School today

Painting whatever he wants on a capital L

Playing Starfall

Number mats (He is FINALLY remembering his numbers! It finally clicked!!!)

Taking a break to play with little brother :)

Pick a card, write the capital and lower case letter

The rest of our K activities

My camera is back from the dead...
We finished our K activities with a "What begins with the Letter K" book from DLTK, K coloring pages, and K dot painting!

More with the letter K

Well, my camera is broken. Here are a couple more pictures I took of our letter K activities!

Our letter K for the wall alphabet
(K is for King)

Tracing/Coloring page

J's writing face

...ALWAYS with his tongue out :)

Our school drawers

This is how we do school nowadays:

We have 10 drawers (aka school drawers/workboxes) labeled with the numbers 1-10 on little circle disks with velcro attaching them to the drawers. J (and T if he is joining us) gets to pick any of the drawers, in the order of his choosing. He takes the number off of the drawer and places it in the basket on top, and we do that activity together. The catch is that we have to get through all 10 of the drawers before I will fill them with new activities and manipulatives. I LOVE doing it this way, and J seems to really be having a better attitude about everything. He has a say in what we do next, so it helps him to have a willing and teachable heart.

I fill the drawers with as many different things as I can think of. We have a set of shelves in our mud room full of different manipulatives and activities and arts/craft supplies, a file drawer full of worksheets, and sometimes I even throw in something from the kitchen (like when we sorted and ate jelly beans for the letter J.)

Here are some of the drawers from this week that didn't directly correlate with the letter K (I mean, I can only take so much of the letter activities...it just gets old!!)

In the drawer: a piece of chalk and a washcloth (our eraser)
J wrote 1-10 on the chalkboard

In the drawer: magnetic letters
J picked out vowels and put them on the chalk board
In the drawer: a notebook and a marker
J traced Genesis 1:1

In the drawer (from the Letter I): Inchworm counting cards from Confessions of a Homeschooler J counted the number of inchworms on each card and found the corresponding number

In the drawer: Inchworm clip cards also from Confessions of a Homeschooler
J placed the correct number of mini clothes pins on each card

and I and J and tag-along K????

Yikes!! Sometimes, I forget I have this blog, so it gets neglected!

We really did learn about the letters I and J.
I have two children whose names begin with J, after all...they were very excited about that week!
(or it might have been because they got to sort and eat jelly beans.)
Anyway, no promises about getting up pictures or a post about those letters. We are on to the letter K this week!!

K is for kite!

Step 1: Cut kite shapes out of different color construction paper, punch a hole and tie on a coordinating colored yarn.

Step 2: Lace coordinating colored beads to the correct kite.



Step 3: Count the beads on each kite and label accordingly!


I truly cannot remember where I read the idea for this activity. If you are reading this blog, and this idea was yours, send me the link, and I'll give you credit!!!! :)
More K fun to come!!

Saluting the Honeybees for the Letter Ii

We made Peanut Butter Honey Balls this week, in honor of one of our favorite insects...the honeybee!!

The recipe:
1 c peanut butter
1 c dry milk powder
1/2 cup honey

Mix all ingredients in a bowl.
Roll together into marble-golfball-sized balls.
Roll balls in sprinkles, powdered sugar, coating of your choice.
Refrigerate overnight.
Enjoy!

The pictures:





The verdict:
E and I enjoyed them greatly. He ate 4 golfball-sized helpings. I prefered the ones covered in powdered sugar. He liked the ones with sprinkles. J and T, however, were not fond of them.

Our Vowel Game

Step 1: Put letters in plastic eggs (I used our wooden letters from Hobby Lobby.)

Step 2: Hide around the house.

Step 3: Release the hounds!



Step 4: Open eggs and sort vowels and consonants into different containers. (I hung our "My Father's World" vowel ladder for a reminder.)







Step 5 (at least at our house): Do this over and over and over and.....

Learning Vowels

We began National Apple Month by making some "a" apples, learning about vowels, and reading a few books about both. We even played a game to help us remember the vowels...I'll post about that tomorrow!

Letter "a" apples, using Totally Tots' idea

A couple books we read

We also watched a few You Tube videos. Here are two of my favorite :)

Please say hello! :)

Are you reading this blog? (That would be a yes :) ) Will you comment and tell me a little bit about yourself? I see some of the most random locations pop up on the Feedjit traffic feed, and I am curious to hear your stories! How did you find me? Tell me about your children's ages...are you home schooling? Do you have any questions for me? Any suggestions for upcoming posts? I would love to hear from you!!

Happy October!

I love these next few months. We have many traditions that roll around this time of year...October, November, and December. It's perfect weather for playing outside (at least where we live!), and we are filled with activities for inside as well!

October is National Apple Month, did you know that?! We will be making apples out of the letter "a," painting with apple stars, learning more about Johnny Appleseed, learning vowels, making applesauce, and more! For Autumn, we will be bringing back our nature table, creating leaf rubbings, stained glass leaves, and hopefully some beeswax leaf ornaments for the nature table. And of course, there's Halloween...visits to the Pumpkin Patch, a Pumpkin carving party complete with pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, and Halloween cookies, and maybe even a local bat exhibit. (I'm praying about that one! ;) )

I'll try to take pictures and post as much as possible!

Happy October!!

I love home schooling!!

Sometimes I laugh when people ask me what curriculum I use for home schooling.

Exhibit A (scissor cutting practice...made by me...ha!) :
Many of the activities we do are inspired by the boys' imaginations:
(J said he wanted to make a kite, so he got out paper, scissors, glue, and some yarn and did the entire thing by himself while I watched!)
Of course, T wanted to make one as well.
I got out the Geoboard to practice some letters, numbers, and shapes. J decided to get out our "hundred blocks" to fill all of the 100 squares on the geoboard.
Sometimes, I combine items from 3 different sources to make one activity.
(Alphabet flashcards from My Father's World Kindergarten curriculum, magnets from a book about colors, and magnet board from our Magnetic Letter Pattern manipulative)
Sometimes, we draw pictures and write to our Compassion child!
Here, J is practicing his writing using some wooden letter blocks from Hobby Lobby and red paper inside a clear folder (with a dry erase marker.)

I love that the boys are using their imaginations. I love that they can learn things from each other without me saying a word. I love that we can do school in our pajamas...on any day we want, at any time of day we want to. I love that I can have one idea in mind for an activity, and my kids can change things up to make it a totally different activity where they learn and LOVE learning. I love that I hear my children laughing often when doing school. I love that I can combine different curricula with my own ideas, based on my kids' learning styles, my teaching style, and what we are interested in at the time. I love that we can really do whatever we want to, even if it means taking a day off from normal "school" activities and enjoying just being with each other and spending time in the 80 degree weather!!

Collecting leaves and sticks for our Autumn nature table
(I can't even keep them from doing school when I try! haha, JUST kidding, I would never try to stop them from learning.)

Check out that blue sky!!! WOW!
(J loves taking pictures. Here, he is laying on the street looking up at me.)

E looking for rocks for the nature table

I don't think you could pay me to send my kids to school!

~So blessed!! :)