International Homeschool Spirit Week...

So this week is International Homeschool Spirit Week. You can find out more about this here Homeschool Spirit Week.

Each day has a theme.  We didn't get to do today's theme.  Homeschool away from home.  We were just too busy trying to get all things in today.  But Samantha did get to pick a mascot and make a homeschool banner. Our Mascot is Jingelette.  Samantha's husky stuffed dog.  She said she made the perfect mascot. So she will sit in class with us all the time.  Kind of like a book buddy.  Our school colors are red, gray and white.   Our school name is Mathias Homeschool, MH. I know so original.

Here is the line of up the days...

1. Monday- Homeschool away from home day
2. Tuesday- Comfy Cozy Day
3. Wednesday- Crazy sock day
4. Thursday- Mismatch Day
5. Friday- Twins Day. 

Since Samantha doesn't have any siblings homeschooling with her I will be the one participating with her.  So wish me luck as I go out into the world dressed crazy!  But its all fun.

Five in a Row...

I keep coming back to this curriculum. Today Samantha mentioned how much fun she had doing this curriculum. She asked to do it again. So quickly I  pulled out the manual and looked to see what books we had that are Five in a Row books.  We are doing the book How To Make an Apple Pie and see the World.  Its fun.  You read one book every day for five days.  You then learn different things from that one book, science, math, literature, art, history, geography and much more.  Today from this book we touched on 5 different countries. Where some of our food comes from. Humor in literature. Writing styles. Repetition in writing to grab the readers attention.

Samantha really hates to write... yes I know I posted this before but she really hates to write. She told me she doesn't even mind writing when its for Five in a Row.  Some days its all hands on learning but other days its a lot of writing.

Some people use this curriculum as their core curriculum and add in Math and Language arts to compliment it.  But We do it as extra fun work that you learn from.  She doesn't mind that we do all her normal work and this too. That her day becomes longer.  She loves it.  This is leading me to reevaluate what we will use in the future.  She really is learning from this type of learning method.  I am going to have to go the the homeschool convention this year and really look at all the curriculum out there to see what will be a better fit for Samantha. She is learning with what we have now.  But she does it more cheerfully and takes a hold of learning from this other type of work.  And really that is one of the reasons we homeschool.... to find what works best for Samantha and make learning enjoyable.

Samantha is at the age where she can keep using Five in a Row or go onto the Beyond Five in a Row.  FIAR uses children's story books that will help teach and expand to include many subjects of learning.  BFIAR uses chapter books to do the same thing.  Although she is reading chapter books I still think that using FIAR is a better fit for this year since some of the books from BFIAR seem really above her reading level at this time.

So this coming week she will be doing many projects to go along with the book. Look for more posts to come with our fun activities.

Looking back to a post not to long ago I had said we would do Five in a Row again this year.... but things got so busy and we were trying to make sure we did all we needed to do each day while having fun. That we forgot all about this wonderful curriculum.  I am so glad Samantha asked to do it.

Science fun

 Today Samantha had a day filled with science.  We did a few science things at home.We use a news letter type of science papers from estudies weekly.  We are supposed to do one a week but the first term papers just go over safety and instruments of science so we have been doing them almost every day.  We were provided with 6 science pages and then when they new term will start they will send me those for that term.  They all have an experiment on the last page.  Today we had to make a model of an eardrum and how it works.  She had to answer questions like how can she protect her eardrums when doing experiments.  Again she gave a one word answer.... earplugs.    The picture with her banging on the cookie sheet is the noise we hear and the bowl with the rice bouncing on it is our eardrum and how it vibrates with each sound we hear.  She was amazed.                      

Then tonight we went to Mad Science at Heritage Park

It was fun.  Samantha was so excited that she was called up on stage to help at the end of the show.  She got to make goop or whatever its called. Play with bubbles, static electricity, see how a bug sees, dig up pretend fossil, pick up pretend space rocks with fake robotic arms and learn about carbon dioxide and dry ice.  

On a side note is there a full moon tonight??? Samantha today was full of extra energy.  We had a busy day and she was bouncing of the walls all day long. She couldn't sit still in her seat during the show.  Its like she had jumping beans in her pants.  Today I filled in at the nursery at MOPS even though I am no longer a member I offered to help out in a time of need. All the older kids who were in the nursery until their class was ready were all crazy.  Samantha started homeschool swim today so you would have thought she got her energy out. 

