Homeschool Corner

Welcome back to Homeschool Corner!  My original plan was to get back into school this past week . . and we did; just not as much as I had hoped!

I had fully planned to start school on Monday morning but the boys asked for Play Dough.  What they didn't know is that my cousin had given me a full bag of Play Dough supplies back at the beginning of October so I got out all of the play dough stuff.  The boys played with the play dough for 3 full hours.  I think it was a huge success.

Tuesday we actually got some school work done.

We used cars to make "O"'s.  It was a great race track :-)

Then, we enjoyed a concert.

 Josh loves to play the piano.  I have a preschool piano book that he uses; he is not ready for lessons yet . . I've tried.  He is still very much about just playing what he wants to play.  I try to teach him concepts through just conversations and hope that maybe sometime next year he'll be ready for a little more "teaching". 

 While the concert is going on . . .Nate uses a wooden pizza cutter on his face :-/  HA

Notice the tongue?  The higher the notes, the further the tongue sticks out. 

The rest of week was a wash.  On Wednesday the boys were playing so I let them play.  Thursday we took my husband to a doctor appointment.  Friday was the last day of Friday school but the boys actually went to my Mother-in-Laws for the weekend.

Weekly Homeschool Report

I decided to change the title on this weekly post.  I was tired of typing the other one :-)

We did not have school this week.  Next week is actually supposed to be our week "off" but due to lots of things I decided to make this week our week off.  Between my husband being off work, me being gone at the end of the week last week, and really nice weather, it just seemed to fit.  I just told my husband a few days ago that I am officially sold on the 6 weeks on/1 week off because this week has been a wonderful break.  Even Josh, who loves school, was happy to have the week off.  When we have school - my entire morning it taken up with setting up for the day, teaching, and then cleaning up.  By the time I finish, it is usually time to start getting lunch ready.  So, to have a week where I don't have to do that, well, that is nice!

I thought I would show you what our "classroom" looks like now that we've lived with it for awhile and I've cleaned up and changed a few things.  I'm living with it like this for now to see how we really use things before I figure out what I want to get from Ikea.  I have a few ideas that will make it look "cleaner" when I can get the things I want but considering the fact that I have already changed, moved, and downsized some things, waiting is good.  Plus, I will be cleaning out my books and selling them to a Christian Bookstore that sells used books and then those shelves in the basement will become my school shelves where I can store things we aren't using on a given week.

 Our "wall".  This wall is where all of our daily items are posted.  From the calendar to our clock to sight words.  It is in easy view for the kids to refer to and also to review throughout the day.

 This corner is "command central".  The table houses the stereo, my cricut (since I use it for school projects too), carts with supplies, the kids baskets/bags with crayons and markers, bookshelf and games plus the yellow table holds their computer. 

This is hard to see but I moved our family photo wall to this small wall.  It also houses our American Flag :-)

Since our dining room is used for class and for meals it takes a lot of effort each day to keep it "up and running".  I finally let go of keeping something pretty on my table since I was constantly moving it off to do class or eat meals.  No more table clothes for now either since they make it difficult to do school work.

I also thought I would share what our playroom looks like too.

 From the doorway. 

 The main area.

My "closet".  Right now the closet houses my crafts, school stuff and scrapbooking stuff.  I'm really leaning towards moving most of this down to the basement on storage shelves once I sell those books.  Then we can use the shelves to house kid stuff, like games and puzzles.

I also have bigger storage plans for this room, again, from Ikea.  That will help with Lego storage, Lincoln Log storage, cars, trucks and other fun stuff.

So, that's our daily life in school.  That dining room table gets a ton of use . .. we looked at replacing the chairs this year because they are so uncomfortable but have yet to find what we like and we sat on a lot of chairs!!

Preschool and Pre-K report

Last week was a little different due to my husband being home due to a back injury and then I was heading out of town on Thursday. 

Monday -

 The boys have been asking to play with play dough lately, which I don't mind at all, but it seems like they ask just before dinner or just before bathtime so there really isn't time to get it out.  After spending most of the day in the ER with my husband on Sunday, I really didn't feel like "teaching" on Monday so we got out the play dough and practiced making the letters the two little boys have learned so far.  Once they had made letters then we got the rest of the play dough stuff out and they played the rest of the morning.

 Nate's letters - I think he did pretty good :-)

My letters - Josh actually made both the upper and lower case letters but I didn't get any photos of his finished product.

Tuesday -

 Nate doing some color matching :-)

 Josh working on his calendar.

The boys working on some graphing.

The boys were really not into school on Tuesday and asked to quit early.  I didn't fight it - that is one of the joys of homeschooling :-) 

We took Wednesday off because I had so much to do to get ready to leave on Thursday.  I made three different trips out during the day in order to tie the trips into naps since my husband is confined to a chair most of the time.   Thursday was already a planned day off - Darryl had a doctor's appointment in the morning and then I left after lunch. 

