Tot School

~Emily is 34 months old~

We had such a great week of school this week. Emily loved adding in some fall activities!

Hammering golf tees into egg carton

 

Playing with wiki sticks

 

Using dropper to put water into tray (she didn’t enjoy this as much as I thought she would)

Spooning acorns and pumpkins into pumpkin ice tray and putting stickers on paper

Playing with plastic shapes and painting Halloween picture

Making a scarecrow to match the picture. She loved this activity!! I printed it from Kidssoup. It is a paid membership but worth every penny.

That pretty much wraps up our 6th week of school!

Countdown to Halloween

Our family just loves fall and all of the fun activities that happen during this time of year like fall festivals, going to the pumpkin patch, the leaves changing colors, the fair and of course trick or treating.  This year I thought it would be fun this year to make a calendar to countdown to Halloween. I loved the one I saw here so I made my own version. I took little colored envelopes I found in the teacher section of the Dollar Tree and glued them to black poster board and added cut outs, stickers etc. to decorate them. I will put a long black slip of paper in each one of our activity for the day.

Some of my ideas so far:

Paint a pumpkin, make goop, go to pumpkin patch, carve pumpkin, go to the zoo, family Halloween/dress up party, make candy apples, various Halloween/Fall crafts, walking in the woods, Halloween movie night, the fair, and that is about all I have for now. I plan on getting all of the slips of paper filled out and put in this afternoon. What fun things do you have planned for October? 

Wisdom From A 5 Year Old

This was our conversation in the car while running a few quick errands that end up taking twice as long as I thought. I had not planned on going inside anywhere so I just wore what I was cleaning in… shorts with a paint stain and a t-shirt. Not to mention that my hair looked lovely!!

Ellie: Mom I am hungry!! We have been running errands forever.

Me: I will stop and grab you guys lunch and you can eat it in the car.

Ellie: Can we please eat it there so I don’t spill any of my food.

Me: No, because I am wearing grubby clothes and my hair is a mess.

Ellie: Mom, it is not what you look like on the outside but how you are on the inside that counts. Remember you shouldn’t care what others think.

OK seriously….what do you say to that??

Me: You are absolutely right!

Why didn’t I just say we don’t have time!!!

Having School Here There and Everywhere

In the past two weeks we have done school on schedule but we haven’t done school in our school room very much! We had a day that was a little cooler so I just took our workbox system outside  and we sat at the patio table and did our work. Emily enjoyed this even more then Ellie because I let her make a mess with her activities and boy did she ever. Instead of reading our books on the sofa like normal we read and ate our snack in our swing set playhouse. I am not going to lie….I enjoy the soft sofa way more then the hard wood floor but the girls love it!

Several times in the last few weeks we have loaded up my backpack with school books and the girls and I have headed to the mall Barnes & Noble for school (yes, I  look like a dork walking around the mall with a loaded backpack). When we get there both girls pick out ridiculously big stacks of books and while they are working I read to them and if there is work Ellie needs to really concentrate on I will help her and then we will take a break and read books after. It is also a great incentive to have the play area to go to if we get our work done in time. I use the play area for PE:) So where else do you do school?

Kindergarten with Ellie

We are into our 4th week of school and it is going really well. Having the first 6 weeks planned out has been wonderful. I have tweaked a few things along the way but we have stuck to it for the most part. So here how everything is going:

Math U See Primer-  Still really easy at this point but will be getting a little more challenging soon

Explode the Code – Going pretty good. The work is easy for her but she doesn’t love all the writing involved.

Happy Phonics – She still loves this and looks forward to playing the games.

My Father’s World 1st grade– We are taking this very slow but it is going really well. We are all enjoying the bible portion of it.

Artistic Pursuits – I love this and Ellie likes it but just not as much as me:)

Handwriting Without Tears – This is a great great program but this is where we butt heads. She wants to write her way and doesn’t want me to help her and doesn’t enjoy writing during school but loves writing on her own.

Five In A Row – I will do separate posts on our FIAR activities.

Teach Reading 100 Easy Lessons -  Ellie hated this when we started several months ago so I put it up and about a month later she said she wanted to give it another chance. I was shocked because I hadn’t even mentioned it. Anyway, we started it back and she actually seems to look forward to it. We don’t do it during school time but right before rest time and it only takes 10 min. It is working great and her reading is taking off!

More then anything we read lots and lots of books!!

We have had two bad school days but we have brushed them off and started fresh the next day!! I am so blessed to be able to homeschool my girls!

Tot School

~32 months~

Here is what we did last week in tot school wearing only our big girl panties:

Lots of puzzles and coloring books

 

Transferring pom poms and putting marbles on golf tees

Lots of doodling on workbook pages and building with pegs

Putting stickers on paper

 

Emily only did school one day last week so it was a pretty laid back week.

Bible Study

Tuesday night has become our family bible study night. We have done bible studies as a family before but only sporadically so it is nice knowing that we have a scheduled night. We are using Leading Little One’s to God. I am really enjoying it and I love hearing the girls answer the questions. You just never know what they are going to come up with. Every Tuesday I put a dessert recipe in Ellie’s workbox for us to all make together to eat during our bible study. The first week we made these yummy brownies and last week we made these cute sunflower cookies from Makes and Takes.

We iced sugar cookies that I bought from the bakery with yellow frosting, put candy corn around the edge and chocolate chips in the middle. They look like owl eye’s when they are side by side !

Seeds Family Worship

I read about the Seeds Family Worship CD’s several months ago on Homeschool Creations blog and I bookmarked it. Well the other day I finally went to You Tube and listened to some of the songs and I really liked them so I ordered the CD Seeds of Courage. Can I just tell you how much I love love that CD!! The best part is the girls love it too. Basically it is scripture set to contemporary music. You can read more about Seeds Family Worship on Homeschool Creations review.  Also, Homeschool Creations has a discount code so you can get 20% off! There are five CD’s total and I can’t wait to order the other four! I recommend going to You Tube and listening for yourself.

New Look

I have a new look!! Have you noticed? OK technically I don't have a new look but my blog does! I wish I could tell you how I did it but I didn't do it... my very dear friend did and she tells you how in this post. Thanks Katy!!!

Tot School

    ~Emily is 32 weeks old~

After taking about a month off from school we started back this past week. The girls were very excited and so was I knowing that I had 6 weeks planned:) I added an extra activity for Emily so instead of having 3 boxes to choose from each day she has 4. Here is what Emily did this week:

Magnetic Pom Pom’s. I can’t remember where I printed these sheets from!! I thought I printed them from Home Grown Hearts but I can’t find them but I will keep looking!

 

Window Clings (Both girls love these)

Match the small picture to the large picture using a magnifying glass. She loved this activity!!! I printed it from here.

Playing with Handwriting Without Tears letter pieces– She made roads to drive her cars on.

Color Wonder

 Putting noodles in a cheese shaker

  Playing Candyland – This continues to be one of her favorite games!

 Color Matching file folder game printed at Confessions Of A Homeschooler

  Pouring Water

AquaDoodle Mat

  The big hit of the week was finding alphabet puzzle pieces in the rice. I got the idea from here.

  Eye Spy Bottle that she played with for all of one second!

All in all it was a great first week of school! To see more tot school ideas visit 1+1+1=1.