First Day of School!

I am sure I am not alone here.... Our first day of school is going great, but things didn't get started quite on time and every activity seemed to be super exciting and take more time than I planned for. Hopefully come tomorrow things will be not so new and move a little quicker.

Our desired start time was 7:45 but 8:15 is when we actually started
Our break time was supposed to be at 9:45 but it turned out to be 10:15

Jacob was ready and eager to listen!

Benji was excited and proud that he can do school things well!

Things we have done today:

1. math meeting
2. calendar
3. math folder(folder 1)
4. this wonderful word family set from Making learning fun(folder 2)
5. a worksheet about following school rules(folder 2)
6. our 8 keys character lesson

Stay tuned for our afternoon update!

2011-2012 School Room

I did a little rearranging and also I have made a huge change in the way my kids will do work.

One thing that is different is my new area devoted to the calendar and our math meeting. There is nothing "special" about it so much as, it is there and not on a science back board or in pieces all over the room.

 This is our bulletin board, born out of necessity it is on our folding doors that go to the closet. It really gave me the space I needed without having to move furniture. The theme is oriented around the stories and books we will be reading. We will be displaying work on it as it its completed.

 This corner of the room used to be filled with clutter but I have managed to streamline as much as I could and then also I turned the desk so I would have more floor space and give the kids a better academic view.

 This corner is a little different but really it was done for storage sake.

 Here is our trusty white/magnetic board ready for writing practice, word making and math fact practice.

 the listening center, same as always!

trusty art easel on the other side of the doorway

the sensory bin in it's new home under the window

And our new writing center, where writing, drawing and coloring supplies are available.

So did you notice what isn't there.......workboxes. I decided to do away with workboxes. They were a lot of work that overwhelmed the kids and me and they also occupied space I didn't have in the first place.

I have decided to switch to a folder/binder system instead. It allowed me to save on space and taper how much "stuff" went into our learning. I put a weeks worth of learning into my binder and then stuff four folders for each kid each night before school. Jacob has yellow folders and and Benji has orangie-red ones. When they are done with their folders they place them in their bins with their names so I can check their work.

Animal Classification: Enrichment and Extensions: The Jungle Book

We are extremely privileged to have a very elaborate pop up version of the classic story The Jungle Book.

 The boys looked through it and enjoyed all the pop ups that really made the story come to life. 

Jacob thought the tiger was really cool, but really fierce. So we colored a picture of one to add to our animals bulletin board.

As a family we also watched the Disney cartoon The Jungle Book, which was a big hit

We can eat a rainbow!

I am doing a health and money unit and I am getting the kids ready to be money smart and health smart. I set a really simple activity for the boys.

I pulled out the color cards from Kizclub and the bin of play food and gave the instructions to match it up and then a short explanation of why we should eat foods of different colors and why we need variety in our diet. This one was a huge success with Benji who loves our play food.

Money! Money! Money!

I am trying to get my kids ready for a unit that will be about both money and healthy eating. To kick things off though, I need to get them oriented with the coins. I am using the large demo coins that came with our saxon math units and I am using some play money from Lakeshore Learning, but you can find some at cool money printable from printable 4 kids that work just as great along with some other cool activities.

The activities I have my kids mastering are:

Matching and identifying coins

And using counting and skip counting to add coins. Again, You can easily create your own cards to what ever amount you think is helpful for you child.

Hopefully in a few days we will be setting up the playroom as a store and I can send the boys shopping. We will be shopping for healthy foods and be making our own food pyramids. So stay tuned. If you want some cool worksheets to work on money with you kids, I found some at super teacher worksheets.

Hang man....ok not really.

In my pursuit to find new ways to learn to read and spell new words I remembered an old standby from when I was in grade school. I played hang man and was very good at it. I always figured Jacob was too young for this game, but I revamped it and now it is just right.

1. I pulled out our word sticks that I made  a while back, a basket of letter magnets, and a dry erase marker eraser set. 

    2. You pull a word and then make lines for all the letters in the word and put all the magnets on the board. As they guess letters to build the words, you build the stick man following the traditional rules. I didn't make the man "hang" because I am not ready to explain to my young ones why anyone person would want to make a person do that. 