Slow day....

This title is deceiving. Today was a very busy and crazy day...

It started out with me going to work and Sam going to her grandmothers.

Once out of work I talked with my mother-in-law longer then planned.

We got home and got into school work.

Then we had to stop to run to the library before we had over due fines.

Then off to dance class. I gave in and she is taking dance. But not as many as before.

We ate supper in the car.

Came home to relax for a short time then it was bedtime for Samantha.

So maybe the title is just meaning it was a slow day for learning?

I feel like we didn't accomplish all I wanted to but she did get some learning throughout the day.

She did a sheet on the subject part of a sentence.

Did spelling, She knows them all but one word

Ended with Math when I realized how late it was and ran off to the library.

Math time she did a kitfractions page.  She decorated a kite then wrote out the fractions for it. Ok here is a picture to make my explanation make sense....

So she had to write out the fractions for all the colored squares.  She enjoyed this type of learning. 

Somehow our theme this week along with rainbows is kites. I see kites all over our pages from phonics sheets to social studies.  Its fun. At the library we picked up a few books one you guess it is on kites. So hopefully this week we will wrap up the rainbow study and move onto the Soaring into flight kit. Lets keep the theme going a little bit longer.  

Fun days...

I wish I would have taken more pictures of our last few days. But I didn't.

We have continued with our study on rainbows. She learned about how the color reflects or absorbs the colors.  Yesterday she learned how the color black will absorbs the heat from the sun and white will reflect it.  That was a fun experiment.  She was wrong on her hypothesis but she loved learning the correct answer.

We played some fun learning games.... rolled the dice and see who could add them up faster, I had to close my eyes for 5 seconds to give her a change. Make a complete sentence game board. the mystery number place game.  Its been fun learning.  

Yesterday I taught Samantha about 9/11. I had a very child friendly lesson on this.  But it still made her very emotional.  She cried easy yesterday. We talked about how this event changed many lives.  How it even effected the people who didn't know any of the people who lost their lives that day.  Mike and Nick were 13 and 10 and going to a candle light vigil they both decided that one day when they grow up they would go into the army and go and fight the very people who brought war to our soil. She then had to think of anyone she thought was a hero in her family and draw their picture.  It is a very cute picture of her with her brothers. She put they are her hero's because they went into the army. 

I purchased a child's weaving kit.  She learned very quickly how to weave and she is making not a pot holder but a blanket for her barbie dolls.  

here it is the science experiment success picture..... (check out the post from a few days ago.)

I found this cute page on the internet.  to make her own color and explain it.  went along great with our rainbow study...

She is a child a few written words. She hates to write. We are working on this. She will write as little as possible to get by.  I often wonder if its due to her sloppy handwriting that its not enjoyable.  Or her perfectionist nature that she doesn't like to misspell words? 

Some exciting finds....

This summer I hit a jackpot on science kits.  Both Steve and I were so excited about the groupon deal we saw. We both purchased the deal without telling each other.  We ended up with a total of  6 Magic School Bus science kits at a very reasonable price.  She will be learning about:

1. rainbows and colors
2. germs
3. space
4. solar energy
5. going green 
6. soaring into flight 

Then I found another good deal... Samantha has a tag reader. She is getting too old to use it.  Most books are for under 7.  Well a trip into Target one day I was browsing around through the isles and what do I see some tag readers on clearance.  They had this cool game on the solar system.  She is all of a sudden in love with her tag reader again. Uses it to have stories read to her at bedtime.  I am excited as this will be a fun addition when we review the solar system again!  

One more cool find... We went to an event at the New Children's Museum in Fall River today and Samantha got to paint a tile for them to use on a wall there.  Well they had all the paint set up and they used bottle caps to put the paint in. Talk about less waste that way.  When she had painted in the past it seemed like a lot got wasted. Well no more. Tomorrow I am off to the craft store to buy some bottle caps.  Better yet... the caps off our throw away bottles. That will work too and save money.  

So new this year is our school room.  Its still a work in progress but Samantha loved using the room.  She said it made it more official. LOL.

Here are some pictures of our room.... Like I said its a work in progress. We still need to add some pictures on the wall.

Having a school room makes the rest of my house less cluttered. My dinning room is one again!!!  Not saying that there wont be days that we do school in other rooms.  But our school room is so cozy.  We can even sit on the couch and watch dvd's or netflix on the computer.