February 2015

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.

January 2015

Sensory We brought the snow inside to play with it. That's my kind of playing in the snow. :) Not so cold. Art We made snowmen with marshmellows. :) Sight Word Practice I wrote his sight words on the chalk board and then he painted over them with water. Did the same thing for Gwen with her letters. Snow Day! We really haven't had a lot of snow this year, so we decided to make our own. We made giant snowflakes to take to the library. They were asking for snowflakes for decorations. We read bunches of books about snow, both fiction and non-fiction. We made a giant snow mountain in the living room. They would roll the dice, and have to climb the mountain to the other side and collect that amount of snowflakes and bring them back. This was a big hit. We also pulled out the shaving cream and put it on cookie sheets. The idea was for them to trace their letters and sight words, but it became just a cool sensory things to play in with their little bath toys. Celebrating Literature! Dad and the kids finished reading Stuart Little in January. We had a little Stuart Little party. I racked my brain for about...1 day and couldn't think of any Stuart Little food. So I gave up and we just had dinner, although the kids requested cupcakes because they said a bird in the book eats a cupcake at some point. :) After we partied, I thought, "Duh! Why didn't we have mini foods (stuart"little") or have foods that mice eat like cheese etc. *face palm! Oh well, they thought it was fun. They colored pictures of the characters from the book and then dressed up like their favorite characters. Gwen chose to be Snowbell and Miles was Stuart. I made a little Stuart Little sized bed out of a match box, just like the book. We also had jello with little "boats" on top because of the boat race in the book. Then we watched the movie, of course. Handwriting Miles' handwriting is definitely improving! Math More snow stuff! I found some free printables online of pattern block snowflakes. Field Trips Gwen's joy school was talking about the ocean this month, so for our field trip, we went to a scuba shop where they talked to us about all the technical stuff and then we got to watch them dive in their deep pool. Homeschool Group We hosted our homeschool group this month. We chose to talk about Persistence for our value. Since our little family is studying the body this year, and we have been learning about our muscles recently, we decided to incorporate muscles into learning about persistence too. This is what the school room looks like at the end of EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Thank you Lindy.

December 2014

Towards the end of this month, both kids but especially Miles got on the bandwagon again. All of a sudden, "He loves doing papers!" I'm grateful for this turn-around although I think it has more to do with the fact that he felt bad for me than an actual love of doing worksheets. :) He is still Mr. Empathetic and works so hard to make me happy. Let's face it, actual, dedicated school time this month was hit and miss. I still feel like we got done what needed to get done though and has lots of fun along the way. Math I guess I didn't take as many pictures this month. Oh well, I promise learning did take place. Here are the kids making a "real" graph, rather than just on paper. They graphed what shoes we had more of a bunch of times. Here's another math shot. Working on patters making pipe cleaner/bead candy canes. They really liked this one. Miles is still making really tiny ones, insisting I keep them for next year's tree. Sensory Making our annual cinnamon ornaments Gwen came home from joy school with some awesome gingerbread play-doh. So we put it to good use and decorated gingerbread men and then it turned into decorating trees with beads and buttons and things. I only managed to sneak in one sensory box this month and it was pretty much a flop. They love helping me wrap presents, so thought I'd wrap a few small boxes and put a bunch of ribbon inside with tape and scissors to they could practice tying/cutting/curling the ribbon. They only thought it was cool for about 30 minutes. Science We finished talking about the Digestive System this month. The kids can tell you all about what happens to your food after you eat it. :) We finished this little "unit" by watching a couple Magic School Bus episodes about the digestive system and making our own system out of stuff around the kitchen. Field Trips For our joy school field trip this month we went to Scheels. :) It was free, indoors and super fun. For our homeschool group we went caroling at a VA rest home. It was a great experience, as those things always are. Before we actually sung, Gwen was waiting by the fish tank and an old man in a wheelchair came up beside her an they started talking. I was far away and couldn't tell what they were saying, but it was tender to watch Gwen rest her hand on his leg and lean in as they talked. Reading They liked the "mystery sight words/letters" thing so much, we did it again, only this time we used a print out that looked like Christmas lights. :) Then we "decorated" a Christmas tree on the light bright. Lindy This is what she does while we work. :) Sometimes it's a real challenge keeping her busy while I work with the other 2.