Excited!

We've been having tons of fun with schooling lately. Seriously, it's the best. I do however still need to get a complete lesson plan figured out for the year.. If I'm going to be doing homeschooling again next year, I have to really figure things out before hand. Luckily, this is practice year. Emily isn't considered a kindergartner until next year, due to her birthday being in October. And Hannah still has two more years until she would be able to go to Kindergarten. But it's looking more and more like we'll be doing it for a few years.

ANYWAYS. We've been having a ton of fun lately. We've changed our calendar. We now have little velcro numbers (and idea I stole from our Co-Op Preschool). And we do a weather wheel instead of taping on the weather cut outs. I like it.. It's easy, and simple. And the girls got to make their own weather wheel.

Today we did some sorting and it was fun. Hannah gets bored/frustrated with too much cutting things out. And since we also cut out penguins, she didn't finish cutting out all her items, which was okay.

Reading lessons: MAJOR accomplished today. I've figure out that Hannah has to do her reading lesson first, before she is excited about other craft stuff. She has been doing AMAZING lately. I just write the word down, and she tells me what it is. For a little while, I figured we were going to fast and she wasn't getting it. So we back tracked and we're right where we need to be. She is challenged, but she also has a lot more sucess. Which makes me so happy.

Emily is still amazing me. Today she wrote a whole sentence just sounding out words.. and only missed ONE letter total in all 7ish words. She's been speeding through her book. She can read all the first set of Bob books.. We just got the second set.. And haven't started yet. But she opened the box quickly, and she read the title of the first book.. I'm thinking she might just fly through the second set.

I got a tracing book for Hannah. It's a wipe-off one. She needs more help with making more defined lines and circles.. I know she can do it, because sometimes she does. But she needs more practice. So she's enjoying them.

Math is fun. We haven't been concentrating as much on the numbers as we should. We've been learning more things like patterns, sorting, most/least, and the first 10 numbers words (one, two, instead of just 1, 2)
I need to plan more number items.. So I'm going to work on that. Emily is ready and has been doing addition. Though, not constant enough. So I'll be working on more of that.

We have also been decorating our house for Christmas. I'm trying to more crafts. We made penguins today. And I have many more Christmas related items, (though I'm waiting until after Hannah's birthday to really hit the Christmas crafts hard.)

We've been learning about differnt types of weather for science. And starting next week, we'll do more with ice and winter weather/temp.

I've really had a hard time with getting everything in that I want to do. We normally have about two hours to do everything. Which, isn't a lot of time. But that's how long Abby naps.

I hope to start Abby in Tot-school soon. When I do, we'll be taking more time to do schooling. We'll do some in the morning, and some while Abby naps.

To end, Right now I am really enjoying schooling. I love being able to watch my kids learn and figure out things. I truly feel like I am blessed to be able to teach them.

Math

We've been having fun doing math lately. Last week we made a "Math Ocean." We took turns rolling a dice and drawing a card. The card had the sea creature we had to draw, while the dice told us how many of the item we had to draw.

Today we did kind of the same thing. But it was with different pizza toppings. We then glued the pizza toppings on our pizza and compared the amounts of each topping. It was fun! Though, I need new ink so everything kind just printed pink.

To Homeschool or Not?!

So lately I've been thinking about if homeschooling really is right for us.. Mostly because we hadn't done it in a few weeks.

Lately the girls have been HORRIBLE. Seriously I wanted to run away. Lots and lots of whining.

It was weird because they were amazingly good for such a long time.. and then they just were starting to crash...

And then I figure it out. We weren't doing schooling. They were bored. They started whining not knowing what was wrong.

We started back up on Thursday. And all I have to say is WOW. MAJOR DIFFERENCE. I know it's only been two days back in a row doing it. But I think we've all realized how much we love it. Today we made weather wheels and did ocean drawing math. We played memory, and we read books. We also did a game with our states and taped up the and discussed sight words. Seriously. It was fun.

And now the girls are just so happy. They are back to their sharing and loving. I just love it!