So, where did I go?  I went on a long-planned scrapbook weekend with friends.  It was fully paid for and, to back out, would have cost me what I paid so we decided that it actually cost less to go - since the amount of "spending" money was much less then what I had already paid.  It was so much fun to go away with some friends AND to get a ton of scrapbooking done. Now I'm back to getting creative with a way to keep my stuff a little more handy so I can do some pages each week.  I have a few ideas. . .. my dining room is the size of the Grand Canyon afterall, isn't it? LOL

So, here we are at Monday of a new week.  I think we are taking this week off - it is supposed to be next week - but I'm kinda buried and behind right now.  To start with the boys have a dentist appointment this morning so we wouldn't even do school.  I still need to unload and unpack plus I have some organizing to do.  Added to that the boys and I all have colds (as do the kids I babysit for - they aren't even here today they are so sick).  I do have a few fun ideas to do so we will do those, review the letters, numbers and sighwords we've learned so far and even do some review worksheets.  I also have birthday and halloween things I need to get a grasp on so that I'm not scrambling at the last minute.  Taking this week to do all of that will be a big blessing :-) 

So, three cheers for a "week off"!

Preschool and Pre-K Report

Here is our week in pictures!

Isn't that face adorable?  This is actually from a week ago Sunday.  The boys and I went to church then met my husband for lunch when he finished working.  He had a concert that evening so we were just all hanging out.  After lunch we went to the mall playland and the boys played until I noticed they kept laying down on the ground they were so tired HA!  When we got home, I carried Nate inside, he woke up so I put him down to take off his shoes; he wandered to the couch where Josh sang him to sleep with a "littleby" and Nate slept for 2 hours, took a bath and went to bed and slept all night!

Now, on to school! 

Monday:

 I love this picture HA!  Nate has a mustache from sucking on a marker cap :-)  One of the great things in the Letter of the Week curriculum is the use of things around the house to practice.  Today we used blocks to make the letter "I".  Some weeks we use stickers or legos or whatever else I can find around the house.

 Josh really struggles still with wanting to do the preschool lessons so he did the letter "I" in blocks too.  It is still great review for him so how can I say no?

Later in the day the boys got out some games to play.  We are still learning how to play games; and that one person doesn't always have to win!!

Tuesday:
No School :-)  I took the day and went to a scrapbooking crop so I did not make Nana do school BUT my boys said that next time, they want Nana to do school with them so I'll have to leave some fun lessons for her to do!
Wednesday:

 In just the first few weeks  of school, Nate's coloring has improved by leaps and bounds.  He know stays in the lines (unless he is adding legs to his elephant picture hanging on his wall; I am very thankful for washable markers HA).  This was our Bible Activity for the day - "Be Fair".  We talked about how Bees don't take all of the nectar but leave some for the other bees; comparing that to sharing with others.

 Scissors and glue sticks - it is what makes a boy happy!

 I love those feet (and they are "almost" clean!)

 Again, making the letter "I" with tangrams.  I need to get more of these though - the boys tend to fight disagree over the pieces. 

 This week, we only did an afternoon craft on Wednesday.  Monday the boys were outside playing so I just let them play and on Thursday, well, I don't even remember HA! 

 I found this great idea over at Toddler Approved for a "Snippin' Tree".  Basically, I gave the boys 4 different colors and let them snip the "leaves" and glue them.  I thought this would be a huge hit.

Well, these were their finished products.  Notice?  One color per tree?  They got bored REALLY fast with this idea!  Oh well, they can't all be winner ideas, can they?

Thursday:
I don't even remember Thursday .  For real.  I don't think we did school . .. I think we ran errands that morning which I won't do again with 4 kids under 5!!

Friday:
Normally we go to Friday school on Friday.  Well we did, for like 30 minutes, and then I had a kid puke.  At least he made it to the bathroom! 

 This poor little guy had the flu - running a fever and crashed on the couch; something we never see.  He kept asking when his fever would leave :-( 

 On the other hand, this little guy was LOVING that his big brother was sick because he got to ride the two-wheel bike the whole day.  He cannot WAIT to get his own bike.  It will be kind of anti-climatic since he can already ride one so I had to take a few photos of his "first" bike ride!

And then there is this guy - the big kid has a blown disc and is pretty much "chair-ridden" at this point. 

So, that was our week.  I'm a little more prepared for this coming week - only 3 days of school this week due to a doctor's appointment on Thursday with the big "D" for his back. 

It's hard to believe that it is the night before October.  I want to incorporate some more fall activities and pumpkin/fun Halloween stuff plus we have a birthday this month for a special boy who is turning 5. 

