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

Pin it Do it Challenge Week 3

 Welcome to week 3 of the Pin it Do it Challenge!

While I was planning Eden's All About Me week for our introduction to preschool, I found 2 ideas that I knew I had to recreate.

First, I love sensory tubs... I love putting them together, and the kids really enjoy playing, discovering and learning with them.  The Totally Tots website has a "What's in the Tub" feature where they put together sensory tubs each month around a specific theme.  It is a great resource and it is where I found this sensory tub:

Totally Tots- What's in the Tub

 Here is my version.  I had fun putting this one together.

• The filler is abc pasta (first week of school, letter review) lentils (for some colour) popcorn seeds and wagon wheel pasta (that's what else I had in the cupboard!)
• Next I took a picture of each person in the family.. even Marcus cooperated! After removing the background with Photoshop, I cut them out and laminated the pictures.  They stood up nicely in the filler.
• I added name cards so Eden could match the name with the person. (name recognition)
• Foam and wooden letters which spelled out her first and last name (she fished these out with a spoon to practice spelling her name)
• magnetic numbers- the numbers in our phone number to practice.
• magnets from our Melissa and Doug calendar (My Birthday, Ballet & Gymnastics- Eden's activities)
• plastic star shape (star was our shape of the week)
• wooden flower and leaf beads (to add some more colour and texture).

I like how it came together and Eden enjoyed playing with the tub (even Eli asked to have a turn a few times).  Eden's favourite part was the cutouts of the family.  One day she spent almost an hour playing with them! 


The next project I pinned  was from my dear friend Mari-Ann's website Counting Coconuts where I always find some great ideas (she is amazing!)

This "Me on the Map" book is a circle shaped book.  Each circle of the book from smallest to biggest represents our home,  neighbourhood, parish (city), island (country), continent, and planet.  The circles are decorated with pictures and held together with a brad.  Eden enjoyed putting each piece together.. we did it over 2 days and the highlight for her was sticking a little star on each page approximately where she would be.  It is a great visual for how we fit in the world.

Here is our version which didn't stray too far from the original (Hey, why recreate the wheel!)

Well, that's how I brought Pinterest into real life this week!  What about you?  Link up below, I'd love to see your great projects and  ideas!

Sensory Boxes

For a while now I have wanted to incorporate sensory boxes into our learning experience. I procrastinated the whole of last year so during the summer I made up my mind that we would have one sensory box per month for this school year.

You may be wondering what a sensory box is and how we use it. Simply, a sensory box is a box filled with different tactile materials for your child to explore. Some schools will have a sensory table but as we don't have room for a sensory table, a box is a good replacement. The one I have presently set up is a clear plastic container with a tight fitting lid. The possibilities of what you can put in the box are endless. They are great for kids who love to use their hands. Playing in them is very engaging and can also be relaxing.

Our first sensory box was built around the ABC theme as that was the theme I used for Eden's first week of Tot school. I filled the box with dry ABC pasta and wagon wheel pasta and then I added letters made of foam, wood and plastic. I also found little objects for each letter of the alphabet and "hid" them in the pasta for the kids to find. The loved rummaging through and finding all of the little items especially since some of them were their toys I had kidnapped with out their knowledge a few weeks ago. It was funny to hear Micaiah say. "I have been looking for that!"

Most of the time the sensory box has been available to them for free play and they know all of the items and the filler (pasta) must remain in the box or the privilege of playing with it will be taken away (I am really not all that interested in cleaning pasta up off the floor every day!!) In addition to the free play, I also photographed some of the items in the box and created a an I spy sheet for them.(An idea I got from my friend MariAnn) They had fun with that.

I had intended for the box to be mainly for Eden and thought Eli might be interested in it as well but it was actually a hit for all 3 kids! It has kept them entertained for hours already and there is no indication that they are tired of it yet.

I now am trying to decide what theme to use for October.
For more sensory box ideas check out MariAnn's wonderful blog Counting Coconuts.