November 2014

Our pace has slowed down dramatically. We took Miles to an eye doctor specialist and found out Miles had a "condition" termed convergence insufficiency. Pretty much it just means that his eyes don't work well together, which is why he always tests just fine on traditional eye exams, but still complains about headaches when he tried to read. The doctor said it's pretty common and he might grow out of it, but just to be safe, we'll probably do some physical therapy for his eye to strengthen their coordination, which will help his ability to read and also his hand-eye coordination. I'm looking forward to his improvement because I'm hoping that his attitude will change once his vision isn't such an impediment. Starting in November, he really started complaining about school. It's now to the point of groaning about doing school not just every once in a while, but every day. I wasn't prepared for this kind of kick-back till WAY later, so it's a little slap in the face I guess. I try so hard to make things fun, and even after backing off A TON when we found out about his eyes, he still complains. I'm learning that what works one week, won't necessarily work the next, and this whole homeschooling things takes a lot more prayer than I was anticipating and a lot more planning. I think I'll be a constantly evolving homeschool mom, just as my kids are hopefully a constantly evolving homeschool kid. Art Projects We dried a bunch of leaves and made animals out of them, and also cut the leaves in half, glued them on paper and then tried to draw the other half. Leaf Symmetry. :) We printed out special coloring pages for Veteran's Day and talked about why November 11th is special. I showed them pictures of the Veterans who have served in our family and it made a bigger impact than I was expecting. Sensory Play We made some pumpkin pie play-doh and did our best to make it look like real pumpkin pie so we could trick dad. :) I only did one sensory bin this month. I just pulled out my stash of beans, rice and wheat (very pilgrim, yes?) and hid foam letter in it. I put our new scale inside so they could weigh things. They only thought it was cool to play with one time. After that, it was lame. Reading I try to mix up their sight word and letter practice as much as possible. So this time I wrote them like secret messages in white crayon and had them water color over the top. They thought this was SO cool! Math We started learning about money, so we turned our kitchen into a store and they each got some school money and they practiced buying food over and over again. Pretty fun! Lots of patterning going on over here. Check out Gwen's grumpy face. School stuff is not always well received. :) Play-doh counting mats. Another one of those things I thought the kids would think was so cool, and then they didn't. :) "P.E." When the weather is too cold to run around inside, we improvise. Both kids love Yoga. Go figure. :) Maybe it will rub off on me? Geography We're having so much fun getting all these postcards from around the country! We get the postcard, find it on a map, and check out a book about it from the library. The kids have officially learned all the states and capitals plus most of their locations, although those get a little rusty. We sings state songs every morning, but they started feeling a little burned out, so we've suspended our state "drills" until the new year. (This is as of December I should mention) It's so cool to see them "find" the states in different places. They eat a piece of toast a certain way, hold it up and say, "Hey mom! It's Oklahoma!" or something along those lines. I always get such a kick out of it. Reading Party I LOVE celebrating literature. I want my kids to be so excited about reading and books. I want to saturate our home environment with it so that there is no way they can escape it. This past month, the kids and dad finished an old favorite of mine, "Matilda". I should probably go through and re-read it again, it's been too long. The kids LOVED this book. Total hit. They couldn't stop talking about all the characters and the crazy things they did. For our party, I had them draw pictures of the characters and then tell me what to write about them. We put them on our chalk board where I wrote one of my favorite quotes from the book. "Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog." A couple other favorite quotes: "She's a spectacularly wonderful child and I love her." "This child, Miss Honey told herself, seems to be interested in everything. When one is with her it is impossible to be bored. I love it." We had Uncle Jacob over and we ate TV dinners for our meal, like the Wormwoods, and then had a giant chocolate cake for dinner, just like Brucey. :) We even found a newt in our water! Afterwards, we watched the movie and kids were enthralled watching all of these crazy things they read about come to life. It was a hit. Behavior The kids got their behavior charts from the summer full. We went to the swimming pool! Field Trips Gwen's Joy school had their field trip to the dinosaur museum this month! This outing is always a hit! Science We ended our unit on bones and started learning about the Digestive System. We lucked out and found some great books, one specifically that has 5 or 6 simple science experiments for kids to do to learn about the digestive system. Pictured here is one we did to learn about how the stomach breaks up the food you swallow and how it helps if you really chew your food before you swallow. We bought some hard candy and put a whole one in some vinegar, and then broke the other one up and placed it in vinegar also. The ones that were broken up dissolved faster! Lindy She tries, unsuccessfully, to stay out of the way during school time. The kids made her this cool sensory box to keep her attention. It doesn't work too well. :) A for effort, right?

