Monday, November 17, 2008

Homeschool Days 49 - 53 November 12-17, 2008

Homeschool Days 49-51 – Nov. 12-15, 2008

Nothing really exciting and innovative happened on these days. We played a lot of learning games like Charlie’s Catalog and Boggle Jr. Boggle Jr. is a wonderful way of practicing reading and spelling skills for your young child that is just starting with 3 or 4 letter words. We also used sidewalk chalk to practice making g’s. I kind of backed up and regrouped. I think we will focus on doing one letter a week from now on. This week’s letter is g. I will have her write it using various methods and at the end of the week, she will complete her A Reason for Handwriting page.

Shayla was happy with reading the first three Bob books in set 1, but I sense that she really wants to read. So we sat down and read Hop On Pop by Dr. Seuss. Again, many of the words in this book are 3 and 4 letter words. She couldn’t read it all, but most of it. Big Cheer Here!!!! Dad and Grandma were also amazed at how quickly she is picking up reading!

Art: Shayla created a thankful garland. First, she used a kitchen sponge to cover a large sheet of paper with paints. Then we went outside and gathered several leaves. We used the leaves to make a template and cut the painted paper around the leaves. On the back of the leaves, we wrote different things we are thankful for. Then she used her "clothesline" to hang the leaves. (fine motor skills)

Homeschool Day 52 – Sunday, November 16, 2008

Scouts at Home: Caring & Sharing badge work. See post here. This activity took all afternoon, but how rewarding it was. Everyone was so appreciative!


Homeschool Day 53 – Monday, November 17, 2008

Now I understand why teachers have “in-service” days. I never fully understood these, but I took some time this morning while Shayla watched Caillou and Barney to reorganize our little school corner. I took down the October decorations, maybe I’ll get around to making the November ones. Then again, maybe I should just focus on December! I also found some great Thanksgiving theme ideas for specials. I'll pass the ideas along as we do them!

Social Studies: We combined a weeks worth of lessons about friendship and her caring & sharing scouts badge work. She completed a page about friends, a page about planning a birthday party – complete with drawings. And for scouts-at-home we discussed favorites.

Journaling: Today’s question “What do you want to eat for Thanksgiving?” Shayla drew a picture of turkey and mashed potatoes. Oh, a girl after my own heart. I guess I better feed us some lunch at this point! LOL!

Activity: (science,art) Today’s activity was rather boring. It was go outside and look at a tree and draw what you see. Too boring since there are no leaves! So I modified this. We discussed how all the leaves were now gone except for pine trees. They stay green all winter long. The pine trees outside our window are snow covered today, so here’s an art project. I cut a small branch from a pine tree. Shayla drew a brown tree trunk, then she used the pine tree branch as a paint brush. After this dries, she will add “snow” by gluing stretched out pieces of cotton on her painted “branches.”

Writing: Shayla practiced making her letter of the week (h) on her aquadoodle toy. I caught her forming the letter wrongly, so I was able to provide hand-over-hand assistance and she was more willing to learn the correct way because she was having fun! She then practiced tracing her dotted name, h, and hat, had, has, and have (all dotted).

G is for Goliath: Since we spent yesterday working on scouts I moved our Bible curriculum to today. It’s not really a problem since a lot of it is different school subjects anyway.

Memory verse: Every good gift is from above. James 1:17

I must say that I am impressed with Shayla’s signing abilities. She signs along with many things including the letter g and the sign for gift (she learned on signing time). (foreign language/memorization skills)

Language: I read Acts 20:35. This verse says it’s better to give than receive. This was easy for Shayla to understand today because of the scouts service project we did yesterday. We gave the gift of caring to family members, doing something special for each member. We talked about how it made our hearts feel good to give something.

We watched David and Goliath on the Read N See DVD Bible. Then we sang and did motions to Only a Boy Named David. We also sang David Trusts God and David (from The Singing Bible (music & movement). Then as a goof off thing we watched Veggie Tales: Dave and the Giant Pickle.

Shayla played with her David and Goliath magnet set. She plays with this set often, so some of the pieces are kind of worn.

G is for Game. We played a board game called Bibleland. It is basically like Candyland, only you roll the dice instead of having cards to loose. You also don’t have to go back any, so it takes less time. It’s still good for counting and color skills, and not to mention a little lesson in fairness. (math)

The curriculum had several other suggestions, such as Guessing for math (using gumballs). We skipped these because we just covered guessing.

Growing grass from seeds for science – done before.

G is for Grandparents. Make a special book for your grandparents – done before.

We started this lesson some time ago and never finished all the activities.

As always, you can find many more David and Goliath ideas here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There must be something in the air - we reorganised our book corner this week too!
Congratulations to Shayla. That's REALLY reading!! Go girl!