The school year begins!!

Alyse has begun Kindergarten!! We have soo many fun things to do this year- My goal is to post once a week a few pictures from school. Everything that we do we can do with Grant and Claire as well- they are right along for the ride, and will be better prepared.

Our Daily Schedule:
7:30-9a Breakfast, Dress, Grooming, Devotional
Devotional consists of: Review of current Primary songs, prayer, scripture study and then, if both Alyse and Grant are well-behaved they get to pick a fiddle stick, which have many fun activity ideas to get our morning started- They love this! Even Claire likes to pick a few.
9-12p Subject of the Day
Monday: Prep for FHE, which consists of assigning who is in charge of what and then baking something sweet for our treat.
Tuesday: Art and Geography, we'll do an art project and read Paddle to the Sea, a great story that happens to teach about the Great Lakes and about how water flows down from the mountains and out to the sea.
Wednesday: We use Five-in-a-Row suggested books and use this day to read and do a related learning activity. The subjects range from math and science to art and nature observations.
Thursday: Science, we have watched Bill Nye, checked out books about bugs and the animals my kids are excited about. Science days might even include a fun project- once we did float vs. sink experiment.
Friday: History, I have a few history classics that so-far have been enjoyable to the kids. We are learning about Early English history in storybook form and then checking out our huge map of the world to see where we are learning about. The books that we use are 'An Island Story' and '50 famous stories'. They usually play with blocks or play dough while I read to keep their focus. The chapters are usually 2-3 pages long. History can be fun! Also, I plan on doing a family history project around November- on our ancestors, each making a paper doll to look like their ancestor. I remember doing this in Kindergarten and it was enjoyable.
12-2p Open school closet, Free play
The school closet is usually locked and holds all of our special learning toys and tools. In our closet you will find, puzzles, art supplies, paper, staplers, scissors, learning games, math manipulatives (dice, cards, rulers), we also have a 'baking box' which is another way that I teach math, Grant's favorite is his 'tool box' which has pieces of wood, tools, screws and nails for him to create anything he wants.

Here are some pics from this week

One of our fiddlesticks was to choose a picture out of our National Geographic coloring books, color it and then watch a video about that animal online. This has been so much fun. They wanted to keep coloring and learning about new animals. So we did!

Beluga Whale
After watching each short clip I asked them what they learned and wrote on their picture what they had learned about each animal.
Alyse learned why the Beluga whale is called the "sea canary"- she got to hear the sounds it makes under water.

Grant chose to learn about the Crane
He learned that when 1 crane flies away they ALL fly away
They sleep in their wings and they use their beaks to catch fish and drink water

These coloring books are going to provide hours of learning this year!! Now I just need to find a way to display all of their art!

Our school closet

All the supplies we use for school!

Grant played with the magnetic numbers for a while on the fridge, when they are able to choose it helps, because then I know they are willing to learn about what they have chosen. We will be spending more time on numbers now that I know he's interested.

Alyse and Grant got to paint. Alyse chose to paint a campfire. We just got back from camping. She is such a good little artist!  

More painting. I didn't get a picture, but Claire got involved and I found that she has 2 different colors of paint up her nostrils... I should've gotten a picture!!

Alyse has had matching hair with her Strawberry Shortcake doll every day this week... Later in the day it looks a bit better... Alyse is also learning how to do hair!

I BARELY missed the CUTEST picture ever!!! When I walked around the corner I saw Claire laying on her tummy coloring on a piece of paper and crossing her ankles. I missed that picture, but this one is pretty cute too! She watched Alyse writing ALL the time and now its one of her must-do's of the day.

We read a book earlier in the week called 'A storm in the night' one of the Five-in-a-row activities was to make a Geo Board

Homemade Geo Boards are awesome!!
They help teach how to make and identify shapes.

Grant observing Alyse

Grant liked making circles; Alyse was teaching him how to make other shapes

Our rearranged living room!

We are using our map of the world every day. This wall is going to be a place to display our best art and our word caterpillar- you can see above the map we know how to read and spell one word-- GO! Hopefully we will get to add to our wall each week and have quite the collection by the end of the school year!

We did National Geographic pages a second time- the kids requested it.

A closer look

Nothing too fancy, but its sure kept their attention and interest, and that's the whole point!

Until next week!