DINOSAUR TRAIN

Seemed like a pretty basic week of school. We are still, 4 weeks in, trying to establish a good routine. It is much easier to make a schedule look good on paper than in real life. Especially for this extremely non-morning mom! We'll get there though and I'm hoping that happens before Christmas! Not so many pictures this week, but we were still busy and did lots!

Itty Bitty Bookworm

We completed week four from the Bo Curriculum July Year 2. This week's focus book was DINOSAUR TRAIN. Since Caleb LOVES to watch the Dinosaur Train program on PBS he was very excited about this book and has really enjoyed everything about our two weeks of study on dinosaurs. We also read LOTS of books about trains this week. They colored, cut out, and created a paper dinosaur peeking out of an egg, completed a dinosaur research paper where they designed their own dinosaur, and soaked hard boiled eggs in purple Kool-Aid to make dinosaur eggs. Our favorite craft this week was a dinosaur bean collage. These turned out great! They completely covered the dinosaur picture with a variety of beans.

McRuffy Phonics Kindergarten

Really nothing exciting to report here. This is really quite slow right now. Caleb continues to do well with his handwriting and for some strange reason insists that I use a colorful pen to mark letters that he could improve next time. It really is amazing the difference a year has made with him in this area. I have always been an advocate for not pushing skills too early if the child seems to be frustrated or not ready- this has been a perfect example.

I did feel a little silly this week about our phonics work. I am having Caleb work through this Kindergarten curriculum when really he only needs to learn a few things that are covered towards the end of the year. Not exactly sure what I plan to do at this point. Can't decide if I want to keep going at a slow pace and cover it all since he is getting more advanced practice other places such as Explode the Code Online, or if I want to pick up the pace and get onto the stuff he hasn't already learned. On our way home from the library this week he was in the back seat accurately reading Little Quack books, Curious George books, and Little Critter books out loud cover to cover fluently. Made me feel a little silly pulling out our phonics books and going over a lesson about the sound the letter s makes. Hmmm, what to do?

McRuffy Math- First Grade

This curriculum is the perfect level for Caleb and we are both enjoying working with it. This week we worked with pattern blocks, telling time to the half hour, simple addition, adding money, and place value.

Preschool

We completed the letter Tt activities from Raising Rockstars Preschool. Our Bible verse this week was "Thou shall not steal". Hannah LOVED listening to our Ten Commandments song from The Singing Bible CD. I love this CD as well. The songs on it are very fun, but the kids (and I) learn SO much about the Bible while listening.

Anyway, Hannah worked a lot with the letter Hh this week and loved having another special book just for her. This week her book focused on the sight word "the". She also loved the new power point show. Her books and power point shows are both from the Raising Rockstars Preschool site.

Hannah also enjoyed adding several new letters to her uppercase and lowercase letter match activity.

McRuffy Kindergarten Science

We finished our unit on the 5 senses this week. We did activities about hearing and touching. We also read a few other books about the senses. My favorite part about science this week was all through the day Hannah would say, "Mommy, we're using our sense of _____." LOVED IT!

Other Fun Things From the Week

Caleb learned to jump rope! He can only jump it one time, but he is so excited. I'm sure he'll be putting a few jumps together very soon.

Caleb also lost his 4th tooth this week- yes, he's 5 1/2 and has already lost 4 teeth and has his 6 year molars most of the way in. At his last dentist appointment the dentist said he was about a year ahead of schedule. He goes back on Monday. He can't wait to show her that he has lost two more teeth since the last time.

On a final note, I must share with you what a fabulous week we had in regards to behavior and sibling play time. Caleb is obsessed with tv, wii, and the computer. I love that he has learned so much good stuff from some of the wonderful programs on PBS as well as some wonderful sites on the internet, but that is ALL he wants to do. We have also noticed that the more time he spends in front a screen, the worse his behavior is! Due to some recent poor behavior there has been NO tv and NO wii this week. Computer has been allowed in very small doses and mostly only for school work. His behavior has been wonderful and he has played amazingly well with Hannah. He has played creatively with toys he usually never touches. I MUST do better at not allowing so much screen time to creep back into his day.

Well, that wraps up our week. Check out what others did this week at Homeschool Creations.

DANNY AND THE DINOSAUR

FINALLY, a whole week of school without any interruptions! We still have some things to work out, and probably always will, but sticking to a schedule as much as possible is key for us.

Itty Bitty Bookworm

We began a two week focus on dinosaurs this week with our Itty Bitty Bookworm activities. This week our focus book was DANNY AND THE DINOSAUR but we read LOTS of dinosaur books. We also had fun with Dinosaur poems and songs. Here are a few of our activities.

