unpacking sweaters and learning the seasons

What a great time to teach Gabi more about the seasons when we are getting out sweaters, jackets and jeans.  We played a fun dress up game.  I filled a laundry basket with items from all seasons.  We had umbrellas, rain jackets, sunglasses, swim arm floats, sun visors, baseball style hats, hoodie jackets, a couple Halloween masks, winter hats and gloves.  I called out a season and both girls had to hurry and dig through the basket and put all as many things they could find that would be worn in that season. 
    We also did a little art with Gabi about the seasons and weather.  We drew a picture of each season and Gabi's were fairly common with rain, flowers, a pumpkin, but her picture of winter puzzled me.  She drew paw prints.  I asked her to tell me about her picture and she said "they are rabbit prints in the snow."  It was a very creative idea I thought.  For weather we drew on index cards, one for each common weather condition.  We have a card for sunny, cloudy, raining, snowing, storming.  Now each day Gabi can look out the window and pick which card fits the weather and tape it to the window.
   I try to overlap topics with both girls, it makes creating a lesson plan easier since some things they can do together.  So Lili spent time this week learning about the different types of clouds, what clouds are made of, what creates thunder and lighting and about tornadoes and hurricanes. 
   We also made a weather vane or wind vane this week.  We made one just like this.  Both girls enjoyed taking it out everyday and checking the wind direction.

We started using an online source for some of our math last year and are continuing to use it this year.   It is khanacademy.org   I believe it is mainly just math and science.  They keep you practicing until you have mastered the skill you are working on.  So Lili currently started adding negative numbers.  On her page that skill will not change to mastered until she completes all practice problems without missing any.  We both enjoy using this site and it is FREE!

I never thought Lili would enjoy learning cursive writing so much.  She asks almost daily if we will be practicing and learning a new letter.   And she is picking it up quickly and pretty easily.  I wasn't sure if I was introducing it to soon but she was interested so we gave it a go.  Here are her papers from today.

I need to send a big THANK YOU to a friend of ours for telling us about a website to check out.  It is ABCya.com  They have games for Kindergarten through 5th grade so both girls are enjoying it but I am mostly excited for Gabi.  I have been trying all sorts of ideas to get her to practice her letter sounds and they have a letter sound BINGO game that she really enjoys playing and as a reward after that she gets to play a fun game on the site as well.  Great games for practicing skills through games. 

Lili has weekly spelling tests and this year I am using spellcity.com  They have games as well which we have not tried out yet but plan to.  So far I have just been using their sample spelling word lists for 2nd grade and choosing her words for each week from that list.

Another week under our belts.  On my list of ideas is to find some ways to take our school work outdoors.  Not just taking books outside but incorporating learning with outside activity since it won't be long before it is to cold to spend as much time outside.  I'll be saving and posting what we find.

Sharing links and materials we like and use

We spent a lot of time outside of the "classroom" this past week.  We had our first field trip of the year with our home school group.  Also our local library offered two events this week, a story hour and Lego club which the girls loved.  To finish off the week we have a park day with our home school group on Fridays and then we head to the library to get movies for the weekend and books for school the next week and some just for fun reading.  We did manage to get everything on my lesson plan done even with all the extra fun stuff.

On to sharing some resources....

When Lili was learning to read we had great success with a book set called Now I'm Reading.  Lili went through level 1, 2 & 3.  I am hoping Gabi enjoys them just as much since that is what I am getting reading to work on with her.  The fact that it comes with stickers that you get as you read the books on your own should be good incentive.  Gabi LOVES stickers!  I found each set either on amazon or e-bay for a great price.

Lili is reading chapter books now and really likes the Junie B. Jones series by Barbara Park.  They are written in a silly way that has kept her attention long enough for her to realize that she really could read those "big kid books".  We recently started our first book from the Magic Tree House series and she really seems to it.  The chapters are quite short which I think is good for starting chapter books since there is a feeling of accomplishment after each chapter.  I am reading the first one and hopefully she will be up for reading the next.  The stories look to be full of adventure and imagination.  Compared to Junie B. Jones I think the Magic Tree House would appeal a little more to both boys and girls.

