Blueberries for Sal

We had a lot of fun with Blueberries for Sal.  This is the first time I've ever read my littles this book and they really enjoyed it.  I  really enjoyed it....what a sweet story.

Letter B sensory bin.

Bear Bingo tray.  I just had Silas match the colors for this. 

Working hard.

Glue the Bs on the blueberry bushes.

He had such a great time cutting out apples and gluing them for the letter A that I printed out this letter B with bears from 1+1+1=1 Animal ABCs series.

He really enjoyed this tray.  Guess I will continue to do this.

Bear Painting.

He enjoyed using a different painting medium other than a paint brush.  Using these little balls also gave the bear an unexpected furry look.  Bonus! :)  Love when something unplanned that is cool happens.

Finished bear.  One of Asa's alphabet sheets....no idea where the big B went......I will probably find it someplace random at some point.

I felt the need to set up the easel one day and let the kids paint. lol  I drew about 5 Bs for Silas to paint.  He had a good time with it.

Asa and Silas helped make Blueberry, Banana muffins.  I have been doing really good on my goal of getting the kids in the kitchen more with me.

Asa is really enjoying his Explode the Code.....what a great resource.  My kids just love doing their ETC pages.

Using our GeoSafari Phonics pad.....learning more about the B sound.

Working on sorting and patterning in our Saxon K.  So far this has been relatively easy for him we've been moving at a good pace through it.  That is nice since it gives me the freedom to not do a lesson everyday.  :)

The kids were being really quiet one day....one of those 'too quiet' moments that kind of strikes fear in the heart of a mom and you don't know what you're going to find as you walk around the corner. lol  I was pleasantly surprised when I found an impromptu art class in session (believe me I was expecting syrup, or hair cutting, or wall painting/coloring).  Straws, glue, and big paper = these creations.....plus cooperation, getting along, and quiet....wonderful combination.

I really wanted to do this balloon activity with them again...they LOVED it, but I just didn't have the time to set it up.  Maybe another time.  Up next is The Very Hungry Caterpillar for the letter C.  Happy blogging!

jess_hak

Week 4 Review

Ok. I have a ton of pictures on here this week, so I'm going to let them do most of the talking!

We had a light craft week this week. We have a couple butterflies (the pink and purple being Annabelle's of course, the other is Asa's). Annabelle used her pink and purple paint that she had left over to paint her plate I thought that it looked really cool so I hung it up. :) The colored pictures are of Jesus teaching in the temple when he was a little guy. The circles with aluminum foil on them have little pictures that the kids drew of themselves on them. They say "Annabelle (or Asa) is growing." Didn't turn out so well....you win some, you lose some I guess. lol

These cute little guys are hanging in our front window. The kids had fun sticking the bees on the flowers and the window.

We talked a little about how we are helpers and that now that they are growing they can begin to help around the house more. To which Annabelle replied, "Not me, I'm little." Then Asa cutely piped in, " I wittle too." Precious....needless to say it is going to take some work for this mommy to get some help around here! We made these little cloths for them to help wipe up the table with after meals. They did seem excited about using these, so we will see how that turns out.

This was our lapbook for the week. The book was The Red Carpet. It talks about the color red, introduced the letter Cc, and opened up the door to talk about how important it is to listen to directions and be obedient....and Annabelle came up with that conversation all by herself! I was pretty surprised when she said, "That carpet needs to listen better....it should be obedient." I must admit, I was speechless for a moment and had to think how I could make it a learning opportunity. It also introduced authority figures and how they help us (police officers mainly). And helped us start talking about the directions left and right.....I love lapbooks! You can find everything you need to complete this lapbook here: www.homeschoolshare.com

Annabelle enjoyed the lacing cards. This is the first she's played with these to my knowledge.

Fun with the sensory tub. Asa and Silas both really enjoyed this. I must admit it was a HUGE mess to clean up. So this will only be coming out once a week....or in desperate situations. lol (and it didn't stay on the sheet)

These are the growing sponges that we put into the water on Tuesday and just took out yesterday. They got really big. Annabelle looked at them everyday and noted the changes in them. These are from the Dollar Tree (my new favorite store).

We ended our Saturday evening with a fun family game called Hullabaloo. I highly recommend this. It is fun, easy, quick (we played 10 rounds in 15min.), and it practices listening skills. Zak even had fun. :)

Annabelle standing on the winning mat....she was pretty excited because everyone else had won a round but her, then she won on the last round!

Even Silas joined in the fun. He thought it was hilarious that we were all standing on these mats....he wanted in on the action.

