Week Four

This weeks theme is Eyes and the vocabulary word is iris. I got the picture from an article on Discover Magazine about the genetics of eye color. The vocabulary word spot on our poster is blank because I put it with the image of the eye.

We started the week off slow, there was a lot of wind last weekend, so for Monday and Tuesday Jasmine and I were sneezing a lot.

Monday: We went over the letter "D" and did a capital "D" worksheet from School Express found here. I also printed the lowercase "d," but we did not go over it.

Tuesday: Jasmine colored the diamond from last week with blue glitter. I defrosted some frozen blueberries, I couldn't find any fresh ones. I hung up our blue window cling.


And our blue ice cream scoop.


Wednesday: was the letter "D" craft. Jasmine made an Duck C using the letter "D" and some feathers from No Time For Flash Cards.


We also colored a "D" worksheet that had an upper and lower case "d" with pictures of things that started with "D" from Mommy Nature.com. Here is the worksheet.

Thursday: was number four. We added another fish to the fish bowl. We got ready for Halloween by making a ghost found on The Artful Crafter here. Instead of a CD we used a paper plate and I let Jasmine paint one side white.


Friday: the nursery rhyme for Friday was Lavender's Blue. I got the full rhyme from Wikipedia. I didn't save where I got the image of the lavender from, but a easy search on Google Images will bring something usable up.

Friday was also Halloween Day for us. Nevada Day is also October 31st, but is celebrated on the last Saturday of October, which happened to be Halloween this year. We went trick-or-treating, Jasmine was a pirate. Saturday we went and watched the Nevada Day parade downtown.

Here is a view of our Learning Poster.


For November we have lots of leaves on our calendar.


What we are currently reading:
Jasmine's selection: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle


I got this for Jasmine after we did the "C" caterpillar from last week and she seems to really enjoy the book.

My selection: The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home by Susan Wise Bauer


I borrowed this from the library and have only just started reading it, so I don't have an opinion on it yet.

Week Three

I know now if we are going to order printer ink online to do it when the printer first starts protesting that it is running out of ink. It took a lot longer to get than I thought it would, about a week and a half. And with my mother visiting we hardly had time to get anything done.

Our travel plans for Thanksgiving got pushed back until the first week of December, and as far as I know we don't have any other plans so hopefully for a few weeks at least we can get back on track.

This weeks theme is Kittens and the vocabulary word is claws, but I changed the theme and the vocabulary work to "Cat," because I think that cat is a reasonably easy three-letter word to spell. I got the picture of the cats from http://a2.vox.com/6a00e398f645e4000500f48d1521a20001-320pi through Google images.

Monday: We went over the letter "C" and did a capital "C" worksheet from School Express found here.

Tuesday: I could not find a diamond activity, so I ended up printing a diamond outline. Later I found shapes and colors window clings at Dollar Tree.



So we will be using those to help Jasmine learn the shapes and colors. They also had a border trim for the shapes with the same pictures as the clings and I cut up one of the trims to use on the Learning Poster.

I also printed out some different colored ice cream scoops from here, and will be using them as we follow the Letter of the Week curriculum.



Wednesday: was the letter "C." Jasmine made an Caterpillar C using the letter "C" and some sparkly pom-poms. I got the idea from No Time For Flash Cards.

We also made a cat with "C"s for its legs and tail, but unfortunately I cannot remember where I found the template for it. I did learn that if a craft needs to be colored and cut that it should be done on separate days.

EDIT: I found the webpage, it is from First-School. And can be found here.



We also colored a "C" worksheet that had an upper and lower case "C" with pictures of things that started with "C" from Mommy Nature.com. Here is the worksheet.

Thursday: was number three. Jasmine can already count to three (and beyond, although she always forgets eight, I don't know why.) So, we continued to count to ten using the number strip. I placed it lower so she can easily reach it.



Friday: the nursery rhyme for Friday was Pussycat, Pussycat. I got the image and rhyme from Mama Lisa, again.

Here is a view of our Learning Poster.


For October we had tons of pumpkins on our calendar.


I also got an alphabet wall border from It's Educational, our local teacher supply store.


I liked how this border had pictures to go along with the letters. It also came with a mini alphabet that I could hang at Jasmine's height.


What we are currently reading:
Jasmine's selection: Where the Wild Things are by Maurice Sendak


Jasmine loves this book. One night during bath time my husband read this to her and it has been non-stop ever since.

