My New Instrument

I celebrated my birthday on Tuesday.  Jadyn was very upset that I did not have a birthday party!  She keeps asking me when my party is and when my friends are coming over!  My husband bought me this beautiful guitar!  I started learning guitar this summer so that I can lead worship with our jr high on Wednesday nights.  It's definitely not easy to practice with 4 kids running around (well, one is crawling around).  Thankfully, I'm used to the distraction.  You should hear the chaos when I practice piano.  They all decide that they need to play with me.  Ha! Ha!  I used my bday money from my dad to buy a strap, some picks, and a capo.  I'm so excited for them to get here! 

1st Week of School

First week of school - check! It was a pretty good week getting back into "school mode."  We had one rough day, but 4 out of 5 were great! ;)  So here's our week!

We start our day together with our morning board time. Our morning consists of:
Make the date: Mj has to make the date with coins (eg: on the 22nd he had to make 22 cents with his coins)
Shape of the day: Circle
Animal of the day: Dog
Letter of the Day: A
Color of the Day: Red
Trait of the Day: Orderly
State of the Day: Alabama & Alaska
Our missionaries
Hymn: Be Thou My Vision
What's the Weather?
What's the Season?
Books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus

Most of the morning board is for Gabe and Jadyn, but we have enjoyed this time together.

After the morning board we go to calendar notebooks.
The kids love working on their calendar notebooks together. 

My favorite part of the calendar notebooks are their daily drawing.  Mj definitely has some artistic talent.

Gabe even has his own calendar notebook where we review the letter of the day and shape of the day.  He really wasn't that into it.  He did it with us one day. 

After calendar notebooks they split up and Mj works independently while I work with Jadyn and Gabe plays. So here's what each kid worked.

MJ - 5th Grade

Bible: We talked about having a good foundation.  We talked about the wise man and the foolish man.  We also talked about the Great Pyramid of Giza.  It looks like it's built on sand, but it is not.  It has a strong rock foundation and has stood for thousands of years because of it's strong foundation.
He memorized II Samuel 22:32 "For who is God besides the Lord? And who is the Rock except our God?"
He also is reading a biography about missionary Nate Saint.

English: This pretty much was a week of review.  We discussed sentences and fragments, subjects and predicates, and types of sentences.  He learned that an imperative sentence can have an understood you for a subject.

Finding the subject in the sentence.

Diagramming subjects and verbs.

Math: We reviewed place value and did a lot of work on decimals - rounding decimals, equivalent decimals, greater than and less than with decimal numbers, writing decimals as fractions...

Writing a decimal number in expanded form with multiplication.

Reading: He read a story called "Runaway Friends" and a poem about a man who whittles.  Mj learned what "whittle" means. We also talked about alliteration and assonance. We had some fun learning about hyperbole and idiom.  Now MJ goes around the house thinking of hyperboles to say,  "It's been raining cats and dogs" a lot around here.

History: This chapter focuses on maps so we talked about how maps were made in ancient history and the time of the explorers.  We talked about the when you would use a globe and a flat map, We talked about latitude and longitude the equator and the Prime Meridian.

Mj cut out a Goode's Interrupted Projection of the earth and made it into a globe.

We peeled an orange to see what would happen to a sphere if we tried to smoosh it.  It does not make a good flat map. =)

Science: We talked about the layers of the earth and the minerals in the earth. Mj learned about the characteristics of mineral and how scientists identify minerals.  We also discussed the importance of scientists being accurate when they are measuring data.

We used an apple to look at the layers of the earth and then Mj enjoyed a yummy snack.

We measured the volume of pebbles.

What does MJ do when he finishes school?

He makes a Lego Party house for all his Lego people!

 

Jadyn - Kindergarten

Bible: We are doing Bible together with Mj two days a week.  Jadyn has a coloring book that goes along with our study and has enjoyed coloring the pictures.

I walked in one day to find MJ helping Jadyn color her Bible page.  One of the many reasons I love homeschooling!

We are also using the "What's in the Bible" DVDs for Bible.  We watched Volume 1 and Jadyn colored a coloring sheet from their website (you can download the coloring sheets for free).  She actually ended up coloring 5 sheets since they watched the DVD two times.  They love them!!  I asked them questions afterward about what they watched.

They also attend AWANA on Wednesday nights.  Jadyn is all about learning her sections in her Sparks book.  We also work on that during Bible time.

