Reality Check

I have many, many friends who homeschool their children. Some are like me and are entering their second year and others are further down the road. I had heard it said that 1st grade was a lot more work than Kindergarten ever would be. I nodded my head, said I can understand that, and continued on in the shelter of my own mind, working to finish Kindergarten. I think in my head I knew 1st grade was going to be more, I just had no idea how much more until we started a week and a half ago.

OH MY WORD!! I have yet to complete our first weeks worth of work. It has been 8 weekdays and we are barely on day 4. To be fair I did take Miss E into her school to take the MAPS test and then I had a workshop that pretty much took up a day and then we had a play date with friends we had not seen all summer; we lost several days with those activities. So, maybe it really isn't as bad as I think it is but for a planner, this is bad!

I talked with a very wise friend and she reminded me again that 1st grade is a lot more demanding and that until you start it you have no idea. I was very encouraged after I talked with her. It is funny how sometimes you hear things, thoughts run through your head, but until you have that one-on-one conversation things don't really 'sink in'. It is like when you tell your kids something over and over and they still do it, but when a third party comes in and tells them the exact same thing they 'understand', my conversation with my friend was exactly that!

So, I'm going to have to squash the box that I hold homeschool in, in my head. The plan that worked for Kindergarten is not going to work for 1st grade. How I planned last year is not going to work this year. Our curriculum is broken up into weeks which amount to 5 days, however for us it might take just a little bit longer. Not because Miss E is slow or anything, we just have other commitments that will take up time. One of the beauties of homechooling is the flexibility one has to teach their own children.

Our first day went great! I'm praying that we find the rhythm that makes most of our days successful both for Miss E and for Little Man. Letting go of the 'calendar' is going to be tough, but I think it is something God wants me to work on. I know that HE called me to this adventure and He will help me get through it as long as I trust in Him.

Blessings,
Elizabeth

The Start of Year Number Two

Today, August 28, 2013 is the official start of our second year of home schooling.

My 1st grader - EpiKardia 1

My Pre-Ker - God's Little Explorer

**To see more about our curriculum choices, see my post here
.

We started our day with Bible and prayer.

We did our calendar notebook. This is going to be a work in progress for the next few days if not weeks. Once I get our routine nailed down, I'll post more details. Right now we are just filing out a calendar with the correct date. We are also counting the number of days we are in school and are making that number with coin money.

Miss E and I did math while Little Man decorated the cover page to his ABC binder.

I had Miss E take a break from her stuff and we read Going on a Bear Hunt, which comes from Little Man's Pre-K. This morning before the kids woke up, I took our Children's Story Bible and wrapped it in paper. I hid it along with a few school supplies around the house. After we read the Bear Hunt book, I told the kids that I had hidden school supplies around the house and that they were going on a treasure hunt. The 'treasures' were hidden in draws and cabinets with an 'x'; 'x' marks the spot!! They had fun looking around the house for the 'x' and brought what they found to the table. Together they opened the special treasure and we talked about how the Bible IS a treasure book and how important it is going to be to our school day. 

While the kids had a little snack, I read a couple of stories from the Children's Bible. We then defined 'science' and talked about some science vocabulary words. 

The kids were ready for another break, so I had them make their very own binoculars. They had a lot of fun with stickers!

Miss E and I wrapped up her day with our memory verse, spelling words, and copy work.

We took roughly 3 hours this morning. Not too bad for putting more into our day that we are used to. Little Man did well with his stuff which made me happy and Miss E is a pro!! We made it through without tears which is always good in my book!!

I can't wait to see how everything meshes together and to watch them learn.

Blessings,

Elizabeth

2013-2014 School Year!

Welcome to the 2013-2014 school year!!

Little Man (4) is in Pre-K and Miss E (6) is in first grade!

Last year Little Man just followed around with Miss E and I. By the spring he was asking to do school like his sister. So, we are going to do a formal program with him. I hope to keep the blog updated and it is my hope that you enjoy following this journey with us. To be completely honest though, I have a full plate. I want so much to keep up with what we do so that the kids have something to look back on but the blog is not a priority in my life. As of right now, I am not an affiliate with any company, so the links are just for your reference. My blog is my journal.

We will continue our journey in reading through the Bible. This will be year 2!! This year we are going to use The One Year Chronological Bible.

This year we are continuing with Epi Kardia and Singapore Math for Miss E.
I am also supplementing with Wordly Wise 3000, Zaner-Bloser, and Explode the Code. Miss E will be doing Bible Study Fellowship with her daddy which will be our Bible curriculum. We will all be studying the book of Matthew.

