1, 2, 3!

Sunshine has begun working in his new "school book," Counting With Numbers, part of Rod & Staff's preschool series.

He had been working through the 1st book in the series for about 2 years now and FINALLY finished that one.  He has an attention span at least a year behind his age, likely because his family age is only about 2 1/2, and prior to now he had not been interested in academic work of any kind.

Which is fine by me.  I've never been a preschool-pusher.  Ok, yes, I was when RoseBud was little, but that was because I didn't know any better.  I learned my lesson with her.

Anyway, he has finished the 1st book, Adventures with Books and is now in the counting book.  And surprisingly, he's working very well!  The first two pages had him tracing the numeral 1 and counting one object.  He could already count, with one-to-one correspondence up to four objects reliably and sometimes 5.  And he could make a reasonably straight line, so this first section, learning "one" was easy for him.

The second page spread jumped right into the number "two" and this was a little trickier, but he persevered through it and even began writing some 2's on his own (without having to trace them!).

I brought out my old preschool-standby favorite, "Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills, Preschool" which I've always picked up at Sam's or Costco for $5.95 and found him the corresponding numeral pages.  He did some more practice with ones and twos.

And now he's up to 3.  "Around the tree, around the tree, this is how we make a 3," is the rhyme in Counting with Numbers and he's making lovely little 3's!

He astonished me the other day in the car by counting up to 11 correctly!

And this boy just LOVES books!  I'd forgotten how much fun it was to read to a preschooler.  Banana Boy has never been a book boy.  Sing to him, yes!  Read to him, not interested.

Sunshine has worn out our voices reading all the My First Little House books about "Lawla and Mary."  He has them all memorized and if you change a word, he'll let you know.

His latest passion is Richard Scarry.  We began with Richard Scarry's Mother Goose, which he called his "kitty book" because of the big cat on the cover.  Now he has discovered that we own almost every Richard Scarry book ever known to man and we are reading through them.  Needless to say, he really enjoyed Cars and Trucks and Things That Go (one of my very favorite books from MY childhood.  We are on our 3rd copy in this house.  Sadly, they don't seem to hold up well)  Can YOU find Goldbug on every spread?

We do our reading before naptime.  It seems to be the only dedicated time I can carve out EVERY day to read to him without interruptions.  We try to read one storybook, one poetry book (focusing on Mother Goose right now) and the Bible.

We are reading the Rhyme Bible For Toddlers together and are going through it for the second time.

And for science, he obsessively watches Sid the Science Kid.

There you have it: my accidental preschool curriculum.  All my past planning was wasted time.  It just goes to show that no two kids are the same.  I don't think I've done anything even remotely similar for any two of my five kids. 

Live and learn...

Beginning to Plan for Next Year

Starting to lay out plans for next fall.  Daisy will be in 6th grade, Pepper in 4th and Banana Boy in 2nd.  Sunshine will go to public school kindergarten and Rose Bud will be a Freshman in PS.

For Daisy and Pepper:  Sonlight Core 5

I'm excited to go through this core again.  It was fun and interesting to read about so many cultures so "foreign" to us.  We'll be studying countries in the 10/40 Window such as the South Pacific, Australia, China, Japan, Korea, Russia, India, the Middle East and in Africa.

For Banana Boy, I think I'm going to use a combination of Mission Friends country packets and Voice of the Martyrs Bold Believers series.  Both sets are available as free downloads and will provide a nice framework for a simple country study from a Christian perspective.

(in case the Mission Friends link doesn't work, Google "Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Mission Friends" and you should bring the correct page right up.)

If anyone knows of any other similar resources, I'd love to know about them!

Daisy will also be doing:
Teaching Textbooks 7 for math
Sonlight LA 4 grammar and writing (yes, we're a year behind)
Spanish for Children and
Rosetta Stone Spanish
Sonlight Science 5
Piano lessons
Art class
AWANA and working through Luther's Small Catechism

Pepper will do:
Singapore Math 4
Sonlight LA 4 grammar
6-Trait Daily Writing grade 3 (or maybe 4)
Let's Learn Spanish grades 2, 3 & 4 (depending how far we get) and
KidSpeak Spanish and
Hola Amigos Spanish
AWANA
Art at home
Science....ah science.  Yuck,  I hate teaching it.  The kids love it.  Maybe will find something for Pepper and BB to do together.

Banana Boy will be in:
Singapore Math 2 and
Miquon Math (probably Blue & Green)
6-Trait Daily Writing grade 2
KidSpeak Spanish  and
Hola Amigos Spanish
AWANA
Art at home
Science--see Pepper


My goal:  Keeping it SIMPLE!  (never has happened yet!)

