Another Week

I haven't posted in a REALLY long time!  I feel my blogging withdrawls... okay maybe not but I thought it would be nice to post a few pictures to let everybody know that we are still in the learning mode.  I will be posting on my other blog http://www.jonesfam02.blogspot.com/ about Nattie's birthday and a few other things.  If you want to hop over there and check it out. 

We are learning about Jesus in school and the different things that He is.  We learned that Jesus is the Light Of The World so we made this "sun catcher".  It was supposed to be a lot different but I had the iron on too hot and the crayons went everywhere.... so we did crayon shavings in between two pieces of contact paper and that seemed to work just fine.  The girls still loved it.  What could've turned out to be a disaster turned out as a success.  Praise the Lord!

I was trying to figure out how to get the girls to learn calendars and I found this on Confessions of a Homeschooler's site.  If you go to the right her blog is linked from this blog.  I love it!  I ended up laminating it so all they have to do is erase the stuff, other than the numbers in the month, and write the new date in each day.  It's been great to teach ordinal numbers, how to write the extended date, addition, tens place and units place, how to write out numerals in word format and how a calendar looks.  Someday I will have them plan out their months and days so they get used to doing that as well, but we'll save that for a later time.



Nattie putting her capital letters in alphabetical order.

We were learning about air so we did an experiment where you fill a cup way full of water then you put a piece of cardboard on it and flip it upside down.  The pressure of the air on the outside of the cup kept the cardboard in place.  The girls were amazed.

When the cardboard was pulled away by force (Daddy) water came gushing out.

We are learning about Astronomy this year and the last couple weeks we've been learning about the sun.  Here is our makeshift balloon solar system.  The sun is first, which is not to size, but the other ones are close in size to the ratios of what they would look like next to each other.  Of course Saturn is the one with the rings, and even though Pluto's not a planet anymore I put it up there anyways because it's part of our song.  Maybe I should post a video of our song.  I'll see if I can find it.

Here is an overview of the week. Week to of Adventures in My Father's World. I'm not going to go over everything we did this week because some of it is just basic school stuff. I will go over some of the important stuff and some of the fun stuff.

This is my favorite picture of the week. Nattie had just woken up from a nap so she was super tired and super whiney so while I got dinner ready I asked her if she wouldn't mind snuggling with Mara for a minute. Mara and Nattie both agreed! So they sat and watched Bill Nye the Science Guy (from the library) on wind while I got dinner made. So sweet.
We learned about Columbus. After Alyssa's initial shock that he really wasn't the first person to be in America... in fact he never set foot in the United States... she really had a good time learning about him. Above are some of the books that we read this week about Columbus.

We learned about JESUS. The name of Jesus and that Jesus' birth was foretold in the Old Testament. They really loved looking at these verses and seeing that what was told in the Old Testament came true... although their faith hardly ever waivers so they knew that was the way it was anyways.

We moved the keyboard into the school room... SMART!! Why hadn't I thought of this before. They like it when people can hear them practice so they've been practicing a lot more.

Syssa practicing.

Some free time... I think this is one of the times I said was MANDATORY P.E. time. Sometimes a Mama just needs a small break!

Like I said before we learned about Columbus this week. We made tin foil boats and sailed them from Spain the New World. They really liked this activity.

Art was from I Can Do All Things, part of My Father's World curriculum. They are getting the hang of drawing okay. This is one of their favorite things to do but the lessons (as of right now) are so short I squeeze like 3 in at once and then I don't do it for a couple days.

Nattie got a two new sets of books called Now I'm Reading. She's already knocked out 5 of them so I may have to order more soon. This little girl (3 years old, will be 4 in August) is a reading machine!!

Some of the journals that the girls have been writing have blown me away. They are so awesome! This is Samara's journal. I asked her to write why the name of Jesus is so important to her. She has been fighting a stye on her eye all week (it got HUGE and now it's a lot better, still there but not close to what it was), so she drew a picture of God healing her stye on her eye. I love it!!!

This is Alyssa's joural with the same question.

I love the read aloud that is assigned. American Pioneers and Patriots. It's a book that is fiction but is a story about the life and time of the people back when people were coming to America. This week it was about a little boy and his sister and family and the boat ride and finally reaching America. It was really cool and since there were kids in the story (7 and 9 year old) the girls really paid a lot of attention.

I didn't put any of our Astronomy work on here so I'll just let you know that we are learning about what Astronomy is. The post right before this one goes over what I did to help them learn about space. Hopefully I will be able to do the same thing for the Bible lessons that we cover. Our History is on our wall in the form of a timeline... I didn't take a picture of that this week either. Oh well, all for another post I guess.

Some of My Purchases

Over the past maybe year I have purchased some things that I wanted to use while homeschooling. Since we knew that we were homeschooling quite a while ago but hadn't started yet I picked up a lot of stuff so that I would be prepared... (what is that anyways!). Here are some of the things that we used this week.

