Homeschooling September 2013 Part 6

Inspiration to begin this post...

          

"God doesn't need perfect mothers but prodigal mothers.

Lavish in love. Extravagant in truth. Big spenders of grace."

                                                    ~ Ann Voskamp

Essential Oils and their Benefits

I am a Young Living Essential Oils Distributor and I am loving every minute of it! These oils are incredible! Not only are they therapeutic grade, but they are also food grade, which means that they can be ingested for medicinal purposes. I got this reference book because it is very thorough on the essential oils and on the remedies for ailments. I first borrowed this book from a good friend who was a distributor. I fell in love with this book and I finally found it for a reasonable price. It is the go-to book on essential oils and other remedies (from the Young Living line). If you are interested, let me know, especially if you have a chronic pain or illness. I can check out this reference book and see what would help you. I have been stepping away from taking medication and other remedies and have been using only essential oils. I diffuse them, I apply them topically, I inhale them, I put them in my homemade toiletries and cleaners and I ingest them. Even though Young Living essential oils are more expensive than others, you have the guarantee that everything they sell is of the highest quality and the products will pay for themselves because of their very diverse uses and applications. Give them a try!

I am a Young Living essential oils distributor. You can order from www.youngliving.com (click here to go to the link) and use my distributor number to order if you'd like (1498096).

Montessori Culture (Geography): Penpal and Postcard Exchange

K got a letter from his penpal. What a sweet boy!

He makes K smile and feel so special!

Bible: Sisterhood (Church Bible Study)

This is my church's Bible study for women. I absolutely and completely love it!

Montessori Practical Life: Pouring

We finally got some decent popsicle molds, so K started pouring some of the juiced fruits and veggies from this morning. Yummy and healthy! Can't beat that!

Bible: God made Plants

This is an update on last post's Bible class. The seeds are germinating!

Field Trip: Boat on the Colorado River

We are seriously loving our outings every weekend! The boat is awesome and we are finding some cool adventures to go on. K isn't scared of the water at all anymore. What a blessing that is!

Inspiration...

Planting a Garden

Great and wonderful and amazing news! The worm factory works! I got the most beautiful black gold (also known as compost) out of it today. Wow! God is so amazing to transform seemingly useless decomposing organic materials into a blob of awesomeness! Gotta just love Him! My newly planted garden is set. Nice! And now, to grow and produce lots and lots of goodies for our family and enough to even share with our friends and neighbors.

Montessori Practical Life: Setting the Table

I moved this little table from the backyard to inside. The kids can eat their snack on it (as long as it isn't messy like yogurt, of course). We love it! It's like we rediscovered it. 

Spanish: Los Colores de Otoño Son... (The Colors of Fall Are...)

Today, we reviewed everything that we have learned in Spanish, sang songs, signed, etc. We practiced our colors and discussed Fall colors (in Spanish, of course). Then we made the Fall color craft. Everyone did really well and we had fun. It is incredible to see how the kids' writing is getting better and better.

        

Music: Orchestra and Stringed Instruments

Another orchestra review today in music. I played conductor and we sang Fray Felipe. The kids had to watch my hands to see how fast/slow and quiet/loud to sing. Then we talked about string instruments. We watched videos of them in action, and then did a worksheet where we took pictures of six different instruments and glued them in order by size. The kids all did really well. I'm amazed week after week at how much information the kids have retained. They are sponges, and it's awesome!

Art: Salt Dough

Yesterday for Art we worked with salt dough, playing with different textures and tools. K and B experimented with making impressions, and everybody had fun with cookie cutters and chopsticks. We made a couple pinch pots and free sculptures. Everything was very chill  Next week, painting our creations, which are fully baked.

Homeschooling Baby Girl: Art

                      

     

               

Homeschooling Baby Girl: Practical Life

Bible: Kidz Klub

Play Time

                                 

Montessori Practical Life: Weaving a Loom

Homeschooling September 2013 Part 5

Bible: Dear God Books

These books were given to K by my mother-in-law. I think it was a Christmas gift last year. These are really fun to read because the writing is fun and so child-like. I really liked this one.

Montessori Culture (Geography): Penpal and Postcard Exchange

We got this postcard mailed from a family we know that recently 

moved away to live in Wisconsin.

This is what our US map looks like with the postcards we have gotten so far. We started strong, but now we have slowed down. It was fun getting so many postcards in a row, but it was a whole lot of work to write and get that many mailed (it is an exchange, after all). I think we'll be requesting a postcard per week. Much more doable and it keeps this project going for a while instead of finishing quickly and then the map is no longer interactive. I don't want it to become just a wall decoration.