Asa listening to where to go next....notice Silas waiting too...so cute. lol

This was our week. It was a rough one due to some circumstances with our dog needing emergency surgery....but I think we still managed to have a good time, and learn a little in the process. Happy blogging :)

jess_hak

Week 3 in Review

Here it is the week in review. We are having a good time still. And Annabelle consistently asks everyday, "Are we going to do school?". lol I'm having to come up with stuff to do over the weekends (which isn't very hard, we just complete whatever we didn't get to during the week). My house has finally settled back down to the normal level of chaos. I only have 3-5 kids instead of 6-8, so I'm able to give Asa more things to do, and he is really enjoying his little Tot School time. It makes him feel grown-up to do these special things with Annabelle. I just wanted to mention that these reviews never really show all the worksheets that we've been doing either. We do quite a few each week that I print from websites. We do a lot of them because Annabelle really enjoys them. And even though most of the time it is just busy work, I think that she feels really important to be doing them....and that is something that will not last long in her schooling lifetime. So we will embrace it while we can. :)

We talked alot about Jesus' first miracle at the wedding in Cana this week. Annabelle and Asa both really liked the visual of the water turning into Kool-Aid :)

We also found a really cool website to help with phonics. http://www.starfall.com/ really cool! And it lets Annabelle play a game on the computer, which makes her feel really big. :)

Another new development this week. I put 3/4 of the kids toys away. I was sick of them playing (which basically means throwing everything off the shelves and out of bins...totally trashing the upstairs), and me having to clean everything up. So I put tons of stuff away and plan on rotating every quarter. Hopefully that will stimulate more actual play, since they don't have the temptation of the fun activity of destroying the upstairs. lol

Ok onto the pictures. I will try to post later today with our theme for the week and some of the things we will be doing. Otherwise, expect that post tomorrow for sure! Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Playing the Letter A game at starfall.com. Asa loves to watch too!

Screen shot of some of the game.

Annabelle's coloring skills. I just have to have a mommy brag moment. She is fantastic, meticulous, and anal when it comes to coloring. But it is exhausting to her, and she does NOT like to mess up. It took her a good 20 min. to color this little astronaut. lol

This is Silas enjoying himself while we are doing school. Wish he was always this happy and self-entertaining while we needed him to be. He stacked those blocks all by himself!

This is the much talked about Balloon Bat game. I stayed up until 12:30am hanging all these silly balloons. :)

But it was so worth the time. They had alot of fun. And they are still hanging up as we speak so that they can play again this week. Annabelle asked, "Is it my birthday?" And then said, "Birthday starts with B!" Funny girl.
Asa stretching to hit a balloon.
Our craft board. Annabelle's letter Bb with buttons, balloons, and butterflies, her circle collage (milk caps and contruction paper hole punches). The next thing is supposed to be a bear made out of circles, but she took it in a different direction lol...more like Picasso. Bingo marker pictures (bingo markers make fantastic circles!). Then there is Asa's Bb picture, followed by Annabelle's circle buddy, and her number 2 buddy. Pretty full week!

Lapbooking

I really have to stop looking at other people's blogs and in the homeschooling forums. The more I look the more work I create for myself. lol I'm going to share with you a fun new project I've found called lapbooking. We have been working on a couple of them the last couple weeks. One of them is for the letter Aa, and the other goes along with the book We're Going on a Bear Hunt, and it enforces the letter Bb. Annabelle and I both love these. They are easy and fun to put together, and you can add something new each day. Plus it reinforces the phonic sounds that she is learning, and makes a great keepsake for her to go back and look at (which already happened this morning). It is also a great discussion tool and makes her think about things which I love. She has been more open to wondering and asking questions about things while we have been working on these. Things like I wonder who so and so's favorite color apple is...or what would you like to hunt for mommy? These questions of wondering never happened much before this, and I think it is opening up a whole new world to her. Exciting.

Ok, I will post some pics now so you know what they look like. Keep in mind that these are really simple ones. They can be more complex.

This is the front of the Aa lapbook. You may recognize the stained glass apple from our first week. Open it up and see what's inside. Apple, Apple, what begins with A? Just a wheel that turns and shows pics of things that begin with Aa. Apple Pattern Strips that she worked on to complete a pattern. The Apple Graph, she had to ask different people what their favorite color apple was (notice nobody said yellow lol). Big A, little A pockets sort the big and little Aa into their appropriate pocket. An Aa book to show more works that begin with Aa. How many apples she got to stamp the appropriate number of apples on the apple tree. Apple Pie Opposites is just what it sounds like, she has to match the opposites with each other (this is a complicated concept for her at this point).


