Third Grade / Kindergarten

So we're starting the new school year tomorrow.  I hadn't planned on starting this soon but started at the beginning of the summer and didn't really take any breaks.  Since all of our new stuff has arrived we're just going to jump right in I guess.

I keep hoping to find a program that magically works for us and end up stitching every year.  I think I've just accepted that we'll never find something that always works, it'll probably vary a good bit each year.  So here's what we've got planned this year.

Math:  Math-U-See.
John and Bella are on Beta, we're still catching up from doing 1st grade math again.  Phoebe is starting Primer.  I really hope this program continues to work for them as I love it and it goes through high school.



Science:  Magic School Bus. 
I got the complete Magic School Bus series on DVD.  We're going to watch the episodes and then read various books that go with each topic.  And add in activities and experiments to go with them.  This will be both fun and easy to make work for the older ones and Phoebe.



History: Sonlight A
We're redoing Sonlight's kindergarten history.  John and Bella did it a couple years back and I'm sure remember very little of it.  I'm going to be doing it with Phoebe so I plan to just go into further details with John and Bella.  Plus they're going to be reading a bunch of books on different subjects.  Mostly Magic Tree House books as they love those.





Handwriting: Handwriting Without Tears
This is one subject where we found what we like on the first try.  We love it and it's worked very well for the kids.  John and Bella are starting cursive this year and John is VERY nervous about it.  I'm hoping it goes well.



Phonics:  Explode the Code
Another program we love. 



Language Arts:  Winning with Writing, Growing with Grammar, Soaring with Spelling.
This is the second year we'll be using Growing with Grammar and Winning with Writing.  We're also adding spelling for the first time.  I also bought several language arts workbooks from Lakeshore Learning.  I'm pushing them a little more in this subject this year and hoping it pays off.





So that's the plan.  Here's a look at the coming week.  I saved quite a bit of money this year piecing everything together instead of buying a set curriculum, it's ended up costing much more in time though.

Airplanes

Hazel loves airplanes.  We don't live that far from the airport so they fly by our house a LOT.  She loves to point them out.  Apparently they fly up to the moon and then fall back down to the ground.

Lapbooks

So we're about to finish up our school year.  John and Bella have finished most of their workbooks which makes for short school days lately.  All of our curriculum for next year has been ordered and we're just waiting for it to get here.

I've decided to give lapbooking a try this coming year.  When I first heard about it I really wasn't interested in it at all.  But after giving it more thought recently I decided it's perfect for my kids.  They LOVE anything involving scissors and glue.  This gives them art projects while reinforcing what we're learning about.  Plus Corey bought me a new printer for Valentine's Day so now I can actually print things.

So what is a lapbook.  It's basically just a bunch of papers/mini books on a subject glued into a file folder.  So I had the kids make lapbooks about themselves yesterday to practice and get an idea of what they're going to be doing.  They loved it of course.





I used the blank templates from homeschoolshare found here

Plus a couple things from this all about me lapbook.

This is what it looks like with all the flaps closed:


And with all of them open:

Hiking

Spring has finally arrived.  We've been out enjoying every bit of it we can.  It's so nice to get outside again, especially before it gets too hot.  So we've been out hiking a lot lately.

Fun at the sporting goods store

School (a long overdue update)

I hate winter and as a result I tend to hate everything in the winter.  That includes school.  We do school all summer to make up for the winter.  I make sure we get the basics in, but the extra fun stuff just doesn't happen as much.  I like to do school outside in the sunshine.  Spring is just on the horizon though, and for the first time since december most of the ice/snow has melted off our driveway.  I spent 3 days last month chipping 4+ inch thick ice off of it.  When your van slides to the end of the driveway in the middle of the night it's time to do something about it.  Problem is our driveway never gets sun, the snow melts off the roof and runs down the gutter onto the driveway where it freezes.

Anyway here's some pictures of some of the things we've done over the last few months.

John and Bella got these kits during the holidays.  John's was a dinosaur egg and Bella's an Egyptian mummy.  They had a blast digging them out.




They made a HUGE mess though.  I plan to get some more but they will definitely be outside summer activities.





We learned about sea animals and watch a documentary on turtles.  The kids seem to have my love of documentaries.   Their science book had these terrifying pages on the bottom of the ocean.  I skipped it, I prefer not to think about what lives down there.  Seriously it's the stuff nightmares are made of.



We moved our piano out of the dining room and into the living room to make more room for school stuff.



We made gak (which was a huge hit)



And Phoebe made play dough





Phoebe is getting much better at drawing.  And seems to have naturally good handwriting.  I haven't really done any formal school work with her in months but her handwriting just keeps getting better.





And speaking of handwriting, John's is awesome.  He struggled so much with it before.  I saw this in a book the other week and thought for sure it was Bella's.  He now writes neater than his father.



Bella wrote these two papers.  She read a book about the Titanic and now she's in love with it.  That's a topic I certainly don't mind learning about.





We went on a 2 mile walk last week to a duck pond we had never been to before.  The kids really enjoyed that.  We saw horses along the way and a birds nest in a tree on the way back.



And lastly we've taken many trips to the zoo.  Winter is the best time to go.



That ended up being long than I expected, perhaps I shouldn't wait so long to update next time.

Happy Birthday Hazel

It's hard to believe my baby is 3.  I swear each additional kid just grows up faster.  This is the first year I've actually managed to enjoy her birthday.  The month of her birth is not really a time I care to remember.  Her enjoying it though has certainly helped so hopefully it'll keep getting better every year.



She loves her new robot quilt.



And she got a bunch of toy horses.  She loves the show Horseland that Bella has on DVD.  So she plays horseland with them now.  Though she is severely confused about the difference between horses and zebras so she never really knows which she's playing with (we also have several zebra toys.)





This year I look forward to potty training my last kid and ditching the changing table forever!  Though we'll probably still be buying pull-ups for nighttime for the next 4-5 years, at least I don't have to change those.