Rainbows on a rainy day

Happy Tuesday AND Happy July! It’s grey and drippy out, but our schoolroom is sunshiny yellow and far more cheerful, so we had a nice morning.

We started out updating our calendar for July, read about a little boy who lives in NYC, then moved on to our daily reading of Little House in the Big Woods. Kendra did an animal print-animal matching sheet, and we looked at our book of pioneer tools. Since today is Canada Day, we read a book about our neighbors to the north.

Next we did some crafts we picked up at the library yesterday. Both were rainbow themed, which further helped cheer up such a yucky day. Liam chose a craft based on Rainbow Fish, and Kendra’s was from Planting a Rainbow. We then hung both from the ceiling!

Finally, Kendra worked on another page from her math journal.

Happy July!

Little House in the Big Woods paw print matching

Happy Canada Day!

Thanks to our library system for being so great and providing take-home crafts!

Liam’s Rainbow Fish!

Kendra’s rainbow cloud from Planting a Rainbow!

Math Journal – additive identity properties of zero (sounds way harder than it is!)

Update on the green beans the kids planted on their first day of the school reboot!

A Great Monday

Today was extra fun because Kendra got to teach Liam using the posters she worked diligently on over the weekend! I love this for multiple reasons – 1) She is learning by teaching, 2) He is learning, 3) they are growing their sibling relationship even more, and 4) I get a few minutes to just relax and enjoy watching them! It’s so incredibly sweet, I can’t stand it! He adores his big sister and she is SO proud of the work she has done.

We started today by going over North America in their atlas, then continued reading Little House in the Big Woods. The chapter was “Sugar Snow”, and they enjoyed hearing more about how maple syrup is made. Kendra did have maple syrup on her pancakes this morning, so that was a bonus school “project”.

Craft time involved making Bald Eagle puppets. I love how the timing of our starting this curriculum coincides with the week of Independence Day. Today we made the eagle puppets, later this week they’ll be making things to dress up as the Statue of Liberty!

After the crafts, Kendra worked on her math journal (subtraction), then taught Liam his counting for today, then came back to start her language arts journal! She was having so much fun with the math journal that I purchased a language arts version to help strengthen her skills in that area! Today’s worksheet was rhyming words.

Last but not least, we worked on reading a thermometer, in both Fahrenheit and Celcius!

Liam’s Bald Eagle Puppet

Kendra’s Bald Eagle Puppet

Subtraction math journal page. She used dice to come up with the equations!

Kendra teaching her little brother!

Counting to 100!

100’s counting poster

Language Arts Journal, rhyming words

Weather Detective

Weather Detective

Minecraft Camp

Ok so I haven’t posted this week but we have still been doing school. There just hasn’t been anything really picture-worthy. We’ve mostly spent a lot of time reading.

Kendra had Minecraft camp 4 afternoons this week. She had an amazing time and even learned the basics of stop motion video! While she was there, Liam and I happened upon an outdoor event for kids. He got to play in a huge sandbox, make a “soil profile” (cup of different types of layered cereals with bug candy sprinkles on top), and make a water-filled glitter tube with a star to remind him to take care of our watershed. Thus their science lesson for today discussed the make-up of soil, and how to take care of our land to best care for the watersheds.

A new project we began today is an interactive math journal for Kendra. We are both really excited about it. Pictures will come as soon as she has a few pages done!

Reading comprehension. She was SO happy that Lisa has “yellow” hair.

Liam scooping cereal for the first layer of his soil profile

Soil profile demonstration

Liam’s finished soil profile. They had shredded coconut dyed green for grass, but he didn’t want that.

Making a stop motion video!

Minecraft world

Taking the pictures for the stop motion video

Working together

My job isn’t so much to teach, as it is to provide an environment where my kids can learn. Sometimes they teach each other!

We read a LOT today. 2 chapters of Little House in the Big Woods, a story called The Singing Toad, and Pinkalicious (at Liam’s request). We also talked about different types of foods from Latin America. Each kiddo was requested to select an animal native to North America to do research on. Kendra picked the American Robin (we have plenty to observe in our backyard) and Liam picked the Polar Bear (yay for a trip to the zoo coming up soon!)

Next, Kendra and I worked on her silent e and long vowels.

After that, Kendra continued to work on her craft projects, and Liam decided to work on his coloring and numbers. With a little bit of help staying on track, he can count up to one hundred!

This afternoon, we did an art project called “Papel Picado”. It is a tissue paper decoration that hangs in Mexican marketplaces. Didn’t they turn out pretty? I also put together a practice thermometer for her to use during her Weather Detective unit on Temperature!

This weekend, they will be baking bread and churning (shaking) butter!

Kendra and I made Papel Picado for art today!

Kendra is cutting out a paper house while Liam checks out his new triangle crayons.

I made a thermometer to practice reading temperature for the Weather Detective chapter on Temperature!

Papel Picado hanging!

Helping her brother with his grip. So sweet!

Another Papel Picado hanging!

Helping Liam count to 100!

Handwriting Without Tears, working on some grip issues.

Counting rows of ten.

Silent e!

Backwards Wednesday

Today was Kendra’s first official private piano lesson, so we decided to be lazy this morning and do school this afternoon, post-lesson. She had fun at her lesson, then we read several books for school, looked at the landforms which make up North America, did a math page, and started learning about temperature as it relates to weather. I had laminated a thermometer worksheet, so I taught Kendra how to read and mark off the temperature, as well as introduced both Fahrenheit and Celsius, since I’ll be teaching them multiple systems of measurement along the way.

All dressed up for her first piano lesson. Little brother photobombing.

Marking off indoor and outdoor temperatures with a dry-erase pen.

More math problems. Setting her up (as shown in #40) to learn how to program computers in a few years.

