We are the dinosaurs, marching, marching!

This may be a guess, but it seems like most little boys are fascinated by dinosaurs. Liam is no different. So when Emily Cook, of Build Your Library fame released a unit study focusing on Prehistory, I jumped on it for Liam! I already had a few of the books required, bought one, (that it turns out is way too old for him, so we’ll save it for later) and got the rest from our fabulous library! I also used one of those amazing 50% off one item at Michael’s coupons for a dinosaur (T-rex) excavation and model building kit! I was hoping to start sooner, but life happens, so I am planning to start on Monday.

In the meantime, Liam is loving his free trial of Reading Eggs, and we will be starting a LEGO themed interactive alphabet journal tomorrow!

Back At It

Tomorrow is the day we officially start school again! Everything is planned, mostly set up, Kendra has been “excused” from attending school for the year by the school district, and we’re ready to go!

One thing we’re doing differently (it’s nice how things can evolve!) is having “circle time” before we start for the day. I have come up with a few activities that we’ll all do together to start the day, every day, before we do our actual lessons. I think it’ll make a nice segue into focused learning time.

For first grade, Kendra will be studying Language Arts, Math, Science, History, Geography, Art, Music, and Health. Liam will be mostly learning by osmosis, since he’ll be with us in the schoolroom, and I’ll work with him on his basic skills each day. He will also do art projects and science experiments with Kendra.

I’m really looking forward to getting back in the swing of things!

North America, Finishing Little House, and Robots

Yesterday, the kids completed their polar bear study and completed the report page for it. Today we finished reading Little House in the Big Woods, and put their North America stamps in their passports.

I didn’t have time to post yesterday, but Kendra picked up her book prizes from her Usborne book-raiser! You can see a picture of them below. After that, we attended another library program, this one was on robots! Each of the kids built their own robot. Liam’s robot’s job was to build thing, and Kendra’s robot’s job was to help birds!

Kendra and I have been working on their abacus to learn the ten-times table. I think she gets it. 🙂 Today we’re meeting up with friends at the Art Museum for craft and dress up time!

North America passport stamp

Polar Bear report, page 1

Polar Bear report, page 2

Liam’s passport!

Kendra’s passport

The abacus is fun!

Kendra drawing the seasons

Robots!

Kendra’s books earned from the Usborne book-raiser!

School Clearance Sale and Thermometers

Happy Monday! A local school was changing its focus and decided to clear out all of the materials they would no longer be using. Our Saturday involved two trips to this school and two boxes of new-to-us materials. We have 2 boxes of books, a microscope, a mini globe, two pairs of goggles, 2 heavy duty thermometers, and a variety of other educational materials…for $12!

Today’s lesson was fun. We were introduced to a boy named Gabriel from Alaska, read a chapter from Little House in the Big Woods, discussed “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” and why lying is bad. Math was a chapter from Life of Fred, and telling time by 5s. We finished our Temperature unit study and even got to experiment with our new thermometers! After that, Kendra did some reading, then did her first page of her science interactive journal!

Checking temperatures!

Cool water, ice water, hot water

Kendra’s journal page on the five senses

Kendra’s temperature chart

Liam’s temperature chart

Moving beyond hour and half hour!

More polar bears!

Today we focused on doing our polar bear mini books! Liam’s is all done since I helped him, and his was filled in. Kendra cut hers out by herself and is writing all of the polar bear facts and body part labels herself, so hers will be finished tomorrow. We also did our reading for the day, and learned about how to make cheese, as well as getting honey from a beehive! We are hoping to make some cheese later this week, and they each got a spoonful of local, raw honey as a special treat.

Liam’s polar bear mini book!

Polar bear anatomy

Polar bear facts

Recovering from the weekend, polar bears, and catalogs

I need to start with Friday night, since we had such a great weekend. We all went to the art museum, got a membership, walked through a few exhibits, then hung out in the children’s area for a while! The kids dressed up in costumes, Liam painted, and Kendra did some mixed media video-game character design.

Saturday we drove about an hour to attend (for the third time) a celtic festival. The kids decorated swords, painted fairy doors, watched some lake monsters, met Merida from Brave, and played on a fabulous wooden castle playground.

Today we picked up where we left off on Friday! We are just about finished with our study of the North American continent, today we discussed Canada, located it on a map, and learned the names of the provinces and territories. After that, we read more of Little House in the Big Woods, which should be finished at the end of this week. Kendra worked on Really Reading lesson 3 and read another BOB book.

For Liam’s polar bear study, today he made a cardboard tube polar bear. Both kids glued the covers for their World Passport, and we left them to dry.

I have been inundated with education-related catalogs lately and ended up having a 5 hour catalog drooling session. I had to do some price comparison for art supplies. Yesterday we picked up a used copy of the 1st grade curriculum from Home Art Studio. So far, DiscountSchoolSupply.com is coming in the cheapest, but we’ll be doing a bit more research just to make sure, since we need to buy a lot! I think they’re really going to like it though!

Super Mario and Princess Peach

Super Mario

Super Mario and Princess Peach

Liam painting a picture of his sister

Watching the sea monsters at the celtic festival

Science experiment fail – the crystals never dissolved 😦

Science experiment fail – the crystals never dissolved 😦

How to divide 2 cookies among 3 sisters. Good opportunity to at least expose her to fractions.

Glue stick for passport cover!

Glue stick for passport cover!

We finally found a globe for the kids at a reasonable price! Yay Costco!

