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Friday, August 27, 2010

School - Week 2

I'm a week behind in posting. I've been having trouble downloading my photos from my new iPhone. The new operating system for the iPhone has been causing me lots of head aches...

OK, so here goes last week! I'm going to post soon how I structure our days and how things look like day to day here at home!

Geometric Solids. Sweet Boy saw this blind fold at the dollar section of Target and got so excited. This added that little extra something needed to get this work out!

Bella practicing her numbers.

Starting our garden. We are growing lettuce, peppers, green onions, and tomatoes. We will be transplanting these into big pots.

Noun Lesson with the Farm. These labels are in English on one side and Spanish on the other side. I used the dictionary in front of the kids to translate the words and wrote the Spanish word on the back of the English word. Bella walked around for days with this dictionary after I used it!

Feeding Baby! Bella loves to feed the baby. Both the kids help with diaper changes and bathing!

Pink Series Words. These are the CVC (Consonant, Vowel, Consonant). I'm going through the pink series words with Sweet Boy as a review. We should be done with these soon.

Puzzle during break time! Sweet boy will usually work with his legos.

Noun Key Experience. I've been doing my presentations with some words in Spanish and some in English.
The kids love on the baby ALL day long! They are really a huge help. The baby loves it and I love it!

Monday, August 23, 2010

Giggle Giggle Quack

As you know, we LOVE the Theater. Where we live there is a Children's Theater. We attended for free! This was part of the Target Free Art + Culture Days this summer.

Duck, always getting the other animals in trouble!

Chicken!

Cow!

Pig!

AND Farmer Brown!

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Knobless Cylinders

Here is how I have the Knobless Cylinders work on shelf (Minus the sticker on the binder!)


I googled pictures of Knobless Cylinder work and enlarged them and printed them. Here is the ones I made.
I also found some Cylinder Work Cards for free and printed them. I put them in sheet protectors and put those in a 1/2" clear binder so my kids will notice them.

I personally LOVE to do this work myself which draws lots of attention and interest!

Here is Bella working after she saw me working with these.


Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Geoboard


This is a very popular work. I googled "Geoboard" and clicked on "Images". I copied an image and pasted it into a word document. I then grabbed the sides of the image to enlarge it. I then printed it. I did not laminate but should probably put in sheet protector. The kids can then try to copy the shapes. The hexagon and octagon are difficult for my 4.5 year old but no problem for my 6.5 year old.

I plan to change the pictures weekly or every two weeks. The next pictures I want to print are some examples of making letters with the Geoboard. The Geoboard cost $3 at a teacher store and comes with the rubber bands!

Thursday, August 12, 2010

How did our first week go?


WONDERFUL!!

I absolutely loved our first full week of Homeschooling. It was so busy that I felt that our days were too short. This was a big surprise for me!

I was actually anxious the night before (like when you start a new job or have a new group of kids when teaching)! I thought that I would not have enough materials and lessons planned for the kids. I actually OVER Planned!

I made sure to plan something out of the house daily. Library, Pool time with friends, have friends come over to play, etc. It is 105 degrees here so we just cannot be outside right now unless we are in the water.



My son was a little reluctant the first and 4th day but I think it was from swimming the nights before. Just tired. They both did great at sitting through the lessons and participating in the lessons.



Bella was a maniac! She LOVES to work and made up some works for herself. Like this one above!
The first two days she did ask about TV ALL DAY! They watched a lot of TV this summer.

The kids did fight but not bad. The fights were not during school time though. The fighting happened during break times, lunch times and after school times. Not sure what that is about...

Our youngest student studied with us and we loved every minute he was awake during our school time!

I will be making changes to the school room this weekend. After this week I figured out that it is just too crowded.

We tended to work in the room in the mornings. Crafts on the dinning room table and worked in the living room in the afternoons for reading and spelling. So, I will be moving books to the living room making this our "library" area. All art will be in the dinning room where we can spread out! This will give us a lot more room in the school room.

Our school day started between 8:30 and 9am and we finished between 2 and 2:30pm. We had 30 minutes or more break in the morning and one full hour of lunch/play time. The only thing I did during our school time was school. Other than some quick morning chores, all of my attention is on the kids.

Here are some more pictures.


Sunday, August 8, 2010

School Starts Tomorrow!!

We are ready for home school to officially begin! We have been unschooling all summer. This means that I just put works on the shelf and they may work one day and not for two days! Just whenever they felt like it.

I've been telling the kids lately "Homeschool starts in a weeek...2 days.. etc..!" My son asked me "But, haven't we already been doing school? :-)" YES, but officially we will have a start date! August 9th! We will take first day back to school pictures and have a special breakfast! We purchased lunch bags, new school supplies, signed-up for co-op and we are ready!

Today, I want to share with you a few pictures of our school room. My loving husband worked hard along with me to get it arranged, shelves put together, etc.. We arranged the room three times!! The kids finally said "OK, this is good. Do not change it again :-)".

I have a map shelf ordered and I've changed and added works a little since I took these pictures.

When you enter the room and look to your left, this is what you see.
The shelf with the globe is the Botany and Zoology shelf. To the right of that is Language.

This is going to be the practical life shelf. Right now it has a few items that should not be there!

Small shelves have sensorial and Spanish. Next to that is one shelf with Writing/History, next to that is Math. Golden Beads will be on a different shelf. I just put those out today so I don't have a picture.

Here is the kids desk, tall shelf full of books (organized), and my desk.

Here is the chair I use to nurse the baby and to read to the kids. Next to that is the kids table.

Here you see where I display some books for the kids. The little reading area!
Also notice the two doors. I have two closets that are organized with materials, games, puzzles, and things I am saving and collecting for the baby.

This is a very small room so it took some creative arranging to get it this way!!

I have so much to share with you.

I plan to post about my planning, the kids co-op, a tour of each shelf, and what is behind the closets in the school room!

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Free Knobless Cylinder Cards

We officially start school next week! Since the school room is ready, the kids have already began working! School room tour soon!

I was trying to find free Knobless Cylinder Cards and came across yet ANOTHER great resource! Polestar Montessori. Here is the link to the free file.

By the way, just me working with these and making different patterns has sparked my kids interest. I also found images of extensions on the web and printed them out so they can look at them and try to replicate.