Tori read Good Night, Gorilla to Alex (and Katie) since it’s G for Gorilla week for Tot School.
It was precious. He even has his gorilla pillow pet! aw! He was so cute and attentive. I love it.
Alex decided he needed some quiet time and started looking through his Bible books. He loves this Baby’s First Bible!
They’ve been in the basket for years and I love it that he’s finally discovering and enjoying them! He’s reading Baby’s First Prayers.
We’re doing math differently this year. We’re focusing on math journals as our primary math learning.
We’re using Life of Fred and Singapore Math as our math texts. I’m gathering living math books from the library and our home bookshelves. And I’m adding more to our holiday wish list!
I found some interesting articles and supplemental materials.
Here are Katie’s and Tori’s journal all decorated. I’m sure they’ll add to them, but that’s it for now. I made stencils out of cardstock. Cutting Duck Tape with cardstock stencils is work!
Here is a page I made for Elizabeth to put in her math journal. Tori and Katie don’t have a fear of math like Elizabeth does. I hope this will serve as a reminder that she can do all things through Christ.
Elizabeth just completed a transition math class through our local school district. It was eight mornings of review and she really enjoyed it. She won a scientific calculator for being the top of her class! Proud Mama moment!
And here I am, getting all organized. When I find something awesome to go in the math journals, I pin it, I save it, I print it, and I put it in my folder here. Now, I just need to remember to use them when we get to it in the math lessons!
I found this neato mosaic puzzle at the Target dollar spot. Everyone has been fighting over it! Maybe I should go back and get a few more. It’s great for art and history too.
Tori and Katie are starting to learn skip counting and multiplication. Liz is reviewing the concept since I realize there are gaps.
I made this little booklet out of these charts and look at these fun mazes! The mazes will go in their binder too. Gotta keep those journals special! The girls use the booklet when working on their Singapore math workbooks. They’re learning beginning multiplication.
I had to help Katie a bit more with the whole skip counting concept, but she understood after trailing off on her own a bit. That rabbit finally got his carrot!
They’ve been singing the rather catchy skip counting song from this DVD. The kids all love them and Alex is learning so much too! We have several LeapFrog DVDs and keep them in the car DVD player.
The girls have really loved our new math apps for the iPad. They’re playing Operation Math here. It’s like a Mission Impossible game with math equations. Fun music too!
Multiplication activity: making squares and rectangles on the geoboards…I told them to do a 4 by 5 or a 3 by 4 and they counted the pegs to put the rubber bands in place.
I also found these fun cards for geoboards!
I have some printables to go in their math journals to help with multiplication.
I hope these changes to our math program help my girls (and me!) to understand math better and learn to love it!
Tori loves the garden. She’s the only one Dad can trust out there without supervision. She loves to go check the beans and the tomatoes and she knows when and how to pick everything. She’s learning so much!
She was excited to help prep the beans for dinner and freezing.
Alex was thrilled to sample our first watermelon.
He does like watermelon. He calls it “little lemon.” It took me a while to understand and he got very frustrated with me. sigh
We have pickled LOTS of cucumbers.
We have frozen green beans.
And we have some beautiful tomatoes – Roma, cherry, and an heirloom. They’re delicious.
We’re getting overrun by yellow squash. We have frozen lots of it. We have sautéed it, casserole’d it, grilled it, and given lots away. We’re almost sick of it!
We have onions drying in the cellar.
We have canned blackberry jam and tomato sauce.
Soon, it will be apple season and we’ll make applesauce and apple butter!
Gardening is really hard work!
Resources:
One of our summer bucket list items was to paint and get messy. It wasn’t too hot out yet, so I figured we better get to it. Summer’s almost gone!
First we had some little wooden figures to paint: snakes and tiny birdhouses (from Target dollar spot ages ago). They loved it!
Just look at that concentration!
Then we explored painting different textures on paper with different tools.
We had sponge rollers, mops, scrapers, and everything in between. I love this young artist’s pack.
Here are their finished masterpieces. They look like flower gardens!
I love how they explored color blending and different textures.
We are so very blessed to have a basement where most of our homeschooling is accomplished and our stuff is stored. This leaves the upstairs to look neat and tidy, most of the time!
