Thursday, April 14, 2011

Wrapping it up

We're finally wrapping up our letter A "week". There was so much I wanted to get in, and so little time that Chy and Coh wanted to cooperate. Gotta love child-led learning. :) I also decided to drag out our first week a bit to allow them to get used to the idea and "routine" of homeschooling. PLUS, I ordered Erica's (confessions of a homeschooler genius) newest disk (K4 LOTW Expansion Cirriculum) and we're waiting on that. I'm stoked.

Chyenne did a little "puzzle".

"Patter-rens" (patterns)

 Spelling apple and APPLE
 A little cut and paste practice (we haven't finished this project, some grumpy girl got mad that she cut one of her apples, so we have delayed this project for when she's more excited about it).
 Matching with upper and lower case A's. (Cohen worked on stacking paper the puzzle that Chyenne had already completed).
 Apple puzzles... color recognition for both Chyenne and Cohen.
 Counting and numbers. She did GREAT with this.
 Sequences. (This came from 1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com Carissa is great too!) yes I ran out of colored ink
 More upper and lower case letter distinction. (Uppercase was circled in pink, lowercase in purple)
 Aa coloring sheet and handwriting practice for her name. (it's light pink at the bottom)
 Another Aa worksheet (again, name-writing practice)
 Cohen colored A LOT... but he also played a lot with his baby cousin so there's not many pics.
 A story. We read and then she circled all of the A's pictured. (She actually traced all of the A's and then circled).

and here's a short video of her doing another matching game. Shapes.


Overall, we have really enjoyed learning about all A things. We discovered many ant "volcanoes" and the ants that occupy them in our yard. We ate apples and applesauce. We talked about astronauts and aliens. We read a ton of books, mostly about animals. We had a playdate with a friend named Allyssa (it was adorable when Chyenne announced "hey! your name starts with an A!" LOL). We talked about family...including AUNTS. We practiced handwriting, numbers, counting, shapes, sequences, patterns, puzzles.
and my personal favorite
A is for Alligator

Monday, April 11, 2011

You Make Me Smile

















Yep. They make me smile. :)

It's Official

It's official... I'm addicted to this blog and this blog

Simply amazing. I can't get enough of the free downloads, printables, new ideas, etc. I LOVE everything. Such creative and organized ladies.

Our days are now endlessly filled with all of their wonderful activities. Chyenne and Cohen enjoy it too!

So if you haven't yet, be sure to check out both of those blogs... but I'm warning you, they are both addicting! The LOTW and K4 cirriculum from confessions are both wonderful.
The tot school printables from tot school are also fantastic!


Pictures of our homeschool activities coming soon!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Day 2 of Homeschool

Yesterday, we were quite limited on time for "school" since my sweet babies took a late nap with daddy and we had to visit daddy's grandmother in the hospital. BUT we got a pretty good lesson in.

A is for ANT!

I took Chyenne's lead. She wanted to use the "wipe-able markers" so that's just what we did. I asked her to circle the A. She did. Then I asked her to write her A's (big and little). She did. :)
 Lovely cheesy grin, huh?
 Cohen, having fun learning. (excuse the bow. He loves to do everything sister does).
 My sweet boy.
She looked through her bag of magnet letters and found the letters "A, N, T" and I asked her to put them in the correct order to spell ant. She did, then I asked her to draw an ant. She was apprehensive at first and then I told her that ants have bodies kind of like caterpillars and a head, 6 legs, eyes and a mouth, and antennas.
 I think she did pretty good!
Gotta love the fake cheesy smile to show how proud of herself she was.
 Mommy is certainly proud!
 I'm proud of my cross-dressing, lovely son, too!
 Next, we did an ART piece about ants. A is for ant. A is also for Art. :)
 I cut Cohen's circles and taped them for him. I also wrote everything for him and allowed him to decorate.
Chyenne wanted to cut her own circles.
 But cutting craft foam is a little hard.  So she cut two and I cut one.
 Cohen had a blast. Ambidextrous? maybe.
 She also wanted to tape it down by herself. So she did.
 Next, she decorated.
 Notice, she did her letter Aa and she also put the letters "A, N, T" together to spell ant. All by herself. (I wrote ANT and she found the letters and stuck them to it).
 We discussed how ants and other insects, have SIX legs.
 Only she thought it would be best to give her ant SEVEN legs. "My ant can have as many legs as I want it to". Sheesh.
 Cohen then played with airplanes and tried to draw them too!
 Chyenne remembered her coloring page from yesterday, so she was anxious to finish it.
She traced the letters that said "Aa is for apple".
 Cheesy grin. Joy joy. And she colored the apples.
 "Mommy, I have to color all of my apples before I color the rest of my picture."
 hehe. I love her faces of concentration.
 working hard. (in the mean time, Cohen used the potty! Third time ever that he popped on the potty! Yes, I'm a proud mama!)
 She bares down so hard to color. I love it.
 ALL DONE! (Just in time to visit Great Granny in the hospital!)
I think she's a natural artist. :)
We also sang our alphabet song and went over words that started with A. We flew our little airplanes that we got from Arby's a few weeks ago. She discovered that Arby's also starts with A.