Climbing Kansas Mountains

This week we are rowing Climbing Kansas Mountains. It is the story of a boy and his father doing something special, just the two of them, no brothers!
Geography: Kansas, land forms(plains, hills, mountains, etc)
Language arts: idioms(Kansas Mountains, when pigs fly, etc)
Science: wheat
We will be doing a lapbook for this story as well. Doing lapbooks with each story has been very beneficial to A6, it is a great way to review everything she's learned throughout the week.
We are almost done with book one of Reading made easy. Next week we'll get to start book 2!
For math u see we'll be finishing Primer by mid December and come January we'll start Alpha.
We are still working on the calendar and nutrition this week. We'll be taking a field trip to the pumpkin patch as well! Sometime next week we'll be going on a leaf hunt.
BTW, X4 is back to normal, no fever after that first night, and the hunt for a piano is looking promising!

Piano Lessons

The kids are going to start taking piano lessons! Yes, both of them.
Now all we need is a piano!
We are doing Suzuki piano, which means that I'll be doing half of the work with the kids, which means that I have to take a few lessons before them so that I can help them during the week. The lessons are once a week starting in Nov for the kids, since the piano teacher has to start with me.
We've been to two lessons, really just to watch her doing it with other kids. It's amazing to see kids that young be able to play without having numbers or letters on the keys.
The search for a piano continues, in the mean time my church is going to let me use one of their many pianos to practice!
Please pray that we'll find the right piano at the right price!
Also please pray for X4, he has a bit of a fever and is not feeling well at all.

The Story of Ferdinand

This week we are rowing The Story of Ferdinand. It's about an incredibly big and strong bull who would rather smell the flowers than to fight at the bull fights in Madrid. We got to watch some bullfight videos already, I tried to make sure they would n't see any bulls bleeding or being killed by the Matador.
Geography: Spain, color Spain flag and look for Spain in map.
Language arts: sequence of events, story cards.
We'll be adding everything we do to a lapbook
Science: Ferdinand likes to lay down under a cork tree.

Also this week we'll be talking about the months of the year, for math A6 will be introduced to the unknown number or algebra... a very simple algebra(if there is such a thing).
I also have an activity pg about the colors of fall. Yes it is officially Fall!
I have a lot of Fall activities for the next few months. We'll be doing a weather lapbook that includes the weather for the four seasons, but that's another post!

Nutrition lapbook

This week in addition to the book we are rowing, we are going to be working on our nutrition lapbook. A6 will be keeping track of the food she eats throughout the week and writing it down on her lapbook, also she'll be keeping track of any physical activity we do during the week and writing it down as well. We'll be learning about the four food groups and we'll be able to track how much we eat of each group, of course there is a fifth group...the junk food group!! We won't be doing any tracking of that food group..too scary!!
Here are some pics of the lapbook, it has a lot of sections. This is the most packed lapbook we've done so far.

Mirette on the High Wire

This past Friday we had our first COOP of the school year. Things were a little different for this one, after the kids finished their show and tells we all stayed together and learned how to do a lapbook. Lapbooking can be done by any learner-- from preschoolers to adults. With this educational method, you make mini-books covering details that you've studied. After making a variety of mini-books about a larger topic, all the books are put together in a large folder. The finished product is called a lapbook because it's large and covers your lap.
Five in a Row has been using lapbooks (they call them fold n learns) for a while now but I never knew how to do them. Well, I know now and I love them. We went ahead and did lapbooks for Madeline's rescue and the little red lighthouse.
It's great to see all the info spread out like that, makes it so much easier to remember details about the story and the different subjects we are covering from a single story. I'm changing all my lessons to include a lapbook for each of them!


This week we are rowing Mirette in the High Wire, a wonderful story about a young girl who helps a old performer conquer his fear and perform once again.
We're going back to Paris, France for this one so it'll be a nice review of what we already learned when we read Madeline's rescue. Also for geography we'll be looking at all the places Bellini performed before ending up in Paris.
We'll be doing vocabulary words as well, lapbooks are a great way to display vocabulary words!
We played a game were we tried to walk on the high wire, the kids had fun pretending to do this.