Would you like a tour of our basement? I didn’t grow up with a basement and this is very exciting for me!
At the bottom of the stairs are these lovely closets and room for Alex’s sensory items and puzzle drawers (there’s another drawer to the left on the other side of the closet). There was no pretty angle to take this picture! I was balancing on the stairs! My husband built the sensory table. The purple bin holds our Montessori sand tray and under the table is our light box with manipulatives.
‘Round the corner, my main kids’ school books shelf…past and future Tapestry of Grace, science, Bible books go here. Also, some reference books are stored here that the kids don’t use as often. The bottom shelves store some Color Wonder, Do-a-Dot books, magnet books, dry erase books, and Educubes.
Our “main” school room. Tori’s and Katie’s matching desks. So pleased to have these. They match the girls’ bedroom sets, so eventually they may fit in their room, or they can take the whole set with them someday (in a far off future!) I found them at yard sales. I also found the awesome table and chairs set at TWO DIFFERENT yard sales – totaling $35! I keep our theme books in the little gutter tray under our picture frames with our daily lessons. The bulletin boards haven’t been updated with our weekly Bible verse(s) or themed word wall yet.
The window is worthless because the deck covers it and it messes up my whole wall arrangement! Oh well, we rent, so there’s nothing I can do. I’d rather not see the window well and all the critters in there. Maybe I could just get a BIG white board and cover it all up.
The girls’ cubes (modified workboxes since they share) are on the opposite wall of the above picture. I also have their weekly word family wall above it.
Alex’s corner. I moved our calendar to his area since he’s the one who needs to work on it now. There’s a chair railing than goes around the ENTIRE basement – weird and it messes with my poster placement! grr!
Every classroom should have a fishtank, no? ack, it needs cleaning!
Our media center and choice vicinity of family read alouds. The TV is my husband’s dowry, lol. He really wants to upgrade. I suppose after 8 years, we should. The screen is pretty much done – sticky and written all over.
Behind the sofa, we have our reading center. The shelf on the left holds all of Elizabeth’s books that the girls are now inheriting – American Girl, Dear America, Royal Princess Diaries, Magic Tree House, some classics. The little shelf on the right holds picture books , among them our vast collection of Berenstain Bears, Magic School Bus, and Dr. Suess.
The light green cube on the left holds current unit/week Tapestry of Grace books for the girls.
The dark green cube on the right holds our living math books for Alex and the girls.
Here is Elizabeth’s cube system (in progress). One cube per subject – history, foreign language, Bible, math, science, LA. The striped basket holds her art books and supplies. The notebooks propped on the floor need to be gone through- old papers put into the portfolio, reorganized, etc. Liz likes to do her work upstairs (away from the little ones and I don’t blame her!) I’ve given her a letter try to turn in completed work for our conference. Her agenda and TOG binder and Kindle are on the left. In the magazine file are her minioffices with a big bunch of notebook paper.
We have a craft room too. Liz’s and my sewing machines are here (messy with mending piled up!) That’s my grandmother’s sewing basket on the floor!
Here is our new craft table! I need one more chair and the three girls can sit here and work together on projects. They worked here, decorating their math journals last week.
Back upstairs is MY domain and conference area. On the left, on the other side of the wall, is the piano keyboard and kids’ computer.
There’s also another bookshelf, just inside the doorway. These two bookshelves hold reference materials and “my” books on literature and Bible. I also have some nicer children’s books on the bottom shelves that I monitor so they don’t get messed up. Some were mine when I was a kid!
I know we’ll not have this much space probably every again, but it’s so nice to be a little spread out while we can!
See our curriculum list for this year here!
We made lovely maps of landforms for geography study.
We used the book Geography from A to Z for reference. The toothpicks were for labels.
Always fun to let them get them their hands dirty mixing the flour, salt, and water! Sticky!
Fun sensory play.
I separated the dough into three sections and dyed them yellow for desert, blue for water, and green for land.
Alex liked using play dough tools.
Kate was very particular placing her land and water dough.
Tori loved the hands on activity!
Liz liked rolling out her dough.
We placed toothpicks in parts of the wet dough maps.
After the maps dried, we glued handwritten flags to the toothpicks, labeling the land formations.
It will dry and harden overnight. You can add painted details!
