Week 12 - Fall

Mother Nature has made it really obvious the last couple weeks that fall is in the air and winter won't be far behind!  In typical Ohio fashion, the weather has been back and forth and non-committal to the change in seasons and the kids have been milking every last drop of warm weather!  I admit that this week we let some of our studying take a back seat to outdoor play time.  There will be plenty of time for sit-down indoor work once the weather is consistently cold! 

One thing we did manage to complete this week was the monthly art program at our local library called Art for Little Hands.  One of our favorite librarian reads books and does songs/rhymes with the kids and they work on a special art project.  This months' theme was pumpkins!  The kids created colorful coffee filter pumpkins and also glued lots of different orange objects on another pumpkin.  The program is geared more toward Little E's age range, but big brother still thinks it is fun and is more than happy to join in! And a trip to the library is always productive.  We usually leave with more books that we can carry!  Little E is really into the Pinkalicious and Marley series of easy readers.  I think we have checked out every single one multiple times in the last six months.  Big K has gone through the entire Diary of a Wimpy Kid chapter books series and has checked out several different comic-book type books.  Of course, in true big brother style he always makes sure to check out one or two ABC or counting books to read to Little E and Baby W because, well, they need to learn that stuff too! 

   

Even though we spend a lot of time at home, the kids don't really play with a lot of toys.  They would much rather spend their time drawing/cutting/gluing paper or using playdough or creating obstacle courses through the house.  However, every once in a while they rediscover a toy that holds their interest for more than five minutes.  This week it was Big K's marble run sets.  I love these things!  The kids spend HOURS designing and testing their roller coasters. 

Another thing the kids like to do is "play cooking."  Most of the time I give them the cheap spices and pantry items to make their own cooking creations, but this week Big K wanted to make something real.  He searched on Pinterest (yes, my six year old son knows how to work Pinterest and he is as enamored by all the yummy things on there as I am!) and found a recipe for Ultimate Oreos, although he kept calling them "Unlimited Oreos."  He checked our pantry for the ingredients we needed to buy, made a list to take to the store, and aside from a little help measuring and taking things in and out of the oven, he made them himself.  I must say - they were DELICIOUS.  Kid has good taste in recipes!  He is going to be quite the chef one day!

You can find the recipe we used here: http://www.mybakingaddiction.com/guest-post-ultimate-oreos/ 

Happy Learning,
Momma C

Week 11 - Communities

This week we continued learning about communities.  We focused a lot on the differences between rural, urban, and suburban areas and Big K decided he would like to live in an urban area best because he loves the tall towers (which is kinda funny because he HATES elevators!).  One of the activities we did was use construction paper to create our own cities.  Big K decided he wanted to make a skyline, so he cut out lots of tall buildings and even numbered the floors.  Then he glued them onto a big piece of blue paper to create a skyline artwork!  While he was doing that, I made a city map.  When all the pieces were dry Big K helped me brainstorm all the different types of businesses that a city needs and we labeled the buildings.  My favorite thing he put in his city was a thrift store.  He said the people needed a place to buy clothes!  (We buy most of the kid's things second hand.  I refuse to pay full price for clothes that are just going to get stained/ripped/ruined!!)

This week was also our monthly visit to read to the therapy dogs!  Big K and Little E look forward to it all month long.  This month some of the dogs were even wearing their Halloween costume.  So cute!  Little E even got in on the action this month and "read" a book to her favorite dog that comes, Holly.  Little E tells me each time we go that Holly is "just her size."

We also went to a program put on by our local park district called Nature Basket.  This time we learned all about fall and what animals do in the fall to prepare for winter.  We learned that some animals find a place to sleep all winter, some animals migrate, and some animals adapt.  Then the kids made a bird craft.  Normally this program is mostly attended by preschool aged children, but we were thrilled to meet some new older homeschool friends this time!

We only have a little more than a month until Big K's debut stage performance.  He has been hard at work learning his lines.  Memorizing lines is hard work when you are six, but he is doing an amazing job.  He has several parts in the play and is getting a real hands-on experience and is really enjoying it!

One thing that Big K has been working on is punctuation and capitalization in sentences.  Each morning I write a sentence on our big white board that has lots of mistakes.  Big K's job is to find the mistakes and rewrite the sentence the correct way.  He is getting really good at finding and fixing all my mistakes!  Now if only he would translate that knowledge into his own writing!  

