sentences after we would play the initial game. He would spend 10 minutes on this activity alone.

From a teaching viewpoint, I appreciated that the company also has free resources available on their website, including pre/post sight work sheet assessments for each of the 6 card games.

I would recommend this game as an added supplement for a young reader as extra practice or for an advanced preschooler/beginning reader who is ready to start learning how to read simple readers.

To Purchase this Game

Visit The Reading Game website, it costs for $24.95

To See What Others are Saying

Visit the TOS Crew Blog.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this game for the purpose of of my review, the opinions expressed are my own.

Week 16 (Adventures Week 12) Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire & Georgia

2011-11-20T11:38:00.001-08:00

I LOVED school this week – I mean LOVED. I knew that I would, I have been waiting to get into our state studies and it finally arrived this week. Surprisingly, as much as I was looking forward to our state studies, I wasn’t all that prepared. I had thrown around a couple of ideas as far as what our “process” would be with each state, but I hadn’t settled on anything for sure, and then all of a sudden… it was here.

I have several books that we will be reading/browsing for each state including:

Then I use the MFW booklist and our local library to find a few books on the individual states to read.

Studying the States:

We are studying the states in the order of their statehood. For each state we are following the same basic process.

I state the name of the state and we locate it on the map. We talk about where it’s located and any distinguishing markers we can identify to remember it’s location. MFW states that the point is not to locate all 50 states, however, Treyton has already learned 20+ states, and has very strong map skills, so we are trying to focus, and reemphasize this strength of his. If he doesn’t learn all of the states, that’s okay, but I figure we will try.

We review the previous states we’ve studied at this point. I call out the name and Treyton locates it on the map. If he’s unable to find it based on the name alone, I provide some “helps”, like “Pennsylvania, they make chocolate and crayons there.” He is usually then able to find it, but if he can’t I will give him a nearby state that he knows and tell him that it’s near that one.

Next, we pull out our “state passport” from Confession’s of a Homeschooler’s Road Trip curriculum. The kids place the state flag sticker in their individual passports, and I date them (as their official travel guide).

Treyton colors in the state on his United States map.

I have the kids look at their state page (from MFW Adventures) and the state card, we talk about the state bird and flower. They then color their pages.

We then put a small journal-page together for each state. This includes a handwritten state title, a colored in US map, the MFW state card and a few stickers of items that are special to this state (ex: peaches for Georgia) and if we have a postcard from this state it goes on our page.

After this we take the Road Trip state card and hang it on the wall (in order) next to our book shelf, where we pull out our state books and begin reading about the new state.

If I’ve found a fun state activity to do, we usually do it after our reading time, or in the afternoon.

In addition to the state-of-the-day activities I found a Rhyming 50 States Song on Youtube that we listen to everyday as we try to learn the names of all 50 states. So far we’ve gotten “Alabama, and Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado and Connecticut and more.” The kids LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this and ask over-and-over to watch the song and video.

Delaware:

Our first state, we learned the Delaware is the second smallest state in the US.

F is for First State A Delaware Alphabet
Cornstalks and Cannonballs by Barbara Michell
If you were there when they signed the Constitution
Shhh We’re Writing the Constitution by Jean Fritz

We only read parts of this book

Pennsylvania:

The second state to join the union. We learned that Pennsylvania is the home of Philadelphia where Benjamin Franklin was from (not born, but from :)) There is a lot of farming in Pennsylvania, and their football team is the Steelers, after the steel industry that once boomed in this state. The Liberty Bell once rang out here, and is still there today.

Books we Read for Pennsylvania:

K is for Keystone a Pennsylvania Alphabet
Homespun Sarah by Verla Kay

After learning that Hershey chocolate is made in Pennsylvania, we decided to make a special treat using the state’s favorite product…

indoor smores!

As the kids were eating their smores Treyton started talking about Philadelphia, about what it would be like to live there. As he talked I began writing a few of the things he said down. I printed it out later, and he added it to his United States Notebooking pages.

If I live in Pennsylivania….

… I would probably do a lot of chores

…. we would make a lot of chocolate and candy

…. A long time ago, I would only have one or two kinds of clothes

…. I might make crayons

…. I would probably see the liberty bell

New Jersey:

Another small state, this state is home to Atlantic City, which is the basis of the popular real-estate game, Monopoly.

We played the game monopoly for the first time – come to find out Treyton LOVES this game, we haven’t finished it yet but he insist we keep it set up in his room until we do ;)

G is for Garden State: A New Jersey Alphabet

Georgia:

Known for growing peaches, this state also grows more pecans and peanuts than any other.

For Georgia, I made the kids peach cobbler. It went over pretty well, Treyton didn’t like the crust, but he liked the peaches. Alexa liked all of it, especially the whip cream and ice cream. I was actually surprised, but I liked it too!

Mountain Wedding by Faye Gibbons
P is for Peach a Georgia Alphabet

Literature

Next week we are starting the Book Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder, this week we read the book “Pioneer Girl: The Story of Laura Inglass Wilder” as an introduction.

Fine Arts

This week, Alexa, Treyton and I went to go see a theatre showing of Goodnight Moon and the Runaway Bunny. This was Alexa’s first theatre experience and Treyton’s third, I believe. It was really good!

Reading

Treyton started reading his first Magic Tree House chapter book (The Revolutionary War one) he read a total of 3 chapters this week. He hasn’t complained even once. He needs a little bit more help with this book, but he’s doing pretty well with it.

Next week we will be learning about 4 more states… can’t wait!

FIAR – All Those Secrets of the World

2011-11-15T20:12:00.001-08:00

This week we read All Those Secrets of the World by Jane Yolen

Go-Alongs:

Hero Dad by Melinda Hardin
The Wall by Eve Bunting

Veteran Studies:

We mostly focused this week on learning about who are veterans are, what they’ve done for us and how they deserve our honor.

I found a cute paper craft on several different blogs that I copied. I think the original idea came from Mrs. Jump’s blog. I drew three veterans and the kids and I colored them camouflage. We then cut them out and pasted them together.

They turned out really cute.

Ship

The “secret of the world” is revealed when the little girl in the story discovers that an object further away is smaller than when it’s close. Her father, leaves on a big huge ship, but the following day when she sees several ships on the horizon, they look like little dots.

I cut out some shapes, and had Alexa build her own ship.

Family

This story focuses on a family left at home, while their Dad is off at war. I had Lexa narrate to me a little bit about her family in her own words.

“My family is Mama, Audrey, Daddy and Treyton. Mommy loves me, Daddy loves me, Train loves me, Audge doesn’t like me, because she bites me. She hurts me when she bites me.

My family hugs me, my whole family hugs me.

When Dad gets home, he loves me and gives me kisses. He tickles me and loves me when he gets home.

I stay with mommy because I live with her. I love her and I like to live with her.

I like to play games with Treyton. Mommy and Treyton play games with me. I like to play uno with Treyton, I like to play house – playing mom and dad with Treyton. Duck, duck goose I like to play with Treyton.

I like to read books with Audrey.”

Lexa has not really gotten into drawing people yet, I thought that this would be a good time to encourage this a little bit more. First, we used our mat and wood pieces to introduce the body concept and the main features she would draw.

Next, I drew on the board and she followed along. She did a great job. She wanted to finish her family on her own. I am very proud of her work.

Lastly, I had Alexa use her felt board and pieces to make a house picture that a family could live in. She would identify and then place the shapes as she used them.

Letter V

Our letter this week was V for Veterans.

Alexa built the letter V with our wood pieces and mat.

She had such a fun job making Vs that I also had her make B (for Boat)

I printed the Vv do-a-dot page from Confessions of a Homeschooler, which is always a highlight for, Lex.

Extra Preschool Activities

Numbers 1-10

Lexie put her fish numbers 1-10 in order, completely on her own. She interchanges between 6 and 9 sometimes, but that’s getting less and less. Drawing

For some reason Lexie was on a big camping kick this week. Telling all of us that we were going to go camping together. Tim and I told her at first that we weren’t going to go camping again until next summer, but she just kept going on and on with it. It drove Treyton nuts, but eventually Tim and I just let it go and let her talk.

This was a picture she drew of us camping.

The blue heart shape was Tim’s bed. The pink bed was for me and Lexie (we slept together a few times on our recent Louisiana trip and she really loved it). The sun is obvious. There is also a pink cat right below our bed. There is a little green person, next to Tim’s bed, that’s Treyton and on the far right is a skinny purple line which was Audrey’s bed. The purple near the top is the campfire where Dad, Treyton and Alexa are making smores.

Adorable, right?

Tot School for Audrey: Coloring & Thumb Sucking

2011-11-14T20:27:00.001-08:00

Audrey is slowly learning how to appreciate the art of coloring…. I can’t believe she’s old enough for this.

