So far this week

 A peek at what we've been up to this week:

On Monday, Adeline was able to read the entire board BY HERSELF!!  We've since added another 5 or so words to her growing list of "can read."  

Hello, friend!  I found this little guy about two and a half steps outside our classroom door one night.  He was promptly moved into a more appropriate habitat - the yard!!

One of Adeline's workbox activities this week.  She loves it!

Braxton is working on the letter B.  He doesn't understand the concept of letters yet, but he will happily sing you the alphabet.  I only care that he has exposure to letters and numbers this year.  Next year he will learn to recognize and write the alphabet.

Meanwhile, Adeline finished a few of her shape boards... :)

This just might be the most exciting part of the week!  A very talented, dear friend of mine has agreed to teach music for me.  Hooray!  Adeline started Kindermusik for the Young Child on Tuesday.  She will be taking a pre-piano course with the glockenspiel.  We are all excited!  

Adeline and her teacher, Miss Jessica, work together, while I entertain the rest of our kids in the playroom.  Consequently, I don't have a lot of pictures, but I did snap this one of the board after the lesson was over.  Adeline told me that she played rhythm sticks, learning how to hold them at rest, ready and play positions.  She also listened for the sounds around her during her lesson.  It's her homework to be listening for music in her day-to-day life.  She was disappointed to learn that Jessica will only be coming once a week!  Jessica says Adeline is doing well.  I'm just happy she's enjoying it!  

After we finished school yesterday, Adeline was sitting at the table coloring.  She came to me very excited to show me that she had "written a sentence!"  Her sentence is "Adeline is it."  I'm pretty proud of her, too.  :)

 Some nights I'm strict about the kids cleaning up toys before bed and sometimes I decide to forego the battle and just do it myself.  I'm always amused by what I find.  Braxton is his father's child, no doubt about it!

All last week and part of this week, Adeline worked on writing her thank you notes for her party.  Here is a sampling.  This week we are conveniently learning about the postal service, so tomorrow we will address envelopes and visit the post office!  

This is Hopper the Frog.  Hopper loves to hop on sight words.  Adeline loves this activity because she gets to shout really loud.  As she reads each word, Hopper makes his way to the puddle.  When he arrives, Adeline gets to yell out "SPLASH!"  She happily does this over and over.  Shh... don't anybody tell her she's learning at the same time.  :)  

We have handwriting practice every day.

In Math, Adeline is making a number book.  I thought it would be nice for Braxton to make one, too.  This is Braxton's:

And this is Adeline's.  I thought it was cute that she colored her tree to be a "fall tree."  The book goes through number 10.  It's an easy activity for Adeline, but after she has worked so hard in Reading, it's nice to do something that doesn't require quite as much effort.  

Which brings us to tonight.  Both kids earned their vests tonight at Awana!  And Braxton immediately spilled water on his.  :)  Adeline moved up to the Sparks club and Braxton is starting his first year as a Cubbie.  We love Awana!    

Our extra workbox activities this week have focused on apples.  We are reading apple books in preparation for a trip to the orchard on Friday.  Today we read Applesauce Season.  Love this book!  We already planned to make our own applesauce next week, but I think we will also give the recipe in the book a try.

Oh!  I almost forgot.  Our other fun thing this week was the first meeting of our VeggieTales co-op.  We hosted it at our house this time.  The kids watched Duke and the Great Pie War which is derived from the book of Ruth.  After the video, they had a coloring sheet and a discussion about loving your family.  It went pretty well.  We will meet twice a month.

Well, that's a wrap!  I'm looking forward to the rest of our week!  I have a blog entry in mind based on some things I learned at Bible study this morning, but that will have to wait until I'm a little more awake.  :)

A picture-heavy update :)

Wow!  Where to begin?  Sorry it's been a while, we've had a couple busy, crazy weeks.  Last week didn't go completely as planned, so we started over on a few things this week.  Here are some highlights:

One of Adeline's workbox activities (from Confessions of a Homeschooler) is this See it, Build it, Write it page.  Adeline draws a word out of our bag, then "builds" it with letters.  Then she writes it on the line.  She really likes this activity!

Hooray!  Our workbox cart arrived!  It was super simple to assemble - I did it in about 30 minutes.  Adeline's side is on the left, Braxton's on the right.  Adeline usually has 8-10 boxes a day.  I've been putting her core work in it, as well as the extra activities.  Braxton gets 3 boxes.  Someday I'll make numbers to velcro to the outside of each box, but probably not in the immediate future.  :)

A new Calendar Time activity is graphing the daily weather.  I took this picture about a week ago.  Our graph is looking really pretty with mostly sunny days!  A beautiful September!

