Week in Review: Week 2 {in pictures}

 

I am feeling a bit tired or lazy, or a bit of both, so our weekly wrap up will be a visual one. (don't worry, I'll throw in some captions)  Click on the button above if you want to check out how other homeschoolers spent their week.... but first check out ours...

 

 A trip to Tom Moore's jungle with friends...

 

 

Continuing a study on animals of the  Galapagos Islands...

the kids looked up the lengths of each animal and lined them up according to size

everyone enjoying this month's sensory tub

Hard at work...

Eden working on her postcard about planet Earth (from our geography curriculum)

learning all about atoms in Chemistry

Fun school 

{Celebrating Johnny Appleseed's Birthday}...

tasting different varieties of apples

apple printing

Tot school...

Extracurricular...

the makings of a tennis star!

the boys received awards for last season's participation in cricket.  Micaiah was chosen by his coaches as "Most Talented" player!

So that was a quick look at our week!  Good bye until next time!!

Week In Review: Good Bye Summer

 

We said goodbye to summer this week and hello to another homeschool year... our 4th year of homeschool!  Hard to believe :)  The kids were eager to start after a nice long summer break and I was even more eager to get into a routine!

This year we have a 4th grader, 2nd grader, kindergartener and a little tornado tot schooler.  It should be an interesting year.  Here are some things we will be doing:

Mystery of History 1

Real Science 4 Kids (Chemistry pre level 1, Physics pre- level 1 and possibly Biology pre- level 1)

A Child's Geography

HomeSchool Spanish

Various unit studies I will scatter throughout to keep things fresh.

Micaiah (primary 5, 4th grade)

Math:  finishing Teaching Textbooks 4, possibly starting 5; ALEKS

Language: A Beka Language A

Spelling: finishing All About Spelling 3 moving on to level 4

Handwriting: A Reason For Handwriting C 

Art: A Beka Art A

Eli, (Primary 3; 2nd Grade)

Math:  Teaching Textbooks 3(very slowly) , Math Mammoth- Early Geometry

Language: A Beka Language 2

Spelling: finshing All About Spelling 1 moving on to level 2

Handwriting: A Reason For Handwriting B

Art: A Beka Art 2

Eden (Primary 1, Kindergarten)

Math:  Horizons Math K

Reading & Phonics: Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading, A Beka Letters and Sounds

Handwriting: A Reason For Handwriting K

Art: A Beka Art K

 Marcus, Tot school (which really means getting into everything everyone else is doing !!) 

I will hopefully spend the first part of each day with Marcus on a focused developmental activity while the older kids are doing their independent work. Here is what we did this week:

scooping and pouring beans

playdough- Marcus loved this and asked to play with it every day

sorting and dumping bears

Here are some other highlights of our first week:

Finishing our work early on Tuesday and meeting friends at the beach (sorry no picture)

Taking a walk to visit some animals nearby

We started a unit study on The Galapagos Islands and the Blue-footed Booby.  We will continue next week and here is a sneak peek at our sensory tub to go along with it:

That was our week... I will try to be faithful in doing a weekly wrap up this year so stay tuned for the many adventures of Best of All Academy!!

linking this post to 

Weekly Wrap up & Moments to Remember

Tot School - Marcus at 14.5 months

If you read our Week in Review post and our Preschool Corner post, you may have been wondering what Marcus was up to all day. Last year this time he was still a newborn and would sleep a good part of the day but now he is a toddler and likes to be involved in whatever everybody else is doing... which can be a challenge! I try to spend some one on one time with him each day and also give him enriching things to do while the others are working on projects or school work. Here are some highlights of our first two weeks.

 Lacing beads in a mini muffin tin...Marcus kept busy moving them from one place to the other and also throwing them on the floor.  As he gets older we can work on sorting them by colour and shape.

 I let him have a little homemade play dough.  He enjoyed sticking things in the dough and seeing the prints it made. 

Marcus loves touch and feel books.  Eden was showing him the fluffy chick.

 He was facinated by caterpillars that the big boys were using for caterpillar races.

 There is always plenty of noise music everyday!

 I laid out items I found outside of various shapes, textures, weights.  We talked about heavy, light, rough, smooth, wood, rubber, stone etc.  I let Marcus explore each item as he wished.

 He liked stacking them all up.

 I punched holes in the top of a canister and stuck chenille sticks in.  I knotted the top and bottom of the sticks so that they couldn't go through but the stick could move up and down.  This kept his attention for a little while but it wasn't one of his favourites.  As he gets older I can give him the sticks to push through himself.

 I gave him a couple of stampers and some scrap paper and let him do his thing.

This activity was one of his favourites.  I stuck clothes pegs around a plastic box and he pulled them off.  He isn't able to put them back on by himself yet but we can work towards that.  For now he likes pulling them off and throwing them on the floor.


 In addition to all of these activities, he has lots of free play, play time with his siblings and what he likes more than anything... time outside.  He is an outdoors child for sure!

 So that's how Marcus spends his days!  As you see all of these activities use things I had around the house. You don't need a huge budget to engage the mind of your little one.  Just look around your home and see what you can turn into a learning opportunity!!

This post is linked to Tot School where you can see what other moms are doing with their little ones!

Tot School Week 1: Introducing the Alphabet

Eden enjoyed her first week of tot school last week. I have decided to [partially] use the Letter of the Week curriculum I purchased from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  The curriculum focuses on on a letter of the alphabet each week and centres the whole week around a theme.  In order to kick that off I decided to have a alphabet introduction week and used the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom book by Bill Martin as the theme of the week.

I made a coconut tree (printable here)  to put above Eden's workspace.  Each week when we finish a letter we will add it to our tree.

We also made a Chick Chicka Boom Boom lapbook that I found here and here.   It was a fun lapbook to put together with Eden... she had seen her brothers make lapbooks so she thinks it is great to have her own!

Some other activities we did over the week relating to the theme were:

Alphabet Bingo -I called out a letter and she used a dot art marker to stamp it on her "bingo sheet".  She recognized most of the letters and by the end of the week missed only a couple.

She worked on this ABC floor puzzle by Melissa and Doug. The first time I did it with her and the second time she did it almost on her own.

She spent lots of time in our ABC sensory box that I highlighted in my last post.

We watched this rendition of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom on Youtube which has continued to be a hit even into this week!

We made a hand print coconut tree- I painted Eden's hands green and she stamped them on a sheet of white paper.  Once it was dry we cut them out and glued them on to coloured paper and added a trunk (brown card board) and brown textured foam coconuts.

 We also had fun with homemade play dough and had a life skills lesson when I set up a washing area for Eden to wash all the playdough toys/ utensils.. she did a great job cleaning up and had fun playing in the water.

Some of the books we read were:

Curious George Learns the Alphabet by H. A Rey
Dr. Seuss ABC's
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin

It was a great week! Of course in addition to the activities above much time was spent playing and interacting with her brothers. I really enjoyed the focused time I had with Eden each morning and I look forward to watching her grow and develop over the course of this year.



See who else is participating in Tot School over at 1+1+1=1

For Tot books and Tot packs like the one we made check this out:

Publish Post