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Showing posts from June, 2013

A Review Coming For Spelling City

I've been given a Premium Membership to VocabularySpellingCity.com for a candid, personal, online review. VocabularySpellingCity helps students study word lists using 25 different learning activities such as Unscramble , Hangman , WordFind , and Crossword Puzzle . Parents can create their own spelling lists , find published lists already available on the site, or use any of dozens of free teaching resources on topics such as Multiple Meaning Words and Possessive Nouns . Be sure to come back in three weeks to read about my experience. There might be more free memberships available for bloggers. If you're interested, find out how you can review VocabularySpellingCity.com .

Nature journal

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Oh wow, these pictures were only taken a month ago, but gee these kids sure look different. These were taken on the day I introduced Monkey to nature journaling. By the way, I've no idea why PicMonkey is randomly putting a black border on my pictures when I have it set to transparent when I save. Monkey started off by making nature sculptures while Froggy just watched. By the way, these desks are activity trays I got from Hobby Lobby with 40% off coupons, they are sturdy, stack out of the way when not in use, and the boys LOVE them! Froggy enjoyed nature painting along with Monkey! I love finding new ways to explore nature with the kids. I mean, they already love being outside enough, but it's great finding creative ways like painting with plants to really make it fun!

Space unit

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The solar system was all Monkey's idea from reading a space book his Gramma sent to him. Monkey drew the solar system for art one day (it's next to the color wheel on the bulletin board). During snack time one day, he decided to make moon phases with his cookies. We used an orange with a pencil in it and a flashlight to illustrate the moon phases, got the idea from this read-and-find-out science book.  Froggy enjoyed playing with our "moon dust". It was just flour, nothin' special. The boys made constellations with star stickers on solar reactant paper, I then had then transfer the stars to construction paper to make a second constellation.   Monkey loved using his favorite space book and these planets for teaching himself the order of the planets. I caught him doing this whenever I came back into the room from cleaning or nursing Little Bear.   Monkey played with our "asteroids" for a loooong time! And everything else! I h

Our curriculum

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This is going to be a cumulative post for every year we home school. We've been homeschooling since Monkey was a tot, starting with sign language and "everyday learning". Our first year of homeshooling was when he was 2 years old, I used the Letter of the Week curriculum until he lost interest. After he lost interest, I used various resources including Hubbard Cupboard , Confessions of a Homeschooler preschool , various resources for tot books . When he was 3, I used Montessori resources including Montessori at Home , and 1+1+1=1 . Monkey turned 4 and kept wanting more, I got tired of the hours I spent planning and preparing for each week, so I started buying curriculum, it isn't necessary, but for me to have extra time, it is SO worth it! Scroll down until you view the year you want to see. 2012-2013 School year Monkey's school Main curriculum For our main curriculum, we are using Weaver Interlock , a Christian unit study that uses the bible les

Today.

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 End of another school week! It was so beautiful today and the mosquitos weren't bad so we had school outside today in between playtime. We've been using the ABC Find It sheets to play games for phonic practice, today we used sweet gum tree balls to cover them as he found each one from the clue card. Shaving cream for cleaning and writing practice was a GREAT idea... until I left the room to clean up and found shaving cream all over their bodies and our air purifier, whoops! Our local teacher and parent resource center has a TON of great shoebox workboxes available for rent, the first one I rented has two colored wooden balls attached to a short dowel rod, you have to push it through half way into the hole in the middle so you can slide it to one of the sides, Froggy really enjoys this! We use the Raising Rock Stars for phonics reinforcement, we're going through the alphabet a final time before starting the next level of a reading curriculum. We use this kinderga

The Great Outdoors

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Words can't describe how much I love being out in nature, so glad my family shares the same interest! We had a wonderful time of exploring trails (for a whole ten feet before the kids wanted to go somewhere to run around), cloud watching (that would be me, the kids were too busy playing explorers), listening to the rustling of the wind in the trees (amongst the sound of children screaming playing monster), and just enjoying being among God's creation (that would be all of us, to some degree).

WORMS!

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We had fun with a mini unit/review on soil composition and worms. Lots of fun getting dirt under our nails and documenting the process with Crayola and photography. We cleaned out the jar from our soil composition experiment and then made a worm hotel, kids absolutely loved it, although they didn't want to touch the wiggly worms. We read tons of great worm books and learned a lot about our little garden helpers. We also grew celery from celery (I got such a kick out of turning scraps into a new plant! We dug deeper into learning about composting, we have been composting for years, but now that Monkey has learned about it, he's really into it and tagalong Froggy is too! We had loads of fun with our mini worm unit, it was so simple and cost us only the cost of purchasing some worms from Walmart!