She loves to be around during school and is always climbing up onto the table, the desks, and couch to be a part of it.

We are also in the process of trying to break her thumb sucking habit. We decided to try the “sock route” so far it’s kind of working. She doesn’t take the sock off, but when it’s off (when it gets too wet or dirty we will take it off) she easily reverts to sucking her thumb. And I’m not talking the “occasional” thumb suck. She’s a compulsive thumb sucker and it’s already starting to effect her teeth --- it was time to do something.

Though it was a surprisingly tough decision, because as much as I didn’t want her to be a 6 year old thumb sucker, I also think it’s kind of cute.

She does pretty well with it, considering. She actually willingly comes over and lifts up her hand for us to put the sock on and sometimes she even smiles and laughs about it.

If we catch her sucking her thumb (without the sock) we tell her “No, Audrey, take out your thumb.” and we make the motion, and she takes her thumb out, smiles and goes “Ahhhhhhhhh!”

The only time she seems upset about it is when she is trying to sleep. Please pray for us, that we can break this habit fast.

Week 15: (Adventures Week 11) President Washington

2011-11-11T14:21:00.001-08:00

Read-Alouds

American Pioneer and Patriots

The Secret Soldier: The Story of Deborah Sampson by Ann McGovern

George Washington by Ingri d’Aulaire (we finished this book from 2 weeks ago)

Let’s Read About George Washington (scholastic) by Kimberly Weinberger

Other Read-Alouds:

Deep in the Swamp by Donna Bateman

Two Bobbies (Katrina Story) Kirby Larson

How do you Hug a Porcupine? by Laurie Isop

Treyton’s Read-Alouds

Treyton read and nearly finished The Collection of Little Bear this week. I can’t remember all of the titles he read but I know he read “Father Bear Comes Home”, “Hiccups” and 2 others.

His reading skills continue to improve which is so fun to watch. It’s still a struggle and takes a lot of concentration, but he’s getting it.

Next week I am going to have him read his first chapter book.

Lapbook

We completed a few lapbooking pieces to add to our US Binder from Homeschool Share.

We included in a few pictures of when we actually visited Mount Vernon last year. Treyton actually remembers some of the trip, which is always nice to find out. Treyton is most amazed by the fact that George Washington measured land. He can’t remember the word “surveyed” but he’s brought it up several times, just today he was saying “I can’t believe there’s a job where people measure land, I wonder what that’s like.”

George Washington Portrait

We used some soft pastels to create a portrait of George Washington.

I am so proud of Treyton’s portrait!!

(And below is mine…. just in case you’re interested)…. now you see why I’m so proud when Treyton or Alexa show strong creative skills…. there mother has none!! :)

Language Arts

We are flying through our Language Lessons for the Very Young, as I skip most of the memorizing and copy work, due to the fact that I have Treyton focusing on his memory verses and A Reason for Handwriting for his handwriting/copywork.

I have also been adding in Explode the Code book 2 which is helping Treyton work with consonant blends, a slight weakness of his.

Business: Snack Stand

Treyton got a call this week from a candy-stand customer (and relative :)) kindly reminding him that he needed to fill his snack stand.

We grabbed our supplies and headed on over to stock the stand. Tim and Treyton usually handle the “money” part of the stand (buying and selling) together, but Tim usually stocks the stand, so this was a good experience for Treyton.

Next week we are starting our state studies --- I can’t wait!!

FIAR: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

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

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening written by Robert Frost (Illustrated by Susan Jeffers)

Go-Alongs

Other Robert Frost Poems

Snow Rabbit, Spring Rabbit by Il Sung Na

Coloring a Woods Setting

We talked about the woods and the type of animals we could find there. We filled out the homeschool share lapbook piece for all the Animals in the Story.

We flipped through our book and talked about all the different animals the illustrator included. I then had Lexie color a woodsy scene.

Animal Tracks

I printed off the animal track matching cards (which I cannot find from where) for Alexa to do, she struggled with this, so we mostly did it together.

It was a fun little exercise for us.

Painting a Snow Picture

I had Lexa use white paint to make snow pictures, but inevitably if you give this girl a piece of paper, paint and time, she literally paints the ENTIRE page :) So, she painted a blizzard, it’s still fun! T is for Trees

We focused on the letter T this week, she did Confessions of a Homeschooler’s T do-a-dot page

…. and practiced writing the letter T

Snowflake Craft

I had Lexie paint some popsicle sticks white

which we then assembled into snowflakes, after they dried

Color Matching

Alexa is always asking for “more, more, more” so she’s always doing more than what I am able to post on. This week she rediscovered her color paintbrush matching folder game.

Teaching Poetry

This was really the kids and I first in-depth look at a poem. We’ve read a few poems here and there, but never spend much time on them. I used this week to have the kids read and write some of their own poetry.

From Let’s Explore, I got the idea to have the kids write their on “five sense poem”.

Treyton wrote “Baseball”

I see bases

I feel a bat

I taste a win

I hear people shouting

I smell grass

Alexa wrote “Carnival”

I see a blue game

I feel candy in my hands

I taste a chocolate brownie

I hear boys and girls laughing

I smell a tasty sandwich

Later I also had them complete the “Animal Poem” which I found over at Delightful Learning, though she found it from somewhere else. I felt like these were great activities, particularly for Treyton, who went into the week saying “I hate poems” and at the end of the week, had written two poems himself and admittedly stated “I guess they’re not that bad.”

Rhyming

We talked about poems and that sometimes poems rhyme. We put together a rhyming tree. Each of the kids had a different tree.

Alexa and I worked together. I obviously had to read the words to her, and then she would say whether or not they rhymed or not. Treyton completed his mostly on his own.

Links & Resources

Puffy Snowflake Craft

Snowflake Prints

Animal Poetry @ Early Bird Homeschool

Lapbook @ Homeschool Share

Rowing Week of Stopping by the Woods @ Delightful Learning

Audio of the Poem

Video of Poem (soundscape)

Woodsy Coloring Pages

Shel Silverstein Poetry PDF

Human Body – Bones and Muscles

2011-11-08T15:19:00.001-08:00

Over the past two weeks we have been learning about the Skeleton and Muscles in our Human Body studies (in addition to the awesome human body creations we made at our monthly co-op)

I should interrupt here and clarify a few things. We are using Pandia Press REAL Life Science and are loving it, but I also stumbled across this Scholastic Easy Make & Learn Projects: Human Body, which has been very helpful, I’ve supplemented several of their activities for Pandia Press’s – they were very similar, I just liked Scholastic’s a little better.

SKELETON

For our introduction to the skeleton system we made a paper skeleton.

Treyton did so good at this. I cut the pieces out the night before, which he was a little disappointed by (which surprised me, he usually doesn’t like cutting), so he insisted on connecting (with brads) the skeleton on his own.

He did an awesome job.

We read a few resources and books on bones. With the main points I wanted Treyton to remember being:

We have 206 bones in our body.
The smallest bone is in our ear.
Bones cannot move without muscles.
Without bones we would be like “goo” with no shape.
Bones protect the softer parts of our body.
Bones are alive and they grow.

We wrote the main points down and included them in our human body lapjournal.

Also from the scholastic book we made a few other bone pieces. We could have skipped these, as they didn’t add anything to our other activities, but I had already printed them, so we went ahead and did them.

MUSCLES

We learned that muscles make our bones move. That we have over 600 muscles, that make up half of our weight. I had Treyton color and assemble a movable muscle model out of our scholastic book.

We learned the muscles should be used and exercised to keep them healthy. We also talked about how if we work our muscles really hard, they can grow stronger and stronger. He flexed his own muscles to show me some “muscles in action”.

We illustrated muscles with a rubberband to show how they can tighten and stretch and go back to the same shape that they were before, and that it is the tightening and releasing that help the bones to move and the muscles to grow.

After all our reading and illustrations, Treyton wrote a few sentences about all that he had learned to include in his human body lapjouranal.

EXTRA’S

Thanks to pinterest, I found this awesome Body Bingo game!! I colored all the pieces and cut them out. Treyton and I played against each other, but as you can tell, he can get a little “controlling of my board” if I’m not playing fast enough ;)

We traced our body shapes, to use later with our MFW co-op, the kids LOVE doing this. A friend of mine mentioned that she did this every year for her kids birthdays, which I thought would be a great idea – you could even write on there what some of their favorite things are.

PRESCHOOL
I’ve been adding in a few fun things for Alexa as well, some of which make for easy supplements for Treyton. The first one was a face and body parts identification printable.

Letter B – is for Body Alexa cut out and glued on all the pieces herself.

