Ice Cream Counting & Monkey Academy

We are learning all about counting from 1 - 20 at my house. The six year old is beginning to learn how to spell the words for the numbers.

The four year old is learning how to count past 13.

So, I made this little pile of ice cream scoops on top of an ice cream cone to help them learn. Each scoop has a numeral, dots equaling it's amount and the written word for that number.

We've been having fun creating our ice cream cones this week! I found the idea for this project here - http://www.first-school.ws/activities/crafts/colors/icecreamcone2.htm

Since I needed it to go to twenty, I just printed each of the colored pages twice. Then I used my scrapbook number stickers to label the scoops with the number I wanted along with the amount of dots. Finally, I got out my p-touch label maker and put the word for each letter on the scoop before running each sheet through the laminator and cutting them out. We played with them on the floor and table initially before I taped them to the door jam between my schoolroom and my dining room today.

You may (or may not) be wondering why I put the colors in the order I did. Aren't you lucky? I'm going to tell you why. A mommy friend of mine invited me to join a makeshift preschool co-op for the remainder of the school year for our preschool boys. They've dubbed it Monkey Academy. My first day teaching the co-op will be next week when I'm assigned the letter V, the number 11, the color pink, the shape of a heart and the themes love, relationships and communication. Whew! That's a lot to cover in 2 hours but we're going to do it.

At tlsbooks.com I found a little apples number book that you are expected to print off where each page contains a picture of a tree and a bear holding a numbered apple. The child is supposed to put/color apples on the tree to correspond with the number the bear is holding. Well, I think an entire book of that is a bit redundant so I just printed off the page for 11 and I'm giving each boy 11 apple stickers (again from my scrapbooking stash) to put on the tree after they've colored it. You can find that here - http://www.tlsbooks.com/appletreebook.pdf

Next I found a map of the state of Virginia (where we live) and the boys and I will color it and glue on the state bird, the state flag and the flower/tree. I found the map here - http://www.kidzone.ws/geography/usa/index.htm

The number 11 in my ice cream cone is pink so that the boys can build up to the color and number of our day.

And I found this darling little heart/mouse craft at http://www.first-school.ws/activities/shapes/animals/mouse_hearts.htm

They will be able to color the hearts pink and practice their scissors skills - something every preschool teacher I've ever known has emphasized.

For snack we'll have Veggies and I'll invite them to dip at least one in vinegar. And I'll offer vanilla wafers too.

Finally, I plan to read the Velveteen Rabbit to them. According to the Treasury of Virtue - it's a story about Love. According to "What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know" - it's a story they should hear around this age.

Let's hope that fills two hours!

Melted Snow

One thing the East Coast has an abundance of right now is snow. It seemed like a great time to conduct an experiment regarding volume!

Always the ham, my eldest son needed to clown around in the shot for the initial photo. He makes me giggle sometimes.

Measurements of the glass full of snow.

Guesses placed about how much water there will be when the snow melts.

Checking the glass halfway through the melting...

And our finally analysis. Snow, Guesses and Water charts ready to be put in a science notebook. Want to do it in your homeschool? Here's the link.

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/docs54478/Snow%20Melting%20Experiment.pdf

I hope you're enjoying the winter wonderland where you are!

Great finds!

Today included some web surfing for my homeschool. I found a few really geat finds to share.

First and most exciting to me is Home Share. It's google but for homeschoolers! We type in what we're looking for and it provides us with googled links that are suitable for homeschool! I am completely excited about that.

Next I found Worksheet Works. The thing I love about this is it allows you to go in and set some parameters for what you want in your child's worksheet in a particular theme and it creates a worksheet for you! How awesome is that? For example - Ashlee is learning her multiplication table right now. We are up to the three's. So - I plugged in my parameters of 3x12 as the maximum and she now has a worksheet with variables of 1x, 2x and 3x any numbers up to 12. Fantastic!

And finally, I happen to own the book "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" because it was recommended to me. Case seems to like it but we'd set it aside recently. While on my tour of the web, I found that donnayoung.org has worksheets that coordinate with each of the 100 lessons in the book! Free! I've printed out the worksheets for the first 10 lessons and all of the traceable cards and slipped them into page protectors. My plan is to use the book for Case and then again for Mason. Each boy will get to practice the letters they are learning with dry erase markers. If you are looking for this resource, visit her at http://donnayoung.org/penmanship/manuscript-lessons.htm

The other two links have been added to my sidebar. Happy surfing!

Following Instructions

In another post, I mentioned my daughter's need to learn to follow instructions. I elected to use two methods for teaching this - a) cooking and b) Legos. (You knew I was going to get the Legos in there somewhere!)

I'm preparing to go to a girls weekend tomorrow. I'd volunteered to bring my French Toast Casserole - which my family loves. So, I promised hubby that I'd make two and leave one at home for the family as well. First, I let her watch me make the casserole I'm taking and then I let her (mostly) make the one that is staying home.

Little brothers both popped in an out during the cooking lesson to pick up a few tricks.

She managed to break 8 eggs into the bowl and only got one tiny shell in! Not bad for a beginning chef.

Her favorite part was squishing it all together at the end. She kept saying things like, "Cool!" or "Weeeee!"

Earlier in the week, we worked on the Lego house.

First, I made her complete the base portion of her new Lego house all on her own by following the instructions. I was pleased to see that she had to take things up several times because she'd missed a step or a detail that was needed just a few pages later. A fantastic, no-nag method to help her understand! Forgive me, but I'm pleased with myself.

After my point had been made, I jumped in and we completed the house together. I {heart} Legos.

Here she is doing her copy work after the house was built. The second picture shows my favorite part of the house - the sliding glass door that actually works! The third picture is her favorite part of the project - the bird on the roof!

