We’ve all been rather under the weather around here last week, so we didn’t do a whole lot of preschool.
Here are the girls painting snow.
We used liquid watercolors.
That was a big hit! They loved that!
My daughter and I came up with this idea to organize all our morning circle time things in one place.
This was great when my kids were very young, and we still incorporate lots of this now that my kids are teens and tweens.
We all come together as a family on the living room sofas after breakfast for read alouds, prayer, Bible study, scripture reading, missionary stories, music, and more.
My daughter and I have read the Bible in 90 Days
We’ve done SOAP journals. (S.O.A.P. stands for Scripture, Observation, Application and Prayer.)
She did a reading plan through Hands On Bible 
I am NOT a morning person, so we often “do” Bible in the afternoon or evening if we have a busy day.
We did Leading Little Ones to God one year.
Glow in the Dark Fish is a nice book for families.
We’ve read through The Dig.
We’ve completed The Talk series about biblical sex ed.
We often read a proverb and psalm every day (there are 31 of those guys, so that works out nicely most months…)
I need to find something short (Sure, I’d love to meditate and pray for hours on end, but let’s be honest… Who has time for that?) and powerful to do for my own devotional time. I’ve been reading and praying and journaling before bedtime. Mamas have to fit it in when we can. It’s sometimes so hard, especially when dad is deployed and I’m exhausted from doing it all.
Learning and memorizing scripture is so important for our future faith.
The girls loved My ABC Bible Verses and these printable cards.
We also loved Songs for Saplings and printables.
SEEDS Family Worship were also good for a while with these printables.
We have a Charlotte Mason Bible Scripture memorization box. The kids read the cards to us at dinner each night. Each prays for a missionary from missionary prayer cards.
I love short and sweet prayer books for moms and kids.
I still love The Power of a Praying Mom and Praying Circles Around Your Children.
We had the whole set of Baby’s First Prayers. (also Nativity and Bible)
We also have a prayer cube.
My daughter made this darling little prayer wheel in AWANA last week and we will incorporate that into our Bible time.
We love reading and learning about missionaries. We love historical reading and learning about heroes of the faith.
We loved Hero Tales.
We now read through Christian Heroes missionary stories along with our chronological history reading.
I think I’m going to start stepping it up with some character traits study. While we often address character as it comes up in our Bible reading and homeschool studies, sometimes, it’s good to have a theme each week too and see how we can incorporate that into our relationships.
Homeschool Share has some great lapbooks.
These are some awesome character cards to use in all sorts of ways.
Education Cubes really engages the kids!
We often include a hymn, classical composer, or a folk song.
We love incorporating our picture study into morning circle time.
We love to read poetry that coincides with our chronological history. We also read poetry and listen to classical music with tea time.
Our circle time and basket is ever evolving as we grow and update. It’s a great resources for all ages – kids and parents!
Resources:
Here is Big Sister reading to Little Sisters. They love this anatomy book!
Here is the little clay girl with toothpick skeleton they made from lesson 2.
They also made some layered human body paper dolls from a Scholastic workbook Easy Make & Learn Projects: Human Body (Grades 2-4)
and are working on a cell model mobile. We’re focusing on healthy eating this week with a Food Pyramid bulletin board and food file folder games from File Folder Fun. (oh, the alliteration!)
Tori and Katie made little log cabins out of pretzels.
I found the printable at TeacherFileBox.com. We’re looking for some paper people to print to add to their pictures…
for the sun, but that didn’t turn out so pretty so we’re going to add some other paint to make it more yellow later.
We also finished up the letter Z. They worked on anatomy science 
We enjoyed watching snow and birds. We went to the Wild Birds and bought 3 new feeders and 3 bags of birdseed and we’ve laughed at these guys fluttering around. Not sure what they are cuz I’m from the East and these western and mountain birds are sure different! I think it’s a type of phoebe or junco…I need to buy a new bird ID book! We also have lots of sparrows and chickadees. They haven’t discovered the other feeders yet..
A great schedule and chore chart system we used for a while this year.
I found this idea on Currclick. I think it will work better than any other chore system we’ve used. I must remember to remind the girls to utilize it.
I have acquired the cards from various sources…Homeschool Creations, Homeschool Share, Heart of Wisdom…I plan to combine school and chore activities on one page to save space. We really don’t need more than 16 squares each day between the 3 girls. They usually help each other with the chores. That can be good and can also cause problems when all 3 are in 1 bathroom trying to clean the toilet, for instance. :)~
I got the pocket chart and clock schedule at Target’s dollar spot over the summer. I cut the clock chart into strips and Voilà ! I’ve just been lazy not getting to doing this until now.
Here is a close-up of Elizabeth’s chart. I made the titles on Publisher and I thought putting what they did today rather than “Lizzie’s Chores” would be more motivational. I put the cards on the white grid and they move their cards to the colored grid as they are completed. They love the color coding with their favorite colors. :)
They get $1 per week allowance, but they’re not good at remembering to ask for that and I forget to get cash for them. They each tithe 10¢ and give 10¢ to missions each week though.
Some recommend to put some little treats in a bin and if they complete their charts, they can pick one…daily? weekly? I’ve never been one to dangle the carrot, but they’re not doing so well lately, especially the 10 year old, and the littles follow suit! I’m too tired to do all the chores all the time!
Note: We no longer use nor condone chore charts, rewards, punishments. This system helped our kids learn to remember to do necessary tasks when they were very little.
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. It is hilarious!An Atmosphere, A Discipline, A Life…
I’m loving notebooking instead of worksheets. The kids can be so creative!
