Unit 8-D for Dinosaur

As always, here are some printables I found for this week:

This is one of the best free printables I've ever found.

Little E loved using clothespins for number clip cards before, so I found these dinosaur themed ones to use this week.

I downloaded this dinosaur matching worksheet for Little K to join in with the dinosaur fun.

These are the books we read this week. I loved the book How Do Dinosaurs Say I Love You. It actually made me tear up (I'm such a sap!). I did not like How Do Dinosaurs Laugh Out Loud. It is a joke book but the jokes are way over a 4 year old's head, and some were just plain dumb. I won't be keeping that one in our collection. What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs is a book about Dinosaurs from a Christian perspective. I thought it would be over Little E's head, but she was intrigued by it.

At our co-op the little girls walked on eggs (would have gone perfectly with n for nest).

I also mixed it up a bit and threw in a little Abeka.

This is my favorite thing of the week. Little E made a picture of mom and dad and tried writing the words as well. Completely adorable first attempt at writing words. This one's a keeper!

Little E said her 6 looks like an apple. She has gotten so much better at pointing and counting slowly to ensure she counts the right number. 

Little K colored her own D for dinosaur worksheet.

Lastly, I evaluated which letters and sounds Little E knows. She's made a ton of progress in a short time!

Next week is O for Octopus! We will be learning all about the ocean and ocean animals. It should be a fun one!

Unit 7 in My Father's World Kindergarten-U for Us!

I can't believe I haven't mentioned these awesome YouTube videos before. For years I've used them in my classroom teaching Kindergarten.

Nellie and Ned have a video to go along with each letter of the alphabet. Here's the link for the letter U video.

Sesame Street Podcast also has a video for each letter. We watched the letter U video this week.

Little E learned the letter U this week. She had fun with cuisenaire rods. 

At our co-op class the little girls made animals with shapes. I love how their pictures show developmental progress. Little K just glued random shapes to her paper. Little E made a simple shape animal (it's a bird by the way), and T made a more complex animal (and filled out the rest of the sheet).

This week seemed light and easy. Next week is D for Dinosaur which I'm very excited about! 

Unit 6 in MFW Kindergarten-T for Turtle!

This week in My Father's World Kindergarten reading begins! How exciting! The curriculum definitely kicked up a notch this week.

As always, I found many free printables to go along with the T for Turtle unit:

This ABC Turtle game is adorable and fun to play!

These turtle size sequencing cards from A Moment in Our World would also be good for younger siblings tagging along.

These number turtles are perfect for practicing counting.

This T is for Turtle worksheet would also be good for tag along siblings to begin to recognize the letter T. Little K did one too but insisted that all of the turtles needed to be colored :) Here is Little E showing hers off. She also counted how many turtles were colored in when she was done.

This turtle number matching worksheet is a great addition for this week.

Here are the books we read this week. The Bible focus this week was on persevering. 

Last week I mentioned the girls tie-dyed shirts. This week they wore them to the co-op. They made sun paintings and made bracelets from special UV beads that turn different colors when in the sun. The girls were amazed at these bracelets!  These would have been a perfect activities for the sun unit a few weeks ago.

Next week: U for Us!

Week 5-Scratch That!

We took this week pretty easy. We got the basics done, but not much else. This week I spent a lot of time in prayer and research regarding curriculum. I've read many times that the first few years of homeschooling you really figure yourself, your kids, and your curriculum out. I'm definitely no exception. Bottom line is, some things weren't working for us, and so they had to change. I decided to change MK over to Switched on Schoolhouse. I think (hope) I will love it. I really felt like Easy Peasy was not a great fit for MK. It was difficult for me to monitor her work, and ensure that she was really learning. With SOS I can see all her assignments, when they were completed, and the grade she got on them. It is automatically graded 90% of the time with the exception of essay questions. MK really prefers to work indepently on the computer, and it works well for her to do so. I searched and prayed all week for a curriculum that would fit both her needs and mine and THINK I've finally found it. We'll see. I'm hopeful.

