Homeschool Day 78 & 79 Monday & Tues, January 12 & 13, 2009

Reading: We started again with read aloud time. We read a book called I Want Your Moo: A Story for Children About Self-Esteem by Marcella Bakur Weiner. It was a funny story about a turkey that didn't like the way she sounded. She asked all the other barnyard animals to share their voices with her. In the end, she discovered that her voice was just right for her. I think we will read this book several more times to see if it helps to build up Shayla's confidence.

I'm excited to see there are many others in this particular series. Especially Cat's Got Your Tongue: A Story for Children Afraid to Speak.

Another book we started working on is Pets, Animals & Creatures of the Beginning Sign Language Series. Shayla enjoys learning new signs. If I were better at it, this might be a way to get her to come out of her shell, but I'm slow learning sign. (foreign language)

Game Play: We played an opposite cards matching game. (language)

Reading: (multi-lessons)We haven't done a literature based unit study in awhile, so I randomly picked out The Tale of Peter Rabbit. It would probably best be done in the spring, but we still

found plenty to do. First, we read the story. We talked about the illustrations. Then I got a few ideas from homeschool share. Shayla reminded me that we have some Peter Rabbit cardboard stacking blocks (from her younger years). We got these out and she had fun stacking them. We did size comparisons and counted them (math). We read the story on the sides of the blocks and practiced identifying abc's on the sides.

Next, we went to Peter Rabbit website. We played some fun games. I really liked Peter's Net Maze. It asked multiple choice questions about the story. Shayla answered them all correctly. (reading comprehension). We also printed off a color page to do.

Shayla watched an episode of Barney today that was titled "Rabbits." (multi subjects)Shayla learned more about real rabbits here. (science)

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Bible: Letter I. We started by watching Abraham Obeys from the Read N See DVD Bible. We sang Whereever you Lead. Then we learned God Will Build a Nation song from The Singing Bible. We also sang Rock My Soul. (music) We reviewed verse Psalm 141:2 - using language and sign. (memory, foreign language)

I is for infinity. This was a fun math activity. I gave Shayla an empty peanut butter jar and a bag of m&m's. I asked her to count out 10 and see if it fills the jar. It didn't even cover the bottom. I asked her how many she thought it would take to fill the jar. She thought 100. So we counted and added m&m's till the jar was full. BTW, it was much more than 100. 453 (or a whole bag to be exact.) We had fun counting and adding together. This activity goes with God telling Abraham his decendants would be like the stars. (math)

Literature: Peter Rabbit. We sang bunny songs and fingerplays. (music & movement, math) Here are some fun bunny activities. We learned all about rabbits at Hopper Home. Shayla decided she would like to have a bunny. Oh boy! Another pet! LOL! (science) We discussed what rabbits eat. We just happened to get our garden seeds in the mail the other day, so we checked off the order. We decided if Shayla does get rabbits, we will need fence around the garden! Then Shayla used some old grocery ads to cut out what rabbits like to eat. She picked out spinach, lettuce, cabbage, and carrots.

We had counter strips with seed packets, trowels, watering cans, etc on them. We used these to do simple addition and subtraction problems. (math)

Shayla made a paper Peter Rabbit. This was a really cute thing. It retells the story using pictures you color, cut and glue and put in the rabbits tummy. (fine motor, reading comprehension, memory, language). She also did a bunny dot-to-dot (1-20)and traced the word "bunny" and made a Peter Rabbit paper bag puppet.

We learned the asl sign for rabbit. (foreign language)

I wanted to do the bunny hop for music & movement, but I didn't have the cd, after all. There was no way I was braving the snow to go to the library today. Some other song ideas are: Rabbit Ain't Got and Peter Cottontail.

Snacktime: carrots, celery, radishes and cabbage (of course).

We ended the day by playing Reader Rabbit First Grade computer program.