Art

I have been searching for a good program to teach art. I stumbled across this book, Discovering Great Artists. I checked it out on Amazon and thought it would be just what I was looking for... so I ordered it. It came in today! Its just what I thought it would be. I can't wait to start trying these.


The other things that was with it was a Mellisa and Doug big stamp pad and a set of See and Stamp Transparent Alphabet Stamps. They are just what I wanted too. I had found an awesome idea on a blog called Mama Jenn. She made up her own sheets for spelling. In one column she has she spelling list to read. The next is to use the stamps and stamp out the word and the last column to write out the word. I made up my own sheets using Samantha's spelling list. Samantha has fun learning her spelling words this way. But the stamps I had were cheep and falling apart. I am so excited that they came in.

Math

She is really getting the hang of math. But she did get a little bit frustrated today when the new concept of counting by 6's was introduced. I was a little surprised that it was. We have only done skip counting by 2's, 5's and 10's. I thought it would be the 3's next. So I showed her how skip counting was actually just adding the number your skip counting by the last number you said. It clicked. But I am sure it will take a bit before she is comfortably counting by 6's. I just looked through her math book one and she doesn't do that again at all. Weird. But at the end of book one she does skip counting by 7's. I am going to check out whats in book 2.
So to help her remember how to skip count 6's I made some stepping stones for her to jump on while she counts. Trying to keep it fun while she learns.


Just looking through her math book I noticed I need to finish the felt fractions I am making for her and I need to add another fraction to it. Her book has her doing 1/5. I only planned on making up to 1/4. I had found this homeschool blog Counting coconuts that had the cutest felt fractions and I bookmarked the page thinking they would come in handy one day for Samantha. Now I can't wait to see her learn with them.

Very pleased...

Well yesterday I had my meeting with the principal of Samantha's assigned school. The school is a nice looking school. What you expect of one of the smaller schools left standing in Fall River. I am glad I love the smaller schools. But anyway....
It went well. The principal is very nice. Offered us if there is anything she can do for us to please let her know. She looked over the work we had so far and said she seems right on target. :) She signed off on our letter of intent, I signed it and now the superintendent has to. I am excited in a way. It was a weight off my shoulders. I know I didn't have to meet with her but for us it was the right thing to do. We will plan on meeting with her about half way through the year.

The other thing is they do offer for Samantha to participate in any of the schools activities. So we were thinking of letting her take music there. I have the days they do first grade music and I think we might take advantage of it.

The only other thing I did forget to ask her... I am curious to see what the standards are for first grade what she should know by the end of the year according to the Fall River public school system. I just might email her an ask or wait until our next meeting we will see....

Art

I feel that our homeschool was lacking in art. We do arts in crafts but its not the same as learning about art. So my sister and I have been trying to add it into our week. We have been meeting up once a week to do mini works of art. We are hoping to teach the girls about different forms of art and have them try and make a mini work of art. We are keeping them in a baseball card holder. Its been fun.

We recently visited the Eric Carle Museum of Storybook Art with my sister and niece. It was really fun. I have always enjoyed his type of art works. We had the girls look at all the different kinds of works and try and copy a few. Its was priceless to see them walk around the museum holding their sketch pads and color pencils trying to recreate. I loved it when Samantha took her book and pencils and sat down in front of one of the art works and created her version of it. I think they both did an amazing job. Here is a few samples of Samantha's work...






Oh and soon we will be having the girls create their own form of Eric Carle's art work. At the museum we saw the works of Tomi Ungerer, Barbara McClintock's The Heartaches of a French Cat, and many more works of art. We went to their library for story hour. Then to the arts and crafts room to do some Punctuation Play they gave the girls a sheet of punctuation and told them to create with it. It was interesting to see what they created. Samantha created a flower.

But I really want to teach her more about the artists and different types of art. I want her to learn how to blend colors and the color wheel. How it all works. I will be looking into a link a friend shared with me... so more to come on art.

History lessons,

I am loving our history curriculum. We are using a book called History for Little Pilgrims. We made a timeline and after each lesson we add that period to it. Each lesson is a brief lesson exposing her to history at her level. We started back at the creation. For creation we made a paper mache earth. We also learned about what history is and how she is a part of history. Then last week we learned about Noah's ark. For that we made an ocean in a jar with a tiny ball in it to represent the art. These are lesson that she already knows but it is showing her how things all fit into history and our past. We moved on to the Towel of Babel and we created our own tower.

Samantha is taken after me I have always loved history. She has told me many times she loves history and is upset on the days we don't do it!

Our lesson tomorrow is going to be on Moses and we will be making our own stone tablets with the 10 commandments on it.

Mondays are fun?!

Yes Mondays can be fun! I had a few crafts planned for today to go along with our lessons.

First we did the subjects without the crafts. She learned to write a cursive E today. She did crab a little that my cursive looks much better then hers. LOL I told her I had many many years of practice.



Her reading is getting much better. She is excited to read the stories and find out what happens next. Phonics went smoothly. Grammar was met with some resistance because it was a lot of writing. Not her favorite thing to do. Math was easy even though it was new. She is breezing through math.

Spelling was a little funny today. I had her take her pretest by writing on the window. She only misspelled 3 words. But oh those misspelled words were so funny......she misspelled Milk by writing it mlik, hook / hock and cook well I can't write how she spelled it out not so polite. :) Good thing she didn't try to go back and pronounce her mistakes like she has on the past 2 pretests.


Science she is learning about her 5 senses. She made a senses mask..Yes it looks a big creepy. She had to try and figure out what senses work better when used together. She pick sight and hearing. She found that she could identify the maker of the sound better when she looked towards the sound.


Then at last she made a autumn tree to decorate out table.


This weekend my daughter asked me to "play" school with her. I told her instead of playing it lets just get a jump on school work and do it for real. LOL She said that's not as fun. lets just pretend. Kids are funny. She did end up doing bonus math sheets. She had fun pretending she was a pirate going on a journey to find the treasure doing math word problems.

I am so excited!!!

I just got a great deal on some scholastic teaching materials. I got them all free. :) They were having a $1 days sale. Then I had a $10 off coupon code. I ordered 10 pdf files and received them free. I am so thrilled. I just was reviewing them and they all fit with our curriculum. Its an added bonus. I can't wait for science class tomorrow and Samantha see's her 5 senses mask. Or when we start learning all subjects through the story Cinderella.... her story from many cultures. WOW are there so many different versions. The grammar manipulatives will be a big help in remembering what is a noun, plural noun, common noun etc......, Or the wearable teaching materials for math. Its all so much hands on fun I can't wait! I will be posting many pictures of our hands on fun.