Ok, don't judge, art isn't my strength!  I made a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree for the back of our door.  Each week we'll be adding a letter to the tree.  When we get through capital letters, we will do lowercase and then numbers.  This will carry over into next year.  Both kids think it's fun to read the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom book and put letters on the tree.  I have a lapbook that we will be making in the coming weeks to go along with this.

Last week we learned about firefighters.  We spent a good chunk of Tuesday testing our smoke alarms, practicing Stop, Drop and Roll and planning/practicing our escape routes from various places in our house, including practice opening the windows and removing screens.  The kids learned to crawl under the smoke and to test a door to see if it's hot before opening it.  For our final fire drill, I pushed the smoke alarm button and let the kids get out of the house completely on their own.  I was really pleased with the day and Adeline now wants to show everyone how to escape.

We completed our fire safety workbooks and watched Elmo Visits the Firehouse.  Excellent video!

Adeline worked on her second reader on Friday.  It's the last reader without words.

And then on Saturday we had a huge birthday party for both kids!

We spent some time at the park this week.  Sadie loves playing with her big sister!

And back to schoolwork!  I didn't take many pictures this week.  I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed and crazy.  Just getting through the day is an accomplishment!  Although today went much better - just  in time a little glimmer of light shined in this tunnel!  More on that a different day.

Adeline is making huge strides in learning to read!  I'm so very proud of her!  Today we played this tic-tac-toe type game.  I said a word and when she found it, she got to put a star sticker on it.  She found them all on her first try!

We did some boardwork reading sentences.  I first read through the sentences, then Adeline circled all the words she knew.  Then we read the sentences again with Adeline shouting out the circled words as we came to them.  "Kate" and "Josh" are characters in our Beginnings curriculum.

The letter "S" was one of our letters this week.  It's the only letter Adeline has trouble writing.  We practiced a lot using finger tracing, writing with a pencil and crafty activities like this one.  She has improved a lot this week!  Still one of her harder letters, but now legible.  :)

Last week was firemen, this week was police officers.  We learned a cute poem about crossing the street and got to practice it a few times when we went to the park!

Stop, Look and Listen before you cross the street;
First you use your eyes and ears
And then you use your feet!

Today we examined our fingerprints and talked about how God has made each person special, giving them their very own fingerprint.  Adeline and Sadie's fingerprints are on the page.  Braxton wasn't feeling well, so he slept through this activity.  Adeline then drew a picture of her doll - something her fingerprints would be on.

We've spent a lot of time this week with the pocket chart!  I just have to say it again - I'm so proud of Adeline's progress in reading!  She's so proud of herself, too.  It's cute.

We started the Madeline unit over this week - it was one of the things that flopped last week.  We located Paris on the map, learned a few new vocab words and talked about how to keep our bodies healthy - as Miss Clavel says, "Thank the Lord you are well!"  Wellness was a timely lesson today as the pukies have struck Braxton and Sadie.  What you don't see in the pictures is the stripped bed because Braxton woke from his nap, walked into the classroom and threw up all over the bed.  All in a day's work, right?  :(

As for reading Matilda, Adeline informed me today with the inflection of a teenager that "Matilda is the longest book EVER."  I don't think she's a fan of our reading time.  I think we'll try again with a shorter book.  For the record, I was thoroughly enjoying the read!

And that's pretty much it.  We played some games and put together some puzzles and spent a lot of time outside soaking up the warm, almost-fall sunshine.  Oh!  How could I forget?!  Grandma located a couple of desks for us - for FREE!!  They are MUCH better than our tiny table.  We like our table, but it just wasn't big enough for two kids.  I'll get a picture of them next time.  :)

Workboxes

Some days I feel like a traveling circus.  Today was one of those days.  My apologies to anyone who met us at the library.  That was when the circus turned into chaos and we immediately went home.  

School was alright today.  The workbox idea needs some work.  And actual boxes.  Work folders didn't work so well.  I ended up with disorganized activities all over the room.  But here is what I learned:  1) This is a good idea, it just needs fine tuning.  2)  Adeline thought it was great.  Braxton seemed indifferent.  3)  Five workboxes is too much for Braxton.  I'm prepping 4 for tomorrow with the hope of getting through 3.

Here are the activities that were in the workboxes/folders:

This week we are covering fire safety.  I made these booklets, one for each kid, from the U.S. Fire Administration website.  We'll do 2 pages a day.  This was their first workbox so we could do it together.

Braxton's next box was counting.  He thought this was fun.

Adeline's second box was also a counting activity.

