Learning through life

One of my favorite aspects of homeschooling is that we can learn all the time.  Even without lesson plans and books.

Did I just hear you gasp?!

We can learn in all we do throughout our day.  Not that we always do and not that we always have fun. BUT we CAN.

It is those moments, when I realize that the kiddos are learning in an unplanned way, and I take advantage of it, that make me fall more in love with homeschooling.

The other day on our walk we had one of those special moments. 
The girls remembered seeing butterflies over by the azalea bushes near Trey's office, they wanted to check it out again.  So, we took a little detour over to the bushes to take a look. 

To our delight the bushed were covered with both butterflies and bees. 

Here is a conversation Abigail and I had.
I asked Abigail what the butterflies were doing and she said, "drinking nectar from the flowers." I also asked her what the bees were doing and she said, "drinking from the flowers." when I asked here what else they were doing she said, "helping the flowers grow." I then asked her what the bees were gonna do with the nectar and she said MAKE honey :) Yeah Abigail!!!

My little Pumpkin Pie, aka Hannah,  also knew that the butterflies and bees were drinking and that the bees were helping the flowers grow.  Way to go Punkin!

Here are some beautiful pictures of the azaleas.

Physical activity

We have not lack of physical activity around here, which I love.  Between playing outside, riding bikes, going on walks, and our newest activity playing on the sports field up at Daddy's work, I don't feel a need for a formal physical education time. 

However we do play outside and get our bodies moving everyday.  Well, unless we are under the weather. 

Here are some pics from some our latest activities.

in front of one of the trails

Yes, I made them stop to pose for a picture :) But the smiles are real!

Rebekah goes for our walks in style

wearing them out on the sports field

soccer time

Library visit

We took a trip to the Library Tuesday morning.  Abigail's sound for the week was the short /oo/ sound like in "book".  It seemed fitting that this be the week that we get back into the routine of going.  The girls were very excited about, Samuel had no idea what was going on.  We have not been since he started walking :) So, first things first we had a talk, before entering, about being on our best behavior and how we have to whisper in the library. 

We actually happened upon pre-school "story hour".  We were a little late but the kids got to make a Mardi Gra mask and had a snack.  From what I could tell it is put on by 2 local moms.  The group meets the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of the month.  So we may give it a whirl and see what kind of stuff they do.

After "story hour" was over we headed to look for books.  Before the kiddos starting grabbing books I handed them a place marker, our library uses the wooden paint stir sticks, and showed them how to place the stick on the shelf before they removed the book that they wanted to look at.  I let them know that we were supposed to do this so that when we were done looking at the book we could remember where it belonged on the shelf.

The big girls had a good time looking through book, completely based on the covers :) Which meant that they were only choosing the ones on the end b/c they were the only ones that had their covers exposed.  They each chose 3 to bring home.

I chose some books about tools for Samuel.  He pretty much just walked around the whole time taking in the new sights.

Rebekah crawled the isle for a while until she found the child magazine section.  I then realized I would need to put an end to that activity.  I figured they would probably like to keep the pages inside of their magazine covers. 

Best find of the day by far was, Baby on theWay, William Sears, M.D., Martha Sears, R.N., and Christie Watts Kelly.

The book explains how Mommy may be feeling, what is happening with her body, how they can help Mommy and Daddy, and what to expected once the baby arrives. This book seems to address some of the more curious questions that the big girls have been asking lately and it answers them in a way that they can really relate to and understand. 

I am so glad that I found this book.  We have already read it several times.  I will probably recheck it so that I can have it on hand as Shepherd's birth day gets closer.

School Milestone

Yeah!!!! So exciting, Abigail read her first book today.

It is a book in the Step into Reading program series. Too Many Cats, by Lori Haskins Houran

I LOVE these.
http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375851971

When we finished the book she got lots of hugs and of course a treat that she could eat :) And of course we called her Daddy and our "school librarian" to share the news.  Most importantly... She was SO proud of herself!! She said, " I did it! I finally read a book!"

So, maybe all our work has paid off and just maybe I can do this homeschool thing after all.

