Moving Right Along

I'm combining two weeks in this post since we had such a short week last week, and I never got the opportunity to sit down and post from the week before that.  It's taking some getting used to, having the three kiddos, lessons for two of them, and running around Jacksonville on days that they have other stuff going on like P.E. on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, gymnastics on Wednesday, homeschool co-op on Fridays, and soccer on most Fridays/Saturdays.  It's quite an adjustment having to plan all this stuff out and actually get to where we need to go (on time!).  I remember the days when I used to be 15 minutes early to EVERYTHING.  I was always the first person to arrive, and then I'd have to sit around twiddling my thumbs waiting for everyone else to arrive.  Now, I'm barely getting there within that 10 minute "it's okay to be fashionable late" window.  It's crazy!  I find that most days we jump into the car to go somewhere, I am not exaggerating when I say that I have to run back inside the house 3 or 4 times because I or the kids forgot something (and to be honest, it's usually me who forgot said item).

So, let's get this show on the road!  What have my little men been up to these past two weeks?  I'll go subject by subject this time around.

Writing
Sawyer worked on his prewriting skills and learning the direction and shapes of the letters, ABC.  He really loves his writing book.  He's going to be through that sucker in no time!

Making big A's and B's on the chalkboard.  He drew the letter, then traced over it with a wet sponge,
then traced over it again with a crumpled up paper towel.  Didn't take long for him to decide he'd rather
just write the letters as many times as he could.  Forget the sponge and towels!

Using playdoh to form the letter B

Decorating the letter C

Prewriting skills: Maze writing.  The goal is to follow the path and stay exactly in the middle.  Harder
than I thought it was going to be for him!

Hayden's writing is not really as exciting to photograph as Sawyer's but he's been working on tracing his letters, writing out sight words, writing his numbers in math, etc.

Trace Copy Recall for sight words this week

Reading:

There was a LOT of reading going on in this house for the last couple of weeks.  First of all, I forgot to add the books that we read the first week.

The Book That Eats People by John Perry
How Do Dinosaurs Go to School? by Jane Yolen
The Berenstain Bears Go Back To School by Stan & Jan Berenstain
ABC (I forgot to put down the info for this one.  Whoops)
I Can Read with My Eyes Shut! by Dr. Seuss

These are the books that we read the last couple of weeks.  Not as many as that first week, unfortunately, but we also added more stuff to our daily schedule.  So, we're having to figure out how to fit it all in.

Beware of the Storybook Wolves by Lauren Child
Miss Smith's Incredible Storybook by Michael Garland
Hooper Humperdink...? NOT HIM! by Dr. Seuss
Square Window by Jo Lodge
Honesty by Kristin Thoennes Keller
Trustworthiness by Lucia Raatma
The Berenstain Bears and The Truth by Stan & Jan Berenstain

And these are the Early Reader books that Hayden has read over the past three weeks.  We are following a series of books that I discovered at the library last year, and I love them.  So does he, which is even better!  They've got just the right amount of repetition in them, and they have reading reinforcement ideas in the back of the books which is very helpful to me, allowing me a little more wiggle room in my lesson planning.

Let's Go, Dear Dragon
Dear Dragon Helps Out
Come to School, Dear Dragon
by Margaret Hillert

Some of the reading activities we did the last couple of weeks were:

Hayden cut apart and assembled a mini reader about the "-an" family.

Of course we spent a lot of time doing Reading Eggs on the computer.

Circling the sight words of the week in different colors.

Sight word search in the sentences.

Hayden helped Sawyer put the ABC caterpillar together on the felt board.

ABC Turtle:  Each turtle has 6 pictures on it, and Sawyer had to put the correct
beginning letter sound over each picture.  I found this activity last year on
www.maketaketeach.com

Roll, Read, and Color:  Hayden would roll a die, pick a word from the matching
number column to read aloud, then he colored it in.

Math:

Math was fun this week.  Lots of tally sticks, abacus, and other fun stuff for both boys.

Number Jumping!
I put a bunch of numbers on the square tiles for the boys to
jump on.  For Sawyer, I just called out the numbers.  For
Hayden, I would say, "5+3!" or "15-4!" and he'd have to jump
on the right answer.  Man!  That was a fun one!

Working with tally sticks and the abacus

Comparing the different ways to see the same numbers

Matching finger counting to the tally sticks

Sawyer's bug sorting activity from his math book

Shape identification with glue and glitter.  I drew a shape using dot-to-dots
and numbers.  Sawyer had to follow the dots with the glue to form the shape.

Then he sprinkled the glitter and told me what shape he made!

Part-Whole Circles in Math

Piggy Bank Counting

Marking the correct number of items for Rainy Day Math cards

Science:

Science was hit and miss these last couple of weeks because most of our activities were supposed to take place outside, and we got a lot of rain.  Plus, with our added physical activities that took us away from the house, the afternoons were pretty much shot.  

We studied living and non-living things the first week.  Now we are focusing on the living, specifically animals and their habitats.  One of the things we were able to do before the rain was a backyard scavenger hunt of wildlife in our backyard.  Here are a few pictures from that scavenger hunt:

Locust exoskeleton on the pine tree (we actually found 7 of these).
LOVE THEM!! We used to put them on our clothes when we were little or
try to scare our mom with them.  Heheheh!

Some kind of insect larva on a dying tomato plant.  A bunch of ants were
crawling around them, but I have no idea what they are.

Chart we used to mark down all the living organisms we
found living on, in, and around plants in our backyard.

After studying what animals need, and different types of animal habitats, the boys decided that they wanted to make an underwater habitat.  So, voila!  Here is our very first class diorama!  There was a bit of discrepancy about whether the dark vs. light  blue was sky and water or shallow/deep water.  Sawyer insists that the little Nemo fish is jumping out of the water.  Hayden insists that the shark and killer whales on the side are definitely NOT jumping out of the water.  

Art/Music:

Unfortunately, art and music weren't covered as much as I would have liked these last couple of weeks either.  But at least we got some stuff in.  Plus, they both get art on Fridays at our co-op. And we do a lot of singing throughout the day to help us remember certain concepts like the months of the year, multiples of 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on, English grammar, etc.

Kazoos we made for music one day.

One of our art lessons.  The boys used watercolor crayons to draw their pictures.
Then we painted water over the picture to create the painting.  Below are the
pictures BEFORE the water was added.

Sawyer's picture.  It's the swingset in the backyard with all of us added in.
The scribble on the left is a melting tree?  Go figure.

Hayden's picture.  It's him frog hunting on the back patio.