Fall is Here!!

Seriously? Three weeks just flew by again, and here I am in the middle of October already without having done any blogging.  Maybe I should just turn this into a monthly blog instead of a weekly blog? I'd probably be overwhelmed with photos then, and I certainly wouldn't be able to remember half of what we did!

We have been having SO much fun with our schooling lately.  The boys are doing awesome with their reading (even Sawyer!), the math activities have been fun, and per request of both boys, we are beginning to learn about Ancient Egypt - the Great Pyramids and mummies.  Perfect timing for the upcoming holiday!

So, here goes our past two weeks!

Writing
We've been doing a pretty good job of keeping up with our journal writing every day.  Both boys participate (more or less) without giving me too much trouble.  I suspect it will become more of a challenge once I start making Hayden actually write out his own entries in addition to illustrating them, but for now, I just want to get the idea across of how to tell a story using a picture that they have either drawn themselves or taken from a magazine or photograph.

Journal Writing: Topic - Something pretty

 Both boys are also doing really well with the sight words that I'm giving them each week to learn.  Hayden is picking it up a little faster than Sawyer, but then, he's also 2 years older and has seen a lot of these words over and over already.  Sawyer is keeping the same words for 2 weeks rather than just one since he's having a harder time grasping it, but there are so many different activities to do with the sight words that it's not redundant or boring at all.  I've gotten several great activity sheets from You Can Read!, a blog I came across one day while searching for reading and writing activities.

Prewriting practice - Sawyer follows the lines with his finger first and then his
pencil, saying each sight word as he does this.

Tracing sight words

Playdoh sight words

More playdoh sight words

Writing our sight words in salt

Every morning, we start the day with the pledge and then calendar time.  I always write the date and the "code date" on a dry erase board after we've established what it is.  Now, I have Hayden doing it since we don't do a lot of worksheets in our class (you know in a public classroom, everyone has to put their name and date at the top of their papers).

Prewriting practice:  Tracing the lines from the sight word on the left to the
sight word on the right.  He had to say each sight word out loud as he did this.

Tracing sight words and letters of the alphabet.

Reading
So our reading obviously involves our sight words as well - more so than the writing actually.  Here are a few more You Can Read! activities:

Dot-to-Dot to connect each like sight word and form a shape.

Circle each sight word in the corresponding color.

Sight Word - Word Search

We also went through a few books over the last couple of weeks.  Hayden completed his 6th book of the year, and Sawyer started Hooked on Phonics and was able to read his very first "mini book"!  I was so excited that I had to record and share!

These are the books we read (minus one that we had to return to the library before I took this picture and plus one that we are reading this week).  Sorry it's sideways.  I don't know how that happened...

How Many Jelly Beans? by Andrea Menotti (what a FUN book!)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (this was the biggie that took two weeks)
Grandma, Grandpa, and the Letter G by Klingel & Noyed (for Sawyer)
It's Circus Time, Dear Dragon (missing), It's a Good Game, Dear Dragon,
& Dear Dragon Goes Camping by Margaret Hillert

Math

Math is becoming more and more fun for us.  Remember we are using the Right Start Math curriculum? We're finally reaching a point to where Hayden has to put on his thinking cap at times.  I love that he knows numbers so well and enjoys math because this was never my favorite subject growing up.  I never liked math when I was in elementary all the way to college.  I did it because I had to, but I did NOT like it.  Now, through Hayden, I'm learning to really enjoy it which is so awesome.  I hope the other two develop this addiction to learning numbers (or anything for that matter!) because it just makes doing every day ordinary things so much more interesting.

Sawyer worked on his shapes some more, orienting them differently to create pictures.

Hayden started off the month partitioning ten.

worksheet to practice partitioning ten

A fun feltboard math activity idea that I found.  The boys were allowed to play
this while I was working with the other, and if they had finished their other work.
For Sawyer, he had to put the ghosts on the corresponding number word.
Hayden had addition and subtraction problems.

 

Partioning and Adding Tens

Learning that a hundred is 10 tens and writing out the partitions

Science

We finished up our unit on living things the first week of this month.  One of our activities was to find the differences in the communities of plants and animals living in two different microhabitats, one being a dry and sunny spot, and the other being a moist and shady spot.

Moss growing in the cool, moist, shady spot 

Finding more flowers and flying insects in the warm, sunny spot.

 Another activity we did demonstrated how arthropods were able to "walk on water".  We used a cork and toothpicks to make our little bug, then we put it in a bowl of water to see what would happen.  Afterwards, the boys wanted to take it outside in the real world to see what it would do.  They played with that thing for ever!