We are loving learning about the human body again, last time we went through it, we did more hands-on activities which I liked, and would like to do again, but just haven’t had the time (ugh… I hate to even admit that). Although all those things are fun, the kids are still learning and believe it or not, are still having fun, which is really what matters.

I’ve Been Nominated!! Please Vote!

2011-11-07T08:17:00.001-08:00

So I just found out this morning (thanks to Beth at Living Life Intentionally) that I’ve been nominated for the 2011 Homeschool Blog Awards!!

Thank you for those who nominated me, I am so appreciative and humbled. Now that I’m nominated, I wonder if you all would be willing to vote for me!

I have been nominated in the category of “Favorite Homeschool Mom Blog” which is a tough category (in fact I see a few of my blog favorites on the list).

To vote is really easy, you don’t need to register or sign in, all you need to do is click on the button below and vote. Voting is open from November 7th-18th, and I believe you are able to vote once for each member in your household – with up to 5 votes per IP address/network.

Here are the “official rules” per the Homeschool Post:

Read the terms and conditions before you vote.
Votes are based on IP and cookies.
You may only vote ONCE (in ALL categories) per person in your home. And no, it doesn’t matter the age of the person – you can vote for your 2 year old if you really want to.
Do not send in duplicate votes from a cell phone in different hot spots. One vote per person – be honest.
No more than 5 votes per network/IP (if there are more, we have the right to delete all votes from that IP/network).
You don’t have to vote on everything at once. You can vote for one category and come back later for the rest.
If you click on the DOT, it will vote. If you click on the BLOG NAME, you can go to the site.
Once you vote, you can’t SEE the rest of the nominees any more (or click to go to their blogs) – so please do your browsing BEFORE you vote. We will list these again after the awards are over for your convenience (either in a post or page), so don’t worry – you’ll get to see them again eventually.
Email us at thehomeschoolpost @ gmail . com (remove extra spaces) if you have any questions or problems
Spread the word!

There are other categories open for you to vote on as well, if you’re interested!!

Thanks for the support and this opportunity!!

Now --- go vote!!!

And (if you don’t mind), spread the word!!

TOS Review: Ooka Island

2011-11-02T17:07:00.001-07:00

Ooka Island Adventures is an online independent reading curriculum for preschoolers to second grade. This program “blends print concepts, phonemic awareness, phonics and language based reading” and progresses until the child is at a second grade reading level.

Product Review:

This product is a downloadable program. It is a large file. You will want to make sure that your computer has the right requirements to use it.

While my computer met the requirements, we did experience a few minor difficulties when running the program. There were times when it was “choppy” while other times it would run smoothly.

In addition to this the first several times we used the program, after closing it, our other programs (that were open) would force close or cause the computer to freeze up at which point I would need to restart it. After this happened a few times, I contacted technical support, they were extremely quick in responding to the concerns I had and said they were aware of the problem of the freeze-ups and programs shutting down and that they were near releasing a patch to fix the problem.

Treyton enjoys most computer games, and this one was no exception. His favorite game was the Alphabet Mountain which was a skateboarding game. He is already reading at a first grade level, so I didn’t notice a huge improvement in his reading while using this program, but it was great review for him, and like I said, he enjoyed it, so I had no problem getting him to play the games.

They offer a buy or try program which you can sign up for on their website.

They have several different purchasing options available for homeschoolers or teachers, you will want to check their website for exact pricing. For a homeschooler, for a one month login it’s $12.95, a year subscription is $99.95.

To see what my fellow crew members are saying visit the TOS Crew Blog.

Disclosure: I received a complimentary subscription to this program for the purpose of my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own. I received no other compensation for this review.

(Week 14) Adventures Week 10 – Revolution and Declaration of Independence

2011-10-30T16:45:00.001-07:00

This is the week Treyton has been waiting for!! He has been asking when America was going to be fighting and when we were going to learn about war. (Boys will be boys I guess).

Along with learning about the Revolutionary War we also learned about the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson and because we didn’t fit him in last week, we also touched on Paul Revere and the Boston Tea Party.

Needless to say, it was a very busy week. I had to remind myself over and over again that we are only doing a relaxed overview of American History and that we don’t have to learn everything this time around!!

Read Alouds:

The Revolutionary War an Interactive Guide by Elizabeth Raum
Red, White and Blue by John Herman
Sarah Witcher’s Story by Elizabeth Yates
If You Lived at the Time of the American Revolution by Kay Moore
Paul Revere’s Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Awesome illustrations, hard reading for this age.
The Fourth of July Story by Alice Dalgliesh
The Story of the U.S. by Marie Hazel

Other Read Alouds:

Going to Town (My First Little House Books)
Tip-Tap Pop by Sarah Lynn
- A touching book about a grandfather and granddaughter (Emma) who love to dance together until one day the Grandpa begins to suffer from (what I assume is) Alzheimer's
Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy by David Soman and Jacky Davis
Where’s the Party? by Katharine Robey
- A book about bird calls
The Artist who Painted a Blue Horse by Eric Carle

What Treyton Read this Week:

Clifford: The Firehouse Dog by Norman Bridwell
Amelia Bedelia Plays Ball by Peggy Parish
George Washington the General’s Dog by Frank Murphy
Brain Freeze (DC Super Friends) by J.E. Bright

American Flag:

We’ve made the American flag before, but this time we made the original stars and stripes, after we read the book “Red, White and Blue” – putting only 13 stars on the flag, we talked about why there were 13 stars and stripes on the original flag, which is the same reason why we only have 13 stripes on our flag today.

Boston Tea Party:

In honor of learning about the Boston Tea Party this week, we decided to have a little “tea party” of our own.

We made some tea, sat down and read a few select pages out of Jean Fritz’s “Then What Happened Paul Revere” (specifically the pages referring to the Boston Tea Party). We talked about the men dressing up to look like Indians, going aboard the ships and dumping over 10,000 pounds of tea into the harbor. Of course Treyton wanted to know why, so we talked about what a tax is, and why the American’s didn’t want to pay it.

This conversation took only a few minutes, but Treyton begged to read more and to talk about it more…. I knew I didn’t want to go into any more detail than I already had, so I just re-read the pages in our book.

Several times since our “tea party” he’s asked “Mom, can we have another Boston Tea Party?”

Make Hasty Pudding

I will be honest, I saw the recipe for hasty pudding and thought “hmmm… maybe we’ll pass on this” it did not look like something that the kids or I would enjoy. But… I decided to go ahead and try it, and guess what?

The kids loved the entire thing, making it (which I knew they would), eating it and talking about it.

We added milk and agave nectar, except for Treyton, who did not add milk, but just the nectar.

They ate the entire pan (except for a little bit I saved for Tim to try later) and Audrey actually cried when it was gone. :)

Lapjournal

Treyton colored two uniform pictures out of our dover coloring book:

one of a British soldier, one of an American soldier. We added these to his lapjournal as well as his narration.

We also included a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

Overall, I felt like we had a pretty productive week, considering we were carrying so much over from week 9, and covering such a big topic.

Treyton loved the war talk, though he doesn’t understand it all and asks lots of questions, questions I can’t always answer.

Next week, we will be learning about President George Washington.

Book Unit: Curious George

2011-10-19T18:28:00.001-07:00

Week 14 of school we rowed Curious George by H.A. Rey

Go-Along Books & Movies

Day 1

After reading the front title page, we discussed the authors name H.A. Rey. Treyton said “That’s a weird name.” We talked about what initials were, and went through the entire family, figuring out what each of our initials are.

We then looked up the author’s real name (which is Hans Augusto Rey) and learned that he was from Germany, which we located on the map. Treyton was then interested to know how a book from Germany got all the way to America. ;)

From there we located Africa, which is where George is from. Every day we read the book we pointed these places out on the map.

I printed off several monkey activities from Confessions of a Homeschoolers including the pre-writing practice sheets. I put them in sheet protectors for her to use throughout the week.

Alexa also made the DLTK paper monkey craft. Her cutting skills are truly amazing. She received no help with this craft.

I also found some printable coloring pages, Alexa picked this one to color.

Day 2

Alexa played with Confession’s monkey puzzle. She is really starting to enjoy puzzles and is able to do simple ones on her own. When I gave her this one, she put a few on upside down, I tried to explain to her that puzzles have “edges”, after the first time through she seemed to get it. I didn’t even need to introduce the letter Mm this week. Alexa loves to watch the Leap Frog Letter Factory DVD and has learned most of her letters this way. Before I even got the chance to tell her what letter we were learning she said “M says mmmm”.

