Weekly Wrap Up

Our week started out with waking up to news that Papa could not get to work, it had rained so hard Sunday and through Sunday night that there was so much flooding and mudslides. Our home and small town are OK but nearby Aberdeen and Hoquiam got hit pretty hard.

 

Have I mentioned how much we are loving our Green Craft Kits that we receive monthly? We pay 19.95 a month and receive a kit that has at least 3 themed activities and suggested further ideas for STEM activities. Selena loves when they arrive and can’t wait to open them to see what lays inside. I love the fact that they come with everything needed and I don’t have to go hunt down supplies. Sure some supplies, I end up replacing with items I feel will be more suitable but most of these items I have in my home and the supplies I don’t use can neatly be restored in a craft box for future use. January’s box arrived and the theme was rainforest.

We did a recap on rainforests, and of course Selena amazed me with how much information she remembered from our unit study when she was only 4. In the kit were the supplies to make a Rainforest Terrarium, a Rain Stick, and Drum to go with it, and Rainforest Rubber Ball. We chose to make our Rainforest Terrarium first.

The kit was complete with dirt, moss, sticks, bark, rocks, and clay to make creatures for her rainforest. Once placed in the sun she could see the mist on the lid and watch it rain. She also observed that on our cloudy days that it didn’t rain so much in her rainforest.

 

The next day’s kit had the materials to make a Rain Stick and drum. Selena had so much fun making and designing her Rain Stick. I did have to help with the drum since it called for stretching a balloon over a plastic cup. We discovered quickly that the cup that came in the kit was not strong enough to hold a balloon tightly without breaking so we quickly found something else to use. Selena enjoyed making music after her projects were completed.

The third and final kit was everything we needed to make a Rainforest Rubber Ball. Selena was having a little off day but insisted on trying anyway. She was not following the directions as closely as she should have and couldn’t keep her hands out of the ingredients, so though her rubber ball seemed to firm up and feel like rubber it quickly got sticky again. We will retry this experiment down the road and hopefully it will turn out better.

Selena has also been having a lot of fun with her Circuit set, learning all about electricity.

 

We have had a very fun week coming back from Christmas Break. We do have some changes coming along in our school area and organization of the area. I look forward to sharing those ideas with you soon.

Weekly Wrap Up

With it being a short week, it seems like the week just got away from me. Missing Monday really threw me off, but how could we do school when Papa was home? We always cherish every moment we have to spend as a family, even though the weather was not suitable for outside activities we had so much fun laughing, playing, and talking throughout the day.

Selena continued to insist this week that all she wants for Christmas is a padded oven mitt, a jar (to put the food in that she makes), a dinosaur train, and a soft cuddly blanket. The jar just threw me, I was trying to figure that out all week long, did she want a mason jar? What type of jar did she want? Finally she told me again, I want a jar with poke-a-dots on it. I still was not getting it, so I asked her if I had one? She said so matter-of-fact, “Yes, in the cupboard!” As soon as I opened the cupboard, the light bulb went off and of course as soon as she spotted it she had to have it.

Boy if this is truly going to make her so happy I will gladly go to the dollar store and buy as many as I can!

As for school this week, we continue to work our way through all our subjects. Due to the higher volume of handwriting that meets us daily, we are making a few changes. We will probably cut back by doing Science one day, then Social Studies the next. Even the math drills are getting quite lengthy but so far Selena is not complaining about that. I am thrilled to see her handling all the reading, which really shouldn’t surprise me, as well as her ability to recall the facts of what she has read days later. She is getting more confident in her writing abilities both with the alphabet and numbers.

On another note, Monday we take Selena to a ENT Specialist. For the past month now Selena has had swollen tonsils, and is going through her second bout with strep. While she doesn’t complain too much I know she isn’t feeling herself, some days the appetite is good, and other days, well lets say she just eats softer foods. I will keep you posted on what the ENT has to say.

We are looking forward to another short week, and for Thanksgiving. We will be staying home and I will be cooking our feast. We use to go to my Uncle’s for Thanksgiving, and while I love to see my family, I truly just love to be at home doing the cooking myself. Plus then we get all the left overs! 

Week Wrap up

Our week started out a little rough, Selena wanted to push the limits in school, she was wanting to only do half the work, hurry through making careless mistakes, or scribble on some of the pages. I finally had to put my foot down and establish a few new rules.

1. No cartoon until all school work is done.
2. No cartoon if school work does not show that she is trying her best.
3. No cartoon if we have a bad attitude.

Boy, Selena has taken all these rules very seriously. She awakes of a morning, waits patiently for her breakfast, then runs and gets dressed and is ready to get started in school. She will sit and do all her school work in one sitting and with not one complaint. Though at times she tries to talk me into letting her do something the following day, if I say no, she does the work without another word.

We had been having some problems with math early on this week, I couldn’t figure out what was going on, we added the math buddies back in, tried M&M math, but Selena just wasn’t quite responding. I even tried the simple number line.

That still wasn’t quite cutting it with Selena. Finally it dawned on me, she has been working with these methods for the last couple of years, she is wanting something new. We are now focusing on counting forward, that has her intrigued to think she can look at 5 + 4 and just start from 5 and count 4 more to get the answer. She is allowed to place 4 small dots on her paper next to the problem, to assist her in her counting.

