Week of September 10

Co-op

 Here's a photo of Ava enjoying playtime:

Science

And here's a picture of Noelle's co-op science project this week.  They learned a little bit about the periodic table, what an atom is, and how atoms form bonds to make elements.  They used balloons (outer balloon = shell and inner balloon = nucleus) and beads for electrons.

Math

And we must talk about Fred.  One of the ways we are learning math this year is through a series called the Life of Fred.  Noelle enjoys learning anything in story form.  Not story PROBLEM form, mind you.  Actual story form.  Fred comes across real life situations based on the little plot of his story that become math problems.  Noelle would read several chapters a day if I let her.  Right now we are in book 2.  Here's a photo of the book, and of what Fred looks like.  

One of the great things about these books is that you don't just learn math.  You learn about life, too.  For example, Noelle has learned about deciduous trees, how a caterpillar makes a chrysalis and not a cocoon, how constellations are stars that make pictures in the sky, and how to punctuate quotations within quotations.  It's really amazing how much you could teach your child just using these books!  Right now we choose to just focus on the math topics, but I'm considering occasionally re-reading them and finding topics that are interesting for further study.  

Note to moms:  I recommend you always preview the chapter first, before just handing it to your child.  You may want to prepare them for, or skip over, some of the story's subject matter.  

Like the death of the University's groundskeeper, for instance.

Health

This week we continued learning about the human body, and wanted to start by focusing first on the skeletal system. We tried watching a much-recommended Magic School Bus video to introduce the topic, but both of us were bored/annoyed by it, so we turned it off after the first few minutes.  Instead, we pulled out a new set of pictures I got from Costco that illustrate the body's systems.  They can overlap to show how the systems work together.  That was much better.

With Halloween coming up next month, maybe we can do something cool with bones and skeletons.  Hmmmmm.

Reading

Noelle continues to read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.  She also got the books about Houdini from the library and has been enjoying reading about his escaping tricks.  For Social Studies we will be doing some Utah studies, and we are starting with the Native American tribes associated with this area.  She has several non-fiction books about the Navajo Nation, and a fictional story called "The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow" about a Navajo girl.  Together, we continue to read "The Wind in the Willows," and have also begun reading "The Landing of the Pilgrims" and hope to have that finished about the same time our co-op does a Thanksgiving re-enactment.  

Week of September 4

The OCD in me is jumping up and down with glee

This is our second year homeschooling.  I still don't have it all figured out, but I have it WAY more figured out than I did this time last year.  We've tried and changed lots of different things.  We've changed the way we schedule our day, how many subjects we can do in a week, different kinds of curriculum, different ways of scheduling the year...I could go on.  But this week, we started with a very pretty shelf and lots of things planned.  I can't even tell you how happy it makes me to look at that rainbow of folders.

Little Passports

One of Noelle's favorite things to learn about is geography.  I signed her up for a monthly subscription to Little Passports.  The first month you get a small cardboard travel suitcase.  Inside is a postcard from your two new friends, Sam and Sofia.  Also a boarding pass which gives you a website access code to games, and a passport and some other fun papers.  Each month afterwards for a year, Sam and Sofia go to a different country and send you a postcard to help you learn about the area.  Noelle loves this!

Math games

Math is a hard one for me to figure out.  We tried Saxon Math last year, level 2.  Didn't quite make it all the way through.  I'm not ready to give up on it, but she's supposed to have all her addition facts memorized and be able to do math fact sheets in under a minute before moving on.  We've been stuck there a long time.  But  I'm happy with how much she has remembered over the summer, and I think we'll be moving forward shortly.  

Another math we've tried recently which Noelle likes much more is the Life of Fred series.  I'll do a post about it later, but basically it's math in story form.  Fred is a five year old professor at KITTENS University.  You follow his life and every time he has a real life need for math, you learn a concept.  It's awesome.

 

This week we are waiting for the next Life of Fred book to come in the mail so we are playing math games and doing math fact sheets every day.  Noelle loves the games.

"This is a book I will actually read in my FREE time!"

Thank you, Usborne.  For health this year we will start with a study of the human body.  Noelle is easily grossed out, creeped out, freaked out, or any other number of -outs you can think of.  So looking at pictures of actual muscles, bones and blood is out of the question this year.  I'm on a quest for interesting, informative and non-gross pictures.  This Usborne lift the flap book is a good start.

"I can't believe I get to read NARNIA for SCHOOL!"

Noelle will be reading lots and lots and lots of books this year.  She reads 30 minutes a day from an approved literature list (approved by me, that is).  Her first choice was The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.  And she has read the same book every day for a week.  This is a girl who likes to have 15 different books going at the same time.  Not so much with this book.  She also reads 30 minutes a day for a time slot we call "student led learning."  This is a time when she gets to learn about anything she wants.  We currently have books about Houdini on reserve at the library.  She also listens to a 30 minute literature read-aloud with me.  This week we read Twelfth Night from Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare.   Noelle liked it, but thought it was extremely confusing!  We also started The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.  There's lots more to talk about with reading, but this is already a ridiculously long run-on paragraph.

Noelle takes a turn being the teacher for Ava

Fridays are jammie days.  So Noelle is in her jammies and taking a break from her own learning to work with Ava on her ABC's.  Noelle writes one letter at a time and Ava yells it out.  She knows all of her letters, lots of shapes (she actually said triangle and rectangle today), and lots of numbers.  Smarty pants.

"K!!!!!!!!"

I write the letters, she says them and underlines them.

Playing with our family photo memory game. 

"Where's Mama?"  "There it is, I found it!"

First Day of Co-op

First day of co-op

Since no one actually gets dressed up with hair and make up for schooling at home (well, no one in my house anyway.  If you do then good for you), we decided to take a first day of co-op picture instead of a first day of school picture.

Welcome devotional

Co-op used to be at my house.  But since Mel will be going through chemotherapy this fall and winter, the powers that be decided to change location.  So at the last minute we rigged up some space in Jen's basement.  Here we all are gathered for our morning devotional.  Noelle meets with an older class upstairs.  They will be learning about physics and early American history this year.

Ava's first preschool project

The preschool theme (I'm the teacher, isn't that convenient?) on the first day was All About Me.  So the kids colored a large cutout to look like themselves.  It was too hard a project for the two year olds, but we gave it to them anyway.  I'm just now realizing that Ava chose to do her entire project in red.  It actually looks a little macabre.  Sorry about that.  But she did GREAT!  She sat on her little green heart shape when she was supposed to, she learned to sing the weather song, and as far as I know she didn't fight with anyone over the toys!  I can't wait to see how she grows and develops over the next year.