Read Across America Unit Study

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March 11, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

Most educators celebrate Read Across America week.

Launched in 1998 by the National Education Association (NEA) and guided by a committee of educators, NEA’s Read Across America is the nation’s largest celebration of reading. This year-round program focuses on motivating children and teens to read through events, partnerships, and reading resources that are about everyone, for everyone.

Many individuals and organizations have stepped away from focusing on Dr. Seuss’s birthday for Read Across America week.

We celebrate diverse authors and subjects. Many teachers and parents eschew Seuss for other, better, more diverse choices.

While my kids were little, I never knew or considered Dr. Seuss books as anything but cute rhymes.

I have an entire bookshelf full of Dr. Seuss books and I’m so upset about it.

Instead of overusing and misusing the word “cancel” why can’t we just say “criticize” and “critical”? Don’t we want to model and teach critical thinking and literary analysis?

Now that I know better, I do better.

Do you know the Truth about Seuss?

Racism and Dr. Seuss:

It is NOT “cancel culture.” It is facing consequences.

A popular homeschool blogger comments about censorship.

So many Dr. Seuss stories are iconic – memorable traditions we read and watch every year.

I think as white people, we tend to overlook subtle, covert, and even overt racism and make excuses for the writer or artist. We wave it away as “a sign of the times” or “how it was back then.”

This is laziness.

It’s important we reevaluate what we expose our kids to and if we continue to read and watch these stories, we do so critically and with more awareness and discuss these issues with our kids. We owe it to them.

Read Across America Unit Study

We went to story time at the library and got neat coloring pages!

Rhyming words sheets

Left foot, right foot sheets

Putting stickers on all the F’s

Literacy Resources

How do you celebrate Read Across America?

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March Tot School

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March 4, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

Alex had a fun week and we did lots of activities together and with his sisters.

He turns 2 next month!

“painting” with shaving cream at co-op

Our March sensory bin with lentils, shamrocks, pom poms, black cauldrons, and a wooden rainbow. Alex loves filling the cauldrons with the lentils.

Moon balancing game

Playing with Geoboards and rubber bands. Alex’s favorite color is orange!

Excited about new light box tools!

Matching colors: plastic stir sticks (from Walmart) to clear bins (from Dollar Tree)

Making his name with plastic stir sticks (I did this). He LOVED this! Alex tried to make his own letters and got the X down!

Making circles (Alex calls them “O’s”) with half circle transparent blocks. And playing Peek a Boo.

It snowed Thursday and Friday, so there was snow play!

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Montessori Language Works

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March 2, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Where has the time gone? It’s flying by!

We’re loving First Language Lessons.

The girls wrote the full names of everyone in our family. This took a little effort and explaining. The girls each have two middle names, to honor my family name that will not be carried on since I’m an only child. Bubba has three middle names since he’s the only boy. We had to honor grandpas!

Here are the sentence cubes I mentioned last week. We made silly sentences with them. “The happy frog shut his mouth.” “The green frog slides on the lily pad.” We reviewed nouns and learned about verbs and adjectives. I used the Montessori grammar symbol 3 part cards to help.

silent E sheets with a letter from our movable alphabet box I made with Lauri Toys Mini Alphabet Avalancheand an adjustable craft box from Walmart (I think this is the one). Tori is almost a fluent reader!

Book about tails they colored and read. They loved the kites and girls’ ponytails pages. Unexpected!

Some fun activities from our homeschool co-op…

Snow paint (glue and shaving cream)

Tori lost her THIRD tooth yesterday!

We practiced reading, sight words, handwriting, sensory and practical life stuff too.

Tori is quite the helper: she swept and mopped the kitchen and bathrooms all by herself! She and Katie cleaned up the playroom (and now I know they can do it quickly and well!).

Tori also helps out by playing with her brother when Elizabeth or I need to do something. I love her servant’s heart!

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Sheep Unit Study

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February 27, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 4 Comments

We are Royal Little Lambs after all.

We had fun with a sheep nature study!

There is a small sheep farm near where Elizabeth takes music lessons.

It’s in a residential neighborhood! So funny. Wonder what their neighbors think? There are always 2-3 sheep and several ducks and chickens in the yard. Last week, there were two lambs and one very pregnant ewe! I want one!

We watched the sheep through the fence. I even acquired some wool that was stuck in the wire.

We read the sheep section in Handbook of Nature Study.

We then discussed it and completed a Warm as Wool unit. I definitely want to go back to Homeschool Share and do more with those pages!

