Next Week's Plan

This week went really well over at our house. We managed to get back into some semblance of a routine and had a lot of fun along the way. I kept the week low key and mainly focused on getting the kids used to routine days again.
Now on to next week!!! The plan:
Monday: Have a back to school bash! We are going to have a special breakfast, make a height wall to track how much the kids grow each year, make display areas for each of the kids to display work they are proud of (rather than on my fridge), make name tracers for the kids to practice writing their names each day, and introduce the kids to their new curriculum and school schedule.

Tuesday: Start working up to our full routine. We'll get up and get dressed, and clean bedrooms then have breakfast. After we clean up breakfast we'll do our morning devotional then do workboxes 1-4.

Wednesday: Is our day off/fun day. If we have gotten our art, PE, and music appreciation kits yet we'll start on those. If not, it will just be a complete day off, as starting on September 7th wednesdays will be co-op day.

Thursday: Do everything from Tuesday as well as add in boxes 5-7.

Friday: Do everything from Tuesday and Thursday plus add in boxes 8-10. Friday will be our first day doing our FULL routine. It will set us up for our first full week of school that will start September 5th.
Now the question is.....how will it all REALLY turn out?

Sidewalk Paint!

One of our activities for our first week of school was to do sidewalk paint. I put cornstarch and some food coloring drops in each cup, then headed outside on the grass with a water bottle, a spoon, and 3 paintbrushes to mix up our paint.

Here it is in all its colorful glory!!! Some of the colors didn't come out the color I was shooting for, but I wasn't anal enough to go and fix them. The kids had fun trying to predict what color the paint would be when we mixed each cup.

I made all the kids put on clothes that I wouldn't mind getting ruined, since I didn't know if they would get paint all over their clothes and if they did if it would EVER wash out.
We had 3 different sized paintbrushes to use. The largest one worked the best for this activity. The kids rotated brushes every 5 minutes.

Most of our painting was just lines, blobs, and running around the driveway with a very saturated brush and letting it drip and dribble all over the cement.

In the end, each girl actually painted SOMETHING.

Marissa painted a transformer (top) and Audrey painted a rainbow (bottom). We had a fun time and this occupied a good chunk of our morning.

Our "first" week of school

My children are acting out more, they are getting bored more frequently, they are being more whiney. All this screams to me that it's time to get back into school. Now, I don't have school SCHEDULED to start until Labor Day (I know, I know, you are all thinking WHY would you start school on a holiday?!?!!? Well, because for my family it's going to be a normal day with Ben at work and no car). So I had to make a decision: Start school officially this week or wait until Labor Day when we have things scheduled to start? In the end I decided that we would "start school" today but we will be focusing this week on doing fun things. Each day we have an art activity, an outdoor activity, and a "game" to do. This will allow us to get back into the routine of school without going all out. Oh, and the kids will also be doing math, science (we've been "growing" butterflies. A post on them will come after we have released them) and reading which they have been doing already for the last few weeks. I also plan to start the girls on their piano lessons again this week.
If you are interested here is what is on the docket for this week:
Monday: fingerpainting, Riding Bikes, and Chutes and Ladders
Tuesday: Coloring Contest, Go for a Walk, and an Educational Video
Wednesday: Sidewalk Paint, Play in the Sprinkler, Assemble our new Fairy puzzle
Thursday: Playdoh, Make Giant Bubbles, and Ladybug Game
Friday: Cut and Paste activity, Obstacle course, and play the Wii.
All this should make for some fun, low key days that get us back into our school routine.

My First Homeschool Post; AKA Our Curriculum for the Year

Well, here we go. My first official homeschool post. I thought I'd share what we are using this year as our curriculum. As you can see I have laid out MOST of our curriculum on my kitchen table for your viewing pleasure. In addition to what you see here we will be receiving kits for Music Appreciation, Art, PE, Typing, and Spelling in the mail from Harmony Education. Now, let's delve into the stuff you SEE.

Elemental Science (bottom left): Both girls will be doing Elemental Science this year. We're excited to try it out. It looks like a lot of fun and comes highly recommended by my friend. We are doing Biology this year so we'll be studying Animals, the Human Body, and Plants. We have already started our first project of growing butterflies!!!

Singapore Math (top left): Audrey will be doing levels 2A and B. Marissa will be doing 1A and B. Because Harmony Ed required Marissa to start as a 1st grader if we enrolled her I am not going to stress getting through the entire curriculum with her this year. We'll get done what we get done. It's better for her to internalize the concepts than to finish the books. We have the textbooks and workbooks for each level and this year we decided to buy the test books for Audrey.

Music for Little Mozarts (top middle): Both girls will be taking piano this year taught by yours truly. Audrey started last year and is doing really well. I had PLANNED to keep her going all summer so that she'd finish the second set of books, but we didn't get around to it with everything else going on. So she'll have to finish up the second set of books when we start up again. Marissa will start on the first set of books and go from there. Audrey does REALLY well with piano. I think she's got a real natural talent for it. Marissa is very excited to start up. She loves to pretend to play and make up her own songs, which really don't sound too bad!

First Language Lessons (middle of the table): Both girls will start this English book this year. They will learn about verbs, nouns, adjectives, ect. While practicing copy work and memorizing poems.

Preschool Packs (top right): These are for Trent. Thanks to a homeschooling blog I love (http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/) Trent will be learning all 26 letters of the alphabet. There is a pack for each letter. Here are my bags for A and B. We will also be tossing in some fun packs thanks to another site (http://homeschoolcreations.blogspot.com/). Trent is really excited for the Monster Truck pack and the Star Wars Pack. Each pack has many activities such as sorting the Capital and Lowercase letter of the week, counting activities, color matching, shape matching, lacing cards, tracing letters and prewriting activities. They were a lot of work to print, cut, and laminate but worth it as in the end they will have gone through 2 1/2 of my kids.

Story of the World (bottom right): For History this year we've decided to go with Story of the World Volume 2 which covers from the fall or Rome through the beginning of the Renaissance. After skimming through the books I'm really excited to start. The "lessons" are made simple enough for young children to understand the History and written in story format. There are TONS of fun activities in the activity book. We will be doing 4 weeks of learning, followed by a project week where we will do an Activity for each chapter we covered.

Dry Erase Tablets (bottom middle): These are for the girls to practice their handwriting and to do copywork on.

That sums up our curriculum! Once a week the girls will do art and music appreciation with the kits we'll be receiving. PE will be done formally once a week in our Co-op, in addition to our "recess" break at lunch time. Audrey will be doing typing and spelling as well.
It should be a busy busy year filled with lots of fun and learning! I hope it all goes as nicely as it does in my head!

Yes, No, Maybe so....

A friend of mine has suggested that I turn my blog into a homeschooling blog. Hmmmm.....What shall I do? I'm not so good at blogging anymore as it is, however doing a homeschool blog would help me document all the things we do for school. I think I'll have to ponder this a bit more. would anyone be interested in knowing what we do?