Fall time!

So it’s finally here. My favorite time of the year. Fall. Oh, how  I missed a good ol’ Hoosier fall when I lived in California. I will let you in on a secret. . .in California season’s don’t really change. At least not to the same extreme as it does here.

Now the leaves are JUST starting to change. A few hints of yellow , orange, red and brown are starting to make their way among the leaves.  We already have some leaves on the ground here so yesterday I took the kids out to explore the area and to let them play in the leave. They had a BLAST. I cannot wait for them to really see the changes as the trees catch all the colors of fire.

 

Running through the leaves is SO noisy & thus so much fun

 

You can’t have a pile of leaves and NOT be buried in them

 

I LOVE this picture. Look at the joy on his face.

 

Bliss. Pure bliss.

 

End of the week

Well I’m finally updating, though I honestly don’t know how many people actually read this 😉

We finished up on The Old Kingdom of Egypt and our first week on the study of Mercury. We did sight words and a bit of phonic work but we are going to order the Horizon one soon for him. Right now I am printing off some work I’ve found online.

Madusa continued her work on the letter D but to be honest we didn’t do as much as I hoped we would. I think we will stick with the letter D next week.

We decided to make a pyramid out of old cereal boxes.

 

Racecar carefully measured each triangle.

 

Madusa made sure he did it right 😉

 

We just taped it together. It wasn’t very big so we couldn’t fit the mummy in it, but still. It’s pretty neat. 🙂

 

We made a mummy out of cardboard and yarn. Racecar got a bit bored by it though and only wrapped up about half the mummy.

 

He had a lot of fun with his map. They didn’t have much directions on it so we added some. He loves finding the Nile River on everything 🙂

& this might be my coolest find at a second hand store. We found it today. It’s a huge mummy floor puzzle. One side is the coffin and on the side is the mummy with a gold face mask on. VERY COOL. Look how big it is! We shall be getting lots of fun use out of this 🙂

 

We spent some time outside and they had fun looking at some of the leaves. They are not changed much yet, but a few are

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They had tons of fun running around, racing. NASCAR & Monster Jam rallies for all.

 

 

guess what day it is?

First off, my heart is heavy with the loss of life in D.C. My prayers go up for the families and friends of the people that have lost a loved one. My thoughts are with all that were involved. It makes my heart hurt to think of the pain & terror that happened on Monday.  May God bring healing, comfort and peace. May He draw this country into His arms.

We have been busy this week. Madusa is working on D for Dinosaur this week and racecar is working on Mercury and The Old Kingdom of Egypt.

We got most of this from COAH. Here she is matching color. She kept showing me one half of the dinosaur & going “dinosaur bum!” *sigh*.

 

Writing her letters. She’s getting really good at tracing her letters.

She also spent a lot of time playing with Houdini 🙂

We spent a LOT of time so far talking about Ancient Egypt, the mummies and pyramids. I might be going a wee bit overboard about it but Racecar seems to be really enjoying learning about mummies.

First thing we did was make a mummy! Warning, naked doll ahead 😉 First we got a fairy doll at the dollar tree. They had no barbies so this was the next best thing.

First he cleaned the body off.

He added some “salt” to the body. We talked about how the body would then rest for 40 days.

 

We then began to wrap. We used gauze. We even stuck an amulet or two in there (pasta)

 

All wrapped up! 🙂

 

We then “painted” it to make it stronger. I just mixed up a wee bit of flour and water He didn’t do a lot but put some on top. Yeah.

Madusa joined in the mummy party.

Looking good. We let her dry for a while. During that time we worked on the “coffin”

They colored on construction paper. Racecar even tried to write some hieroglyphics. I glued the papers to the side of an old oatmeal box.

 

Racecar than made a funeral mask for the mummy

All done! We then put a “lid” on top

We got many more mummy stuff we did & I plan to share some more tomorrow 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today is a lazy day. . .just finished the Colts game (sigh. .. to the dolphins? really?) and am now enjoying the Sprint Cup with my son(Come on Newman!) when it hit me I really haven’t updated much this week. May I just say this week flew by? 

So with no further delay. . .

This week Madusa studied the letter C for Cat & Caterpillar. We got all our printables from COAH , 1+1+1=1 and 3 Dinosaurs. We focused a lot of C for Cat since Madusa LOVES cats. 

She LOVES to do this. We got this from 1+1+1=1 and she loves to match up the cats. Right now I just print off two copies of each and let her match up the cat pictures. As she gets older I might use it the way I’ve seen others use 3-part cards bur right now we just match up the pictures and talk about the cats. Matching up pictures is one of her favorite things to do.

Matching up cats by drawing straight lines. She’s pretty good at this actually and asks to do it a couple times a day.