Next she put monkey numbers 1-10 in order. 9 still slows her down a bit, but once she figures out the other letters she can figure it out. Day 3

We had our co-op on Wednesday of this week, so we didn’t do any activities other than the kids watched 2 old episodes of Curious George. (I’m not referring to the PBS Curious George ones) I mean they’re “old”, I can’t find the DVD right now, but they are re-readings of the original books put to play-doh style choreography (yes, I am very technical :)). They are really good, a classic, a style I want my children to be able to appreciate as they get older.

Day 4

Fire Safety – In the story George inadvertently calls the fire department. I decided to talk to the kids about fire safety in honor of George’s mishap with the fire department. We talked about (& practiced) what we should do if we were on fire: Stop, Drop and ROLL!!

We also talked about what we should do if we were in a building that is on fire and there is smoke around us, we don’t run, we don’t walk – we CRAWL through the house to get to the door.

I also reminded Treyton, and instructed Lexie for the first time, where our designated meeting place is outside of our house, in case of a fire, which is out by our garden on the corner of our lot. We talked about how we should NEVER go back into a house/building that is on fire – no matter what!

I’m glad we had this great opportunity to review some of the important fire safety rules. Sometimes, you just don’t think about these types of things…

Curious George Printables

I found several cute printables from the PBS Curious George website. Lexie enjoyed these printables, although, like most worksheets, she blows right through them in seconds with no problem.

Lapjournal

Day 5

Of course before we could end our unit we had to watch the Curious George Movie the kids have seen it many times, before, but never after becoming so acquainted with the original book. After watching the movie we talked about the differences and how many movies are based off of books, but that they are rarely the exact same.

Although we had already completed most of our lapjournal pages, on our final day I also had Alexa do some size activities which we added in. If Alexa had a weakness it would be with sizes and location vocabulary (i.e. large, small, medium, top, bottom, middle), so this was a good activity for her, meaning it took more than 2 minutes.

I also had her match monkey shapes (from Confessions), she really liked this.

Lastly, we did a few monkey bingo games, one with our numbers, and one with letters.

Alexa really enjoyed school this week, I think because we had a lot of fun activities, and she kept busy. She likes to know that she is a part of school. I enjoyed this week too, I’ve enjoyed Curious George since I was a little girl, so this was a particularly fun week for all of us.

LINKS

Curious George Printables from PBS

Curious George PBS – games, printables, clips and more

Confessions of a Homeschooler – Letter M

1+1+1=1 Monkey Tot Pack

TOS Review: Wits and Wagers Family

2011-10-19T16:39:00.001-07:00

My family recently reviewed the game Wits and Wagers Family from Northstar Games.

Product Description:

Now families and kids can get into the Wits & Wagers action! First, every player writes down a guess to a fun question. Then players try to score points by choosing which guess is closest to the right answer without going over.

Product Review:

This game was a hit for the entire family!! From Alexa, our 3 year old, to Mom and Dad, we all loved it. We’ve played this game ALOT since we’ve gotten it, even bringing it out to play with our house guests.

Not only was this game fun, it was also educational. Both of the kids were stretched in their own way. For Alexa, while playing this game she practices writing/tracing her numbers. For Treyton, he practices estimating skills, “guestimating” skills, and strategic game play with his wagers. Along with that, keeping score is a new responsibility he’s loving!!

This game is recommended for ages 8 and older, but our 6 year old has done just fine with it, and our 3 year old has done well for her age, her guesses aren’t great but she writes, wages and has a good time with it.

This game has made a GREAT addition to our game closet! I would highly recommend it.

You can purchase this game for $15 on amazon.

To see what my fellow crew members had to see visit the TOS Crew Blog

Disclosure: I received this game from Northstar Games for the purpose of my review, the opinions expressed are my own.

TOS Review: Educating the Wholehearted Child

2011-10-17T13:08:00.001-07:00

When I received Apologia’s “Educating the Wholehearted Child” written by Clay and Sally Clarkson, my first thought was “wow… that’s a lot of reading, I’ll never be able to read the whole thing.”

I was wrong.

I can’t hardly put it down.

On top of that, I didn’t get through the first page before I heard myself say “amen” and start reading excerpts out loud for my husband to hear as well.

A week or so after I started reading this book Tim said “I really like this book your reading, I can tell it’s making a big difference.”

Product Description (from Apologia’s Website):

“God did not forget to include "school" in his biblical design for raising children&mdash:home education is a natural expression of all that God intended for parents and their children. Clay and Sally Clarkson's Educating the WholeHearted Child is about rediscovering God's original design for the family. What you'll find in this book is a homeschooling model that makes sense. It's an approach that is based on sound biblical principles of nurture, discipleship, instruction, and learning. Newly revised and significantly expanded, Educating the WholeHearted Child is about much more than homeschooling; it is about life. Effective Christian homeschooling must begin with the sure foundation of a Christian home, and the Clarksons' uncomplicated, common-sense approach to life and learning will provide you with the tools you need to experience God's abundant blessings for your family.”

Product Review

This book has reminded me of all the reasons why I homeschool, and even given me a few more, and as if that weren’t enough it’s a great resource book.

I have read a few of Sally Clarkson’s books (namely The Mission of Motherhood and most recently I started the Ministry of Motherhood), and they are, life changing. This book is just as amazing.

The Clarkson’s teach a method of homeschooling that they call “WholeHearted Learning” (which is very similar the the Charlotte Mason approach). They include recommended resources, helpful tips and what their approach has looked like in their own home.

This book is well-written, easy to read and so full of encouraging, practical tips that any homeschooling family can benefit from it. I’ve read several great homeschooling books, but if I could recommend only one book to homeschooling parents, whether starting out or mature homeschoolers, it would be this one.

To See What Others are Saying visit the TOS Crew blog.

You can see the complete Table of Contents and a Sample Chapter here.

You can purchase a copy of this book for $22 from apologia.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Apologia as part of the TOS Crew, the opinions expressed are my own, I received no other compensation for my review.

MFW Co-op: Human Body

2011-10-16T20:38:00.001-07:00

We had a great co-op this month studying the human body.

FIRST GRADERS

I taught the first graders this time, and I was a little unsure of how to fit “The Human Body” into and hour and half. So… instead of trying to fit in a bunch of information in a little amount of time, I decided to do the best I could with an overview that the kids and mom’s could use later when they studied the Human Body. I got the basic idea of making a life like human body from pink and green mama but of course tweeked it a little bit. I downloaded the Scholastic Easy Make & Learn Projects: Human Body for our personal studies, and found a gold mind of awesome life-like printables that I was able to use with our co-op. I cut out all the pieces before hand and used Alexa’s body traces (because our skeleton pieces fit her size the best). So it was all set and ready to go before the kids got there.

We started with attaching the brain, then did the skeleton, heart, lungs, stomach, liver, esophagus, and intestines. For each part of the body I read a short section out of Usborne’s First Encyclopedia of the Human Body

After attaching the skeleton, we taped the other organs and parts on where they would flip out so that the students could go back and look at any of the parts they wanted to.

Here is Treyton’s finished body:

PRESCHOOL GROUP

This month, Kelly, one of the mom’s that teach the preschool group e-mailed me and told me what they did in their group. So I get to share it with you all!

They read 2 books: My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss (talking about feelings) and Eyes, Nose, Fingers, Toes by Judy Hindley (to talk about body/senses). They discussed things that they hear, smell, taste, how things feel, what they see, etc.

They also did ABC exercise activity cards.

And played musical instruments and sang a song to highlight how they can make music to 'hear'. Lastly, they traced and colored their bodies.

GENERAL CO-OP INFORMATION

Having this type of co-op is truly a blessing, this was our third month and you can tell that the kids are really starting to get to know one another and build strong relationships. We meet at 10:00, have lunch at 12:00 and usually the kids play after that for a couple of house before people start heading home. It’s a really fun time. Here is a picture of the kids in the co-op minus two of the little ones. They were building a fort in the backyard here.

Here’s them, being a little goofy (LOVE IT!)

(Week 13) Adventures Week 9 – George Washington

2011-10-14T19:48:00.001-07:00

Read Alouds:

George Washington by Ingri d’Aulaire
Sarah Witcher’s Story by Elizabeth Yates
The Story of U.S. by Marie Hazel
A Lion to Guard Us by Clyde Robert Bulla

Other Read-Alouds:

Stories from My First Hands-On Bible
Curious George Goes to the Hospital by H.A. Rey
Just Like my Dad by David Melling

Reading

Books Treyton Read Aloud this Week:

George Washington and the General’s Dog by Frank Murphy
- I loved that Treyton actually read a book that went along with our history this week. It was a level 3, which I wasn’t sure he would be able to get through, but he did awesome!

