Friday Book Basket

Well we are back after a much needed break, a break I took for my sanity and get get things better organized. I did not do such a good job of this over the summer. We all learn from our mistakes right? Anyway we are now off to Europe, Norway being our first stop. So here is our regular book basket posting although a couple days late .  but in any case thanks for reading with us here at Our Days at CA.

Christian Heroes: Then & Now George Muller (Prince’s Lit reading)
Norway (countries of the world)
Thor’s Wedding Day
Seven Natural Wonders of Europe
East of the Sun & West of the Moon
Master Maid
The Race of the Birkebeiners
Snow Treasure *
Odd and the Frost Giants
A Gift for Mama *
Heidi *
The Long Way to the New Land *



*recommended by the Hazells

Still in South America!

We are still in South America. Although we are using the MFW_ECC curriculum (who by the way are having a sell right now) I chose to add in more countries from each continent. To do this I purchased Erica’s EE curriculum, and use some of Jolanthe’s Geography printables to round out our studies. So far we have visited Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador and our last will be Argentina.  
We took the full week in Brazil, but with the other countries we played it by ear and moved on when we were ready. Brazil and Peru were by far our favorite as you can see in this post.
The children liked learning about the ancient Inca City of Machu Picchu and about the Bowler Hat Indian tribe (as they remembered them). They were surprised by all the items that these Natives made using reeds including the floating islands they lived on.
Their favorite part was learning about all of the animals of SA. I used this opportunity to teach them how to do reports, which went great because they were doing and learning about something they loved! Isn’t Home school GREAT! 
Here is what we did in South America

A growing experiment and speculation sheet. Both cups were treated the same except for the plastic wrap that represented the tropical rain forest.


We did the EE animal books of the different countries.


In Peru, Prince and Princessa drew their version of  Machu Picchu.


They colored the children of San Blas Islands in Panama in their traditional clothing.


In Venezuela we learned about the art of pottery and looked at some of the pieces found in the area. Since I could not find a cheap pottery activity for them to do that would go along with the lesson, they colored a picture of pottery.
There are also some good cheap recipes in the Trip around  the world books for some of these countries.
I think the kids are getting restless in SA so we are off to Europe as you are reading this post.
That is our traveling here at Our Days at CA!

Tot-School with a Valentine Twist

We did our valentine theme the week of Valentine rather then the week before. From what I have seen online most do theirs the week before, so I guess that makes us oddballs .
Anyway the girls loved our Valentine week, EVERYTHING was pink and white, but I threw in a little red for Prince.
Lady Bells was a little more cooperative this week but I think it was because of the candy, in fact I bet it was only for the candy!  
So here is Lady Bells' week with Valentine:

Her letter mat with PINK play-dough

She built with Legos, “Valentine Legos”.  I tried to first give her a little tower and then gave her the exact ones and asked her to build her tower like Mommy’s.

We’ll work on this!

Fine Motor Skills with SweetTarts. Some didn’t make it into the bottle

Then we counted what was left of the SweetTarts.

She used SweetTarts for her magnet page this week.

Valentine Vocabulary cards: This is the first time I use these with her. We first laid them all out while saying them, then I would call out one and have her point to it. The candy was left over from the previous activity. I finally convinced her that she did not have to wait until all the candy was gone before she moved on.

“Such a cute face!”

Patiently trying to stack her candy hearts

When the candy ran out!

Sharing V-Day stickers with Lady Jey

She made a Valentine.

Color sorting with SweetHearts.

More fine motor skills

And for fun!

And of course we can not go a week without:

And that is Tot-School with Lady Bells here at Our Days at CA~




                                                              


printables shown were provided curtsey of: COAHS, 1+1+1=1, OTBM, 

Moments to Remember…

We all started homeschooling for different reasons… But one of my top reasons is the time I get to spent with my kids and in turn the relationships they develop with each other…

They all made Valentines for each other!

     

Valentine Pre-school

I can not believe how fast our new year is going! I wasn’t ready for valentine already, but we got through it. I am still just combining things for Lady Jey, While searching on Pinterest  I found another site for printables, Over The Big Moon, I used some of their valentine printables along with the usual. I am still working on collections for Lady Jey with a more math focus but I have also been working behind the scene on Tot collections for Lady Bells but that is another post. I am hoping to get some of Lady Jey’s done before Spring Break is over. I am excited about these for her, the first one will have a Carnival theme!

Enough chit chat here is our Valentine week:

These are follow the direction sheets that I got from Simple Schooling, The Simple Homeschool classroom has lots of printables from any subject you may be looking for and are always on sell in CurrClick.
We used the sheet to learn Left and Right and handwriting. I also had Lady Jey scramble the Banana Gram letters and respell “hearts” using what she wrote.

I did not believe at the beginning of all this that I would EVER be able to teach her to read (she is my first not to attend PS for K) but she is sounding out more and more words YAY!

Lady Jey did a V play-dough mat. just a printed letter V that is laminated. And look we used a valentine color! Everything was pink, white and a little red thrown in for Prince this week.

This was a find the letter sheet. She chose to use stickers, of course hearts, to cover the V’s .

She counted to 20 using SweetTarts hearts, (we don’t like the original ones . )

She did letter puzzles. She has learned all of her letters and their sounds but review is ALWAYS good.

More beginning sounds using our favorite Crayola dry erase activity board.

Lady Jey and Lady Bells LOVE to draw, and I was running out of room on the fridge, and I NEVER like to pick which pictures go and which stay so while loading and testing my laminator I accidently came up with the idea of having a dry erase paper for them to draw on. So they can hang the picture and reuse it whenever they choose. And I have room for my grocery list again
I also gave Lady Jey a baggie of conversational hearts and let her copy the sayings on her paper. Now that she can write letters she wants to copy EVERYTHING!

Here she is counting hearts and matching the numbers.

She still enjoys getting stickers for her sticker book so this week I put her book and valentine stickers in one of  her boxes. She was happy, and I love to see her HAPPY!

Had to include this shot. My little ones sharing their “work” They are SO CUTE!!

This exercise has proved confusing for her. The point of the graph was for her to color in each square for the number of SweetTarts found in her bag. But she just colored in all of the squares while I was working with Lady Bells, but we worked it out by placing the left over hearts directly on each square. This worked out better for her so maybe we will do it this way from now on.

We “played” how many chocolates. This is the first time I used a sheet like this only because I could not think of a good way to use them and store them. I finally broke down and realized that we did not have to use Velcro, I just glued an envelope, pink of course, to the back of the sheet which is only laminated on the front, to store the pieces. I just place the number in the box and let her place the correct amount of pieces on the board.
I got into this kick of laminating everything I could so that in the future we would not have to reprint anything for Lady Bells and those who may come after her. But soon learned that Velcro does not stick to the plastic very good, I guess everyone knows that . So with some things I have had to be creative so that we can reuse them in the future. That is the reason I bought the Crayola board, and turn everything I can into folder games like the one below:

         Shadow matching:

On this I used Velcro to match the pieces.

A Valentine pattern.

Labeling Sheet.

And for FUN:

That is Our Days at CA!

PS. This week Lady Jey got the news that she won a place in the Knowledge Box Central coloring contest she entered. YAY!

Check out the winners here.

 

Check out our newest Tot-School post.

Our printables came from:  COAHS, HsC and OtBM