Geography "The World that God made"

When I stared planning for this school year during the summer I knew I wanted to include Geography.  I decided to start big and talk about the basics.  I quickly realized that on a Pre-K level it would not take all year or if it did it would be LOTS of review and really boring.  So after much brainstorming I came up with a general plan. I decided to create my own curriculum. 

I realized right away the we needed a globe for our new adventure.  "Gary the Globe" joined our team, I found him on www.amazon.com . He was a great investment, we use him every week. 

We started the school year with an introduction into basic geography.  We began with learning what a map was and worked our way through the different continents on the globe.  We then moved onto the United States and our neighbors to both the North and South. I threw Germany in because there are so many people there that we love.  After these lessons, I wanted the countries that I chose to have purpose. So, I enlisted the help of  www.joshuaproject.net to find countries with the most unreached people groups.  I have explained to the girls the reason that we are learning about these countries and then we pray for these countries through out our week.  I am eager to see if the Lord starts laying these people on my children's hearts during prayer time. During the week of our first lesson, Trey asked the girls what they learned in Geography.  Abigail quickly responded, "We learned about Algeria so that we can pray for the people who live there that don't know God."

This is what our weekly Geography lesson looks like:

We start by finding the country on our globe.

We also look at the country in our Atlas

After we have looked at the country for the week using both "Gary" and our Atlas, I hand the girls their flag and they color it appropriately. This is Hannah's flag for Algeria

This is Abigail's flag of Afghanistan.  I found these flags on a site that I join this year www.enchantedlearning.com. Since I created my own curriculum this site has been a big time saver for me.  They have lots of neat printables. 

Once we have talked about the colors of the flag we fill in this chart that I created.  The girls look at the flag and observe what shapes they see.  Then they check of the boxes for the different shapes that make up each flag.

At the end of the year we will have neat books of all the countries that we studied and a reminder of who we spent our school year praying for and should continue to pray, that they hear the good news of our Savior Jesus Christ. To the ends of the Earth!

Item field trip

Abigail's phonics lesson for last week was /nt/ like in print.  So we took a field trip to The Huntsville Item to learn how a newspaper is made and see the printing press.  It was a GREAT tour.  I really think the kids had a good time and learned a little something too.  Here are some pictures from our visit.

Showing us the paper

learning about the different parts of the newpaper

old thing I took a picture of

watching the advertising department set up ads

The printing press

Look at all the rolls of paper!

leaf rub and flower pressing

Fall is officially here and this week we did some fun fall activities.  For science the kids gathered leaves and drew their favorite find in their journal.  Their math activity for the week consisted of them counting and sorting their bag of leaves.  For some Friday fun we did a leaf rub and pressed the flowers that we used for our flower experiment a few weeks ago. 

Hannah working on her leaf rub

Abigail creating her leaf rub

placing the flowers inside the book

/st/

We had another great week of school with our /st/ sound. We read the old book, I Know a Postman. On Friday we took a "field trip" to the New Waverly Post office and Abigail mailed some letters that she wrote. She was so excited to put them in the mail she had been waiting for several weeks.  I was hoping that we could take a tour and see how they sort the mail but, one more way the world has changed since 9/11, they are no longer allowed to let us behind the counter. Her are some pictures of her smiling face at the Post office. 

Abigail putting on the stamps and return address labels.

wohoo, she is really excited!

Into the slot they go.

Fl /ow/ er week

October 4 - 7 we talked about the /ow/ sound like in flower.  A sweet friend told me about an experiment with carnations and colored water.  It sound to neat to pass up so, here is our flower experiment.

Hannah looking at the stem with her magnifying glass.

Abigail checking out the flower stem with her magnifying glass.

We placed the carnations in glasses of different colored water.

Next the girls drew what they observed in their journals and made predictions about what would happen to the flowers.

Hannah, "The flower will drink the red water through the holes in the stem and the flower will turn red." Hannah's prediction was correct.

Our yellow carnation.

Green carnation.  It was hard to see, but some of the very tips turned a light green.