We are using bookadventure.com again this year.  It is a fun way to keep up with reading comprehension.  Their prizes are not great but we just use the personal incentive program where I get to create certificates for prizes that I will provide as she reaches her goals.  Not all prizes need to be a physical item, some are as simple as quality time together with mommy playing barbies or cooking.

I did some searching for online games and worksheets to use this past week and found some nice sites and thought I'd share them.
  For anyone learning to read music,  I came across these printable worksheets.  I was looking for something to use as a fun refresher.  Lili started playing the recorder and piano last year and I didn't get on her about practicing during the later part of the summer.  I wanted to see how much she remembered before we jump back in.  Her main goal is to be able to play Jingle Bells on both instruments for Christmas this year. 
   We haven't started working on times tables yet but we have started introducing multiplication so I found this site and thought I would save it for later in the year.  Looks like it might be good for testing out times table knowledge.   It is a simple website, more for drills not exactly a game.
   We are working on root word, prefixes and suffixes.  This site was a bit tough for Lili so might be better for older kids.  There are games for learning and practicing root words, suffixes and prefixes.  I am saving it for future use.  I then found this site which was more on her level for the same topics but not as games just printable worksheets.  But this site also has a lot more to offer on many other subjects so I will be back to see what else they have for us to use.  I love having a lot of resources for free printable worksheets.

The 2nd week of school has come to an end.  It was a fun week with beautiful weather and time spent out of the house with friends.   The girls are enjoying school and most days are willing to get things done without much, if any, fuss.  That leaves a happy mom who is ready to put in some work to get the lessons planned for next week.




Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.
~ Roger Lewin
 
 
  

We're Back!

I am back from my one year hiatus!  After only one year of blogging too, talk about commitment.  Well, I started missing it a few months ago and thought if I can get our plan and goals for the school year ready to go before the first day then I will give this another try.  Looks like I met my goal.  Previously this blog was private and only available to those I invited and then I found out they had to have an account to log in, view and leave comments.  With all those hoops I ended up with 4 viewers.  Not that they are not worth writing for,  those 4 viewers are very important people in our lives but well I was hoping for a larger audience.  So now I have taken off the private lock down and here we are.  Now on to the good stuff......

Our first week of school went great!  Lili is in 2nd grade and Gabi is working on K-4 which is pretty much kindergarten but if she doesn't get to a first grade level by next year we do Kindergarten again from where we left off.  I mainly do a K-4 because she has gone through all the preschool level and is ready to move on even though she is only 3.  Oh sorry, 3 1/2 she won't let anyone forget she is 3 1/2.

For most of the summer the girls have been watching this show in the morning called Signing Time.  It is on at the time I am normally making breakfast so they get to watch while I cook and clean up the kitchen.  They really enjoyed this show and were learning a lot.  They were teaching me all sorts of sign language.  The alphabet, numbers, colors, animals, foods, etc...   I had planned on adding a foreign language to our curriculum this year but after Lili made it clear that she really didn't want to I thought why not sign language.  Both girls are enjoying this show and they can both learn it this year.  We were all in agreement so on the first day of school we came downstairs I headed to the kitchen and the girls turned on the tv to the channel for signing time and..............Word World?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
They were so bummed.  We emailed PBS/LakeShore Kids to ask if they will have that show in another time slot.  It has been almost a week and no reply.  I checked their program schedule and looks like that show is done for now.  BUT, our public library TO THE RESCUE!!!  They have several volumes (older version) of this show that we can get.  So I requested Vol. 1 and we will have it for school this week.  YAY!! 