Little Man will be doing God's Little Explorers with a bunch of other things thrown in as he asks for activities to do. He will also be following Miss E and I as we go though her stuff.

Together the kids will do Family Time Fitness and a calendar notebook. I'm being eclectic with our calendar notebook. I'm using pages from MamaJenn, Mama's Learning Corner, and Mrs. Meacham.

I'm looking forward to this next chapter. Here is to another successful year!

I have a page on facebook, come and follow me, Domicile Lessons.

Blessings,
Elizabeth

Science at the Beach

Okay maybe it really isn't science but when you read a book about the seashore you might as well plan a trip to the beach. Miss E has been asking to go to the beach for months! I'm not really a beach person, it is a lot of work! However, to the beach we will go, or rather we went.

We read The Seashore Book by Charlotte Zolotow for science. The book is about a mom telling her son about the seashore. They live in the mountains and he had never been to the beach.

So, we went to the beach. Twice actually in one week. Here are some highlights!!

 Trip #2, Daddy got to come with us!

 Looking for sand crabs.

Part of our summer fun!

Blessings,
Elizabeth

Summer Break?? Nope, not here!!

As everyone else is wrapping up their 'school year' we are still going strong. There are several reasons for this. One would be that our kindergarten curriculum is 45 weeks, I'm not 'behind' I just didn't realize that we had about 9 more weeks than most schools. Not a problem!! We are just going to continue with our schedule though the summer. Two, I ordered our first grade curriculum and there is going to be a huge jump in time commitment. I don't want to go into shock come September because of the work load. So, doing a little bit of school everyday through the summer will keep us in good practice. Three, it is not like we sit at our table for 8 hours a day doing school. An hour to an hour and a half isn't hurting our summer play time at all.

In fact we have BIG plans. We are going to the beach several times this summer, we are going to enjoy the summer nights at Sea World, we are taking a tram ride, and will probably fit in a ferry ride to Coronado. The plan is to do one big thing each week this summer. I'll try to update the blog with our adventures!!

Blessings,
Elizabeth

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Studying Wind

We read Gail Gibbons book Catch the Wind! for science. (As of the time of this post, I am not an affiliate of Amazon, I'm just including the site for book reference.) The book is all about kites. My kids loved it. They each took turns pointing out different things about the different kites on each page. I was impressed that Miss E actually let her brother point things out. They both started thinking about how they were going to decorate their kites when we made them.

To start off our study of wind, I did a little experiment with the kids. What I wanted them to understand is that wind is just the movement of air. We took a Coke bottle and put a balloon on the top. 

I put a little bit of water in a skillet and warmed it up. 

I then put the bottle in the hot water and we watched the balloon expand. Pretty much like magic in the eyes of my kids!

We also made wind socks. We used a small paper sack, some crayons and colored pencils, crape paper, yarn, and tape. The kids decorated their sacks. Then they tapes pieces of crape paper around the opening. I punched a hole in the bottom of the bag and attached the yarn. We then took our wind socks outside.

Our front patio is pretty protected from the wind. The kids did see that a slight breeze did move their wind sock as they held it but there was nothing too exciting.

 I was not going to let the kids go outside our gate because they were in their jammers (and I didn't want the neighborhood kids to think we had a ton of time to play). However, I knew that the wind was blowing and I knew that the kids would see it better if we were not in our protected front yard. So, out we went. There was a pretty good gust of wind that make their wind socks take flight. They started to run around like they were trying to make a kite take off. I later learned that I was supposed to cut off the bottom of the sack. Oh well, the kids had tons of fun anyway.

Of course when you read a book about kites you have to make a kite!! Using the directions in the back of our book, we made a Flat Kite. This is what we did.

I had some large packing type paper and had the kids paint their kites. I do believe Miss E ended up helping Little Man with his at the end.

  

Miss E's

Do you see Fox In Sox??

Little Man's 

After the kites dried we worked on making the frame for the kite. I just used small dowel rods, kite string and glue. I quickly learned that I'm really not the DIY type person. If it wasn't for the help of Daddy, I don't think we ever would have finished the kites.

The finished kites...

We headed off to the park. I just said that I'm not a DIYer and I had no faith in our kites, so on the way to the park we stopped at the Dollar Tree to buy a kite. I had to have a plan b. When we arrived at the park we were in for a surprise. First it was the hottest day of the year and second there was absolutely no wind or breeze or anything when we first got there. I didn't think we were going to get our kites to fly at all.

