We are loving Adventures in My Fathers World. The Bible portion starts with Jesus, His birth, on to when he starts preaching. We are also learning the different names of Jesus. During week 2 we got to make a Jesus suncatcher. The was fun and easy. This final result is pretty!
You need Wax Paper, crayon shavings, glue, scissors, construction paper, an iron and newsprint.
Cut out 2” letters from construction paper
Arrange the letters on wax paper and sprinkle on the crayon shavings, be conservative.
Place another sheet of wax paper on top, cover with newsprint and iron on low. Be sure to have paper under the wax as well.
We added construction paper border to match our letters.
hanging in the window
We will definitely use this technique to create other projects in the future. I am thinking maybe a Mayflower silhouette with blue and white crayons shavings, with yellow for a sun.
Love this time of year! Who doesn’t, really? I think I write about it every year, unlike the other seasons. Just something about the Fall. It officially starts today, yay! Thought we would kick off the many, many Fall activities we will be doing this season, so excited! We started by doing a leaf study. I purchased this really cool kit from the Used Curriculum sale at my local Homeschool Convention.
The kit includes many samples of leafs, each in their own plastic sleeve and label. The Tree Finder book has every kind of tree you can find in North America, comes with illustrations and descriptions. The workbook, guides you through lessons on trees and all their parts. Yesterday I let the boys look through everything in the kit. We will start the lessons on Monday.
The next project we worked on was leaf rubbings as seen here on Pinterest, which is where I saw it. It is originally posted on this blog.
We collected leaves from around our neighborhood.
pretty leaves.
Then we taped the paper down to the table with masking tape. We used crayons that had the labels taken off so we could rub properly. I stressed to the boys the importance of holding the bottom of the paper tight once they placed their leaves under the it.
After the leaf rubbings we read 2 books about Fall. One is a family favorite about all seasons but it seems best for Fall it is called The Acorn and the Oak Tree. The other book, of course, was Clifford’s Leaf Season. All in all, this was a great start to celebrate my favorite season.
We are using Adventures in My Fathers World for our school year. I have a 2nd Grader, Kindergartner, and Preschooler; so far it is working very well. We started off the year by learning about Leif Ericson and Christopher Columbus. The boys have been fascinated. We used a wall map and a globe to trace the explorers routes.
We heard about how long they were out to sea and the hardships involved in such journeys. My boys were wondering why it would take so long to cross the Atlantic Ocean. This came after they asked how long it would take in a plane. I had the opportunity to explain Sailboats and their dependence on the wind.
One of the hands on assignments for Week #2 is making Christopher Columbus’ ships and use the sails to move them across the water.
We used aluminum foil, craft sticks, modeling clay, thick paper
We folded 12″x12″ squares of foil in half then in half and then one more time. Then we folded the sides up to create the boat. We used a dab of modeling clay to hold the craft stick and then attached sails made from resume paper and voila, we had a Nina, Pinto and Santa Maria.
All three ships with Christopher Columbus in the lead. I was not thrilled that Mr. Columbus is a skeleton but the boys scrambled to find some lego men,
boys gotta love em!
After the ships were complete we had them set sail in the best make-shift ocean we could find… the bathtub. They worked really well. The rules: you can only blow on the sail to move your boat. We used straws. The boys loved it! One word of caution – if you have an eager preschooler perhaps wait until naptime to do this. Our lil guy sunk our ships in under 3 minutes.
This year we are doing Adventures in My Fathers World, included in that is “I Can Do All Things” art lesson book. We did assignments out of there to start off our homeschool week. The lessons are good but it starts out with coloring and drawing and my boys were dying to paint something. So I headed over to Pinterest and searched for Kids Painting, got so many great results but one piqued my interest. It was a paper with swirls, dots, waves and stripes. I thought it would be a perfect, easy and fun lesson with the boys. The original post is here at Be a Fun Mum.
I set the table up while they were all on break. I usually have them share paint and brushes but that never turns out the way I imagine it can. This time, everyone got their own palette and a variety of brushes.
I asked them to watch me paint the different items and then told them they could make any kind of painting they wanted as long as they used dots, stripes, waves and swirls.
mommy’s sample
They liked being able to have freedom with their painting, I liked that they actually incorporated the items into their creations.
