Let the New School Year Begin!

And the adventures of the Holbrook Heroes continues.....

I'm not gonna lie.  These pictures weren't actually taken on the first day of school.  As a matter of fact, they weren't even taken during the first WEEK of school.  But for the sake of my sanity and wanting to keep up with scrapbooking and whatnot, we're just going to go with it.  If anyone asks, it was definitely the first week of school.  At least within the first month.  Close enough.  Right?

It took us a good two weeks to get into the swing of things around here.  In fact, I'd say it wasn't until the third week of school that we actually started doing some of the 3Rs.  But, in this house, learning is learning, and if it's reading a book, watching a youtube video on the Star Spangled Banner, or putting together a lapbook on dinosaurs, brain cells are being put to use.  So there.

Our first day of school started off with our typical first day of school stuff.  We had fun, got into the spirit, and just prepared ourselves mentally for the coming months ahead.  I had to begin, of course, with a scavenger hunt.  Nothing says "fun" like a scavenger hunt to my boys.  If every day were a scavenger hunt, they'd be the happiest kids in the world!

Each clue was hiding in a blue pocket somewhere in the house.  I think next
year, I'll definitely have to make it harder because it didn't take long for them
to figure out.  I didn't even have time to take pictures!

With each clue was a portion of photograph that I had taken of the very last
hiding spot.  They had to put all the pieces together like a puzzle to figure
out where to go last.

The last clue took them to the swing set (where I, of course, did not take a
picture *sheesh*).  They each got a pack of markers, some bubbles, and a
free trip to Sweet Frog, a local frozen yogurt place they really love.

This year, we are starting each day off with the calendar and the pledge like before, but this time, they each have their own daily calendar to write in.  I found them through freehomeschooldeals.com at Mama's Learning Corner.  There was one for PreK-K and one for 1st grade.  They are perfect for starting off the day, but I'm telling you, the time it has taken to go through it each morning is a lot longer than I was planning.  After 3 weeks of school, the boys are finally getting the hang of it without it taking 20-30 minutes.  I'm hoping that after another 3 weeks or so, maybe we can get it down to 10 minutes tops.

Both daily calendars are in 3 ring binders with the monthly calendar in a
page protector so they can write over it with a dry erase marker.

Sawyer's calendar has the numbers printed that he can trace each day.

Hayden's calendar is blank.  He fills his numbers in and writes the year and
month each day.

Both have a clock face on the next page.  They draw the hands for whatever
our school room clock says, and then they write in the digital time.

On the next page is a weather "graph".  They fill in the blank next to the
corresponding date for whether the weather (ha!) is sunny, cloudy, rainy, or
snowy.  Guess which has the least amount of blanks filled in?

I decided, this year, that I wanted to do another unit on the American Flag along with some other patriotic/U.S. Constitution type stuff for the first couple of months because in October, we will be taking a trip to Washington D.C.   Can't make a trip to D.C. and not know who the president is or what the Star Spangled Banner is, etc. etc.!!  So, we are starting off with the American Flag and other symbols of our country.  I'm also trying to teach them some patriotic songs (I got quite a few giggles when I sang a few of them).  Apparently, I'm hilarious.  Who knew.

The books we've read so far on this subject:
The Flag We Love by Pam Munoz Ryan
I Pledge Allegiance by Bil Martin Jr and Micael Sampson
Red, White, and Blue: The Story of the American Flag by John Herman
The American Flag by Lloyd G. Douglas
The Star-Spangled Banner by Debbie L. Yanuck

After reading these books, the boys usually did an art activity to coincide with them.

Marble Painting the colors of the flag

Thank god for those green trays.  That's all I can say.

Rip-and-Tear Stars and Stripes

This one was not so much fun for little Sawyer who struggles still with his
fine motor skills.  But he finished it, and for that, I am grateful!

And the finished results (sans flash since mine died on me, and now I have to buy a new one. :(

Hayden's flag and colors (we decided to use 13
stars for the original 13 colonies because A. we don't
have enough stars for 50 states on each flag, and B.
neither kid wants to go through that many stickers
anyway!

Sawyer's flag and colors
(I love how he bunched all the stars together at the
bottom).

Language Arts:
We started using the curriculum, Learning Language Arts Through Literature, over the summer and decided to stay with it for Hayden right now.  Sawyer will start it again in a couple of months once I've had the opportunity to go through some basic phonics, letter reviewing, etc. with him.

Sawyer's Language Arts:

ABC Arc.  The goal here is for Sawyer to pick out the letters in ABC order and
match them to the letter in the arc in 3 minutes or less.  Once he can do that, we'll
switch it to getting all the letters in reverse in less than 3 minutes.

Working on the -at family.

Letter Aa maze found at www.education.com.

Leftovers from last year.  He uses his do-a-dot markers to find the letter (in this
case, the letters M and S) in the sentence.

Cookie Sheet Challenge #1
  Matching letter magnets to the capital letters on the sheet.

Lacing Letters.  Working on our fine motor skills.

