Friday, April 28, 2017

Weekly Wrap-up

It's the end of our first week home. It felt a lot more like a long weekend than homeschooling. But I suppose that's what it's supposed to be right now as we give Monkey some time to decompress and adjust to being back home. There will be plenty of time to get to more school work later. For now, we will keep it light and fun.

We took the kids to an aquarium. They love getting to be hands-on with all the animals. Monkey got to mostly hold a snake; it was too big to fit on her shoulders!


Monkey absolutely loves the bird cage! You can feed the birds and they flock to you when you come in! 




Bear had a field trip with her preschool class and Monkey came along. I didn't get pictures of most of the trip, but we did get to see this little foal. An employee where we were (the horses were next door) said he thinks it's about 3-5 days old, based off of when he first started seeing it. 



We spent a lot of time doing puzzles and playing games, and reading on the couch!


Lots of crafting took place, as well. Here the girls were making creations out of clay and craft sticks. They plan to make a bunch of fun things and set up a table to sell them. 


One of the highlights of the week for Monkey was that we acquired two new sensory toys this week. I need to get some good pics of them. She got a tactile ball to bounce and sit on, and a ride on toy that uses your arms to move. She totally loves both! 

My project this week is to get the school room cleaned up and organized. I regret that it has become a catch-all for mess and clutter over the winter since we weren't using it for schooling. Flooding in the basement necessitating a quick evacuation of the playroom didn't help! I now have it mostly cleaned out and am moving on to re-organizing all of our stuff. 

I'm also in the midst of finalizing our plans for next year and will be hitting purchase on most in the next few days. I can't wait to post about our plans for next year, but that's going to wait until it's all in!

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Back to Homeschooling!

So Monkey went to public school this year for 3rd grade. While she had a good experience while she was there, it didn't end up being the right thing for her right now, so she is coming back home! I'll be keeping up this blog so we can track our homeschool experience!

For now, we're taking it kind of easy. Mostly math, reading, and science with little bits of everything else here and there and a LOT of play and time outside!

We're using:

MONKEY - 3rd

MATH: Beast Academy 3
SCIENCE : Fluid Dynamics lab station, Steve Spangler box, Kiwi Crate, Usborne books, and whatever else catches her eye!
HISTORY: SOTW 1 - listening in the car
SPELLING: AAS - We're backing up to review the key concepts we learned in 1 & 2 and then we'll move on to level 3 when we start back with a fuller load.

Everything else is going to wait until she's ready for more :)

BEAR - Pre-K

MATH : Mathematical Reasoning Beginning B
HANDWRITING : HWT pre-k
PHONICS: OPGTR
Kumon workbooks and lots and lots of read-alouds

Monkey and Bear on Earth Day at a March for Science.



Fluid Dynamics. Experimenting with hydrogen peroxide and potatoes.


She made her own experiment resulting in a "green swamp with potato rocks!"