Christmas with the Animals

We went on a field trip to a local conservation area where we learned about animals in winter. We fed the birds, left food for the skunks, squirrels and rabbits. It was so much fun despite the frigid temperatures. It was cold out that is for sure. The instructors were fabulous. I highly recommend this as a learning opportunity for others.

Looking at this week....

I have to tell you all how much I enjoy homeschooling my youngest daughter. This week we are going to start working on our Christmas lapbook and we have a field trip on Tuesday that we are so excited about. Of course as the week progresses pictures will follow. Right now it is snowing out so our plans for tomorrow could change... to lots of outdoor play depending how much snow we get.

Monday
start on Christmas lapbook
daily lessons

Tuesday
Field trip: Christmas with the Animals
daily lessons

Wednesday
baking with mom
Christmas Lapbook
daily lessons

Thursday
more baking
Christmas Lapbook
daily lessons

Friday
Children's Museum (maybe)
Christmas Lapbook
daily lessons

Christmas Lapbook Ideas

I am just putting together our links for our Christmas Lapbook. I can't wait to get started on this next week. Enjoy! As we put our lapbook together I will direct links and pictures to what we actually used to make ours.

Example of Christmas Lapbook
Printable ABC mini book
Christmas Symbols
More Christmas Lapbooks
Audrey's Christmas Page
Pop Up Christmas Tree
Free Christmas Coloring Pages
The Night Before Christmas
J is for Jesus book
Homeschool Helper Stuff
Printable Christmas Advent story book
12 Days of Christmas Lapbook

Jesse Tree Links
Jesse Tree
Jesse Tree Calendar
Jesse Tree Colouring Book
Jesse Tree Family Devotional

Advent
ABC's of Advent
ABC Advent Calendar to Colour

To my American friends and readers...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Christmas Links

These are some links I have found while searching for curriculum for my daughter on Christmas so I thought I would share them with you. As I find more and some that are not as useful I will purge the lists but for now they are here for you to look through. ( I have fixed some of the links... I will tr to get the rest fixed later this evening)

Advent

Annie's Advent Calendar Page
Make an advent calendar

Lapbooks

Christmas Symbols Lapbook
Christmas Customs Lapbook


Unit Studies

How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Cookies

Curriculums

A Holiday Preschool Curriculum
Christmas Bible Reading Chart

History

Christmas Traditions
Christian Origins of Familiar Christmas Customs
Christmas History


Colouring Pages

From Sheryl's Originals (Santa, Angel, Snowman)
Santa 1, 2, 3
Coloring Book Fun 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Trace and Colour Star

Other Activities

Christmas Tree Light Sewing Card
Christmas Templates


Printables

Kaboose Crafts
Christian Printable Worksheets click here (pdf)
Mazes 1, 2
Christmas Themed Worksheets


Books

Christmas Alphabet Book "print here"
Twas the night before Christmas (printable minibook)

Crafts

Christmas Crafts for kids 1



Stories

The Christmas Story for "kids"

Recipes

Miniature Gingerbread House 1
Stained Glass Cookies 1

Online

Christmas Fun with Veggie Tales 1

Sorry about little updates

but I have been busy trying to get my life organized with my husband currently at home with us and getting on a schedule that will work for all of us. I plan to post more this week as I try to work on a new schedule.

Nature Walk and lessons for today...

Today we went for a nature walk... the temperatures were beautiful outside so we thought we would take full advantage of the weather. We did our lessons first thing this morning... it worked out well for us... and then in the afternoon we did some crafts.

Today's lesson on the table waiting to be taught.

Off on the nature hike we go:

Getting the crayons ready to make the rubbings. It took longer to peel back
the paper on the crayons then it did to do anything else.


It is magic... a leaf appears!!!!!

For our Felt Board (Halloween Theme)

5 Little Ghosts

5 little ghosts flew through the door

One flew away, and then there were 4.

4 little ghost spooky as can be.

One flew away, and then there were 3.

3 little ghosts drinking Halloween brew,

One flew away, and then there were 2.

2 little ghosts having lots of fun,

One flew away, and then there was one.

1 little ghost is a real super hero,

He flew away, and then there was zero!

Halloween Songs

5 Little Pumpkins

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate (Hold up open hand)

The first one says, "My, it's getting late." (Point at the thumb)

The second one says, "There are witches in the air." (Point to pointer finger)

The third one says, "But we don't care." (Point to the middle finger)

The fourth one says, "Let's run and run and run!" (Point to ring finger)

The fifth one says, "We're ready for some fun!" (Point to the little finger)

Ooooooooooo went the wind (Hold hands open beside mouth)

And out went the light (Clap hands together)

And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight. (Roll hands around each other)

Hoo!

