The Joy of Homeschooling

The joy of homeschooling... so many joys are to be had, however flexibility is one of them I treasure most!!! The flexibility to change your day to be in tune with your child or accommodate a new adventure. Today was a good day for flexibility.

The work box was filled, the plan was created and there was work to be done. Holly also had a science class to attend. The theme was Fossils & Rocks - a favorite of Holly's by far.

The day at home started with wanting to look at her one of many dinosaur books and then it soon evolved into watching Walking With Dinosaurs (which is amazing by the way). We headed out for her class where they talked a lot about fossils, inspected many, Holly brought some to share, they colored some pictures and then created their own 'modern day' fossil craft project.

After returning home she pulled out yet more books, did a dinosaur puzzle, played with her Playmobile dinosaurs, colored in her coloring book and asked to go to the library to get more books on dinosaurs. So, we loaded up and went out to get more books.

Flexibility. She had a serious desire today to do all things dinos and fossils so we went with it and scrapped our other school plans. The joy of homeschooling! Sure we'll make up the work throughout the week, nothing to major as it is Kindergarten - however, for now Holly sits engrossed in a new book. Can't beat that!

Chalk Art

Today Holly learned about chalk pastels in art. This can be a messy little activity, but a fun one and her first time really trying art chalk out. She created a design on black paper with a white crayon and then used bright colored chalk to color it in. Her goal here was to learn how to hold and use the chalk, only one piece broke -- not too bad!

For the second project we discussed blending chalk, she saw some examples and then tried her fingers at it. Holly then created a free 'scribble' to blend several chalk colors.

When you are done coloring with chalk you want to lightly spray your art project with an aerosol hair spray to set the chalk - it will limit the dust and smearing.

The Day to Day Stuff

Often times on this little blog I'll post a fun art project, outing or experiment that Holly has enjoyed -- but, please know there is that day to day stuff we do all the time. The reading, math, writing, listening, science, history and so much more! Typically we cover at least eight to ten different subjects/activities a day if not more, depending on how in depth we are on them.

Today for instance we started with reading, I read Holly a great book on weather that does a nice job breaking down how weather works and what a meteorologist does. Then she read three books to me. After reading we moved over to spelling words for the week - reviewed reading all of her sight words (sounding out some, knowing others and stumped on the tough ones) there are about 75 of them right now, she wrote out her weekly words several times and then spelled them out with magnets on our board. Holly worked on math and subtraction, diamonds on the geo board, a word search of winter related words, did some copy work with a four line poem on snowflakes, did her 100 sheet and we did a lot of talking about the weather for the day as she filled in her weather graph.

Absorb & Repel

For science today Holly did a little experiment on whether water will absorb or repel on certain items. I had collected a bunch of little items and she was set up with a small dish of water and an eye dropper.

Holly had to look at the materials and hear what we are doing with them and then she made a prediction. Her prediction was "I think it is going to get wet." We then discussed just how wet she thought the items would get and why. Then she set to work choosing and item, making a prediction for each item as to if the water would either absorb or repel. Holly placed a drop of water on each item and watched to see what would happen, we discussed it and then she categorized them.

When all of her items were sampled she looked at her collection of 'absorb' and 'repel' to determine why the items did what they did. She determined the items that absorbed the water were softer and had holes in them, which soaked up the water. The items that repelled the water were hard and solid, or had no real wholes which repelled the water.

Little Bit of Love

We are starting to enjoy a little bit of Valentines fun in our home now. We checked out a couple of fun children's Valentine videos from the library, a Winnie The Pooh and a Charlie Brown dvd - they will make for some nice free time this week. As well, we have loaded up on several books.... always lots and lots of books!

Today Holly started off with a good snuggle on the couch as we read Love Splat! (We love Splat, he is so cute!) After our story she created a beautiful Valentines inspired collage on clear contact film which makes for a stunning sun catcher. She had several colors of tissue squares, bit of white torn paper, heart foamies and your classic lace heart shapes and a lot of iridescent glitter. She layered it all on her contact film and glittered away then a second layer of film was added to sandwich her project. It is now hanging in our window and serves as a beautiful 'sun catcher' art project!

Snow Flakes

A little winter weather fun! Snowflakes Holly made from white pipe cleaners and clear pony beads. This was a good creative project that included some fine motor skills and a review of symmetry... which was not really applied to this particular project though - she tried.

Holly created her pipe cleaner snowflakes after we read a snowflake poem, Moon, Have You Met My Mother? by Karla Kuskin from the book 'Sharing the Seasons: A Book Of Poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, and discussed it.

We will hang her snowflakes around her puffy cloud she made last week.

Hibernation & Migration

Some more work we have done on hibernation and migration includes several more books - in which I have included a couple favorites here. The house is loaded though with what I am sure is a 1/4 of the library!

Holly has done some art projects and projects as well we have enjoyed several online videos from National Geographic. It has been a fun morning!

This following art project was fun. We used Holly's Fingerprint Drawing Book and she created her own hibernating scene. First she drew out the nature scene and then she went through her art book and chose animals who hibernate and included them in her drawing. Holly created a turtle in the mud under the pond, a frog in the mud under the pond, a raccoon in the tree, a chipmunk the tree and a bear in the cave. She had a lot of fun with this project. It is always fun to get messy hands I have discovered!