week 2

A lot of these pictures are going to start looking the same, because I take just about the same pictures everyday.  A few of them I want to look back and see how the kids are progressing.  And also because I am a slacker and fall behind on updating this blog, I need a reminder of what exactly we did do. 

 

Week 2, we started out each day with the boys writing a little something about the date, their name and then a random sentence that I came up with.  Some mornings I let them spell words out themselves in the random sentence and some mornings I would help them spell it out.  Carson has to jump in to and thinks he can write just as good as the other boys can and has to have his picture taken and has to see his face in the camera or he pitches a fit.  We also started out with the pledge, star-spangled banner, prayer, and calendar time.  We would count the numbers in spanish as we went through what day it was in the month.  We did the weather some mornings and also let them color in what day of school it was. 

 

       

        

Andrew really enjoyed putting together 3 letter words with the phonics cards from our A2 program. 

   

The boys are obsessed with catching critters they find in the backyard.  This particular week, they caught about 50  grasshoppers and crickets then decided to put a frog in the same bug box.  Who knew that frogs at baby grasshoppers ☺

    

 

I bought this hat from the dollar spot at Target after I took Carson to the doctor and he wore it the whole day…   

  

 

We worked on simple addition for Andrew and double addition with carrying for Spencer.  We learned about place values so that it hopefully would make a little more sense.  The boys worked in a few workbooks that I had got from the Target dollar spot.

 

After our frog and grasshopper/cricket encounters, I had the kids draw in their nature journals about the animals.  I used the Usborne Draw Animals book and a page off the internet on how to draw crickets. 

 

We read about Nephi and the brass plates this week and I found a song off of LDS scripture rock that dealt with 1 Nephi 3:7.  I LOVE these songs and the kids do too because they’re fun to dance to and it helps them learn the scriptures. 

 

            

    

Andrew helped me set up the new September calendar. 

   

 

MATH

* Place values

*Skip Counting by 3’s

*Dreambox computer games

Andrew – Practice writing numbers, workbook

Spencer – Double digit addition, workbook word problems…simple addition and subtraction

*dot to dot puzzles

 

LANGUAGE ARTS

*Rain, Rain, Go Away rhyme – ‘ay’ words

*Started McGuffy Readers with both boys – Andrew…primer, Spencer…1st reader

*Read “Dinosaurs at Dark”

*Listened to “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” and others by Beatrix Potter on CD

*Played Hooked on Phonics Spanish game…Spencer dressed up like what he thought a Spanish person would dress up like and grabbed his cowboy hat, tomato stake to use as a guitar and let me know this is what Spanish people did. 

*Andrew – 3 letter word puzzles

 

And to see what the boys did that weekend, go to my family blog…

quick update

School is coming along.  We do have good and bad days…and last week when this happened just about everyday, maybe not ALL to this extent where red juice splattered all the way up to the blinds…

 

I called Shaun crying and thinking to myself…I don’t think I can clean up messes 3 times a day like this with everything else that I have to get done.  Luckily I was just exaggerating a little and after a good cry and coming to my senses, I decided that with a little help from above, I can do this. 

 

The boys are doing pretty well in their studies.  I will give a more detailed post on what exactly they have been doing…mostly for my records, since I am 3 weeks behind… Getting them to try and not whine and complain about doing things they consider “hard” and “boring” is another thing.  Once they get going though, they realize that it’s not so bad. 

 

We got to meet Caroline Bennett who wrote, Charley’s Columbia Backyard, on Wednesday at the preschool.  I had never read the book before and it’s really cute! The boys even got a signed book. 

 

Don’t look too excited boys!!  ☺ One of these days they will enjoy me taking their picture. 

A couple of Friday’s ago, the boys had a woodworking class with Shaun.  They learned how to measure, cut, hammer and nail, plane some old wood that Shaun had gotten, and do basic woodworking skills.  They learned about different tools and what the tools’ functions were.  I got a book entitled “Tools” from the library for them to look at. Just don’t mind their outfits…they picked out their work clothes☺ 

frog and toad

The Camden Library had Frog and Toad come and visit yesterday and it was awesome!!  The boys and I read Frog and Toad are Friends before we went so they were familiar with who the characters were.  Carson was SOOO excited!!  At first they wanted to have nothing to do with him but they finally warmed up and at least gave me one picture so I could prove they were there.  The library also furnished snacks {cupcakes and crackers and juice} beforehand, and then the children’s librarian had a group storytime after everyone had a chance to mingle with Frog and Toad.  Carson loves the Frog and Toad books.  He got the book last night from me and sat in his bed, almost in the dark, and just “read” until he got too sleepy. I really enjoy these books too…they are funny!  I don’t know why I haven’t read these books before. 

     

 

 

    

      

first week of school

We are officially homeschoolers...

The first 3 days were just ideal and then reality set in and I was ready to send the kids back to school on the 4th day. I came to the conclusion though that I already knew there would be days like this, so I just needed to take them in stride and have faith that the next day is a new day and that’s that.

We’ve done a lot of review this week and mixed in a few new concepts.

I’m just getting my feet wet into what homeschooling is all about. I’m sure it’s going to take us a little bit to figure out what is working and what’s not.

