Finishing out the Year!

Greetings! Here is a brief overview over the final weeks leading up to Christmas Break! 

In Tot School

We are following Carisa’s Rock Star Curriculum and Erica’s LOTW Curriculum for Chipmunk. I mix and match a few things and modify for his interest, ability, and our schedule, of course, but I really so like the combination of what these homeschool moms have created. 

So without further ado, we have been learning:

• How to write the letters H & T
• Pre-writing Practice
• Letter Identification (we love letter mazes for this)
• Letter-Led Bible Verse (we love Steve Green)
• Writing the number 2 (and boy does it pose some challenges
• Size Sorting (we loved the LOTW Turtle sorting for  “T”)
• Cut and Paste (asking a 3 year old to cut, oh my!)

 

• Butterflies (we learned how to make a butterfly with fingers paint and hands)
• Build-a-Pattern (we loved the LOTW Hippo Building for “H”)

In First Grade

Morning:

• Calendar Notebook (Peanut is thinking of ways to make  11)

Math:

• Counting by 10s Review (we love number mazes for this,)
  Addition Mazes (trying to figure out sums of 7, 8, & 9)
  Chapter 2 Test (Peanut ACED it!)

Social Studies:

• 13 Colonies and how they began(matching using card print outs and yarn!)

Science:

• Life Cycles of a Frog & Butterfly

English:

• Adding “s” and “es” to nouns
  Compound words/nouns

Reading:

• We read out first play and acted it out!

Bible:

• Balaam & Balak (Peanut love the part about donkey and the angel!)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Addition Mazes

I love the letter and number mazes that I have found for my tot. However, my 1st grader has been a little disheartened that his brother has all the "fun learning." So, in an effort to make math even more fun, I created some addition mazes as well. The concept is the same, except instead of number and letter and identification, students have to determine which addition equation equal the given sums.

You can download the mazes here.

Enjoy,
MissMom

Growing Seeds

Last week, we are exploring living and non-living things in Science.

• We have learned:
• The difference between living and non-living
• What all living things needs to survive
• What is necessary for things to grow 

We ended the week with a cool and fun science experiment on sprouting seeds.
Peanut learned what main element is needed for seeds (and all other living things, for that matter) to grow.

We used Red Wheat Grass seeds for the experiment. With just water and 5 days, the seeds began to sprouted.

If you would like to complete this science experiment for yourself, please download it here.

I used this for my (advanced) 1st grader who is on 2nd grade curriculum, but I am sure most 1st-3rd graders would easily be comfortable completing this experiment.

Weekly Update

We are excited about Thanksgiving this week. We have "themed" out the entire week in most of our core lessons and especially in our extra-curricular activities. We are learning about Pilgrims, Indians, Pocahontas, giving thanks, harvesting, and much, much more. We have had some new packages arrive this week and we are eager to either get started or really delve in.

Take a look at some of the activities we have been working on this past week:

1st: Tot Trays! 
I have incorporated some alternative ways to keep this fun and exciting for my tot.

2nd: Geography!  
We have began our "Road Trip USA" curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler. It has wonderful lessons and plans and my son is enjoying himself. We will be charting each State Insect/Bird/Animal as we explore the 50 states!

3rd: Countdown to Christmas! 
My boys enjoyed creating this calendar. We will be counting down our days and celebrating Advent along the way. The pack is called Everyday Emmanuel from What's in the Bible? Later this week, we will be stuffing our calendar pockets with fun-filled family things to do for the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas. We will keep you posted!

Helping Kids Write

My son loves to free-write, but formal writing is another animal! We have been practicing very hard on writing a personal story this week. Because my son is an aspiring artist, I thought of a way to make writing fun! We introduced colors and he thought is was so cool to begin writing on construction paper. I created a PDF as a guideline to help other teacher-moms who may have creative, unmotivated, or struggling young writers. My son was excited about his final draft and he has been talking about it all week!

Hopes this blesses someone, MissMom.

You can click here to view the PDF!

From brainstorming to final draft, Peanut mastered the writing of a personal story, 2nd grade!

What are we getting into?

We are all on track this morning and ready for learning.