Liam’s polar bear craft for his North American animal research project!

Our new art curriculum!

Wednesday again?

Today seemed a bit chaotic. Kendra slept very late, we had to run a quick errand before school to pick up some new books, Liam threw a tantrum, and everything was just out of sorts, but I managed to reign it in and get some good learning done!

We read about American foods (the kids and their dad may have to bake brownies), finished a chapter of Little House in the Big woods, in which Laura went to a store for the very first time, and read more of Bad Kitty.

Liam and I played another game of letter identification/build your name with our letter tiles, then he examined our marbles under our cheap-o microscope.

Kendra and I started working on a different reading program today, I think we’ve already made some good headway. We also worked on double-digit addition with regrouping, which she’s not quite sure she understands just yet, but that’s ok. I think a stronger understanding of place values would help that. After that, she did another page on her math journal, then it was time to do a science experiment!

I’ve had these little crystal growing kits sitting around for a while, so finally pulled them out. I hope they work, the kids are very excited! Liam has green crystals, while Kendra’s are ruby red. It will take several hours for them, so pictures will be tomorrow.

Speaking of crystals, I finally remembered to check on the salt/evaporation project we set up the first day of school! I used so much water, it hasn’t even entirely evaporated yet, but it’s mostly there! Both kids loved seeing and touching the salt on the sides of the jar.

A good day overall.

Copywork of the math definition

Math journal

Examining marbles under the microscope!

Crystal kit

Waiting to get started!

Proud of his crystals

Kendra pouring crystals on the stones

Saltwater evaporation

Double-digit adding and a puppet show

Kendra’s favorite story is The Wizard of Oz. She listens to the audiobook, so cleverly narrated by Anne Hathaway, every single night as she falls asleep. When I noticed that our local library was hosting an Oz puppet show , it was a given that I would take the kids. They both sat quietly for over half an hour and enjoyed the show as much as I had hoped they would!

Before the puppet show, however, we had to get some learning in. Liam did a coloring page with pictures of items starting with the letter L and played with letter cubes. Kendra did a worksheet of double digit adding. She hadn’t really been exposed to it before yesterday, but she grasped the concept immediately and was able to do the worksheet without much assistance at all! Next up, double digit adding with carrying over!

Big news in Kendra’s world – yesterday she lost her very first tooth! The tooth fairy left her a receipt and one dollar in coins. We had it be a little learning time as well as fun – she received a half-dollar (which she had never seen before) and other random coins to add up to $1, so she got a little bit of money practice!

For Geography, we learned about a little girl who lived in Illinois, and for History, we read more of Little House in the big woods!

While at the library, I came upon a book of polar animals on the sale shelf, so I picked it up so they could learn more about polar bears! Our friend Melissa, who works at the library, introduced them to a story called Bad Kitty Meets the Baby. It is very funny, and we read about 50 pages of it today!

I finally got around to doing some prep-work on materials that we’ll need in the future. The customizable dice now have cards in them. Kendra can roll them and write out whatever short sentences randomly show up. I have her math and language journal work prepped for tomorrow, and also finished up with her silent-e cards.

Somehow I still feel like we’re not doing enough…

Double digit adding!

Letter cube stacking

Polar bear research

Customizable cubes for reading and writing practice!

The Wizard of Oz puppet show at the library! My two gingers are right up front!

Post-holiday break

We took a few days off last week due to Kendra having art camp and the holiday, but we’re back on track today! We read more of Little House in the Big Woods, a Native American story called The Magic Doll, learned about bison, placed the bison on our new map, and then read the first page in our Kids Discover magazine about Native Americans. I ordered this particular issue because it tells the truth of the Native Americans, which I think is important. Science today was more work with the thermometer. Both kids filled in some thermometer worksheets and played with the model thermometer I made. We also read The Rainbow Fish to go along with Liam’s craft made last week.

My cousin Jane was kind enough to pass on some wonderful books to the kids, leftover from her days as a teacher, and they arrived today! Kendra’s handwriting assignment today was writing her a thank you note. She also wrote a note to her penpal, Coralee.

We did another reading sheet, a fill-in-the-vowel sheet, and I taught her how to add double-digit numbers! Her hand was tired from the note writing, so that’s my handwriting you see, but she understood the concept enough to tell me the answers! We also worked on big numbers and putting commas after every third number.

Bison has been added to our map!

Kids Discover magazine on Native Americans, which tells the truth of the atrocities committed against these people.

Bison!

Model thermometer

Several great books sent to the kids by my super nice cousin Jane!

Teaching Kendra how to add double digits!

Polar Bears

As part of our study of the continent of North America, the kids each picked a native animal to learn about. Liam chose polar bears, Kendra chose robins, but later decided that she wanted to learn about polar bears in addition. Today was supposed to be a really nice, not too hot, day, so we met up with friends for a trip to the zoo to see some polar bears up close! Well the weather was a LOT warmer than called for, so I really wanted to go swimming with the polar bears. 😉 One of the not-so-baby-anymore babies kept carrying around a ball and another toy, and doing backflops from a rock into the water. It was a lot of fun to watch!

Our new world map arrived this morning, so I just hung it on the wall in the schoolroom, which required a little redecorating, but it worked out well. I think we’ll need to find a different way to hang the map, but time will tell!

As we do our Build Your Library studies and learn about each continent and its native animals, we will add those labels to the map. Isn’t that fun?!

Silly polar bear!

Hugging a mini polar bear statue

Hi!

Labeling our new world map!

The basics