I really wanted geography and cultures to work this year with H and T. I started off with My Father's World Exploring Countries and Cultures, and then switched to Easy Peasy Geography and Cultures. After 5 weeks I finally admitted that this is just not working for us. I needed to do something else. My main focus with H and T this year is actually the Three R's, but I don't want to throw history out completely. However, it needs to meet certain criteria. It needs to require minimal, if any, research from me (so I can use my time for the core subjects). It needs to be able to be used with both girls, in different grade levels, and it needs to have worksheets/activities already planned out. So, after debating all week on what to do, I finally decided to just go with The Story of the World Volume 3. I chose volume 3 because it's recommend for grades 3-6 (perfect, right?) and because to be perfectly honest, I've never really liked Ancient History, so my first year homeschooling I would prefer to avoid it (Volume 3 is early modern history). We'll get to Ancient History later when I've got this whole homeschooling thing down. Since SOTW is read like a book, we can all sit on the couch to enjoy it, and on the busier weeks we can skip activities from the accompanying activity book if needed. What I'm saying is, there's no pressure to do it all. I needed the pressure off for history, because reading, writing, and arithmetic are my focus with these girls this year. Those come first. History is an added bonus right now.

Now, on the bright side, I am super-de-duper loving Pathway Publishers reading for T. Her reading is improving greatly. It's absolutely the perfect program for her/us. Finding this program didn't come easily though. I first bought Abeka, sold that, and bought Rod and Staff. We got the R&S over summer and T absolutely hated it. So, I went down a grade level in R&S thinking that might help. It didn't. We had been reading one of Pathway Publishers books over summer for review/practice, and I thought (lightbulb moment) why not just go with the entire Pathway Publishers program since she seems to be doing so well with it (ding-ding-ding)!

I've also been around the block with reading curriculum for H. I originally bought Bob Jones Reading 6. I scratched that and got Rod and Staff's A Time to Plant. We used that for a few weeks and we were both extremely bored. My friend told me about Circle C Adventures. It's a series about a 12 year old girl who loves horses and is figuring out her place in the world. The author has free lesson plans and worksheets on her website. We both absolutely love the first book in the series, The Long Ride Home. H actually said said this week that she couldn't wait to find out what happens next. That, my friends, shows me that this series is the right choice for her.

So, onto a new week. I'm loving this homeschooling thing. I know with full certainty that this is exactly where my children and I are supposed to be. I thank God every day.

Oh, we need some pictures, don't we? I don't have too many, but we did go on a field trip to the ice skating rink. 

And check out this awesome art!

See ya next week!

Unit 5 in My Father's World Kindergarten-N for Nest!

Little E is progressing so well through the MFW Kindergarten curriculum. I am so happy that I decided to go with it. This week focused on N for Nest! This weeks math introduced nickels. I expected it to be difficult for Little E to understand that 1 nickel equals 5 cents, just like 5 pennies equals 5 cents, but she caught on so quickly and easily. She loved tracing real money too.

If you haven't already noticed, I really love finding fun things to print out and laminate on TPT. My $20 laminator from Wal-Mart has been one of my best investments. I've had it for a few years now and use it weekly. I found some fun things this week.

This egg and nest number matching game is super cute!

I also found this egg and nest counting sheet. It was a great addition to math this week.

This emergent reader is perfect for little learners! I don't have a picture of this one, but it was Little E's favorite activity of the week. She absolutely loved having her own little book that she could "read" (memorize). She carried it around for 2 days.

This file folder game (though I didn't make it in a file folder) is perfect for learning colors. This would work great for younger tag-along siblings (it was way too easy for Little E but she still had fun with it).

This nest cut and paste activity goes perfectly with this unit!

 Check out these cute nests to use for sorting activities.

I found Abeka 2 year old preschool curriculum at a thrift store this week and will be using it with Little K (when she wants to do school). Have I ever mentioned that I just love thrift stores?

We have officially completed 5 weeks of school! I can't believe it!