He read some other books as well (two others) but I cannot remember which ones…

There are weeks that I am not as “on top of” Treyton’s reading as I should be, and I don’t require what I should of him. I’m trying to do better. I have recently added to his reward reading chart that he must spend 50 minutes a week (in at least 10 minute increments) reading to himself. We separated his readers into two piles ones that now count as his read-alouds to mom, and his “easier” (some even memorized) books into a read-alone pile. I told him that he can try to read ANY book during his read-alone time, but that to read with mom and for the book to count, he needed to be reading at least a level 2 or a tough level 1.

This has slowed him down a little bit on receiving a reward, but it’s really good for him, and he actually seems to enjoy it. I bought him a fun little timer, that makes his reading time even more fun!

History

We spent the first day of this week finishing our Benjamin Franklin lap journal, so we really only studied Washington for 3 days this week, and actually left out most of the Paul Revere reading, planning to push it to next week.

We started our studies this week by looking at the dollar bill and pointing out that George Washington was on the front of it. We talked about how important he must have been for our country to put him on the dollar bill. This peaked Treyton’s interest to learn more about him.

We actually visited Mount Vernon a year or so ago, while visiting my sister in Virginia. We talked about our time there, and looked at a few of our pictures.

I didn’t have any time to do very many “extra” activities other than our reading, no worries though, the kids managed to come up with an awesome one on their own!!

They built a fort together on the back patio, like the one Washington built when fighting the French and Indians who were trying to take the English land.

I had Treyton make a Tricorn Hat, like Washinton’s. He wore this thing for over an hour the first day… I think it made him feel tough.

Nature Walk & Journaling

We had absolutely beautiful weather this week, so we spent a little time outside on a nature walk, drawing in our nature journals.

Treyton found lots of interesting things.

Audrey, however, was not having any of it!! :(

Bible Memorization – AWANA

Treyton continues with his AWANA verses and weekly AWANA meetings. I have actually slowed him down a little bit as we go back and review all of the verses we haven’t been reviewing. I just stumbled across the Scripture Memory Box System from Simply Charlotte Mason, which I am thinking about making for our family to use, I want to make sure that Treyton is really understanding the verses he is (and has) learned. The past few weeks he has been focusing on John 3:14-16:

“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of man must be lifted up that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

Piano

Treyton is in his 6th week of Piano class. He is learning solfege (which basically means, he’s learning do, re, mi, fa, so instead of note names to start) through the yamaha music class. So far he has learned (well) 5 songs, and is currently practicing 3 others.

We are so proud of all of his hard work. He practices 5 times a week for about 15-20 minutes. He has memorized most of the songs thus far, but is slowly learning how to read the music as well. He also recognizes quarter notes, quarter rests, half notes and whole notes. He has worked with staccato notes and slur notes and has learned the difference between the G clef and F clef.

I’m actually happy to be on this ride with him, I’ve learned more about music in the past 6 weeks than I ever have in my life. It’s been a lot of fun, as a family to bring the gift of musical talent into our home. I can’t wait to see what His plan is through it all.

Math

Treyton is about halfway through the Singapore 1B book. This week we introduced the concept of dividing, half and fourths.

To illustrate this, Treyton cut up a piece of paper, into halves first and then fourths.

Spelling

We are on step 20 in All About Spelling which is the consonant blend ‘ng’. Treyton mastered the rule and words within in the first couple of days.

Extra Thoughts

Though it was a very busy week, and I didn’t add in as many things as I had wanted too, the kids still had fun, and actually learned a thing or two along the way, too. I’m grateful that God allows these weeks to come every now and again, to remind me that our schooling is based on His plan and not mine (and praise Him for that)!!

It’s easy to forget our goal by focusing on the methods. It isn’t about what I’m teaching or how I’m teaching it – it’s about WHO I’m teaching them about. Any education they get along the way is truly just a bonus!!

I am in the process of reading “Educating the Whole-hearted Child” by Clay and Sally Clarkson (amazing book by the way), and I wanted to close this post with a quote that I have been pondering much of this week:

“home education is not our primary goal – home nurture and discipleship are, and home education is simply the natural extension of those biblical priorities.”

LINKS

Weekly Wrap-Up

Unit Study: Stars

2011-10-10T12:25:00.001-07:00

This was actually from a couple of weeks ago, but I forgot to post it…

We spent one week on learning a little bit more about stars. I kept it pretty light and pretty much only did the things in the MFW manual, only adding in some more books and I think one activity (that didn’t turn out).

Books we Read

Stargazers by Gail Gibbons
- I loved this book, informative but not too wordy. Great illustrations explaining some difficult concepts
The Sky is Full of Stars by Franklyn Branley
God Made Outer Space
First Encyclopedia of Science (an Usborne Book)
How Big is a Million? (an Usborne Book)
- Adorable little story about a little penguin who is out to find out how big a million is, very helpful to at least explain that a million is really, really, big
Sun, Moon and Stars (an Usborne Book)

Discussion, Experiments & Journaling

We talked about the distance that light travels. We talked about how it takes 2 seconds for light to get to earth from the moon. It takes 8 minutes for light to reach earth from the sun. And it takes 4 years for light to reach us from our closest star (Proxima Centauri something). I explained to Treyton that that meant that the light that came from Proxima on the day that Lexie was born has not even gotten to earth – we haven’t even seen it yet! Treyton thought that this was pretty amazing.

We tried to illustrate this in Treyton’s science journal.

Next we talked about the biggest star we could see from earth (with a telescope) called Betelgeuse. This star is 600 times bigger than the sun. We cut out a 1 inch circle which represented the sun and had Lexie hold it on one side of our yard

we then measured out 600 inches (16 3/4 yards) and had Treyton stand there. This was a humbling illustration showing just how small the sun (and in essence we really are)!!

Completed Lapjournal Pages

We took our handouts from our MFW Co-op: Stars and added them to our science journal.

Treyton’s person constellation.

Star/Galaxy picture and Constellation Flashcards.

(Week 12) Adventures Week 8: Benjamin Franklin

2011-10-09T19:32:00.001-07:00

Read Alouds:

A Lion to Guard Us by Clyde Robert Bulla
Benjamin Franklin by Ingri D’Aulaire
The Story of the U.S. by Marie Hazel
A Picture Book of Benjamin Franklin by David Adler
The Amazing Life of Benjamin Franklin by James Cross Giblin

Other Read-Alouds:

Inside Your Outside The Cat in the Hat by Tish Rabe
Dingo Dog and the Billabong Song by Andrew Fusek Peters
Snow Rabbit, Spring Rabbit by Il Sung Na
Do You Want a Hug Honey Bunny? by Rachael O’Neil
Pirate Boy by Eve Bunting

13 Colonies

I had Treyton color a map of the 13 colonies. It took us two tries, as I didn’t realize Maine was a part of Massachusetts.

Poor Richard’s Almanac

We made our own version of Poor Richard’s Almanac to include with our lap journal pages.

Lapjournal

We found our other lapjournal pieces here.

Treyton put his lapjournal pieces together as we read through our Benjamin Franklin books throughout the week.

He picked pink for the pages this time, for Lexie he said.

Treyton’s Narration

I asked Treyton to narrate what he learned this week, he gave me a full page!! He was mostly interested on Benjamin Franklin’s young life, which didn’t surprise me.

“Benjamin Franklin was a boy. He wanted to be in school, he was good at reading and writing. He wasn’t good at math. His dad wanted him to work with him making candles. Benjamin Franklin hated the smell of candles. His dad sent him to work with his brother, he learned to print. He had to do all the work – he had to sweep and clean. When he was cleaning his brothers were making papers and printing.

He asked his brother to give him his money, so he could eat his own food when everyone else went out to eat – this way he could write and read while everyone else was eating. He knew his brother would laugh at him, so he kept his writing a secret. When his brother found out, he was mad. Benjamin said he was going to leave. But his brother said “you better stay the 10 years” he had only stayed 5 years.

Then he left. He knew his mom and dad would be sad, but his brother would be mad. He went on a ship to New York. He didn’t find any work there, the little town was too small, so he walked 100 miles to (where?) Philadelphia. He found work there. He went to his dad and said sorry and asked him to help him print on his own. He said “no”.

Benjamin went to Philadelphia. Benjamin became a great printer, he made enough money to retire when he was around 40 years old. He wanted to learn about electricity. He had three kids, one died when he was 4.

Franklin made the first library, the first hospital, the first fire station and post office.

When Franklin was older, he went to France to help America get money to fight England. He was there 10 years. He helped to write the Declaration of Independence.

Benjamin Franklin was nice. He was smart, and funny. He did a lot for America.”

I really enjoyed learning about Benjamin Franklin this week. I know I learned more than Treyton, and I loved it!! I had no idea all of the things Franklin helped to start for our country (the first library, hospital, fire department, etc.) and I knew nothing of his childhood, honestly I didn’t know much more about Franklin than the fact that he helped write the Declaration of Independence.

