Didn't take as many pictures as I thought I did. It's times like these I wish I had a smart phone, so I could just snap quickly away, documenting every little thing. Instead, I have to lug the big camera around (which I love, don't get me wrong), which I don't always do. Hence, not so many pictures.
Joy School/Field Trip
It was my turn to host Gwen's joy school group this month. I had the same month for Miles' group last year, so I just repeated a bunch of the same stuff. Score! The theme was Valentines/Transportation. Here's a few pictures, some of my kids, some of others in the group. At the end of the month, we took a field trip to a classic cars museum in SLC. It was kind of a let down, to me, but it was still cool and a good outing.
Science/Field Trip
We finished talking about muscles this month, so we added muscles to our body drawings downstairs. Let's be honest, I just lost steam with the muscles "unit". There's a song I wanted to teach them, that teaches them the names of all the muscles, and some other experiment type things I wanted to try out. But it was just dragging on and the kids were losing interest, so we cut it. They may not know all the names of the muscles, but they can tell you the name of the biggest one, how many muscles we have, what muscles do, and what we should do to keep them healthy and strong.
We had the chance to go to The Leonardo museum in SLC twice in the same week this month! They were hosting The Body Exhibit, and the opportunity came twice for us to go, so we jumped on the opportunity. I was a little hesitant because I didn't want to scare the kids, but they handled it really well. In true Miles and Gwen fashion, they wanted to go from exhibit to exhibit as fast as they could, while I would have been content to take my time. After the body section, they had a bunch of cool hands on things for kids to play with. They loved it, both times! No pictures allowed inside the body exhibit, so only pictures of the other stuff. :)
Reading
Gwen is so ready to read. I should just go for it, right? I keep holding her back because I don't know if I can handle it! I made these word family things for Miles to practice his fluency with sandwich words, and she picked it up and just read all of the words like it was no big deal. Mind you, I've never given her a formal reading "lesson" of any kind. It was crazy. And awesome. She's almost done with her "letter of the week" type stuff, so maybe we'll tackle reading with Gwen over the summer.
Miles is doing great as well. He started learning blends and it's no big deal for him. I drew a blender and and cut out all the letters and then we stick the letters in the blender and see what blend it makes. I also bagged the way I was finding sight words for him to learn and started using the Dolch sight-word lists. I was finding sight words for him before by what words I saw in the little "BOB" books we were reading. But since we stopped reading those (because of his eyes), I figured we still needed to keep up a sight word list. Miles hit some sort of phonetic breakthrough this month. He no longer asks how to spell something when he wants to write a note, he just sounds it all our phonetically and writes it. It's usually totally mis-pelled, but totally right as far as phonics go. I should start writing some of them down. All I can think of right now is that he addressed a letter to Erma as "Rmu" :)
Here's a few pictures of sight word activities. We laid out their words/letters and pretended they were bugs. When I called it out, they had to slap it with the fly swatter and squish it. Total hit. Miles has also been really into tic-tac-toe lately, so we played tic-tac-toe with his sight words. He loved it!
Math
We're well into the math lessons for mid-April, and Miles isn't the least bit challenged. I need to step it up I guess. Gwen stays right with Miles as far as understanding goes (almost), but her fine motor skills aren't quite up to a 6 year old level, so she gets frustrated trying to keep up that way sometimes. She knows the answer, she just can't write it! No pictures, but for future reference, the kids had a lot of fun reviewing telling time to the hour by using their analog clocks and showing me the time as we read "The Very Grouchy Ladybug". That book is perfect for this! It doesn't have a bunch of "weird" times, just to the hour ones.
Art
An out of the ordinary art project we did was tracing shadows. The weather here has been AMAZING! Playing outside a bunch in February? What?? I don't quite trust it, but I'll take it while it's happening I guess. We went outside and built towers with our legos. Then we placed them on paper and traced their shadows. We'd play around, and then check the shadows a bit later to see how they had magically moved! We traced the same tower probably about 3 times throughout the day. This project was impromptu and totally well received. I love those ones!