And we get to learn together.

I do have to take a few days and really figure out a year lesson plan. But.. for right now we are taking it week by week. Maybe I'll make Bryan take two days off work in a row and disappear at the library for those days and get it all planned out.

Weather

This week for "science" we're learning about weather and seasons. For our projected dealing with weather on Monday, I decided that it would be fun to "Paint with clouds." It was fun! The girls liked it and I even joined in and had fun.

I have also decided to get back to doing sight words. Tomorrow we are starting our "Sight Word Wall". We'll add a few words on Tuesday and Thursdays, and also review each word during our circle time!

I've been thinking a lot about the whole homeschooling concept. Like I said at the beginning of homeschooling, I don't know how long we will be doing so.
But on my drive home today I was thinking about how it brings the learning back to the home. I've heard a bunch of parents complain that teachers give to much homework, and that they send kids to school for eight hours and how they should be able to do all their work at school. And yes, I feel there is a LOT of busy work. But I do think learning should continue at home. And homework is a guarantee that kids are learning in their homes. Though, I don't think it gets as much parent involvement as it should.

I've also been thinking about how our life has changed so much since June. Seriously. Once we took on the complete responsibility to teach our children so many things have changed. We now read EVERY night to our kids, and make it more of a priority. We read a lot more during the day also. We also get to explore so many different things together. So we're all learning as a family. Tonight Bryan and I watched a documentary together. Yes, it sounds boring. But we found it really interesting to watch. Something that months ago I would have said no to. Even Abigail is being affected by all this. I love it. She's starting to realize that books are fun and she'll even lay on her tummy and look at the pages.

I'm hoping this homeschooling stuff works out for a long time for our family!

My newest find.

We like to play games during school... But the number 1-6 dots.. were kind of boring.. So while shopping at my favorite store (here) I found these dice. One has the number 1-6 but in word form, some are the boring ones but in fun colors, I found one that had numbers 7-12, and another that had numbers 13-18. But my favorite so far is the 30 sided dice. What a fun way to learn the numbers.. and more then just 1-6!

Some things we've done with math

First of all.. Can someone tell me why all my pictures keep posting in words instead of pictures while I'm writing the post????

Anyways. Here are two activities we got from our fun book I posted about below.
The first pictures are of the size activity. We had two gardens. One was small and the other was big. We put the big yarn worms in the big garden and the small yarn worms in the small garden. I probably ought to make them count up all the worms in each garden.. But since the baby was awake.. It kind of threw me off. And no, Emily wasn't bored. We were talking and she wasn't really doing the activity at the point of the picture.

The other activity we "picked apples from a tree". And sorted the "apples" into different colors and then counted them. We then counted all the "apples" and found out how many apples were on our tree.

And yes, the baby was awake. I've decided to try and include her in on a few of the activities we do. We had some playdoh scissors and some scraps from the activity we were doing, so she joined in. No, she didn't actually use the glue, the lid was very tightly on. She also joins us for reading time when she's awake.. She just loves being part of it!

Book Review

(We have the Grade K book... since that's the age of my oldest)
I've been piecing together our homeschooling program. There have been some books I've just absolutely loved! Luckily I haven't purchased any I didn't like.. Thanks to research, and lots of time studying the book before I buy it...

This book (tech. a magazine) is one I've recently come across. I had looked at some of the magazines that they had produced.. And I just wasn't interested. But this one caught my eye when I was looking for "the perfect" math book. With this magazine, I feel I actually found it!
It has TONS of different math activities, and covers so many different math concepts. In the front page of the magazine it says "The best activities are easy to prepare, easy to explain, and fun for your kids!" I completely agree that this magazine has done just that. Almost all the activities can be done with household items. As long as you have a printer and stuff laying in your house, this book will work. The activities are fun and creative, yet actually teach the concepts.
The best part... It is SO simple to plan for the activities. The activities require very minimal amount of items, and the ideas are all there. I can just look at the supply list, grab the items, and that the activity is planned!
I am planning on checking into the grade 1 book for the next year.