New Math

Daisy has finished Singapore 6 and begun Teaching Textbooks 7.  We got a good deal on it from a friend who was finished with it.

So far, so good.  She likes working on the computer and does her computations on scratch paper before entering the answers into the computer.  She looked over the topics and pronounced them easy-looking, which is good.  She's only in 5th grade and this is 7th grade math, so easy will be ok.  She can use the review before hitting Algebra.  And if it takes her a little longer, that will be all right, too.

Beginning, Middle and End

Today Banana Boy's writing assignment was to write a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. (the focus of this is organizing a story).

Here is his story, more remarkable for what happens in the story (which is true, btw) than for his writing prowess...

"I was chewing my flaverful gum.  I was playing with it.  I got it stuck in my hair.  Daisy had to cut the gum."

A testament to Daisy's ability to think on her feet, since I was not home at the time (ran Sunshine to preschool).

Back on Track

Now that I'm back from my trip, we are fully back on track with school.  We've finished our Canada/Olympics study, with the exception of filling in the medals charts.

We are back into Sonlight Core 4 and are on, ummm.... Week 13.  Well, that's the first week that we have entirely completed.  We are jumping around a bit and going at our own pace in the read-alouds, so we're ahead in Caddie Woodlawn.  Pepper needs to read about Thomas Edison.  We listened to Old Yeller twice already, the last time being about 2 years ago and the girls don't want to hear it again, so we'll skip that.  It's not a book I can read aloud (it's actually scheduled as a reader, for them to read to themselves) so we've always listened to it on CD.  I hate sobbing while I'm reading aloud.

Daisy has read all the Core 4 readers months and months ago in her quest for "something to read, Mom!"  Pepper, a more reluctant reader, is going to be plowing through a pile of them in the next week or so.

It's not that she CAN'T read them.  She's an excellent reader.  She just CHOOSES the more fluffy stuff.  Pony Pals (gag) for instance, are her latest passion and she can read two a day.  I gave her the stack she needs to read Monday and she's already blown through The Toothpaste Millionaire (took less than a day) and We'll Race You, Henry Ford.

So in her pile, still to be read, are George Washington Carver, Thomas Edison, Helen Keller and Shoes For Everyone.

Pepper just walked into the room where Daisy is busily (and happily) making electrical circuits for science and muttered under her breath, "I hate science experiments."  This on the heels of Banana Boy, who stomped through the room shouting, "I NEVER get to do anything FUN!  I NEVER get to do experiments!!!"

I offered Pepper the chance to trade with BB (even though TOPS Electricity is really too hard for him) and she jumped at it.  His response to her: "SURE!  But then you have to finish my puzzles." (Lauri crepe rubber preschool puzzles). 

However, once Pepper discovered that today's experiment involved burning up tiny pieces of steel wool, she was all over it.  Now she is determinedly completing her work sheet.  Daisy, who has finished the sheet, is burning up more wires.

Olympic/Canada Projects

Pepper made a TV to display what she learned about Canada and the Winter Olympics. We used a kleenex box (well, ok, Target brand facial tissue, if you want to avoid trademark infringement) and I made "screens" on half-sheets of paper. She drew or wrote her information in each screen and then we taped them all end-to-end and rolled them up on dowels. You turn the dowels to advance the screens. It turned out very cute!

Pepper proudly shows off her TV

 

The Canadian flag

Ancient Greek Government (the line of guys in the bottom left corner are standing in line to vote in their democracy!)

 

Ever wanted to see inside a TV?

The ends of the screen-strip are taped to the dowels.  We poked a small hole, just big enough for the dowels in the top of the box.  The bottom end of each dowel sits inside a large paper clip taped to the inside bottom of the box.  This keeps the dowels straight and in place and keeps the screen roll near the front of the box.

Here is Banana Boy's not-quite-finished lapbook:

"Canada and the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games"

Canada/British Columbia section

Olympic section (a little sparse)

Individual sports.  BB wrote a little about each sport inside the little books.

Daisy made a similar lapbook, but of course put much more time and effort into it.

 

Ancient Olympics section.  Booklets are a combination of the two lapbook kits mentioned here.

  

Modern Olympics section.  It includes a calendar of the dates of the 2010 Olympics, a map of the torch relay, a tri-fold brochure of British Columbia, a booklet about the torch, the Canadian flag, a chart showing distances from our area to former Olympic host cities, a booklet about the opening ceremonies, an Olympic acrostic poem, a medal count, map of participating countries and a report on an outstanding Canadian.  Inside shots of some of the booklets are below.