The owl goes Hoo
The owl goes Hoo
Hi ho on Halloween the owl goes Hoo
The ghost goes Boo
The ghost goes Boo
Hi ho on Halloween the ghost goes Boo

*Sung to Farmer in the Dell

Jack O Lantern

I'm a little Jack o lantern
Fat and Fine
They picked me off a pumpkin vine
Halloween is coming don't you know
just light my candle and watch me glow

*Sung to I'm a Little Teapot

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, by Engelmann, Haddox, and Bruner is the book I have been using kind of to teach my daughter to read and learn the alphabet. But I am not using it in the way the book was meant to be used not at all. Here is how I am using it.

I took some cue cards/blank recipe cards purchased from the dollar store and a black sharpie and I put all the different letters and combinations on the cue cards that they teach. Complete with blend so she could see how to say them. I did all 44 letters/blends and every day we would do some cue cards... nothing hard core because I like to keep things simple with her. She prefers that and it is much less stress when your dealing with a 4 year old. So every day we are adding more and more cue cards until she can do them all without prompting.

After she is done with the letters/blends then we will go on to the words they have in the book. I will just take my cues from her. If she can say the blends without prompting then it is time to go onto the words.

This book is available at most libraries I have found and it is a wonderful resource to use to make up the cue cards and not do the lessons. Mind you some people have had wonderful luck with the lessons it just isnt' something my daughter can handle and I know that so I just changed it up for us.

Staying Motivated and feeling like your doing something...

I have had many conversations as of late with people who are concerned about if they are doing enough when it comes to homeschooling. Between not doing enough and staying motivated these seem to be a couple of areas many homeschooling parents struggle with.

As far as asking yourself if you are doing enough. There are many styles of homeschooling and just because "susie" uses a curriculum and you don't doesn't mean she is doing any more or less then you are. Children learn in different ways. I know that if I was to do just work sheets with my daughter I should just forget it. It won't work she would be totally bored to tears and be difficult to teach. I have chosen a literature based curriculum because after doing much research and sitting back and watching my daughter I realized that it was the fit for her and so far so good.

Just because one child learns one way doesn't mean the rest of your children will learn the same way. That is the beauty of homeschooling you can customize the curriculum to fit the child. Something that can not be done in a public school.

I have been homeschooling my daughter for about two months now and it is going well, we do have times when we dont' get done everything I want to in a day but I still walk away at the end of the day knowing we did accomplish things whether it was just a walk and talking about nature or baking something.

So staying motivated is harding than feeling like you have done something I think anyways or maybe they go hand in hand. You will still be motivated or will be motivated period if you know you are accomplishing something every day. Look at the little things. Keep a list of the things you do throughout the day so that you can look back at it at the end of the day and see that you have accomplished something. That would probably be a good start.

I will try to post more on this subject in another post. I have to get ready to start my day here this morning and set up things for my daughter and I.

Children's Museum... and schedule for the week...

We made our first trip into the Children's Museum and Shaylin loved it!!!!!

Shaylin loved working in the McDonald's and going in the Dinosaur cave. She loved playing the drums as well as meeting up with some new homeschool friends and a former nursery school friend Ani. It really was a good morning and I was impressed with the museum. I am sure we will be making many more trips back that way.

Today I am just getting ready to start school I know it is 3pm but Rob doesn't go into work until 2pm now so we start it late in the afternoon. It really doesn't take long we read some of the stories after bath too before bed. We do crafts in the morning as Shaylin likes it when her daddy helps. I have to decide on our outings this week.

Tuesday ~ eye doctors (nothing like making appointments learning time)
Wednesday ~ ice skating
Thursday ~ story time at the library
Friday ~ go to see High School Musical (might wait until cheap Tuesday)

Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing all my Canadian readers a
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

Letter B Lapbook Butterflies

I hope your enjoying the links I am using to create my lapbooks. I will continue to post them as I go through the making my lapbooks as I find it easy for me to organize them this way also.

• Butterfly Crafts 1,
• Colouring pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
  
• Activity Sheets 1,
• Butterfly Anatomy 1, 2,
  
• Lifecycle 1, 2,
  
• Homeshare Butterfly Links
• Butterfly activity kit free download near the bottom
  

Fall Songs to sing...