Tori and Katie really enjoyed learning about sheep. They love farm animals!

We went through the questions together orally and then I wrote the answers on a dry erase board for them to copy onto their papers.

The girls are doing so well with their handwriting!

Then, they drew their own picture of sheep on another page and we talked about the Latin name for sheep.

We sang an extended version of Baa Baa Black Sheep.

We gathered all our sheep toys together for a meeting.

We felt wool clothing.

The girls asked if we could buy some lamb to eat.

Love those girls! Off to the store!

Resources:

Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock
Baa Baa Black Sheep by Iza Trapani
Warm as Wool Children’s Book with Learning Ideas by Mama’s Learning Corner
Sheep Lapbook by Homeschool Share
Sheep Notebooking Pages at Homeschool Helper Online
Mammals Notebooking Pages

ProSchool Membership - Productive Homeschooling

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Ogden Union Station

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February 27, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

A visit to the Ogden Union Station and Train Museum, just for the fun of it!

Alex loved seeing all the models and train parts.

The Caboose!

Here he is in the caboose.

Aaron’s dad used to work in a caboose, so this was a fun photo op!

A model of an engine. Alex wanted to go, go, go!

I love the photo op of the train car. It looks real!

We loved the model trains too. They started at the push of a button.

Visit Union Station

Open Monday – Saturday 10:00am–5:00pm
Closed July 4th, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day

Adults $5 | Senior $4 | Student $4 | Child $3
Family Day Pass $15

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Bubba School 22 Months

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February 26, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

Our Tot School Update at 22 Months

Enjoying playing the iPad with Toca Boca Doctor

This kid likes mushrooms. I have to hide them if I want any!

playing with fraction blocks

Alex still likes pouring and sorting. Just didn’t get any pictures of that!

It amazes me how much this little guy learns just by playing.

He recognizes many letters and points them out to us all the time, everywhere.

His vocabulary is pretty extensive, and he doesn’t turn 2 until April 1!

He’s following directions ever so much better at our homeschool co-op.

I even was able to leave him in his PE class with Tori and Katie last week and he did awesome!

He knows lots of shapes and loves his FISHER-PRICE Games MATCHIN’ MIDDLES. He loves Oreos too. He licks the middles out and hands me the cookies. yuck!

I’m going to try reintroducing some Tot School printables and see if he’s interested. He wasn’t a few weeks ago.

Watching Sesame Street on YouTube. I have no idea why he’s pointing at me.

Playing the iPad with our new apps we reviewed.

cutting paper at co-op! big boy!

getting ready to slide. He paused on purpose for a picture, but he wouldn’t smile. Tough guy.

He’s growing up so fast!

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Presidents Day Notebooking

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February 26, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

I found and downloaded the cutest sentence pages! I adapted them to be more Montessori by drawing the grammar symbols beside the words and on the worksheets.

We have officially completed the You Can Read sight word program! I don’t know if I really did it justice since the girls didn’t like some of the activities. They did really like the sentences and word searches and different fonts. I think they learned a lot though and we can review now. I found this neato site to study word families!

The girls are kinda tired of the Letter of the Week work too. I think we’ll transition a little early into 1st grade work so we don’t get bogged down in minutiae. This month we’ve been moving into Year 1 with Ambleside Online and The Well Trained Mind curriculum.

Working on Presidents’ Day printables…

cutting and pasting summary

Tori working on her word families pages. She begged to do it while I was making dinner!

Working on Draw Write Now. This week was a turkey. Tori wants to go hunt one for dinner next Thanksgiving! Should this concern me?

Katie loves our new Melissa & Doug Deluxe Wooden USA Map Puzzle. I am amazed how many states and capitals she knows! She loves playing the Stack the States app, which I think is too challenging for her, but it must be working!

We also read books about presidents and the USA.

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Valentines Preschool Activities

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February 17, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

We had some fun with Valentine packs this week.

Thanks to Homeschool Creations and 2 Teaching Mommies for their beautiful and creative activities!

Valentine’s Week Homeschool

Valentine chicken noodle soup…see the heart noodles?

Heart shaped morning message for corrections and directions.

Valentine math pages for fun

Graphing with candy conversation hearts.

We love these observation sheets!

Reading and beginning copywork (Beatrix Potter)!

Painting roses with celery ends.

We also made and exchanged Valentines at co-op.

We finished our Valentine poetry.

We ate too much candy and got lovely scented soap roses and cute kitten cards.