Here’s what the kids did this week though and a few pictures mixed in…

LANGUAGE ARTS

Spencer read a few of Aesop’s fables to me and then I had him narrate back to me what he read and what he understood. He read The Ant and the Grasshopper, and The Lion and the Horse, which is REALLY funny! He also wanted to read the “little Peter Rabbit book”, The Tale of Peter Rabbit. We read quite a few pages and still have a few to go. We talked about long and short vowels and gave examples. I found a Rhyme a week program that we have been doing. The kids really enjoy this! It has a two fold mission around here. They usually act it out, which gets them out of their seats and moving…because they need it… and then it teaches them rhyming words. For instance we did Jack and Jill this week and learned a lot of –ill words. The kids LOVED when I told the rhyme fast, then slow, then soft…and just changed it up so they could change up their movements. The website has riddles too which I used with the –ill word cards and they got to choose which word went with the riddle. We mostly did this while Carson was at preschool.

Andrew read a couple of the Dick and Jane books with me and then he also did this book and another booklet like it from Hubbard’s Cupboard that I heard about from Susana in this post, while Spencer and I read together. The words we worked on were: I see we will look something yellow blue come funny. He learned a lot of the sight words last year during preschool so some of the words we have started off with are review. He participated in the Rhyming program too. He also knows the difference between vowels are and the consonants. We worked on 3 letter words with our phonics cards in our Accelerated Achievement curriculum.

 

 

MATH

We used workbooks a lot this week. Spencer is reviewing simple addition and subtraction. Andrew is working on recognizing numbers, writing them correctly, and adding using dominoes.

I found this awesome domino parking lot from a blog {I’m sorry I can’t remember whose it is} and the kids have loved adding up the dominoes and parking them in the right spot. Carson gets all of the dominoes that are over 12 and he thinks he is adding them up too ☺ One day we only “parked” the even numbered dominoes since we worked on skip counting by 2’s this week and learned that those are even numbers. We compared how many dominoes were on each even number and then wrote those numbers on the board. We used our math symbols we are trying to learn to compare them… less than, greater than, add, subtract and equals. Spencer passed his little quiz I did on Friday on the symbols, but Andrew needs a little work remembering them.

Andrew also loves a math game I picked up at TJ Maxx where you put the puzzle together with a matching number, name of the number and items that add up to the number. He likes to see how fast he can do it.

We measured a few objects and wrote down the measurements. We took notice of which one was the least amount of inches and the most amount of inches. They measured small things with their rulers and big objects like the bookcase with a tape measure.

On Friday, Andrew dumped out all of his money out of his bank and was counting it, so I thought that would be a great math lesson. So we sorted the coins into quarters, nickels, dimes and pennies, then sorted those piles into dollars. We counted the money, recorded it, then added them up. I tried to get Spencer to add more in his head…and with using numbers that I would have to carry a number into the next column, I made sure they watched my process of doing that. I’m sure one of these days they will get it. We estimated how many pennies we thought there were, then the boys had to change their estimate a couple more times after we passed their 1st estimate.

 

The first numbers are the even domino numbers. It looks like we were trying to subtract but we were just comparing Andrew’s number of dominoes to Spencer’s and seeing if the numbers were less than, greater than, or equals to…

SCIENCE

For science this week, I used a 1st grade textbook that I found at a garage sale until I can find something else. It was okay… We talked about some science skills, such as observe, compare, classify, measure, predict…and a few more… then did a couple of chapters and the review.

We talked about living and nonliving things and our senses. We compared a lizard that the boys had caught and put in a jar, to some rocks that they boys had collected. We just mainly discussed the topics and then made a couple of charts.

I guess you could say we experimented a little with colors. The boys wanted to paint for their “art” class so we discussed colors and what happens when we mix certain colors. We discussed blue and yellow make green, orange is red and yellow, and red and blue make purple. I'm going to definitely go back and teach a little more on depth with this because they still asked me the second day which colors make green, orange and purple.

Spencer saw a volcano in one of our I Wonder Why books and was very interested in that. So we watched some YouTube videos on volcanoes and the boys were AMAZED! One video we watched was how to make a volcano, so they were all wanting to make one. We made a simple one, but this week, we might delve into trying to make one out of paper mache or something easier. Baking soda and vinegar work well, but Diet Coke and Mentos make a real explosion!!! ☺ This coming week, I think we might focus our science on volcanoes and study them more in depth. The boys did build a volcano with blocks and then of course they built an army out of all the baskets, blocks, and anything they could find to try and help save the people from the volcano. I just love their imaginations!!

HISTORY

For history, we went to this website and the boys learned about our nation, and did the symbols of our government. The bald eagle was one symbol of our nation and so we looked on YouTube and found some awesome videos of bald eagles. One video was shot in Alaska and the guy had over 30 bald eagles in his backyard, perched everywhere. It was AMAZING! It was interesting to hear the eagles talking to each other and letting the couple’s kids get rather close to them.

We are planning a trip to DC in the next couple of months as our belated “summer vacation”, so I thought we would talk about the things we would be seeing while we are there and the importance and significance of them. I didn’t purchase a history curriculum right up from because I was a little overwhelmed, but I think learning about these things will suffice for right now until I can decide.

NATURE STUDY

This week, we went to the Wateree River boat ramp right under the Wateree River bridge to just take in the nature. The following day, we discussed some of the things they heard and saw…crickets, butterflies, the flowing water, rocks, and a boat. Then I had the boys draw pictures of something they saw. They both drew pictures of the boat with a father and son in it.

Like I said…I’m STILL learning TONS everyday!! But I wanted to keep a record of what we did everyday, so I can make a book like Susana had of all their homeschool adventures ☺

Hope next week turns out okay!!