Our Homeschool Schedule

Our day's schedule:
1.  Circle Time
     -  We sing about 3 songs.
     -  We do the "left and right" activity. I'll post a video of this soon.
     -  We do the "north (up), south (down), east (right), west (left)" activity.
         I'll post a video of this, too.
     -  We do ordinal numbers from first thru twelfth.
     -  We repeat the 7 continent song. I'll also post a video of this. It's cute.
     -  We talk about the United States map and recognize the states where some of
        our family members live.
     -  We do calendar (date, weather, days of the week, months of the year).
     -  We talk about the day's activities (schedule for the day).
     -  We talk about immediate and extended family's birthdays (months so far,
         but soon, I'll incorporate the dates as well).
     -  We go over the basic and advanced geometric shapes (see April Part 2
        for a picture of some of these).
     -  We go over the number train (count by tens to one hundred and count
        from zero to one hundred, then we find random numbers on the train
        -see April Part 2 for a picture of this, too).
     -  We go over an animal (cat, dog, duck, cow, etc) in 7 languages (English,
        Spanish, French, Chinese, Portuguese, German, Italian); a different one every day.
     -  We go over the colors in all the 7 languages above (he is repeating after me
        right now, except for English, but he will eventually read them and pronounce
        them correctly by himself).
     -  We go over the numbers (0-10) in all the 7 languages above (he is repeating
        after me right now, except for English, Spanish and Chinese, but he will
        eventually read them and pronounce them correctly by himself).
2.  Devotional
This is where we do one of the following:
     -  K sits on my lap and we either read a Bible story from one of his toddler Bibles.
     -  We read a book with a Bible story.
     -  We color pictures in a Bible story coloring book.
     -  We use our felt kit and retell Bible stories using the felt background and shapes.
Then we talk about prayer requests and we pray together.
3.  Desk Work
This is when K sits at his little table and I sit next to him with a box of materials.
I have folders for each day of the week in the box.
Each folder has:
1)  a Pre-school multi-subject activity book (paper and pencil activities)
2)  a list of Dolch sight words
3)  readers in 3 levels of difficulty (easy, medium, hard)
4) a surprise activity (number flash cards, fabric marker -I'll explain later-,
a pop-up book, a small musical instrument, etc).
In the box, I make sure to include a sheet of stickers to reward him when he
completes an activity successfully.
4.  Subject #1
This is where I teach him a particular subject, usually following the Montessori curriculum.
5. Subject #2
This is where I teach him a second subject, also Montessori.

Homeschooling September 2013 Part 1 First Week of Pre-K Homeschool!!!

Inspiration...

Vacation Roadtrip: Las Vegas

We went to Las Vegas for Labor Day weekend to visit my husband's grandparents. They are 90+ years old and, since my mother-in-law was visiting them, we thought it'd be the perfect time to go see them. The last time we saw them I was still pregnant with Baby Girl, so they had never met her. Another big reason to go visit.

Homeschooling August 2013 Part 4

Montessori Culture (Geography): His very first PENPAL!

K was so excited to receive a letter in the mail "just for him!" He was super careful opening it and he was smiling a lot. He managed to read the letter almost by himself. His new penpal is H and he lives in England. K and H are the same age.

K loved all of the stickers that were in the letter. He was finding all of his boo-boos and putting stickers on top of each one to make them better. Hilarious! This is the beginning of a wonderful friendship!

Inspirational...

This is what happens every single time I make myself a smoothie for breakfast! I mean, I add goji berry powder, ground flaxseeds, ground chia seeds, and even spirulina! They love this stuff! I now make double the amount because they do gobble this thing down. Can't complain! Click here to see a ton of smoothie recipes that I have been collecting.

I used to have trays with reading books for the kids on top of this bench (mostly, to keep them from climbing on it and to keep them from opening it because I have a ton of educational materials in the storage area). But now, I really want it to be our devotional/prayer area because having them sit on my lap on the floor and juggling the Bible and two wiggly kids wasn't working. Now, they each sit on either side of me and everyone is happy (mostly, my legs, haha).

Montessori Culture (Geography): Penpal and Postcard Exchange

Here he is, faithfully practicing writing his name so he can "autograph" some more postcards for the exchange.

