Apples everywhere!

This is my favorite time of the year! The apples, the cool breeze, The beautiful colors, Tis the season of family time! We kicked off the season with A for apple, reading about Johnny Appleseed and an apple tasting. but that is just the start, oh, the things I have planned!
Lady Jey even seemed more spirited while doing her apple activities. Could it be that talks of Christmas have started in the Castillo household !  Don’t deny it, it is all but 12 weeks away!
But back to the time at hand, Here is our week in pictures…




handwriting…

identifying the letter A by placing apple stickers on all of the letter A’s. Lady Bells had to help with this one. She loves watching sissy do her work.



Apple counting… She made apple finger prints to match the number printed in each column.



finger painting… She was suppose to color in the rest of the picture but painting was the only thing that appealed to her that day!



she completed other fun worksheets found on different sites around the web, many of which I found pinned in Pinterest.

We have finished up our study of forces in science with magnets being her favorite. For her journal she wrote about an apple tree and for math we are studying decimal street in MUS.  Next week we will be adding in our Social Studies part of Sonlight, we are excited for the many books we will get to read together.
This was a really fun week working with apples and talking about fall, thanks for reading with us here at CA!

T for Turtle

School did not go to well this week, she was more interested in playing with her toys then learning about her letter. I do not worry  about this to much because she will have another year to review before starting Kindergarten so I did what she would do then let her go. Here is our week in pictures…

Prewriting: We are still working on this concept, she doesn’t yet understand that she has the trace the lines but we are getting there!


play-dough mat: She just likes playing with it, she doesn’t really make the letters yet.


Shape Sorting: This is her favorite activity, she does this one everyday.


Just playing around!

this is where she was found most of the week doing her own little thing!
To download our T activities click on the picture below.

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Thanks for visiting us here at Our Days at CA!



         

T with Lady Jey

3 weeks and things are still going strong, in fact I think she is becoming a little bored I may have to move up starting the You can read curriculum sooner then planned. Anyway we reviewed T, learned to write higher numbers, we also learned about forces, she especially like playing with the magnets, and wrote another entry in her creative writing journal.
This time her journal was about a special visitor. It really touched me, and it will the person to, if you are reading this, that she remembered the visit.
She talked about playing frisbee with Uncle Ron and when asked about how she felt she said, “ It made me happy to play with Uncle Ron but sad to because Nanny Donna has not been back!” I think it is time for another visit!
Here are some pictures of our week…


calendar time…


handwriting…


to busy to look …


T bubble letters from our CA Collections…


a little bit of coloring from our CA Collections…

That was our week in kindergarten here at Our Days at CA~

M for Monkey

My little monkey had fun this week with the letter M. From counting marsh mellows to a little bed jumping, supervised of course! We read 10 little monkeys jumping on the bed and she sang the song for the rest of the week. I gave her the How many game board from our CA Collections and let her act out the story.
Here is a look at our week through pictures…



“feeding” the monkeys marsh mellows (counting)…



Monkey magnets…



Here she is teaching her lalaloopsy how to write M’s…



Here is a shot of her making the M sound and her notebook at the beginning of the week with all her work inside. She went and found Mickey Mouse because like she said, “ Mommy he sounds like M!” …

If you see anything you like here please feel free to download it by clicking the picture below, just remember to use it only for your family and do not host it anywhere and please link back to us if you blog about it.


That is the letter M here at Our Days at CA~



                                                                      

Kindergarten, Sailing through

I am so glad that I stumbled upon Erica’s LOTW last year and worked through it with Lady Jey, Because this year is sailing through. Ok I know it is only the 3rd week but we have had no real hiccups, she is totally adjusted to school and really doesn’t need the full week with one letter. I may have to do something different here soon but for now it is working to have the time for everyone to adjust to the routine.
I was SO second guessing myself with teaching her to read but now I see she is totally ready for it this year YAY LOTW! Even the science concepts we are working on are sticking with her and she truly seems to be enjoying it!
So here is a little peek at our week (or what I was about to capture)



A little fun with coloring from our Collections.



We did M for Monkey this week and for practice counting to 15 she did How many Monkeys on the bed.



We also did monkey graphing, which is included in the M for Monkey.



We  did our first journal entry, according to Sonlight’s  creative  writing. She dictates the story to me while I write for now. Her story was about a girl who had a robot friend.  This is them jumping on a bed.
We also finished up our Sun, Moon, Starts in science. She enjoyed the moon the best and would watch for the moon every night to tell me what phase it was in. She also at her age understood that the moon had no light of it’s own that it was like a mirror and reflected the sun’s light. She also understood the sun to be a star closest to the earth. I love the way BJU breaks it up simple enough for her to understand but also gives me the opportunity to introduce other facts that I believe she would also understand.
All in all our third week of Kindergarten went by fast but it was great. Thanks for visiting us here at Our Days at CA!

What Schedule?

This week on the “Not “ Back-to-School blog hop I had a peek into the life of many homeschoolers. and I have to say some made me green with envy. The beautiful routines and schedules are to die for. It makes me wonder where did I go wrong, why can’t I do that. Then I turn green with something else, remembering the days we tried to follow a schedule…
I have to admit laid back is the style here. Lists are not my thing, when I had one it sucked the fun out of the whole day. I fought to stay on task while the kids just fought. That was the first 6 months of our first year, then they were out the door and in the trash, the list of course!
Having a laid back style has worked for us so far and I don’t plan on changing that anytime soon. We do, however have points throughout the day that sort of serve as a routine…

                       School starts at 8:30
                         Lunch is at 11:30
         group is after lunch (while Lady Bells naps)
                           day ends at 4:00

Anything between these times depends on how everyone is doing on any given day. The two older ones have independent work which we call self work and they also have time with me. Lady Jey is just starting into self work so sometimes I am still helping her through this time. Lady Bells works with me for 30 minutes and then has a notebook that is full of fun tot-school things for her to do, she can do these are have free play with anything in the school room.
The order that we do the subjects depends on the “feel” of the day, sometimes math with Prince can get tedious so if he is in a “good” mood we do math early if he isn’t we wait till dad comes home to get it done in this case school doesn’t end at 4.  I say we end at 4 but if it is a good day for everyone we can end as early as 1:00.
To keep myself on track and to make sure I am getting everything done, I made a list of everything I am to do with each child. I put this into a laminated pouch and as it gets done we check it off. It sort of looks something like this… nothing fancy!

                             

This list only includes the things that I work on with each child, they have other things that they work on individually which is stored in their weekly workboxes (my spin on the workbox).
So that is our schedule, for the Day in the life of… Castle Academy!

B for Ballerina

This week we did our second week of our CA collections. It is surprising to see how far Lady Bells has come since just last year! She is able to remember the letters we are working on along with their sound. This I have to credit to the Leap Frog Letter Factory DVD, she loves the catchy little tune and can be found often singing it. She has also gotten very independent and does most of her notebook by herself. I can already see that I will be searching for new things for her to do very soon!
So here she is in action with some of the activities included in B for Ballerina…
Beginning handwriting:

Size sorting…

Color sorting…

Shape sorting…

Magnet page…

Capital/lower case matching

And that is just some of the activities included in the collection click on the picture below to download the whole collection.


Enjoy from Our Days at CA!