This fun book taught shapes, counting, adding, how to arrange in sets, and subtraction. I think learning to subtract by way of eating was the favorite part of the whole lesson. Mmmm!
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Yummy Math
Who says math can't be fun...and delicious?!
This fun book taught shapes, counting, adding, how to arrange in sets, and subtraction. I think learning to subtract by way of eating was the favorite part of the whole lesson. Mmmm!
This fun book taught shapes, counting, adding, how to arrange in sets, and subtraction. I think learning to subtract by way of eating was the favorite part of the whole lesson. Mmmm!
Friday, October 14, 2011
2011-2012 School Lesson Plan - Noah
As I mentioned before, I have decided to have a little more structured schooling with Noah this year. Last year, he participated in a lot of our craft projects, but other than that, he really didn't have much to do during our school time. That meant that he provided us lots of distraction. There were times that I was ready to pull my hair out because he was constantly wanting attention, I was trying to teach Madison, and she was distracted by whatever Noah was doing. This year, I was determined to not let that happen.
My solution was to make Noah his own box containing things for him to work on during school. It means that I have to be more diligent in finding and providing his work box activities, but so far it's been going really well. A lot of the activities are things that he can do on his own, but there are some things that he needs my assistance with. Since Madison is learning to do a little more independent work, I can work Noah during those times. So what's in the box?
Noah has his own calender notebook. He also has his own box of crayons, his own pencil, and a variety of books and worksheets. My mom got a bunch of school books and worksheets at a rummage sale from a lady who used to be a teacher. I have been using many of those worksheets for Noah because they are very age-appropriate for him.
I have a couple math books that he has been working through as well as some basic number flashcards to help him learn his numbers. I have also been using a number of worksheets from one of my favorite homeschool blogs - Confessions of a Homeschooler.
Also taken from Confessions of a Homeschooler are activity pages to help Noah learn some pre-writing skills...
...and pages to help him learn his letters. The pages you see here he uses Do-a-Dot markers, he traces, and he uses a pushpin to poke holes along the lines of the letter. My parents also gave him a couple of alphabet books as a gift.
Noah doesn't know his letters very well yet, so these books have been very helpful in introducing the letters to him. They have also given him practice in writing the letters, something he is still a long ways from mastering.
Noah is our puzzle-boy, so I usually have him choose a few puzzles from our stash to work on as well.
Along with these work box activities, Noah works on his Awana verses, he participates in our Science lessons and experiments, he watches the music lesson video, does art projects like painting or coloring, and he listens as we read the various supplemental library books. He actually lasts the entire 3 hours that we work on school in the morning, which is something that was unheard of last year. Of course, his attention span is a little shorter than Madison's, so I don't make him sit there all the time. If he gets off his chair to go play with his toys, I'm just fine with that. I realize that he is not even school-age yet so I don't force it upon him. I just have these things planned out for him because more times than not, he wants to do school too.
So there you have it. This should give you some idea of what goes on here during the school week. I'm sure things will be tweaked in the months to come, but for now, this is what works for us.
My solution was to make Noah his own box containing things for him to work on during school. It means that I have to be more diligent in finding and providing his work box activities, but so far it's been going really well. A lot of the activities are things that he can do on his own, but there are some things that he needs my assistance with. Since Madison is learning to do a little more independent work, I can work Noah during those times. So what's in the box?
Noah has his own calender notebook. He also has his own box of crayons, his own pencil, and a variety of books and worksheets. My mom got a bunch of school books and worksheets at a rummage sale from a lady who used to be a teacher. I have been using many of those worksheets for Noah because they are very age-appropriate for him.
I have a couple math books that he has been working through as well as some basic number flashcards to help him learn his numbers. I have also been using a number of worksheets from one of my favorite homeschool blogs - Confessions of a Homeschooler.
Also taken from Confessions of a Homeschooler are activity pages to help Noah learn some pre-writing skills...
...and pages to help him learn his letters. The pages you see here he uses Do-a-Dot markers, he traces, and he uses a pushpin to poke holes along the lines of the letter. My parents also gave him a couple of alphabet books as a gift.
Noah doesn't know his letters very well yet, so these books have been very helpful in introducing the letters to him. They have also given him practice in writing the letters, something he is still a long ways from mastering.