Her third box was number tracing.  She loved getting to use the dry erase marker!

Then a missing letter activity.

Braxton is starting over with letter A this week using the Letter of the Week material from Confessions.

For her final workbox, Adeline had a couple mazes.  

The workboxes are in addition to our regular curriculum.  It lengthens our day by about an hour.

We started reading Matilda today, too.  I think we will do a chapter a day.  The first chapter was a bit long.  Adeline enjoyed it until the last page or two, then she got tired of listening.  I think I'm really going to enjoy re-reading books from my childhood and sharing them with my kids!

Oh, we also started our first Five in a Row book today, Madeline.  We will read the book each day and have a different lesson related to the story.  Today we read the book, then found Paris on our map.  Tomorrow we will talk about some of the big vocab words in the story like "appendix" and "solemn."

And we made it!

Week one is done!  I learned a lot this week - both good and bad! - but overall I'd say the week was a success.  I had a good time, the kids had a good time and I think they just might have learned a thing or two!

Here is our Friday.  Our friends woke up sick, so they didn't get to spend the day with us.  We were bummed, but we plan to see them one afternoon a week for the next couple of months, so the grief was short-lived.  :)

Braxton matched up some ducks.  It's part of a new set of material we're going to be using.  More on that later.

Adeline has a pretty easy Friday.  We do a quick review of the things learned Monday-Thursday, then we work through a reader.  The first two readers are wordless.  Her homework for this weekend is to "read" the book to Daddy and complete one shapes worksheet on her own.

Adeline made some patterns in math.

For the final reading of The Kissing Hand, Adeline "read" the book to her brother.  She did really well!  Isn't that a sweet picture?

So here's what's brewing in my planning process.  I thought it would be easy to pull something together quickly for Braxton's one-on-one time.  And it probably should be.  But the truth is, the rest of our day takes so much of my time and energy that I've slacked on his activities and yank something out of our cupboard as a last minute "plan."  So after downloading some of the freebies from Confessions of a Homeschooler, I decided to pay the $20 and get the Letter of the Week curriculum and K4 curriculum.  I'm going to add it to what we are already doing.  I'm going to implement a workbox strategy to our day.  I think it will make better use of our time.  I have a break for Adeline planned in to the morning, but all week she spent her break sitting with Braxton and me wanting to do what he was doing.  So Braxton's one-on-one time is going to transform into Workbox Time.  I ordered storage carts to use as the workboxes (another Confessions idea!).  Each kid will have one stack of ten boxes.  I probably won't use all ten boxes this year, I'm thinking 5-6 a day.  They will be filled with activities from the Confessions curriculum (and other stuff I have around here) that supplement what we are doing in our curriculum.  The activities will be things that I can help the kids get started on, but they should be able to do on their own.  The picture above of Braxton matching the ducks is an example of a Confessions activity.  I'm looking forward to starting the workboxes.  I think the kids will really like them!  The carts will probably arrive next week, so we'll do workboxes sans boxes until then.  :)

I'm also going to start reading Matilda to Adeline after the other two go down for naps.  A friend has been reading a "big" book with her homeschooled son and they both really enjoy the time.  I haven't decided how long/how much we'll read each day, we'll just see how it goes.

Whew!  And that's a wrap!  Monday is just around the corner and I have much to do.  I have a fun Chicka Chicka Boom Boom project in the works, but that's a post for another day!        

School & the Zoo!

What a busy day!  We worked hard in school in the morning, then went to the zoo in the afternoon.  I don't know about the kids, but I'm ready for bed!!

Adeline's journal entry this morning was a picture of her family... and Tinkerbell.  Tinkerbell got the most time and attention.  I asked her what we were doing in the picture and she said, "Cartwheels."  Of course, why didn't I see that!

As requested, Braxton got his marker board activity.  Tracing a line is still above his ability level, but he enjoyed the activity, nevertheless.

He was more successful at lacing.

Adeline chose to play with blocks while Braxton worked at the desk.  Then she wanted me to take her picture.

Adeline played the cupcake file folder game during math.  She did really well!

And Sadie used her time to tear apart the art center.  She looks pretty proud of herself, huh?

 We talked about triangles in math, then made triangle hats.  They look a bit like dunce caps, but the kids don't know that!  They had a great time decorating them with glitter glue.

On the fourth day of reading The Kissing Hand, we discussed nocturnal animals and then completed a worksheet about the things we do in the day and at night.

And then the zoo!!  The kids had a lot of fun in the butterfly house.  The butterflies seemed extra friendly today.

One more day and we will have the first week down!!  Tomorrow we have 3 friends joining us for school.  Wish me luck!