Angry Bird Birthday Party

 Most of our decor revolved around the food. We had a little tower with TNT boxes and angry birds in them, ...

 ...printed, colored, and cut out angry bird shapes to decorate the watermelon and bowls as well as lemonade dyed green to look like a piggy. 

 The birthday boy really wanted those icing cookies for his party so I got colored licorice to make eyebrows and beaks...

 I had found angry bird cheeze-its and fruit snacks! Score! I got little sticky balls from the party store and had a sign that said "thanks for crashing Nehemiah's party, please take one home." and they got to make slingshots and color angry bird pictures.

 It was a pool party so we did a lot of water play and daddy had an eye infection and had to stay indoors so we then moved the party back to my parent's house for presents and cake and slip-n-slide water fun in the backyard.

 So excited to get his first big boy bike!

First Week of School 2012-2013

We started our first week of homeschool this week. We had our wonderful moments where everyone was excited to learn and so excited to be playing together and sitting and listening, and we had our moments of craziness and chaos. I love making these memories with my children. I am so overjoyed that this is my ministry. It's not everyone's calling and that's okay. My calling might change and that's okay. My homeschooling might look totally different than someone else's and that's okay. But, for this school year, I feel we are where we are supposed to be and learning the way my kids need. 

We talked about whole body listening this week. We read a really awesome book called Howard B. Wigglebottom learns to listen to reinforce that, as well as made a few projects and hung a few visuals (see here, here, and here). 

I am really glad we made a clip-chart for discipline. It has been another motivator for getting through our school day with happy hearts. It's really hard to balance school discipline and obeying me as a teacher vs obeying me as a parent. Overall I think that it's good for my kids to obey no matter what, but at such a young age that can be tricky to add schooling in the mix. This chart helps alleviate some of that, so I can encourage sitting still and doing writing through a chart and not hitting brother through a spanking or timeouts.  If the boys get to the top at the end of the day there is a special prize (sticker, computer time, ...)

 I introduced the kids to the calendar as well this week. Every day we started off with the calendar and reading books (related to our subject of the week) on the rug. (We are attending the library story program every week as well and I get a chance to pick up books there.)

We made a calendar book to show different things happening throughout the months of the year. I used this printout and my own stickers, cutouts, and stencils. We sang songs about the different months of the year (a printout from here).

An accordion calendar from here.

We cut out PlayDoh numbers and put them on the right day of the month.

We played with a magnet calendar someone generously gave me.

We made a calendar out of painted hands (idea from here).

Grandpa got the kids these cool things for Christmas last year. They are boards you can slip a worksheet into and then write on with expo markers. Then, you can wipe off and re-use the worksheet. We did a calendar journal everyday to circle the day of the week, write our name, circle the month, draw the weather...

I colored some water and had my son use a dropper to put the water on... the 12th... or the 27th... or all of the Mondays...

Nehemiah's favorite thing in life is technology so we watched several youtube videos on the months of the year and days of the week and went over our zoophonics animals.

We did several worksheets from a workbook all related to the subject of school or about the calendar.

 We did name and sight word practice as well as fine motor skills. We cut out some little books (Elijah is all of a sudden being able to use scissors now!) I wrote the kids name in pencil and they traced it in glue and then poured glitter on top.

We spelled with Cheeze-its letters (food is always a motivator with my kids...you spell it, then you eat it..for Elijah he just had to tell me what the letter was).

 Magnet spelling (Isaiah kept attacking the magnets and throwing them on the floor):

Using bottle caps with letters to arrange in ABC order:

And, per Daddy's request of favorite thing he did in elementary school, we did shaving cream writing. It was one of the chaotic moments of the week.

Classroom Signs

Some signs I made to start our new school year:

I saw this on pinterest and was inspired and had to make it. It's a reminder to myself that I want to teach my kids character, not just textbooks.

I know I will be saying this to my oldest throughout this school year! (Just spray painted a piece of wood someone was getting rid of and wrote words with the kids' finger paints.)