The kids kept asking when they would be able to fly their kites and I kept telling them we had to have wind. Finally the wind kicked up and we took our first kite a test drive.

We did get it in the air for a couple of seconds and then it started to fall apart. We then pulled out the kite I bought and it didn't fair any better. We'll have to try flying kites again some other day.

My good friend, Allison over at Train Up A Child did a great tutorial on making kites, check it out!

I'm now on facebook, find me here.

Blessings,

Elizabeth

Literature Fun with Author Jan Brett

With our umbrella school, we did a literature unit on The Mitten by Jan Brett. For several weeks we read books by Jan Brett along with doing some fun activities. Jan Brett has a really neat website with a ton of activities that go with her books. Check it out!!

I also found a wonderful literacy packet for several of Jan Brett's books at TeachersNotebook.com. Most worksheets were purchased from Sarah Paul's store at TeachersNotebook.

The Mitten

Lapbooks are very popular with some people. I have thought about making one with Miss E on several occasions and have never really followed through. Here is our first lapbook. We did a sequencing activity involving the different animals found in the story. I found a great printable here. I had Miss E color the animals. She chose to go with more of their 'natural colors' instead of making everything rainbow. Then every time we read the story, which was several, she would put the animals in the mitten in the order of the story. The mitten on the front of our lapbook was decorated as she wanted it to be.

One of my favorite websites for finding project ideas is homeschoolshare.
I did not use their entire lapbook, but they have great resource for putting together a lapbook for The Mitten. You can find it here. We only used the animal description matchbook activity. Miss E had fun matching up the different animals with the different descriptions.

We did two 'literature' activities with The Mitten involving worksheets, Read & Sequence and Cause & Effect.

For the read and sequence worksheet we just cut out the prompts and pasted them in the correct order of the story. I made two copies of the worksheet. One we cut up and the other we pasted on. If I was to use this as a sample for my umbrella school, I have a full sheet of paper and not a half sheet. Not that it really matters.












We talked about about the 'cause' and then I had her tell me what the effect was; what happened next. After she gave me her answer I had Miss E fill in the answer. I helped her with spelling, but she did all the writing. I get really excited watching how much she has grown. She does not like to write and our core curriculum has very little writing. She however did enjoy this activity.

Berlioz the Bear

I found the following worksheet on Jan Brett's website here that I had the kids color before we read the story. After reading the story I found this video.

The Hat

All activities for The Hat came from here.

We did a similar activity involving Cause & Effect like we did with The Mitten. We talked about about the 'cause' and then I had her tell me what the effect was; what happened next. After she gave me her answer I had Miss E fill in the answer. I helped her with spelling, but she did all the writing.

I had Miss E decorate a hat, you almost have to with a book like this one. After she decorated her hat, we talked about the word 'ridiculous', what it meant and other words we could use that mean about the same thing. We also looked at the picture at the end of the book and talked about what the different animals were wearing. She filled in the blanks to the following sentence: The ________ looked ________ in the ____________. She then drew a picture to go with her sentence.

The pony looked silly in the pants.

Annie and the Wild Animals

I found a recipe for Annie's Corn Cakes, here. So, we made some...

When I usually cook with my kids I usually have them in the kitchen with all sorts of ingredients scattered everywhere. It usually means that we make a huge mess, someone ends up in tears because they didn't get to add the ingredient they wanted to, and it is just plain crazy. I decided that this time I would get all the ingredients measured out for them in these little bowls, they would see exactly how many ingredients we needed and they could take turns. It turned out to be a great experience for everyone. However, when my husband got home and saw all the dishes in the kitchen he asked what we did. He was not overly excited about washing all the little cups. Oh well, I won one battle and just laughed at the second one.

We started by adding all the dry ingredients in no particular order to the large bowl. The kids took turns in both adding and stirring.

 They then added the wet ingredients. Stirring became a little bit harder. Team work was awesome!

I decided that little muffin cakes would be better than a huge cake of corn bread.

 Done!! They were good. Not as sweet as I prefer but good none the less. I made my grandpoppies sweet butter to go with them. Little Man loved them. Miss E ate about half of hers and left the rest.

After reading several of Jan Brett's books. I asked Miss E which one was her favorite, she really liked Hedgie's Surprise.

Thanks for reading about the fun we had with author Jan Brett.

You can now find me on facebook, here. 

Blessings,
Elizabeth