Happy new school year!

So we have started another school year and as of right now we are into week 6.  Here is a little of what we have done!

King Narmer's crown! From Story of the World V:1

We were learning about mummies and so we decided to mummify an apple! We took a regular apple we got from the store and I let him draw on it, because we were not going to eat it. We then covered it with 1/2 a cup of baking soda and 2 cups of salt mixture.

This is 2 weeks later. It had perfectly preserved it!

Inside of the apple. Just as delicious and juicy as the day it was bought.

So we put the other 1/2 in again.

Storing it in the same place for another week or 2 and seeing if it will mummify and suck out all the moisture, like the Egyptian Priests did to the Pharaohs.

Here was one of our science lessons. We are doing Geology this year. This is the layers of soil.

Here under the flaps he wrote what each layer was made up of. We then the next week dug up soil in 2 very different parts of the yard and used a magnifying glass and looked for things in the soil and he drew what he saw for each sample. We then talked about how each was different.

Getting a little more in depth with the Earth's layers. Here Smith kid #2 is building a model of the Earth's layers. (Love all my canning gear in the background? LOL It is that time of the year!)

Here he had finished the paper mache model

Side view.

He even painted the continents on the Earth's crust! The purple is the mantel or bedrock, orange is the outer core or lava and the gray is the inner core or nickle center! 

It has been a blast doing this with my oldest son. We just started with the younger kids last week for pre-k and preschool. I love doing this and could not think of a better way for my kids to learn! I wish I could post more since my posts are so sporadic but I need to hit the hay! LOL

Mrs. Smith

A week away from starting the new school year! Well sort of! LOL

So we are about to start the 2013-2014 school year in a week! Smith kid #2 will be in first grade and is pretty excited! Smith kid #3 is pretty excited as well! I love seeing their faces as they see some of the things I have planned out for them!

Looks like Smith kid #1 will not be joining us this year. Oh well there is always next year.

I have decided to change things up. As I was doing the lesson plans for Smith kid #2 I was noticing that it seemed like he was doing more then he had too and it was other stuff that was all over the place. I was planning on going with the weekly themes that I do for preschool.....well I decided to nix that idea and go with something else. Since I was already planning on going with Story of the World for their History course and English I am using this book "The ABC's and all their tricks" and I am doing basic grammar and sentence building from that, plus reading books to build up his brain muscle. For Math I was just following his lead and just going with his flow and seeing where we went. We are still on track to do double digit addition and subtraction since he is learning place value of the 1s place and 10s place. The last thing I needed to come up with was Science. I found these awesome books, Apologia Science books, and I just decided to do one of those a year. We will not be doing them in 1st grade, but 2nd grade we will be starting with Astronomy. The book is called "Exploring Creation with Astronomy", they also have 2 journals to go with it. One for younger kids and one for older kids, depending on what age you want to teach your child about astronomy. So, it just seemed silly on top of all of that to do these weekly themed books with other history, math and science in them....when we could just focus on what we were currently doing and make it a little more fun. For 1st grade I decided to do geology and weather. Basically study rocks and dirt and weather. For the weather experiments and some lesson plans I got them off of weatherwizkids.com and for the rest of the geology stuff I found an awesome website that was basically like a text book that I printed out. Kidsgeo.com. Now it seems boring.....but I was able to find some awesome experiments and crafts to go with it off of pinterest. Like the earth's crust and inner layers....I found a paper mache earth we could make with labeling the inner layers! How fun is that! For crystals I found how to grow your own crystals. For volcanoes....well you know that one! A baking soda volcano! LOL There is also an erosion experiment and I could keep going! Don't be afraid to change things up if you find an easier way or better way to do something! That is only 1 of the beauties of homeschooling!

