What We Have Been Up To

Okay, I admit I'm not a good blogger... oh well!!

This 'school year' has been a busy one. 1st grade has literally kicked my butt. It has been hard, I won't sugar coat it. Miss E and I have had some epic battles when it comes to our school day. Part of it is probably because we are both strong willed and another part is probably due to the fact that we don't have a set daily routine. Everyday for us is different and that makes things hard. One thing I'm going to work on for next year. If everyday is different then we will make a routine set for each individual day. Who needs to do science and history everyday?? How about just three days a week??

We have, however, had some really fun times though. We've pushed through subtraction and even though it is not her favorite thing, she is starting to 'picture' the problems in her head. We've had fun with science and history. She LOVES to read and be read to. We've had some days where things just 'click' and we've finished everything we set to accomplish.

As any homeschool family will tell you, school is not the only thing you have to manage. We are also managing life. Back in December we had a diagnosis of celiac disease in our family. Fortunately celiac is only affecting one of the four of us but as the head cook, the whole family is now gluten free. Let me just say that GF is hard work!! Not only are we cleaning out our pantry and replacing what we can with GF stuff, we are also replacing recipes and our 'go to' food. Yes, there is a ton of processed foods in the grocery store that are labeling GF but I can only take so much of the boxed stuff.

As of right now, I have a plan to change the focus of my blog a little bit. We are still a homeschool family and as I find things to post I will. (Don't hold your breath waiting for an update.) I also want to post about our adventure into the GF world. I want to share the recipes we've tried and liked. I also want to share how we are managing as a family as we make these changes. In all fairness, our kitchen is now 99% GF, I've had a few months to work at getting there.

So, let the adventures begin!!

In the mean time here are a few pictures of our winter/spring adventures!

 Hatching Dinosaur Eggs

Reading Hop on Pop

 Family fun at Disneyland!

Making our own solar system.

Desert Habitat

Miss E, 1st Grade, Epi Kardia, Unit 1

Ancient Egypt, Joseph, Moses and the Exodus, The Nile River... all of this leads up to DESERTS!
To see our history activities around Ancient Egypt, click here.

One of the kids' favorite sites is brainpopjr.com. They love learning with Moby. I also get excited when there is a video on one of the topics we are discussing because I can utilize their worksheets and quizzes. I say that I'm lazy, but really I think it comes down to not reinventing the wheel so to speak.

I logged into the brainpopjr and let both kids watch the science video on desert habitats. I wanted Miss E to do both the quiz and the activity from the desert section. She was able to do the quiz by herself while I printed off the worksheet activity. Miss E labeled and colored the desert animals and plants. Little Man (pre-k) just colored the picture.

She still thinks animals need to be colored like a rainbow.

We took two days and made a desert mural with paint. The first day I had Miss E paint only the vegetation that would be found in the desert. We read the book Storm on the Desert and we discussed the types of plants would be found in the dessert based on the book.

The second day she added the animals after discussing desert animals from our book.

I purchased a Desert Biodome. I thought it would be fun for both of the kids to watch different cacti and succulents grow. They had fun making their little biodome. Now we watch and wait for our plants to grow.

**Update: We are more than a week into our biodome and we have not seen anything sprout. I don't know if it is user error or if our window just is not hot enough. Maybe it is not a good idea to start a biodome the end of September. We'll keep an eye on it and keep you posted.

Blessings,

Elizabeth

Ancient Egypt

Miss E, 1st Grade, Epi Kardia, Unit 1

Joseph, Moses, The Nile River, Africa, the Exodus, Deserts...ANCIENT EGYPT!
To see our science study on Deserts, click here.

This section of the study of the ancients was full of exciting things. We first read of the story of Joseph and how he saved the Egyptians and his family during the famines. We then read about Moses and how he saved the Israelites from the oppression in Egypt. Thrown in there we also read about King Tut, Mummies, and a fun story about the Nile River.

Modern Rhymes About Ancient Times: Ancient Egypt is a pretty cool book about all things Egypt. One of the rhymes is all about the hieroglyphics. Miss E recreated the hieroglyphics from that page.

BrainPopJr also has a unit on Ancient Egypt. I had both kids watch the video and I had Miss E take the quiz after the video. I also printed off the activity and her decipher the hieroglyphics.

Blessings,
Elizabeth

Creation

Miss E, 1st grade, Epi Kardia, Unit 1

Little Man, Pre-K, God's Little Explorers, Week 2

Picture from from Google Images
http://godordirt.com/

"In the beginning God..." Creation is probably my favorite science subject. I love how we start our year off focused on our Lord as creator God.

