Creation Books

We have been making a page in these creation books each day while reading through the creation account in the Bible. The kids were really excited to staple all their pages together to complete the book today. I love that both of them, including Noah at only the age of 2, can "read" their books and tell me all the things that God made on each day. It was definitely a great learning experience for them!


Day 1: God made light. God divided the light from the darkness.

Day 2: God made the sky. God divided the water above and below the sky.

Day 3: God made seas, dry land, and plants.

Day 4: God made the sun, moon, and stars

Day 5: God made living creatures in the sea, and birds

Day 6: God made animals and other living creatures on the land. God made man and woman.

Day 7: God rested.

M: Moon, Mice, and Mixing Colors

We have been spending the last couple days learning about the moon, and we have done several fun activities in our lessons.

Yesterday we made sun and moon snacks out of an orange and a hard-boiled egg. The kids wanted to demonstrate how their moon reflects the sun's light, using a flashlight.


Today we read the story "Little Bear Goes to the Moon" by Elsa Homelund Minarik. In the story, Little Bear makes a helmet and tells his mother that he is going to fly to the moon by climbing a hill and jumping out of a tree. So we created our own helmets...

...and then reenacted the story


The trees on the moon sure look like the trees on Earth!

After reading some information about how the moon has craters, we decided to go make some craters of our own using balls and sand. I discovered after this activity that it would have been far more wise to do this outside. I had quite the mess to clean up after they were done playing in their moon sand...but they sure had fun!

We read this cute book, "Mouse Paint" by Ellen Stoll Walsh, which is a story about 3 little mice who find out what happens when you mix certain colors together. After reading the story, we made our lowercase m into a mouse, and then we had fun painting different colored mice - first in primary colors, and then mixing them to make new colored mice.

S is for...

a Sun Snack...
(idea taken from http://mama-jenn.blogspot.com)

Shadow fun...


Seasons...
(idea taken from http://mama-jenn.blogspot.com)

Spaghetti art - making the letter S, of course...

hand Suns...
(idea taken from http://mama-jenn.blogspot.com)


a Scavenger hunt...

a Spectacular and Successful School day!

First Day of School

Working on their Creation Books

Their Sun badges to help them remember that...

Working on an a letter S activity

Our first day of homeschool was mostly a success! I'm very happy with how things went and pray that things will continue to go as well as they did today. Our only hang-up occurred during handwriting. The letter we were learning about all day was the letter S, and that is the letter that Madison has the most difficulty with writing. She know how to write it; she does not know how to write it within the lines you see on handwriting paper. That is where the frustration came in. I really don't know how important it is for them to learn how to write the letters within those lines? She can write an S, and it looks like an S...so is it absolutely necessary that we painstakingly work with great amounts of frustration, to make sure that the top of the S touches the top line, the middle of the S crosses the middle line, and the bottom of the S touches the bottom line? Because I'm beginning to think that it isn't worth the frustration on her part. I'm afraid that she is going to start not liking writing if we continue on being so particular. And writing is something that she has always loved to do.

Other than that, like I said, it was a successful day. Noah even did really well for most of it too. He participated along with us for many of the activities, but he also got toys out and played with as well. During his nap, Madison and I worked on a few more things so it was nice not having the distraction that Noah tends to bring. :-)

So on to planning tomorrow's lessons!

The Plan For Extracurricular Activities

"But homeschooled kids don't get the social interaction that publicly-schooled kids do. And it's very important that kids learn those social skills."

I've heard those arguments before when I've told people about our desire to homeschool. And in my defense, I'd just say that school is not the only place for kids to have social interaction. In fact, it seems to me that those kids who do try to be social in the classroom are labeled as disruptive or even ADD.

Just because our children are homeschooled, that does not mean that they will be totally isolated from the world. I feel that we have enough "outside" interaction and that Madison and Noah have no problem with their social skills.

I do realize the importance of extracurricular activities, though. They teach important skills such as teamwork, good sportsmanship, encouragement, perseverance, dedication, etc. I do plan on having Madison get involved in some activities outside of the homeschool environment:

• She loved participating in Awana last year, so we were really excited to learn that there is a church here in town that offers Awana. Her Awana verses and lessons will also be a part of our daily Bible lessons.
• She has expressed an interest in gymnastics so I think we are going to sign her up for the beginners session, beginning the end of September. This class only meets once a week and goes for 8 weeks. There are three of those 8-week sessions throughout the school year. We'll see how this first session goes for her before determining if she'll continue on the rest of the year.
• We like to go to the public library quite frequently and they will be starting up their weekly Story Hour again beginning September 1st. They have a great program that includes reading books, making crafts, and doing other activities, and the kids both really enjoyed participating in it. This will likely take the place of our Reading lesson once a week.
• Our pastor and his wife also homeschool their children, and they informed us that there is a local homeschooling group that meets on a regular basis. They are going to help us get involved with that. I'm not sure how often they meet, but I know it will be a great time to get together with other families that are homeschooling.
  
• And of course there is our regular Sunday church and Sunday School time, which provides good, Christian fellowship.

So that's my plan right now for allowing our kids to have their social interaction time. I think it is a good amount of extracurricular activities that will allow us some time outside of the house, but still not feel like we are overstretched and always on-the-go.

Our Lesson Plan

CAUTION: This is a long post!


I have spent quite a bit of time going through the curriculum I purchased and though a number of homeschooling sites that I have come across, in an effort to come up with a lesson plan that will be fun and educational for Madison. I think I have come up with a general format that I want to follow for teaching Madison, for now. I know that things will likely change as we get into a routine and I see what works and what doesn't work for Madison and myself. I am open to that change so that's why I've labeled our schedule a "general format".

