Friday, September 16, 2011

Two weeks of school in five days!

These past few weeks have been busy!  We are finally getting into a good groove with school...despite traveling and being sick.  I haven't started all subjects yet...waiting on Science until we aren't as busy.  

Just a little FYI on what we do and what works for us...we don't do sit down school on Friday...ever.  We try to go out and about and do "field trips".  Last week we met some friends at the zoo...this week...we might just get caught up from being sick...and I might work on transferring seasons of clothes in closets.  

On average we spend 45 minutes of intro activities...bible, devotions, memory verse, chores etc.  
We then spend an hour-hour and fifteen minutes on core subjects: math, grammar/English, states for Jocelyn; reading, spelling, and Math for Katelyn; letters for Easton.  We then spend the next hour doing fun activities...soon it will be science or themed units.  We do Music Monday, Art Tuesday, cooking and Soon-to-be Science Wednesday, and game day on Thursday.  In the afternoons I work with Jocelyn on reading and spelling.

Here are a few things we worked on these past few weeks:

Bible Verse & Devotions:
This week we reviewed the story of Noah and the ark.  In our devotions we discussed promises and how Jesus promised Noah that he would never flood the Earth again.  A rainbow will be a sign of his promise "the Noahic covenant".

The girls' Bible verse was:
Matthew 5:8:  Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Here is a video of my lovelies saying their verse!

We used the Seed's Family Worship music to help the girls memorize the verse.  LOVE their music!  You can check it out here:
We did several different activities during the past two weeks.  I won't bore you with the details, but one that the kids enjoyed doing was an estimation activity.  Jocelyn filled up a container with counting cubes.  She then had our family and our mail lady guess how many cubes were in the container.  
 She recorded their guesses.
She graphed out their guesses so she could try to visually tell who was the closest.
She then figured out the difference of the two closest people (Sean and Katelyn) to see who was the closest.
Katelyn ended up winning...dad was in 2nd...
Easton was in last place.
I asked him to give me a sad face...that is what I got.
Music Monday:
I taught the kids several hymns on their recorders.  Only joking.  I attempted to teach the kids proper hand position of how to at least hold the recorders.  Only Jocelyn caught on.  The other two just didn't have the finger strength and their fingers weren't long enough.  We then just focused on listening they could play and then I would say stop and so on. 
Art Tuesday:
My kids LOVE any type of art activity.  Jocelyn received quiet a few different art activities for her birthday.  The first activity was shrinky-dinks...really cool activity.  You color an image on plastic...throw it in the oven and they shrink!


The second were window clings.  

Cooking Wednesday: 
We made the worst yogurt smoothies.  Check out my yesterday's post for details on that!

Game day Thursday:
This will be a bit tricky with a 2 1/2 year and a grabby little baby.  We played Pictureka which the girls and I loved...just annoying having the extra grabbers.  We then played a few matching games.  Easton felt neglected and I don't blame him, so I played a few little kids games after I was done playing with the girls.  No whiners today...as each of us one a game!

Other activities:
We started a daily journal.  The girls write what they learned in school each day and draw a picture related to that lesson.


Easton loves playing on my iPad and iPod.  Whatever device he can get his hands on.  His favorite is a train matching game.  He matches up letters and then the word is read to him.  
Well that is it.  We had a pretty good 5 days of school...loving how we have started this school year.  I wake up excited to start the day and see what we can get accomplished.  

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