Homeschooling Baby Girl

Baby Girl is now 20 months old. She is developing so well. Right now, she is getting all 4 canines in at the same time, but she has been a trooper. Her speech is better and better every day. I can understand a lot of what she says now. She loves homeschooling, too.

This is one of the baskets I have for her materials. I used them with K when he was her age. Slowly, I collected stuff and put them (a little bit of everything) in these sturdy zip bags, which I bought in an education store for about $2 each. I got one for each day of the week and labeled them.

I made sure that in each bag I had at least one activity/game of each of the following categories/subjects: Math (shapes and numbers 1-10), Language Arts (alphabet and sight words), Science (animal names), Bible (Bible story cards, scripture verse cards),  Art (colors), Music (nursery rhymes and nursery songs), and there's more in there, but I can't think of it right now.

          

          

          

          

NOSE (touching her nose)

She was waving here, but I didn't take the picture fast enough.

          

          

               

Bible: God Made the Plants

We talked about different kinds of plants and how they are alike (the are all alive and they need sun, water and nutrients to live) and how they are different (some are big, some are small, some have flowers, some have thorn, some have both, etc).

                     

We looked at each plant up close.

                           

We said a prayer to thank God for making beautiful plants in His world for us to enjoy and to clean the air.

Then we planted some beans in mason jars. We used cotton instead of dirt (to keep it cleaner and for us to see the seeds germinating a bit easier.

We poured water on the cotton and put the beans in. Each got 10 beans.

   

We added colored popsicle sticks with their names to put in each jar and placed them by our pots out front.

Dinner: Chicken Enchiladas with green salsa (yummm)

I found this recipe at www.allrecipes.com. It was relatively easy to make. I'll definitely make it again, except that the Anaheim peppers ended up being super spicy this time. We have never had them this hot before. I forgot to take a picture of the finished product. I started off well taking pictures of the pepper roasting process.

Bible: Kidz Klub at the Chapel

 

Montessori Sensorial: Pink Tower

She is building the (Montessori) Pink Tower all by herself.

Spanish: Rosetta Stone (Latin American Spanish) Homeschool Edition

                    

French: Les Coleurs (Co-op class)

In French, we watched a French video (about 8 min long) that introduced vocabulary in the following categories: the universe, means of transportation, insects, musical instruments, in the city, my body. There is also a short monologue of a girl describing her family members in French. The kids love it all, but it isn't just fun; it is training their ear to listen to spoken French with its unique pronunciation. 
Then we read the color book, talked about what colors we are wearing, found objects in the room that were those colors, etc. 
Finally, we went over the color flashcards. Mack was disappointed that I didn't have a flashcard with pink (awww), but the book did have pink. The book didn't have brown or purple, but the flashcards did.  They all did awesome! I'm so glad we're doing this!

                              

    

                      

Yummy!

Music: Woodwinds

We had a great class today. Everyone was really focused. We reviewed Crescendo, Diminuendo, Fray Felipe, and the orchestra. We then talked more in depth about the Woodwinds. We watched videos of each instrument (Bassoon, Saxophone, Oboe, Harmonica, Clarinet, Flute). We had two worksheets, one was tracing the names of each instrument and the other was matching the word to the instrument. Finally, we decorated our homemade pan pipes, and played them. We talked about how the longer straws had a deeper pitch and the shorter ones were high.

Art: Texture

We learned some more about texture today by using different utensils to "paint" with and looking at the different effects they created. Everybody seemed to have a good time

Spanish: Los Colores

In Spanish, we reviewed everything we've learned so far. We sang all the songs, said all the rhymes, practiced all the signs, reviewed all the vocabulary. We also focused the last third of the lesson on the colors in Spanish. We sang the color song, went over all 11 colors and made our own cards that read, "Mi color favorito es ....." as well as drawing something that is that color. The kids had fun. We will be moving on to shapes next week.

   

Letter of the Week (My Father's World): Sense of Hearing

Field Trip with Dad: Flying a Kite

Wow! Wow! Wow! Baby GIrl has started talking in full sentences!

At lunch today, she had had enough papaya and when I tried to put more on her plate, she said, "No, I don't want it. Stop."  Lol. And now, she says, "Go on boat." She points at sunscreen and says, "Put it on face." Ahhhh, such a sweetie!