Week 6 Review

Week 6 is in the books!!  WHOO! HOO!  We are moving right along!  Here are some picture highlights from the week!

Our bible theme this week was 'Jesus the Light of the World'.  On Monday we decorated a pillar candle that we have sitting in our windowsill now.

On Thursday we made a light switch cover!  Seth wrote the 'Jesus' and Aaron and Alyssa made suns.  (Aaron's on the left and Alyssa's on the right).  Seth cut them out for them.

Look at Aaron's numbers!!  He is doing so good!!  I did  not help him at all with these!!

Alyssa decided one day to wake up really early...and fell asleep on the bench about 30 minutes into the school day!  LOL!

I found Aaron a cool Scooby Doo Seek and Find book on the $1 at Target one day!!  He loves this book! I give him stickers to put on the items once he finds them.

One day Alyssa spent most of the day putting stickers on a piece of paper!!  :-)  That was a very nice day for all of us!!  :-)

In History this week we were talking of when the Dutch came over and settled at New Amsterdam and talked about how they brought all the livestock over.  In one of the stories they were talking about making butter so on Thursday we made butter!  All three kids got involved!!

 Here are the kids shaking their cream.

Here is the buttermilk draining off from the butter.

 And here is our butter!!!

 This is how much butter (right) and buttermilk (left) 1 pint of whipping cream made!!    Tonight we are going to have dinner rolls at supper to enjoy our butter on and then Saturday morning we are going to use the buttermilk to make pancakes!!  YUMMY!!  :-)

Seth started a new book program this week where he is earning points to use towards prizes that I come up with!!  He earned himself 600 points this week!!  Go Seth!!

Here is Seth working hard on his reading workbook!  :-)

And I have to tell this funny story - even though I didn't get a very good picture.  On Thursday after school we went to the park to meet up with some friends  On the way we got behind this trailer.  It had a pig in it and the pig started standing up on his hind feet and poking his head out the top.  The kids were cracking up and so I got out the phone to try to get a picture.  Of course he went back in the trailer right before I got the picture.  And then a couple of minutes later he stuck out his head again....and managed to get out of the trailer!!  While it was moving!!!  He ran off into the neighborhood!!  The driver of the truck had no clue!!  I tried to honk, but that didn't work! I rolled down my window and waved my arm really big until he noticed me and pulled over so that I could tell him that his pig escaped!!  I don't know if he was able to find the pig, or if someone else is going to get some bacon!

Well tomorrow (Friday) we have co-op again!!  Yay!!  And our first real cold front is suppose to come in this weekend and temps are suppose to stay in 50s all day Saturday!   I. CAN. NOT. WAIT!!!!

And next week I should have pics of Seth in his new cub scout uniform.  It came in the mail today!!  We are hoping that he will receive his bobcat badge on Monday night!!  

Fun times!!

Until next time,

Kellie

Seth's Sqanto Coloring Book

I have decided I want to include Seth's coloring book that he colored in during the reading of Sqanto in our photo book for the year.  So these are pictures of his colorings for the book.  (this post is mainly in here to make sure I get this included in the photo yearbook at the end of the year)

Until next time,

Kellie

Week 5 in Review

Week 5 is in the books!!  We had another good week of school.  Here are the few pics that I took this week.

Seth and Aaron are enjoying the cooler mornings.  (It is still getting pretty hot in the afternoons but at least we are getting a little break in the mornings).  They are now playing outside for 30 minutes or so before we start school.  This has helped to get rid of some of their energy and make school run a bit smoother.   On the morning of this picture they were running up and down the driveway. 

Aaron and Alyssa enjoyed playing board games one afternoon while I was working on some school planning.

In History this week we talked about the pilgrims and how they made their first homes.  One of the things we discussed was how they didn't have any glass so they made windows from oiled paper.   We did an experiment to figure out why.  We took a sheet of notebook paper and spread it with oil and saw how the oil made the paper transparent.

 We then dropped some water on the oiled paper and a piece of paper that had no oil on it and saw how the water beaded up on the oiled paper.  We saw that the paper with no oil tore very easily when got wet, but the oiled paper was actually quite strong.

Aaron completed his A book this week and started the C book, which is introducing how to write his numbers and practice in counting.  He was quite excited about  this!!  In this picture he was proudly writing his name on the inside cover of his book.

He was so proud of himself this week with his writing and had every right to be.  Look at these 2s he wrote!!!  :-)

 

And here are his 3s!!  All I can say is WOW!!  Way to go Aaron!!

Seth is still struggling with handwriting a bit and I have noticed has gotten into a bad habit of writing his g's and d's in a sloppy way.  So today I had him write a's, g's, d's, and q's on a piece of notebook paper and was very impressed with his work!  He proved to me he can do it and can have good handwriting!

We also finished our Squanto book this week!  I am looking forward to starting 'The Courage of Sarah Noble' next week!  Having them color while I read really did work well!!  I was impressed!  To change it up a bit I have printed shapes on different colors of construction paper.  I am going to have them cut them out and glue them to another paper to make a quilt (because the book talks of the making and use of quilts) while I read this book!  Hopefully this will help them listen as well as they did for Squanto.