This is K's letter to his penpal, H, from England. He did a great job! (The first word is "Hi")

This is the little display we made to put up the most recent letter from K's penpal. I think we'll be making one with K's name and mailing it to H, so he can do the same at home.

More postcards are ready to be mailed!

This is the map of Europe that we have in our schoolroom. I used tags to show where friends or family are in all of Europe.
Below, you can see our map of the U.S. and tags of family that live here (and Mexico).

We are starting to receive more postcards! Yay!

Play Time

I know, I am posting way too many pictures under the category of "Play Time," but, if you think of it, Einstein said that the highest form of research is play. The kids are learning and enjoying themselves and hey, it's SUMMER! :)

Homeschooling Baby Girl: Amazing Retention and Language Ability!

The other day, A was playing with my sandals, brand GUESS. She started pointing at the letters and said, "G" as pronounced in Spanish, "U" as pronounced in English, skipped the "E," said "S" as pronounced in English, and "S" as pronounced in Spanish. I was dying laughing because she was mixing up the English and the Spanish, but, at the same time, I was super impressed that she knew all of those letters!

Montessori Practical Life: Cutting with Scissors

Art Materials

I found this book at a homeschooling sale. Retails for $22, but I bought it for only $2! What a buy! I love it! I am going to look at the other books on the back to see if I can find them for cheap. I personally like to buy at www.valorebooks.com because I have been able to find incredible deals there. I've ooked in other sites, but Valore Books has the very best deals, at least for what I've been looking for. For example, I just bought the entire set of the Chronicles of Narnia for $5.50, whereas other sites start at $23.

Spanish: El Alfabeto

Today, we learned the Spanish alphabet rap and sign language for all the letters in the alphabet. I have the best students!

Play Time

The kids love to color, especially together.It's so funny to see the dynamics of siblings, or as we would all agree, a love-hate relationship. The can't live with or without each other! I hope they become best buddies and they can confide in each other.

Homeschooling July 2013 Part 3

Montessori Botany: Composting

We bought a worm factory to start our compost pile for this Fall. We like to keep a garden going, but the Summers here are brutally hot and everything dies. The Fall is the perfect time to keep things running from around September or October until May or June. The kids were super excited about playing with the worms.

Crafty Things for Mom

I bought this awesome "buckle" when we went to Oklahoma earlier in the month. All I did was buy the beads and clasps to make my own bracelet. It turned out great and the best part about it is that I can make more bracelets with different color beads and add clasps to them and I can interchange them! How cool is that?

Play Time & Miscellaneous

It rained quite a bit here (which doesn't happen often) so I let the kids play out in the mud and puddles for a while. They had fun. The funniest part was when it was actually pouring and the kids were staring out the window and kept wondering where the hoses or sprinklers were! Yea, we hardly see rain here!

Baby girl got a haircut! Her hair was super uneven and very hard to manage. Now, it'll keep her cooler and it will grow more evenly. Can't wait to start with the ponytails and ribbons again!

Bible / Devotional Time

Our very favorite thing to do as a family is reading the Bible and praying. We do this every morning after breakfast and with Daddy before bedtime.

More Play Time

Who doesn't love playing with bubbles and with other kids? Yes, we had fun playing with our little neighbors and bubbles. It was fun! It was hot!

Montessori Practical Life: Visit to the Dentist

K's teeth were not only perfect, but he was a true champ there! He behaved really well and he wasn't scared at all to be there. I was anxious to hear about his teeth because we have been using my homemade toothpaste and wanted to see if it was working as well as I was hoping. Well, it does! If you are interested, here's a link to the 2 recipes that I alternate: Homemade toothpaste recipes.

I ordered K a garment hanger from amazon.com because his costume corner was constantly messy and out of control. This was a wonderful alternative to having everything thrown into a bin or be spread all over his room. Plus, it teaches him how to keep things organized and how to hang things up.

Baby Girl is 18 months old!

Here are pictures to compare both kids when they had their 18 month pictures done.

Such a cutie pie!

