First Day of Second Grade!!

Look at my baby....she is a SECOND grader! When did that happen??!!

She picked out her back to school outfit and was ready for our first day of second grade homeschooling and also using parts of the k12 online school program!

 

Hasn't she grown SO much since last year? It is insane! She did it without my permission again! We didn't set any alarms this morning, but we were up by 7am and fed, dressed, and working at 8am. While last year's first day EVER went well, today was superb. She seems to love the combined "Well Trained Mind" and online formats blended together. It went much smoother and faster than last year's start. We were done by lunch (that she prepared).

Valiant and Gift did great. Gift napped most of the morning, and Valiant either hung out with us, or was off playing or being very mischievous lol!

I need to go and do some lesson planning work, but I plan to come back and update - more pics from today, and this summer. I caught some great summer moments on camera! I hope to get around to reading blogs again too! You all always inspire!

Much love and happy "New Year"to ALL!!

Ummm, what happened to summer and my plans? HA!

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee'rrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeee baaaaaak!

Ok, so obviously I stopped blogging this summer. Oye! Also, we never really finished "Along the Alphabet Path" (see the below posts). Maybe next summer! Lovely was either out of town or at camp about 5 weeks (added up together) of our summer. I do have some catch up posts to do - but we never made it through the alphabet. But...that is the beauty of our schedule - we'll save those plans for later!

Ok, let me do a "Part I" First day of School post. Keep reading! I'll get back in the habit - promise!!!

Welcome Back!!!

Bb and Cc Week Highlights

Ok Blogger - Why are you messing with me? Why are you making my artwork sideways?? Boo!

Anyways! We also completed B and C week. So, let us review our combined letter week.

First - our focus on the letter Bb:

Can you tell these lovely kids are creating the letter B?

We adore our next door neighbors, and they joined us for much of our activities for Bb and Cc.

We read some great books together:


The Tale of Benjamin Bunny
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
The Runaway Bunny
Bear Snores On
Blueberries for Sal



We also read about St. Bernadette!



For our art study, we studied Thomas Eakins' The Champion Single Sculls (click here .). It had lots of detail to take note of, comment on, and with 4 involved kids, a great discussion on the possible story behind the picture. The kids actually made up their own story! See below for interpretations on the painting:

(I love the alligator addition to the painting lol!!)

Love the detail!

Love the vision!!

Love the dedication!!

 What was so great, was how so many ages were blending together to read, learn, narrate, and interpret together from our books to our art. Look at this next picture - what a GREAT picture of learning together!

Ages pictured - age 1, age 2, age 3, age 5, age 7 

Working on their paintings...

Letter Cc

We also jumped into the letter Cc. We attempted to get a picture of the kids making a C, but it just did not turn out right. LOL I need to see if my girls can re-attempt the letter.

We did more reading and acting out of stories.

Corduroy
Curious George
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
The Cat in the Hat

We also read about St. Catherine of Sienna!

Our art study for Cc was a segment (the Cat under the table) of the painting Joseph Interpreting the Dreams of His Fellow Prisoners ( here).

It was so great discussing this cat with kids of different ages, and I'm SO impressed with their interpretations. I really wish the pics would post correctly. Take note of the cat's facial expressions, and the children's interpretations:

I am BEYOND impressed!!!!!

I love what we are doing this summer!!!!!!!! Thank you Serendipity for all these ideas and lessons!

More of Aa Week...

I'm not sure why the above interpretation of Paul Cezanne's Apples (Click here)  is sideways. but that is blogger for you.

Part of the Waldorf style method I'm doing this summer includes living books, art study, and more. The girls took some time to study Cezanne's painting online and we discussed the colors, what we liked about it, and then Lovely tried to recreate it by memory and her interpretation of it. I liked what she came up with!

We also do some refresher work in math and geography. 

More to come of Bb and Cc week!

Homeschool Mother's Journal - Summer Edition

 



In my life this week….
My husband and I are celebrating our 10th Wedding Anniversary. I feel so blessed with him in my life, corner, and as my team mate. We're not perfect, but we are perfect for each other!

My favorite thing this week was…

...having such a FULL week. I feel so blessed. We got out and did things most every day this week. Highlights include the Natural History Museum today, sharing a grilled Memorial Day dinner outside with the dearest people, an all day playdate on Tues, a pool party on Thursday, and as an anniversary gift, my husband had our house deep cleaned on Wednesday, so the kids and I spent a good 5 hours at a local play gym.We came home to utter heaven. I am so grateful. 