Pre-School and K-4 Report

Welcome back to week 3 round 2 of our school year.  This week seemed to go the most smoothly .  .well, Thursday was a little iffy but I can fix that in the future by not planning 5 cutting, gluing and coloring activities in one morning for 3 different kids.  Wow.  I couldn't keep up.  We also did something fun every afternoon and I have found that really helps to diffuse the day by breaking up day.  Even if it is only a 10 minute thing to do it gets all three boys sat down, and doing something totally different. 

Here's are week in photos!
Monday - 

 Josh working on one of his math worksheets from our Confessions of a Homeschooler curriculum.  He's also working on using a pencil vs. a marker for some of his worksheets. 

 I ordered/downloaded this set of number poem cards from Teachers Pay Teachers that includes the full color card with the poem as shown above, a black/white card to color with the poem and one without the poem.  Such a simple resource to have when teaching numbers.

 Nate was working on making a pattern on the letter's E as that is the letter of the week for the younger boys. 

 Our craft on Monday was making Sandpaper Trees.  I always like to give credit for ideas I use but . . .I cannot find where this one came from currenlty.  For this craft, I cut out the trunk and some branches and had the boys make their tree.  Just as a side note, sand paper does not glue well to sandpaper - you need to glue it right to the paper; don't overlap it.  Lesson learned :-)

 Then we took tin foil and rolled it into balls and dipped them into paint to stamp leaves on our tree.

 The boys had fun and made three very different trees.  I love seeing creativity.

Tuesday: 

 Our Bible lesson this week was on young Timothy and how he learned from Paul to be fair.  We played a game where the boys drew out a card and I read what it said such as "Tell a boy with blonde hair - "I'll be fair""  Needless to say, since they can't read, I made lots of stuff up HA!  Not to mention that I brought this lesson into real life all week but saying, "Now, is that fair (being kind) or unfair?"

 Nate loves his curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler as well.  Cutting skills are a must . .. he likes to cut tiny pieces and this week I had them glue the pieces onto the pattern worksheets.  He enjoys that activity alot.

 The boys all love the Do-A-Dot markers - this is one of the activies that Josh got to do that was part of the preschool lessons.  Allowing him to do many of the same worksheets as the younger two on top of his own work has really made him happy.  He gets the best of both worlds - review of the younger topics plus introduction to the new topics.

 I came across a cute idea from Toddler Approved to make nature plates.  While the munchkin was napping, the boys and I walked around the yard and gathered things from nature that reminded us of fall.  We picked sunflower petals, purple flowers, leaves from the willow tree and yellow/orange leaves from the neighbors tree, black eyed Susans and some weeds.  Yes, weeds.  That was not my choice.

 One of the great things about this project was glue.  We tend to use glue sticks more often because they aren't quite as messy but for this project it was glue all the way and lots of it. 

 The finished projects were true masterpieces and included such things as glue waterfalls and glue snow drifts that took about 4 days to dry.  ;-)

Wednesday - 

 We started our morning with an unplanned game of Hungry Hungry Hippo that I turned into a counting activity.  Every time all of the marbles had been gobbled up, we had to count them.  This was also a good lesson for Josh that he can't win every time and he can't steal other people's marbles to make himself the winner.  Yes, he likes to win. 

 Josh loves clocks and time so we started our Kumon Telling Time book.

 Nate also is working out of a Kumon book on cutting and pasting.

 Awhile ago, my mom picked up all kinds of learning books/activities for the boys.  Josh had some down time on Wednesday so I pulled out one of the books and he did several pages. 

 Our afternoon activity is thanks to my mom.  The last time she had the boys they convinced her to buy a marshmallow pop kit and we made them today.  Nate liked the chocolate but Josh loved the whole thing. 

 Josh asked me to buy everything to make them again "sometime".  I wonder if I could put carrots in the chocolate??? HA!

Thursday - 

This is the first activity that really challenged Nate this week.  First, he had to put the elephant # cards in order from 1-10 and then count out the correct number of discs to put on each card.  I love to see him challenged :-)

Our "fun" activity I posted about on Saturday  . . .we put Training Wheels on Josh's bike, which he loves.  I often have to move the truck to the end of the driveway and park "horizontally" so that it blocks the end of the driveway completely so he and Nate can ride bikes up and down the driveway, into the garage and back out. 

I forgot to share this earlier - I mentioned my mom and picked up some fun stuff for the boys for school.  Well, this is another  item we just got out this past weekend.

 This is an awesome floor size tracing and activity book to use with dry erase markers.  I had put it away when my mom first got it because the boys weren't ready to use the markers yet.  But, a week or so ago, I got it out and leaned it against the wall; they finally noticed it on Saturday and have played with it every single day.  My husband said we need to find more of these because they love them :-)

That's our week!  I'm still holding off on the daily notebooks.  My thought now is to use it starting in the next 6 week rotation but do it in the afternoon when we do our art/craft/food activity.  That way they can do what they want in the book but if they go play, that is fine too.  I'm counting this year as just an introduction to it :-)