We are HERE!!

Well, it has been a LONG, LONG time since I have updated anything on this page. Life has been busy, wonderful and full with homeschooling my fourth grader and kindergartener. We are loving life and enjoying learning, exploring, and experiencing things together!

I will be returning here though as I will be online more often. My kiddo has requested setting up her own little corner in the blogging world to share on -- and in my mind I see creativity, computer skills, writing, editing, planning, etc. She is currently working through her 'plan' and presenting her ideas to us soon and then with that I will be monitoring her work and guiding her through some basic skills to publish. We'll see how it goes!! In the mean time, here are these two little people enjoying something they both love -- science!

Hudson, Kindergarten

Holly, 4th Grade

Week In Review

The first week of school here was fantastic!! Both kids worked really hard this week, explored a ton, enjoyed many hours of more free flowing learning and had fun!

 

Hudson had a great time learning with his preschool week. This week his theme was centered on apples. He practiced colors, letters, numbers, counting and creating in sets of ten, reading short vowel a words, learned the life cycle of an apple, taste tested eight varieties, looked at an apple tree through a magnifying lens and observation, baked apple hand pies, did a load of art, mastered some fun puzzles, watched a video on apple orchards and the harvest, spent some time on Starfall.com and read a lot of books with me!! An excellent week that he loved with full rich days of learning and playing... he could not get enough of!!

 

Holly also enjoyed an amazing week of third grade! She started the week off with brand new curriculum and a mix of some familiar curriculum too. The week starts off in review for math as she masters some skills learned last year, a book study was kicked off with Little House In The Big Woods, she finished up her chemistry unit with a final project in baking bread from a cold yeast start and a warm yeast start and a review test which she rocked, loads of art, many great books, a look at ancient civilization, learning about history and how we learn from it as she created a history pocket and notebook project, learned about becoming an archaeologist, watched a video on archaeology, jumped into the country of France as we start year two of Expedition Earth, she started a poster from her new health program and did some reflection writing. It has been a full week with so much more than listed... a wonderful week!!

 



Curriculum 2013-2014, Holly

I have finally wrapped up planning and began prepping for our 2013-2014 school year, third grade and preschool. Along with that I have decided to ramp up blogging once again to share our journey. I enjoy hosting it, some family and friends enjoy reading it and I especially love having a small history of our days with photos that I can easily pull to print for years end.

We have Holly's year all planned out now. I am still working on Hudson's school year however we have determined this will be his last preschool year, next school year he will start kindergarten as all of those benchmarks have easily been met now, so we will refine them this school year, mature a bit and move forward next. It is earlier than we had originally thought, but he is ready. Now to adjust that college financial plan, ha!!

Here is a rundown of Holly's school year:

Reading: Selection of works and a book study with Latin Road/Phonics binder 2

Writing: Bravewriter/Partnership Writing, poetry binder and ZanerBloser Cursive

Spelling: Latin Road/Phonics binder 2

Language: Latin Road/Phonic binder 2, pre-latin 

Math: Horizons, online games/practice

Science: finishing up geology through fall, RS4K Astronomy, Nature Club and Nature Studies, fun projects intertwined, (still determining full path beyond this, next curriculum)

Social Studies: Expedition Earth second half (world study) and World Religions (Usborne)

History: History Odyssey Ancients (modified)

Health: ‘Be Fit, Be Strong, Be You’, body study, swimming, group games with our homeschool group

Occupational Education: continue weekly cooking, field trips to various businesses, sewing, learn about professions in science, inventors/inventions

Art and Music Appreciation: Atellier, Usborne and self created. Artist study. Tacoma Youth Chorus, begin intro to piano and attend arts performances.

Special Units: Geology, Gallapagos Islands & Darwin, Food Chains, Coral Reefs

Activities: Camp Fire (4th year), Swimming (working on level 9 of 10 - if completed move to a swim team), Tacoma Youth Chorus (2nd year)

Tissue Paper Garden

A beautiful spring art project Holly created a week or two ago has been a wonderful addition to our art wall. This project was so much fun and produced such great results that she wants to create a much larger version that will include more nature to put in her bedroom as art. This child loves art!

