Homeschool Highlights - week of April 26, 2009

Days 155 - 161

These are some things that I forgot to add last week that we did:

Fine motor: Shayla had such a great time making the silly puppets from magazine pictures last week, that we did another activity along the same lines. We made silly pictures by cutting and gluing parts of different magazine pages together.

Science: At Wee Discover "outdoor school," the topic was flowers. The kids were each given a flower to plant along the walkway to the nature center and they made these simple paper flowers. (art)

Now onto this week:

Social skills/art: In honor of the Fancy Nancy books, our library held a soiree. That's fancy talk for a fancy, frilly girl party. The girls were encouraged to dress up as fancy as they liked. There were many tiaras, feather boas, and beautifully, fancy dresses. The girls decorated a foam tiara to take home, then listened to a Fancy Nancy story, made this simple paper butterfly, and the other girls had a snack of fancy cut peanut butter and jelly finger sandwiches, chocolate chip cookies, and lemonade.

This is our little diva at home and feeling comfortable.

This was when arriving at the library which she is very familiar with. She often unplugs her ears in anticipation of noise when there are other children around.

This is afterwards. She is holding the paper butterfly craft she made.

Now she has decided to put her tiara on again.

It was a fun thing. Shayla definately enjoyed it. She thanked me for taking the time to take her and paint her finger and toenails and curl her hair. She said she had a great time!

Reading/science/math/art: We found a foam ladybug flyer craft that we got somewhere, so we decided to make it today. Then we read Home Sweet Home and The Grouchy Ladybug. Next, we were talking about telling time thanks to the small clocks in The Grouchy Ladybug.

There's never a break from learning and homeschooling!

Fine Motor/Creativity: I stole this idea from Family Fun, too. We made a paperdoll playhouse. Shayla absolutely loved this idea. First I cut apart a large cardboard box. Then I covered several sheets of colored paper with clear contact paper for rooms of the house. Then glue the colored paper - paper side down onto the cardboard box. I did this so we can tape and use a gluestick on different furniture and people. We cut pictures out of old magazines to be our paperdolls and furniture. Shayla continued to work on this clear up to bedtime!

Reading: Still reading the Kit American Girl series. I'm planning on doing a depression era craft or something after each story to keep her interest up.

Shayla is reading Rub-A-Dub Cub (short u sound) by Innovative Kids. These are comparable to the Bob books. These actually work better for us because they offer a reward. Each book in the series has 4 stickers that have the characters of the book on them. She gets a sticker each day. After she gets her 4 stickers, she knows she gets to move to the next book.

Rub-A-Dub Cub is the fourth book in the series.

With the weather changing, it is difficult to keep Shayla's attention, besides, I plan to go back to literature based short lessons after she officially finishes first grade in 20 some days. So when I read Nina, Nina Ballerina by Jane O'Connor today I decided to do this cool butterfly art project that I seen on Crafty Crow, but hadn't found the time to do.

We read Stellaluna because we will be attending the Children's Theater Foundation production of this. We always like to read the book and have discussion about similarities and differences between the book and play.

We read The Bubble Factory by Tomie dePaola. Of course, we made our own bubble solution and had fun blowing bubbles. We tried using several different objects as bubble wands. Our favorite, a child's plastic clothes hanger, made HUGE bubbles. (reading, sensory, science)

The bubble recipe we used was:

1 Tbs. corn syrup

2 Tbs. dish soap

1 c. water

Math: Graphing coins. This was fun! We reviewed the names and counting by 1's, 5's, 10's, 25's and 50's.

Ordinal Numbers. Counted toys as first, second, third, etc. Completed several worksheets.

Addition review. Filling in an addition grid.

Writing: Still working on badge 2 - Psalm 1.

Spelling: Long a sound words. We played the game and read Jake's Tale at Starfall. Then I made another dictionary page with her words using Google image. She verbally told me the correct alphabetical order. Then she wrote the spelling words by the picture on her dictionary page.

Language: Parts of speech review. Completed a worksheet that was a butterfly when she colored the correct parts of speech.

Science: Attended Wee Discover. This weeks' theme was seeds. First the kids were given a paper plate with some seeds and other objects, such as pasta, buttons, etc. They were to sort the seeds in one group and everything else in another.

Shayla is sitting with the group of children. She's not plugging her ears! Hurray!

They planted seeds in the pots they decorated last week. And they started several seeds in a plastic see through cup full of wet paper towels. They should be able to see the whole seeding process in this way.

Science: Senses. Sight. We read The Magic School Bus Explores the Senses. We also looked at one of my old contact lenses closely. The Magic School Bus book talked about the cornea of the eye being not even as thick as the page in the book. I don't think Shayla fully understood how delicate our eye parts are until comparing the contact lens to the cornea. She enjoyed seeing it, looking through it (not in her eye)and of course, touching it.

There is is a scout badge for the senses, so we did the experiment listed in the badge book.

Now You See it Experiment

Take a piece of posterboard and cut into a square. Hold it so it looks like a diamond, not a square. Draw a fishbowl on one side and a fish (in the middle)on the other side of the posterboard.

Tape the diamond onto a pencil.

Hold the pencil between your hands and rub hands together. Look at the diamond. It gives the optical illusion that the fish is in the fishbowl.

Social Studies. Geography & Cultures. We are studying the United States first. First she located our country on a world map. I was surprised that she was unable to do that. UGH! Anyway, then we read a few facts about the U.S. in a library book. I made a map outline at eduplace.

I have decided to incorporate this into the Brownie try-it for People of the World. We are going to make a nice booklet of facts for each country that we do.

She identified and colored the state we live in one color, the states she has ever been to - another color, and states she would like to visit or learn about another color.

Science/Scouts at Home: Working on the Earth is Our Home badge. More about the importance of recycling and keeping our earth clean, in time for Earth Day. Shayla and her dad also constructed a solar oven, unfortunately we haven't been able to try it out yet because of bad weather.

Some days it seems like we're not doing enough even though we "play school" a minimum of four hours each and every day (7 days).

To read about days in other homeschoolers lives go to the Weekly Wrap up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.