Tuesday, April 20, 2010
The "Constituting America" challenge!
OK, so I decided to add one more thing to the home educating and moving at the same time challenge. Janine Turner founder and co-chair and Cathy Gillespie co-chair of "Constituting America" have issued a challenge to the people of the United States to read the Constitution and the 85 Federalist Papers in 90 days. They are also sponsoring the "We the People 9*17" contest for students. We have accepted their challenge and will be participating in both as part of our Social Studies curriculum. For more information on the challenge and the contest click here.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Weeks 2 & 3 - Moving
We spent most of last week getting ready to move.
Since Math is my daughter's weakness we made special effort to at least get a math and reading (her favorite subject) lesson in each day. Everything else is on hold until we finish moving.
Saturday (with the help of some men from church) we moved all the big, heavy items. This week we are moving all the smaller items and hope to be mostly moved in by the weekend. Next week we will finish up the move and prepare for our huge garage sale. Since we are moving to a place with 1/2 the square footage there will be a lot of stuff to sell.
Hopefully, we will be back on schedule (with regular posts and pictures) the first week of May!
Stay tuned! :)
Since Math is my daughter's weakness we made special effort to at least get a math and reading (her favorite subject) lesson in each day. Everything else is on hold until we finish moving.
Saturday (with the help of some men from church) we moved all the big, heavy items. This week we are moving all the smaller items and hope to be mostly moved in by the weekend. Next week we will finish up the move and prepare for our huge garage sale. Since we are moving to a place with 1/2 the square footage there will be a lot of stuff to sell.
Hopefully, we will be back on schedule (with regular posts and pictures) the first week of May!
Stay tuned! :)
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Our First Week
So far so good! Our First Week was a success! The kids learned a lot, they were able to play together more and they helped mom clean the house and do chores! It was also nice to have 2 meals together everyday! Prior to homeschooling we were getting 1 meal a day only 1-3 days a week because Daddy works nights and Unicorn was in school all day.
Monday we went to grandma's house. Some cousins were in town and they had recently been in a play. We were able to watch the video of them performing in "The Wizard of Oz". They did a great job and it was fun to watch the play because we knew some of the actors. After lunch we went home to do Math and Reading.
Tuesday and Thursday we rode bikes and went to the park for P.E.
Thursday and Friday we painted Nature Scenes for Art. Thursday was "National Bird Day" and we had found a bird's nest in our yard earlier in the week so we painted pictures of the nest. Friday they could paint whatever they wanted. I found a website, Artsonia, that publishes children's artwork online for free. This site makes it easy to share artwork with family and friends. If you want to check out more of their artwork just click here and in the search box enter the screen name for the child's artwork you wish to see.
April is National Poetry month so we are focusing on Poetry in writing. Unicorn wrote 12 poems already this week using an online site that helps generate poems. After she created the poem we copied and pasted it into a word document that we will print out and she will illustrate the poems and we will bind it into a book for her.
We also wrote letters to our penpals this week!
What we are learning:
As a family we Read Aloud each morning. I have decided that because of the huge range in interests and reading levels of the children to read "The Magic Tree House" series. This week we read the first book: "Dinosaurs Before Dusk". It was a hit! The kids don't even realize that I am "testing" their comprehension and teaching them about predicting and summarizing!
Unicorn: Math - Money; Reading "The Series of Unfortunate Events - The Grim Grotto" (book 11), nouns and poetry; Science - Nature; Social Studies - Current Events.
Ladybug: The number 1, the letter A (and it's sounds), following directions and reviewing colors and shapes
Monkey: ABC's, Counting 1-10, colors, Nursery Rhymes
Here are some pictures from our first week:
Monday we went to grandma's house. Some cousins were in town and they had recently been in a play. We were able to watch the video of them performing in "The Wizard of Oz". They did a great job and it was fun to watch the play because we knew some of the actors. After lunch we went home to do Math and Reading.
Tuesday and Thursday we rode bikes and went to the park for P.E.
Thursday and Friday we painted Nature Scenes for Art. Thursday was "National Bird Day" and we had found a bird's nest in our yard earlier in the week so we painted pictures of the nest. Friday they could paint whatever they wanted. I found a website, Artsonia, that publishes children's artwork online for free. This site makes it easy to share artwork with family and friends. If you want to check out more of their artwork just click here and in the search box enter the screen name for the child's artwork you wish to see.
April is National Poetry month so we are focusing on Poetry in writing. Unicorn wrote 12 poems already this week using an online site that helps generate poems. After she created the poem we copied and pasted it into a word document that we will print out and she will illustrate the poems and we will bind it into a book for her.
We also wrote letters to our penpals this week!
What we are learning:
As a family we Read Aloud each morning. I have decided that because of the huge range in interests and reading levels of the children to read "The Magic Tree House" series. This week we read the first book: "Dinosaurs Before Dusk". It was a hit! The kids don't even realize that I am "testing" their comprehension and teaching them about predicting and summarizing!
Unicorn: Math - Money; Reading "The Series of Unfortunate Events - The Grim Grotto" (book 11), nouns and poetry; Science - Nature; Social Studies - Current Events.
Ladybug: The number 1, the letter A (and it's sounds), following directions and reviewing colors and shapes
Monkey: ABC's, Counting 1-10, colors, Nursery Rhymes
Here are some pictures from our first week:
Ladybug's 1st time on a bike!
Work by Ladybug!
Unicorn and Ladybug playing.
Monkey and Unicorn on the slide.
The nest found in our backyard.
Unicorn painting the bird's nest.
Ladybug working hard.
Monkey's 1st time painting!
Bird's Nest by Unicorn
Bird's Nest by Ladybug
Bird's Nest by Monkey
Hearts in a Maze by Unicorn
Mud by Ladybug
Cactus in a Storm by Monkey
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