Fun with Pinterest

First and foremost, let me just say I am glad I printed off some compound word and punctuation worksheets from  http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/index.html , because literally within hours of printing them the other day they went from being a free site, to a pay for print site. :( It's only 19.95 for the year, so that is not that bad, but do I really need it? I don't know! I do know a lot of my printable worksheets came from them, but was that because they were free and I knew where to find it, or is it because they best fit my need? Hmmm. I will have to think about that. Maybe I am being ridiculous, considering it is only $20 bucks out of an entire year that I have spent on dumber less useful stuff than that. 

Anywho, that brings me to today, just in case you were wondering I also LOVE to use Pinterest for ideas and links to printable worksheets. If you haven't been, GO NOW! Do not even waste your time reading this, it is quite possibly the BEST waste of time ever! Or if you are me, you waste a lot of time, and somehow work in things that will be useful for prep ideas on lessons, so you can look somewhat productive. More on this later....

We do Saxon Math everyday, and I usually don't post much about it, because it isn't much fun looking at facts over and over, but today she did some measuring using blocks, and I can't help but remember a little Curious George blurb about measurement. If I can find it that is! pbskids.org has a tendency to keep only a handful of items on hand, and while they have games pertaining to measurement, they are not as useful as you might think, not allowing the child to actually measure before making their guess. The point of the lesson isn't about estimates, it is about using different items as a system of measurement. Here's what I did find though: http://pbskids.org/curiousgeorge/games/how_tall/how_tall.html Who knows, maybe I will use that later. I guess it depends on how my prepping goes tonight.

Measuring pencils drawn on paper using blocks for practice.

Measuring real world items (ruler, crayon, marker, pencil) and recording the findings.

Taking the record and organizing it in a way in which we can easily discern which item was the longest, by using a bar graph, how else? ;)

Finished product.

She also loves loves loves the Mystery Bag and guessing games. She wants me to do a whole hour on that alone, but I don't. I think I may however start this idea:

 from Pinterest and phase out some of my other dailies, or maybe just work it into Fridays since my load is usually lighter with no Science or History. I don't know......

Speaking of Pinterest, if you are interested here is my home-school board: http://pinterest.com/jacqui_cupples/home-school/

On to fun ways to do compound words in our Language Arts lesson.

This was also an idea from Pinterest (http://pinterest.com/pin/160370436700592324/)

I tweaked it a bit, and we made a vase so that she can put the compound word flowers in and out, that way we can make more, or pull them out for future use. 

 The finished product now adorns the wall of our classroom. :)

Here she is reading from her Sing Spell Read and Write companion book. We do comprehension exercises while reading and after she's done. To be quite frank, she doesn't love this.

Our animate history lesson. It is kind of explanatory, since there are speech bubbles, but I would LOVE to see someone do a comic book version of Early Egypt and Mesopotamia history for young kids. Wouldn't that be amazing?! This is my haphazard version, it changes and is added to as the lesson goes on.

Just in case, the gist of it is...... After the White Crowned King defeated the Red Crown King and placed the crown upon his head creating the double crown you see on the left, he controlled all of Egypt. He began to gain so much power that people begun to think he was a God. I put the speech bubble in the Red Crown King's mouth, to simply illustrate to Kelsey that it was misguided of the people to believe that, and reminded her that just as it had always been before it still was. (Meaning that we explored yesterday that the Nile would flood yearly when the rain came from the mountains and the farmers used this to their advantage to build canals and dam up the source to keep water for their crops during dry months, but now people were attributing this "phenomenon" to the Pharaoh's power as a God. This was simply not the case, it was just as it always had been, but people misguidedly believed the Pharaoh had power over this.)

The next part of our lesson was about the other Egyptian Gods, Ra, Osiris, and Isis, and how people used the Gods to explain away things that they did not understand, such as the Nile flooding. What you see there is the story of Osiris' brother Set tricking Osiris into a coffin to drown him, and Isis finding him and wrapping him as the first known mummy in Egypt, which prompted him back to life. This made the whole world cry tears of happiness that the Nile overflowed with their tears, and thus the reason for the annual flooding. See is this not the kind of stuff that needs to be in a comic book?! Complete with zombies!!! That's why I do my stick-man theater. I may just decide to do a comic book, I should check up more on history during prep, and make one for her, except when will I find the time? Oh, well....