Free World U

I found something really neat last night. It's called Free World U and it's a complete curriculum for the each grade level preschool through high school. It's a flash card style of curriculum in which the child (or in our case, the child and the teacher) evaluate when the flash card has been mastered.

We started on a few of the flash card sections for second grade today. My daughter really seemed to enjoy it! We sat together and clicked through the digital flash cards and she gave me the answers verbally. I think she really thrives on one-on-one attention.

One of the sections we covered today was about maps. It was particularly interesting to me that although she'd covered this material in her public school education, she hadn't retained even half of the material. It seems to me that this offers some depth to the topics that might be missed otherwise.

I have begun to subscribe to the notion that memorization of rote facts is particularly important for the elementary years - as seen in classical education models. I'm looking forward to spending some time with this website for my two younger boys too. It'll be interesting to see how quickly they begin to retain facts.

Being very new to the whole homeschool journey, it's very exciting to me to discover things that will work for my children and customizing a curriculum to get the most value for each child. I'm surprise by how much I'm learning myself and how passionate I've become about education! It's just a fun and joyful place to be. I only hope that my passion and enthusiasm continues for the duration.

On one of the pages of the Free World U site, I found the following quote.

"Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire." - William Butler Yeats

I find the quote to be relevant to my little blog.

If you'd like to visit Free World U to see if it's a fit for your family, check them out at freeworldu.org.

Cheers!

Lily the Bear

It's been a very exciting day here in our homeschool! We watched Lily the Bear have her first cub live via webcam!

Unfortunately, I sent our six year old son to afternoon Kindergarten today as scheduled. In hindsight, I wish I'd kept him at home with us. I can bet they didn't have nearly as much excitement at school today as we did here!

This live webcam experience has launched what will be a semester long study of bears. We will watch Mama Lily and her cub(s) as they continue to reside in their den and on into the spring. We will learn about bear behavior, hibernation and anything else that excites us.

If you'd like to have a good starting point to learn about bears and join in with us on this adventure, visit bear.org . The Den cam is fascinating to watch. Today alone we've witnessed Lily's labor, seen one newborn cub's arm and heard newborn cub cries. If you do find the website useful, please consider making a donation to them for all the fantastic information they've shared. Even a small donation would be appreciated by the team of scientists. And it's tax deductible too so remember to print out your receipt!

Cheers!

The Adventure Begins!

The morning of January 1st, I sat with my husband to drink our morning coffee and chat like we often enjoy. I had no plans to venture into the topic of homeschooling when I sat down. Somehow during the conversation, I found myself saying, "Can I tell you the reasons I'm considering homeschool?" My husband is a type A personality who thrived in public school. He is not a huge fan of the homeschool concept. However, for some time now, I've felt the gentle urging of the Lord to consider it for our children. In spite of all my inadequacies and my nerves, He has persuaded me. A few months ago, my prayer became, "If this is really your will, Lord, YOU have to sway John's heart because I can not do that in my own strength."

Somehow the words that came out of my mouth that morning were enough to persuade him to pull our 2nd grade daughter out of school for the remainder of the semester. The Friday before she was to go back to school, we had made the decision to try homeschooling. To say I was shocked that he agreed is an understatement!

For the last few weeks, my daughter and I have been muddling our way through homeschool. I had two books already on hand to help us begin this journey. The first is the Core Knowledge series (What your Second Grader Needs to Know) by E.D. Hirsch. The second is a full scale curriculum called Home Education Curriculum by Jean Wolff. This is a third grade curriculum (she has all elementary levels) but apparently it's no longer in print. I saw it was well reviewed at Amazon and I came across an unopened box of it for $20. I decided for $20 it was worth investigating!

So far, it's been a modge podge of those two guides. Mostly the third grade curriculum package (which has worksheets and book guides to go with it) but also items from the other book too.

I have two girl friends who are educating their children with Classical Conversations. I'd originally declined to investigate that method of schooling because I thought it sounded so dry and dull. But their kids seem to be thriving and enjoying the work. In a number of other ways, it appeared that God was putting this method of schooling in front of me so I had no choice but to examine it. My favorite thing about the curriculum is that it gives a timeline study of history that the children memorize. How wonderful would it be to learn of something in history and already have a framework built in my mind about what the life and times were like at that point?! Certainly something I was not blessed with in my own education.

Today I ordered the curriculum. I'm sure it will be here within a week or two. It'll be exciting to try it. I'll let you know what I think after we've used it for awhile.

In the meantime, I'll continue with the Home Education Curriculum. I'm sure I'll continue to supplement the new curriculum with it as well as the Core Knowledge series.

It's exciting and overwhelming to begin this journey. I'm afraid I'll stumble and fail my children. I've been reassured that my thoughts and fears are common. That it's a whole new experience for our entire family. That it'll take a little time for us to get our groove before I begin to have those fears lessen.

This week, our primary focus is on following instructions as they are given! This is something my daughter has struggled with for as long as I can remember. She frequently thinks that her childish brain can tweak the instructions of her mother, father, teacher, etc. to be better than the way they were given. Nothing seems to have curbed this behavior previously. Today she began building a large Lego house. As I see it, the value in this is two-fold. 1) she must follow the instructions from Lego in order to build the house correctly and 2) she must be diligent in continuing on her course beyond where her attention span might otherwise release her to move on to other things. Judging by how much time she spent on the project today and how little was accomplished, I anticipate this to be a week long project!

On another fun note, I found the Sunflower Schoolhouse today. Specifically this post on reading resources that I think will be most helpful on teaching my two younger boys!
http://sunflowerschoolhouse.com/reading-resources/

That's all I have for you now. Hopefully, I'll be sharing more exciting adventures with you shortly.

Blessings!