2012-2013 Homeschool Plan

Weekly Unit Studies

Date	TOPIC
27-Aug/31-Aug	Calendar/Whole Body Listening/Name Practice
3-Sept/7-Sept	Seasons
17-Sept/21-Sept	Seasons
24-Sept/28-Sept	Weather
1-Oct/5-Oct	Weather
8-Oct/12-Oct	Creation
15-Oct/19-Oct	Bugs
22-Oct/26-Oct	Bugs
29-Oct/2-Nov	Halloween
5-Nov/9-Nov	Community Workers
12-Nov/16-Nov	Transportation/Road Signs
19-Nov/23-Nov	Thanksgiving
26-Nov/30-Nov	Adam & Eve
3-Dec/7-Dec	Adam & Eve
10-Dec/14-Dec	Christmas
17-Dec/21-Dec	Christmas
22-Dec/30-Dec	*Christmas Break
31-Dec/4-Jan	New Years
7-Jan/11-Jan	5 Senses
14-Jan/18-Jan	5 Senses
21-Jan/25-Jan	Noah’s Ark/The Flood
28-Jan/1-Feb	Noah’s Ark/The Flood
4-Feb/8-Feb	Health
11-Feb/15-Feb	Valentine’s Day
18-Feb/22-Feb	Plants
25-Feb/1-Mar	Plants
4-Mar/8-Mar	Emotions
11-Mar/15-Mar	St Patrick’s Day
16-Mar/24-Mar	*Spring Break
25-Mar/29-Mar	Easter
1-April/5-April	Easter
8-April/12-April	Where I Live
15-April/19-April	Where I Live
22-April/26-April	Landforms (Mountains/Rivers/Oceans/Valleys/Deserts/Local)
29-April/3-May	Landforms (Mountains/Rivers/Oceans/Valleys/Deserts/Local)
6-May/10-May	Time
13-May/17-May	Time
20-May/24-May	End of Year Review/Party!

Nehemiah's (age 4) Learning Goals (in addition to what is implied from unit studies): advance reading skills, story interaction, learn sight words (ie: name, the, a, I, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does, colors, numbers, ), know vowels (a, e, i o, u), handwriting letters, rhyming, describe positions (ie. above, below, in out, by, behind,...), color mixing (ie. blue+yellow=green), patterning, sequencing, greater than/less than/equal to, count to 100 by ones and by tens, writing numbers, describe 2 and 3 dimensional shapes, state changes (ie. liquid to solid), improve gross & fine motor skills,

Reading:
Read BOB books as well as stories related to unit study. Do craft projects, re-tell stories (felt board, act it out, verbalize it as mommy writes it, puppet show ...)

9:00-11:00 Three-five days a week.

Elijah (age 3) Learning Goals: no set learning goals. Planning on him doing schoolwork with us and letting him pick up what he can.

Letter Pp Week (And Rest of Year Wrap-Up)

We finished off P with some activities and did a fun pom pom activity to boost motor skills and counting.

 We only made it through letter P and then summer hit. We finished up our letter book and number tracing and letter tracing pages and shape practice that we've been doing all year. We also finished up our ice cream scoop colors and will leave that up for next year. Here's the only picture of the world-wind of work we did in a few weeks:

Can't wait for the new school year to come soon!

Homeschool Group Stations

One thing I remember about elementary school was the fun stations you got to switch to when the teacher rang a bell. You would get to the next one and see a whole new thing to explore. Not only will my kids not miss out on fun things like that because we homeschool, but we also get the pleasure of doing such fun things with friends who homeschool too! I love this group!

 We had three little tables set up with two different activities so the kids did a total of 6 stations for five minutes each. Tons of gross and fine motor skills practiced!

Station #1: Transfer water from a dish using different types of syringes and spoons into an ice cube tray. 

 Station #2: Lacing practice.

Station #3: Shape Construction with Popsicle sticks.

Station #4: Puzzle assembly with math blocks.

 Station #5: Use tongs to pick up pom-poms and put in egg carton.

 Station #6: Get a glob of PlayDoh and hammer nails into it.