Week 19 Review

Once again, I've disappeared for a few weeks!

We've been working at a bit slower pace the past few weeks, summer activities and gorgeous weather have taken over a lot of our time, but we're still at it!

Alyssa has now learned all of her lowercase letters up to f, and is quickly mastering letter sounds. We've finished patterns and are currently working on greater than-less than. She's turning out to be quite the math whiz!

Rylan has had a bit of trouble with the number 9, but seems to be grasping it now- we're hoping to move on to 10 next week! He has also been picking up a lot of letter sounds from hearing his sister, he especially loves "M says Mmmmmm!".

We finished a unit on the Ten Commandments, and since I FINALLY have my camera back, here are our tablets!

We also finished a unit on My Family and Me, we made mini books, and chose pictures from old catalogs to represent the members of our family in a collage.

And here's a few shots of our summer fun with Alyssa, Rylan, and one of their best friends.

And one of my baby girl, for good measure!

Review for weeks 7-10

Things have been a bit crazy here lately so I haven't been blogging, but I'm back!

Over the past few weeks Alyssa has really taken off with her alphabet, she's finished thru letter S and is doing amazing! She has also learned to write and recognize up to 14. Rylan has finished shapes and colours, and is currently learning the number 4. We're learning about the life of Moses, and have taken a break from our animal study to start a study about plants (we're working on our plots in the community garden, so it seemed fitting!).

I won't post everything we've been doing, but here is some of what's been happening here over the past few weeks:

Moses in the reeds craft. I got the idea from here but changed it up a little.

Accordion books about how plants grow. Next time I will enlarge the pictures though, my kids had a hard time colouring them because they were so small. 

Our new file folder game to practice numbers. Copied from Stick Your Neck Out File Folder Games series (Kindergarten).

Starting our plots at the community garden.

And one of baby girl, just because :)

Review Week 6

This past week we spent Monday-Wednesday learning the letter J, and Thursday and Friday reviewing all of our letters so far. We also learned the number 9, and practiced counting to 15. Rylan finished up all of his shapes and knows them perfectly, he's still having a little trouble with the difference between black and brown, but I believe that's normal.

Our health lesson was manners, and our weekly study was all about fish. We also learned about David and Goliath.

We talked about where fish live, what they eat, how they breath, and their body parts. The kids made this pictures after pointing out all of their parts:

As a bonus, they got to practice their cutting and gluing skills!

Then we made our manners mini-books, the kids loved the idea of creating their very own book and were so excited to show Daddy when he came home from work! I printed the pages from this blog that I found when I googled "manners mini book".

After reading and talking about David and Goliath all week, we went "stone picking" for 5 small, smooth stones. Then we cut circles from felt, mommy punched some holes around the edges and the kiddos were able to "sew" a pouch for their stones.

And for good measure, a shot of all three of my babies spending some time playing together, I love catching moments like this!

Week 6 Review

Well, there really isn't much to review this week! The sickies hit our house hard this week, all week! So there really wasn't much done, we're back at it again this week though!

Week 5 Review

This week things are finally calmed down and our routine is back! We learned the letters H and I, the numbers 7 and 8, the colours black, white, and brown, and about ovals. Our Bible lesson was about Noah's Ark, we also learned about rainbows, and healthy eating.

We started the week with the kid's favourite breakfast, pancakes and strawberry-banana smoothies!

We made junk vs healthy food collages (and the kids spent 15 minutes trying to convince mommy that Smarties are healthy and they should be allowed to eat them for breakfast, very clever!)

We painted rainbows, and also made rainbow necklaces with fruit loops (although they were eaten before I got a picture!).

And we made Noah's Ark:

In other news, Sophia had her first play date this week!

And have a look at my fearless children! They were playing in the backyard and I came in to check on supper, I was greeted by this and my daughter yelling, "It's okay Mommy, we're being careful!"

Organizing

I realized after my second child was born that I had to get more organized, and after out third came along it became even more obvious. Our decision to homeschool and our fourth child on the way just reinforced that fact. I'm naturally a planner, but I'm not an organizer. I know, it doesn't sound possible, but it is. Trust me. I always start out with big plans and lots of lists, but I'm not always as quick to organize a way to get it done. I need a system, or several smaller systems, in place to help me out.

The biggest help for me are:
Lesson plan sheets (I printed mine from here)
Meal Plans (here)
Cleaning Schedule
Goal pages
Weekly Journal
Pinterest! (and yes, I might be an addict!)

All of this is put into my homeschool planner (which is just a 3 ring binder with dividers), before I started homeschooling it was my household binder, but I didn't want to have to worry about keeping up with two separate binders! It also has pages for Unit Study ideas, craft ideas, library logs, reading lists, field trip ideas and logs, and monthly calendar pages.

I'm hoping that by keeping all of this in one place will make the end of the year portfolios much easier!

More on meal planning here.

Field Trip Friday!

Hubby works shift work, which is really awful most of the time, but one of the perks is that every second weekend he gets 3 days off (although he only has one day off on the other weekend). We've decided that on most of those Fridays we will try and do some sort of field trip with the kids. Today, we had a picnic in the park, and then headed to a Science Museum- the kids loved it and we all had a great day!

Our healthy picnic :P

I thought this was very cool!

They each wanted a turn pushing baby sister.

Watching the ducks.

Feeling her heartbeat.

Chairs of nails!

Learning about muscles.

And an impromptu lesson on gravity!

The Kaleidoscope corner.

My little scientist.

The museum was in an old jail, and many of the furnishings are original. Rylan thought that was very cool!

A sign of things to come?! Let's hope not!

All tuckered out!

Week 4 Review

This week we learned the letters F and G, and the number 6. Rylan also learned the shapes diamond and heart, and the colours purple and orange. Our health lesson was Bathroom Habits, and we continued our Bible and weekly unit lesson from last week (Creation and weather).

Day 6- We coloured, cut, and glued on animals to our Creation pictures. We also added Adam (hard to see in this picture)- we made him clothes from leaves as well, which the kids thought was hilarious!

We also continued to use our weather spinners everyday, and I think we will continue even though the unit is over.

We talked about rain and recited rhymes involving them, we made an itsy bitsy spider craft.

We also talked about snow, and made snowflakes, we added glitter to them after the picture was taken.

Then on Friday we had a Field Trip day! We had a picnic lunch at the playground, then headed out to the science museum. But, I think that deserves a separate post!