Homeschooling July 2013 Part 2

We have started a wonderful co-op with two other families and it has been beyond great. W have been meeting for a couple of months now and I never want to stop! I get all 5 kids and teach them Spanish for 30 minutes, then they go next door to learn about Music for another 30 minutes and then they all go a few doors down to learn about Art for 30 minutes. Perfect! My co-teachers are so wonderful and creative and all the kids are thriving. I couldn't be happier. 

Free Play

I got K some new wooden rolling pins for his playdough and he's been having a lot of fun with them. I got them at the Learning Zone store in Texas (4 different ones for about $10).

Circle Time Additions

I have made copies of the Montessori shapes nomenclature
cards and put them in sheet protectors. Very cool stuff.

Desk Work

K has been having a lot of fun reading new readers (other than our typical Preschool Prep Co ones). I found some random ones at Goodwill and Sam's Club (Go, Diego, Go, Superheroes, Monster Trucks, etc). I went out on a limb and bought levels 1-3 (thinking 3 is second or third grade reading), thinking that he'd eventually read them well and they would be a great challenge for him. He's only 3.5 years old and, to my complete surprise, he is reading level 3s almost perfectly! So proud!

Tracing numbers, counting Spiderman masks, ordinal numbers, and tracing more numbers, are just a few of the activities that we did today.

This is Desk Work from another day. Tracing shapes.
Great practice for beginning penmanship.

Montessori Culture (Geography): Flags of the World (North and South America)

Nomenclature Cards: Flags from a few countries in North America. 
We matched them up as we talked about them and pointed at the countries on the globe.

We did the same with the flags of a few countries in South America. K memorized them quickly and remembers them almost perfectly.

  

      

Montessori Sensorial: Red Rods

These are 10 red rods differing in one dimension – length (from 10cm to 100cm). 

The unit of difference between each rod is 10cm.

- Show the child how to hold the shortest rod by gripping over the top of the center part of the rod using your right thumb and fingers. 
- Slowly slide the rod off of the shelf (wooden stand) until it is fully out. 
- Grip the rod with your left hand below your right hand.
- Carry the rod vertical and so your hands are at waist level. 
- Have the child carry all of the rods over one at a time and place them randomly on one of the mats.
- Once all of the rods have been brought over to the mat, have the child stand to your left.
- Carefully pick up the longest rod and as you kneel in front of the mat, place it horizontally near the back of the other mat. 
- Turn to the child and tell him that you are now looking for a specific one.
- Go over to the other mat and carefully choose the next longest rod. 
- Kneel in front of the longest rod and in a steady and precise movement, place the rod directly under the longest rod on the other mat, and align them so that the left edges are well aligned. 
- Once it has been placed, check to see if it is well aligned by sliding your hand along the left edge of the two rods.  
- Continue placing all of the rods in correct order and placing them so that they come closer and closer to you as each rod is placed.

Extension 1: Once the rods are placed in order (longest to shortest), ask child to look away or close his eyes and remove a rod. Push all rods together so there are no obvious gaps. Show the rod to the child and ask him to tell you where it belongs. The material is self-correcting.
Extension 2: Same as Extension 1, but this time, do not show the rod to the child. Put it behind your back and ask the child to look at the rest of the rods and try to figure out which one is missing. This exercise is definitely harder because the missing piece isn't visible. It is a wonderful exercise.

Free Play

Desk Work

K is really starting to be interested in writing, so tracing letters and numbers has become really important to him. It is one of his favorite things to do right now, which is great. It is amazing to see his little brain work and how much he improves every time we practice.

Daily Devotional Time is part of our Circle Time routine

We always read the Bible (a kids version most of the time, but an adult version sometimes) and then read a book besides that. Sometimes we read a Christian children's book (like the one pictured below), a children's Bible story book, a book from the "Dear God" series, a Bible story coloring book, etc. The kids absolutely love this time. We have managed to make it a routine every weekday morning (right after breakfast), but we don't do it on the weekends. We live pretty far away from civilization, so we go to town (about 40 minutes away) on Saturday mornings to run our errands and do our grocery shopping, so we are usually out the door by 8am. On Sundays, we also go to town for church, so we pretty much let that be our devotional time. 

We do read the Bible together as a family almost every single night. When we read from the kids version of the Bible, we let K do the reading. He does a really good job.

Homeschooling Baby Girl

Sight Words

Counting 1-5  

Counting 1-10