Shapes Trees

This is one answer to the question, "How do you homeschool with kids of different ages?"

Tonight (yes, after dinner...a beauty of homeschooling!) we all gathered around the dinner table (or rather, cleared our food and cups and stayed in our seats), and participated in a fun activity...each child learning and experimenting with different skills.

We made Shape Christmas trees:
The tree: triangles
The trunk: a rectangle
Ornaments: squares and circles

The 6-year-old (Kindergartner/First Grader) practiced patterns, sorting large to small triangles, and assuring his mother that he still knew his shapes!

The 4-year-old (preschooler) worked on using JUST the right amount of glue, lining things up appropriately, sorting large to small triangles, and (again) assuring his mother that he knew his shapes!

The 3-year-old (I typed "2-year-old" and had to go back and change it!) worked on colors and shapes.

Things like this don't always turn out as beautifully as I have planned, but they had fun, learned a little, and got to glue...so they were happy :)

E doing school

Today, we had fun with the letter "H"

Sorting hearts by color*

pre-writing (horizontal, then vertical lines)

Dot painting*


cutting pictures for a collage

sorting capital and lower case H's
(hippos)*

(sometimes, the plastic baggie is the best part of the activity :) )

*Most of our Letter of the Week activities for preschool fun come from (or are inspired by) the
Confessions of a Homeschooler blog

It's Raining, It's Pouring

And play dough is never boring!!

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

A Montessori Kind of Day

We made some new activities, played some, and learned!

We all sorted sea shells together

T practiced small motor/coordination and opening/closing the lid
(sorting lids from used bottles into a cashew container)

J, T, and E practiced taking turns and helping each other
(straws cut into different sizes and a parmesan cheese container)


J practiced his photography skills ;)
(my camera!)



J sorted some beans
(miscellaneous beans, cups, bowls, and spoons)
AND J practiced his photography some more :)



We built towers, castles, and swimming pools!!
(good old wooden blocks)

sorting beans

...a little tweezer work today...

beautiful butterflies

Butterflies

Butterflies go fluttering by
On colored wings that catch the eye.
On wings of orange, and silvery blue,
On wings of golden yellow, too.
Butterflies float in the air,
Making their homes most anywhere:
The rainforest, field, and prairie land,
On mountaintops, and desert sand.
If winter brings the cold and snow,
To warmer climates, off they go!
Returning home the following spring,
Beautiful butterflies on the wing!

Author Unknown

...a daunting task turned into a very fun project this morning,
and we completed our wooden butterfly!
personally, i thought it was beautiful in the simple wooden "color,"
but of course, j and t wanted to paint it.
i guess a butterfly wouldn't really be a butterfly
if not arrayed in all its beautiful colors.




we read our new book about the life cycle of a butterfly
and took an impromptu trip to the ft. worth botanical gardens...

putting our recycling to good use

...t practicing his scissor skills...

...putting together his scraps as a makeshift puzzle...

...i love when the boys come up with activities on their own.
i was cutting coupons, and they asked for their scissors so they, too, could cut coupons.
cutting coupons turned into some fine motor practice,
some literacy practice,
and some great opportunities for sharing cool pictures found in the newspaper ads.
isn't it great when fun learning activities come about with no planning whatsoever...