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

PreK and Kindergarten Activites

Homeschooling lots of children of different ages is really a challenge. I have read and listen to lots of tips on how to do it and why. They are all different and work well for those families, THAT is the wonderful thing about homeschooling. I have had weeks where I feel like I am sinking in a sea of dishes, laundry and piles of "to do" school stuff. Or where I just can't seem to get anything done because my younger kids are distracting me. 

 I have tried giving the younger kids things to do while I work with the older kids, and I have tried just having them tag along while they sit on the older kids stuff, and this works "some" but I still find they are happiest when they get their school time too. I do pre K and Kindergarten level activities (just for the younger two boys) 1-2 times a week. The other days through the week, they each get their reading time with mom where we read books then do a puzzle or quick game etc. For me I find my younger boys are much better about doing "busy bags" or playing or doing things on their own better if they get some time with me too. For us, I give the older two something they can go by themselves (first thing after our spiritual thought), while I play with the younger ones, Then They are much better behaved while I work with the older two. Most of these ideas/activites are from early in the year but I am just now getting them posted. 

 Here are a few things I have done with my younger boys. Ryan (picture one) is making a number line up to 20 creating something from Legos for each number on the line. GREAT activity lots of practice counting. We did this over time, not all the numbers in one day. Picture two is similar, these are beads on pip cleaners, then a sticky note with the number on top. Dallin did 1-10, Ryan did 11-20 again we did a couple each week, then reviewed each time we got the project out again. They really liked it.

 Ryan LOVED this activity, and Dallin helped too. I would give them a letter in this picture it was the better B and he went though the house finding things that started with that letter. I then put the words on pieces of paper and we sounded them out, to match the word to that item. I went with him searching,  but he found everything on his own.

 This is a really fun Lego Math game teaching greater then and less than. I give them a container of Legos, and start the sand timer, they build as fast as they can until the timer is out. Then we count how many each person has, then see who has greater or who has less. Dallin just learns to count and number recognition, Ryan is really learning the concept of greater and less.

 For Dallin after we counded his I would give him four options of cards and say "where is the number 10? and have him find that card, that matches the number of Legos we counted. I did this for Ryan too, even though he already knows them.

I try to keep things simple around here, I do not have tons of time to plan, print, cut out and do long fancy things. These things are easy, and do not takes lots of time, but when for me, I find when I spend that time with my little ones, they are happy they do not feel like they are being pushed aside for the older ones, and I feel happy because I get time to enjoy my little boys personalities before they are all grown up!

Random Fun things...

These are just some random picture from some of the stuff we did. I would like to be super organized with regular experiments, art project and activities, but I am not. In a perfect world I would like art once a week, and science with a hands on project once a week, and then a history or whatever other subject hands on activity, or even math once a week. But it never goes that way. And I am now ok with it. We do the projects and things when we get to it.

Here are the boys are doing a project from one of the science books we have about light, and color they had a lot of fun with this section.

I love these books we have a few of them. They are fun and colorful. I love that they really are pretty advanced. For my younger kids I do not read it all, just skim it, and look at the pictures and talk about it but for my older kids there really is a lot for them to take in. They are for ages 5-10 the author is Kimberly Brubarker. We read this book, and then made balloon rockets an idea I found on pintrest. The LOVED it! and want to do it again!

I am really enjoying our Art Program (ARTistic Pursuits) Here the kids are using water color crayons to make a picture. I also want to mixing this up with other things too... I will share whenever we get around to actually doing it... if we do... ha ha

Ethan is really into reading and writing, and enjoying learning vocab. The way we do Vocabulary is when he is reading, he underlines words that he does not know. I trust him to be honest and do this. I am sure he does not always, but many times he does add words to his list. We also add words to the list as he reads to me, or as I am reading and he will ask what a work means. He keeps this running list and then once a week he picks 2 words from this list, and he uses this page that I made up in word. Where he writes the word, then the definition, which he looks up on the ipad, then we talk about to to make sure he understands it. Then he comes up with a way to use that word in a sentence. Then he draws a picture of the sentence he created. This works for us I feel like it is efficient and you can do it as often as you like. I do not know how to share word documents on a blog so if you want it them ask me.

Aaron is doing one of the boys favorite games, making up silly sentences. We have a game that we bought from a used home school book sale but often times we like to make up our own. And we cover a little grammar along the way. The pics "things" or "people" and I write them on note cards that I cut into strips. Then they think of "adjectives" and I write those. I think in this lesson Aaron was learning how state of being and linking verbs work. We also will reads some fun grammar books too.

Here Ryan built out of Legos When we learned about the Erie Canal- I think I may have already posted about this so sorry if it is a repeat, but often times the kids like to act out or build things we have learned about and I love it when they do that.

Here is when we did a Volcano science lesson- this was back in the fall of 2012

this was  a few months ago, it was our Balloon Rockets- we are for sure doing this again, and I bet that wont me the last time either. I will for sure make the strings longer next time. 

Ethan is doing a math activity with a book that we got at a yard sale, basicly it is copy work, but it is good way for him to pratice those math facts. Aaron is going a game with a dart gun he hits a number then a nother number then he add or subtracts them. He has a +/- dice I made that he rolls. I got plain dice at a teacher store and put the symbles on them.