Organizing Our Homeschool

It's been a while since I've posted! Kept forgetting to upload pics and my phone is being silly about sending emails out. Anyway, wanted to share our organization for our home-school. We don't have a dedicated room since we live in a small townhouse so space is limited. 

These 2 rubber maid type drawer sets come in handy! I have 1 drawer for each child with their workbooks and other daily items in them. On the other side i have one with craft/art supplies then the other 2 are basically stuff we have nowhere else for! On top we have our globe,pencil holder and my daily teaching books. 

Up above the stove in our kitchen I have a bunch of craft supplies and a few other things that i don't like to keep out all the time. 

For the bulk of our curriculum I have a crate labeled with weeks 1-34 (since that is what My Father's World is setup for). In each folder I have

The weekly lesson plan grid

• a list of supplies
• time line pieces
• worksheets for math and note booking
• sentence strips for Bible memory verses in the weeks we start new ones. 

We have a calendar wall for the children setup so we can practice days of the week, counting, weather and reading a calendar. It's a bit different looking now since it's been moved a few times but same general idea.

The last thing not listed is the shelf in my closet. There I have all the other books that we will use throughout the year. Not on a daily basis or maybe later in the year. 

So hopefully this can help some of you with storage/space issues! We have gotten creative and tried to keep it from overrunning our house but as a homeschool family I guess it tends to after a while! 

Weeks 5-7

Haven't updated lateyl so here we got!

Science

Weeks 4&5

we learned about the solar system! One fun activity was learning how BIG Betelguese (pronounced beetle juice) is in comparison to the sun. My little cowboy is holding a 1 inch circle of yellow paper to represent the size of the sun. My little artist is by the pine tree. The distancc between the 2 is the diameter of betelguese!

They were also fascinated by the fact that they wouldn't be able to move because the gravity there is SO strong!

Weeks 6&7

Week 6 we learned about yeast! We tried putting yeast, sugar and water into a glass bottle and then a baloon on top. After a few minutes the balloon was filled with the gas from the yeast mixture. This took 2 attempts. Our first try had the balloon fly off! On thursday we tried again with salt instead of sugar to see if it would work but the yeast needed the sugar for food so it didn't make any gas this time.

 

Week seven was bread week! We made play dough on wednesday with flour, salt, water and cream of tartar.I've made play dough before without the cream of tartar and it came out so much nicer this time! Not a sticky mess like before.

 

 

 

Bible

Weeks 4 &5 we learned

John 8:12

"I am the light of the world, who belives in me will never walk in darkness and he who comes to me will have the light of life."

To go with this we decorated a candle and also made a sun to hang on the windows.

First Two Weeks

As the title suggests we finished our first two weeks! So here's an update. Next week is off for the Artist to do just that. She's going to an art camp. I didn't do much with the littles this week so I will probably do that while the oldest is at camp.

The Artist:

History

The first week was a lot of intro stuff. We went over the world and US map, found where we live and colored the maps after labeling the continents. We briefly discussed vikings on thursday.

The second week we talked about Christopher Columbus and added him to our timeline. The first section of "American Pioneers and Patriots" was read and we learned about Pedro and Catalina as they journeyed from Spain to the "new world".

On Wednedsay all three helped to make three boats, the nina pinta and santa maria.

We tried for a while to get them to stay up with the sails.

Finally emded up taking the sails off and just letting the boat float. LOL They still had a LOT of fun!

Math

Last week we started BJU Math 3. We finished the first chapter Thursday. It was mainly a review of the strategies for adding, subtracting and solving word problems.

(thanks to the little cowboy who decided to play with the camera for getting the pic! LOL)

Latin

This was new to us both but we started Prima Latina the second week. I wasn't sure how my little artist would like it but she seems to enjoy it! We talked about the alphabet, greetings and a few vocabulary words.

Science

The first week we talked about what scientists do and tried a little experiment with floating eggs in plain vs salt water. She was surprised to find that the egg in the salt water floated!

This second week we started Usborne's "Science with Air" On Thursday we tried an experiment to see if an empty bottle is really empty by pushing it down under the water in our kitchen sink.I was surprised at how much fun she had with something so simple! In the end my little Artist learned that there was air in the bottle even though it looked empty.

Language Arts and Reading

We've been reviewing cursive as well as manuscript writing so far just for some extra practice. Spelling will start nxt week and our Primary Language lessons I think the week after that.