Our week NOT using My Father's World Exploring Countries and Cultures

 Yes, you read that right! We are no longer using My Father's World Exploring Countries and Cultures. Now, let me say that there is NOTHING wrong with this program. It is a very solid program. However, at the end of the day (well 3 weeks) I had to go with what is going to work for my family during this season. You can read more about what we are now doing here. We are still doing geography and cultures, just a little differently.

So, we have jumped right in and stamped our passports for the United Kingdom this week! As always, I've found some great resources on TPT, including this research project on England and this England PowerPoint presentation.

The girls did a country fact sheet on England, mapped the UK, read about the culture using all the wonderful links on Easy Peasy's website, and got a general overview of the continent of Europe. I picked up a few different atlas' at Goodwill, and I am SO glad I did because each girl can use their own. Plus, different ones have information that other ones don't, so having a few makes it pretty well rounded. Buy all the atlas'!

 Easy Peasy has Around the World in 80 Days scheduled into their daily lessons. We read the first two chapters and got over it very quickly. I couldn't get into it, and neither could the girls, so we scratched that off the list. We are also not doing the online games that Easy Peasy has linked. However, the links to many different websites for each country is great! So we are "loosely" following Easy Peasy, but as always, I do my own thing as well. It must be the teacher in me.

They also created this awesome art at their art class. 

 It was a short week due to the holiday (only 3 days of actual school plus our co-op day), but we somehow managed to get everything squeezed in. Next week we are off to Greece and Norway!

Week 3 of MFW Exploring Countries and Cultures

This week we moved on to studying the United States.

I found this AWESOME video. The girls decided they want to make their own music video to go along with this. Stay tuned next week!

MK and H did a lot of geography map work this week. They studied the bodies of water in North America, labeled the 50 states, and are memorizing states and capitals. When the big girls are doing their geography work, T works on her Complete Book of Animals. It has tear out stories and comprehension worksheets for animals in the different continents. For the next 6 weeks she will be working on the North American animals.

I'm really seeing a breakthrough in T's reading. For the first time this week she was excited to read. I really love the Pathway reading program. It is so perfect for T. For each lesson there's a workbook page to do before reading, then the reading, and then another worksheet for comprehension. Each day there is a supplemental reading exercise that focuses on different things such as digraphs, or vocabulary. Everything is laid out nicely in the Teacher's Manual.

MK does the majority of her daily work on the computer, with the exception of Exploring Countries and Cultures. Her favorite subject is Spanish. She has been very excited to tell me all the Spanish she is learning. She is even more excited that she got BRACES this week!

I had quite a few books to go along with our United States unit. None of these are actual My Father's World recommendations, but they're all great books.

We continue our study of the United States next week!

Unit 3 (Leaf) of MFW Kindergarten

Ll for Leaf

I found this AWESOME free printable on TPT to go along with our leaf unit. TPT is probably my most favorite website ever (and no I do not work for them and no I do not get anything from saying that). I laminated the leaves with the numbers on them and we used them to practice counting out the right number.

Little E enjoyed sorting the leaves by size. (Sorry, I do not remember where I got this printable. I made it a few years ago when I was teaching Kindergarten in the classroom).

Little E made sure to point out that pink, blue and black are not real colors of leaves but she was just making a pattern.

She's doing great with her Explode the Code primer books.

The "little" girls enjoyed their science lab class with our home-school group.

 This experiment shows how the clouds hold water and when they get too full the rain comes down. It is super easy to do! Simply fill up a clear cup with water and put shaving cream on top. Add some food coloring until you see the color come through the shaving cream and down into the water.

They learned about different types of clouds and made their own cloud observers.

 This experiment was supposed to show "lightning" by rubbing the balloon on your head and then touching it with a metal object, but it didn't work. The balloons were still fun.

 This experiment showed tornadoes. Little Monopoly houses make quite the touch!

 These are the books we read for our leaf unit.

We had a lot of fun this week. Little E is progressing so nicely with My Father's World Kindergarten. It is so gentle and fun. So far it's a perfect fit for us.