  

 

Medal-winning countries in selected events

Olympics and Canada

Part of Sonlight Core 4 includes a study of Canada.  I think it is scheduled near the end of the year, but when I began to plan for studying the Olympics, I had an aha! moment and pulled out the Canada book to tie in.

So we've been making lapbooks.  We've learned about Canada using Sonlight's book A Unit About Canada.

This has been a very nice study.  We were fairly choosey about which pages we did.  I copied off many of the pages with fill-in-the-blank answers and after we'd read about the topic, I had either Daisy or Pepper do the writing while everyone chimed in with the answers.  I didn't feel it was necessary, nor productive, to have each one complete their own sheet.  Between the reading, the discussion and the worksheet, I think they all got a good grounding in the topics.  I also had whomever hadn't filled out the sheet check it over for accuracy.

This book was also nice in that I was able to find activities within suitable for Daisy, Pepper AND Banana Boy.  He enjoyed the maps.  We also did some extensions with him about tides when we read about the world's highest tides in the Bay of Fundy.  He chose to read about Michael J. Fox when they each chose an "Outstanding Canadian" to report on.  Why would he know MJF?  Mr. GT and the kids are movie addicts on the weekends when I am at work, and they've seen all the Back to the Future movies!

After a general overview of Canada, we focused in on British Columbia because that's where the 2010 Winter Olympics are, in Vancouver.  There's a page in the book with 6 different province-study topics and each of them took two.  We checked out a bunch of books from the library on BC and the kids set to work investigating.  Daisy and Pepper were able to find answers to their questions and record notes pretty well on their own.  BB and I worked together to explore natural resources, crops and manufacturing and food, sports and attractions.  He made a little book about logging with coloring pages I found on the internet and colored a picture of salmon for his lapbook.  I think I'll have him do a hockey page, too.

Finally, for the Olympics study, I bought two lapbooks from CurrClick.  CurrClick is a wonderful place to buy e-books and instant download lapbooking sets.  They have a nice selection of freebies and often have sales, plus they carry products from many different companies.  If you get on their weekly newsletter mailing list, you get a new freebie each week and it's a good way to sample each company's product.  I've definitely found I don't like all lapbooking kits. Some companies are much more to my taste than others.

We used A Journey Through Learning's 2010 Winter Olympics lapbook and Live N Learn's Winter Olympics lapbook.  AJTL's lapbook was a nice fit for Banana Boy, with much simpler, broader activities.  LnL's kit contained very specific and deep projects exploring the olympics and was a good match for Daisy's skills.  Pepper worked a bit from both and I selected just the projects and booklets we needed and tossed the rest.

If you are considering purchasing either, the Live N Learn kit is not year-specific and could be used as-is over again for another Winter Olympics.  The Journey Through Learning set is specific to the 2010 Olympics, but only in a few places (mascots, themes, map of the torch trek).  Much of it could be used again another time and it's on sale right now for only $3.75!  It would be a great value to purchase now and use again next time.  You could adapt the year-specific activities to the new olympics fairly easily with a little internet research.

A few other online things I collected from www.activityvillage.co.uk

An Olympic acrostic and a Distance to Travel worksheet

I'll post pictures of the lapbooks when we have them finished--hopefully that will be by tomorrow, since Grandma and Grandpa are coming!

I Was Going to Make Them Come Down and Do School

after lunch.  Daisy has some things in her Olympic folder to work on.  I was going to read Caddie Woodlawn to them.

But when I went up find them, they were in the attic and Daisy was reading The Boxcar Children to Pepper and Banana Boy.

ah, homeschooling.....  :D

Just Like That, She's Multiplying

So Pepper, who cried all morning (and for the last 3 months, for that matter) showed her multiplication pictures to her dad.  And because explaining something to someone else is the surest way to know it yourself, she now KNOWS all the facts for which we drew pictures.

From the kitchen, where they are rolling truffles, she calls to me, "Mom?  What's 8 x 8?"

"You know that one!"

"Oh, 64!  I made 66 mint truffles!"

And she's cracking up because I caught her KNOWING her multiplication facts.

Just like that, she's multiplying AND using it in real life.

Finished the Civil War

We finished the Civil War a bit ago.  The girls made lapbooks from History Pockets: Civil War.  I shrunk the printables from this book to make smaller-sized booklets to use in their lapbooks.