We can't just cross out a word that we find.  We have to circle it too.  :)

Cookie Sheet Challenge #2
This time with lowercase letters.

Illustrating a book for a story he is supposed to come up with.  I think the actual
story got lost in the complexity of the drawings he made.  Ha!

Hayden's Language Arts:

Working on beginning blends and making words.

Context Reading Activity (except he could actually read the words so it was
more of a "match the picture to the word" activity).

Creative expression activity.  Hayden had to look at the picture and tell what
he thought was happening.  Then he had to make up a story about the girl in
the picture, thinking of what probably happened before and after.

Finished story.

Stick puppets to go along with the easy reader he had for the week.

"Chad and Brad", the early reader for the week, and a sequencing activity
Hayden was working on next to it.

Math:

Sawyer's Math:

Sadly, I didn't spend a LOT of time on Sawyer yet with math.  I introduced Sawyer to RightStart Math this year, but I'm still trying to figure out how to do both boys in a reasonable amount of time.  I find that I'm having to alternate days with them right now.  While I'm working with one, the other works on the computer or with worksheet/workbook type activities that they can do on their own.  Since both boys are still very dependent, this is proving to be a challenge.  Sawyer did a lot of Mathseeds these past few weeks.  He likes it a lot, and he IS learning.  So, I'm going with it for now.  

Sorting activity with wooden stars.

Sorting activity with geometric shapes.

Adding objects and writing in the correct number beside them.

The page after the one he was doing above.  For someone
who can't hold a pencil or crayon correctly, I'm kind of
impressed with his handwriting skills.

Hayden's Math:

Hayden is also doing RightStart Math.  We never finished Level B last year because we stopped so many times to do holiday activities and such, but he's kind of ahead of the game.  So, I'm not real concerned about it.  I'm hoping we can finish up Level B by Christmas, just to give us a goal to work towards...

Adding 2-digit numbers to a multiple of 10.

Finding the number of cubes in a picture, and constructing arrays of cubes
from a 2-dimensional picture.

Learning to mentally add 2-digit numbers, and using the hundreds chart to
help and/or check his answers.  This was tough!  We might be spending a few
days on this one.

Additional Subjects and Activities:

We finally finished up our butterfly lap books. Yay!  We also did one other activity to go along with it.  It took a couple of days because I also incorporated into a writing lesson for Hayden, and it was a lot for him to write.

Completed lapbooks!  Sawyer's is on the left, and Hayden's is on the right.

Inside Saywer's lapbook.

Inside Hayden's lapbook.

Butterfly Life Cycle Activity:

We used a paper plate as the "cycle" and divided it into four parts.  For each stage, we used 3 dimensional objects to glue into each part.  For the egg, a pom-pom on a leaf. For the caterpillar, dried pasta colored with a black marker.  For the chrysalis, a twig and cotton ball fluffed up.  And for the adult butterfly, tissue paper and a pipe cleaner.

Hayden's finished project

Close up of the writing activity part.

Another activity that I'm doing just with Hayden is a dinosaur lap book.  I'm teaching a class on discovering dinosaurs at our homeschool co-op on Tuesdays that he wanted to be a part of, but another class that he wanted to take conflicted with it.  So, I told him we could do it at home.  That way, he could take advantage of both classes.  

Each week, we'll do a lesson and activity that will have a mini book to go along with it that can go into the lap book.  The lessons that we've done so far are:  becoming a junior paleontologist, dinosaur classification, and timeline of the dinosaur era. 

Junior Paleontologists
Hayden didn't actually get to participate in this activity.
These are the co-op kiddos.  However, he's done this kind
of thing multiple times at home.  So, he's looking forward
to doing it again at some point.

Creating a dinosaur from q-tips after learning about dinosaur classification.

The bird-hipped dinosaurs

The lizard-hipped dinosaurs

The finished dinosaur (sideways.  Sorry about that).

Creating a geologic time jar by making each time period a different layer of dirt.

Hayden's Geologic Time Jar
For the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous Periods, he used different types of dirt.
A layer of gold glitter to signify the end of the dinosaurs.
White flour (we ran out of types of dirt) for the Cenozoic Era.
Green glitter for the evolution of humans.
And we added a couple of play-doh fossils (blue) for good measure.

Last, but not least, for the start of the year, is something new that I learned about at the FPEA Homeschool Convention in Orlando.  Little Passports is a fun way to learn about geography and other cultures around the world (or here in the United States).  It starts off with the kids receiving a package in the mail that includes a suitcase filled with a map, passport, activity sheet, letter from Sophia and Sam (the two kids who "travel the world" and send stuff to us), and a picture of Sam and Sophia.  They visit a different country each month, and the boys can go online to learn about the country through games and activities. 

The boys received their suitcase in the mail and immediately dove into it.
I'm really excited about this for them!  They solved coded messages to figure
out the ages of Sam and Sophia, and they also figured out the first country
that the two will be visiting - Brazil!  They can't wait to get their next package
in the mail!