Noah is our puzzle-boy, so I usually have him choose a few puzzles from our stash to work on as well.
Along with these work box activities, Noah works on his Awana verses, he participates in our Science lessons and experiments, he watches the music lesson video, does art projects like painting or coloring, and he listens as we read the various supplemental library books. He actually lasts the entire 3 hours that we work on school in the morning, which is something that was unheard of last year. Of course, his attention span is a little shorter than Madison's, so I don't make him sit there all the time. If he gets off his chair to go play with his toys, I'm just fine with that. I realize that he is not even school-age yet so I don't force it upon him. I just have these things planned out for him because more times than not, he wants to do school too.
So there you have it. This should give you some idea of what goes on here during the school week. I'm sure things will be tweaked in the months to come, but for now, this is what works for us.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
2011-2012 School Lesson Plan - Madison
It's been quite awhile since I updated this blog! I decided to go ahead and document what we are doing for school this year. I'm doing it to give you all a glimpse into our school days, but I'm doing it mainly for myself, to look back on in years to come.
Our school day typically begins at 9:00am. We start by saying the Pledge of Allegiance and The Lord's Prayer. There are 4 core subjects that we try to do everyday: Bible, Math, Reading, and Spelling. I decided to also have one other additional subject added each day that we focus on. Mondays we do Cursive Handwriting. Tuesdays we do Science. Wednesdays are Library Time and Awana. Thursdays we do Music. And Fridays we do Science Experiments. I have found this to be a nice way of accomplishing a variety of subjects without feeling like we need to do all of them every single day. Most days we are able to accomplish the 4 core subjects and the one additional subject.
Our first subject is always Bible. We are doing My Father's World curriculum again this year and Madison reads out of her Bible Reader and completes the work in her Bible Notebook when there is a page to complete. We read some pages out of our Bible storybook, and we also work on the kids' Awana books/verses. The kids are also learning the books of the Bible and so far know the New Testament books. We are still working our way through the Old Testament. After Bible time, we each pray and then we begin the rest of our schoolwork.
After Bible we do Calendar Time. Our calendar board is mostly unchanged from last year, but we have tweaked things a little bit. We still do the daily weather, determine which day it is (yesterday, today, tomorrow), and we find the correct date on the calendar. However, this year, I alone am in charge of the bulletin board. The kids do their calendar work in their Calendar Notebooks.
The Calendar Notebook was an ingenious idea that I took from Mama Jenn. I absolutely love it! It is a binder that has all the necessary pages in it for completing each task in our Calendar Time.
The first page is their weather graph. As you can see, we have been enjoying lots of sunny days!
The next page is the monthly calendar. The kids tell me the full correct date (i.e. Thursday October 13, 2011) and then they mark it on their calendar. Ha! I just noticed in this picture that Madison needs to fix the date for tomorrow. It appears that she wrote the number 13 twice in a row.
On the next page, Madison gets practice writing out the full date in written form as well as the code date. Noah does not have this page in his notebook.
The next page tells us how many days we have been in school. For Noah, I let him just color in the boxes instead of writing the numbers.
The last page in the notebook is tally marks, and it coincides with the number of days we have been in school. This also provides good practice in counting by 5's.
After Calendar Time, we begin working on our other subjects. I have a few different math workbooks that Madison works through. "The Complete Book of Math" was the recommended book by "My Father's World". The other two books were fun gifts from my parents. All have fun, colorful illustrations and activities for learning new math concepts. Madison has really enjoyed all of them so far.
"My Father's World" has a list of other books to supplement each new concept introduced. I have been able to find these books at our local library. For example, today we read "Lizzy's Dizzy Day" and did some of the suggested math activities that were listed in the book. The kids had a lot of fun with that.
We also do time tests, flashcards, and other math worksheets to help reinforce math facts that we have already learned.
For Reading, we go through the student workbook that comes with our curriculum. However, we do this at a much slower rate than what is actually printed in the book. I have found that introducing a new reading "rule" every single day was too fast for Madison, and not effective. She was becoming frustrated with all the new rules and we weren't getting anywhere. I actually took a break from using the student notebook in reading for a few months, and we are now just getting back into it. Also, Madison is still reading her Bob Books as well as reading her Bible Reader that is shown in the first picture. We read many library books all together and she likes to look at books during rest time and attempt to sound words out in those. Little by little, she is becoming a stronger reader.