We taped 18 different dinosaur related words around the room and each kid used a clipboard to go around the room and write the words. They did great with this. I was especially impressed with how well Hannah did copying these really long words and her letter formation was good too, she only struggles with writing the letter s.

We did lots of organizing, sorting, and playing with dinosaurs.

We used coffee to make playdoh for dinosaur fossils- they LOVED this! Caleb wants to send his to a museum.

Dinosaur Pasta Art- This is Hannah's- the center part is a campfire.

Caleb's Dinosaur

Sorting dinosaurs that fly/walk

Painting

Stegosaurus Hats

McRuffy Kindergarten Phonics

We are still in VERY EASY skills for Caleb, but I am still choosing to do each lesson for reinforcement and handwriting. This week both kids wrote a story about Nan who had nine nickels. Nan could buy anything that had an "n" in it. They tell me their story, I write it in their books and they illustrate.

Caleb's

Hannah's

McRuffy First Grade Math

We had fun using dinosaur counters during our math time. Caleb continued practicing simple addition, timed tests, and identifying coins. Adding coins is a little tricky for him right now. He did some work with pattern blocks and graphing different ways to produce the same sum. He was introduced to the cents symbol and did a little pattern work mixed with counting by two's, fives, and tens.

Preschool

We began something new this week adding in some of the Raising Rock Stars Preschool activities to Hannah's weekly work. She loved having some more activities that were especially for her. Her favorite things were her sight word book and the power point show.

Playdoh is one of Hannah's very favorite things to do. She spent lots of time making playdoh ice cream treats this week.

Worksheets

Taping her Bible Verse together

Seeing how long her Bible verse is

Reading herself to sleep at the end of a busy day.

McRuffy Kindergarten Science

We have been learning about the five senses this week. So far we have covered sight, smell, and taste.

The kids tried to identify several smells from cotton balls. (lemon, alcohol, perfume, cologne, vanilla, orange juice, water)

They tasted salty water, sugary water, lemony water, and unsweetened cocoa. I really wish I had a picture of Caleb's mouth full of the cocoa but I just didn't have the camera in my hand at the right moment. Let's just say he wasn't coming back for seconds! And after his reaction Hannah wouldn't try it.

Check out what others have been doing for preschool this week at Homeschool Creations.

GOOD NIGHT, GORILLA

Week two was similar to week one, not quite what I had envisioned. We still have lots of kinks to work out in our schedule, but I am confident that in just a few more weeks school will be looking much more like it should here. We once again had some things come up that really threw us off this week. Hannah had a four-year-old check-up on Tuesday which involved 4 shots. She was already not feeling well and sure enough by the time we got home we had a tired 4 year old girl with very sore legs and a stomach virus. She really didn't start feeling better until Saturday, so we didn't really push for a full schedule this week.

Batman joined us for school several days this week.

Itty Bitty Bookworm

We continued with a zoo theme this week with GOOD NIGHT, GORILLA being our focus book. We continued reading lots of fun zoo stories and singing some great zoo songs.

Hannah colored zoo animals from the GOOD NIGHT, GORILLA story to cut out and glue on a picture of a bed.

They colored zoo animals and matched the written animal names to the correct animal.

Pictures of the animals going to bed (Caleb's on the left, Hannah's on the right)

Caleb's zoo painting (from left to right- hippo, giraffe, tree, monkey, tree, elephant)

Hannah's zoo painting (a picture of a girl walking into the zoo)

We also did a few zoo worksheets.

McRuffy Kindergarten Phonics- Caleb

The big adventure in phonics this week was writing a story. We discussed the letter Tt and she was asked to "write" a story about Terry, the Terrified Tiger then illustrate it.

Once upon a time there was a terrified tiger named Terry. He had some candy and a burglar took it. The terrified tiger called the police. Terry went through the tunnel to go to Wal-Mart to buy two hundred bags of candy. The End

On the first page he drew Terry the Tiger and the burglar. On the second page he drew a picture of Wal-Mart.

Hannah wanted to write a story too.

Once upon a time there was a terrified tiger named Terry. Terry was afraid of the boy because he scared him.

She drew a picture of Terry.

McRuffy First Grade Math- Caleb

Creating patterns with tangrams

Learning about less than and greater than

It's a good thing Batman has fingers or this math could have been much harder :)

McRuffy Kindergarten Science- Caleb and Hannah

We had planned to begin a new unit this week, but instead we finished the last lesson on organizing by size. With having a sick child, we didn't complete any other science this week.

Preschool- Hannah

Hannah was only able to sit with us a few minutes at a time this week so other than a couple of worksheets and the Itty Bitty Bookworm activities we didn't do any preschool work.