Oliver painting the Solar System
Preston creating a Robot
Adam’s is ocean waves, fish “and the red part is a force field” -lol
Samuel immediately mixes all his colors up and made this masterpiece
Last year while I was gearing up for my first year of Homeschool, I came across a Blog Hop. At the time I had no clue what a Blog Hop was… glad I found out. A blog hop is a place where bloggers with common interests can participate in a theme and submit their blog to one place. I poured through so many blogs, I was so inspired.
This week’s topic is Curriculum. I am going to share 2 lists with you. My “dream” list and my “real” list! I have 2 simply because of budgetary reasons.
Here is what we will be using for my Kindergartner:
Sonlight Core 1
We used this for Preston this past year. Oliver is already doing math and reading so I am going to try Core 1 with him this year . He will probably end up doing the Apologia Science with us.
For My 2nd Grader and possibly my Kinder – Adventures in my Fathers World. I have this curriculum and it is for multiple kids. I am going to work through and may discover that I do not need the Sonlight Core. I will keep you posted!
Preston will also be using Horizons, we used it last year and liked it.
For all 3 boys I am going to use Positive Action for Character Training.
Thanks for stopping by! I cannot wait to see all the blogger Mommies and what they are using!
Next Week: SCHOOLROOMS!!! (did I tell you an IKEA just opened up in my city?!?!)
Today we conclude our 5th week of homeschooling, the time has flown by! I wanted to write an update of how it is going, what works well and what doesn’t. Over the summer I spent hours reading all the books I could find on the subject, then I found a ton of blogs, each day I was more and more convinced that homeschooling was for us. I set a date to start and as that day approached I became more and more nervous about diving in.
To make myself feel better I spent many more hours preparing all the lessons, we are using Sonlight Core 1. I went through the curriculum book and separated it into 6 week chunks and put those in smaller binders. This definitely made the lesson book less intimidating, I felt I could get handle on it, so to speak. After that I went through the first 6 weeks and read everything we were to cover, I bookmarked the pages in each book, I pulled all the worksheets out of the Horizons Math 1 book and the Explode the Code book. I made a list of Science project supplies we would need, Library books as well. I then setup a file system with a file folder for each week, as I went through everything I would add the supplies, worksheets, etc to the appropriate week.
Inside a Weekly FolderFolders while I add items to them
At the time i was working a lot and was exhausted, a couple of times I questioned whether I was going overboard in preparing, I am happy to say that I was not going overboard. I am so thankful I did all that work back then before school started, it has made it all so easy! Now that we are in our 5th week, this weekend I plan to take several hours to prepare the next 6 weeks. It has worked great!
Oliver with Centers
School has gone really well. Not perfect, but even better than I had expected. My biggest complaint is getting my 1st grader in to school mode. Every morning we go through a 10 minute battle to try to get him to sit at the table and be ready to start the day. He drags his feet during calendar time but after we get through that he snaps out of it and we are ready to get started. It has been a real joy to sit with him and work side-by-side. I go through each lesson with him and then he does his worksheets for math, phonics and a Handwriting Without Tears 1 workbook. We use manipulatives and flash cards a lot for math, flash cards for phonics and spelling too.
"No pics please Mom"
We do our reading in the school room or sometimes on my bed. We read from geography books, the Bible, Leading Little Ones to God, 2 science books, and a poetry book. We have read the Velveteen Rabbit and are finishing Charlotte’s Web today. Next week we are to start Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, however that was one we already read during the summer, my son begged me to read it then. I think we may just start another chapter from a “classics” list.
As far as my preschooler goes, well he is four let’s just start by saying that. He loves to do worksheets but there comes a time when he is ready to get up and go play, with I allow. I am not worried about it at this point, because of his age. He works out of 2 math workbooks and a Handwriting without Tears Kindergarden book. He is working on an animal alphabet, a super cute idea from Totally Tots.
Samuel loves Veggie Tales, can you tell?
The littlest can be a huge distraction after he gets bored with centers, but with my husband home lately it has not been an issue. It works so well with him around. We shall see how that plays out when he goes back to a 9-5.
Binocular Station
We have taken 2 field trips, a local historical museum and cultural center and the botanic gardens. We are taking one this afternoon to an outdoor garden, sprawled over several acres with flowers, trees, wildlife, creeks, wooded areas. They offer Explorer Packs, they check a kit out to your family and it has educational material to use as you go through the gardens. They offer subjects like baby frogs and turtle observation, exploring the garden with your 5 senses, observing pollination, and the one we are going to check out, Leaf Lookout. The Leaf Lookout Pack sends you on a scavenger hunt for leaves of all shapes, sizes and colors, ends up in a pumpkin patch!