I have also decided to do a notebook with a zipper and a zipper pouch for their crayons and colored pencils and scissors and pencils to try to keep all their stuff together and not all over the dining room table. LOL we shall see if that happens! HA HA HA  I am still going to use the old system of pencil boxes and my labeled filing cabinet in my homeschool cabinet for the loose papers for the preschoolers, but who knows that may change too. We will eventually find something that works. We loose markers, crayons, pencils and just about everything under the sun and I have no idea where it goes. I have tried 3-4 different organizers and so on to try to keep up with the chaos....it doesn't happen. LOL

We are also about to have Smith kid #6, we are about a week away from that as well and I will not be starting their school year while I am recovering. We will be doing basics like math and reading till August then we will get to the nitty gritty. I think a month should be good to get back into a sort of routine. So even though their school year starts in a week....we will be starting actual school work in August. We get into a routine pretty quick around here....we all have had quite a bit of practice with the 1st 5! LOL

Now that all lesson plans are done, baby prepping is just about done and Spring veggies are winding down on the farm, I will go enjoy my children a little more and maybe swim in the kiddie inflate a pool with them! I am sure roasting enough! LOL

Talk to you next post!
Mrs.Smith

Winding down on the 2012-2013 school year!

It is so weird to be in May already! Only about 6 more weeks till we start the new school year. Still enjoying the year around schooling, it gives us a lot more flexibility with our schedule and we don't have to shove as much into a few days and gives us more freedom to do family things. :)

I have just completed the lesson plans for Smith kid #3 for Pre-K. Still need to finish up Smith kid #4's and Smith kid #2's....there is also a possibility that Smith kid #1 will be joining us for homeschool this next school year! She will be entering 4th grade. Excited!!! Have not gotten to those lesson plans, just want to make sure they are concrete plans before I spend my time planning that out. I do have an idea ....or I guess a really rough draft outline of how I would like it go...but to try to plan daily what we are going to work....whew...no where near that! LOL

For History we decided to go with Story of the World Volume 1: Ancient Times. We bought the book, the activity book and the test booklet. There are 42 chapters and it says to do one chapter a week with a test at the end of the week. Well I guess we shall see how this goes. We are planning on doing Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages for 2nd grade, Volume 3: Early Modern Times for 3rd grade and Volume 4: The Modern Age for 4th grade. They all seem to have roughly 41-42 chapters in it. This school year coming up I am skipping all of July for History just to make it easier on myself while adjusting to doing homeschool with a newborn. If we can start earlier, then we will! We are also taking a week off for Christmas, New Years and Easter. I think we (if we stick with the one chapter a week schedule) will finish the entire book with one week left to spare of the school year. This is all just a plan, if it seems to be too much for Smith kid #2...then we will back off a little and adjust the schedule.
      The Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages talks about the fall of Rome to the Renaissance  We have an awesome Renaissance Fair around here in September and October so that would make an awesome field trip! Thinking of going in 3rd grade, since we wouldn't learn about the Renaissance till the end of 2nd grade and the fair is in the beginning of the year. Sorry, so many ideas! Brain is everywhere!

For math right now, Smith kid #2 is on 3 tier addition. He is just flying by with it. The next place I plan to go is addition facts to make sure as soon as he sees 1+1 he knows the answer is 2 and so on. Beginning of 1st grade I plan to do ones & tens place and do double digit addition and subtraction.

We are also going to be getting into grammar this coming up school year and learn about nouns, verbs and adjectives....well I found Mad Libs to make it fun.....not just Mad Libs, but Lego Star Wars Mad Libs! LOL It will be fun to do those with him.

I have been going through pinterest quite a bit looking for homeschool ideas. I have gotten so many. They have links to things that I use for lesson plans or lapbooks or printable worksheets. I love pinterest! I know I have said it before...but I DO! LOL

Well that is all I can think of for now!
Mrs. Smith

Reading!

Smith kid #2 is chugging along with reading! We are still doing the main book "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons", but I have also decided to partner a few extra readings along with this book just to reinforce reading and give him the satisfaction of completing a story! We have started reading "BOB BOOKS" as well after we are done with a lesson. We started with the 1st set for beginning readers with very short sentences and short 3 letter words. He did amazing! He was able to read them with little help from me and he is building his confidence on reading and is eager to do more. In 3 days alone we have finished the entire 1st set! He is pretty proud of himself, as am I! We will continue tomorrow with set 2 of the "BOB BOOKS" for advanced readers. I do like how as you go through the books they slowly get harder and he does not notice. I did buy extra books with stories from the same author that wrote our main as well. We started the "BOB BOOKS" on lesson 33 into the main book. I am pretty pleased with this style of teaching to read.