My selection: The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart


I got the first book because it sounded interesting, and when I finished that one I had to get this one, the second book, right away. I don't know how I'm going to be able to wait for the third book to come out in paperback.

Oops!

Week 3 will be late, not because we didn't finish, but because I ran out of ink for our printer for one project. The ink is the only think holding us back, we also can't start week 4 because I can't print out the activities.

Week Two

This weeks theme is Jungle, but I changed it to Monkey because I don't think Jasmine would have grasped the concept.

Monday: I tried to get Jasmine to pretend to be a monkey, but it ended up being a tickle fest. That's okay. I unfortunately do not remember where I got the image of the monkeys from for this week.

Tuesday: we took the square from last week and covered it with two different green glitter glues. Jasmine already know the word "green" from her green foam soap that we use at bath time.

Wednesday: was the letter "B." Jasmine made an Bee B using the letter "B" and some glitter glue. I got the idea from No Time For Flash Cards.


We also colored a "B" worksheet that had an upper and lower case "B" with pictures of things that started with "B" from Mommy Nature.com. Here is the worksheet.

Thursday: was number two. We added another fish to our fish bowl and counted out our food.

Friday: the nursery rhyme for Friday was I Had a Little Nut Tree. I printed out a picture and rhyme from Mama Lisa, but I also added A Little Nut-Tree by Roald Dahl.

Here is a view of our Learning Poster.

I had to recreate this, we went on vacation to Las Vegas for 4th of July weekend and while we were gone the paper fell off the wall. I didn't pick it up quickly enough when we got back home and Jasmine drew all over it. Right now it is a bit wonky, the words are all crooked, but I think I'm going to leave it that away until I need to do it over again. If you look really really hard you will see Jasmine has already drawn over a bit of it.

I also recently got new items for our calendar. We now have a section that tells us what today is, and what day it will be tomorrow, and what the weather is like. There is also new months that have photos instead of cartoons. Also there are holiday dates now that are photos (e.g. Labor Day is a construction worker with an American Flag background.) I don't know why, but I like photos better than cartoons, I think some times cartoons are still too abstract for Jasmine to understand.

Week One

I can't believe this post has been sitting in saved drafts since May 15th! I am so bad. :(


So, we've just finished our first "week" of scheduled homeschooling. Why is "week" in quotes? Well, it took us longer than a week to finish. Jasmine got sick towards the beginning of the week, Monday night, so we didn't finish until this week (that would be the week of May 15th.)

A couple of weeks ago I discovered Brightly Beaming Resources. I can't remember how I found it, but it took me a couple of days to look through the website. I wish I had discovered it before. It is great! And I'm not saying that lightly. I have been looking for some sort of guide to use with homeschooling before Jasmine was born.

The curriculum starts at three months old and goes up to eleven years of age. For those of you that are secular homeschooling, like we are, the infant and toddler sections have bible verses, but they are very easy to leave out and don't interfere with other things being taught.

There are also sections that are not complete, weeks 22-36 under Sound of the Week, Story of the Week only has one lesson, Science of the Week only has plans for 7 of the 80 books listed, (but it gives good ideas what to do when you get to that stage), only 3 of the Country of the Week (which can be used with the letter of the week) are done.

So, we started with "Steps to Reading" for ages 2-7 years old. We did week one of the "Preparatory Curriculum," (found here.)

Each week has a theme, week one's theme is cows and here is an example of the "Learning Poster" that you can build for/with your child covering the weeks ideas and activities.

Monday: I showed Jasmine pictures of cows and we practiced a bit of mooing. We read few board books that had cows in them. I printed out this image of a cow and calf for our poster.

Tuesday: the shape was square, and we ate a few square foods, like crackers and cookies.

Wednesday: was the letter "A." Jasmine made an Alien A using the letter "A" and some water colors. I got the idea from No Time For Flash Cards.


We also colored an "A" worksheet that had an upper and lower case "A" with pictures of things that started with "A" from Mommy Nature.com. Here is the worksheet.

Thursday: was number one. I found Five Fish in a Fishbowl from First-School. I colored it with crayons, and we will add a fish a week.

Friday: the nursery rhyme for Friday was Hey Diddle Diddle. I printed out a .pdf from Laura B. Smolkin, found here.

Here is a view of our Learning Poster, sorry it is so blurry.


And a picture of our bulletin board,


I do think this is a good series, but I think if we do it again I will change the themes to fit the letter we are studying that week (i.e. A is for Astronaut or something like that.)

We did week two in early July, hopefully I will post it quicker than it took me to do week one.