Other Fun

It just wouldn't be right to learn about the zoo for two weeks without going to the zoo. Granny was visiting for the weekend and we all enjoyed a fun day at the zoo. It was WAY TOO HOT, but the animals were still active and since public schools are back in sessions we went on Friday and avoided a crowd.

Check out what other preschoolers and fives are doing at Homeschool Creations.

DEAR ZOO

We survived our first week back to school (and that is about all we did, was SURVIVE!). I could choose to post these sweet pictures and write a wonderful entry about how our week was and leave you thinking that I must be a super mom who has it all together. However, my biggest issue with blogs is just that, blogs that leave a false impression. If you read lots of blogs (speaking specifically about homeschool blogs at the moment) you could find yourself feeling much like a failure. It is easy to see the smiling faces and admirable list of activities and be deceived into thinking that the home of that blogger must be perfect. It is important to remember while reading blogs that we are only seeing a glimpse of the whole picture, only the part the writer chooses to let us see. Not to say that there aren't some wonderful homeschooling bloggers who do a wonderful job managing their home, but we all have struggles, we are all sinful beings teaching sinful children. Praise God (especially after a week like this) for forgiveness and grace! So all that to say, we did have a lot of wonderful moments at school this week, but it wasn't always easy. We had lots of bad attitudes (mine and theirs), we had way too many interruptions to our schedule causing us to not complete our work for the week, Bible time was a disaster, and other than laundry and meals no housework got done. There you go, the REAL story behind the week. Now onto some of the GOOD highlights of the week.

First Day of School Photo

They look "happy" right? This photo follows several minutes of fighting over where they

wanted to stand for this picture!

Itty Bitty Bookworm

This month we are using Itty Bitty Bookworm's Bo Curriculum July Year 2. This week was focused on the book DEAR ZOO by Rod Campbell. We had lots of fun reading zoo books, singing zoo songs, enjoying other zoo crafts and activities.

They made their own DEAR ZOO books. This took three days to complete- lots of coloring, cutting, and gluing, but they turned out GREAT!

I was especially proud of Caleb. He has never liked coloring much

and use to just choose one color and quickly color the entire picture that color. But just look at all the detail is his picture above- completely on his own, I didn't give him

any instruction as to how to color it. HUGE progress!

We talked about habitats and used blocks to build a zoo.

We also cut pictures of zoo animals and used them as manipulatives

for simple math problems. And of course we enjoyed snacking on zoo animal crackers (I even let them have the ones with icing and sprinkles!)

Science

Our Science lessons from McRuffy Kindergarten Science were about organizing by size. This was very easy for both Caleb and Hannah, but we are doing each lesson for reinforcement and assessment anyway. I don't want to just assume they already know something and then find out later they don't. As long as they are enjoying the activity we do it. If they show mastery over a skill then don't want to keep working on it, we will stop.

They cut out Happy Bean pictures, ordered them by size then glued them to a strip. Hannah lined hers up right, but then didn't keep them in order when she glued them.

I told each of them to go choose any 5 objects. I then asked them to put them in order from smallest to largest.

Preschool Time

We did lots of preschool worksheets on a variety of skills. Here are a few other things Hannah did this week.

Playful Patterns from Discovery Toys

We are working on matching uppercase and lowercase letters. This week we only did A-E. I will add a few letters each week. She actually didn't have any trouble with this, I thought she might.

The Original Memory Game

McRuffy Kindergarten Phonics

I really struggled with whether to use Kindergarten or First Grade curriculum with Caleb. He already knows all the skills in at least the first half of the book, but I decided to go with the Kindergarten because of the handwriting, writing prompts, spelling tests, and long vowel words. The biggest accomplishment this week was handwriting. We started with a handwriting program when Caleb was 4 1/2 and it was a nightmare! His fine motor skills at that time were week and he hated writing. After about 4 or 5 weeks I just decided to wait until he was older. This year at 5 1/2 it is NO PROBLEM! He doesn't complain about it (much) and his letter formation is really good.

McRuffy First Grade Math

Nothing new here this week- counting to 100, number identification, adding simple one digit equations, timed test, and making a chart.

Centers

Making zoo animals with playdoh

Played SORRY- This is one of Caleb's favorite games.

Other Fun Parts of Our Week

Caleb has been laying on his bean bag to sleep. This night I checked on him and it was on top of him. We I showed him this picture he said, "Oh yeah, I was being a turtle."

Bowling for Daddy's Birthday

Chalk Drawing with a friend

Playing the new Wii with Daddy

Singing "The Animals at the Zoo"

Check out Homeschool Creations to see what other preschoolers have been doing this week.