Exitement.

Okay. That's it. I love homeschooling. I really do. And I do take it this responsibility very serious. I am almost COMPLETELY responsible for my children's learning. That said, I've been having a lot of fun cooking up some ideas. I think I'm just going to start posting them. And like the actual files and such. So here I go.

We've been attempting to make reading more fun. I read (well, I'm still working on it) called "The Read-Aloud Handbook" and it has made me more serious about making my kids LOVE reading.

I've been making a lot of fun teaching aids to go with the book "Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading"

I've decided to add them, when I'm extra excited about the lesson we are doing. I figure sometimes I spend more then an hour coming up with the items for the lessons we're going to be learning, I might as well share!

Here is what I've come up with for Lesson 69. It is suppose to be a role play for the sentence portion of the lesson. I have decided to add pretend phones to make it just a little more interesting.

I got the cellphone graphic from this site.
I think it's fun, I made them bigger, cut out the shadow, laminated them, and then added Velcro to the back to make the reusable. Seeing how I have three kids, it will at least get three uses out of it.

I would love to know how to share my file for the whole lesson, please leave a message in the comment if you know how!

Science

So, I have a scientist on my hands.. Well, the more we learn, the more I learn I have two scientist on my hands.

We have been using this book for science right now. It's REALLY interesting. What I do is make up vocabulary cards with pictures for all these new science words. As we're reading the book, I will post the new words on our "Science Word Wall" as they come up. This book does a great job of introducing a word, and then in later pages explaining it more in depth.
I very much recommend it.

Good, Better, Best.

I'm not against public school.
I just have to state that, that's not why I want to home-school.

I'm not trying to be overprotective.
That's not why I want to home-school.

Good: We were always planning on sending our kids to public school. And then we were blessed with Emily. She was born after the cut of date for Kindergarten last year. She was ready, but because of 6 days she wasn't allowed to go. She was ready to move on from preschool. But couldn't move to kindergarten.

Better: Then we started looking into private schools. We even came up with a plan to pay for them (they are pretty expensive). We interviewed and toured a few schools. She could get in as a kindergartner. It was better then public school. Less people in her class. Yet something was missing. It just didn't feel right.

Best: All of a sudden the idea of Homeschooling came about. I had been against it forever. It wasn't even something I was going to consider. But.. Something felt right about it. It fit for all of us. It was more challenging, just like Emily needed. Yet, it's changed a lot in our entire family. Our home is becoming more of a place of learning. It became not just what was best for Emily. But what was best for Hannah. And what was best for the rest of our family. It just fits.
Right now it's the best choice for OUR kids. Maybe not everyone's, but OURS.

That's just a thought that's been going around in my head...

Fun Activiy, had to share!

So today we did something really fun.

I gave the girls a paper, one side had "Greater than" and the other side had "less than." I gave them an unsharpened pencil. They then went around the house drawing picture of things that were greater then the pencil, and less then the pencil.

I way recommend it. Of course I got it from the Mailbox!

Lots of school, little posting.

We've been having a LOT of fun at school these last weeks. And I have pictures of it!!!

We made Forkupines. We drew porcupines and painted them using forks. (got idea from The Mailbox)


We made graphs of the blocks we had. Sorting them into different colors. (The Mailbox again for the idea)


We played "Greater Alligator." We had the alligator eat the bigger fish. Then read the math sentence. Example "Five is greater then four." I made the alligator from a pattern I got on a website. But I forgot where..


I also made a Velcro word board. I got the letter print out from here. I laminated and put velcro on the bottom of them instead of putting them on wood. We use the for teaching new blends on such in reading.


We also remade weather wheels (Mailbox) but this time we made our own season wheels too. I was tired of the girls asking everytime the weather changed what season it was!


Heart matching. We first sorted the cards and put them in the right order. They were all tens (0, 10, 20) Hannah surprised me when she also knew how to count by tens. (thanks Leapfrog). So then we played memory with them.


We've done more. But that's all the pictures I have!