The "BOB BOOKS" I borrowed from the Library to see how he did before I decided to make the investment and purchase them. I am really lucky I have all these resources available to us. Otherwise, I have no idea how we would afford all this. We purchase all of our books we use for homeschool used off Amazon.com or Ebay.com which saves us quite a bit as well and we have not run into a problem with quality! :)

Math, I gave him the choice of doing more of the clock or starting fractions. He picked the clock and this past week we have been working on 1/4 hours. He got addition with sums ranging from 0-19 and subtraction ranging in numbers from 0-9.

Science goes with our weekly theme. During bird week we learned about eggs and things that hatch from them, plus a few different birds, what they eat and how they make a nest.

History, we haven't touched too much into that....unless it goes with our weekly theme. Like during Pilgrims week, we learned about the Mayflower and the settlers and so on. My mind is a little blank right now...so I cannot think of anything recent to report about with this.

We are going to another Folk Art class at our local Library tonight, which Smith kid #2 always enjoys.

Well we are in St. Patty's week this week and while we did not get into much of the history behind this holiday, we are doing all the fun stuff of the holiday. I made them special snacks as well. I will have to post pictures about it then.

I have started to get the outline for the new school year ready to go. Smith kid #2 will be entering 1st grade, Smith kid #3 will be entering Pre-K, and Smith kid #4 will be entering year #2 of preschool this coming July....which also happens to be when I am due with Smith kid #6. I am trying to prepare everything in advance so I am not running around all frazzled with a newborn trying to keep school going. It will get there, we get into a routine pretty quick around here after the birth of another Smith! :)

With Smith kid #3 we are working on writing his first name and reinforcing shape and color recognition. We are also still working on number and letter recognition and counting. He is able to count to 8 right now :)

Smith kid #4...she is still in the 1st year of preschool...so its more all fun and games and getting used to the routine of sitting for school and doing a few papers. If she learns her shapes, colors, numbers, and letters along the way...great! What we are focusing on for her is potty training. She was a micro preemie so she does things a little bit behind everyone else....one thing I have learned from her though is that she will let you know when she is ready and will do it in her own time! LOL She has done just that with every obstacle we have faced. What a little spit fire she is! :)

Well I guess that's about it. Sorry about no pictures...we are turning my old office into the new nursery so all my stuff has been moved. I will get some up ASAP! :) I like to look back on my own pictures too! I love to read back on my old posts as well and see how far we have come...which is one of the main purposes of doing blogs for me and hoping to help at least one person along the way! :)

Happy belated Valentine's day & President's day!

Well it was president's week last week and we did a theme history book on George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Well for my kindergartener....the 2 preschoolers got to color pictures of them, the White House and the American Flag. We are getting pretty far into addition all the way up to 9+9 and even adding with a zero! I think since we have been focusing on that for ....this will be our 3rd week that next week we are going to move onto subtraction. The new book we are trying "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons" is working wonderfully right now! Smith kid #2 is able to read the full sentences now at the end of the lesson with little to no help! We also do writing sentences at the end that he has to sound out to figure what letters to write! He is doing so awesome!

 

We also went to a Valentine's Day party at our homeschool group and all the kids had a great time and made crafts....I love being able to get together with other homeschool moms!

 

This week we are on Friendship and Manners and are talking about what manners are how we use them. We are also talking about friends and situations we run into with friends and how to handle them!

 

Other then that we still do our daily journal and extra math by learning even or odd and now counting by 10s to 100, by 5s to 100 and by 2s up to 10 so far.

 

Here are some pictures of what has happened since I last posted.

 

 

 

Here is our February clock.

I am obsessed with Pintrest and I got this idea off of there and we have there laying around the house and they are too small for me to use for wipes and since we have so many doctor appointments we have to go to....I need to keep the kids minds occupied.