Another shot of stuff out of the pockets....we had fun with this.

Now for our Bear Lapbook pictures.

The Story Sequencing Cards are fun items for her to be able to retell the story with. The Bible verse is under this flap, then there are the pattern bears that she had fun coloring. The lift and see flap is asking a question about what type of bear lives where, she had to glue the correct bear under each flap. Next is the over, under, through cave, we still have yet to do this but basically she will listen to the story and place the correct marker where is goes every time she hears it read. And the little flap with the girl and net was a fun little question she got to answer: What else would you like to hunt for? She said a poodle. lol :) So we did just that we hunted for one of her stuffed poodles.

A shot of everything out and opened.

Annabelle having fun this morning exploring her lapbook and playing with the sequecning cards. She did this for almost 30 minutes! Then she came up with the idea that tomorrow morning we should go on a bear hunt with her, Daddy, Silas, Asa, and me.....and Amos too....so that is what we will be doing with our Saturday morning! How fun!

Lastly, if you would like to try your hand at some lapbooking of your own here are the links that I love and have used for these ones (and for others that I'm planning)

www.homeschoolshare.com

www.lapbooklessons.com/FreeLapbooks.html

www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/TotBooksTotPacksALL.html

And I thought that there was another one, but I can't seem to find it. Anyway, looking forward to introducing another new idea in the next couple of posts. Still working on it and getting it ready. Until then happy blogging!

jess_hak

Week 2 in Review

Whew....another week done. This week was a whirlwind of activity. Needless to say with extra kids and a spontaneous day out with Grandma I didn't get everything that I wanted to get done this week done. But this is the beauty of homeschooling. I can let my kids take a day off here and there and it is not so hard to make up. We still did get a lot done. The Balloon Bat game that I talked about the previous post did not get played, but it definately will be on the schedule this week.

Again this week Annabelle had such a great time. I always give her the option of wanting to school or not, and everyday she responds excitedly about wanting to do it. She is making progress with phonics. I think that once she actually catches on there will be no stopping her. I stumbled upon a website in a homeschool forum that I think is just plan fun...and it's free! www.starfall.com It's a site with games on it for learning phonics. Go and visit, I don't think that you will be disappointed.

I will be posting a couple different times this week. One the normal rundown of our week, and something that I am so excited to share with you. A wonderful new world has been opened up to me....the world of lapbooking...more to come about that later. Hopefully, by Wednesday. I included a couple pictures of our week. Enjoy! Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Sprinkling coffee on her 'brown bear'.



This was by far her favorite craft of the week. We did a brown bear and a polar bear with their caves. She 'pet' them all day and wanted her picture taken next to them :)




Up close with the bears.

This is her finished brown bear. Her letter Bb's dressed up to look like bees...cute, Asa's color buddy...it's supposed to be a red rose lol, a polar bear (this one was sprinkled with salt), and Annabelle's number 1 buddy. All in all....a great week!!

Bears, Adam & Eve, & Bb

Week 2 here we come! This week should be fun. I am introducing the letter Bb and the rest of this month will be focusing on Aa and Bb. I have a couple fun games that will be taking place as well as the file folder games, worksheets, and arts & crafts. Most of these activities you will have to wait and see pictures of at the end of the week.

In particular I'm looking forward to a little game called Balloon Bat. It consists of me hanging balloons from the ceiling and letting the kids run around and hit them. I haven't decided if I am going to make a variation of the game or not yet. I planned on writing Bb on all of the balloons, but I might write different letters on them and tell Annabelle she can only hit the ones with the Bb on it. We are going to be doing this game a couple more times this month so I will probably introduce that variation a little later.

I will also be introducing the number 2 this week. There are a few games that I have planned for that as well including a collage of pairs and a game called Find Two. Find Two is a game where Annabelle will reach in a bag and find two of the same object without looking. I am interested to see how that will work out.

Well, not as many pictures to post at the beginning this week, but there will definitely be more at the end of this week. Hope your week is as entertaining as mine is shaping up to be. :) Happy blogging!

jess_hak

These are butterfly color match file folder games in a couple different variations. Sorry again for the dark/not good quality pictures...can't seem to get the right lighting in here :/





These are Bear Dominoes that I made. Hoping to have a nice, quiet, fun game to counteract the Balloon Bat, which we all know will be pretty noisy and chaotic :)