I purchased the "All About Spelling" curriculum to use for Madison this year. I figured it would also help out in the Reading area as well. We aren't too far in it yet, but I know this will be a good fit for Madison because it appears to be a very hands-on type curriculum.
As I mentioned, Mondays we work on cursive handwriting. Madison wanted to learn cursive and I figured, why not? I found some cursive handwriting worksheets online at www.superteacherworksheets.com. Madison has really enjoyed learning cursive writing and she is doing really well at it too.
Of course, she still gets regular handwriting practice in as well. One day she had to write a letter to someone (she chose her friend Abbie). Here she had to write out the weekly Proverbs verse.
Tuesdays we have a Science focus. We read the science topic out of the book "Things Outdoors" (which came with our curriculum) and I also find library books to supplement the lesson.
After we read, the kids each illustrate the lesson in their science notebooks.
Wednesdays are our busy days. We have library story hour in the morning, Madison attends a kids after-school program at our church called Kids for Christ, and then both kids attend Awana in the evening. Another homeschooling mom gave me the good idea to have the kids bring their backpacks to the library each week. That way, they can carry the books instead of me trying to juggle the stack of books/videos while carrying the baby in his car seat. Brilliant! Plus, they love bringing their backpacks.
Thursday is music day. Right now all I'm doing for this is having the kids watch a music course video series. It teaches the very basics of music in a kid-friendly way. Eventually I will start teaching the kids some of the fundamentals of reading music, and I would love to get a piano and have the kids learn to play.
Friday is Science Experiment Day. I purchased the book "How To Do Science Experiments With Children" and so far, the kids are loving it. There are 73 various experiments in the book and it has detailed teacher instructions as well as student sheets. I had both kids make a science experiment folder in which they keep all their worksheets from the experiments.
Before we conduct the experiment, the kids try to guess what the outcome will be. After the experiment, we answer some questions and then they draw a picture of what happened during the experiment on the back of their page.
We are typically done with our formal school day around 12:00 noon (with a short 5-10 minute recess/snack break done around 10:30 am). Madison is still in gymnastics this year, the kids help me with various household tasks, they have a lot of "Phy Ed" time playing outside, they do various art projects and hands-on activities like play dough, and we spend a lot of time reading books before bedtime each night - all which I count as school time.
And that is what Madison's school week looks like. Noah's school is different, tailored to his age of course. I'm going to do a separate post to show you what I do for him. He does more structured school this year than he did last year, and it is really working out well so far.
Our school day typically begins at 9:00am. We start by saying the Pledge of Allegiance and The Lord's Prayer. There are 4 core subjects that we try to do everyday: Bible, Math, Reading, and Spelling. I decided to also have one other additional subject added each day that we focus on. Mondays we do Cursive Handwriting. Tuesdays we do Science. Wednesdays are Library Time and Awana. Thursdays we do Music. And Fridays we do Science Experiments. I have found this to be a nice way of accomplishing a variety of subjects without feeling like we need to do all of them every single day. Most days we are able to accomplish the 4 core subjects and the one additional subject.
Our first subject is always Bible. We are doing My Father's World curriculum again this year and Madison reads out of her Bible Reader and completes the work in her Bible Notebook when there is a page to complete. We read some pages out of our Bible storybook, and we also work on the kids' Awana books/verses. The kids are also learning the books of the Bible and so far know the New Testament books. We are still working our way through the Old Testament. After Bible time, we each pray and then we begin the rest of our schoolwork.
After Bible we do Calendar Time. Our calendar board is mostly unchanged from last year, but we have tweaked things a little bit. We still do the daily weather, determine which day it is (yesterday, today, tomorrow), and we find the correct date on the calendar. However, this year, I alone am in charge of the bulletin board. The kids do their calendar work in their Calendar Notebooks.
The Calendar Notebook was an ingenious idea that I took from Mama Jenn. I absolutely love it! It is a binder that has all the necessary pages in it for completing each task in our Calendar Time.
The first page is their weather graph. As you can see, we have been enjoying lots of sunny days!