Our favorite Civil War resources?


Across Five Aprils

We listened to this book on audio, rather than me read it. I have a hard time reading dialect aloud. It is available from iTunes or audible.com.  This book is the (roughly) true story of the author's grandfather who was a boy of 12 or 14 when the Civil War began.  He remained on the farm while his older brothers went off to war and the story chronicles the war through all five Aprils, 1861-1865.  It's a wonderful, moving story that captures you and gives a fabulous overview of the war through the eyes of Jethro and his family.

We also listened to Bull Run on audio (also purchased from iTunes). LOVE this book! I prefer the audio version of this book because of the format of the story. It consists of about 15 characters, each speaking in his own chapter. The characters vary between male & female, North & South, slave & free, rich and poor, soldier and civilian. All meet in some way at the battle of Bull Run and through their collective perspective, you experience that battle. LOVE this book!

Besides listening to the audio version, which offers a different voice for each character, we also make a chart of the characters' names, their affiliation (north or south), a few words about their story (who they are) and their role at Bull Run.  This book can be a little confusing because of the number of characters, but the audio and the chart help us to keep it straight.


We read Lincoln: A Photobiography and a few Cornerstones of American History books.

To celebrate the end of our Civil War unit, we took a day-trip to Springfield, IL to visit the Lincoln Museum and his home there.

Lincoln's Home is a national park site and is a free tour.

The Lincoln Museum is part of his presidential library.  If you are within driving distance of this museum, I encourage you to go there!  It is a wonderful, interactive museum that traces Lincoln's life from his early log cabin days through his time in Springfield, the White House and to his death.  There are two really great holographic movies, lots of realistic wax (I think they are silicon nowadays) figures, a coverage of slavery and the Civil War, and actual items that belonged to the Lincolns.  The cost is $10 for adults and $6 for kids, but it seemed worth it to us.

We had actually visited this museum on our vacation to St. Louis two years ago and the kids were STILL talking about going here.  Since they had such fond memories of it, I thought it would be fun to revisit it now that that period in history was "explained" in their minds.  They liked it just as well the second time.

Also in Springfield are Lincoln's tomb, where he and his family are buried and the village of New Salem where Lincoln lived and worked before he became an esteemed lawyer.  We didn't visit those two places on this trip.  (We saw his tomb 2 years ago)  If you can't visit the tomb in person, you can take this photo tour.

Friday Art

Catching up on some Friday Art.

This project was to color something in a surprising way. The girls really had fun with this one and it was actually HARD to choose the colors you weren't "supposed to."

This next project took us about 2 months. The girls began the paintings way back in September, I think, with a cool watercolor wash and a warm wash (not pictured) They had to dry, which put us all off track. The next step was to print leaves of the opposite temperature (warm on cool and cool on warm) onto the background.

By the time we were ready to print the leaves, there was snow on the ground. Luckily I had purchased some foam leaves in a bin one time. Four different leaves each in three sizes makes for a nice printing activity!  In the first two photographs, if you look carefully, you can see the foam leaves lying on the picture in the position the girls have planned out.  They are in the process of painting (or touching up) the first leaf.

Here is the finished product

At this point in the book, Daisy got annoyed with art and quit. So Pepper sponged this "cool" snowman and got to mix her paints, to boot.

The next exercise was to paint this "cool" tree. To be honest, I drew the tree (she wouldn't), but she colored it (after I demonstrated) and she painted it. When she was finished, it made her cry because her tree (which was supposed to resist the watercolor due to the crayon) had turned all blue and she hated it. For the record, Rose Bud thought it was awesome!

So, there you have it.  This fall's Friday Art!

My Little Musicians

Daisy has been giving Banana Boy piano lessons.  She even puts a book on the back of his hand to keep his hand still and make his fingers do all the work.

Banana Boy got a microphone and guitar for his birthday.  There have been LOTS of shows  and concerts ever since.  One night, there was even a church service complete with worship band and children's sermon.

Daisy and BB spend a lot of time composing and choreographing things.  They make a good team and both can play by ear.  I can't even list for you the number of songs they can play on the piano that each has picked out by ear.  Banana Boy, especially, is gifted at this and for him, it's a necessary skill since he can't read music.

In addition to the piano, they are both constantly messing with: the recorder, the guitar (I caught Daisy "borrowing" her brother's new guitar and the Teach Yourself book that came with it), hand bells, accordian (we have a toy one that plays surprisingly nice music), and various rhythm instruments.

Here is a little treat for you from today.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com