I had the opportunity to sign Lili up for Book-It where you read books and track how many minutes or how many pages you read and at the end you can win a free personal pan pizza from pizza hut.  Well, I like the idea of the whole program but I don't necessarily like the prize.  So instead we used some of the printables for tracking how many pages Lili reads and when she meets the goal she gets a prize that is mommy approved.  We have decided on 3 prizes.  When she reaches her first prize goal she will be cashing in for a trip to Zig-E's Funland, the next prize will be a sleepover at Grammy's house with some type of outing while we are out there.  She wanted a double sleepover (2 nights, 3 days but poor Grammy would be wiped out, lol) so we compromised with the outing (a movie, back to Zig-E's, etc...).  Prize 3 will be a pizza and movie night with a few friends over.  Boy those prizes sure beat a trip to Pizza Hut in my opinion.  Below is her tracking sheet for September and the first book to be read.  Her and Gabi both LOVE Gerald and Piggie.  They are very cute and funny books by Mo Willems.

YARD SALE SCORE!!  I wanted to get Gabi and set of these and for Lili to use along with a tangram set.  They are not really expensive but you can't beat .50 cents.  Both girls love it and we use this for independent work if I am busy with the other during school.  This is a really nice set, I may have to take a look at Discovery Toys and see what else they have to offer.

Thanks again for our library, we get to use this for music class for 2 weeks.  The girls will get to learn and listen to the different instruments and what instrument family they are in.  Families include String, Woodwind, Brass and Percussion.  They love dancing while we play the CD, my graceful ballerinas.

Gabi is doing pretty well sitting for school each day.  Her attention span is that of a 3 yr old so she doesn't sit for long but when she does she is quite productive.  Here is here printing practice.  She is in love with markers and uses them for everything.  I slip a piece of cardboard under her sheet as to not ruin several sheets of paper underneath due to her love of markers.  This is a nice small tablet of handwriting paper we picked up at Dollar Tree.

Lili is moving on to cursive this year.   She likes to call it fancy writing.  We are doing a few letters at a time and so far very little frustration on Lili's end.  She is catching on well and enjoying it.  I tried to make sure we get a couple vowels in each lesson so we can actually write a few 3 letter words with what we have learned.  Putting the letters together "all fancy" is fun.
 I don't know where this dry erase cursive mat is from,  it was given to us but it is great.  We also have a couple math ones.  If I come across them somewhere I will pass it on, in the meantime I bet Amazon would have them.

This past July, during our library's summer reading program they had a stuffed pet sleepover.  Lili was planning all summer long on which pet she was going to take.  All the kids were able to bring in a stuffed animal/pet and during the program the children's librarian read them stories, the kids made little blankets for their pet and signed them in for the sleepover.  The children left their pets overnight and picked them up the next day.  Well, this mom was a bit busy that week and completely forgot about this event.   It was 9:00pm on the day of this sleepover when out of no where it popped into my head that we had missed it.  The girls took it better than I expected but I had to promise to host my own pet sleepover for their pets of choice.  The girls enjoyed sending their pets with me for the night when they went to bed.  I took pictures of all the fun things their pets did that night and we put together this little scrapbook of all the fun, just like the librarian did for their event.   I learned my lesson for forgetting about the library that week.

This fall we are working on this Election activity book.  It is for grades 1-3 and since we have a presidential election going on I thought this would be a great year to use this book.  It comes with a large poster and lots of reproducible activity pages, such as an election mini book, election time line, wheel of presidents, white house lift-the-flap tour, an election scrapbook and many more.  We also found a book at the library with all of the presidents in it including pictures.  The girls loved looking at all the pictures and how weird they thought the men looked.  A few presidents were even compared to some of the Three Stooges, we are talking appearance here.  Gabi at all of 3 1/2 years old yells out, "that guy looks like Larry from the Three Stooges!"  Definitely Daddy's girls.

Time to start week 2, I hope it goes as smoothly as week 1.  I will be sharing links for products and freebies soon.   Thanks for visiting and have a great week!