Homeschooling Journal: March 2014 Part 5

Cursive Practice (sort of)

This is an awesome printables packet from 3 Dinosaurs. And it is FREE!

K had been showing a lot of interest in cursive and can read it now, so I asked some blogger friends for resources. Cassie responded with this. Wow. How amazing! That very evening, I printed it all off and put it together, even the dice.

The next day, during homeschool, I presented K with it and he loved it, but once he tried to write in cursive a little bit (after begging me to teach him how to write cursive), he said he didn't feel it was time yet. Sigh. Ok. That is what I had thought, but since he insisted so much, I didn't want his interest to wane. So it is there, in our homeschool room, looking all pretty, waiting for the day K wants to give it a go again. Thank you, Cassie! :)

  

                              
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Baking homemade brownies. K wanted his with extra chocolate chips (like Daddy likes them) and A wanted hers with caramel and pecans (turtle, just like I like them).

 

Helping Mom clean up around the house. As I vacuumed, K was using a real hand vac and A was using a play one (but it does make the realistic sound, so she feels like she is really helping). I love it when they become involved in what I am doing around the house.

                                          

Mandarin Chinese: Review and Learning Animal

   

First, we reviewed our book on how we love our family and the book on family members' names. 

Then we read the book that teaches us some animal names in Chinese.

I made these post-it notes with the pinyin (Chinese using our alphabet) and calligraphy. We matched them and created mnemonic devices to remember them when we match them together.

We learned: cat, dog, bird, chicken, rabbit and fish.

Wo jiao xiao means "I am called little..." and then we took turns putting each animal post-it next to the phrase to complete the sentence.

   

   

    After he had mastered the sentence formation and matching the pinyin to the calligraphy correctly, the I drew pictures of the animals they belonged to. I know, it sounds a little backwards, but K didn't really need them. A did. She is only two years old, so these were helpful to her. :)

         

Bible: God Made Smells

We like using Karyn Henley's Bible curriculum as an inspiration for topics to study, besides our daily Bible reading and story telling. 

We talked about smells, good and bad, flowery, sour, nasty, yummy, gross, delicious, etc. We made a long list of about 20 adjectives (words to describe) smells.

K's favorite color is green, so we picked out most of the essential oils we own that have green tags on. After studying them a bit and giving each one a good, long whiff, he chose Peace & Calming for us to use in our activity. It smells so good and is so relaxing. 

I added a few drops to our playdough and kneaded it well to blend. Then they played with the playdough.

   

   

 

Kombucha home brew. let me know if you want to learn how to make some. I can even give you a starter scoby from my own brew.

McGuffey's Readers: Cursive!

                                             

Classical Conversations Review: Week 8

 

Pledge of Allegiance: U.S. Flag, Christian Flag, Bible 
For the FREE printables of these, CLICK HERE.
U.S. Presidents list

Making birthday cards for family members.

A.C.E. (Accelerated Christian Education)

Rosetta Stone: Latin American Spanish (Homeschool Version)

Montessori Math: Large Wooden Number Cards

First, he set up all the units (ones) in the right order..
Then the tens.
Then the hundreds.
Finally, he set up the thousands.

I was asking him to point out at random numbers and he would find them. 100% accuracy.
Next, he made numbers with units and tens only and he would say their names.

He moved on to making numbers with units, tens and hundreds and named them with 100% accuracy.
And he also made numbers using units, tens, hundreds and thousands. Named them all.

Reading Time

Coloring Time

Spanish: Greetings and Review of our Favorite Things

We learned how to say a few more greetings and watched a video to reinforce that.

 

Then we reviewed food (and each said which was their favorite), the room, animals (and their favorite), transportation, shapes (and their favorite), and numbers (and their favorite). We also learned vocabulary for bath time and bedtime.

Homeschooling a Toddler

A really loves to homeschool with me. She loves the one-on-one attention and the activities that we do are fun and engaging for her. I don't have as much one-on-one time with her as I did with K at this age, but I do what I can. :)

She gets her mat and unrolls it. Out of three sight words, she can recognize them all and points at the correct one when asked.

 

Assessment post-lesson: I am positive that she is outgrowing pretty much all of the activities I have for her, so it is time to kick it up a notch. Getting my wheels turning to set stuff up for her. I am excited. :)