I thought this was brilliant! It fits nicely into my diaper bag and keeps them all from breaking (well for the most part) and the kids can now color while waiting! I went to Target and in there $1 section grabbed a few coloring books one for each child and it has been nice for them to have this ONLY for the diaper bag!

 

This is the Folk Art class Smith kid #2 is taking at the local library. Here he is weaving a mat! 

Here you can see Smith kid #5 peeking over the table to see what his older brother is doing! LOL

As you can see there are quite a few children there. Its great for the kids to see other homeschooled kids and interacting for a class.

 

HAPPY PRESIDENT'S DAY!

Here is Smith kid #3

Smith kid #4 (yes she did preschool in her pjs! HA HA HA)

Smith kid #2

 

We did Abraham Lincoln as our art. It is just a paper plate they colored black with black construction paper as the hat and then construction paper around the back to hold it on their heads! The kids love it! We do it almost every year.

 

 

Next week we will be doing wind! Happy early Spring! We cannot wait for the weather. All the kiddos have some really bad cabin fever.

Some of what we have done so far

Finally here are some pictures of our homeschool area.

 

This is one of our walls, it has a calendar of events, so they know what is coming up, a day of the week board that moves with a velcro star, a dry erase board behind that. (The days of the week comes down) and our clock.

Here is the next wall. We have a calendar that counts the days, one that goes over the weather, counts how many days we have been in school (and also by 100 place, 10 place and ones place), what date it is by day, month, number and year. What season we are in, our address and phone number, yesterday, today and tomorrow weekly changer and make the date with fake money.

Here is the wall with all the numbers up to 30, the alphabet and the computer area.

Here is a few papers I printed out and laminated to use dry erase markers on to keep track of what books we have read this year.

Here is a better look at our clock. I change the 5 minute pumpkins every month or 2 for seasonal fun. Right now it is a snowman and about to change to hearts for Valentine's month. I will have to post those later. I am doing preschool and elementary so I have to keep things fresh and fun...well its a little fun for me too! LOL The clock labels by every 5 minutes since we are doing Kindergarten and are focusing on how to tell time by this clock Smith kid #2 in Kindergarten is up to hours and 1/2 hours. He is well on his way!

This week's theme is body and nutrition. We go over how many different foods we need to have a healthy diet. We make our own of what Smith kid #2 has eaten to make sure he has eaten a balanced diet. He loves it so much he has not asked for junk food all week! He just wants to see what else he needs to eat to make a balanced diet and picks from a food group he is lacking in! He is amazing!

Here is our body part skeleton. I love this guy. he has velcro parts so we know where body parts go and what they do! This goes with our body and nutrition week so we learn what the different food groups do for our body.

Here we were during pumpkin week in November making pumpkins with pockets. In the pockets were their names in brown construction pumpkin seeds!

They love to paint.

Here was also during pumpkin week (1st full week of November) this was a science project.

Here is our little pumpkin for the science project. It was estimate the weight, see if you can guess how long of a string needs to be to go around them, can they float and how many seeds are inside. The counting of all those seeds in the big one was not so fun, but we needed to make sure his estimate was right....it was not...but that's 1/2 the fun!

Here I wanted to show you our thankful tree....not us decorating our Christmas tree :) Everyday each family member (that can talk LOL) has to say one thing they are thankful for and I write it on a leaf and tape it to the thankful tree. The tree was butcher paper and I used Smith kid #2's body for the trunk and Smith kid #3's head and arms for the limbs then painted it brown! They loved it. Our tree got pretty full! We had 5 people adding on daily!

This just happened this week. Our local Library does a lot of projects with homeschooling kids. They are great, they have a homeschool room dedicated to just stuff we can borrow to add to our homeschool lesson plans. They have puzzles and games and anatomy body parts and books and books and books! I LOVE it! We are there A LOT. Here they are making gingerbread houses. Yes, we are making them in January. The Library knows how busy December is already for everyone, so they wait till things calm down and then do some celebrating!

Only Smith kid #2 & #3 went....the younger 2 don't have the attention span yet.

