Preschool Indoor Activities

I really struggle with balancing by younger boys and my older boys. I WANT to spend time with them all but that is not always easy to do, and near impossible for me at times. So I strive for balance. Some things I plan I do with them, and some they do while I am working with the older two. These are a few ideas I got from pinterest. 

 They LOVE these. I made shapes for them out of making take as a Target but it did not work out so well, they just like shooting them. They play with these often LINK HERE 

 PomPom Soccer LINK
Ryan said this was way to easy, Dallin liked it better it was more challenging for him. The also Loved building the fans to watch the game from Legos (more pictures bellow)

 I kind of was on a making tape kick trying different active type things inside since it had been cold at the time. This was a fun Balancing activity- did not last long but the liked it.

 More pics of the Pompom soccer this was on the floor for a few days, the really enjoyed it.

Math Activities K-4th grade

I try to do math in a "fun Activity" way once a week just to make things more fun. Here are some things we have done. 

Copy work- I know we hear about copy work being good for spelling in the CM world but it is really good for math too. We have this book that you spin the wheel and it shows the answers to the multiplication tables. Ethan was doing copy work with this book. (fall 2013) 

I made 4 boxed on piece of paper then I wrote a problem on it, and he used his blocks to build it out, and did dot paints to write the answer. Just a fun way to practice this addition problems. (12/2013)

This is another fun game that we like to do. I found this board on Pinterest - it is a plain board and I printed it off, colored it and laminated it. Then I can write what ever problems on it I want. We roll a dice, answer the problem. If you get it right, you get to roll again to see how many Lego's you get to "build a tower" or you can just play where you get "that many that you rolled" 

 We used Lego figures for our games pieced. All the boys love this game. you can do addition, subtraction or multiplication etc. Here is where I got the game board Game Board HERE!

 This was in March 2014

White board + Nerf gun = fun math facts practice. You can do this many ways but we did it where he would shoot two numbers then a -/+ dice to decided if he has to add them or subtract them. He just played until he was done, but he got lots of practice in, and really liked it. (fall 2013) 

Play dough always makes math more fun! 

 Ryan likes to take his math sheet and just do the problems in play bough I feel like this slows him down to really understand and memorize the problems not just rush to get the sheet done.

Non- Fiction Study Day -

I love the Drawing into the Heart of Reading program. We do this off and on too. This time we learned about non-fiction and for our kick off day we talked about what it covered in the teacher book, and for the activity they looked through out set one One Small Square books, they each got some note cards

 on the cards they wrote a question, and then fallowed it up with, is this true or false? I helped the younger ones with the writing. Then they each took turns drawing cards and then making a guess. They used the books to look up the answer and read the facts. It was a lot of fun.

Fire Station Field Trip 2013

We did this field trip last year and they loved it so much we did it again- plus the younger boys enjoyed it more this time. 

 They had a cool video for the kids to watch- really awesome, then they toured the station, and got to sit on the trucks. It was really fun, and we had a HUGE turn out! To many for me to even get a group picture.

 Ryan was upset in the top pic but he was really happy in the bottom one. My camera was not working so a firend took the bottom one :)

Nothing but Silliness!

For our Drawing into the Heart of Reading each time we start a new genera we have a "kick off day" to introduce that genera of reading. This time the book were Humor books! so we did nothing but silliness! They dressed funny and did funny faces! 

We played some funny card, games, and did spoons.

We also played a game where they acted out silly noises that animals make and they had to guess what they were being.

We made silly sandwich men :)

We had a lot of fun with this, The books that they read for this section were. Frindle, tooter peperday, and Mr McBroom one Acre Farm . Along with enjoying these fun books we learned about cause and effect, and other things. I am really enjoying this program. There are many books that we read just to enjoy them, but I also think it is "fun" to break stories down and think about the different elements as well.

Field Day in the Fall

My Friend Amy did a wonderful Job putting together a field day for the home school group in our area. There were a few different events, and the kids had a lot of fun. And even though it was October we were all melting- gotta love the south! 

Here is the first event, Ryan running with a ping pong pall on a spoon. 

Wheel barrow races.

Potato sack races

This one was a fave, they had to run with a cup over there head, full of water and it had holes in it, so it dripped on you- nice to cool off a little. Then dump the rest into the bin on the other end.

The last event was a tug of war. I love my boys faces in this pic!

I was running back and forth from setting up the stations, and trying to take pictures, so I did not get many but at least I got a few! The kids had a wonderful time! I am soooo Grateful they have so many kids in this town that home school too!

Going on a Nature Hikes!

We really enjoy Nature, well except for cockroaches :) This summer we were visited by lots of pretty butterflies on our Zinnia flowers, and I love butterflies! 

We got this camera for the boys to start taking pictures more, they really love it. Here is Ryan taking pictures.

One of the boys took this picture we have TONS of these spiders around here they are very popular, and they are HUGE this is a great shot, look at the deatils of that web!

One of the boys took this picture of a butterfly

Ryan look these of this butterfly

We found this pretty bush it is called a

Callicarpa - Beautyberry bush

we also found this yellow daisy type flowers we found these as we were hiking as a family at swayback trails, it is one of our faves around here and it is close.

Will and the boys on our hike.

We all thought these trees with the twisty vines up the trees were cool

Here was a tunnel of trees twisting together, it was a beautiful day for a hike! we did about 3 miles, and even little Dallin held his own, what a trooper!

We also Took A field Trip to swayback trails in October, we had a lot of fun kicking and us mom visiting - love my home school support here!

Down Town Montgomery Tour Field Trip!

We took a tour of Down Town Montgomery there are a lot of really cook museums and historic places there you can get on and off this Trolley all day and enjoy the stops. We just decided to do the tour. 

There is a lot of really cool civil rights movement history here, although my boys are still a little to young to really understand all of that. After this we played at the park with Friends. It was a fun day!

Biography Kick off day

One of the Things we do is Drawing into the Heart of Reading by Heart of Dakota This program teaching the different Genres of reading, it also teaching biblical character traits and how to "direct" reading, thinking about "moods" "cause and effect" etc. The program starts for 2nd graders but the teacher is very hands on, starting 4th grade it is much more independent. I so adapt it, and we work together as much as we can on it. This program forces my kids to "slow down, and think" about their reading, it is a very different approach then what we normally do, and I like that. We only do this twice a week. We work on a new Genre, every couple months. At the start of the new genre we have a "kick off day" doing fun things to introduce that Genre. This time we did Biography. We talked about what a biography was, a true story of a personals life, written by another person 

Our first Activity was to look at some "family biographies" scrapbooks, of them, and other family History scrapbooks.

Then they each got to pick out the book they were reading. Ethan a book on Milton Hershey, Aaron picked Shark Lady, and Ryan a book on Benjamin Franklin (he does not really do the program) this was just for this day, and we were already learning about Ben Franklin in history. Another activity we did was they went through the house and found 5 things that they would want someone to write about them, and took turns telling there favorite things. As they did this I wrote these things on little strips of paper. After words I picked one of out a bowl and they had to guess who that thing match too. We had a lot of fun.

When we are done with the books they each do an activity from something they enjoyed about the book, Ethan of course wanted to make some Hershey chocolates, and Aaron and I made shark pancakes.  (no pictures of the pancakes but the turned out awesome!) Ethan also wrote a summery of what he learned from it, and Aaron drew a picture of his favorite seen from the book.

we made homemade peanut butter cups and almond Hershey chocolate bars. YUMMO!

wonderful job boys on your projects!

we did this Genre August through september