Orange leaves, cool green and white leavesthe Boys
After checking out a ton of homeschool blogs this summer I was looking for an alphabet activity for Oliver to do, I came across an idea at totallytots.homestead.com. It is called Now I Know My ABC’s and it shows pictures of animals made from each letter in the alphabet. Here is what Oliver has made so far:
A is for AlligatorC is for CrabD is for DinosaurOliver's ABC Book
He is keeping them inside of clear sleeves in his very own ABS’s book… he likes it so much!
After looking at this site and her ideas for a Calendar board I was completely inspired. Thank you Homeschool Creations for the wonderful ideas! Here is our Calendar board:
Our Homeschool Calendar ideas from Homeschool Creations blog
We have: Todays Date, with different ways to write the date, make the date in money, color of the day, weather for temp. (1st grader will fill in daily), weather for the 4 year old to use picture cards. We also have letter of the day and verse of the day. I will also be adding the skip counting pages.
For calendar I plan on having all 3 boys participate in one way or another. I have also been looking around for center ideas, things to keep the 2 little ones busy when I need to work with my 1st grader. Carissa has so many excellent ideas on her blogs. One of them is Tot Trays. I loved all her ideas and will be using them and creating more inspired by what I have seen. Here are some things we have so far:
Basket #1 (white) – for the 2 & 4 year olds, basket #2 – Base Ten set – 1st grader
basket #1 – Pompoms for sorting, pouring, gluing, scooping, measuring, tongs, ice cube try for sorting, clothespin centers (see below), poker chips to sort and stack, pipe cleaners, eraser center (see below).
I cut a square in the lid of a take n go container, then added erasersHe puts them and then tries to retrieve themDifferent games to play with these both toddlers and preschoolersBeads, funnels and bowlsPasta, glitter and glueFoil, Pasta and glitter
Still on the lookout. Excellent places for centers: the Dollar Tree, Walmart, Big Lots. You don’t have to spend a lot and your children will learn, play and love it!
For the Blog roll and my first time participating in it, I am featuring the curriculum that I will be using for my 1st grader. Since this is my first I wanted to use a curriculum that “laid it all out for me”, complete with books, daily schedules, everything. A friend happened to have Sonlight Core 1 and offered it to me! What a huge help to get started into the homeschool arena! They use Explode the Code, which I just found out they have an online version, for language arts. I am also using Sonlight Science 1.
For my 4 year old he will participate in the 1st graders history, science, and Bible (I will adapt accordingly). For Language Arts I have several workbooks and the same goes for Math, I will use them but I am also hoping to buy another core for him.
I plan to incorporate art, playdoh, manipulatives, puzzles, calendar time, weather, etc. throughout the day.
I must say that I am getting so excited… and nervous but with great anticipation!
This morning I went to the Mardel Education Sale! Since I have SONLIGHTs CORE 1, I was looking to buy Horizons Math I and maybe a Science program. All education items are 20% off. Unfortunately, they did not have Horizons 1, I quickly grabbed a Saxon Grade 1 Math. Growing weary in my hasty decision to grab the Saxon, I ran around the store looking for a friend from church. She home schools and I knew she would offer excellent advice. I asked her about Saxon and she said that she uses Saxon now but when he son was younger she used Horizons. She said Horizons is more colorful and “exciting” for little ones. She recommended Saxon for later years. Perfect!
I did pick up LifePAC Science 1, which was reduced to $60 from $75, plus 20% off for the sale! I also picked up a pack of blank US maps, Preschool Centers folders, some magnets that were on clearance and a Colorado childrens workbook. I am still wondering if I should go back and get the Filetastic I saw there…
It was fun to go and look around. I think there are still great deals to be had online but have a store to actually walk into and see it all is so motivating! With my purchase I also got a free Insects poster, $5 coupon for laminating (a homeschool MUST) and another coupon for another 20%. All in all – I am happy!
Cut out 2” letters from construction paper
Arrange the letters on wax paper and sprinkle on the crayon shavings, be conservative.
Place another sheet of wax paper on top, cover with newsprint and iron on low. Be sure to have paper under the wax as well.
hanging in the window
