Name Art

Last week for art day we did name art. it was quick and easy and a great way to use up a lot of the scrap paper I had lying around.

Lacys Letter Of The Week

Lacys letter of the week this week is C. Her words this week were cat, cow, crab, cloud, and cake. she used the word cloud for her letter art.

History Report - Abigail Adams

Finley and I read the book Abigail Adams In Her Own Words by Blair Belton. We read a few pages a day and wrote a sentance about what we learned. When she finished the book she rewrote all her sentances on construction paper and made a book of her own for her history report.

Bible Verse Art

John 15:1
I am the vine and my father is the gardener.

Field Trip Friday

Today is field trip Friday so we headed out to Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead, which is a local children's farm. There are goats, chickens, cows, and pigs. The kids can mine stones, fish, bottle feed baby goats, go on a pony ride, and wagon rides. I usually don't, but today I purchased the family fun pack. Each girl got to pick two activities and we all went on the wagon ride. Finley chose mining and fishing. Lacy chose baby goats and a pony ride. Then we all rode the wagon together. We had a picnic lunch and a lot of fun. We then came home for journal work, math, and a spelling test.

Bible Book

Lacy has a children's bible book. Yesterday we started the Story of Creation. She had gone over this before in her church preschool so it was a review. She then completed a craft. She decorated a number 1 - 6 according to what was created that day. It took her quite a bit of time but she really enjoyed doing it.

Lacys Letter of The Week

Lacys letter of the week is B. She has practiced big and little b's. Her words this week are boat, bear, big, bug, and ball. For her letter art today she completed a boat.

Butterflies

Finley had a worksheet on butterflies. Both girls were needing a brain break so we did a quick art project. We made some toilet paper roll butterflies. They were quick and easy and the girls got a fun little break while I fed the baby.

Weather Art

To keep in coordination with our weather unit, Friday we did a cloud art. Both girls completed this project. They cut their own clouds, glued cotton balls to their clouds, then gave their clouds a face. They then cut their own raindrops. Together, we glued string to the raindrops and connected them to their clouds. They dried all weekend, because the girls used quite a bit of glue. They turned out great.

Lacys Letter Of The Week

Lacys letter of the week this week was the letter A. She worked all week on perfecting the letter. She worked on the words, apple, ant, arm, air, and alligator. We used apple for our letter art.

Time Unit

We are getting to the end of our time unit. Yesterday, instead of a worksheet on time, we did a poster. Finley really enjoyed it.

Weather Unit

We are currently working on a weather unit. We have a weather log we complete every morning. We've practiced our tornado drills. We have a few experiments we are monitoring. Today I decided to take an old saying and make it into a quick art project. We used the saying "Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning." Finley had a fun time doing this and it was a good fun brain break for her.

Popcorn

Today we read the book Popcorn by Frank Asch. It was a very cute book about popcorn and Halloween. We also did a popcorn art project. We popped corn and glued it to make it look like corn in a husk. Very cute and very fun. Happy Monday.

Field Trip Friday

Today we went to Wonderscope. It's a local children's activity museum. There were about ten different activity rooms. The girls favorites were the vet and hospital room and the art room. There was also a rock wall, water room, and race track room. They enjoyed those quite a bit too. We came home and F wrote five sentences in her journal about what she did and L drew a picture about what she did. It was a very fun Friday.

Tornado Drills

We live in the Midwest where tornadoes are a very real thing to be prepared for anytime of the year. Our county runs a tornado drill the first Wednesday of every month, so yesterday we got to practice our tornado safety. Lucky for us we set up our homeschool in our basement. All we had to do was get up from our chairs and head to our safe room.

Germs Experiment

Today we did an experiment on germs. I thought it was good to do this one now as we are about to enter the sick season. We may not be going to a brick and mortar school but we are actively involved in all-star cheer so we will be at plenty of practices and competitions.
Our experiment showed what happens to germs when you use soap. It was very simple but had an awesome message. I put a good amount of water in a plate with a good edge so the water doesn't run out. Put a good layer of pepper in the water and have the kids coat their finger in soap. Stick your finger in the pepper water and watch the soap do its job against the "germs".

Preschool Worksheets

I have a daughter that is in Pre-K as well. I'm trying to keep her occupied as much as possible so that F has a nice quiet environment to concentrate in. I found some workbooks at Wal-Mart called "The Big Preschool Workbook". They have all sorts of worksheets. L particularly loves the connect the dots because I don't think she did a lot of those at her old school so they are a fun new thing for her. For now these worksheets are a great time filler as well as being a good teaching tool.

Daily 5 in our Jammies

Today's Daily 5 was to write 5 sentances about why she is excited to be doing home school. Most said things like - I'm happy to
homeschool to stay at home. I'm happy to homeschool so I can be with my mom and dad. The one that broke my heart though and solidified our choice for homeschooling though was - I'm happy to be homeschooling because no one will be mean to me. We will continue to do our Daily 5 in her journal every morning and most likely still in her jammies because I feel that it gets her brain going and it's a great way to ease into our day.

The Decision to Homeschool

We had been on the fence for quite some time about homeschooling the kids. We had recently bought a house in the country. We also still had our house in the city. We had been at the "city" school district for two years and we're never highly impressed. We loved our kindergarten teacher and our 7yo seemed to enjoy her first grade experience. The truth is we were just not that impressed. So, when we bought the house in the country to flip we thought it was the perfect opportunity to send the kids to school while we worked on the house and if we liked it a lot then we would keep the house and not flip it. For the first few weeks we were thoroughly impressed. There was a deputy at the school at all times. The kids all said the pledge of allegiance and an anti-bullying pledge every day together before heading to their classrooms. From the outside it was picture perfect. Our daughter had brought home a total of 3 notes about behavior so we decided that I would go in with her and meet with the teacher to review her behavior and expectations. I was shocked and devastated as to what I was met with. She immediately was bashing my daughter for talking. Yes, talking. I asked if there were any other bad behaviors that we needed to address and she continued to talk about how my daughters talking was so annoying to HER. I will also add that my daughter was there and was hearing how terribly her teacher felt about her. The teacher at this point said that she just gets so tired of hearing her talk that she sends her to the white room most days. At this point red flags are flying. I asked her what a white room was and she essentially told me they are isolation rooms. I am absolutely NOT ok with this, especially just for being a typical chatty 7 year old girl. I was devastated my daughter was not only being singled out but also spending a good portion of her day completely alone. And the teacher never gave any ideas for solutions, she just continued to say the same thing - how my daughters talking so greatly annoyed her. I came home but didn't want to discuss the situation with my husband till the kids were all in bed. I told him that I couldn't send her back to that environment and then it all came out. Once I told my husband the entirety of what had happened he agreed our children would not be returning. When our daughter woke up in the morning we asked her side of the story. She said that the only time she wasn't really in the room was for her spelling test and that when she was in there the para would just check in on her. We called the school and told them we would be there Monday to withdraw them from school. There was absolutely no concern from the principal as to why or concern about what happened, we literally just got an email that said their belongings will be waiting at the front office. I'm sad that it took six weeks for us to figure out this happened but am glad that it pushed us to finally take the leap to homeschool.