Homeschool Happenings

Oops, this picture is sideways (please tilt your head to the left to see the letter "P")





My little one has been working hard on her alphabet notebook and for the letter P, we glued dried peas, what fun!









Here it is in the process.



















My precious preschooler!















The next day we started Q, so I seached high and low for all the quarters in the house (I may have even raided the kids' stash....shhhh) and I found about 60 quarters.

We talked about the features of the quarters and then seperated the old quarters from the state quarters and had a mini geography lesson with both the preschooler and the 1st grader.





I love the state quarters, there is so much info about each state on a little coin!


This is a great placemat map that can be found at Walmart and they even have a world map one.

BTW..we had about half old quarters and half state quarters.

King Tut Lapbook

So, In January, we headed to Atlanta to see the King Tut Exhibit. I was awesome and I hope the kids will remember it for a long time. We did have a scare (literally) at the beginning. It was dark, as museums are and they were playing music that might be alittle scary for a 4 year old. Add the total unknown of what we are doing and the only thing my children know about mummies is that they chase you (Scooby Do in the Dr's office), all this combined, and I had a loudly crying 4 year old that would not go into the beginning of the exhibit. Here I am thinking, well, there goes the $16 for her ticket and the $25 for mine, and I am not going to get to see it. It's a very quiet setting, not something you can drag a screaming preschooler through until she understands that King Tut is NOT going to pop out from around the corner to scare us. :) Well, thankfully, once we did turn the first corner and she realized it was all quite safe, everyone was VERY well behaved. Mid-point there was another very dark place that she didn't want to go into, but once I verified that it was the "gold jewlery" and I told her it was darker so we could see it sparkling, my princess was good to go!

Here is the lapbook that we made when we came home. We couldn't take pictures, so I got them sticker books that worked great for decorating it. I really in a King Tut/Egypt lapbook.

Sorry, I can't figure out why the blog is putting them sideways, the pictures are not like this on my computer. :(

Fold out map with Egypt colored.

We did a little book on the Jews in Egypt. 1st, Joseph brought his family.

The top says they lived there for 430 years. Then the middle talks of the slavery and the babies being thrown in the river. Last part is how Moses delivered them.

Little coloring sheet showing Moses and some of the plaques, this is under the Jews mini-book.

A little mini book on furniture, we even saw some of this in Tut's exhibit.

This is the back, We wanted to show that the pyramids are in Egypt.

Homeschool for One More Year

So, I've finally decided (outloud) that we will homeschool both girls again next year. I think that the oldest could benifet from staying home again and learning with me. The younger one really could go either way, but...I am not going to have different schools for them at this age. I could just see it, one at home and one in public school.....the one at home feels like she has less time with buddies. Then the one at school decides she likes which field trip we are going on and she wants to stay home for the day to "have school" with us. Uh....no. For now, they go where the other goes and I guess where I go too. It's daunting thinking about another year with little free time to myself, but I know it will be worth it in the long run. They are here with me for such a short time.

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it. Proverbs 22:6

Flower Lapbook

I used links from this blog
http://lapbooksbycarisa.homestead.com/flowersandplants.html
for our flower lapbook.
We did alot of "field trip" stuff for flowers and plants, the girls really loved it. We had a group field trip to an educational nature site that included a flower class. We also went to a nursery and looked around. We did this awhile ago, so we will get the lapbook out again soon when we start planting for the spring.

Camping Lapbook

This was so much fun to make. Since we were going camping, I wanted to make some things educational. I used a bunch of stuff from the homeschoolshare.com camping lapbook.

This was actually helpful, because I think we saw some and were able to stay away from it while hiking.

Things to be prepared for first aid.

Being prepared for camping

In the hiking spot, I printed out the info for the 3 places we went hiking.

Little according book to add photos from our camping trip.

Summer Olympic Lapbook

Yes, it's very late for these pictures, but I wanted to share some things we've been doing in our first year of homeschooling. In August we watched alot of the olympics (I would record them at night) and I found a great lapbook to learn more, so this is out 1st offical lapbook ever! :) We used all the info here.

Back of the lapbook

Middle pages

This was a double lapbook because we had so much info to add into it

She picked this picture for the front

Homeschool Stuff

This year we decided to do some creative gifts for Christmas. Here the girls are painting the ornaments that we picked up at JoAnn's for about $0.50 a piece. They really had a great time decorating each of them and adding their own little photo to the back.

More homeschool fun! Here we are practicing letters. The little one has been going thru the alphabet. Don't worry, this was a while ago, we are almost finished with the abc's.

This was our shaving cream practice. I gave her a ton of the cheap shaving cream and let her practice "writing" her letters with her fingers on the table. She loved this!

The letter "E" ;)

Moses

We all loved learning about Moses for homeschool since we just got the movie The Prince of Egypt from Trinity's consignement sale in the fall. This day, I let the kids get the paints out and do whatever they wanted and this is what she came up with.

My little artist at work.