The Leaves are Falling Down
Sung to: "Farmer in the Dell"

The leaves are falling down
The leaves are falling down
Red, yellow, green, and brown
The leaves are falling down

Scarecrow
Sung to: "Teddy Bear, Teddy bear turn around"

Scarecrow, Scarecrow, turn around.
Scarecrow, scarecrow, jump up and down
Scarecrow, scarecrow, arms up high
Scarecrow, Scarecrow, wink one eye
Scarecrow, scarecrow, bend your knee
Scarecrow, scarecrow, flap in the breeze
Scarecrow, scarecrow, climb into bed
Scarecrow, scarecrow, rest your head

Letter A Lapbook - Ants

The ant pictured above almost makes ants seem cute... I did say almost.

Here are some links where I picked up some things to do on ants.

• Free printable Ant lesson plan
• Homeschool Share: Ant links
• Coloring pages: 1, 2, 3, 4
  
• Math Sheet 1
• Ant Anatomy Worksheet
• Ant online game

Question from my comments: How long does it take to do a lapbook or do I spend on them?
Lapbooks sometimes take a week to do but most often usually a couple of days because we add so much crafty stuff to them. I plan to do the ant lapbook in two days and of course I will be taking pictures of the lapbook once it is done and probably some during. We do others that work out to be more than a week to do at times. Just depends on Shaylin's interest but I have condensed these so they won't take long.

Week 5

Ideas for this week:

• ant lapbook ~started Monday
  
• butterfly lapbook
• count numbers on the clock
• collect leaves for a leaf rubbing
• play dress up
• bake a pie
• make soup
• build a spider web "Little Miss Muffet"
• nature walk "Jaffa maybe"
  
• Make a chart of Shaylin's daily schedule and post it
• musical band with kitchen utensils
  

What are we reading this week:

• Every insect
• The Ant
• Willie Winkie
• Little Miss Muffet
• The Four Friends
• Little PeeWee
• Busy Timmy
• The Hungry Caterpillar
• 5 3 pages from our Science book
• Math make patterns with coloured blocks
  

Matching colours today

Friday we decided to cruise some links that have been giving to me.
My daughter really enjoyed matching the colours together and it
was really good in helping with some fine motor skills with the work
she had to do with the mouse.

Here she is loving the game she is playing.

Week 3 ~ Day 2 and Day 3

Today was a fun day homeschooling learning about rain and spring and rainbows.

We sand the song... Little Cabin in the woods with the hand motions today for those of you who don't know the song.... here are the words with what the motion you do with the words.

Little cabin in the wood (trace a cabin outline with your index fingers)

A little old man by the window stood (hand above eyes)

Saw a rabbit hopping by (two fingers of one hand like rabbit ears, hopping)

Knocking at his door (knock with fist)

"Help me! Help me! Help me!" he said, (throw arms up for each "help me")

"Or the hunter will shoot me dead!" (make a finger gun, point, and shoot)

"Come little rabbit, come with me, (welcome gesture with hands)

Happy we will be." (hug yourself)

This is Shaylin reading the Bernstein Bears big book of science. I have to say this book is so cool and we always enjoy our daily lessons in it.

Week 3 Day 1

I am loving Sonlight curriculum for my daughter it is working really well with her. So exciting to watch her learn. We had so much fun today learning about the wind and trying to fly our paper airplane indoors... it was raining outside here. Windy but rainy which is not the best flying environment for a paper airplane.
We also enjoyed playing with playdoh making worms/snakes into
bracelets.... okay... I have a total girlie girl.

New location for homeschooling curriculum...

The middle shelf has her sonlight curriculum.

Hurricane Lapbook

I am on a yahoo group and someone shared the most wonderful link with us all it is Weather Wiz Kids it will teach your children about weather. We are starting a hurricane lapbook here on Monday to go along with our Sonlight curriculum.

Here are some of the links we are using:
Weather Wiz Kids
Printable Hurricane tracking Chart (pdf)
Another Printable Hurricane tracking Chart (pdf)
Lesson: The Eye of the Hurricane (grade 3-5)
Hurricane Lesson
More Hurricane Lessons (more than one)
Weather Lapbook
Hurricane Watch

more links to follow as I research this more and get all the info together for the lapbook.

Back to Home School

Now that everyone is healthy again time to get back on track for homeschooling.
I have noticed that Shaylin knows a lot more than I realize she knows. It is always a delight to see how far she is coming along and how much she enjoys homeschooling.

We are getting excited about our NGBTS Picnic on Tuesday. It is going to be so much fun to hang out with other homeschoolers on the traditional first day of school around here. But alas I have already broke traditional ways and started school already. Call me a rebel.

more pictures will be coming now that things are back to normal around here.

