We’re now in week 4 of homeschooling, and we’re all still alive! Just kidding, its really been great. Totally loving the homeschool thing right now. But boy, it keeps me BUSY!
So, we’ve done a lot of great things the last few weeks, but I’ve been too busy to post any of it…then tonight I was determined to get caught up and accidentally deleted all but a few of our school photos, YIKES! That’s what I get for working at 11:00 a night. Too tired, must stop…
So what have we been doing:
- FIAR: We’re now on Book 4 and I switched things up a bit for this one. Five in a Row also has a curriculum called Before Five in a Row designed for younger children. A couple of the books we’ve done with FIAR have been longer than my 3 year old will sit still so I tried one of the B4FIAR books, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. Its been great fun! I’ll retake some photos of our completed work and post later.
- Last week our book for FIAR was Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans. The girls loved this and are still watching the DVD of the story from the library. We however, didn’t complete many projects on this lapbook. See “What I learned about sick days” below.
- Science: We’ve done a couple Sid the Science Day experiments since my last post:
- Change Happens: My Mushy Banana
In this episode, Sid wants to know why his banana turns brown. Teacher Susie takes the kids through a lesson on ripening and decay. That’s what we did too, used our senses to explore a very decayed yellow squash from a friend’s compost bin along with an intact squash. The girls squished the decayed squash through a plastic bag (it was seriously gross, I couldn’t bring myself to let them really touch it) and then they did touch and explore the good one. They had a great time and drew pictures in their journals about it. - Change Happens: Why Did My Ice Pop Melt
Today we learned about melting. A few days ago I covered a bunch of fruit with water in a Tupperware container and put it in the freezer. Then the girls were able to feel the ice and determine if it was cold or REALLY cold (REALLY cold) and if it was smooth or rough (smooth). Then we poured cold water on the ice. Not much changed. Finally we added a bunch of hot water and the girls then scooped and used eye droppers to set the fruit free. We ate some of the fruit, but most of it didn’t taste very good. Don’t know if that was from the water bath or because I used fruit that I found in the far back corners of my freezer.
- Change Happens: My Mushy Banana
- Reading
- Sight Words: E4 has been doing quite well with her sight words and she is now noticing them on things other than school work. She’ll point them out on boxes, books, signs, or if she hears one being used. Its cool 🙂 We’re going to keep at these same words for at least another week (see, and, the, a, I).
- Sing, Spell, Read, & Write: I’m embarrassed to admit, we haven’t worked on this program in over a week. I’ve been planning it in the afternoons but its just not getting done so I think next week I’ll switch it to mornings and sight words to the afternoons and see how that goes.
- Letter of the Week: This week and last our letter has been “T for Turtle.” E4 has breezed through all the activites and K3 has done much better. She did a Do-A-Dot sheet with really deliberate placement, and traced the letter fairly accurately.
- Math
- FIAR: E4 and I did a fun math game using a bunch (42) little paper Madeline girls. The story starts out “Twelve little girls in two straight lines” so we took 12 paper girls and put them in two straight lines. Then we took 12 more and did 3 straight lines, and finally 12 more and set out 4 straight lines. Then I asked E4 to tell me would group had the most Madelines. She picked the one with 4 lines. We counted them all again to prove they were all the same. This was a seed planting moment for sure. Although she believed they were all 12, she didn’t seem entirely convinced that the 4 row 12 was actually the same as the other two groups of 12.
- Bible
- We’re done a couple pages from our Who Is God and Can I Really Know Him book and we’ve kept up with our daily readings from our Children’s Bible. E4s Sunday school starts this weekend and she has a list of weekly Bible verses to memorize so we’ll start working on that as part of school too. There is something heartwarming about hearing my children recite a Bible verse 🙂
On top of all that, we’ve had a few adventures!
- Last week the girls started gymnastics. This is K3’s first class without mom and it has gone surprisingly well. I think it helps that E4 is in with her. Our class is fairly simple and done through our local YMCA. Oh…bummer, this was part of the photos I lost. I’ll take some more shots next week.
- This week Tuesday we had gymnastics again and then yesterday (Wednesday) we had a great adventure at Living History Farms. They have a preschool story time program once a month and we all had a great time. We started out in the visitor center and heard a story about planting apple trees. Then we took a tractor ride out to the 1900 farm site and got to see the animals (chickens, pigs, horses, cows and cats). We picked apples and pears from the orchard and took a tour of the house and barns. Another tractor ride back and we were done!
What I Learned About Sick Days
- Last week K3 was sick for 3 days. Nothing major, but a lot of messes. I decided mid-morning on the first day so “cancel” school until we could be out of the bathroom for more than 30-minutes at a time. This was a mistake. I’m not sure how I could have managed all the bathroom trips and cleanup (we had 7 in 5 hours the first day) but I learned I need to keep some activity going. By the afternoon and evening, the girls were wild and crazy from just being plain old bored. I let them watch far too much TV and basically be aimless the whole day. Well I didn’t wisen up the second day either and things only got worse! So on day 3 we had school anyway, and we were all so much happier. And thankfully we are all healthy this week!
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