I got these Geoboards recently off of Amazon.com. I wanted something for Alyssa to be able to do at centers time that she could feel was something appropriate for her age. Although these are the younger ones (with only 25 pegs) it seemed to keep her occupied... as well as the other two. This is a picture of Samara our 5 (almost 6) year old.
I bought these books for a dollar a piece at Target throughout the last couple months. I'm hoping that they have more and more as the year goes on. They are perfect for a two day book for Syssa.

I got the front bins off of Orientaltrading.com. I thought they'd be nice to have for any workbooks and papers that the girls wanted to do during centers time, or any time throughout the day after they've finished their schoolwork. I kept the blue ones in the back for things that are odd shaped. This is where I keep their Brain Quest cards, flashcards, etc.

I also found these at Target in their dollar section. The space ones are perfect for this year. I ended up laminating them so that they will last a lot longer and so I could stick some of them on the wall for the girls to see. I have a picture of the space ones below. The other ones I can use next year if we stay on the same thought process we are now with using My Father's World again.

These are the stickers that go with the posters below. These pictures are semi-out of order. I got these from Oriental Trading as well and am loving them already.

I got these also off of Oriental Trading. I laminated the big cards to protect them so we could have them... well, hopefully forever. The posters have interesting facts on the back as well. There's a picture of each planet, the moon, the Milky Way, and the sun.

These are the posters that go with the stickers. As we go over each planet they will put the sticker on the chart. Not sure what we're going to do with the other stickers but I'm sure I can come up with something.

Okay this is our work wall... As you can see I have a lot of writing on my board today. I've been going over some space stuff with the girls and instead of looking in my book a million times a day I decided to write it on the board. Anyways you can see all the wonderful stuff I have on my board but the real reason I took this picture is to show you what I did with my space flash cards I got from Target. I laminated them and then stuck them to the wall. I love them already!! It's a great visual for the girls when we're talking about something to be able to point to it instead of just telling them to picture it in their minds.

I've accumulated and purchased way too much I'm sure but if I see a dollar buy or something on Oriental Trading that catches my eye... well, there's some things I just can NOT pass up!! Thank goodness I have a homeschooling budget!!

The first week of school!

I have been homeschooling my kids longer than I've known until this week. We started homeschooling on Monday. We decided to start now and do kind of a year round type of school, taking breaks when needed (or wanted) and just going at the pace of the girls. So far so good. On the first day when I told them that class was over for the day (9AM- 12 Noon) they didn't like that idea and wanted more stuff to do. I was a little tired myself so I told them they'd have to wait until tomorrow. It's been a lot of fun. Daily I have been switching things around bit by bit to try and figure out what's going to work best for us so I'll be trying to post every once in a while to blog my changes. I'm mainly doing this so family back home can see what we are doing and for my future references for next year. (and maybe years to come.) Here's a little bit about what we did this week. (Not everything is included here, just highlights or like today a lot of pictures of books because I didn't have my camera out much. I will do better next week, if we have it next week because of the 4th.) Anyways........

These pictures are very out of order but they'll have to do. We discussed Vikings on Friday (today). We came across this book which has some of the characters from "How to Train Your Dragon" in it so the girls thought that was pretty awesome!
I read this book out loud to the girls as they colored Leif Ericsson ships.

At the begininning of the week we studied the Pledge of Allegiance and what all the words mean and who wrote it and how it's changed over the years. Some things I didn't know like "under God" was added in 1954. Anyways, we got this book from the library and Alyssa read it at the library and her mouth dropped open. She had just learned about this and all the information and more was in this book. She was so excited! My 8 year old LOVES to read and learn knew information!!

This is the art curriculum that comes with Adventures in My Father's World. I'm loving it. We bought a copy for each of the girls and I have been making copies for myself to do it along with the girls since I'm not very good at art this might teach me a few things as well!

This was the first page we did in art. Left to right is Alyssa, Samara, and Natalie.

The 2nd page we did. Left to right is the same, Alyssa, Samara, and Natalie

We are using Math U See. Natalie-Primer, Samara-Alpha, and Alyssa-Beta.

Samara and Natalie are using Explode the Code for Phonics.

Their centers baskets. Each day they have something in here they can do while Mama's busy helping another kiddo with their work.

We will be working on a U.S. folder since we are studying the U.S. this year. We did the first four pages this week and this is the first one.

We learned about where we live in America and what NSEW is and the oceans and what countries border us from the N and S.

This is upside down and Natalie's. She colored the words Pacific and Atlantic Oceans instead of the whole ocean. Oh well, she is only 3.

Syssa's Leif Ericsson summary.

Natalie has been reading Bob Books. I know you say "she's only 3!!!" I say "I know!!! holy cow!" I do not push her to read she simply sees her sisters read and says that she needs to do that too!

This is the Spelling curriculum we're using.

Natalie is using this to learn to read. I love this book!!

This is their chore chart checklist. Some of their chores change, some of them don't.

The next few pictures are check-off sheets for me and the girls to see what they did on what days and to make sure they do everything they need to every day.

This is our daily schedule to give you a little bit of what our day looks like just click on the picture above and check it out.

Hope you enjoyed this post. I'm loving being my kids mother and teacher. They refer to their sisters as their classmates during school time. It's really cute!