Girls at their desks

Here are a couple of pictures of the girls as they do some of their activities in school. I know I definitely should have a lot more pictures than two of the girls but I wasn't thinking camera, I was thinking, how is this going to work well. Here you go!

During Praise and Worship time
Coloring Leif Ericsson's ship while I am reading to them. Well, and taking a picture!

Better pictures next week!!

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!

Starting School Monday

For a lot of different reasons we are going to start the girls' school on Monday.  We have prayed about and discussed this for a while and decided that this would be best for our family... and we can because I am the teacher!  I love that!  If you're wondering what curriculum I'm using, that's why I'm posting.  One so that I can have this post for next year when I want to order curriculum and I'm unsure of what I got last year (and what worked and what didn't work).  Anyways here you go:

Adventures in My Father's World for History, Science (we'll be supplementing this), Bible, Art, Music and some Reading.
Apologia- supplementing My Father's World Science
Spelling Power for Spelling
Math U See for math
Primary Language Lessons for Language Arts--we're going to try this.  If it works we'll keep it if not we'll toss it.
We're going to be learning Haitian Creole for our foreign language.  It should be interesting since there's not a lot out there to help me with this.  Oh well, I'll come up with my own stuff.
Writing Strands for writing--for Alyssa
Explode the Code--for Phonics for Samara and Natalie

I think that's it.  We'll be adding and subtracting what we want from here.  If you get a chance we'd appreciate all the prayer we can get that things will run smoothly this year!  Thanks!!

Winter Stuff

We've done a few things this past week having to do with Winter. Nattie loves to cut and trace, and just about anything else... haha. Here are some of the fun things we did this week. The printouts I got were from www.itsybitsyprintables.com and www.thoughtsofme.blogspot.com The second site always has a lot of stuff that is super cute and fun that Natalie loves to do. I highly recommend going to both of these sites and checking them out. Anyways here are the pictures.

These were some cutting sheets. Nattie is learning how to cut so well. I'm so proud of her. Although she's a bit of a perfectionist. If she goes off the line at all she says "oops, sorry Mom". Haha. I think it's funny. I keep reminding her that it's okay to make mistakes. She's such a doll!
Here is some tracers that she did.

Trace the word then write it yourself. I had to write dots for some of the letters for her to trace because she doesn't know how to form all the letters yet. She keeps surprising me at how fast she is learning though.

This is our January sensory bucket. I'm going to find more stuff to add... if anyone has any suggestions I am open to them. Right now it has cotton balls, tongs, a magnifying glass, a couple measuring cups, a play spoon, and a tea canister. She'll have fun with the tongs and spoon putting the cotton balls into the canister. I'm trying to really stick to my budget from now on so my sensory bins will just be what I have around the house. I have a budget for it next month so maybe I'll get to go to the happiest place on earth... (Hobby Lobby)... there are actually a lot of happiest places on earth but that is one of them!

Doing snowman patterns. She's going back through making sure they are all correct.

Putting the hat on the correct snowman.

Nattie wanted to model how she was playing with the patterns. She's such a ham! We are going to have a great time this month! She's already learned so much this year and I can just see her little mind exploring and wanting more!

The girls have Comprehensive Curriculum books that I buy at Sam's Club for about 8 dollars a piece. They are each just about through with the grade level that they are in. Micah went to Sam's today to buy some things and he got them all the next grade level books. I'm super excited but not half as excited as the girls!! They started working in their books so that they could start on their new ones. They are going to have to wait though because it's going to take more than an hour to get their books done.. they are close but not that close.

Stations

Today when my husband got home from work we set up stations to keep the girls busy while I made dinner.  It was really fun and the girls loved it.  While they were doing it my husband asked each of them Brain Quest questions... they really had a blast!

This is a picture of the jingle bell station.  Nattie did it first.  I had an empty Parmesan Cheese jar and some shakers that the jingle bells fit into.  This was probably their favorite station.

This is the color sorting section.  Here the girls separated the cubes into different colored cups.  Then they counted them.  For Alyssa, my 7 year old, she had to count them and then add them all together.

This is Alyssa sorting.

This is the links station.  They put the amount of links that were on the cards.

This is a reindeer ornament that the girls made.  It was really fun!

The finished reindeer ornament.

The snapping caterpillar that I made recently. 

This is the button snake I made.

Well, that was the second half of our day today.  The rest of the day was a lot of learning fun!  We bought some Comprehensive Curriculum books at Sam's Club.  Normally they are 20 bucks but at Sam's Club they are something like 7 dollars.  The girls love them!  Nattie is almost done with her Preschool book though so I'm thinking I'm going to start on Kinder soon.  I will work with her slowly on it for sure though.  Until next time...

Making cookies

I posted the other day about how we made and decorated sugar cookies, so as promised, here are some pictures of the fun.  I didn't get any pictures of the girls doing the cookie cutters.  They made a huge mess but it was so much fun and so worth it.





Mara took her time and made them look as pretty as she possibly could.

Nattie had a blast too!  She couldn't stop licking her fingers!

Syssa concentrating on getting her cookies just right.



Yummy!!!

First day of Christmas Break

I absolutely love having my girls home with me.  There is arguing, messes, and kids having too much fun to listen, but most of the time they are so much fun!  Today is the first day of their two weeks off of school and it's a success so far.  We made sugar cookies and decorated them.  The girls had so much fun.  Samara was super focused and concentrated the whole time, it was kind of funny.  We plan on doing many other fun things, none of which are planned on paper, all of which are chaotically (I make up my own words now and then) scrambled in my mind.  I will post pictures of todays cookie making fun a little later for all those who want to see.  Until then, I better go get my house vacuumed... then again maybe I'll eat another cookie and lay on the couch watching more Christmas movies with my girls.