I believe in a good foundation and being open to questions and conversation about God and the Bible.
and have felt more comfortable with the eclectic approach lately. I have much of Liz’s reading material on our new iPad and that’s working out very well that it’s so portable and we’re not worrying about carrying lots of books when we’re out and about. We have some really cool educational apps too!
We moved to Utah from Hawaii.
It’s a BIG change.
Here is our workbox wall.
On the left, our calendar/circle time “corner.”
Here is our desk wall and calendar. The clock is set to “Daddy Time” in Afghanistan.
Here is the rest of our school space that we finally cleaned up and organized.
We are so blessed to have a finished basement in our rental house to use almost exclusively for learning space. When we move, I have no idea what we’re going to do because I doubt we’ll have anything like the space we have here and we’ll have to downsize! We came from a small 3 BR 1-level house where we “did school” at the kitchen table or on the living room sofa to this great 6 BR 2-story with a basement. God made it all possible. :)
That corner wasn’t really working out, so here are our updated circle time boards on a pocket chart rack. They are two foam boards hooked together. (I am working on changing it up for the week so there’s blanks.) A word wall is in the red pocket chart on the back.
Our reading nook.
Our weekly preschool manipulatives are in the cubes (from Target).
I use the shelves (yard sale finds) to store pencil boxes, AWANA cards, felts, a Beka cards, big puzzles, our book of centuries, and nature journals. The tops of the shelves have our pencil sharpener, a basket of magnet letters, a portable DVD player, paper towels, Kleenexes, etc. The rainbow cart (had this forever) on the right holds magnets, push pins, do-a-dot pens, geoboards, cork boards, play doh…On top of the rainbow cart are our Education Cubes and tot trays.
Here is the same wall from another angle. I found this very sturdy table at a yard sale for $15 and the 4 chairs at another yard sale (on the same day) for $20. That was a good day!
I put our daily tools in little metal buckets on a lazy susan on the table. The bulletin board above the computer station shows off my 2 preschool daughters’ Bible crafts. To the left of that bulletin board, I have created pictorial timelines for my daughters with pictures of each of their birthdays to show their growth. They love it! Underneath those, a little blue pocket chart holds a weekly Bible verse.
The bookcase holds all my teaching materials and extra books that I want to keep nice. The bottom two shelves have some manipulatives like dry erase books and magnet dolls. The colored plastic drawers hold lots of Melissa & Doug and Lauri puzzles. On top of that is our bin of circle time stuff.
There is another set of folding doors to the right of these, but it’s still messy. I store board games in here. We have labeled plastic bins with all of our school and craft supplies like construction paper, paints, stamps, beads and baubles, pipe cleaners, feathers, etc.
We also are so blessed to have a separate play room for toy storage and another room that is supposed to be my personal sewing and craft room (right now it’s seeming to be storage!)…
We also have our TV and sofa behind the reading nook. It’s nice to have a not-so-central location so it’s not on very often. We use it more for the Wii anyway.
Our school room in the basement…
Maybe should’ve taken the picture before school time?
(Although, it looks better than most days! Notice I’m not showing you the play dough tables and accessories all over the kitchen floor! Nor the glue dollops and collages that are stuck to my plastic floor pad under my computer desk…)
We do workboxes, sorta. Love my cube unit for activities the 3 littles share. The girls are about to outgrow those little pink and purple desks! The bookshelf mostly holds Elizabeth’s books. A plastic crate holds board books. Bean bags and pillows are on the floor.
There’s another bookshelf in Tori’s room that holds the picture books and early readers.
Elizabeth has an entire setup in the room that should be a formal dining room. We turned it into her music studio and desk area. She has her keyboard, workboxes, a storage shelf, desk, and computer station.
This setup is working for us this year!
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Year 5 can be tough. Bodies and minds and attitudes change. It’s a hard time for a child, asserting her independence and discovering who she might be.
I try to allow for interests while guiding the curriculum for what I want her to know. She has a lot of freedom and few rules.
I highly recommend the books by Louise Bates Ames. A good guide to follow is What Your Fifth Grader Needs to Know: Fundamentals of a Good Fifth-Grade Education by E.D. Hirsch, Jr.
This week, we started geography learning about Kenya. I bought the Expedition Earth curriculum and we love it! I’m teaching future missionaries with our new books and prayer cards!
We’re also studying a U.S. state a week with the Nifty Fifty states flash cards from A Beka and other U.S. books I’ve had since I was a kid. We did Alaska last week and this week we did Montana. Yeah, no rhyme or reason. They just picked those out of the stack.
We love the PowerPoint shows at 1+1+1=1. The membership is well worth it!
She loves to read, so I have no worries there. Just trying to find appropriate and interesting books to read and discuss can be a challenge sometimes. We love the book lists from Ambleside Online.
Liz has studied piano for over 2 years and here she is practicing! She loves classical music and opera and adores Broadway musicals. We learn about composers and music all the time.
Liz is working on Singapore Math 5B. She does really well when I can work with her, but does not do well independently in math. She loves reading and will do almost everything else on her own…Life of Fred is a great supplement that incorporates fun stories with sneaky math.
She did her Latina Christiana II lesson right after math with very little help. We have the DVDs and CDs for those and they’re great.
I love notebooking for assignments and narration and evaluation. I print notebooking pages as we need them based on our history and reading assignments. I don’t force writing formally.
Liz helps a lot around the house and with her siblings. She’s becoming a great mother’s helper.
5th grade is a fun transition year – before middle school!
I can hardly believe my youngest is doing 5th grade work this year, y’all! He’s only 9 but keeps moving along at a quick pace and I won’t hold him back.