I should mention here, as far as art goes, the kids made their Valentine's this year for their homeschool friends. We like to save all of our broken crayons, and then when we have enough, we put them into silicone molds and melt them into new crayons. They made heart shaped ones for their friends and then glued them to hearts they had decorated. Miles took so much time on them. He thought about every single one. He's say, "Hmmm...I wonder what I should draw for Ethan.. I know! Ethan likes trains!" He did something different for every single one. I was pretty impressed.
Science/Field Trip
We finished talking about muscles this month, so we added muscles to our body drawings downstairs. Let's be honest, I just lost steam with the muscles "unit". There's a song I wanted to teach them, that teaches them the names of all the muscles, and some other experiment type things I wanted to try out. But it was just dragging on and the kids were losing interest, so we cut it. They may not know all the names of the muscles, but they can tell you the name of the biggest one, how many muscles we have, what muscles do, and what we should do to keep them healthy and strong.
We had the chance to go to The Leonardo museum in SLC twice in the same week this month! They were hosting The Body Exhibit, and the opportunity came twice for us to go, so we jumped on the opportunity. I was a little hesitant because I didn't want to scare the kids, but they handled it really well. In true Miles and Gwen fashion, they wanted to go from exhibit to exhibit as fast as they could, while I would have been content to take my time. After the body section, they had a bunch of cool hands on things for kids to play with. They loved it, both times! No pictures allowed inside the body exhibit, so only pictures of the other stuff. :)
Reading
Gwen is so ready to read. I should just go for it, right? I keep holding her back because I don't know if I can handle it! I made these word family things for Miles to practice his fluency with sandwich words, and she picked it up and just read all of the words like it was no big deal. Mind you, I've never given her a formal reading "lesson" of any kind. It was crazy. And awesome. She's almost done with her "letter of the week" type stuff, so maybe we'll tackle reading with Gwen over the summer.
Miles is doing great as well. He started learning blends and it's no big deal for him. I drew a blender and and cut out all the letters and then we stick the letters in the blender and see what blend it makes. I also bagged the way I was finding sight words for him to learn and started using the Dolch sight-word lists. I was finding sight words for him before by what words I saw in the little "BOB" books we were reading. But since we stopped reading those (because of his eyes), I figured we still needed to keep up a sight word list. Miles hit some sort of phonetic breakthrough this month. He no longer asks how to spell something when he wants to write a note, he just sounds it all our phonetically and writes it. It's usually totally mis-pelled, but totally right as far as phonics go. I should start writing some of them down. All I can think of right now is that he addressed a letter to Erma as "Rmu" :)
Here's a few pictures of sight word activities. We laid out their words/letters and pretended they were bugs. When I called it out, they had to slap it with the fly swatter and squish it. Total hit. Miles has also been really into tic-tac-toe lately, so we played tic-tac-toe with his sight words. He loved it!
Math
We're well into the math lessons for mid-April, and Miles isn't the least bit challenged. I need to step it up I guess. Gwen stays right with Miles as far as understanding goes (almost), but her fine motor skills aren't quite up to a 6 year old level, so she gets frustrated trying to keep up that way sometimes. She knows the answer, she just can't write it! No pictures, but for future reference, the kids had a lot of fun reviewing telling time to the hour by using their analog clocks and showing me the time as we read "The Very Grouchy Ladybug". That book is perfect for this! It doesn't have a bunch of "weird" times, just to the hour ones.
Art
An out of the ordinary art project we did was tracing shadows. The weather here has been AMAZING! Playing outside a bunch in February? What?? I don't quite trust it, but I'll take it while it's happening I guess. We went outside and built towers with our legos. Then we placed them on paper and traced their shadows. We'd play around, and then check the shadows a bit later to see how they had magically moved! We traced the same tower probably about 3 times throughout the day. This project was impromptu and totally well received. I love those ones!
I should mention here, as far as art goes, the kids made their Valentine's this year for their homeschool friends. We like to save all of our broken crayons, and then when we have enough, we put them into silicone molds and melt them into new crayons. They made heart shaped ones for their friends and then glued them to hearts they had decorated. Miles took so much time on them. He thought about every single one. He's say, "Hmmm...I wonder what I should draw for Ethan.. I know! Ethan likes trains!" He did something different for every single one. I was pretty impressed.