I have decided that I am not going to put time restraints on the subjects we go through. I think it's far more important that we cover the subjects in the amount of time needed to make sure there in comprehension and learning taking place. If Reading takes only 20 minutes but Science takes an hour, that is fine with me. Or if I discover that Madison is experiencing a great deal of frustration with a subject, and we are gaining no ground, I'm fine with leaving it for the time being, and coming back to it later. I have already found, in just the small amount of preschool homeschooling we have done with her, that Madison is a perfectionist. If things are not done perfectly, to her liking, the first time, she has the tendency to become very upset. We have had many conversations addressing this, but I do see this as an issue that will continue to surface as we work our way through the school year.

I also want to allow the opportunities for those "teachable moments" that will likely arise. I'm fine with pitching out all or some of our planned lessons for the day if one of those moments come up. So many things can be learned during those opportunities, and I don't want to just let them pass in exchange for keeping with our schedule.

In looking through the My Father's World curriculum, I discovered that Madison already knows quite a bit of the things that they teach. Instead of making her go through it all from the beginning, which would probably be a little boring for her, I decided to supplement the curriculum with some other activities and lessons from some websites I have come across. There is so much information out there and a lot of great sites dedicated to helping homeschooling families. It has been so much fun scouring the sites and finding things that I think Madison will enjoy, as well as learn from.

So having said all that, here is what I have come up with. While looking through it again, I'm wondering if what I've planned will be too much to accomplish in one day. But if that's the case, I'm okay with things spilling over to the next day. Like I said, I'm not concerned with keeping to the "schedule".

Bible/Art
My Father's World(MFW) - the first 10 days we will be doing a Creation study. We will be going through the creation account in Genesis and we'll be making a creation poster and a creation book.

Math
MFW - doing the 100 chart, which obviously, helps the student learn all the numbers up to 100. There is a visual activity involved as well as a worksheet to complete.
We will also be doing Calendar Time each day - teaching Madison the months, days, and numbers on a calendar. We'll also be going through the concept of Today, Tomorrow, and Yesterday. I found the printable sheets for these activities on the Confessions of a Homeschooler blog.

Reading
Bob Books - Madison has already excelled in reading with these, and we love them! We'll continue to use them for as long as we can.
MFW - Since Madison is already reading, we'll only be doing a few of the worksheets and activities from here.
Also in MFW, they have a list of recommended books to read to go along with the unit study that is done. For example, Lesson 1 is about the sun. So there are various books to read and activities to do that relates to the sun. There are 26 lessons in the year, and the subject of each lesson is a different letter of the alphabet.
Another website I have found is homeschoolshare.com, which is a site where homeschooling parents can post books and unit studies that they, themselves, came up with. I plan on using a few of these unit studies throughout the school year.

Science
MFW - Go through the recommended supplemental books on the subject. Do a few activities to reinforce the concept. For example, with the Sun unit study, we will make raisins and also create a simple sundial.We will also be doing a weather chart each day, found on Confessions of a Homeschooler again.

Handwriting
MFW - do the worksheet that corresponds with the letter for the day. For example, on the Sun lesson, we will work on the letter S. Madison already knows how to write all her letters pretty well. She needs more work on the lowercase letters so we will really be emphasizing those.

Art
I like the concept of a stART. What's a stART? Simply put: A Story + Art = A Great stART! I discovered the idea from amommysadventures.com.

Totallytots.homestead.com does a great job at coming up with stART's. On the day we work on the letter S, we'll be reading this book:


and we'll be making this foam letter project:



There are both uppercase and lowercase examples of the letters, so I'm going to do the lowercase letters to help reinforce Madison's ability to write them. There are also a few other art projects that I have come across that I may add in as well, as time and/or interest allows.


So that is what I have come up with for our lesson plan. Having it all in written form makes it seem like a lot! Like I said before, I'm not expecting all of this to stay just as I have planned, for the entire year. I'm hoping we will tweak it and discover new ideas that work better for us.

I'm thinking we will start our first official day of school on September 1st, so I will keep you posted on how things go!

Our Classroom

While I'm trying to enjoy what's left of Summer, I can't help but realize that our school year is quickly approaching. I can't believe that Madison is already old enough to begin Kindergarten this year! I'm coming into homeschooling with a mix of uncertainty and excitement. Being in uncharted waters, I'm not exactly sure just how our school days will run - we won't know that until we're actually in the midst of it. But I'm getting excited as I've been planning out a general format, as well as arranging our "classroom".

I didn't have much in the realm of classroom decor. And unfortunately for me, we don't have much for shopping around here. I know that a beautifully-decorated school room isn't what's most important for learning, but I still wanted to make it a fun and interesting environment, with what I had available.

I purchased My Father's World curriculum, which we will be using, and with it came alphabet flash cards. Since Madison already knows all her letters and their sounds, I decided to just hang the cards on the wall instead of using them as flash cards.

I found a number of fun printable pages from this great homeschooling website. I hung those pages on a bulletin board along with a monthly calendar and a number chart. All these things will be part of our daily learning activities.

I purchased a set of drawers that was on sale, to house all our school supplies - crayons, pencils, paper, makers, paints, foam pages, and other craft items.

The empty bin sitting next to the drawers will hold all the books that I have requested from the library, which we will be using as additional resources for our lessons.

I decided to clean up and move inside our little picnic table. I thought it would be a good little spot for Noah to sit and participate in our lessons. The room I have set up as our school room is right next to the toy room, so if Noah gets a little antsy and his attention span drifts, I figure he can head into the toy room if needed.

And that's our room, right now anyway. I know it will likely change as the year progresses, as we add art projects and other things to the wall.

I'm going to do a separate post on the general format that I've come up with for structuring our days, so stay tuned for that. I'm looking forward to chronicling our homeschooling journey here through this coming year!