Also see this salt dough map of the Nile River Delta. Check out no-bake cookie dough maps and chocolate chip cookie maps.
Mix ingredients together with a wooden spoon or plastic spatula or by hand.
Divide into thirds. Add yellow to 1/3 (desert), blue to 1/3 (water), and green to 1/3 (grass) to make land maps.
It will harden so keep in a zip bag in fridge until ready to use.
Added food coloring to water and froze it in an ice cube tray.
We painted with it. I think I need to make the colors darker. It was pretty watercolor-looking abstract stuff though. The kids loved it. I think freezing the colored water in muffin tins and using wooden sticks would make for better holding onto. Maybe.
Of course, it was 97* so we painted outside on the driveway.
Ths kids had lots of fun watching the ice melt onto the paper. They explored and learned.
Homemade frozen pops! I found this cute little pop tray at Walmart, I think.
We’re going in a different direction for math this year.
I’m using Life of Fred math with Elizabeth. We just got the Fractions book. She does the lessons so quickly that I am having her complete a couple each day. We’ll try to do a journal every other day. I am so not a math teacher, so this will be difficult for me to get in the groove. I plan to start out slowly to help us get the hang of it. She can do her LoF work in the journals to keep everything together. I will supplement with mathbooking (math+notebooking!) as needed. Liz really hates lapbooks, so I will have to make it not so artsy, more note taking and visual interest. We’re collecting living books; a few I have already, and lots of others are at the library.
With Tori and Katie, we’re doing Singapore math 1B and I will supplement with Life of Fred and we’ll do journals maybe once a week or so. Tori really loves math and makes her daddy proud. I’m going slowly with these two because there’s no rush. We’ll do a Singapore lesson every Monday, then LoF on Tuesday. Wednesdays will be journal day. Thursdays and Fridays they can do apps, board games, or Funnix.
After searching the Internet for ideas, I’ve come across some awesome websites with a plethora of math ideas. I’ve listed them here in no particular order.
I love middle school math blogs since most middle school teachers only teach one or two subjects and if these math teachers have great blogs showing all their fun ideas, then they are probably great math teachers!
The elementary blogs often have lots of great fun teaching tips, but you may have to dig to find the math goodies in between all their other fun stuff.
This is what started it all. I have ruminated on this for about a year, y’all. My husband is old-school. He would love to have a cute little one room schoolhouse in our basement, but that’s just not feasible or desirable with a toddler, 2 primary girls, and a middle schooler! Often, I have 4 different levels to teach! (Tori and Katie are a year apart in age, but eons different in personality and sometimes quite different in abilities!). Tori wants to learn cursive, for instance, and Katie is still mastering manuscript.
1. Middle School Math Madness. I think this lady really enjoys what she does! I wish I had had a teacher like her in 7th grade!
2. Runde’s Room has some great products for sale and lots of fun freebies. Very exciting stuff! She’s pinned all over Pinterest and has a great teacher store. I love her math journaling ideas.
3. Homeschool Share has some great math notebooking and lapbook materials! Subtraction lapbook and games and a division lapbook. These will be fun for Tori and Katie. Liz won’t do them, I bet. We’ll see. She can choose if she wants to or not.
4. Math N Spire: Some really great math lab ideas. Some really “getting in and doing it math.” Innovative! Liz might like the projects. Great for kinesthetic learners!
5. Step Into Second Grade: A good blog for primary work, not just math. I love the flip book idea! Also printables and freebies! Great pics and examples to help me, a visual learner.
6. Tales of Frogs and Cupcakes…is that not a great blog title? I’m so jealous, lol…Great pics and examples for math journals. Again, I’m visual and this has eye candy!
7. The First Grade Parade has many great ideas! I love this one for money learning. I have to adapt some stuff for notebooking since it’s classroom poster type stuff.
8. Homeschool Math blog with great resources and sister site Homeschool Math. Great articles!
9. Blog, She Wrote: math journaling article with great links to other sites. A mom in action with math journaling her kiddos! hurrah!
10. Our Journey Westward. Lovely examples of using living math books. Cindy writes her own curriculum at Shining Dawn Books – Now Our Journey Westward.
So, I hope to begin with our math journals in a couple weeks with our math journals. I have some lovely composition books, but I may go get some blank journals instead. Liz has a summer math course the next two weeks which I hope will give her some much-needed review and more confidence in math.
