A Recap of Our Week

Since I obviously did not get back to the computer yesterday, I thought I would just do a recap of our week. We only do "school" 4 days a week leaving Friday open for playgroup with our friends, grocery shopping, and other errands. Today is going to be a light day because I am headed off to another Dr. appointment this afternoon. We have less than 8 weeks to go!

Our Monday Morning Project this week was to do Winter Drawings. Snow is a bit of a novelty around here. We usually only get it once a year and it melts before the day is out. But it is a very interesting topic for the children. Our Five in a Row book this week is Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost so this also was our Art Lesson. We just took dark blue paper and white crayons and drew winter scenes. Everyone drew snowmen (of course) but we also had snow covered trees and houses. Nick also made some snowflakes. He loves making snowflakes out of construction paper.

For our Science in Five in a Row we did a worksheet on matching animals to their tracks. For Language Arts we matched 5 vocabulary words with their definitions. Our handwriting assignment was to copy Jingle Bells, and we also did a worksheet on Who was Robert Frost? Nick also did his regular Math assignments one page every day out of Math-U-See's Alpha, and his spelling words on http://www.spellingcity.com/. He also spent 30 minutes of free reading time every day, and we are continuing to read out of the Egermeier's Bible story Book.

Chelsea is learning about Ancient Greece. She read several book this week and her History/Language Arts assignment was to do a Book Report on one of the books she read. In Science we are doing a unit on Inventors/Inventions and I found some worksheets on http://www.abcteach.com/. Her assignment this week was on the Wright Brothers. She also does one lesson a day out of her Math-u-see book and her Bible Study on Elsie Dinsmore's Life Lessons. Chelsea also does spelling on http://www.spellingcity.com/, her music is practicing the clarinet, but we did skip Art this week. We are still reading through The Lord of the rings for our Read-Aloud.

Alex did some of the work out of Five in a Row. He spends time "reading" every day during quiet time. He has a desire to learn to read so we are working on some phonics sounds and reading lots of rhyming books. I also printed several math counting sheets off the Internet and one day he made a pizza counting book by cutting and pasting pepperoni on to blank pizzas labeled 1-10. He loves cutting and pasting and this kept him busy for a long time. I can't remember where I found that on the Internet.

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The Stomach Bug

You never know when it is going to strike, who it is going to strike next, or how long it is going to be lingering throughout your house. Is everyone going to come down with it? After it starts all you can do is wait and see, and hope that it will be short-lived and not make its way through everyone in the house.


I had several different things I was going to post about yesterday, but after being up all night Monday with a sick baby, I never got around to sitting at the computer. He seemed to be fine yesterday during the day and I even squeezed in a short nap while he was sleeping. Then last night the poor baby was sick again, but now he is up and playing. So for now we will just watch and wait. I hope he is over the worst of it and that nobody else comes down with it. Hopefully later on this afternoon I will get back to the computer to post everything I was planning on yesterday, but for now I am off to do some laundry before we start our schoolwork.

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Chelsea's Lapbook on Ancient Egypt

I meant to post this quite awhile ago and then forgot that I never did. From August through December, Chelsea was studying Ancient Egypt. We read several nonfiction and historical fiction books on Ancient Egypt. Then as a way to put everything she was learning into one place, I thought we would work on a lapbook. I found a great outline for a lapbook on Ancient Egypt on http://www.homeschoolhelperonline.com/ under their lapbook link. Then I found something even better. A homeschool mom had used this outline and downloaded several templates to be used to put the lapbook together. She posted this and offered it as a free download. Her link is www.homeschoolblogger.com/homeschoolingmommaof4/408126. I was so happy to find this. It made my life a whole lot easier.

Some of the things we included in our lapbook were: Egyptian homes, transportation, math, work, science, furniture, entertainment, foods, clothing, and religion. We also did a page with information and drawings of Egyptian pyramids. We made Canopic Jars out of clay and included a picture and information on these. We also mummified a Barbie Doll ( I did post this previously) and included the pictures and how we did it. Chelsea also learned how to write her name in Hieroglyphics and drew the symbols in her lapbook. We really enjoyed this project.

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A Lesson on Money

This month I have been trying to think of important things that I think a 1st grader should know that hasn't come up in any of our "curriculum." We worked on writing his full name, and address. He has already learned how to tell time and the days of the week and months of the year last year. The next thing that I thought we should work on was money. Nick is pretty good about knowing his dollar bills, but except for the quarter (needed for video games at the pizza place) he did not know the difference between the other coins and what they were worth. I started out by going to the computer to print out some worksheets off of the Internet, but my printer is not working all that great and it didn't sound like much fun. So, instead we went for some hands on learning at the kitchen table. We made stacks of each coin to equal a dollar. Then we talked about the different coins and how much they were worth. We also practiced counting them by 10's, 5's ect... Then we played "store" and practiced "buying" things for a set price and deciding which coins we should use to buy the item. For Alex we kept it very simple," Count out 3 pennies to buy this seashell." Nick's was a little bit harder using pennies, nickles, dimes, and quarters. The boys had fun doing this activity. I think they really learned a lot, and we will be practicing this again very soon.

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Out of the Mouth of Babes

All three of the older boys wanted to play with the same Star Wars Transformer ship this morning. We have 5 or 6 ships but they all wanted the same one. I explained to Anthony that Nick had it first and in a little while, he would share with him and then Anthony could have a turn.

Anthony, " Sharing is NOT fun! It always makes me cry."

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January's Homeschool Co-op

Yesterday was our monthly Homeschool Co-op and the children always look forward to going. Our theme for this month was Cooking Around the World. Each family chose a country and did a small presentation about that country. We also chose a dish from that country and brought the ingredients for the children to be able to prepare that dish. a couple of families also brought a small craft to go along with their country. The church that allows us to use their building has a big kitchen/fellowship area so we were able to set up 6 different "countries" quite easily. The children got to make Quesadillas and Maracas in Mexico, Pizza in Italy, Crepes in France, Rice with vegetables and Tea in China, Baklava and Olympic Medals in Greece, and Snicker doodles in Germany. It was a fun learning experience and the children enjoyed cooking and of course eating their creations.

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Monday Morning Project:Torn Paper Collage

Today for our Monday Morning Project we did a simple craft. We made torn paper collages out of construction paper (wrapping paper also works well.) The children made a design out of glue on a piece of construction paper, and tore different colors of construction paper to glue on their design. They enjoyed this craft very much and everyone could participate. Alex really had fun with this and made 6 collages. He did not like to tear the paper, though. Instead he got a pair of scissors and cut strips of paper to make his design.

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