New Summer Schedule

Well as the weather is really warming up here, our summer schedule has changed quite a bit. Any other homeschool Mamas feeling the same? I started the summer with much vim and vigor and have now scaled way back.
So here it goes. We will now being doing math one day a week and reading for 15 mins five days a week. And that is it!!! I want them to stay fresh on the things they have learned, but they need a break and so do I!!! I feel this will keep their little minds on track but also give them that down time to let them refresh and recharge.

This is where we will be spending most of our days and time. At the grandparents house enjoying the sun and lots of swimming!!! 

So I will maybe post once in a while, but will start back up at the end of Aug. Everyone enjoy your summer and time with your kids. 

A wise woman once said, "They will have the rest of their lives to be scheduled and organized, let them be kids."

Bird Unit

Sorry for the little break. We have been enjoying our summer and doing a little traveling. So we did a two weeks bird unit. This first Picture is of use playing birds inside. After we read our books we acted out some bird scenes. As you can see here the girls made a nest and had an egg.  

These are some of the books we read. The Spielgaben lesson in the end is about eagles, but we focused on all birds. The book, Mama built a little nest, was a great book. It introduced the girls to different birds and their nests. 

We then ventured outside to find some birds or evidence of birds. Birds and their nests in the trees. 

Our bird house out back. 

We found these foot prints in the sand by our creek. We think the large one is a turkey. 

Outside we pretended to be birds again. 

In the afternoon, I took the two big girls to our Bird Sanctuary. It was a great experience. We took a hike and Kate was on the hunt for bird nests. 

They actually got to feed some birds too!!!

Mid way through our lesson we read this little chapter book. 

We made sticker birds. Once we put the stickers on I had them draw a tree or nest for the birds. 

Buddy working hard on his. 

We also did an egg experiment. We read in some of the books about eagles that their eggs at one point were weakened by chemicals. So we put an egg in a cup of apple cider vinegar for a couple of hours. The shell became weakened by it and had a little bit of a rubber texture. It was really easy to crack. 

I printed out the pictures we took and made a book about birds. I had them glue the pictures on and write (or I would write it for them) what they learned about birds. 

And lastly we made birds out of Spielgaben. We followed the worksheet and also did free play.

 Here we are making our eagles.

After this unit its amazing how all four kids are looking for birds or evidence of birds. We have been blessed to find some more nests and robins eggs. 

Letter Hh Week

This week we began Hh. Here KK is checking out the letter Hh card.

Not the best picture for this, but we put our hands in front of our mouths to feel the Hh sound come out. 

Hh wall card 

Using our Spielgaben set to make an Hh. If you don't have Spielgaben yet, check it out!!! I have a post about it. But seriously, if you don't have something just improvise. Use what you have. You could make Hh's out of straws or stones. Pick something you have and something that interests your kid. When Buddy does Hh you can guarantee we will be making it out of cars. ;-)

Here we put hearts on our Hh paper. 

She really got into it and wanted to color and cut the paper. Personally I wanted her to show Daddy all her hard work but if she wants to practice those fine motor skills and have fun while doing it, then I need to let go of my ideas ;-)

The last day we did Hh is for house. I wrote Hh's and other letters on cut up pieces of paper and she had to pick out the Hh's to put on the picture of the house. I love these activities and so have KK.

What are some other great Hh activities that you have done? You can keep it simple or do a lot. I really think it depends on how much time and how many kids you have. Either way you can always do it well!

Houses

Today we were stilling using set three. We made houses. There was a certain way for the houses to be built using the worksheet, but I guided them a little bit, and then let them go free. That is the point with Spielgaben right?

Sorry this pic is upside down ;-) These are the books we read. Building our house was great because it showed how a house was actually built but with fun fiction mixed in. If I built a house is one of our FAVORITE books, so of course we read it lots. 

Doodle was so proud she could do it!

Roo as always got creative, adding other parts from other sets. 

All the kids ended up building houses with the older two. 

After we made our houses, we tried to build a human house. It was pretty hard but we fun trying. 

After the whole lesson, we were blessed to take a little walk and meet our friends who are building a house and they let us walk through it. The girls loved being able to see it being built!!!! 

Letter Gg

This week was letter Gg for KK. Here she is finding the Gg on the wall. 

We made Spielgaben Ggs on day 1. Sometimes I make them for her first and have her copy them. Sometimes it just seems to hard to make them, so she will just watch me make them and say the name and sound with me. Again my goal is recognition of the letter and for her to know the sounds. 

For most of the letters I try to have a little sign to help her remember the sound. For Gg we put our hand on our throats to hear the g sound. 

Day 2 we did a garden of Gg. I cut out circles and wrote letters on them and taped them to pipe cleaners. Some of the circles had Ggs and some other letters. When I make these types of activities I try to make letter that are similar to the one she is learning, to really test if she knows the letter or not. For example Gg I put some Qq in there.  

The first time I did it I held them and had her pick out the Gg and the second time she held them and gave me the Gg.

Day three I printed out goats and wrote on them just as I did above for the flowers. 

She had to glue the Gg goats to their goat house. 

She really enjoys these activities. Again you have to decide what your goal is for your child and for that day. For KK my goal was letter name and sound. I find what activities would help her learn the letters best and find things she likes. I may not do something for her that I did in the past with the other kids due to her lack of interest in that activity. I also only do three days of each letter.  With Doodle I did 4-5 on each letter because that was just what she needed to learn them. Isn't homeschooling great? We get to individualize our kids education! 

Keys and Turtles

The older two girls did set 5 key lesson today. Here are two books we found. Honestly when I am planning for the lessons, I will just search our library for keyword key or whatever our lesson may be. I try to find books that are non-fiction and fiction. The silly books keep the kids engaged and help make it fun. 

The girls making their keys

A finished key. 

I asked them what their keys were for. Once they answered I had them make up a story about their key and what it was for. This helps develop their language art skills.  

Here are the books for Buddy and KK. They made a turtle today. 

KK put the turtle body together all by herself! I was pretty impressed. 

Here is one of our turtles.

This is our second turtle. We called this one our sea turtle. 

Here is Buddy making a turtle. Yeah he just wanted to put the rings on his feet. ;)

He did get in on the action of pretending to be a turtle. 

KK walking like a turtle. 

Here she was getting in her shell. I asked her why would a turtle go in his shell? And she said to stay away from enemies! YAY that was the goal that she would learn something about turtles. There are so many great advantages to Spielgaben, but I do love that it encourages us mamas to really teach our kids through play.

I will leave you with this picture of Roo's horse ready for battle! She used a mixture of Spielgaben and Car toys.