The rest of the month has been devoted to learning about Ancient Egypt.  Hayden wanted to learn about the Great Pyramid and Sawyer wanted to learn about mummies.  So, we combined the two into one big unit.  Hayden began a lapbook on Ancient Egypt, and we have gone through quite a few books and activities having to do with both.  The first thing the boys learned was the location of Egypt - what continent it is located on and where.  We also talked about the Nile River and its importance to the Ancient Egyptians.  

These are the books we are reading on Ancient Egypt:

EGYPT in Spectacular Cross-Section by Stephen Biesty
Beginner's World Atlas by National Geographic Kids
DK Eyewitness Books MUMMY by James Putnam
Pyramids! 50 Hands-On Activities to Experience Ancient Egypt by Avery Hart & Paul Mantell
The Kids' Guide to Mummies by Joan Axelrod-Contrada
The Moses Basket by Jenny Koralek
The Nile River by Allan Fowler

Looking at pictures from the book, EGYPT In Spectacular Cross Section

Using the above mentioned book to learn about Egyptian housing and fill out
a mini book for our lap book.

Making a miniature version of a pull-toy similar to one type of toy used by
Ancient Egyptian children.

Waiting for the playdoh to dry so we can assemble the toy.

Sawyer getting in on the action (I had to help him  create his horse).

So, more to come next week on Ancient Egypt and what the boys are learning about that!

Art/Music:

There hasn't been a whole lot of art and music done independently from the other subjects.  As you can see from the Ancient Egypt pictures, we've kind of been incorporating it a little bit there.  The first week of this month, though, was spent doing a little bit of art and music activities.....

First, the boys sat on the floor of the school room and listened to music while moving their arms around in time to it.  Then, they put markers in their hands while continuing the movements so they could actually visualize how they were moving.

After that, we took the activity outside and danced with paint on our feet.  Thank goodness I had the forethought to do this activity outside instead of on paper inside because it was MESSY!  The boys had remnants of paint on their feet for almost 2 weeks!

I think that pretty much sums up the first half of the month of October.  More to come next week (hopefully) on the last half, plus some Halloween and Classical Conversations (our homeschool co-op).

The Busiest Month of the Year

So you'd think that the busiest month would be December or some other holiday month like that, but nooOOoooOo!  I had to go and give birth twice in the same month (thereby creating one big birthday party between the two), marry a guy whose birthday is in the same month as those babies, throw a baby shower for another friend in the same month, and run a race (just to kick it up a notch)!

That being said, I have tried sitting down to write these posts multiple times with no success.  Since it has apparently become impossible for me to do each week in September separately as I usually do, I'm just going to lump it all into one big post (and mostly pictures since that seems to go faster for me, and it's more entertaining for you, I'm sure.

Reading:

Sawyer circling the beginning letter sound

The "-ad" Family Wheel

Sawyer's E Letter Hunt

More Letter E Hunt to make a path for the elephant
to his peanut

Paper Clip Sight Words

Can you tell it's a Letter E kind of week?

Paint stick/Clothespin sight words 

Writing:

Daily Journal Entry: I give them a subject/topic to illustrate and then I write
for them what they tell me about their picture.

Hayden's ABC Book to practice writing his letters.  We do one page a week.

Magnet letter Sight Words

Math:

Puzzle Fractions

A fun little game using shapes and colors

Memory Game but with an added twist of finding two numbers that add up to 10

Match the number to the correct number of dots on the snake

Cutting out and creating an oval owl

The finished result.  Not bad!

Art/Music:

Exploring sounds with different fillers and containers

Art Nature Hunt.  The goal was to find objects in nature that appealed to them
and draw it as they see it.  Here, Sawyer found a stick...

...and Hayden found the shell of a cicada on the maple tree.

Making Angry Bird magnets to go on thank you cards for the people who came
to their birthday party.

Science:

We took a short break from our unit on living things/plants and animal habitats to just play around with some of the science stuff that Hayden got for his birthday:

Grow Your Own Crystals:  Here is Hayden stirring the calcium sulphate (or whatever
it was - I can't quite remember) into some warm water to dissolve it.

Then we placed the stones in the solution and waited for the crystals to grow.
We were kind of disappointed with the results, but it was fun to make it anyway.

Grow Your Own Worms: kind of a crazy experiment that was loads of fun.  There
were two different solutions to work with.  One was in the plastic tray, and one
was in a bottle that you squeezed out into the other.  And voila! Worms!

Hayden went bananas with this one.  He successfully created
a multitude of blue worms.  And then some.

Sawyer didn't really want to touch them.

And that was the last three weeks in a nutshell.  There were a few other non-photo activities, but you get the idea of what went down in the Holbrook house from these.  Looking forward to having a month of prepping up for Halloween next!!