Tuesday, January 20, 2009

we started K finally!

In case you didn't know, for preschool last year with Melissa we had so many interruptions that we only got about half our work done for the year. This is what I love about homeschooling by the way. So when we started this year with Melissa, we were picking up in the middle of preschool materials. Well, I managed to get a wonderful deal on Sonlight core K and science K (I'm talking $50 and my spare tv here, the seller was a friend of mine who knew my money plight with the materials I needed) and I spent a week studying my instructor guides before we started this week. I was all geared up to start yesterday; I had gone to the library to get a few books to add to it and had copied the worksheets for the week and typed up a simple lesson plan for the week with all the assignments for the week in each subject that we are going to do. Then when yesterday came, the girls fought me on their morning cores and managed to drag them out until suppertime so we didn't get to lessons. No biggie really, they were really sad that they didn't get to do lessons (after all, these are the children who asked me on Christmas Day if they could do lessons before they asked if they can open presents, and when they asked me we were standing by the tree with all the presents under it LOL) but they must not have cared that much because they dragged folding a small basket of their clothes (I'm talking small enough it barely holds 3 pairs of adult jeans, not a huge rectangle one) and put away a few toys in their room.

But anyway, our read aloud is "The Boxcar Children" and for history we are learning about Martin Luther. Today in science we learned about the water cycle and how rainbows are made. In language arts, our weekly letter is Mm so we did our letter page today, and the copywork is our street address. In math, Melissa FINALLY mastered counting by 2's to 10 so we moved on to ordinal numbers 1st-5th. Yep, today was a hit. We did very well, and I'm really happy at how things turned out for us.

Oh, and we also watched the presidential inauguration this morning, and talked a little about Barack Obama and his job. Melissa asked me how old his daughters are, and if they go to a school or do school at home. She thinks his girls look like they would be fun to play with and didn't quite get that she can't just go to their house for a playdate (but oh man would I love to do that, a trip to the White House is on my list of things to do in the next 5 years for school-related field trips) So I'm guessing that as soon as we are done with Martin Luther, we'll learn about our new President and do a lapbook about him.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

January 7th lessons

Well, today was another super simple day for lessons in our home. Its snowing here, and I can't seem to keep a fire going in the fireplace effectively, so its been difficult finding the energy to really do much of anything.

Melissa started with a math lesson. Today we did more practicing of determing even and odd numbers up to 10, and then we practiced counting to 10 by two's. She really did *not* like the lesson because this is a totally new concept to her, so she spent half our our 20 minute lesson time whining and complaining while trying to sneak out of her seat to hide under the table. There's a reason we keep lesson time for each subject short, when it gets difficult she usually starts whining horribly. Then she did 2 pages in her handwriting book, and ended with a couple pages in her Explode The Code book (we're still on the primers with her, as review and fun stuff for her as well as to help her start breaking down the individual sounds in words to help with reading and spelling)

Lydia did another letter sheet today, this one she drew a picture of an Aa item (she chose apple) then she wrote what it is on the line (I had to spell it for her though, no biggie she'll get to that point on her own eventually) She also did a review page from her shapes workbook. She finished up with a page in her handwriting book.

Kimmy colored in a page for the colors red and blue. The pages just had drawings of things that color and we talked about the color and then went over what the items she was coloring are. Then I showed her the right crayons to use, and she did her page. She finished up the rest of lessons time with her number puzzle again, she really likes that thing.

Tonight the girls are going to AWANA for bible, and then tomorrow we'll pick up their memory verses for our bible study until the next AWANA time. Then tomorrow we have gymnastics, so it'll be a busy day there. Ugh, I'm already tired just thinking about it.......... lol

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

January 6th lessons

Well, today was another day lol I did our lessons today, and it went pretty well I thought. Kimmy spent the whole time working on board puzzles for the letters and numbers.

Melissa, today in math we started learning about even and odd numbers up to 10. I used legos and some of our pattern blocks for manipulatives to help teach it, and I think she's starting to get the hang of even vs. odd numbers. By the end of the week she *should* be able to rattle off her evens and odds up to 10 if I keep working with her on it. We aren't doing any actual reading lessons, as she's still pretty resistant at this point to even trying it. So, instead we are doing spelling words. I asked her to write out 8 simple words on a piece of paper and draw a picture to go with each word, and then I asked her to read each word back to me when we were done. I'm going to do the same words again later in the week, because she seemed to be able to just sound them out a little and tell me exactly what the word was. I think we may try doing this for a while instead of the reading part of our language arts program just to see how its going.