A teacher note - I have LOVED my first week of my post-it note planner!  It really has made life easier and is already helping me to take note of what is and is not working and to not be afraid to change things up a bit if need be!!  :-)

OH!  And Seth joined cub scouts this week!!!  :-) One of the families in our homeschool group are starting up a new pack!!  So Monday nights are now full but Seth is super excited about this!

Well, we are headed to Mimi and Poppy's tomorrow!  My sister is having a baby shower on Saturday.  The kids are super excited about the trip!!

Until next time,
Kellie

Week 4 In Review

Week 4 is in the books!!  We had an exciting week reading about North American Indians, and continuing our reading of Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims.

 Seth has started reading a Magic Tree House book on the kindle.  Let me say I have not, up to this point, been a big supporter of the kids reading on these devices.  I like real books in their hands.  But I am having trouble getting Seth interested in reading.  I want him to learn to love reading, not just read because he has too.  I thought maybe if we tried a book on the kindle it will help spark an interest.  And so far it seems to be working.  He is reading a chapter a day and he has read two so far.  When he is done I take the kindle and and quiz him to make sure he actually read the book...not just pretended to.  And he has showed me that he has read it and is comprehending it! YAY!!  And he was excited today (his 2nd day) for his Kindle reading time.  

And Seth is learning the consequences of doing rushed, sloppy work.  We showed Daddy our bad, sloppy work one night at dinner and he made him sit at the table after dinner and re-do it all!!  Today he rushed through his math and did not do well, so tonight he will be sitting at the table after dinner and redoing his math.  Hopefully this will put a stop to the sloppy work.

Here are some pictures from our week.

This week we read a book on North American Indians for History.  We made wigwams one day and teepees the next.  Here is Seth working on the wigwam.  This was a weird little project that I didn't think was going well...but once all the glue dried it looked better.  :-)

Here are the kids working on making teepees.

 We had to make a trip outside to find twigs for our teepees.

 Here are our finished teepees (I even made one) and our wigwam.

 I have scheduled science lessons but sometimes letting the child lead I think is best :-).  The kids are always asking if they can take the magnify glasses and explore.  Well one day this week Seth brought me a few items and asked if we could get out the microscope and explore them with it!  Of course I said yes!!  So, we didn't get to our "scheduled" science - but we sure did have some good science lessons happening around here!  :-)

Ok so I started Aaron on some formal handwriting lessons this week.  We were working on our capital Ls.  I helped him make a few and then I wanted him to try some on his own.  I went to my desk and a few minutes later he said "I am done".  I came back to the table expecting to see a page of Ls.  But I was surprised to find that he found a page of all the letters of the alphabet and wrote EVERY letter!!  For most of these letters, this was his first attempt at writing them!!  I thought he did an awesome job!

I also pulled out the Letter Factory DVD for Aaron and Alyssa!!  This was how Seth learned his letter sounds.  We will be watching this DVD over and over for the next few weeks and I guarantee you, after a couple of weeks or so, both Aaron and Alyssa will know their letter sounds!  I LOVE this DVD!

Ok I debated whether to put this in the post or not.  I had. over the summer, purchased an online planner program, for lesson plans, scheduling assignments, projects, etc.  It sounded like such a neat program I just had to jump on it.  And I think it still has potential for being a neat program...but I think the problem is they opened it up to the public WAY before it was ready!!  There are so many glitches and problems it has been more headache than help!  I have tried to be patient but I am to my breaking point!  A couple of friends of mine in our homeschooling group have created post-it note binders.  The simplicity and flexibility of these planners really intrigued me that I finally decided to try it myself.  I mean, the cost is minimal...so why not!

So here is my planner set up for next week.  All of their assignments are on little post-it note squares.  As we complete an assignment I will move that post it to another notebook that is labeled the record book.  There I will be able to write notes about what was good and/or bad about the assignment, what we need to work on more, etc, etc...  (actually the journaling side is what really intrigued me since I did not have that at all with my online planner - once you mark an assignment complete it will record a grade but everything else disappears...)  So, anyways...I am going to try this way a bit and see if it works.  Maybe in the future the online program will have their act together...or maybe I find that I just like this better anyways and stick with it...

Regardless, right now in my life I am finding I just need something SIMPLE!  LOL!!

Well, that's about it for our week.  We go to co-op tomorrow!! Kids are super excited about that!

Until next time,
Kellie

Children's Aquarium Field Trip

We had a fun day at the Children's Aquarium at Fair Park on Friday!!  I coordinated a field trip there for our homeschool group and there were about 40 kids and 27 adults in attendance from our group!!  It was a very fun day!  The kids had a blast!

 Aaron was concentrating hard on finding all of the animals on his scavenger hunt!

Here is Seth taking pictures while Alyssa was working on her scavenger hunt.

Alyssa's favorite animal was the alligator snapping turtle!!  For some reason she fell in love with that big prehistoric looking thing!

They had a ball petting the sting rays!

It was a fun day!!

Until next time,
Kellie