Anyway, Jacob loved the game and it was a great way to do spelling and word memory with out pain. 

I looked out the window and what did I see?.....Our new class pet!

Introducing: "Sheldon"

My neighbor knocked on our door this morning and in her hands was a box. She informed my husband that there was a turtle in it and asked if we wanted it.

He then said "hold on, let me get my wife..." and of course I thought this would be an awesome pet for the boys. So I came inside for a moment and we already had our first adventure because he climbed out of the box during that short time and went really far down the lawn. I am just glad he didn't try to cross the street! He was very hard to find since he blends in with our landscape. We picked him up and put some big rocks in the pond for him and put him in his new home....our small pond.

I actually don't know a thing about raising turtles, but am going to after a few trips to the library. The boys are thrilled to be the proud owners of the little turtle. Let the adventure begin.

I was actually contemplating getting them a pet, but it was going to be a fish in a bowl. I have to say this has already been way more exciting. The boys are now drawing pictures and talking up a storm about their turtle and Jacob has even made one out of legos!

http://www.petturtle.com/

Field Trip!

Today we had lots of sunshine all around, so why sit inside.....

We headed out to an awesome park that had not just one, but three play structures adjacent to each other. It was marvelous! I have to say, I am now a huge advocate for those huge coverings. It was at least 15 degrees cooler under them.

Benji continued his love affair with climbing and sliding

And Jacob was loving the activity centers on the playground

This place was a winner and I have no doubt we will be back again!

Other highlights include Jacob taking on a kite by him self

And Benji being king of the rock wall.

And this green and yellow tube tunnel

Centers!

We started off the day today with centers. Its always fun to mix things up and not start the day as a worksheet factory.

1. Reading fun with racing cars:  I went to the activity section of Making Learning Fun and loved the large assortment of stuff available. I would even call it a printables "wonderland". I found this race car activity that was very exciting and engaging to do. I tossed all the cards in a basket and then put out markers and the booklet that comes with it. It took no instruction for my child to figure out what to do. He read the cards and matched the correct car. Afterwords, he then colored the booklet with no problem. This is a great center for independent learning.

2. Counting Fish: I came up with this when Benji started to try to count past ten on his own. I found this is great for fine motor skills and counting and more. I just drew a simple fish bowl with marker on some cardstock and then gave him a sheet of small fish stickers and let him count as he placed them in the bowl.

3. Fish Addition (adding two): This is a super simple center. I just used laminated fish. I wrote the math sentence on one fish and the answer on the other fish and set them in piles. I gave unifix cubes as counters to help make the sentence. Just let the child do the addition and match the fish.

4. Chicka Chicka Sight Words: This activity also came from Making Learning Fun.
  I tossed the word cards into the basket along with some letter tiles.

I then had my child match up the tiles with the word on the cards provided.

Don't have letter tiles? No problem, just let your child use a dry erase marker on laminated cards. Or you can make these letters and just cut them into square tiles rather than circles.

Want to focus on vowels? You can have your child do a vowel sort before making their words
I found this card at Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Looking for more? just check out the links from todays posts, they are loaded with tons of fun and easy educational ideas.

Animal Classification: Enrichment and Extensions

We have been working very steadily on our animal classification and adding to our bulletin board(which is really the bi-fold doors to the closet)

Up to now we have learned

• the difference between living and non living things
• kingdoms of living things
• vertibrates and invertabrates and how to tell the difference. 
• we have also subdivided the animal kingdom into mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish

At this point we are having fun adding extensions to our learning with lots of fun activities.

We played with puzzles to learn all about the different animals

We played folder games. The top folder games I made from Primary Partners and the bottom one came from File Folder Fun.

These were the selections pulled for silent/independent reading.

We sang Kindermusic songs about the creatures in our backyard

We played with animals and their habitats

We sorted mini animals into their different groups

We did our math using a barrel of monkeys(besides who says you have to count beans!)

We played fish games. (These came from Nana!)

We read the book Froggy gets Dressed. (The boys love these books, they are simple and sweet and fun)

We used the materials from Kizclub to add to our reading experience.

These activities were so fun and my kids really enjoyed them. It was also a nice way to step away from worksheets for the day.