Places I’m going…

...to bed soon. HA! This week was so busy that I'm exhausted. Those clean, crisp sheets are calling me....

.
Things I’m working on…


...paperwork for the K12 curriculum (see link on my sidebar). Lovely (my daughter's blog name) got accepted into the home education program. I've been playing around with the online features (not all of it is online, but for now it is all I can see until our 6 boxes of supplies arrive). I THINK I'm excited. I mean, I am excited...learning always has me excited, and the pros to this program are FANTASTIC. I still have some worries, but this is a good grade (2nd grade) to try it out on as we won't have to do any testing (for our state). I can see the program work without that stress. What is exciting is that Lovely has academic summer camps she can do for free, as well as some other "fun" summer learning activities that will help her get to know the program. I love knowing we can do some more learning this summer in new ways!

Books I’m reading…


Real Learning: Education in the Heart of the Home by Elizabeth Foss



A quote, a video, a link or pic to share…

I came home to our deep cleaned, and even our toilet paper looked like a 5 Star hotel!!!

 Much love!!!!

Aa - Along the Alphabet Path

Good Afternoon!

I am finding a nice minute to blog our start to our journey Along the Alphabet Path and though we are not done (I still need to read our saint and fairy stories and do some art work and writing) we have enjoyed exploring Aa this week. We'll be moving quickly since this is a summer plan, so we will also be doing B and C this week before VBS starts up.

While I don't have pictures of our apple pie (we ate it too fast!), here are some other pictures of our Awesome Aa exploration! I'll add more pics as we go.

Here, we attempted the letter A with all three kids, but little Gift (our son) doesn't seem to get the memo:

The big hit (and I forgot to snap pics) was a scavernger hunt with baskets to find items in our home that start with the letter Aa. We found an American Girl Doll:

an angel....

an alligator....

"A" cute little boy...

We also read some great books:

We love Amelia Bedelia! She cracks us up!

We made our apple pie and did some GREAT geography (we are still building on it, we look at a country mentioned a day) from this book: How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World.I can't say check this book out fast enough! Go get it from the library. It is a great book! Great for science.

Other great stories we have read nightly or daily have been:

Angels, Angel Everywhere
Angelina Ballerina
The Art Lesson
The Little Airplane
and my childhood copy of The Value of Love: The Story of Johnny Appleseed

We also had an Aa picnic...we had apples....

and Aa shaped sandwiches....

Even little Gift had an Aa lunch!! Look carefully...

somehow our cheese even looked like an A:
 

It was a lovely way to relax and start our summer Along the Alphabet Path....

 

Homeschool Mama's Journal

In my life this week...

Swim lessons, potty training, a morning at the park, a morning at a play gym, cooking, cleaning, and maybe a nap? I need one! I feel run down....

 

 In our homeschool this week...

Our first week of Serendipity's  "Along the Alphabet Path". We started with the letter "A". Check back in a few days for pics and a write up (if you dare lol...will I get around to posting? hehe). We'll probably do 2-3 letters a week (much faster than the normal use of the "Path" - but this is just for summer learning) that bring us all together age wise. We've had so much fun so far! 

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing...

We hope to get out and about this weekend and see some museums or hike, or work on our garden this weekend. We are so behind!! lol

 My favorite thing this week was…

The fun "A" scavenger hunt we did the other day. The girls were SO excited. I never expected this start to our summer! I've also enjoyed napping, relaxing, and not doing much of anything lol!

What’s working/not working for us…

 Summer break is WORKING for us so far...hahaha!

Homeschool questions/thoughts I have…

We have decided to go with the k12 curriculum for next year. I'm both excited and nervous as I LOVED how we did things this year. I'm just intrigued by the learning support and FREE materials for every subject and project we have and how many of the sources are what we did this year with "The Well Trained Mind".  I just wonder what the personal cost will be working so close with the state. 

A photo, video, link, or quote to share…

I did some catch up posts below of our final weeks of the main school year...scroll down and see! Also a picture thought to share....

My summer swimmers! PE at its best!

I am hoping to make the rounds and meet more of you!! Thanks for your kind words!!!

(Don’t forget to stop by The Homeschool Chick and The Preschool Corner to be encouraged by other journal entries or to add one of your own.)

Natural History and Science Discoveries

Lovely looking through "night vision" goggles....(see next pic)

The view in her goggles (you see an alligator, possum and other animals)

Using a pulley

Microscope discoveries

native turtle

SSSSssssssssss....

Counting tree rings...

Bee Hive

Discovery Club House

log discovery

And reason #530 I love homeschooling together?