The project was simple and with easy, around the house supplies. We took a piece of thick cardboard and she painted it a light yellow and then watering down a white Elmers glue and using a paint brush she decoupaged a whole sheet of lime green tissue paper over the whole board, this was her canvas to work on. The cardboard was not a lighter color surface to create on, however if you have a white canvas or white cardboard I do believe the tissue colors would be a lot more vibrant.

Next Holly used an array of tissue colors I keep on hand for art to cut out grass shapes, leaves and various styles of flowers. She then layered her grasses (in different greens) and added a few leaves. When you add a piece of tissue you use a paint brush and paint a light layer of watered glue and place the tissue, then paint over the tissue gently with another light layer of watered glue, ensuring it is fully covered in glue. After she had her greenery completed she then added her different styles of flowers repeating the same process with gluing, tissue, gluing. Careful with the glue as if that hand is not gentle or rushed you can smudge the tissue up or break it, creating frustration. Once the final design is completed she used a larger brush and painted one more layer of watered glue over the entire artwork. Allow to dry and display.

State Capitol Tour

This week we joined in on a field trip to our state capitol. The tour was geared beautifully to the children's ages, not too overwhelming yet interesting. They were invited throughout the facility, asked many questions, learned about the history of our capitol building as well as a brief introduction to our government. A really nice balance.

Zoo Fun!

Maintaining a zoo membership is a lovely thing in conjunction with homeschooling! We recently attended with a few homeschool friends, it was a beautiful sunny day - making for many hours of fun, exploring, playing and animal observation. A wonderful day!!

Rain Forest Lapbook - 2nd Grade

I let Holly choose a couple of subjects to do special projects on each year. And, for this school year she chose Rain Forests and Coral Reefs. We wrapped up the rain forest unit a couple weeks back - it was a lot of fun! I created the objectives I had in mind for her unit and then planned around them with tons of books, documentaries, art work, games, online resources, mural, and a lapbook.

Holly chose all the elements she put in her lapbook. We did not include every little project or study in it as there is just no way we could do that and keep the sanity and fun in lapbooking. She did include some pretty key elements though, so that is good. She kept lists of animals, plants, fish, reptiles, amphibians, insects and foods from the rain forest that we learned about and researched. She also included a couple of art projects and drawings, maps, work packs, vocabulary review, layers of forests, comparisons between tropical and temperate, locations of forests, small projects and more! She had a great time designing her lapbook as she went along. It is all her work, a representation of how she enjoys being creative and a wonderful end product that stores easily.

Making Chocolate

For part of Holly's rainforest unit she learned about various products we consume from there. We looked at different foods, spices and medicines we all use. However one particular item was the most popular... chocolate! What seven year old wouldn't find chocolate to be the most exciting.

We started with a tasting of dark and milk chocolate to see if she preferred one over the other. Holly enjoyed both but preferred the milk chocolate. With that we used a kit I had ordered to make chocolate. She used a cocoa powder, sugar and cocoa butter to make the chocolate over the stove top, then had to temp it and make the little chocolates with treats in them (peanut butter, nuts, cranberry and marshmallows. They turned out fantastic!

The kit also included a few real cacao beans for her to explore - she rubbed them in her hands, smelled them, tasted them, cut them open and sampled it a bit more. She didn't like them at all - 'too bitter' for her. A good experience!

Chalked Buildings

This week we are learning about India and with this I decided to do an art project that was inspired by this unit, while not exact it was simply an inspiration. The colors are beautiful, the architecture is appropriate and the use of chalk is always messy fun!

We used The Usborne Complete Book of Art Ideas as our lesson guide, Domed Buildings. Holly drew our her buildings as basic squares first and then she added the details. We have been working on not 'over detailing' our projects... however, she seems to still enjoy the details and often needs to make adjustments throughout to compensate for too much detail work. A lesson on it's own I suppose! After the details she chose a color, bright pallet of colors from our chalk and started to work, coloring and then blending. The final results are simply beautiful!! She did a fantastic job! (I'll admit I couldn't pass this one up - chalk, color... to much fun) Her art work is with a warm yellow sky and mine is with a soft blue sky.