She made the double crown, yes they can both be used separately or together.

Another angle. It somewhat reminds me of the silly bishop hats, but I guess nothing tops the flying nun hats, so this is probably less dramatic among them.

Now our science lesson. A quick white board review on forces.

Before the bottom portion about balanced and unbalanced forces, we did a little push against eachother activity, as well as a arm wrestling match to illustrate balanced and unbalanced forces, then we put it on the board to further drive the point home. And just so you know, in my mind strong-man there is saying I work out in RedFoo's voice, and if you don't know what I am talking about, you are about to discover that this is not your traditional blog about home-school. This is a blog of awesomeness, and definitely NOT your mother's blog!  Here's what I am talking about: 

It's a blog about kids, not one for them. And please for the love of God, stop giving Wilmer Valderrama work. It is disturbing to know him as Handy Manny and see him otherwise. Now back to more normal topics....

Cute children wearing construction paper hats.

The completed version of our addition folder.

Her Literature assignment to look up words we don't know and illustrate the definition.

The finished product of our compound word flip book

You can also see it here on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/pin/160370436700592327/

part of our lapbook

She added the Egyptian God's flipbook to it.

What we are currently reading for our independent reading. She loves Junie B.

THE END.

"I work out!" ;)

Back to the Daily Grind

After three long weeks off from school, we are finally back at it. Three weeks is officially long enough to have forgotten nearly everything. She has been inverting numbers and letters again, but after tomorrow, I think that will pass. It makes me wonder though how summer will go. :/

I decided to do a math fact game, as it was increasingly boring to just do flashcards. I wrote the math facts, both plus and minus, to 2 (sets of 0-10) (i.e. the last cards would end in 10-2 and 10+2) as well as doubles, and the properties of 0, onto the back of tickets, then scrambled them into a gift bag, and allowed her to pull out the problems and solve using manipulative, number lines, hundred charts, or plain simple mental math. She pulled the problem, I wrote it on the white board, and wrote the answers she found.

Here is her completed math facts for today.

We also began an addition folder, she glues one side of the correct problem to the answers on the squares, then she can practice, by looking at the problem and checking her answers by flipping it open.

For Literature we read the Pied Piper Of Hamlin. She chose to make a comic book retelling for her comprehension project.

A fun way to do compound words, I found this on pinterest.

http://pinterest.com/pin/160370436700592327/

Later this week I plan on doing this: 

http://pinterest.com/pin/160370436700592324/

We have also been reviewing subjects and punctuation. Kelsey really likes watching this Electric Company video about silent "e"

Since I am starting to suspect she is a visual learner we have been using the white board a lot more, and the cd provided by her school that goes along with Sing Spell Read and Write isn't so useful, so I have been scouring youtube and pbs kids, as well as whatever I can find to help illustrate the ideas at hand. Both of these videos have really helped her.  Between the Lions, which was a show on PBS seems to have a lot of neat phonic songs available on youtube.

Since history tends to be a very abstract kind of subject matter, I did my best to illustrate the lesson.

What you are looking at is the end result. It shows rain coming down the mountains and flooding the Nile River where the farmers had their land. I showed the overflow of water, then the water receding, and then illustrated how the farmers figured out that this happens every year, and how they dug canals to plan for the flood, then plugged them to keep water for the crops. I also illustrated a silly stick-man battle between Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, each with their respective Kings, ans how the White Crown gained control over all of Egypt, thus placing the Red Crown upon his White Crown as the Double Crown.

She then identified the area on the map and saw the new land acquired by the King.

We added a "Life Among the Nile" fold-able to her lap-book, complete with a crocodile tour guide. She was especially amused by this being that the crocodile is enormous compared to the Nile on the paper.

We did a fun lesson in science about friction, involving socks and sliding on the floor, as well as trying to slide on the floor without socks. Then we did a silly experiment with a shoe and a rubber band to explain the difference between Kinetic friction and Static friction. DO not be impressed, a 6 year old will always find a way to thwart the intended result, and so she did. :( But at least I think the sock one stuck.

That's it! I'm off to prep for tomorrow and into the week if I can, as well as make dinner.

Just one of those days...

And after that, some chocolate......

Where Did Everybody Go?