1st Grade

We read the Biblical account of Creation from the Bible and a book called Song of Creation by Paul Goble. I have a children's story Bible, but it is terrible when it comes to the Creation story. I was disappointed, so we read Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 straight from the Bible. Miss E made a lapbook on creation, her first big project.

We took our time putting the lapbook together. We read the account of each day, Miss E memorized a sentence in regard to what was created that day, and then made a mini book to represent the day with her own picture. On the inside of the mini book is a verse that corresponds with that day.

Here is the completed lapbook.

The sentences she has memorized about each day of creation.

Day 1 - God created day and night.

Day 2 - God created the sky, land and sea.

Day 3 - God created plants and trees.

Day 4 - God created the sun, moon, stars and seasons.

Day 5 - God created birds and fish.

Day 6 - God created animals and man.

Day 7 - God rested. 

Her completed timeline of creation.

Pre-K

In Little Man's curriculum there is a lot more going on with week 2 than just creation. I'm just highlighting the creation part here.

Both kids created a sticky book on creation. Like I did with Miss E, we read from the Bible the account of creation and then they made their book pages themselves.

(Pictures to come)

For Fun

With the help of a friend, I found this site. I used her creation printable to make magnets and we retold the creation story on our magnetic board. Miss E used her memorized sentences and Little Man used his own words to retell the story.

Blessings,

Elizabeth

Old Testament History

Miss E, 1st Grade, Epi Kardia, Unit 1

Unit 1 history is all about the Ancients.

We start our history study off with creation and then move forward from there. We did a more in depth study of creation in science, see the post here.

Our primary text for ancient history is the Bible. We used a Children's Story Bible to read abridged, although not very good, stories from the Old Testament. Mostly we read Genesis and Exodus; creation through the building of the Tabernacle. I'm not too worried about the 'overview' as we are reading a Chronological Bible Daily. As we read though the Bible we talk about where that fits into the timeline we are creating. 

I made the timeline cards and had Miss E paste them onto a timeline. I laid out the cards in a random order and we talked about the timeline. With the help of Little Man, the kids were able to piece the events together and then Miss E pasted the cards onto the long timeline. We are not concerned with dates, just the order in which events happened.

Blessings,
Elizabeth

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom {Virtual Book Club}

This month for the Virtual Book Club we read books by Bill Martin Jr. With the start of our school year I did a little bit of research to find a book that would work with what we are already learning.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is a fun book to read. We have read through the book several times. The book that I bought also has a CD with Ray Charles preforming the story. The kids love to listen to him tell the story, too. We listened to the CD version several times.

This year for Little Man (pre-k) we will be focusing on new letters each week. Here are a few letter inspired activities that we have done.

Puffy Paint Letter Tracing 
(to make homemade puffy paint, click here.)
I printed off some outlined lowercase letters for Little Man to trace or decorate with puffy paint. He starts tracing the letters and then fills the page with paint. Not a picture I can display but it is fun for him none the less.

Magnet Coconut Tree
I made my own coconut tree with construction paper, laminated it, and then added magnets. I have a huge magnetic oil pan I purchased from Wal-Mart. I pulled out our lowercase magnet letters and had Little Man decorate our tree. I left the tree and letter up on our board for several days and both kids have come by retelling the story on their own.

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Blessings,

Elizabeth

**This post is a part of the Bill Martin, Jr. Virtual Book Club. You can see more fun here.

Puffy Paint

My kids love to play with puffy paint. My friend, Allison, over at Learn Play Imagine loves messy play. She introduced me to the homemade version of puffy paint. Check out her latest post for fall themed puffy paint here.

Since Little Man had so much fun with our last batch of puffy paint I made more. If you have never made puffy paint for your little ones, I strongly suggest you give it a try. It is not very messy, it is really cheap, and it is a lot of fun!!

Puffy paint is made with equal parts flour, salt and water.
I used food coloring for the color but you can also purchase liquid water color. I've used both, since they ran though my last batch so fast, I decided to use the food coloring as it is cheaper.

I mixed 1/3 cup of each ingredients in a sandwich size Ziploc baggie. I added about 10 drops of food coloring to get the colors that I wanted. For the brown I did use liquid water color. I massaged the bag to get out all the lumps. You really don't want it to be liquid but you don't want a solid either. Think about paint consistency. I then cut the end off the baggie and squeezed the paint into my squeezie bottles. A funnel would have made pouring it into the bottle easier, but I don't have one that small. I then repeated the process for each color. EASY!!

Let me know if you give it a try and how your kids liked it.

Blessings,
Elizabeth

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