Hope y’all had a Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Valentine Montessori

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February 11, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 3 Comments

Montessori Fun in February

I found the neatest little heart stencils at Wal-Mart.

The hearts had a spiral gear in them, very similar to the Spirograph! I showed the girls how to use it, and they were ecstatic!

Poetry work. We almost have these memorized.

We’re also memorizing “The Caterpillar” with First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind: Level 1 (Second Edition) (First Language Lessons).

What’s in the box?

math FFG and weaving sea critters.

Play dough girls.

We made pumpkin pie (smells good!) play dough and “snow” (just add glitter) play dough. Get our play dough recipes!

We started a morning message page with calendar time and the girls really like that it’s personal. It encourages them to read and follow directions. Sometimes they highlight sight words or draw a

certain colored shape at the bottom. I always ask for a hug!

Nature art with contact paper and nature-y stuff…We still have snow on the ground, so they really had to hunt for things to make a collage. It was really bright out.

Tori’s finished collage. I love the lines.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Our Curriculum for 2011-2012

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February 6, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

The solution I discovered a few years ago to homeschool burnout midyear is to begin transitioning into our next “grade level” of school. We educate year-round, so we don’t follow the traditional school calendar and we don’t completely take summers off. I began this non-traditional schedule with Elizabeth when we first began homeschooling since she finished her curriculum about March. Then, I panicked, what were we to do until August?!

Our Curriculum for 2011-2012

Elizabeth is 11.

She’s mostly in 6th grade.

One of the freedoms and blessings of home educating is that we don’t have to maintain that grade level standard. We do have to report to our local schools a grade level on the form, so I go with whatever math level we’re currently using. Elizabeth reads on a high school level, and has vast interests in languages, history, and art.

She does like science, but we’ve not pushed her because I wasn’t ready to move on to Apologia General this year. One reason is that I wasn’t ready to put Elizabeth in with the high schoolers at our homeschool co-op. I am kinda worried about how she would do socially with 13-18 year olds.

In reviewing our proposed scope and sequence and upcoming schedule for 7th grade, the workload is going to increase exponentially. I hope Elizabeth can rise to the challenge. She has done better this past month or so; I hope that means she is maturing. First semester had some rough patches.

After intense research and polling the members of our homeschool co-op about math curricula…it seems our best bet (since we’ve used Singapore from grades 1-6) is to go through Saxon 8/7 and then dive into Video Text algebra.

So, next month, we’ll continue with

Tapestry of Grace
First Form Latin
Ambleside Online
First Start French
Write Shop Storybuilders
Artistic Pursuits Book One: The Elements of Art And Composition
Bible journaling and copywork

Elizabeth takes P.E. and drama at co-op and a cooking class through our community learning program.

We need to get out and do more nature activities, but I’m just not a winter girl.

We’ll be finishing up Singapore math 6B and Apologia Swimming Creatures. I plan to wait until this fall to start the new math and science. Co-op will probably offer an experiment course.

Track should be starting up soon! Elizabeth and Victoria can hardly wait!

The girls are doing Kindergarten work.

They’re not fluent readers yet and we need some work with handwriting. I find that I’m getting frustrated with them because they’re not where I want them to be. Some days, they really get the concepts we’re doing…and other days I want to pull my hair out.

They’re finishing up the program at Raising Rock Stars Kindergarten and You Can Read.

I started First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind: Level 1 (Second Edition) (First Language Lessons) with them last week and they love it.

My son likes to sit with us and be nearby. We give him fun Montessori toys and keep him busy and watch him play.

We’re reading The rainbow book of American history : Illustrated by James Daugherty.

I plan to supplement U.S. history with a download from a while ago called Read-draw-remember American History Activities.

We will continue to use Tapestry of Grace, Ambleside Online, and Artistic Pursuits, Book One: An Introduction to the Visual Arts.

Here are the co-op classes we’ve done: Swimming Creatures experiment course, a StArt class that’s really popular, a PE class, and a geography class with Window on the World: When We Pray God Works.

We’ve done a few lessons from Draw Write Now, Book 1: On the Farm-Kids and Critters-Storybook Characters (Draw-Write-Now). I will introduce some real copywork next week.

I’m thinking about doing Apologia Land Animals for science in the fall. I kinda want to see if co-op offers a science course for this age group next fall.

I still like Singapore math for grades 1-6, but my husband has never really cared for it, so we may change. They still have a K math workbook to complete and lots of fun hands-on activities. We’ll continue to do some Montessori works. The girls have been great about going out to play even when it’s cold. Good for them and gives me a break!

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