 

Big K's favorite thing this week is his new writing tool.  We found a squiggle wiggle writer on amazon and thought it would be a great way to work out those hand muscles and help him with his fine motor skills.  I remember having one of these as a kid, and they are just as cool as I remember!  Big K did spelling work with it among other things!  I think we wore out the batteries more than once in a week.  That it a lot of writing!!  

 Happy Learning,

Momma C

Week 10 - Communities

This week we expanded our project learning about community helpers and started learning about different types of communities.  We learned the words rural and urban and read books about life in each type of community.  We also talked about how life in those areas are alike and how they are different. 

We also spent a lot of time this week focusing on learning about the dictionary.  Big K was thoroughly impressed by his new Children's Dictionary.  We did a scavenger hunt to help us learn about guide words and finding definitions.  We even did a spelling activity this week using his dictionary.  BigK really liked looking through all the additional information at the back of the book.  He found pictures of flags of all the countries in the world, a list of presidents, maps, and all sorts of good stuff! 



















We also started the next book in our math series.  Big K is excited about the adventures Fred is going to take in this book, and I've caught him several times reading his math book during his free time.  I'm going out on a limb and saying that he enjoys our math curriculum. 

On Friday we had our monthly tumbling class.  Big K has been talking about tumbling class since last month's lesson and he was thrilled to be going.  And this month did not disappoint either!  There weren't as many kids this time around, so he got more individual attention working on his forward rolls, backward rolls, cartwheels, and other tumbling basics.  The last month or so we have run into the same group of boys his age and he has been having a good time getting to know these new friends.  It was so great to see him running and playing and laughing with those kids!  I'm excited to see his friendships develop!  Last year in public school he was allowed only 15 minutes of recess time to run and play.  This year he gets as much time as he needs and I love that about homeschooling!

Happy Learning,
Momma C

Week 9 - People in our Community

After the last two weeks of learning about specific community helpers, this week we expanded and talked about all the different jobs that are in our community and how we all work together to make a productive society.  Some of the jobs we learned about were mail carriers, librarians, farmers, grocers, construction workers, doctors, nurses, and scientists.

Our big trip for the week was to a working farm!  Big K and Little E got so much hands-on experience with the animals.  They got to hold baby chicks, brush a pony, bottle feed baby goats, milk a goat, collect eggs, and pet and feed lots of other animals!  We learned about all the goods and services that farmers provide for the community. 

In other big news, this week Big K finished the first book in his math series, Life of Fred!  He is very excited to start the next book next week!  Some of the topics covered in the first book were telling time to minute, addition, subtraction, basic pre-algebra concepts (x+7=10), numbers in a set, and LOTS and LOTS of other information.  We LOVE Life of Fred!

This Saturday was Space Day at a local community college, so after Big K's football game in the morning we went to check it out.  We were pleasantly surprised and how much there was going on.  The kids got to compare the weight of objects on different planets, try out the tools doctors use in laproscopic surgeries, we saw a Math Magician show, and Big K even got to ride on a hovercraft!

 
It was a busy, fun, full week with lots and lots of learning going on!  Who knew homeschool life could keep us on the go so much!

Happy Learning,
Momma C

Week 8 - Community Helpers

After a great week of learning about fire safety last week, we decided to continue and expand our learning by studying more community helpers.  This week we focused on the police.  We read lots of books about police men and women and why they are so important to our community.  On Thursday, we even joined our homeschool friends for a field trip to the local police station!  Big K was pretty disappointed that we didn't get to go see the actual jail, but we did get to check out the garage where they keep all the police cars!

After the field trip, we went with another homeschool family to the park for a picnic lunch and some playtime.  All of a sudden we started seeing something in the sky - SKYDIVERS!  Apparently this park was located right next to an airport and skydiving school so as we played we got to see several planes take off, people jump out of them, float down, and land right on the other side of the park!  Talk about an unexpected treat for the kids! 

One think we also learned was how the police catch criminals.  We learned all about how unique our fingerprints are.  We even made our fingerprints on paper to look closely and see how Big K's and Little E's fingerprints were alike and different.
 
The kids were also really interested the learn about the role that animals play in the police force.  We learned about how police K-9 units work, and how dogs help the police.  We also learned that some police use horses in their work! 

In math this week we have been learning about place value and have been working on numbers up to 1,000.  We are getting really close to finishing the first book of our math series, Life of Fred, which is really exciting!  One day we played a game using UNO cards.  We picked three cards and then tried to make the biggest number possible as well as the smallest number possible with the three numerals.  We also worked on the less than and greater than signs with three digit numbers.  Big K breezed right through it! He's such a smart guy and math is definitely his forte!


