Back to School, Fall 2012

 We actually started back to school several weeks ago.  I didn't say anything about it because I didn't want to make all those public schoolers jealous.  haha!

Here are our first day of homeschool pics from then.  We're using My Father's World this year, which is new to us.  David and Elizabeth will be doing some of Adventures in My Father's World together, while she also has the MFW First Grade.

And here we are on the first day of public school (today public schools in our area started).  We started our day by looking at all the BTS photos that people were posting on fb, then we prayed for all the students and teachers we know in public school.

 All my students in our classroom!

We do lots of reading and we have a timeline this year.  This is what Christopher Columbus' ship would have looked like if Elizabeth had been his sail designer!  haha!!

 Here's our puppets.  The boring one in the middle was made by Mom.  : )

I had to move the marker board calendar, because Sarah kept erasing it!  Beside it, we have our new spelling board!  I'm very excited about using All About Spelling this year with David.  And cool repurposing project? Oh yeah!  That spelling board was formerly the front of my dishwasher!! 

David Building & Learning

Here are some more of David's recent creations.  For a while he was constantly making angels.  Now this...

 He says this is Grandma in heaven driving an Angel Prius.

 And this is Great in heaven.

Funny thing is that he's too young to remember that Great loved hats and big mugs!

 Obviously, Galileo for studying Jupiter.

I had to turn our recent trip to the Arboretum into a learning experience, so we made a folder for it.  Blogger is not accepting my cover photo right now, but on the cover, David chose his favorite photos of the tulips.  It's really pretty.  Here's the inside:

Here's the recent folder we did for Jupiter:

 Can you name this Looney Tunes character?

Hint: He's drinking a root beer.

 (ok, that's not really a hint)

 This was a really cool demonstration of the storm on Jupiter.

I previously thought Saturn was the coolest planet, but David seems to think it's moons are cooler than the planet, especially the one named Titan.  We ended up with not as much to fill our folder on this one, so we added a second illustration, looking from above Saturn.  You can see in David's view from above (illustration on the right) that he included two of the shepherd moons, as well as some sort of alien attack on the planet.

 My illustration is under David's.

TT Tuesday and Our Zoo Review Folder

Oh!  I almost missed Tuesday!  There's never a dull moment around here.  While many people are having spring break this week, we're not completely... We took Monday off to meet some friends at McD's for a play date.  Just now realized I should have taken my camera!  Oh well.  Today, we worked some more on our Zoo Review from last Tuesday's field trip.  Now there's a place that gets CRAZY on Spring Break Week!  Soooo glad we went last week!

I have to admit, the Zoo Review project turned into something for ME and not just a school project.  David wrote out all his animal answers, and I made him sound everything out, only giving a hint on the f sound in elephant.  He matched up photos and handwriting, drew his picture, but then the lost scrapbooker inside me took over.  David carried on with some other school work while I finished the folder.  I couldn't help it.  But maybe I needed that.

Half way through his math, David said, "Hey, I know what you're doing.  You're trying to trick me into having school!"  I told him there was no trick to it!  We will be having a regular school day on Wednesday, celebrating St. Patrick's Day on Thursday (which will include some school disguised as fun), and having a play day on Friday. 

Other tiny talk that has been overheard this week...

Wow, that's a lot of toilet paper.  You must have a big bottom.  (I'm not telling who said that to whom.)

Smell my feet.  They smell like lemons!

Cha-ma-milk!  Cha-ma-milk!  Cha-ma-milk... (the chanting of "chocolate milk" continues from the time I announced that I was making it, until it was going down her almost 2-year-old throat)

Oh, what fun it is!

Pseudo-Lapbooking

 One of my homeschool friends recently asked about lapbooking and I realized that I was behind on blogging
some of the stuff we've been doing in school.  We don't go full out on lapbooking, with fancy folding & all, but do a simpler folder.  For astronomy I've been cutting the folders down and hole punching them so that they can fit in David's astronomy notebook.
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 I like having all of the information neatly presented without a lot of little papers floating around.  And David likes seeing his work combined into one place at the end of each chapter.

 Handwriting practice, which is greatly needed, is a lot more fun when combined with a project than it is when we're working in the handwriting workbook! (which is more like torture)

 I use the review questions at the end of the chapters for the questions that he answers.

 This will also be a keepsake, because we used his actual footprint to make the flap book above.

  When something in the chapter has been especially interesting to him, we make sure that gets into the folder.  It doesn't show up to well on the red, but he drew a volcano (above) to represent Olympus Mons on Mars - the largest volcano in the solar system!

 David gets tickled every time he sees that picture of the asteroid that looks like a dog bone!!

 We also do folders (instead of pockets) for his ancient history.  In hindsight, I wish I had cut them down & hole punched them also.

 So that's a quick summary of our modified lapbooking that we've been doing this year!  See more.

First Grade Checking In

 We are trucking right along with first grade.  Now that I have 4 kids, I often forget to take pictures of everyday stuff.

 Much of our school day now takes place in the living room while I'm nursing the baby.

 I never used math manipulatives before this year and it's amazing to me how quickly David grasps new concepts by using the blocks.  Elizabeth has even picked up some stuff by listening & watching us use the blocks!

 I don't know why it never occurred to me to let David type stuff on the computer until he asked one day.  He occupied himself a good while.  And when he asked how to spell things, I told him to sound it out.  English can be tricky, though, but I thought he did a good job spelling things the way they sound using what he has learned so far.

 He loves learning Spanish words, also, and has now declared himself bilingual.  We are going to step it up and get some better Spanish training very soon... for both of us.  I haven't been very good at teaching him that because I never had it myself!

Trucking along in First Grade

My camera has been circling the drain, so thanks to Target's Deal of the Day, I was able to get a new one this week!  Yea!  And it's been a while since I got pictures of David doing his school work, so I spent some of my time today playing with the new camera while David was doing his work.

Working on his Handwriting Without Tears...

I thought it was kinda funny that me taking close up pictures of him at strange angles didn't phase him at all.  Guess he's used to it by now!  Next, he's doing his Math-U-See review sheet.

 

He really loves those Crayola Erasable Colored Pencils!  (and I love how much stress they save us!)

I am really happy with how school has been going this week.   We finally had a week that is not riddled with doctor's appointments and we're on week two of a new non-stimulant ADHD medication that seems to really be making a difference in his concentration.  He's staying no task much better and able to do much more work in a shorter amount of time. 

We've also started using Explode the Code Online. After getting the hang of it, David is doing really well and has made it through 3/4 of the exercises for Book 1 in just three weeks.  It has really improved his reading skills & confidence in reading other school work and reading to Rebekah, so I am very happy with the program.

And I'm pretty happy with the natural light photos I'm getting from my new camera, too!  : )