I’m kinda excited to get started. I fear math. I really do. I can do money math and the basics and that’s about it.
I am so pleased that Elizabeth loves the Life of Fred books. I probably projected my math fears onto her. My husband says so. This whole pre-algebra thing is at my math abilities limit. I really don’t know how I got through algebra I&II and geometry in high school. So, I’ll do things differently with Tori and Katie. I’ll probably have to do everything differently with Alex. He’s a boy. He throws me for a loop every single time.
We’ve been fitting in Tot School wherever we can this summer. We haven’t done much formally and I often didn’t have a camera available to get cute shots of the Bubba!
I gave Alex his share of dough when we made our salt maps. He loved doing this!
He’s often working alongside his sisters.
Homemade play dough is great. I really can’t stand the smell of the name brand store bought stuff. I often make ours yummy-scented and use really neat colors. I store them in bags in the fridge and they keep forever.
Alex likes to help with chores. He likes to use the spray mop. I guess he needed that stool for leverage or something. Maybe he’s got a little Captain in him.
He really loves mopping! But I had to dry the floor with a towel when he was “done”.
Coloring his “Rose Window” for history. We studied medieval cathedrals. I love it when he participates with his sisters. He’s getting to be such a big boy!
He really loves the early readers on the iPad. Alex knows all the colors of the rainbow!
I found this great little fishy tray on clearance at Walmart and knew I had to have it. We used it to sort Goldfish crackers by color, of course.
Alex is saying, “I did it!” and is really just excited that he gets to eat them now.
Alex does love “his” iPad. He has really learned so much from the apps in the last year. He loves Preschool Adventure lately. His favorite is the arcade, especially the rocket letter game where he gets to blast the robots. I am impressed that he can identify and differentiate the uppercase and lowercase letters. The sounds remind me of the Cybermen in Doctor Who. creepy!
Alex got a cute big boy haircut at JCP. They’re free for kids all of August!
Some of my favorite shots. Alex started gymnastics with his sisters (different classes). He got some slick sunglasses in a kids’ meal from Arby’s. He loves feeding the ducks. And his darling spiky new big boy haircut. He was so thrilled to get a sucker.
Alex has shown much more interest in doing school lately!
I plan to continue the following:
I’m following the ideas in The Well-Trained Mind and Ambleside Online: First Language Lessons, Winnie the Pooh, Christian Liberty Nature Reader, monthly theme printables – if I can more advanced ones to match Alex’s themes. Quarterly, we study an artist, composer, hymns, poet. I post them on our calendar board.
Here’s their 1st grade curriculum:
We still like reading lists and other things from Ambleside Online. We love the quarterly artist, composer, hymns, poet.
Here’s her 7th grade curriculum:
Every Day: math, reading, foreign language
Mondays: Intro to TOG unit, art lesson, science lesson intro
Liz watches Latin DVD lesson, reads Greek and French lessons (much shorter than Latin lessons)
Tuesday: history reading (TOG), science reading
Wednesdays: map work and geography (TOG), science reading and notebooking
Thursdays: Lit reading (TOG), LA notebooking, science reading and notebooking
Fridays: finish reading with TOG and science and notebooking, Liz has a science test biweekly
Saturdays: finish up any notebooking, work with Dad on science experiments, history projects, nature study
Because I get bogged down in stuff and often don’t remember important events until after the fact, here is my reminder of appropriate themes for certain months. Some themes don’t matter when you do them, but I put them where I needed filling. I must remember to gather materials beforehand. ha!
August: summer themes (BBQ), nursery rhymes, dinosaurs
September: apples and leaves, autumn, community helpers
October: pumpkins, Halloween, space, transportation
November: harvest and Thanksgiving, farms
December: Hanukkah, Christmas, family
January: New Year, snow and winter, MLK Jr. Day, bears
February: Groundhog Day, Chinese New Year, Valentines, President’s Day, health
March: St. Patrick’s, animals
April: spring and Easter, weather
May: Cinco de Mayo, Mother’s Day and flowers, bugs
June: Father’s Day, gardening, frogs, beach
July: Fourth of July, camping
Elizabeth is 11 and in 7th grade.