Bible

We do our Bible together as a family in the morning before Daddy goes to work. We are focusing on simple theology right now as we go through John MacArthur’s A Faith to Grow On. We read one question and answer a day, and have Treyton look up the scripture verses in his Bible and read them.

I think that as soon as you can, you should have your children in the word themselves, learning how to find and read verses and scriptures for the themselves.

Alexa is also a part of this, and while she can’t read the books of the Bible she does have most of the New Testament books memorized, thanks to Treyton’s memory work through AWANA.

It does make for a longer family devotional, but I strongly believe that it’s a sacrifice worth making.

Reading

Treyton is continuing to read level 1 and level 2 readers, I’m proud of all of his work. Treyton enjoys reading to both Tim and I.

Extra Activities

He insisted I take a picture of his church. :)

Next week is George Washington… can’t wait to see what I learn about him!!

B4FIAR: Blueberries for Sal

2011-10-09T18:02:00.001-07:00

For weeks 12 and 13 we only rowed one book, because Lexie ended up getting the stomach flu, which (like it typically does) lasted 48 hours, and through a real wrench into our school plans. However, it was a good one: Blueberries for Sal.

Lexie, loves rowing books. Seriously, it doesn’t matter what the story is about or what topic we’re learning about – she loves to have a consistent book read to her throughout the week. Every day that we read it she seems to develop even more of a fondness of the story line and characters.

For this story, we got most of our printables from Homeschool Creations (the link is below), so if there’s not a link for the activity mentioned, it’s probably from there.

Go-Along Books:

Are You My Mother? by PD Eastman

The Little Mouse The Red Ripe Strawberry and Hungry Bear by Audrey Wood

Day 1

Dad actually started this unit with the kids while I was at the eye doctor. This was a very special time for both Dad and the kids, I’m so glad they were able to “do school” together.

After reading the story, Alexa used the Blueberry Math Mat Board from homeschool share to count out blueberries to the corresponding numbers. We played this game throughout the week.

Of course we couldn’t read a story about blueberries without having a berry snack. Alexa likes blueberries, however Treyton detest blueberries for some reason (he only dislikes a few foods), so I picked up strawberries for him. We enjoyed a simple fruit snack together.

Day 2

She matched her colors using fruit and color cards.

Circle the Bb’s on the page (from Confessions).

And we watched the Blueberries for Sal You Tube Video

Day 3

Berry Patterns. Alexa is just learning the concept of patterns, this was a great exercise for her, though it was a little tougher than normal because she had a hard time remembering the names of all the berries (blueberry and strawberry were easy enough, but blackberry through her for a loop :)).

Are you my mother printable – Alexa cut out and glued on the mom and babies that belonged together. She was over-the-moon excited about putting in her and I’s pictures :)

Cover all the B’s worksheet, we used our blue and purple animal figures to cover all the upper and lower case B blueberries.

Day 4

To finish up our unit, Lexie colored a blueberry picture. I told her to color the container brown and the blueberries blue, she decided to do it the other way around (LOL!).

Alexa’s favorite activity was making a blueberry pie with construction paper and paint.

Apparently I didn’t get a picture of this, but I also had her do the the Where is Little Bear book, placing little bear below, above, near, under, etc. certain objects. Some of these were easy, some of them weren’t.

Letters:

We are generally focusing on a letter a week in our five in a row studies, but don’t spend TOO much time on any letter or number other than simple review and recognition.

However, Alexa is loving the Leap Frog Letter Factory DVD that her brother once loved. Since starting to watch it, about a month or so ago she has gone from recognizing 8 of the 52 letters (upper and lower case), to recognizing nearly all of them, as well as knowing their sounds!! I praised this DVD a few years ago, when it helped Treyton to learn his letters, and I will again now. This is a great DVD, and the kids LOVE it.

On her own this week she asked me if she could build some letters using building blocks – of course, the answer was yes. She is getting so big, where did the time go?

AWANA

I wrote on my other blog about the kids both going to AWANA, but wanted to mention it here about how proud I am on Alexa and learning her memory verses. So far she has memorized 1 John 4:10 “God loved us and sent His son.” and the Cubbies motto “Jesus Loves Me.”

LINKS

Growing Kinders Bear Ideas

Homeschool Creations: Blueberries for Sal Pack

Blueberries for Sal You Tube Video

Blueberry Pie Craft

Artist Study: Van Gogh & Artist Book

2011-10-05T18:08:00.001-07:00

Van Gogh Info. & Study:

* We placed Van Gogh on our timeline and found Holland on the map (where Vincent Van Gogh was born) as well as France (where he lived for a while).

* Van Gogh sold very few paintings in his life, and did not become famous until after he died. (Two of our books actually said he only sold 1, but I’m not sure if that is true or not)

* Van Gogh wrote his brother lots of letters.

* Van Gogh painted using his feelings, more than reality (this is called Expressionism-painter). He loved the color yellow which he thought meant happiness and friendship. He often painted with thick bumpy paint.

Pictures We Studied

Bedroom in Arles

Vase with Twelve Sunflowers

Starry Night

Blossoming Almond Tree

Artist Recreations:

I LOVE doing artist recreations – it is during this time that Treyton’s “real” observations come out.

I think it’s because he is forced to look at the original for so long while trying to figure out how to make something similar to it. While simply coloring the starry night, Treyton said “It looks like he’s dreaming in this picture,” something he hadn’t observed when we merely did the picture study.

I decided to stick with recreating the Starry Night because it was the picture that I most wanted Treyton to remember.

My favorite project was using pastels to recreate the starry night on dark construction paper, outlined in glue (an idea I got from the Crafty Classroom). Before doing the project we read a little bit about pastels, and looked at a few pastel pictures. We also discussed that Van Gogh’s picture was NOT done with pastel’s but that we were going to try to do something a little different.

While doing the picture Treyton said “He [Van Gogh] called the picture starry night, I’m going to call it Starry Night Mixed Together, because there are so many mixed colors.” It took his recreation to realize the color-mixing that Van Gogh actually did to come up with a picture like the Starry Night. Books we Read/Used

Camille and the Sunflowers by Laurence Anholt

Vincent's Colors (this book takes Van Gogh’s paintings and pairs them with some of his own words written in his many letters to his younger brother, Theo)

Spot the Difference: Art Masterpiece Mysteries Dover (AWESOME Book!! Love it!)

Usborne: The Children’s Book of Art by Rosie Dickins

Artist Book

In addition to studying Van Gogh over the past 6 weeks, we also put together our very own Artist Book, where we will continue to add new artists and pictures that we study throughout the year.

I love this.

Links and Resources

Starry Night Coloring Page

Vase of 12 Flowers Coloring Page

Van Gogh Gallery

Muddle Puddle Van Gogh Ideas

Van Gogh @ Art Projects for Kids

Paint The Room in Arles Online @ Enchanted Learning (I believe that have one for the Starry Night as well)

Van Gogh Craft @ The Crafty Classroom

Online Interactive Story about entering into a Van Gogh Painting

Artchive: A great site to look at full size artist paintings

FIAR: Katy and the Big Snow (Week 11)

2011-10-02T19:48:00.001-07:00

This week we rowed “Katy and the Big Snow” by Virginia Lee Burton. A cute little story about a red tractor by the name of Katy. After the little town of Geopolis is snowed in after a blizzard, Katy is the only one that can save the day.

(New this Week) Felt Board I spent some time this weekend and made a felt board. Alexa spent some time building a house and yard out of shapes. This went along well with this book which focused on town life, and responsibility.

Day 1 We used our tanagrams to build a snowflake.

We also did some map activities. On the third or fourth page of the book there is a map of Geopolis with a key surrounding it. Treyton and I worked on finding a number and then finding the correlating building. We did this every day we read the book, he enjoyed it so much. We decided to practice some map skills by coloring a map of Wisconsin and labeling where we lived.

If you ask Lexie where she lives, she knows. It was good, to have her do a map exercise to show her.

Treyton’s Map Studies In MFW, we learned about the French exploring Michigan, the great lakes and the Mississippi river. They made friends with the Indians who traded canoes with them. We learned about how they would portage their canoes. Coincidentally Tim (my hubby) is from Portage, and Mommer and Papa still live there, it’s a place that Treyton knows well. So we talked about why the city is called Portage. I had Treyton draw the major rivers of Wisconsin, and then where Portage is located - he understood even more why it was called that. He did a great job.

Cottonball Snowman Craft

Day 2

Painting with Tractor Treads Katy is a tractor (obviously), and has treads instead of wheels. We wanted to take a closer look at how different tires make different tracks.

The best way we thought to do this was painting with tires.