I’ve seen pics similar to this floating around pinterest so I attempted to make my own. I colored some TP tubes the colors of pom poms and taped them to the wall. The kids dropped them into the matching tube. They didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought but they did play with it for a bit. Houdini liked it. He would go after the pompoms when they fell through 🙂

 

We played a game with Racecar. I made sightwords and put them on leaves. He caught them with a net & sorted them into the correct pile reading them each time. Madusa also joined in. She couldn’t read the word but she would match it up.

 

She enjoys this and likes to makes the cats “talk” to each other. It’s quite cute. 🙂

Racecar studied the sun this week.

 

We melted chocolate with a magnifying glass and the sun. It was so stinking hot out there though it didn’t take long at all for ANY chocolate to melt. He did notice that the chocolate under the magnifying glass melted more.

 

We made crayon art, using the sun to melt the crayons.

We also made an eclipse using a ball and flashlight, made shadows, worked on his notebook (which he’s enjoying quite a bit actually) and watched a short documentary about the sun on Netflix.

He also studied The First Writing in history. We talked about hieroglyphics and cuneiform. 

 

We made a scroll out of an old paper bag. He then attempted to paint some hieroglyphics. He talked about how hard it was to paint those small pictures.

 

He deciphered a hieroglyphics code we got from Royal Baloo. He struggled with it a bit as some symbols looked close. It lead to a discussion about how much training scribes really had to do and how important it was for them to learn the correct way to write. 

He worked a lot on sight words, which is one of his favorite things to do. He usually asks a few times to work on them.

 

I made cards for him and cut out letters. He uses them as mats to spell out his words.

 

I also wrote out a whole bunch of words and let him dot the words I called out.

Well that is a short preview of our week. I really DO plan to try updating better and maybe add some more fun stuff. We shall see. I’m not that technologically advanced so we shall see 😉

 

 

 

The Art of Messy Play

I have a love/hate relationship with messy play. I love watching the delight of my kids as they play with whatever we have chosen but I hate. . .well. ..the mess of it all sometimes.  I’ve often seen some awesome ideas but the thought of cleaning up afterwards made me second guess actually using the idea.

No more.

We are fully embracing messy play in this house. My kids are quite delighted and I’m. . .well. . .I’m doing my best to stop twitching when it gets a wee bit more messy than I thought it would.

One of our most frequent types of “messy play” is sensory bins. This usually is the least messy of them all but it can be messy considering my kids like to go gung-ho on them.

This is an example of this week’s sensory bin. Madusa is working on the letter C so I added some C stuff to it. We got beans (navy & kidney), a cow toy, a chicken cow, a big cat eraser, a small cup, a measuring cup, a few C cards, a big magnifying glass (plastic from the dollar tree. It was suppose to be for bug catching) and several small plastic cats.

Some common things we use for sensory bins are: beans, rice (my most hated. It’s so hard to clean up once it falls on the carpet), pasta, oatmeal (which, in all reality, we haven’t tried but we will use next week) and a combination of them all.

Another favorite of the kids is foam. Plain and simple foam. I add a couple of squirts of dish soap to some cool water and I whip it up with a whisk. I’ve seen some moms talk about using a mixer but I haven’t attempted that yet. & I thought for sure I had a pic of that but. . .alas I can’t seem to find it. I guess I’ll have to whip up batch and remedy that 😉

We like to play with ice. Sometimes I add food coloring to them, which tends to be more messy, and sometimes I will add some small toys to them and let the kids pick them out.  We add some salt a lot of times for some melty fun.

This is a new one for us. Elephant toothpaste. I’ve seen it on pinterest but never thought of making it. One day I was looking for something different and I noticed I had everything for it so. .. voila. We attempted and Racecar loved it.  We didn’t have the “fancy” hydrogen peroxide so we used the stuff from our first aid kit. . .it still worked.  We will do this again soon.

This is a new one we just tried today. .. goop. All it is water & cornstarch. It was a very odd feeling substance but the kids love it. As you can see we went outside with this to help contain the messiness. It was a lot of fun and I think it will be one we will use quite a bit more. I even enjoyed it 😉

Moon dough. This is a favorite of my kids and the least favorite of mine. It’s meeeeessssssyyyyy which is why they enjoy it so much. It’s not allowed inside 🙂  It’s flour and oil. . .I usually use olive oil.

Shaving cream & glue is another fun one. It makes poofy paint. This is an older picture *sniffle*. We haven’t done it for a while but I think we shall have to do it again sometime soon.

When we lived in California mud was a favorite. Our backyard was basically sand. ..so we’d take water outside and make mud.

There are so many wonderful messy ideas out there. Play-doh is another favorite one we do. I just made up a batch for them today.  Water is another favorite of my daughter. She could play with water all day I think. I often have to chase her out of the bathroom because she loves to play in the sink.

You can go here to find some of the recipes we use. I will add more as we use them 🙂 

Also check out this website for some super awesome ideas. I mean. .. super amazing ideas! 