Extras for this week...

I thought I would post some of the extras for this week that we are doing along with our week 2 of Sonlight P4/5.

• Monday
• watch a train movie
• practice counting to 20
• Tuesday
• Chipmunk coloring page
• make a windsock
• Wednesday
• noah's ark craft
• nature walk
• try to use a hammer and nails
• Thursday
• make a monkey craft
• fly a kite
• Friday
• paint a rainbow

Day 2 of school....

I have to tell you... it is going so well... my little one wants to keep going after we have done the days work... but so far we are keeping on track. More of an update and pictures later.

Moving a Big Rock

This video is absolutely incredible... seriously! Give it a view.

First day of school for us!!!!!!!!!!

Today we plan on starting our first day of school. I can't tell you how excited I am. I figure come family when school traditionally goes in we will be doing lots of stuff with different homeschooling groups so if we get a head start now I will feel a whole lot better. Besides she is more than eager to start. She can't wait.

Box Day!!!!!!!!

Box day was officially July 9th....
(due to a death in my family we didn't get it open and looked at until yesterday)

The box has arrived!

Shaylin showing how excited she is about the box being here.
She can hardly wait to get started.

I love having my week laid out of me. It makes it so much easier to
plan my life.

The books are all on the shelf we bought at Ikea on Monday.

For those who don't remember our curriculum is Sonlight.

Happy 4th of July!

In honour of the Fourth of July I thought I would share some of my
favourite american blogs and links with very useful resources.

Freebie of the Day - check this one daily

Ambleside Online - free online curriculum

Homeschool Helper

Lapbook Resources

Giggles, Grins and Grades - new blog I found and visit

School name and motto

I am so excited for you... just today I pressed the order button on my curriculum.... :) So it should be here next week... and we have come up with a name also it is:

HOPE Learning Academy

HOPE is an acronym for: Home is the Opportunity for Pursuing Excellence

Motto:

Living and Learning in Love, and Faith

I am planning on making ID cards for both Shaylin and I and hope to do t shirts and sweats also... which should be easy... I just have to come up with a logo, mascot and some school colours now.

We are on summer break right now...

just so you know... I haven't forgotten this blog but school is done until September maybe late August I am undecided as to when I will start up again.. we will be doing little projects here and there throughout the summer and I plan to post them as we do them.

Right now we are concentrating on our garden which is growing like crazy so you might want to skip over to my main blog It's Just my Life to check out our garden and other things happening at our house.

Learning about Kites

What a perfect time to be learning about kites!
The kite festival is in town and we had a blast there today.

Picking out the colour for her kite.

Helping add the tape to keep it together.

more putting the kite together.

Kite ie almost complete just adding the tail.

Tail is on now time for some string.

Up and flying!!! It really does fly!

Check out my main blog for more pictures of the kite festival today.

Curriculum Decision... DONE

After much prayer and research... ugh.. totally researched out I tell you we have decided to order the Sonlight P4/5 for September. We are just going to do math basics this year and start with Math U See Primer for next year Primer level. I can't tell you how excited I am about this!!!!

I plan on continuing with lapbooks on the books we will be reading and what we will be covering in the Sonlight curriculum. My daughter loves lapbooks way to much to give them up. She just loves seeing the final product.

Thrift store find...

Here is my latest thrift store find... I can't tell you how
excited I was to find this book today. And only for 25cents.
It just reminded me of my old school days.

Who knew shaving cream could be so much fun?

With a dollarstore crafting mat... nice and big
and no mess on my tables and some shaving cream
just a dab... she had so much fun.
This helps with both her sensory issues and
learning to write letters and numbers.

Here she is spreading the shaving cream all around the mat.

You can tell she is making different numbers here as she is playing.
What child doesn't like to get their hands all messed up but mom
loves the fact that it is a very easy clean up.

Got to love those hands... I had to inform her she was not to
touch mommy until after her hands were clean.

Planners

Found these at a local dollar store last week... great planbook I
purchased two one to have next year also. I love to have
everything organized so when I saw these I was really excited.

Nature Walk

We have a really cool place here locally to go for walks at.
I have to say it is one of my most favourite places to take a walk.
And what is better than a walk with a dear friend and some littles ones.

Two cuties posing in front of the house where the cookies are.
Funny children always remember where the cookies are.

One of the beautiful displays.

The goats Zohie and Yoshi. Not sure who is who but the kids like them.

I really like this guy... you could sit here just enjoying some jazz music.
Alas no jazz music playing out of the sax.