We have several tractors, trucks and play cars around here. We pulled several of them out. … and went to town (pun intended).

The kids LOVED this activity.

Alexa’s painted tracks. Treyton’s painted tracks.

A simple activity that we did this week was to just play with tractors. To be honest, Lexie doesn’t play with trucks much, so this was a different type of play-time for her, it was good for her.

Day 3

Build a city with blocks and trains.

Day 4

Do-a-dot letter Ss, from Confessions of a Homeschooler

Make our own Weather-Wheel

Alexa colored, cut and glued the weather wheel.

More Map Skills – Drawing the Neighborhood and Bedroom

This is Treyton’s map of our neighborhood. I was really proud of his effort here. Last year I had him map out his bedroom, which did not go nearly this well.

I had Lexie attempt to map her bedroom. She drew her bed, which was great, the rest of the room were mostly scribbles but they all represented something to her ;)

Day 5

Lexie’s colored a compass. I filled it out for her, but she doesn’t really understand direction yet, but at least she was able to see it and get introduced to it.

Painting with Snow

We made snow paint with shaving cream and elmer’s glue. I cut out a snowflake and had Lexie paint that first.

Then, because they begged to keep painting I let them paint whatever they wanted out of the snow paint on dark construction paper. Lexie wanted to do a snowman.

Treyton did a snow blizzard.

Alexa’s Narration

Her original narration:

“Katy is a red tractor, she has wings to push the snow. She pushed the snow. She helped the people, get to the hospital over there. Katy was a hard worker. She worked hard and hard. Work and work and work.”

Retold as she flipped through the story:

“Katy was a red tractor. She pushed the snow in the whole city. A tractor went in the water, Katy pulled the tractor out. Katy came out in the big snow. It was raining, and snow. It dropped and dropped – five drops. Katy be a hard worker going in the snow. Katy pushed the snow to help people, the whole city. Katy worked hard all to over there. Katy kept going and going. There was an airplane, Katy pushed the snow so the airplane could come. Katy went home tired, she was a hard worker.”

Go-Along Books:

One Snowy Day by Tammi Salzano
The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

Lapbook

Extra Activities: Treyton made a hornbook for Colonial Life, Lexie practiced all her letters and numbers….

FIAR Update:

We are loving our FIAR journey so far. It’s working out so much better this way. Next week, we will be doing a B4FIAR book (Blueberries for Sal) and from there I think we will be doing Curious George, I think :)

(Week 11) Adventures Week 7: Pilgrims in Michigan

2011-10-02T19:36:00.001-07:00

This week we continued to learn about the Pilgrims, this time focusing of the French Pilgrims who explored the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River and established Michigan.

Read Alouds:

…If You Lived in Colonial Times
American Pioneers and Patriots
Colonial America: An Interactive History Adventure
The Courage of Sarah Noble
A Lion to Guard Us by Clyde R. Bulla
Pilgrim Cat by Carol Peacock

Other Read-Alouds

Butterfly or Moth, How do you Know?
Katy and the Big Snow

Our FIAR book this week

An Egg is Quiet by Diane Aston

Geography

Most of our studies this week were geographical.

We did several mapping activities this week, between our FIAR unit (Katy and the Big Snow) and our MFW studies, Treyton made his own imaginary city map, we drew a map of our own neighborhood, drew the rivers and a few cities in Wisconsin and labeled the Great Lakes.

One fun thing Treyton learned this week is the meaning of the word ‘portage’. Portage, Wisconsin is where Mommer and Papa live, so Treyton is very familiar with the term. We drew the rivers on a map of Wisconsin to show why Portage is named exactly that. He didn’t really understand what I was telling him, about portaging the canoes between the rivers until he saw it for himself on the map. It was fun to see such a connection occur in his mind (hopefully it will stick) :)

Science

We started using Pandia Press’ REAL Life Science this week. We are learning about the Human Body, this week we talked about the difference between living and non-living things, and how to tell the difference. On Day 1 we looked at 4 different objects and made a checklist of the 8 different characteristics of living things. We started our science journal, which Treyton created a beautiful cover for.

On Day 2 we went outside and did a plot study, identifying both living and non-living things within the plot.

I am loving, loving, loving this science. It’s hands-on, to the point and written at Treyton’s level. It’s a 2-day a week program, with hands-on labs.

Next week we will be learning about Benjamin Franklin, I have big plans, we’ll see how far we get :)

Review: MathHouse Game Card Set

2011-09-28T19:28:00.001-07:00

I recently had the opportunity to review Carlito C. Caterpillar's MathHouse Game Card Set. I am always looking for fun and new little math games to play with the kids so I thought that this would be a nice addition.

Product Description:

“Based on Domenico’s proprietary 20 Step Sensory Math Teaching System. Featuring two uniquely designed games to demonstrate each step (40 games in all)

The set contains:

30 double-sided, full color, illustrated Game Cards

Related editorial information explaining to parents The What, Why and How of Each Step

Each 8" x 4" loose leaf card is printed on heavy card stock, lacquered to help protect from spills and ring bound to keep together and facilitate play”

Product Review

This product is what it says it is. I loved that there were printable resources available for use on the website instead of having to make my own (or to even make copies).

I also liked having a resource like this as small game cards on a ring that I could easily take on and off, rather than in a book. It may seem like a small thing, but it made it a lot easier for me to use and handle.

This product has some really cute math ideas and hands-on activities that my kids really enjoyed. Lexie particularly liked the “climb up” game. A game where she counted out cheerios, on to a chart to represent each numerical number.

This is a great “extra” to go along with our primary curriculum, or for parents to use after-school with their students.

The only negative that I must include in my review is that while I think it’s a great product, I don’t think that it’s worth the price tag.

Purchase Information:

You can purchase Carlito C. Caterpillar's MathHouse Game Card Set for $23.95, which includes shipping.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Giveaway Winner

2011-09-27T14:14:00.001-07:00

Random.org selected #8 as the winner of the Jeremy Riddle Furious CD. That was commenter Alana who said

Alana Wiemann said...

I follow Refined Metals Academy thru feedburner.

September 24, 2011 11:58 AM

Congratulations Alana, if you could e-mail me your address, I will get the CD sent to you right away!!

Giveaway – Last Day

2011-09-26T19:28:00.001-07:00

This is the last day to enter the Jeremy Riddle Worship CD giveaway!!! Go and enter NOW!!

If You Give a Cat a Cupcake (Week 10)

2011-09-26T19:18:00.001-07:00

Although this is not a Five in a Row book, we “rowed” it in the same way. Focusing on the book “If you Give a Cat a Cupcake” for 5 straight days, doing a variety of activities to go along with the storybook.

Day 1

I introduced the letter C, which Alexa was apparently already familiar with. I let her practice tracing the letter C on my phone using a Free Preschool App.

I also had her do a letter C do-a-dot page that we got from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

By far her favorite activity of the week was “How Many Candles on the Cupcake?” I would place the number beside the cupcake, she would tell me what the number was and then count out the correct number of candles. She could easily do up to 12 on her own and needed minimal help up to 20. We played this game almost every day this week, and I’m sure we will next week too!! Next we took out the Cuisenaire Rods and built a letter C using all different sizes and colors.

Day 2

We used our Education Cubes this day to play mama jenn’s cupcake game. Lexie rolled the die and kept track of the numbers that came up. The first number/candle to reach their cupcake one!! The first time she played number 5 won.

Day 3: Baking Cupcakes

Of course you can’t read a cupcake book without baking cupcakes, so that is what we did!

Alexa doesn’t get to cook by herself very often so this was a very special treat, that she really appreciated. She told me “Thank You” at least 3 times. Exclaiming “Oh my word, I can’t even believe it, Mama!” and shaking her little pooty over and over.

She really did do most of the work herself while I mostly just instructed her on what to do. She did very good cracking the eggs, and only got one little shell in there.

I poured the batter for her, and put them in the oven, but by this time she was distracted with the most important job of taste testing the batter (yes, we do that here).

Audrey was also very helpful for this portion of the baking.

Day 4

We didn’t have time to decorate our cupcakes the day before, so we squeezed that in on Thursday.

I had seen some really cute fish cupcakes on pinterest that I wanted to try…. each of the kids picked a color and we made frosting of that color.

And then we decorated with m & ms. Treyton said that they didn’t look like fish…. but I see it. (Oh and there are 2 ladybugs in there too…. and no, I don’t think those look like ladybugs)

And of course, after we decorated we had to eat some!!

On this particular day, Treyton and I made a glue pastel page of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Alexa wanted to join in on the fun, so I made her a C is for Cupcake page to decorate once the glue dried.