We’ve taken a lot of relaxed time with bird watching, a lot of play filled with laughter, watching the Lion King II, and a little money play. I thought it was so cute when Selena took quarters and pennies to make Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and a second Mickey Mouse.

Of course Selena had to show me how she could turn herself into Mickey, if only I would have had a bow handy she would have been Minnie.

We all had doctors appointments yesterday. Selena’s tonsils are still enlarged, so yet another culture. She really wants to avoid having her tonsils removed, but is not totally dismissing that at this point. I had to go in as early in the week, I thought I was getting a pimple on my nose, but it just was refusing to come to a head or heal, as it ends up I have an abscess so on antibiotics I had to go. I will be so glad when this family is finally all well, this has been a tough year for everyone in the community with colds, sore throats, and nasty colds.

It has been extremely damp and cold even though we have had a lot of sunshine. The cold has kept us indoors which has been rough as I know Selena truly sees the sun and yearns to run around or ride her bike.

Week in Review

We had a fairly busy week. While we do not celebrate Halloween in the traditional manner, we still enjoy some pumpkin fun, art time, and of course eating candy. Selena had so much fun yet again this year with her pumpkin. Papa picked it out this year and surprised her.

 

Our pumpkins always get cooked off and froze for pumpkin pies and cookies. Just out of this pumpkin alone we got enough pumpkin for 10 pies and two batches of cookies.

Selena and I both love the Autumn colors. We enjoyed a lot of exploring these colors in nature, while it rained for a good part of the week, there were still a lot of looking going on, looking for all the red, yellow and orange signs of Autumn.

After observing all the colors of Autumn around us, it was time to pull out the paints and create our own Autumn art.

We finished up our first booklet in our PACE History curriculum and are very close to finishing up our first Science booklet as well. Selena is looking forward to digging into the new booklets to see what new words she will learn to write. We also had fun in math, adding a little hands on just to try to take some of the hum drums out of the repetitiveness, one of Selena’s worse complaint is the repetitiveness of most subjects.

First grade is moving right along, Selena is learning a lot and we are having fun making new discoveries.

Week in Review

It has been a busy week between appointments and with Papa’s hours changing at work, We didn’t get as much accomplished as I would have liked, but yet we really did accomplish quite a bit.

Selena continues to love her PACE curriculum and was very excited when her Math and English came in. It has been fun to watch as her writing skills continue to improve. There is a lot of writing in this curriculum, but so far she is enjoying exploring how to make her letters and numbers.

One of her first assignments in her English though simple dot to dot abc’s, but with a twist she had to use a strait edge to make her lines between the dots. She was so excited to think she was going to use a ruler, too bad I couldn’t find her ruler but this worked even better for her small hands.

Selena asked me if we could map out the planets, so that will probably where we will go next week.So long as we have red for mars, according to Selena!  We would have sat down yesterday and started this fun project idea, but Selena had invited a little friend over for a play date. Selena has had play dates before here at the house, but this one was really a special one, as she made the invitation and gave it to her little friend who attends Team Kid with her. Also this young girl is the same age as Selena, so they were able to relate on so many more levels. We couldn’t have asked for a better day this time of year, while the sun was not out, it was really pleasant and wasn’t raining, so the girls spent a lot of time playing outside.

We also took a break from our outside play to come in and eat popcorn, watch a little TV and play on the white board, along with other games.

We look forward to having Selena’s friend over again soon. I have to say it was so nice for me just to see Selena making friends with girls her own age. This is the beginning of a whole new world for Selena now.

Weekly Wrap Up

We had a very productive week even with the consideration that we were dealing with Strep throat around here. Selena was very happy to be back to homeschooling, I don’t know what ever made me think of trying public school. Anyway we tried and are now very happy to just have her home learning and watching her grow.

I already mentioned that Selena loves her curriculum and she works very hard in it. We only ordered the First grade Science and History until we decided how she would really take to it, well since she loves it, and the fact she has already worked all the way through the math book I had here at home, we have placed our order for the Math and English books as well.

This week took us into a new discovery of loving to learn to write. She finished the entire section of History and Science, completing the quizzes all on her own.

We did a quick unit on sheep since her curriculum at this time introduces a lamb named Baba. I found a very nicely done unit study from Wyoming that we printed out and incorporated our geography lesson as well.

We incorporated a Bible lesson when Selena asked, “Why is Jesus called the Lamb of God?” I basically had her compare all the things we get from sheep, clothing, blankets, and food, then we compared this to all the things Jesus blesses us with. For a little deeper meat we looked in the Old Testament to how they sacrificed the first born or best lamb which was in atonement for their sins. Then jumped to the New Testament and Selena’s understanding of what Jesus did for us. It wasn’t long before she caught on and announced, “Jesus deserves the title of The Lamb of God!”

She insisted that I try to teach her to crochet. While she did get a few stiches made in a simple chain, she finally decided she would wait until she is a little older to try learning this again.

It wouldn’t be Autumn without some leaf crafts. We found some leaves which we tried to identify what trees they came off of. We then did some leaf rubbings.

What would our week be without a Science experiment. After a record dry spell we finally got rain. I decided to revisit an experiment we did a few years ago. Selena had fun making clouds and rain in the kitchen while she learned and made observations of the clouds in the sky as we learned more about clouds from this site.

We had a very fun and exciting full week back in the homeschool world. We look forward to learning so much this year.