 For reading I let her pick one of her chapter books. She chose a Scholastic one called "Pink Princess Rules the School"I FINALLY Figured out why she wasn't wanting to read though! I knew she had comprehension issues but just asking questions wasn't doing it. SO last week I wrote first, next last on the white board. After she read some to me (aloud) we stopped and I asked her to tell me what happened. We wrote a sentence on the board before continuing. After a few more pages we wrote another sentence and again at the end of the chapter. Then sort of worked together to summarize what happened. IT WORKED! Now she's reading fine for school. Wants to read ALL 3 books for bed time (each picks a story) plus anything that needs read for history or science! She's not sitting and reading on her own free time yet but she is reading whenever we get books out together! Woohoo! This is the child that for the past year I've been trying to get to read with incentives and a variety of other ways and nothing worked. Now she WANTS TO READ!

The Cowboy and the Princess

For the first week we talked about school, read stories about school and also the ABC's. We've sort of continued those books into this week but also started talking about the letter A.  I have some pictures on my phone of them making froot loop necklaces nad other things but my phone isn't letting me send/upload them right now so maybe I'll post them later.

New School Year!

And LOTS of changes! I've finally got a computer and internet again. WOOHOO! So We have finished one week of school. Decided to go with a year round schedule (one change there). After having june off I felt we were ready for some order and kids around here aren't out til after lunch anyway. SO we decided to go ahead and start July 2nd with a 3 week on 1 week off schedule.

Curriculum:
3rd Grade: The Artist (8yo dd)
MFW Adventures for Bible, History, Science, Music, Art
Math is BJU Math 3
LA: Primary Language Lessons
Spelling: Spelling Power
Latin: Prima Latina
Handwriting: Will be practiced through a variety of ways including a Scholastic Cursive practive book.
Reading: Lots of books! Anything I can get her to read for now until she gets more confident. Then we'll start on the list I have.

Preschool: The Cowboy(4yo ds) and the Princess 2.5 yo dd)
I put my own schedule together with a theme and letter for each week. We'll get books from our home library and the public one plus lots of arts and crafts!
Since we have our internet back we'll use Starfall.com too.
Rod and Staff About Three workbook series (Mr. Cowboy will fly through these but he likes them.)

First Day Events

We learned about the Pledge of Alegiance and for our "book basket" she read a book about the flag.

We made a patriotic snack to celebrate our country. Rice Krispy Treats are MUCH easier to buy! LOL BUT all 3 had fun and we had quite the mess of a kitchen making our red white and blue rice krispies. Perfect time to start our year of US history when celebrating our country's Independence Day/

The Cowboy and Princess decorated pages with the letter of their first name on them. Miss princess only colored the one corne while the other had the whole thing colored in quickly. They worked on those and some of their Rod and Staff workbooks while I finished up our first day with the artist.

We had a WONDERFUL first day and week. Completely loving the My Father's World curriculum. Such a change from our previous workbook style but miss artist and I are really glad we made the change. Even the two little ones join us to listen to what we are learning. Here's to a great start to a new year!

Apple Orchard!

As promised here's the pics from our apple orchard field trip! When we arrived we all piled on the hay ride to head out to the apple orchards!

Wayne and Hunter on the hay ride

Natalie

Chelseeea

Me and the girls picking apples for a snack. YUM

After the hay ride we went into the cider house and saw how they put the apples into the machine to clean them and then crush them up for cider!

In another room was a machine that washed aples to be packaged. They went into tubes that took them to bags and a conveyor belt to be boxed up and sent to the stores.

After the tour we went to another building where they had animals and a hay maze! Chelsea enjoyed the maze while the little ones liked the animals!

The turkey kept talking to Hunter. He got a BIG kick out of that!

Natalie and Hunter watching the animals.

Overall we had a blast and learned a LOT about how we can have apples all year long and how they grow apples and make cider. Each child got an apple cider sipper, sticker and coloring book before we left. This is one trip we won't soon forget!

New blogger!

Well, I finally did it! I'v ebeen thinking about starting my own blog to share our family's happenings and our homeschooling experience.

A little about me, I'm Jacquie, a mom to three wonderful children, my oldest, chelsea is 7. Hunter is 3 and natalie will be 2 in november! It's hard to belive that one!

We are a homeschooling family and even though we have our ups and downs we LOVE this lifestyle. I'm SO thankful that God turned my heart around to the idea. I used to be VERY anti homeschool. A year and a half ago I started thinking about the possibility of homeschooling my oldest who was in public kindergarten. At first I just brushed the idea aside thinking I was crazy to even have that thought enter my head. But God continued to put the idea into my head and so I began researching and talked to some of the ladies at my church who homeschool their children. We made it through 1st grade and now this year I am enjoying teaching preschool to the younger two and 2nd grade to teh oldest!

My blog title? Well there's my husband, wayne and I and our three kids. That makes 5. Our last name is pronounced like the number 4. So, we have 5 fours!

So there you have it, a little bit of me to get started. I plan to add details of our recent apple orchard field trip soon!