K5 Beginnings: We learned about the Vick family. We will be learning about the Vick family all year.  The Vick family is moving to the town of Pine Hill. So this week we talked a lot about moving.  Jadyn remembers a little bit about when we moved here so it was good that she could kind of relate. And she was very excited that the Vick family has a 10 year old brother like she does and a 3 year old brother like she does.  Jadyn loves singing all of our fun kindergarten songs together and has had a very fun 1st week of school.

Jadyn had to glue the objects into where they would be packed - a suitcase or a moving truck.

Doing a little science experiment.  We made colors by mixing two colors together.

Working so diligently on her Beginnings paper. She had to color Hopsotch exactly right.

She made a family album. This is her dad.

I love how she drew me in blue since it's my favorite color.

Mj, of course, had to be drawn in green since that is his favorite color.

Jadyn's drawing of herself.

She told me that Gabe's head is big so she had to draw his head big in her picture of him.

Baby Job

And we can't forget Streak our dog.  This picture cracks me up!

Making her Bell (the Vick family's dog) stick puppet.

We read her first book together in her curriculum.  It was about the Vick family moving to Pine Hill.

Math: We reviewed shapes and patterns. We also reviewed counting forward and backward 1-10

Working hard on her circle paper.

Putting 10 sheep in the pen.

Extra Fun:
After she finishes her school work I let her play on the ipad.  She plays 15 min of an educational game and 15 min of whatever she wants.  Her favorite apps this week were "ABCs of God" and "Alphabet ABC" and of course "Angry Birds" and "Princess Salon"

Playing with her magnetic dolls is always a fun way to keep busy while big brother is finishing up school.

Making "A" with play dough.

Jadyn usually sneaks in while I'm teaching Mj and draws on the chalkboard. She drew a magic hat and wand.

I love playing board games with her.  Sorry is definitely a favorite.

Some dot-a-dot fun!

Gabe - Totschool

I made a school bin for him every day with different activities inside.  Each bin contained a sensory bin, educational matching games, books, cars, plastic bugs.

He loved the sensory bins the best.

And then one day, I walked in to find them all with a sensory bin!

He played with the unifix cubes for a bit the one day.

Coloring his "A" is for apple paper.

Gabe loves the leapfrog videos on Netflix!

He loved gluing the apples on the tree. We will keep working on his scissor skills.  I thought I was going to lose a finger! ;)

Gabe loves matching so I made sure to have lots of matching games.

Playing with Fireman Elmo in his bin.

Play dough time making "a".

His "bad guys" were having an epic battle with a garbage truck, canon and horse one day during school.

Working on his 1 paper.

Coloring his red paper for our color of the week.

Dot-a-Dot fun.

Coloring his Cubbies book from AWANA.

I snuck in the room to see Jadyn "reading" Gabe's cubbies book to him and teaching him his verse.  She was teaching him her Sparks verse, but that's ok!  This made my heart happy!

Gabe loved our "A" is for alligator craft. The googly eye was his favorite part.

Gluing the alligators on his "A" paper.

Enjoying some water sensory bin fun with Jadyn.

Every day during school there were epic battles being fought at the castle.  I love listening to his imagination being played out with his "bad guys".  I still don't understand where the good guys are, but those bad guys sure do fight each other a lot!

Job - The Tiny Almost Tot

Job's at the point where he's into everything, can't quite walk yet but is going, going, going all the time!

His new favorite thing - helping me with the dish washer. When I'm not looking he stands up and gets the cups out for me.

He loves watching the balls spin round and round.  He's finally figured out how to make them spin all by himself.

 

Keeping himself entertained in the exersaucer while school is going on.

He learned he could make some funny faces in the play pen to distract the kids from their work.

 

Bucky is his favorite toy right now.

This is his "Please, let me out of the play pen" look.

Exploring his brightlings toy.

 



 

Co-op
We were able to meet some new friends at our co-op we just joined.  On Tuesday we had fun at a Back to School Bash at the beach.

 

 

And on Friday we enjoyed meeting some of the other elementary kids at an ice cream party.

So that was our first week of school.  The printables, morning board and calendar notebook are from these amazing websites 1+1+1=1, Homeschool Creations, and Confessions of a Homeschooler. I've never met these ladies, but I am sure thankful for their free printables and ideas.  Check out their blogs!
If you want to see the weeks of other homeschoolers check out the Weekly Wrap Up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.