Second Grade!!

Today is the official start for Holly in second grade! She is excited for the year ahead, many fun projects, field trips, art projects, cursive hand writing, lapbooks and outings... I am as well!

Looking Back & Forward

The fun of our past several weeks is slowly coming to an end as we begin to gear back up for school... second grade and preschool to be exact! Our summer though has been amazing and filled with so many wonderful activities, friends and family. While we still have some flexibility to embrace the beautiful days of September before the chill of fall settles in, we will officially be starting school next week. I have been working on organizing, changing a few things up, reading through our materials, making a general plan of our weeks which I am sure will need some modifications, pondering working some subjects in as units or semester approaches versus scattering them about and preparing my mind for some preschool work for the youngest. While young, he is ready for something... preschool or tot school, some where in the middle! Basically, we are busy getting ready - physically and mentally.

I'll start ramping up posts again here over the next couple of weeks - the summer break has been wonderful and I feel ready to resume posting!! I thought I would share just a small sampling of our summer adventures.

Beach Reliefs

Last week we met up with some homeschooling friends and enjoyed a wonderful morning at the beach. We have not been to this beach in about a year, but it is such a lovely little beach. When we head to Anderson Island I think we will take more time to stop here and play.

The day we visited it was a pretty good low tide... which made for some fun finds. A very different experience than Titlow Beach or Penrose Point as this beach is a very sandy beach with little rock. Creatures are harder to locate but you have fun getting in and out of the waves to collect them. As well, the kids simply had fun playing on a sandy beach.

After doing some low tide exploration the kids collected various bits of shell, rock, little bits of drift wood, and some other little finds. We gathered up in the loose sandy section of the beach and created beach reliefs with plaster of paris. This is such a simple activity that creates such wonderful results that kids and adults love!! A favorite activity of ours for sure!

The kids all created some wonderful masterpieces, were very creative and simply had a great time!

End Of Year Celebration

To end our school year I organized an End of Year Celebration with some fellow homeschooling families. This is only the second year doing this and it grew a lot this year, I am hoping that by the end of next year it will be even larger.... as we all (children & adults) loved it. It was a wonderful way to put a close to the year or simply award your child some recognition on accomplishments they worked hard on throughout the past year. This was a a nice approach for homeschoolers who followed various calendars - it was not assumed each family was 'ending' the school year as some were awarding reading awards, special class awards, workshops certificates, art awards, musical talents, etc. A wonderful mix!!

We invited all the students to bring along some of their work from the year to share.  There was such a variety of work displayed, everything from display boards of art work to Lego creations, photo montages to portfolios of work, sewing samples and penmanship work, live music and singing. The variety of work was wonderful and really offered a great show to enjoy for both the kids and the adults.

After we all enjoyed time viewing the kids work we viewed a slide show of the year as a group and kids were then invited to share their work. This offered them a chance to do some public speaking (which was so much fun!) and some did musical pieces... so much talent! To finish out the evening each family then brought up their students to recognize their year.

I did Holly's award, recognizing her First Grade year. She had an amazing year filled with so many activities and field trips, classes and group experiences, math and art, science and nature club, reading to many books to count, spelling and writing, projects and cooking... the list is endless! Holly has grown as a student and we are so very proud of her. She is now heading to second grade this coming fall -- another wonderful year ahead I am sure!

It was a wonderful evening and I am looking forward to watching these kiddos grow through the years and see their wonderful accomplishments!

Imaginets

I am starting to put together ideas for my youngest one during next years school season. Right now I set our table up with mini-stations for him to work through while I do lessons with my daughter. He has enjoyed these stations but as we re-use the same materials over and over his attention span is slowly dwindling. He is getting a bit older to where I will put our a bit more art, basic science exploration and letter work this year -- he is ready for it.

One new learning activity I recently picked up is called Imaginets. It is a wooden case with a magnetic white board and colorful wooden shapes that are magnets. He can free play with it or use the cards included to create shapes, things or animals. There are very easy cards that we will use to start and much more challenging cards he can work up to. I have let him try this out a couple of times now and he loves it! I love that it is very well made, thin for storage, age appropriate but will grow with him and can even work for travel in our trailer. It should make for a great addition to our home and learning table!

Loupe Learning

We broke out some tools to start learning about and with. I had learned of this great program several months back from a fellow homeschooler and we decided it would make a great addition to next year's science plan... and well, just our learning experience over all. Loupes along with a book called The Private Eye, here is their site: The Private Eye

I am in the process of reading the book to better prepare myself for a rich program with the loupes. So, we have not taken a serious approach to them yet. Instead I am letting my children become familiar with them and practice proper holding, use, focus and care of their loupes. We have used them on several occasions now and have had many discussions on the care and use of them. Towards the end of summer we will try an activity from the book in a lesson fashion. For now, it's all fun!

Holly decided to get out her rock and fossil collection the other day -- a great chance to also break out the loupes. Using the loupes kind of changed the normal experience to more in depth discussion on what things looked like. She slowed down and took a moment to look at the details. She found similarities in different materials, she showed differences to me that from the naked eye -- looked the same. As well, we learned not to scrape the lens on the rocks, Hudson mastered which way to use the loupe and they both had a really good time!

Rock Hound Discovery Kit

Bryan and Holly picked up this neat little Rock Hound Discovery Kit from a place called Rock Solid Learning website. This was a fun bag of sandy dirt filled with a large variety of rocks and fossil bits. She loved it!!!

We placed the contents into a bin and she then sifted through and found items - using a magnifying glass, loupe, brushes and a card to identify her findings this kept her entertained for some time. Rocks and fossils are right up her alley so Holly adored this project kit! We also got a bag of rocks to add to her tumbler mix in which she cannot wait to get started!