Thursday, September 30, 2010

In case you’re wondering…

Things have been pretty busy around here. We’ve been having a good time getting back into the swing of things.

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I put together a Letter of the Week curriculum for Frankie, pulling resources from Confessions of a Homeschooler, Homeschool Creations, and Hubbard's Cupboard, with some of our own activities thrown in there, too. This week our Letter of the Week was M. We read If You Give a Moose a Muffin, If You Take a Mouse to the Movies, Muncha, muncha, muncha, and Moosetache. We practiced writing upper and lower case M’s on her dry erase board and in a dry erase book. We did many fun activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler, like M&M sorting (pictured above) and lots of Monkey activities. (Frankie is pictured practicing her A’s from last week. I didn’t get pics of her writing her M’s. She’s very good at them though. A natural, even)

This year I’ve decided to put together our own Science curriculum. To start the year we’re studying animals, so I’ve been trying to make our animals start with Frankie’s Letter of the Week. Last week we did Monkeys. It’s kind of nice to have all three girls learning together. I have worksheets and activities in varying degrees of difficulty for each of them, and we all work together drawing our animals each week in our Nature Journals. It is by far the most fun we’ve had doing Science. I’ve learned that one of the things that comes with experience is confidence. When we first started homeschooling I was terrified I would forget to teach them something critical, so I spent a fortune on curriculum and followed it exactly as directed. Now that we’re in our third year I’ve realized some things. First, learning is constantly taking place, not just during *official* school time. We’re outside and the kids see a cool bug or plant? Science time! Katie wants to know how many more silly bands she has then Frankie? Math lesson! Sam wants to know about Joan of Arc? History time! Also, who is to say when they “should” be learning something? I was so programmed by Sam’s time in public school that it’s taken me three years to realize that I say when it’s “time” to learn something!! And if I happen to overlook something? So what!! I’ll teach it to them when I realize I’ve forgotten! Homeschooling rocks!

frankiebunny katelisteningears twobunnies

We’ve started a new Character training study this year as well. Each week we have a new trait that God wants us to have. Last week was attentiveness. We read supporting bible stories from the story bible, verses from the Bible, and regular stories. For attentiveness we read about Samuel, and how he listened to God when He spoke to him. On the flip side of that story, we talked about what happened to Eli and his sons for not listening to God. We read a couple of stories, The Listening Walk, and Listen Buddy. Buddy is a rabbit who doesn’t listen very well. After we finished, we made listening bunny ears. The girls got a huge kick out of these ears. They wore them for days after we made them. It’s really great to be able to reinforce the lessons with fun crafts. And I love that this is another subject we can all work together on. (Sam wouldn’t let me photograph her with her bunny ears on. OK. If she had actually made bunny ears, she wouldn’t have let me photograph her with them on…)

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In History we learned about the first forms of writing. Then we made clay tablets with our names on them in cuneiform writing. Sam is studying world history this year, and read A Murder for Her Majesty and The Kings Fifth. (Anyone else love Sonlight as much as we do?)

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Frankie has also been enjoying making patterns with her magnetic color cubes. (These blocks are actually much smaller than I thought they would be, and we could probably could have made them ourselves, but we love them!) Katie has been working on adding doubles, and we recently started Awana at our church.

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 Oh! And puzzles! Puzzles have been the life of the party around here lately. As you can see, Frankie enjoys doing puzzles in her evening wear. And Katie and Sam have been bonding over their shared puzzle love. Notice Sam’s shirt? It says “Jesus is my superhero” They were putting a puzzle together while singing along with Kari Jobe:

 

 

So, that’s what we’ve been up to lately. What about you?

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