This week we are adding Tot Trays for Chipmunk and Geography for Peanut.

We had a mini preview of tot trays yesterday and it was a hoot! He enjoyed counting finding his ABCs, and making the letters of his name. We are thankful to Carisa for the idea. You can visit her page here to learn more.

Today we will be adding cutting, painting, and 1-2-3 counting to his trays. He is working with a new distance learning curriculum as well and he his loving his two teachers. He has mastered all the letters in his name...now we just need to get them in the correct order! :-)

Peanut has a mini-preview of the 50 states as we take a year long road trip through our country! We begin with our nation's capital--D.C. He visited early this year and is excited to learn some new thing and read up on some of the landmarks he's seen. We chose the curriculum from Erica of Confessions, you can visit her site here.

Today we start unit 2 in all of our subjects. In math, we are learning place value, greater than/less than, expanded form, and rounding. Peanut is very excited about math! In Social Studies, we are planting and learning about farms, past and present.In English, we are working on how to use the thesaurus and dictionary.

I will check back in later today with updates of our day!

I have a class to attend this evening and all my "worthy" caretakers are unavailable, so off to class they go with me. This will be my first time taking them with me, so let's pray!

2012-2013 Student Interviews

I loved this idea from Carisa at 1+1+1=1. It was quite fun interviewing my guys and hearing what they had to say. Because we transitioned from school to homeschool, I am a bit late in the year with all of the homeschool tenants of education, so forgive me for posting this in November!

I have created a basic template for this, for those who want one. If you send me an email address I will send it to you as I am not sure it would post here without losing the formatting. Even with the template, you would still have to insert your own pics, obviously. I created mine a bit differently than Carisa, b/c I have no photography software skills and it was getting late and I wanted to feel like I had accomplished something by staying up 3 hours over my "bedtime." So, it's not perfect, but it's ours. If you are savvy with photography software, then yours will look better than mine. Oh, and I let my boys choose their color scheme, so forgive me if it does not "match." I like to let them be creative.

So here's to trying (and a little inspiration!).......

Having a great day!

We are so excited to be learning today! We have a fun-filled and a few challenges along the way. 

Tot School: "Chipmunk"

We are following the LOTW Curriculum from Confession of a Homeschooler. Erica is wonderful and her lesson plans are easy to follow. My son is quickly picking up his letter, sounds, and how to write them. 

We are on letter "A" this week and I pleased with his progress and eagerness to learn. We will be implementing "Tot Trays" next week. A super neat engagement activity for toddlers. We got this idea from Carisa on 1+1+1=1. 

1st Grade: "Peanut"

Since we started homeschooling in the middle of the year, I have been waiting for Peanut's ccurriculum to arrive. I just checked the tracking and it should be here today, hopefully. In the meantime, I am just following the unit lesson from school/state/standards for 2nd 9 weeks. 

Bible: "Garden of Eden" (I even learned something!)

Math:  I introduced fractions today! Now, you have some of those "challenges" that I wrote of earlier! :-)

Spelling/Handwriting: What a breeze! (If only it was this way in ALL subjects!)

Typing: We started on HOME keys today! It was quite interesting to see my six year old explore the keyboard! My youngest was pleading to type like his older brother, but I do not think I was ready for that yet!

Grammar: Declarative Sentences. I am waiting on the day when he doesn't say "Discover" sentences anymore.

History: We learned about the timeline today and then I had Peanut create one for himself. I taught him that major events are typically in a timeline, so choose wisely. He choose birth, walked, and climbed a tree. Not too bad! 

Writing:  Peanut had to write 3 things he's glad God gave him and write God a note about how he will obey Him. His very first one was "thank you for a good, loving mom." Most kids write 1 adjective to describe their moms (or anything)...I GOT TWO! 

PE: We're hitting the playground today!

Check out some pics from today 

Peanut is reading the Bible learning about Creation and the Garden of Eden!

My Chipmunk has a sad face because he has to clean up his paper shavings from cutting practice. (Sorry kid, no maids here!)

Chipmunk enjoys his educational video on letters and sounds. Check out LeapFrog Letter Factory!