The next page is the monthly calendar. The kids tell me the full correct date (i.e. Thursday October 13, 2011) and then they mark it on their calendar. Ha! I just noticed in this picture that Madison needs to fix the date for tomorrow. It appears that she wrote the number 13 twice in a row.
On the next page, Madison gets practice writing out the full date in written form as well as the code date. Noah does not have this page in his notebook.
The next page tells us how many days we have been in school. For Noah, I let him just color in the boxes instead of writing the numbers.
The last page in the notebook is tally marks, and it coincides with the number of days we have been in school. This also provides good practice in counting by 5's.
After Calendar Time, we begin working on our other subjects. I have a few different math workbooks that Madison works through. "The Complete Book of Math" was the recommended book by "My Father's World". The other two books were fun gifts from my parents. All have fun, colorful illustrations and activities for learning new math concepts. Madison has really enjoyed all of them so far.
"My Father's World" has a list of other books to supplement each new concept introduced. I have been able to find these books at our local library. For example, today we read "Lizzy's Dizzy Day" and did some of the suggested math activities that were listed in the book. The kids had a lot of fun with that.
We also do time tests, flashcards, and other math worksheets to help reinforce math facts that we have already learned.
For Reading, we go through the student workbook that comes with our curriculum. However, we do this at a much slower rate than what is actually printed in the book. I have found that introducing a new reading "rule" every single day was too fast for Madison, and not effective. She was becoming frustrated with all the new rules and we weren't getting anywhere. I actually took a break from using the student notebook in reading for a few months, and we are now just getting back into it. Also, Madison is still reading her Bob Books as well as reading her Bible Reader that is shown in the first picture. We read many library books all together and she likes to look at books during rest time and attempt to sound words out in those. Little by little, she is becoming a stronger reader.
I purchased the "All About Spelling" curriculum to use for Madison this year. I figured it would also help out in the Reading area as well. We aren't too far in it yet, but I know this will be a good fit for Madison because it appears to be a very hands-on type curriculum.
As I mentioned, Mondays we work on cursive handwriting. Madison wanted to learn cursive and I figured, why not? I found some cursive handwriting worksheets online at www.superteacherworksheets.com. Madison has really enjoyed learning cursive writing and she is doing really well at it too.
Of course, she still gets regular handwriting practice in as well. One day she had to write a letter to someone (she chose her friend Abbie). Here she had to write out the weekly Proverbs verse.
Tuesdays we have a Science focus. We read the science topic out of the book "Things Outdoors" (which came with our curriculum) and I also find library books to supplement the lesson.
After we read, the kids each illustrate the lesson in their science notebooks.
Wednesdays are our busy days. We have library story hour in the morning, Madison attends a kids after-school program at our church called Kids for Christ, and then both kids attend Awana in the evening. Another homeschooling mom gave me the good idea to have the kids bring their backpacks to the library each week. That way, they can carry the books instead of me trying to juggle the stack of books/videos while carrying the baby in his car seat. Brilliant! Plus, they love bringing their backpacks.
Thursday is music day. Right now all I'm doing for this is having the kids watch a music course video series. It teaches the very basics of music in a kid-friendly way. Eventually I will start teaching the kids some of the fundamentals of reading music, and I would love to get a piano and have the kids learn to play.
Friday is Science Experiment Day. I purchased the book "How To Do Science Experiments With Children" and so far, the kids are loving it. There are 73 various experiments in the book and it has detailed teacher instructions as well as student sheets. I had both kids make a science experiment folder in which they keep all their worksheets from the experiments.
Before we conduct the experiment, the kids try to guess what the outcome will be. After the experiment, we answer some questions and then they draw a picture of what happened during the experiment on the back of their page.
We are typically done with our formal school day around 12:00 noon (with a short 5-10 minute recess/snack break done around 10:30 am). Madison is still in gymnastics this year, the kids help me with various household tasks, they have a lot of "Phy Ed" time playing outside, they do various art projects and hands-on activities like play dough, and we spend a lot of time reading books before bedtime each night - all which I count as school time.
And that is what Madison's school week looks like. Noah's school is different, tailored to his age of course. I'm going to do a separate post to show you what I do for him. He does more structured school this year than he did last year, and it is really working out well so far.
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