Smith kid #2's house

I have no idea how this picture go in here! LOL This was after Smith kid's #2 birthday party all his toys are still everywhere after he unwrapped them! This is Smith kid #3...sneaking in some extra play time with his older brother's new toys :)

Smith kid #3's house.

These houses become a problem after they come home. The kids are constantly sneaking candy off of them right before dinner or right after they wake up.....so they get to eat a few pieces...then the pigs get the rest! Shhhhh don't tell them! LOL Smith kid #2 saw me, luckily he is very understanding and said he knew they had to go. WOW....what a great kid!

 

This Library also had a Folk Art history class 2 weeks ago. Another homeschool mom leads it and she splits it up between 6 classes over 3 months and they do a different country each time. Smith kid #2 is the only one that is doing it right now ...none of the older ones wanted to. I think its great! Last time they learned about Puerto Rico.

 

Since I started homeschooling preschool 3 years ago, I have followed my mother's themes for the weeks. She went all year round, she ran a daycare and did preschool. Since homeschool here goes all year around too I just followed those preschool themes into kindergarten and into 1st grade. 2nd grade and 3rd grade I have the themes and I needed to make them harder and harder...so they change. Not there yet...we are only into Kindergarten. Then I work curriculum around those themes to make it more fun and do math and science and reading to do with those themes so things are changing and new and interesting. Smith kids #2 really needs that! Keeping him focused and into the work ...it has to be challenging and new and fun!

 

Our homeschool year starts July 1 and goes till June 30. Here is a run down of the theme weeks up till 2nd grade:

 

Vacation Spots

Fairy Tales

Nursery Rhymes

Around the U.S.A week 1

Around the U.S.A week 2

Around the U.S.A. week 3

Around the World week 1

Around the world week 2

Around the world week 3

All about me

Apples

Farm

Transportation Week 1

Transportation Week 2

Signs of Fall

Fire Safety Dinosaurs

Halloween

Pumpkins

Pilgrims

Native Americans

Thanksgiving

Signs of Christmas week 1

Signs of Christmas week 2

Christmas week 1

Christmas week 2

New Years Week

Winter Fun

Winter Animals

Nutrition and Body

5 Senses

Groundhogs week

Valentine's week

President's week

Friendship and Manners week

Wind

Birds

St. Patrick's Week

Signs of Spring

Easter

Bugs

Garden

Earth Week

Rain

Mom's day

Pets

Cowboys

Camping

Space

Dad's Week

Community Helpers Week 1

Community Helpers Week 2

 

Now these change year to year depending on which week some of these holidays land on. Like FireSafety week is always usually with Fire Safety awareness week around here and they offer a free tour of the fire house. Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter...all those change so do my weeks and we work it in. :)

 

Almost Christmas

Here we are almost at Christmas and the homeschool dining room shows it! We have been working on money and Smith child #2 is able to count by 10's and by 5's up to 50 and can recognize all the coins and read "at", "an", and "am" words and in sentences. So, we are well on our way! We are doing December Celebrations this week and learning the different ways everyone celebrates the Holidays. Next week we are taking a break for Christmas. I finally found an outline of what my kids need to know by the end of each grade up to 5th grade. Now I know where I am at and where I need to build onto curriculum wise and where I am already ahead. Its not as easy as I was hoping to find. I just couldn't find a curriculum base that I really liked and fit Smith kid #2. So I made my own from an awesome library resource with a homeschool room and the online resources that are out there for FREE! I already had filing cabinets set up for preschool year 1, preschool year 2, and pre k. I had themes for each week and built what they needed to know before kindergarten up through the years. Made a folder per week of everything I would need so when it came time to get the year started I would just pull the hanging file month out, and make copies of what I needed and put it in a file I have set up for a month of school work in my homeschool cabinet in the dining room. When I decided to start homeschooling for all grades I found a huge 4 drawer filing cabinet and just built off the themes I already had in place for preschool and I got up to 3rd grade. I had to change some themes as we went up in grades as they seemed too simple and I want to challenge them!

Sorry for the lack of pictures, we are going through a lot of changes and I haven't had an opportunity to take very many during school time. You would think I would have a little more time since the homestead has slowed down, but no....this is when we get all indoor projects done.