This week we are starting phonics as well, A6 had no problems getting back into it. She is reading very well and she is able to figure out the different sounds certain letters make when they are together. I had to give her a little brake in between subjects because we are covering a lot more stuff now than when we first began school. The breaks worked well, she seemed ready to tackle the next subject after each break.
Math is going very well, we are almost done with Primer and we should be starting Alpha before the semester is over.
Her handwriting is getting better as well, I'm going to start a bit of spelling with her, probably every two weeks 3-5 words at a time. I have a really simple spelling curriculum where I have lists of words for each grade.
I'm working on the calendar right now, she will be learning how to spell the days of the week and then the months of the year.
This Wednesday we'll be continuing with the nutrition chapter from Home economics for homeschoolers.

The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge

This week we are rowing The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge. It is based on the story of a real lighthouse along the Hudson River in New York.

Since the story takes place in NYC we will be learning about NYC today. Not too in depth, but enough that she'll know where is located in a US map and she'll be able to recognize some of the most famous images of NYC.
We'll talk about lighthouses and their purpose, and of course big bridges. We'll be starting our Home Economics curriculum. The 1st chapter deals with nutrition, lots of fruits and veggies!
I'm planning to have her do some notebooking pages with pics of different kinds of fruits and veggies and why they are good for our bodies.
This week we will start handwriting exercises once again, both upper and lowercase. I won't touch phonics till next week, and we'll be doing math as well.
This Friday will be our first COOP, which means I have to make sure I cover everything in four days.

X4 is doing really good with Letter of the Week. His sister has been a real help with that, she's been playing teacher with him. This week is the letter B , the number 2, red and the octagon.
Should be fun!!

Look Ma, No Trainning Wheels!

Two years ago we we got a bike for A6. She hardly ever used it. For some reason she seemed to be afraid to ride it. Two weeks ago it was X4's birthday! He got a bike for his birthday that he started riding right away. When A6 saw this she asked where her bike was because she wanted to ride with her brother. Two weeks later she asked her Daddy to remove the training wheels.
Twenty four hours later here she is riding her bike with no training wheels!! X4 is there as well riding his little bike!

Birthdays, Soccer Camp and Other Things

Last month was X4's birthday! For those of you who could n't make it, here are some pics.
















































Our Church had a Mini Soccer camp for the little ones, here are some pics of X4 and A6 playing soccer!



































Some of the boys started to take take their shirts off and of course X4 had to do it as well!!














Here's A6 and her new smile! She lost her tooth right before Church on Sunday!

Madeline's Rescue

We're back! This week we are rowing Madeline's Rescue. Madeline falls into the Seine River and a very special dog comes to the rescue.
Geography: The River Seine
Madeline was rescued from the River Seine in Paris. Locate the river on a map. What famous church is located on an island of this river? (Notre Dame)
Tomorrow we'll be doing a sequence of events activity and Vocabulary/Dictionary Skills, we'll get a chance to look up some words from the story that we had never heard before in the dictionary.
Science: Animal welfare. In the story, the officials kick the dog out of the school. Discuss why this in inhumane and unacceptable.
On Friday we may take a field trip to our local animal shelter to see what happens to pets who are no longer wanted.

We started math as well, A6 had to practice her numbers, for some reason we had lots of letter practice this summer but not enough number practice. We'll be doing math four days a week as well as handwriting and phonics 3 times a week.
Starting next week and every Wed we'll be doing either Library day, home economics, health & nutrition or music. We will NOT have story time that day nor math or handwriting.

I started doing Letter of the Week with X4.
This week is letter: A, number: 1, color: blue & shape: square. He got to color some stuff blue including a square. He seems to be enjoying that more.
This takes about 5 to 10 minutes plus story time, another 15 to 20 minutes depending on the book and how many questions they ask while I'm reading.

For A6 we are doing close to 2 1/2 hours of school.

A6 wants to continue doing girl scouts which will be three Mondays a month this year. COOP will be starting on the 12th of this month and from what I hear they are going to be doing really cool stuff! I don't want to overwhelm her with too many activities since we also have Clubs and Small groups during the week plus my Ladies Bible study on Tuesdays afternoon.

This year is going to be a busy one which means I won't be able to blog as much but I will try to always post what we are doing for the week and if we do something different or unexpected I'll blog about it as well.