Lydia, today she did a matching worksheet to review numbers 1-5 for math. In her language arts, she did a letter worksheet. She had fun with it, since it was a coloring page. She had to color the apples with a captial A red, and the ones with a lowercase a yellow. Then she colored the tree. She also participated in the spelling lesson with Melissa, but we only did a couple words with her.

Jordan napped through the whole thing thankfully, she's been getting her 1 year molars in and has been a total beast to live with for a week and a half now. I'm ready for her to finish this teething sesson already, she's by far the worst teether I've had yet. She just screams and cries nonstop and inconsolably almost every minute she's awake it seems like, and I just want to run screaming half the time becuase I'm so tired of hearing the constant screaming, crying, whining, and screeching.

When Jordan woke up, we all snuggled on the sofa together while I read a couple stories to the girls. The theme for this week is honesty, so we read about George Washington and the cherry tree as one of our stories. The point went right over Melissa's head I think LOL But then, this is the same child that last night spent 15 minutes trying to convince us that she wasn't standing in the kitchen eating the grated parmesean cheese straight from the container, while she stood in the kitchen next to the empty contain sitting on the counter with cheese all over around her mouth, down her shirt front, and on the floor at her feet. I was less than amused, but now I can look back at that sight and chuckle about it. I have a feeling that any lessons in honesty will be hard to teach her, so I'm preparing myself for a long hard series of lessons with her on the subject.

Oh yeah, this afternoon I also sat down with Kimmy for a few minutes and we counted her fingers and toes together, one hand/foot at a time. I'm working on teaching her to count to 10, so we are doing fun little things with it for a couple minutes each day.

January 5th's stuff

So we kicked off the restart of our school year yesterday. I decided to take it really easy, so we didn't do too much. Yesterday, we talked a bit about good foods and bad foods, and how we need good foods to fuel our bodies. I showed them their food pyramid printouts I got online from www.mypyramid.gov and then we made an uber-healthy lunch of pbj, carrot sticks, cottage cheese with strawberries, and citrus blend juice to drink. Its a pretty typical lunch for us to have, so while being fairly healthy it was also familiar. We didn't do a lot else, but it was a good start to easing back in I think. Today we're going to dig a bit more on the basics of the food groups and food pyramid, and we'll add in language arts as well. Maybe we'll do handwriting too, we'll see how it goes.

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Ahhh the new year!

So here it is, the first day of 2009. Isn't it lovely? I took some time to really evaluate where Melissa's at this year so far, almost halfway through the "school year" and am now setting some loose framework in what I'd like to do with our remaining time before we start next school year in September (this year it looks like we won't get much of a summer break)

I'm feeling pretty good about the fresh start that I have now, I have had time to reflect the last few days that I've been injured (I hurt my hip while walking the puppy in our back yard, I found a hole lol) and I realized that while we haven't made as much progress as I would have liked, we did make some progress so far this year. No, we aren't as far in our math as I hoped we'd be, and we have to restart our reading and LA program because Melissa lost it thanks to a long run of the flu in our home, but that's ok in my eyes. I'll get us there, it just may mean that we carry into the summer and don't get a "spring break" this year and we may have a few weekends. I doubt Melissa will object to this anyway, she was asking me if she could do lessons on Christmas morning before she asked when they would get to open presents LOL So that's where we are at now, its literally a fresh start for me with lessons. I am almost done creating a really fun study on the food pyramid and the food groups, which will be the majority of our science study the rest of the year (at least through the winter) We're going to expand it beyond just talking about what good foods and bad foods are and what food group things are in, we're also going to include fitness and cooking and even learn about some of the exotic foods that we don't eat much and where they come from (as well as where our regular foods come from, how they grow, and how they go from nature to kitchen) Its a huge study, but I'm really looking forward to it. While we do our basic food pyramid learning, we're going to touch on the names of the continents and oceans and learn where on a world map they are. Nothing too rigorous, but its something they'll need to know for when we delve further into our health study. When we finish that, we'll pick up one of the girls' favorite books from our core, its a Usborne book called "Things People Do" I'm sure you've seen it before, its a wonderful picture book about the different jobs and what the people do in those jobs. The girls got a real kick out of it, so we're going to do a study of it again and focus on one 2 page spread a week, and do a lapbook on the book (I have a feeling it will end up as big as the lapbook a friend of mine did with her 7yr old on "Finding Nemo" if not bigger LOL)

So, I need to learn how to add pics to my blog posts, because I'll have pics soon probably to share of our lapbooks as we do them.