Victoria is 6 and Katherine is 5 and they’re in 1st grade (funny how they have different abilities! Tori loves math and science and Katie can narrate very well and can read much more fluently than Tori).
Alexander is 2 and does Tot School (when his mood is right).
I love it when all the kids learn together. I love Tapestry of Grace for this. Here are the children coloring Rose Windows from cathedrals and Elizabeth is researching them on the iPad. She read the article to her siblings.
We are studying Medieval Times this year. We can’t wait to dress up Alex as a knight or something. I wish we lived close to a Medieval Times restaurant. I found the coolest medieval cookbook at the library. We shall have us a medieval feast as our unit celebration!
The kids often have a hard time comprehending when I just read from the Bible. We often read from our Bible story book for TOG history. We needed something more though. We’ve been loving Grapevine Bible Studies. I contacted Dianna a couple months ago and asked if I could do reviews for her and she happily obliged. I really thought the idea was silly at first, but the kids love it. They really get it. I need something the kids can all do together and this fits well.
We’ve used Apologia science Exploring Creation elementary series from day 1. Tori and Katie did Swimming Creatures last year. This year we are learning about Land Animals. Elizabeth is beginning General Science this year.
We also do nature notebooking each month. I read a Christian Liberty nature reader to Tori and Katie almost every day.
Um. I was an English teacher in my past life. I don’t have a curriculum for this. I know there are some great ones out there. I’ve looked at them and I just can’t bring myself to spend money on them.
I use the TOG writing ideas each week, mostly for Elizabeth. Elizabeth learns her grammar from her Latin program. She started with Prima Latina in 3rd grade. IF I feel she needs a refresher, I teach it to her. That’s what I did. I don’t need a curriculum to teach grammar or writing or reading. I think I am blessed with these talents. I love literature and writing and all that grammar stuff. Liz love to read. She carries her Kindle with her everywhere. I loaded some free classics as well as some TOG and Ambleside Online reading books on there and she loves it.
I use online printables for Tori and Katie. The girls really love her word families. We read A LOT. We do copywork. We get lots of books from the library for history, science, and literature. We’re also working our way through First Language Lessons. I don’t make them do every lesson. Tori asked me last month: “Mom, when are going to move on from nouns? I get it.” So we move on!
I teach them all a word each week or so in German, French, and Spanish. This week is the word “sun.” Die Sonne, le soleil, el sol. They love it. Katie is begging to learn Spanish. I guess I can try to fit it in. Our library has a Mango languages app.
Liz is currently going through Elementary Greek. It’s just ok. She will begin Second Form Latin when she completes the Greek study. Any recommendations out there for a good Greek program? Liz really loves it but I am less than thrilled with this text.
We love Artistic Pursuits! All the girls enjoy these lessons. We also study the artists on Ambleside Online. I really need to incorporate more arts and crafts. TOG has some great ideas, and I am just lazy.
We have lots of computer games and iPad apps. Technology, check.
I think Tori and Katie need to start up Funnix again, taking turns. It would give me time to work with Alex one on one. I need to set a schedule up a couple times each week.
Tori, Katie, and Alex are taking gymnastics this year. They just started and they love it! We took a couple years off and Tori and Katie are just picking up where they left off. Katie is playing soccer these next couple months. Liz and Tori will probably run track again in the spring. Not sure what to do for Liz during the fall and winter. She wants to start Taekwondo, but it’s just not affordable or convenient. They recently pooled their allowances and bought a couple Just Dance Wii games. They make you sweat!
I also plan to begin a homemaker’s journal with Elizabeth. I have plans to get a lovely scrapbook and pretty tab dividers and let her help me plan it. My mom just gave me a subscription to Better Homes&Gardens and I think Liz could use that as a jumping off point to begin her home idea scrapbook. She can start collecting decorating ideas, recipes to try, cleaning and organization tips, beauty and hygiene tips, hospitality and event planning/holiday ideas.
Basically, it will be a real life Pinterest since I will not let her have her own account yet. (I’m a mean mom!) I hope it helps her get more adept at running a household and doing her chores. If she gets to make some decisions, then maybe that will generate interest? I was doing so much more at her age and she doesn’t even want to learn. sigh
This is an exciting year!