MeMe and PawPaw's Sea /Sh/ore trip

On Wednesday, September 29 we ate an early dinner and then hopped in our packed  mini van to head to Corpus.  With PJs on and blankies and animals in hand we started our long journey South.  The big kids we fine because they had their movie to watch, but Rebekah won the best traveler award hands down.  We stopped so that I could nurse around 8:00pm, although we had not heard a peep.  She rode in silent slumber for the rest of the drive.  We pulled into Mom and Dad's driveway at about 11:30pm with 4 wide eyed children. We had several fun days ahead of us so, Trey took the little ones out to our room and It wasn't t long before the big girls were ready to settle into MeMe's sheets.

It just so happened, whom I kidding? I planned it, that this particular  week of school was the /sh/ sound.
Fish
Sea Shell
Sea Shore
Well you get my drift....

So, our geography lesson was on the Oceans. The girls colored all the oceans blue on the map in their Geography notebook. We also went on 2 boat rides where they touched and looked at the water.  I did try to explain that we were actually in the bay while on the boat and not the Ocean but honestly I was just happy that they learned the Gulf of Mexico.  Pre-K people Pre-K.

You guessed it, Science was about Fish and Sea Shell. So, beach pails in hand we headed off to the National Sea Shore on Padre Island.

Here are just a few pictures of our adventures with by the Sea /Sh/ore at MeMe and PawPaw's

our sand dollar/sea shell

A helping fly PawPaw's kite

Abigail, with her Daddy's help, actually caught a little fish

Hannah, MeMe, Samuel, and Abigail checking out the water on one of our boat rides

School week #2 Science - Lima Bean

We had a great time with Science this week.  We did the Lima bean experiment on Monday and the girls were so excited to be able to use the magnifying glasses.  We started out by "looking inside a seed" in our Usborne First book of Nature.  Then the girls spent some time observing their beans then made some drawings of what they saw in their journal.  They helped me wet a paper towel and wrap it around their bean.  We made predictions about what we thought would happen to the bean and then I taped it onto the window.  It has not been really sunny here this week but i did peak inside today during nap and the shoot is starting to appear.  So I think that we will record another entry in our journal either tonight or tomorrow.  I am looking forward to many more fun science adventures.  This next week we head to the ocean to MeMe and Pawpaw's where the fish and shells are. Lots of fun science is in store.

School Week 1 Sept 13-16

School week 1:

handwriting

Geography introduction


Making maps


Abigail's Map



Pictures from the "Get it Game"










We had a great first week of school. Well it is actually our second, we did a review week before last. Abigail was very excited and READY start. Getting back into a routine and having more structure has been very nice. This is how our morning goes so far.

• breakfast
  
• girls dress, make beds and have prayer time in their room while I get Samuel set up(he watches Sesame Street and eats his breakfast while we do our school)
• School

We start with Prayer and then do our Bible lesson. Then we move to our Calender and Clock. After Calender we do our L.A. which includes our sound of the week, poetry and handwritting. Some days, depending on how writting goes, they have a small break and I get Samuel cleaned up and he joins us for the additional lesson that we will be doing for the day. Our extra lessons are as follows.

Monday-Science
Tuesday- Geography
Wednesday- Math
Thursday- Math

This week for science I introduced them to their Science journals and science terms they also drew in their journal something that they wanted to learn about. I got some very interesting requests :)

Our First Geography lesson went very well! I introduced them to the Globe and Atlas then I read them a book about maps. After the story they were supposed to draw a map from our house to the neighbors. I was very impressed with Abigail's work. I didn't really know what to expect but hers was GREAT :)

For Math the first day we did some counting with counters and then on Thursday we played a game I called the " get game" (ex. Abigail, go get 4 pillows, Hannah, go get 10 baby dolls) They had to remember the number, count out the objects and bring the correct number back to me. This seemed more of a challenge for Hannah then just counting out counters. They both thought it was really fun! I think they liked looking for and then carrying all the objects back to me, so we will def. be playing this again. Oh, and yes we have 10 baby dolls, we actually have more than that :)

We had some challenges and I have already had to readjust some things but over all we had a great week!