Somehow I lost everyone that were "members" except one. I hardly doubt my family would delete being members. SO what the heck happened?

A Productive Day Ends In What Could Only Be Described As A Cutting And Pasting Sweatshop.....

Here's what our day looked like before this happened. Apparently I could not read directions for our history project and so had 2 days worth of cutting and pasting piled up.... Poor Kelsey.

It had started so well.

Identifying patterns with odd numbers.

Keira practicing letters.

Lexia reading. 20 minutes every day.

Brain Pop! The Scientific Method.

Math fact puzzles.

Somewhere within here our cat threw up. That was a big deal to the kids for some reason. I thought you might need an "artist rendition" of the event to help you understand the fun of home-school.

This tends to start a whole new lesson about do all animals throw up? That line of questioning goes into some ugly territory about what else do all animals do that I have censored for your benefit.....

She is learning about compound words. She is also practicing two vowel words. "Two vowels get together and they play a game, one stays quiet and the other says it's name" (Like oat)

This is actually from yesterday. We had lots of fun active projects for this.

A timeline about Kelsey.

Her artifact box, it has important things about Kelsey. There are many drawings. The spider is there because she loves bugs, specifically spiders.

The beginning of her history lapbook.

Then there was this, which turned into the comic you just saw.

And then we called it a day!

:)

The Last Few Days of Packet 3 / Conference

As luck would have it Living Social did a special on tickets to the Scripps Birch Aquarium before my mother was due in town to visit. We had been studying habitats, and I had planned a whole ocean / tide pool mini field trip for the Friday that she would be here. We did get our required work done, but it was difficult for Kelsey since she wanted to play and visit with her Mema as her sister was doing... pretty much 3 feet from her while she sat patiently at her desk with her math work sitting in front of her. Needless to say we fought the good fight to keep the attention on our work, but alas, we gave in. This is a downfall to home-schooling, but even so. It is minimal.

Ah, but... the best laid plans of mice and men.....

So here are some pictures from our adventure.

The first few pictures are of the Thursday before my mom came out.

They love our hundred chart games. Keira is working on letters. We got her a little dollar store workbook so that she could feel part of the "class" with "work" to do.

Reviewing our even numbers.

She desperately wanted to wear her Chinese dress.....

but then she got hot, and decided on something more practical.

Discovering lines of symmetry, and the difference between infinite symmetry lines on a circle and those on triangles, squares, and rectangles.

Fun with reading comprehension and fables.

Colonial sign for history. Kelsey chose to be a blacksmith so that she could make horse shoes for ponies.

The photos from that Friday. My mom had come in late Thursday night. We worked through the morning and then headed to the aquarium that afternoon.. Here are our pictures from that adventure.

I had all these plans to make it a very educational mini field trip, but I felt bad for her after how the day had already went, so I tried to let her just explore things on her own and just be a kid.

The next week, we had conferences. There is nothing and yet so much to report. She is doing very well. Our teacher was very impressed with Kelsey's hard work. We turned in our samples for accountability, and talked about all our work and our projects. Kelsey showed the things she was proud of most, which was her rain forest book. We received some more material to work with, and said our goodbyes. 

The bigger thing to report is that she suddenly turned on these past weeks. It is like someone flicked on the switch, and now she is incessantly inquisitive about everything, ALL the time, all hours of the day and night. It is both wonderful and exhausting. We have had long conversations about how electricity and plumbing works, how a satellite works, why we can't see space, both the infinite vast sky of stars and planets, and the the space between two objects. This is just the tip of it. The questions cover everything you could imagine. She has already started questioning how it is physically possible for Santa to go to each home every night, how Rudolph must be very old, and wouldn't Santa need new reindeer, as well as the usual - we haven't ever SEEN him questions ect... I just tell her magic. 

Our new packet only seems to spark more interest. She is learning about physics, and her love for science, which has always been there is blossoming. She looks forward to experiments, demonstrations, and googling all her questions. It was only weeks ago that most things went over her head and she lived in the clouds, she is now ever present and interested in everything around her. It is really neat to see. She is proud of herself, she is taking chances, and she is not afraid to be wrong anymore. She has given me many opportunities to be  proud of her, but mostly I am just so happy she has such a want for answers, and has really grown her confidence. It is just perfect.