A day in the life

No. . .Not The Beatles song even though it is a great song 🙂

I’ve seen several blogs doing a sort of “day in the life” of a homeschooler thing. . .so I thought I’d do one. It’s interesting to see how other’s do their day so I thought it’d be fun to share mine. That being said our day was a bit longer today as we made up for yesterday. Both the stinkies caught colds and we rested a lot yesterday.

I have no set time really of when I get up. I usually am up my 8:30

I start my day with my coffee and my daughter photobombing me. That’s my super awesome Colts coffee cup which I just love. I usually watch the news at this time for a wee bit or whispers Dr. Oz if I sleep past the news.

I feed the kids. Got to love the “see food” they have 😉

We start out with Calender time. Both my kids have a binder with several calender sheets in them. Madusa has a sheet for each day of the week which she can trace. She usually traces them all anyways. Racecar has a calender to write the dates & then one he writes the day on. We go over the days of week and the months of the year in English and in Italian. We also do the Pledge of Allegiance

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Next we read our fact from our Calender Connections. I get these from 1+1+1=1. THis month we are studying bugs. I got the holder at Target. I’ve seen some sew it so they can put the papers in it but I find it works fine that way. Just not as tidy. This is something new we are trying and the kids seem to enjoy it.

Next Racecar works on this math. Sometimes he chooses something else first but today he chose math. He loves math and tends to fly through the worksheets.

Hmm. So this got out of order buuuuut we went into a bit more detail today with Calender Connections. My mom gave us this Bug match game so we went through it and found all the true bugs and studied them.

Madusa does some binder time while Racecar works on his math. I let her choose want she wants to do. She is doing quite well with her B’s. She likes butteflies a lot so that helps 🙂 I got these from COAH.

Next we worked on handwriting and his language smarts. Madusa practiced writing her A’s. I forgot to print of the B’s. >.<

Madusa worked on a butterfly craft. Her butterfly “crashed” and it’s wings fell off. sigh

Next comes lunch. Sandwiches and grapes today. Madusa had some homemade soup too but it was still heating up. Racecar isn’t much into soups.

After lunch the kids have a bit of free time which usually involves some good ol’ Monster Jammin’

We made some butterflies out of coffee filters. We want to try this again with watercolor paints

Next we talked about Egypt for SOTW. Racecar found the Nile River and followed it. We pointed out Upper & Lower Egypt.

We made crowns for the two kings.  The White Crown King (played by Racecar) & the Red Crown King (played by Madua).

We talked about how both kings always fought each other. They wanted to practice that too.

Red Crown King won and wore a double crown.

We made a raft and put Osiris on it. He floated away.

Now I know crocs and hippos were a real issue on the Nile but I didn’t realize giant Ducks could be an issue also 😉

They had a lot of fun watching the raft and the ducks. The raft IS still out there. I don’t know if Osiris is still on it though 😉

And after a long busy day it’s time to sit down and relax to some My Little Pony

So there ya have it. A day in the life 🙂

wake me up when September end

Ok. So every time September starts I sing that song just a little too much.  Wake me up when September ends. . .But I digress.

The main issue is I truly can’t believe it’s already September. We’ve already been in school for 2 weeks.

Our second week went quite well. Madusa is showing much more interest in doing “binder time” as she calls it. Racecar is actually enjoying handwriting! Last year it was a struggle to get him to write and now he is really liking it. I just hope this phase last and he doesn’t start to weary of it anytime soon.

We are also thinking of getting another phonics program. Right now we are using Phonic Pathways and the truth is we both don’t care all that much for it. I don’t doubt it can be a wonderful curriculum but I don’t feel like it’s the right fit for us. I wondered about when I got it (it came with the package we chose) but we decided to give it a go. After about a week of using it my son asked me if we could go back to what we used last year. We used Horizons last year and I was quite impressed with it. The main issue was there was a lot of writing and when your kids doesn’t LIKE to write it can be a bit overwhelming. He did quite well with it and he has been asking to go back to it.

We shall see. I don’t mind switching curricula if one isn’t working. I don’t see the point of continuing to use something that isn’t working.  I think we will still use some of the games that are a part of Phonic Pathways but use Horizons as our spine.

Last week we still continued on the Letter A with Madusa.  She seem to enjoy it a lot more last week.  Again we used printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler & 1+1+1=1.

She attempted lacing but had a hard time with it. Sometimes I give her pipe cleaners to try and using but she asked me for “the ones that aren’t ouchy” meaning yarn. Sometimes, I guess, the pipe cleaners are “ouchy” 🙂

 

We attempted using Salt trays to try and writing letters. She enjoyed it but she ending up using her monster trucks in it

We talked about the Nomads and how they were travelers and would hunt & fish for food. . .so we fished. & yes. You can see the HUGE mess behind them. ..and if you look closely in the pic of Racecar you can see Houdini passed out on floor 😉

Talking about Houdini. . .I have a feeling we will be getting a new pet. We have no found his owner and Madusa adores him.

See. Adoration.