This week was also the September edition of Tail Waggin Tutors at our local library - always a favorite with the kids!  This month they  had a ton of books by Big K's favorite author, Mo Willems for the kids to pick from. 

Happy Learning,
Momma C

Week 7 - F is for Fire Safety and Field Trips!

What a busy week we had last week!  So busy that it is Monday morning and I'm just now catching up on our end of the week things, like blogging!

This week we learned about fire safety.  We read books about firemen and fire safety, we talked about what to do if we had a fire at our house, and even had our own fire drill!  Most of it wasn't new information to Big K and Little E, but I still wanted to drill it into their brains a little more.  We also expanded by talking about the fire triangle and what a fire needs (air, heat, and fuel).  We did an experiment where I lit three candles and tried to put out the flame by taking away one of the needs.  The kids were amazed at how putting a glass over the fire would make it go out, and they really enjoyed squirting the flame with a spray bottle and sprinkling baking soda on the flames to extinguish them.  Apparently I'm raising a couple fire bugs, so it's a good thing we learned about fire safety! 

We also did a few fireman themed math activities this week.  One day we played a game called Roll and Count where we had to roll a dice, count the number of dots, and then find the numeral on the firetruck and cover it up.  Little E is getting really good at identifying her numbers and counting with one-to-one correspondence! 

We also took a field trip to the fire station with a homeschool group we are in.  The kids had the chance to see the firetrucks up close and personal as well as talk to a fireman about fire safety.  Big K's favortie part was seeing the living quarters at the station.  The fact that they had a kitchen and a big bedroom with lots of beds was pretty cool! 

  

This week also marked the start of weekly play practice! Big K is going to be in a production of Around the World in 80 Days.  He is a character named Thomas Flannigan and is also going to be a British police officer.  The kids read through Act I this week and also got an acting lesson where they learned how to move their bodies on stage to portray different modes of transportation. 

Our big treat for the week was a day trip up to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.  We had never been there before, and the two hour drive was just perfect for a day trip!  The kids (and us grownup) had a blast!  

Big K liked the train tunnel!

We acted like paleontologists and practiced digging for dinosaurs

And then we dressed up like dinosaurs!

It wouldn't be Indy without a kid friendly race car.  Big K wants to be a race car driver when he grows up, so this was a particularly special treat! 

Then we took a trip to China and learned all about what life is like on the other side of the globe.

Little E practiced her pretend cooking skills making a traditional Chinese meal

And learned the proper way to serve tea

Of course, Baby W just enjoyed a day full of snuggles!

Looking ahead we are going to transition our fire safety project into one about our community and community helpers!  We are even heading to the police station for another field trip!  

Happy Learning, 

Momma C

Week 6 - On the Go!

What a busy week!  This homeschool business sure keeps us busy.  So much learning, so much time together.  I LOVE it! 

We had several big events this week.  On Tuesday Little E had a tooth pulled.  Her tooth has been bad since it grew in, and finally needed to come out.  She was such a brave little girl, and our dentist office was amazing with her.  We took that opportunity to learn more about our teeth and how to keep them healthy (Little E's tooth was bad all on its own - she takes good care of her teeth!). 

On Wednesday we went to a program put on by our local parks department.  We learned all about squirrels and how to identify the different types of squirrels that live in our local area.  We learned about what squirrels eat and what happens to the nuts they don't eat.  We also learned what animals in the area eat squirrels.  The kids then made squirrel magnets for our fridge!

Since it was such a nice day to be at the park, we decided to go for a hike down the the creek.  It has been a very dry summer, so the creek bed was the perfect depth for taking our shoes off and splashing around a bit.  We found lots of rocks and even a few shells!  There was lots of discussion about how and why those shells were there.  The highlight of our creek experience was seeing a little crayfish.  Big K and Little E were amazing watching it duck in and out of the rocks. 

 Friday the kids had their first tumbling class.  A local gym does a Homeschool class the first Friday of the month, and I think it is safe to say we will be going back!  I was impressed with how many boys there were in Big K's age group.  He worked on some forward and backward rolls, cartwheels, and some trampoline skills.  After the hour long instruction, they kids were allowed to explore and practice for an hour worth of free gym time.  After a while, the practicing turned into fort building with the mats, but it was great to see Big K being able to have some free exploration play time with a group of boys his own age!  We made quite a few new friends and got some great exercise while we were at it. 

On Fridays Big K generally writes in his journal about something he really enjoyed that week.  And Tumbling class made the cut for this week's entry! 

"I did flips and jumps at tumbling class.  I did roll overs at tumbling class.  Max was there at tumbling class."