She played her Education Cube Candle/Cupcake game again this day, as well. Day 5

I had Alexa complete a “My 5 Senses” worksheet about her cupcake that she made and ate this week. We talked about whether it tasted sweet or salty, if it smelled good or bad, did it look big or small…. those types of things.

Off the top of my head (this never happens to me), I came up with the idea of a flower cupcake wrapper craft she could make.

She did most of the work herself (I helped gluing on the leaves). She also 100% on her own, cut out and glued this DTLK cat together on a piece of paper. I was sooo very proud. She really is an independent student.

This was such a fun book to read and work with this week. Alexa loves cats and cupcakes so I knew we couldn’t go wrong!!

LINKS

Most of the printables came from Spell Out Loud’s Birthday Bash which included the following and more:

Cupcake Download from 2 Teaching Mommies

Musings of Me Birthday Unit

Cupcake and Candle Game from Mama Jenn

DLTK Cats

(Week 10) Adventures Week 6: New Netherland

2011-09-23T20:52:00.001-07:00

We learned about New Amsterdam this week (now known as New York). The pilgrims that originally established New Amsterdam were from Holland.

Colonial Read Alouds:

The New Americans (Colonial Times)
Projects about Colonial Life (ch. 3)
The Courage of Sarah Noble
American Pioneers and Patriots
A Lion to Guard Us
Kids in Colonial Times
…. If You Lived in Colonial Times
Colonial America: An Interactive History Adventure
The Rough Face Girl
- More of an Indian story than colonial times

Extra Read-Alouds this Week:

How Do You Hug a Porcupine?
Who is God?
Sunflower Sword
Moses and the Burning Bush
Everyday Graces (Excerpt from Robinson Crusoe)
A Storm Called Katrina
Over the Rainbow
First the Egg

Activities:

Make a Windmill

We talked about how many people started coming over to the new world from different places (France, Holland, England, Spain) and that they established different towns to live in. The people of Holland came over and established New Amsterdam.

In Holland they have lots of windmills, they built one here in New Amsterdam, too.

For one of our activities this week, we colored and put together a paper windmill.

Make a Hornbook

While reading “…. If You lived in Colonial Times” we learned about school in colonial times and how students didn’t have a lot of books and paper, they instead used hornbooks. So we made our own hornbook with cardboard and plastic covering.

Make Butter

This was the coolest activity. After talking about how the pilgrims had to make most of the things they needed, we talked about how they made their own butter from the cream from the cow’s they brought over from Holland. We took a quart size jar and poured in a half-pint of whipping cream. We then took turns shaking it for 15 minutes or so.

As the whipping cream thickened, I wasn’t sure how much longer we could shake the jar, but then all of a sudden the buttermilk just separated and we had butter!

Map Study

I printed off a map which we color coded.

Orange for Spain
Green for Holland
Blue for France
Purple for England

We colored the countries and then marked where they established their town in America.

This was a good activity for Treyton. He has very good map skills, and is able to visually picture things, which helps him remember.

Nature Journaling We attended a nature journaling class through our homeschool group. It was really great learning different drawing techniques, and how to draw nature different ways. I think the kids and I do pretty good doing nature study but I don’t really know how to teach them how to draw, it’s nice to have support to teach them these things that aren’t my strong suit.

It was a fun week of school, and we learned a lot. We didn’t do any lap journal pages this week. I think next week I will have him narrate to me about what he’s learned about the pilgrims, but other than that, we will only be adding in maps to our American History Binder.

Can’t wait until next week… more pilgrims, this time in Michigan!!

Review: Wondermaps

2011-09-22T12:28:00.001-07:00

I was recently given the opportunity to review WonderMaps a map program put out by Bright Ideas Press. This is a product that I was really excited about getting the chance to review. Imagine having a program full of maps and historical geography printables as easy to access as a few clicks of the mouse – that’s what you have when you have WonderMaps.

Partial Description from Timberdoodle:

Choose any one of the 350 different maps and then customize it to fit your child’s level of study. Wonderfully versatile, each map has a variety of layers that you can turn on or off with a simple checkbox. Need a basic outline of a country, it’s there. Want to add cities, borders, terrain, even color? Each is just a click away. Easy-to-use layers even allow you to see how borders changed over time!

Product Description:

When you initially open the program this is the screen you see.

Separated into 4 categories, it’s easy to navigate to find the map you need.

In the first weeks, after receiving this product we were able to utilize several of the maps in our school including Christopher Columbus’ 4 Voyages to the New World between 1492-1504, a simple US map along with several state maps, and the 13 colonies map. I personally, love the customizable aspect of the program probably the most. I cannot tell you how many times I have found “almost” the perfect map somewhere, but it had just a little too much, or was missing one aspect of what I was looking for. Being able to make it what I need, makes my job a lot easier.

Product Review

This product is a great supplement to our school. We do lots and lots of map studies, on their own as well as a part of our history. We need good maps to make the most of these studies. The fact that we can use this program on the computer, or to print, is a feature that I appreciate.

This is a well organized easy-to-use program that has only added to our geographical studies and supplements. Having the ability to simply open up a program and find the map I need in a few simple clicks, sure beats scouring the internet for a decent free printable. The time saving alone is well worth the price, in my opinion.

To Purchase

You can purchase the WonderMaps CD through Timberdoodle for $44.95

To check out other great geography curriculums and supplements (including some great puzzles and hands on items) visit Timberdoodle today.

Legal Disclosure: As a member of Timberdoodle's Blogger Review Team I received a free copy of WonderMaps in exchange for a frank and unbiased review.

Review & Giveaway: Furious by Jeremy Riddle

2011-09-20T15:08:00.001-07:00

I was recently given the opportunity to review Jeremy Riddle’s newest CD called Furious. I was so excited to receive this product, having already been some what familiar to Riddle’s worship style, and liking it.

I don’t know about you, but I like to know who it is I’m listening to, before I listen to them (if I can). I found lots of information on Jeremy Riddle on the Vineyard’s website which I thought might give you a better idea of who the man behind the music is and where his heart is:

Jeremy Riddle is first and foremost a follower of Jesus Christ, husband to one beautiful wife, father of four amazing children, a servant of the body of Christ, a songwriter, and a pastor/teacher.

It is tension that fuels the music and ministry of worship leader Jeremy Riddle. It is the tension between grace and the law; mercy and judgment; love and discipline. It is the people of unclean lips lifting praise to a holy God. It is God wearing flesh, and God’s imminent return. It is life between the first and second coming of Christ. It is messy and stressful and beautiful and exhilarating. It is the tension between The Now And Not Yet.

Jeremy Riddle’s Website own website describes his newest album the following way “Furious communicates the story of God's love and kingdom with strong worship anthems” – I love the sound of that!!

Songs on the New Album:

Fall Afresh
Furious
Love Came Down
One Thing Remains
Acquitted
You are Good
Walk in the Promise
One Thirst
Glory to the Lamb
Lord My Shephard
Here
Always
Nations Rage

Product Review

I really enjoyed this album. As a whole, it has more of a worship sound than simply a Contemporary Christian Artist type sound – which seems some what self explanatory, but I wanted to be clear that this is a worship album and not just a “fun clean” album the family can listen to, together. It’s both.

My favorite songs on the album were track 4, One Thing Remains (my favorite), Track 8, One Thirst, and track 11, Here. Though I seriously liked all of them.

All of the songs, but particularly Track #4, One Thing Remains, are songs I can hear being played in a contemporary church service. Written from the heart these songs are Riddle’s sincere form of worship to the Holy God of the universe, and when I took the time to listen and worship along with him they opened up my heart in a similar way.

This album has found a place in my morning quiet time, as it inspires my worship, and truly softens my heart to sit humbly and quietly before a Holy and loving God.

A great addition to congregational or personal worship times, this album is being released TODAY!!

WIN A COPY

I am so excited to be able to give a copy of this CD away to one of my blog’s lucky readers. Simply leave a comment for your chance to win – and let’s go ahead and make it fun by answering the following question:

Who are you listening to a lot right now? Which artist/album/band is finding the most play-time on your I-pod/CD player?

For additional entries

Like Refined Metals Academy on Facebook (2 Entries) if you already have give yourself (1 entry)

Follow Refined Metals Academy through Google Connect or Feedburner (2 entries) if you already do (1 entry)

Like Vineyard Music on Facebook (2 Entries)

Leave a separate comment for each entry.

Entries will no longer be accepted after September 27th, 12:00pm (noon) central standard time. I will select a winner soon after.

Good Luck!!

To Purchase

Visit I-Tunes (or your music purchasing market of choice) and pick up Riddle’s Album today. I don’t think you will be disappointed.

To learn more about great christian artists and albums that are out visit Vineyard’s Twitter and Vineyard’s Website.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.
I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."