We are reading Little House in the Big Woods. I was lucky enough to find this book of historic tools and gadgets to go along with the story!

You know you’ve got it right…

You know you’re doing it right when your kids actually ASK when it will be time to start school and are excited to find out what we’ll be doing. *insert huge sigh of relief here*

Our first task today was to read about the life of an 8 year old little boy named Omar, who lives in Cancun. First we found Mexico on the map, then we looked further to see exactly where Cancun was located. We read about his family, their home, his friends, and his interests.

Next we finished the first chapter of Little House in the Big Woods. They are both enjoying it. I’m glad Kendra seems to be enjoying it as much as I did as a little girl. I’ll have to buy her the box set at some point.

Today both kids wanted to play with the letter tiles to try and build their names. Liam was missing one letter, but his sister was nice enough to give him that letter from her pile!

We read a few animal poems and briefly touched on haikus, and Kendra read 2 BOB books.

Math involved one chapter of Life of Fred and one sheet of math problems. We practiced sets of items, and Kendra’s assignment was to come up with sets of items. Her answers were:

• 0 – the set of guinea pigs I have
• 1 – the set of 1 purple bouncy ball in the schoolroom
• 2 – the set of my 2 eyes
• 3 – the set of people currently in our schoolroom
• 4 – the set of animals living in our house (2 dogs, 2 cats)

The green bean seedlings they planted on their first day of our reboot!

Kendra is almost finished the books in the first (blue) box of BOB Books!

Working together, they were able to spell Liam’s name!

My little math whiz

Practicing singing his alphabet while swinging!

After school was finished, we took a drive and spent the afternoon with friends!

Little House in the Big Woods

Today we started reading Little House in the Big Woods. Both kids really enjoyed listening and looking at the pencil drawings in the book. After that, they found Wisconsin on our quilt map! We also started reading a UNICEF book about children around the world. Science today was another lesson on the atmosphere, and also a chance to teach Kendra how to do her first crossword puzzle! I think we’ll spend one more day on the atmosphere, then move on to temperature.

Kendra’s math for today was a full page of math problems from this 1st grade book of Daily Math Prompts.

We have a container of individual letter tiles. I dumped out a good sized pile of them, put them face down, and had Liam identify (if he could) each letter as he turned it upright. Then he had to tell me if that letter was in his name or not. His letter identification skills are coming along really well. Sadly the letter pile today only contained L, A, and M. It’s a fun goal to reach for though!

Letter identification

Atmosphere crossword puzzle

First Grade Daily Math Prompts

Kendra’s readathon project is coming along well. She has read (or been read to) a minimum of each day so far, and so far has collected $50 in pledges!

How to Bake an Apple Pie

The end of our week ended up busier than expected, so we delayed apple pie baking until Father’s Day! I will admit to cheating with the crust and using pre-made, but I’m allergic to wheat and didn’t want it floating around in the air. I’m not going to be eating this delicious pie, sadly. Ok maybe a tiny bite. Minuscule. I hope the kids and their dad like it though!

A slight disaster with the apple corer/peeler.

Mixing spices and sugar together

Mmm, caramel

“Painting” the top of the pie crust

Yeah pie crust decoration isn’t our strong point, but it’ll taste good!

Finished Product!

First Friday

We finished our first week with no real issues, yay! One thing I have decided to be very strict about is NO morning events, because historically, we won’t get our work done in the afternoon. Today was a curriculum trunk sale in the local homeschool community, so I broke that rule and we still got our work done! The trunk sale was great. We got a lot of new books, a set of fraction tiles, customizable dice (differentiated instruction cubes), and a bunch of other useful things!

Geography was one last reading of Me on the Map. Both kids like it a lot so I may need to pick up a copy. Science today was working more on the layers of the atmosphere. Since we touched on biomes the other day, Kendra chose one to do a bit more in-depth research, but that will be for later. Math involved adding 3 digits with sums 10 and below. Some she can do in her head, others require unifix cubes, but that’s ok! Liam opted to swing and experiment with gravity and marbles today. Our dog Rosie volunteered as a teacher’s aide today, but she really just wanted to try and eat their crayons.

Reading today went really well. Kendra is participating in a read-athon this summer, in which she commits to reading a minimum of 20 minutes each day for 3 weeks. Friends and family pledge a cash amount to donate upon completion. Half of the money goes to Kendra’s Usborne book fund, and she will be able to choose her own new books. The other half goes to books for an organization which focuses on getting books into the hands of kids who may not even have a single book of their own! Isn’t that a great idea? Today was day 1, and she read 2 Bob Books (this alone took at least 20 minutes combined), a bit of Me on the Map, and I read Pinkalicious to her. More reading will happen for sure, but I know her reading skills will be so much stronger by the end of this. I’m really excited for her!

Layers of the atmosphere

Practicing 3 digit addition

She’s got it down!

Our crayon-eating teacher’s aide, Rosie

Reading!

Our green beans have not sprouted yet, we’re eagerly checking every morning! Afternoon check: We have one seedling!

Reboot Day 4

We didn’t entirely stick to plan today, but that’s more than ok, we still got plenty done. Kendra is making great progress through her BOB books, Liam practiced his upper and lowercase letter matching, we discussed globes vs maps, Kendra did a few pages of map skill worksheets and we read a chapter from Life of Fred: Apples. One craft for today was supposed to be creating a passport to use as we study the continents, but they each already have one from Little Passports, so we opted to use those instead. The other was a flip book for Me on the Map, but we just did one of those with one of our books from Five in a Row not that long ago. Also, we were supposed to pick up ingredients to make our apple pie, but that didn’t happen either. That’s life.

We did get a great selection of new books to add to our library today, as well as a new-to-us desk from a school that was just throwing them out! Crazy.

Upper and lowercase matching puzzles

Newest additions to our library!