Field Trips and Experiential Learning

The children and I have been taking lots of field trips this spring. Lots of times just to the creeks or parks to explore, where they can observe different habitats and the creatures and plants that occupy them. They love doing this.

We've also been working on our regular curriculum, which is going so great. She loves playing school, too, so she is actually teaching Maggie what she learns and is reading to her often.

We will continue homeschooling through the summer months. Annie loves it. Here are some recent photos of the girls enjoying craft time and the SciTech Discovery Center.

Can you believe summer is almost here????








The children and I have been taking lots of field trips this spring. Lots of times just to the creeks or parks to explore, where they can observe different habitats and the creatures and plants that occupy them. They love doing this.

We've also been working on our regular curriculum, which is going so great. She loves playing school, too, so she is actually teaching Maggie what she learns and is reading to her often.

We will continue homeschooling through the summer months. Annie loves it. Here are some recent photos of the girls enjoying craft time and the SciTech Discovery Center.

Can you believe summer is almost here????

Nature/Science School Celebration

We made it to the end of Annie's Nature School Spring Semester. She has learned so much...it seriously impresses me. Here are some photos from the family day! Congratulations Annie!!! We are so proud of you!

Handwriting

Annaliese loves to write. She keeps a little journal and writes whenever she gets a chance. Of course, she's not really spelling any words, but she is using letters and punctuation! I can't get over this little girl's imagination. She knows exactly what she's writing. ;) And she creates these beautiful, thoughtful stories and screenplays! Yesterday it was her idea to make sock puppets...and we're going to make a wooden stage and sew some little curtains so they always have a place to perform. And she told me exactly how we'd build the stage and how we would sew the curtains. Love it. I love how she thinks outside the box in each of her tasks.

I've posted a little sampling of her handwriting here. She's doing a great job.



And we're in desperate need of some sunshine here!! And warm weather again. :) What happened to spring?

Focus on Natural Science

What a big week we've had. Aside from our normal lessons, we have found ourselves reading and learning about natural disasters. Annie became curious about earthquakes and tsunamis since we had been talking about the events in the Pacific.

Learning the value of money is still a focus in math, and she is learning how to form all of her lowercase letters in handwriting.

This past week Annie has been obsessed with drawing, and perfecting, Snow White. She has gotten so good at it...it's precious. I'll have to upload a picture of it soon.

Happy almost Spring!

Learning about Money and Reflections

We are learning about the value of a penny and a nickel, and the term cent. Annaliese caught on quickly to this. However, I think I need to pay with cash more so she actually sees this in the real world. I always tend to use a debit card, so her concept of money is probably a little vague. When she and Maggie play "store", they are always sliding a card to pay and typing in a pin number. Ha!


We are also learning about reflections and building those on a geoboard...she loves this. As we're working with the geoboard I throw in the terms symmetrical and reflection. Another thing that has helped her grasp this concept is working with her favorite things...pictures of butterflies!


Over the past couple of weeks she has moved into the stage where she tries to read every sign and word she sees. This is so cute. She is actually doing a great job. Of course, we haven't gotten anywhere near learning about the crazy rules of the English language. So, when she's trying to sound out the word, height, for example, it makes no sense to her. I can't say it makes much sense to me either, though.

Happy First Day of March!! :)

Addition, Place Value and Symmetry

It just blows me away to see how much Annie can learn at such a young age. She is reading books, writing beautiful letters and diving into math. It is so fun and such a blessing for me to do this with her.

So this week we're still learning about place value, tens and ones. These place-value cards are so neat. I wish I would have used them with my second graders when I taught.


Today we picked these dandelions and incorporated lots of different concepts. We grouped them in tens, counted them by 2s, talked about the soil outside, danced with them, and Annie told a story about them. I love days like that...when it just flows.


Today was also the day we introduced the Geometry reflector and talked about symmetry. Annaliese cut out several different shapes and we folded them along their lines of symmetry, while also reviewing parallel lines.


I feel like we're finally getting back into a good groove with our schedule. Every day is definitely an adventure!! And sometimes a CrAzY one!!!

Part-Whole Circles and Recording Tens

After a couple of weeks of road-tripping and focusing on handwriting and reading, we jumped right back into math. We've been working on solving story problems by partitioning into parts. According to RightStart, research in the US shows that kindergartners who use the part-whole circle concept are better able to solve problems. The one we are using is a modification of one used by Japanese teachers. Here is Annaliese practicing this application as I read her the story problems.




We've also begun discussing place value. This week we are focusing on recording and recognizing written 10s. Our abacus and place-value card manipulatives are excellent for this.

And, of course, no homeschooling day is complete without little Maggie doing something memorable. This day she was a black swan princess on her green bike...and of course, pulling her green frog behind her (she had it tied to her bike)! ;)