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

Moments to Remember: rain, a lake and a bird named Bernard

After today's heavy rain we took the kids out for a drive and stopped to check out the "lake" at Bernard's Park.  The kids were amazed at how flooded the area was and quickly took advantage of the opportunity to splash around.

 We rescued a Lesser Yellow Legs that was sick or injured.  We named him Bernard and Joe took him to BAMZ where they can hopefully nurse him back to good health.

It was a fun way to end our week!  Hope you have a good weekend :)

Linking up with 

DIY Recycled cardboard jewelry organizer

So it's been awhile since I have updated this blog. I will not start listing the reasons making excuses
as to why,  and I won't make any promises that the posts will be coming more regularly... there is a 2 year old in the house.. need I say more??

Summer is zooming by... plans for our upcoming school year are swirling around in my head but I am trying to enjoy the freedom of summer as long as I can!

We were feeling crafty last week so Eden and I tackled a little project that we had fun with.


I had been saving this sturdy cardboard frame which came with a new air conditioner.  As soon as I saw it I knew we could use it to make something.  I decided on a jewelry organizer for all Eden's treasures which usually end up all over the place.

I started by letting Eden paint the frame inside and out and decorate it how she liked.

Once the paint was dry I added little hooks along the top, hot glued a wooden bar in the middle for more hanging space and attached some clothes pegs on the bottom clip art work or little notes.  I punched 2 holes at the top and threaded a ribbon for hanging and voila...

A cute and easy jewelry organizer!



 Until next time...
 

What Makes a Fish a Fish: A Review

Have you ever heard of a frogfish?

 It is one of the creatures we learned about while reviewing What makes a Fish a Fish which is one in a series of DVDs from a company called Dive into Your Imagination.  It's founder, Annie AKA "OCEAN ANNIE" has become one of America’s leading ocean-environ educators.

What Makes A Fish, A Fish is the first DVD in the Dive Into Your Imagination series. This DVD teaches children about astounding fish from around the world. In 2008 it won the Greatest Products call from iParenting Media Awards!

We were sent the DVD and given access to the PDF Educators' Guides. The DVD has 8 main chapters including Sea Anemones and Their Friends,   Bath Time for Fishes,  Frogfish are Funny Looking Fish and Dinner Time for Fish. and a couple of bonus tracks explaining scuba diving and production. 

When we watched it the first time the kids were fascinated by the Frogfish so I decided to use the teaching guide to develop a whole lesson around this funny looking creature. The lesson plans are well laid out easy to follow and can be adapted to meet the needs of your kids. They include background information about all the topics presented on the DVD and many activities to use with each topic which cover math, language arts, social studies and science.

For each of the chapters on the DVD, there is a chapter in the educator guide of the same name. Within the educator guides, you can choose from 6-7 activity stations per unit to share with your children. Both sets of guides, PreK-K and 1st-3rd Grades follows the same framework with age appropriate activities so if you download both sets you can choose your favorites. I was given access to both the Pre-K to K guide and the 1st to 3rd grade guide. I used both to prepare a fun day for all 4 kids. ( yes the almost 2 yr old also joined in. )

Here are some highlights from our FrogFish Day:

our Frog Fish Board

Checking out where Frogfish can be found around the world

Making their own Frogfish

Even Marcus joined in!

our diverse Frogfish

completing a language arts worksheet

Frogfish math

playing a frogfish memory game

catching fish like a frogfish!

 As you can see, we had a great Frogfish Day!  It was easy and fun to put together and as usual, I learned a lot too!

Other titles in the series are Who Lives in the Sea  and  Dive into Diversity.   The are available at Diveintoyourimagination.com.  Each DVD is priced at $19.95. 

It is important to note that the Educator guides are separate and are available as a printed version for $299 (for the whole set) or as individual PDFs for $69.95.  But check this out:

"As a special for the Homeschool Crew and The Old Schoolhouse Magazine and followers Annie Crawley of Dive Into Your Imagination, she will gift you a set of PDFs with purchase of the DVDs. When you place your DVD order, just let her know in the notes that you are a Homeschool Parent!"


In order to obtain these 300 page information packed guides, just mention "homeschooler" in the comment section at checkout after you have added the DVDs. That's a good deal!  There is even free shipping for the month of June!

See what other reviewers had to say here.

Disclaimer:  As a member of TOS crew I received this product in exchange for an honest review.  All the opinions expressed here are my own.