I have a new favorite children's book - On Beyond Zebra by Dr. Seuss. The boys begged for this book over & over again during our Zebra unit. The story is about a boy who is proclaiming his knowledge about the alphabet all the way to "z is for zebra." His friend then expands his world by taking him on beyond zebra to all sorts of new letters & creatures in his own imaginative alphabet. Some of the highlights of our zebra unit were making a zebra mask... ...making zebra pudding (layered vanilla & chocolate pudding)... ...learning lots of zebra trivia, cutting & pasting animals on an African map, & enjoying our stack of "zebra" books from the library. We considered the question - are zebras white with black stripes or vice versa? (A question I had never thought about before!) It seems that most people agree they are black with white stripes.
In other homeschool studies, I switched AJ from the MFW first grade math to CLE (Christian Light Education) first grade math curriculum. The MFW math felt a bit disjointed and light for me and my math-loving boy. I felt like it needed a lot of supplementing to be a complete program. CLE is much more of a deliberate, workbook-based approach. I'm hoping to lay a good foundation of memorizing his facts in the remaining months of first grade and perhaps move on to a different program next year. MFW recommends Singapore in second grade. I'm a bit overwhelmed with all the choices out there, but, at the end of the day, I guess I just need to pick one. CJ continues to plug away at the MFW kindergarten math and phonics. Math is a breeze for him, as is learning letter sounds. We continue to work on sounding out words, but it isn't his favorite part of the day and I'm okay with that at his age. JJ is always delighted for "his lesson" and begs for more & more of my stash of freebie worksheets from online. I try to print out a few worksheets relating to our unit theme for him, and he just can't get enough of it. (I'm thinking it may be more the one-on-one mommy time :) Some of my favorite go-to sites are as follows: -All Kids' Network (I like their realistic pictures) -Confessions of a Homeschooler (love Erica's letter of the week curriculum-for free!) -Homeschool Creations (full of resources) -1+1+1=1 (great lapbooking resource) -Our Little Monkeys (lots of great printables if you own the MFW Kindergarten curriculum) Thanks for stopping by & have a blessed weekend! This post is linked to Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly wrap-up.
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It has been awhile since I've "rambled" about our homeschooling endeavors. Here's a brief glimpse into what's been going on around the homestead.
We finished up our penguin unit right before Christmas. We took 2 weeks off for Christmas. I had an ambitious to-do list over break, which included things like make 12 freezer meals, organize EJ's clothing, reorganize toys, wash bedding , scrub kitchen walls, and finalize the details of my "7 Days of Creation" co-op class that I'm teaching this semester. I was able to cross off most of things on the list, with the exception of getting play dough made for my co-op class. As I made my freezer meals, I found my new favorite freezer meal that I'm eager to share here on my blog soon! On the school front, we've hopped right into our new unit on kangaroos. We've been soaking up lots of kangaroo facts through all the books we're reading. The most exciting part was, of course, learning just how far they can jump. The boys were delighted as we measured off 25 feet across our basement and realized a kangaroo could jump further than the length of the basement. They were also proud as peacocks to win a jumping a contest against Mommy (and I didn't even let them win!). One fun book we've discovered with this unit is Animals Should Definitely NOT Wear Clothing by Judi Barrett. And, thanks to JJ snipping the cassette tape from the library, we now own our very own copy (translation: the library made us pay $15.95 for the book & tape, but allowed us to keep it and the ruined cassette tape). My personal favorite page was the chicken trying to lay its egg with clothing. Check it out if you're curious - it is a simple, cute book. We will wrap up kangaroos the beginning of next week and move onto zebras. Thanks for stopping by! This post is linked to the weekly wrap-up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Our household has been busy with our new litter of mini schnauzer puppies, but we still have had time to get our homeschool studies completed. We finished up our elephant unit by making an elephant paper bag puppet. The elephant puppets are lying on a spider web made by AJ. AJ loves to make things, and I needed a spider web to go along with the song "One Elephant Went Out to Play." (This must be one of the strangest songs ever, but it is catchy.) We used the web and the puppets to play and dance along with the song, and they had "such enormous fun," as the song says. Following elephants, we moved onto penguins. (We are fousing on wild animals for several units.) I must confess I wasn't overly excited about this unit on penguins, but it has turned out to be one of the best yet! We have had a great time learning about a father emperor penguin's commitment to his chick (and the mother's, too, but the father's is truly remarkable). The lesson to go along with the penguin is to show love to everyone, but especially those in our family (as the father emperor penguin does). We discussed how our daddy shows care for us and painted penguin cards for daddy. I was pleased with how their cards turned out. Even MJ (above) had fun joining in the mess. But even better than their paint job was all the things they came up to write inside about how Daddy cares for them. The other exciting part of this unit was a mini-study on icebergs. We made icebergs by freezing water in quart and gallon ziploc bags in irregular shapes. We just plopped them all in 9x13 pan close together. The next day we floated them in the bath tub and dicussed what icebergs are, how they form, and how they are dangerous to ships. The picture didn't turn out to well, but here we are floating our icebergs. There's been lots of "playing penguin" around our house with belly sliding across the kitchen floor, leopard seals chasing unhappy penguin brothers, etc. The dusting of snow we received last night into today gave us even more of a penguin-y feel as we wrapped up our unit.
Looking ahead to next week, I haven't decided yet when our official "Christmas break" begins, but we'll take a few days off. Thanks for stopping by! This post is linked to the weekly wrap-up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. |
AuthorVanessa from Russell Homestead. Follower of the Lord Jesus, wife of my knight in shining armor, mother of 5 wonderful children, and joint-keeper of the Russell homestead. Thanks for stopping by! Archives
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Vanessa Russell
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