October 2014

Sensory Bins We had a water bead, just for fun, sensory bin this month, and also a "bone dig" bin. I thought since we were studying bones, this counted right? They were archaeologists and had to pick out the bones from the sand with tweezers and dust them off with a brush. Then they counted how many bones they found in total. Dramatic Play I originally wanted to teach the kids all about when bones break, you have to get a cast. There was a pin about how to make a fake cast and I was all excited and ready to go until I found out I would have to order special stuff to make the fake casts. No time for stuff like that. So instead, we just set up a Dr. office downstairs and used their baby dolls as patients. Richie snapped this one picture of Gwen being the patient. I wish I would have snapped more but this was happening on Halloween and I was busy. They really enjoyed themselves. I think their favorite part was that I put wax paper on the table just like that funky paper they have on the benches at Dr. offices. :) Field Trips I'll try and get some pictures later, but there were 2 field trips this month. Gwen had a joy school field trip to Olive Garden. (Miles was so sad he couldn't tag along on this one.) They got to go into the kitchen, with hair nets, and see how and where they prepare the food. They worked on a sticker sheet and then were treated to breadsticks, noodles and pink lemonade. Gwen thought it was the coolest. Our homeschool field trip this month took us to the pumpkin patch. :) We had a farmer take us around and talk to us. He even took us on a tractor ride. Then we got to feed the animals, pick a pumpkin and play in the corn pit! Math Math was pretty low key this month. Lots of repetition from last month. Lots of one-to-one correspondence, patterns, ordinal position (1st, 2nd etc), and identifying shapes by one or more qualities. They've got that stuff down pretty well, it's time to move on. Reading Our printer ran out of ink this month, so out of necessity we didn't do a lot of worksheets. Worksheet type things make me feel like we're doing something official and I see the benefit of using them. However, it was a good experience to not have any. We did lots more hands on things and they still seemed to get what they needed. Here's some of our word activities from this past month. (Play-doh letters, tracing letters/words in pudding, "writing" our words and letters with yarn on contact paper) Science We are learning all about our bones this month. We'll be working on the human body all year, but I thought learning about skeletons fit nicely with Halloween. We baked bone shaped cookies, made a skeleton out of paper plates, and have learned the names and locations of almost all of the 32 most well known bones. We also did a science experiment where we put chicken bones in a jar of water and a jar of vinegar to see what would happen. The acidic vinegar stripped the bones of all their calcium and minerals, so by the end of 7 days they could bend! Geography This one picture represents it all I guess. :) They like working on this huge, magnetic USA puzzle. We have a small, regular USA puzzle too that they work on. Every morning we sing a patriotic song, say the pledge and sings songs/get quizzed on the states using our giant USA poster we keep on our kitchen table. So far they've learned the southern, eastern and northern states locations and capitals. The funnest thing about geography so far is getting post cards in the mail from all around the country! When we get a post card, we find the state on our map downstairs, hang the postcard next to it, and then check out a book about that state from the library. It's been super fun and the kids get such a kick out of getting mail! Art We've read LOTS of books about fall and Halloween. I only managed to squeeze in one art project that went along with the leaf books we checked out. I have about a million more in my head. Maybe in November? We just melted crayon shavings between wax paper leaves. They seemed to enjoy watching the colors melt together. Reading Party The kids and dad finished reading "The Tale of Despereaux" this month, so we celebrated with a Despereaux party. We ate soup, celery, and cheese and crackers (food from the book), I decorated (kind of) and we watched the movie. (Which wasn't anything like the book!) This lame picture is the only one I snapped. I was grumpy that night. Oh well. :) The kids enjoyed themselves and had fun telling me all the parts about the movie that were "wrong".