Peanut is in deep concentration on his fractions, proving that kids do not have to be in a classroom to learn (or think!)

Oh yea, he thinks he can read and I cannot tell him any different. (We are working on it!)

Yes, he changes his "setting" based on what subjects he's on. He loves to move around! Tackling Declarative Sentences here!

 

Our First "Official Day"

Today was the first day we started with our classroom officially together, a guided schedule, and prepared plans! We have an awesome morning and the boys seemed to flow right into the routine. I did notice a few things that I would been to tweak as well. Take a look at what we accomplished this morning. 

My "Class"

 

My oldest son, Peanut, reciting the Christian & American Pledge

A quick snapshot of the Pledges.

My youngest, Chimpmunk, completing his "Calendar Notebook"

Peanut is writing his date!

Looking up the weather to assess his weather prediction and record in his weather journal.

We are working on correct color choice and staying inside the lines.

Homeschool Transition

MEET ME:

I'm Joyice, also known as "Miss Mom." I married with two boys ages 6 &3 and I am new to homeschooling. I am not a traditional homeschool mom. While I have been at home with them, I never once considered homeschool. I have taught and subbed in public schools, so naturally I sent my oldest to school last year for his Kindergarten year. We had a wonderful experience. His teacher really cared about him and his learning. She catered her teaching to all the children in the classroom, but of course I saw this most in my own child. As the year progressed, my son showed signed of "giftedness", but it was too early to test him. We moved on. I always "homeschooled" both of my boys heavily in the summer, as we had more time, all three of us, at least. 

THE PROBLEM: 

As the 2012-2013 school year approached, we enrolled our son in school for his 1st grade year, hoping for the same experience as last year. First grade consistently and frequently failed to meet out expectations. My son suddenly began to claim he "hated" school, his was overwhelmingly bored because he was not being challenged enough. The boredom then resulted in behavior issues (that my son never had before) and ultimately he did not want to be there. On top of that, his awareness (and introduction) to certain topics and issues were too mature for a six year old. When I asked him, "what did you learn that?" or "who told you that?", my son often replied "school" or "my teacher".

 Needless to say, I was becoming more and more irritated with public school. In turn, I realized, with the help of the Lord and some others, that I was in fact more irritated with OUR decision to enroll him in public school. Public school was failing my child and I was allowing it to happen! Who knew?!?! When I had that epiphany, I realized, I have a CHOICE! If that was not enough, a lady at my church reached out to me and mentioned that in children's church my son had admitted to being bullied at school. I quickly began "to see" that we could could not continue down this path, and this was just the first nine weeks of school. 

More and more, I was being led by God to seek an alternative educational route for my son. At first, I thought the issue was mainstream education, so, I had him tested for giftedness believing that if his results favored my desire I can withdraw him and enroll in a magnet school. However, I learned the results were not due back until December, and at this point I could not wait that long. 

THE SOLUTION:

 As I sat in church one day, my pastor said these exact words, "some of y'all aren't going to like what I have to say, but some of you need to take your kids out of public schools." My first thought was, well them, where do they go? And please, do not mention private school because many claim private school as if its affordable--it's not! Obviously, he mentioned homeschool. If I never heard the Lord speak, I did then. Public schools do not believe what I believe. I wanted my child to be someplace where the same beliefs, traditions, faiths, and practices were being upheld. Not a place where they were draining out the very substance I worked SO hard to instill.

THE TASKS/GOALS MET:
Within a week, I had researched homeschool, contacted by county office, meet with a homeschool mom guru, studied curriculum, paid for curriculum, visited Christian homeschool blogs/sites, withdrew my son, and began homeschooling him!

THE CONCLUSION:
I am so happy I did! My husband and I love it. My son is overjoyed that he can learn without having to wait for others or be told to stop because he wants to move ahead. He also enjoys sleeping in and having home-cooked lunches! ;-) We are enjoying being at home.

If you are a "transition" homeschool mom or at least thinking about it and you are of the Christian faith, here are a few scriptures that may help you along your journey. Seek God about what is best for you and your child. 

Psalm 1:1
Proverbs 1:7
Proverbs 22:6
Matthew 12:30

-Joyice