We've been "officially" but still unofficially (I haven't done the paperwork yet) homeschooling for about 5 weeks now. Overall, it's going well. The first week was an eye opening experience...I realized that it wasn't going to be as easy as I'd hoped!
It's a challenge to keep E(2) busy while O(6) is having a lesson or working on something that E can't participate in. If I'm working with O, E wants to be on my lap. That sometimes works, but often it doesn't. She's gotten pretty good about going inside (we have school on our deck) and choosing "work" from her shelf. She then brings her work out and works beside us. Luckily, she is able to be involved in most of O's lessons (History, Science, Music, Art, Spanish, etc).
The girls play SO well together, and they ALWAYS have a plan to play (I've never heard them say they were bored or ask me for ideas of what to do or play), so it is sometimes difficult to pull them away from their play in order to do school work. After the first week I realized that I really didn't want to interfere with their play any more than I absolutely had to, so most of our formal lessons have been put on hold. We spend the vast majority of our time reading aloud (as we always have) and engaging in pretend play. Only now, I try to incorporate our themes from school into some of the pretend play.
For instance, we are studying Ancient Egypt this month, and O(6) received lots of Ancient Egypt Playmobil figures for her birthday. So, we read about Egypt, and then we play with the Sphinx, Egyptian soldiers, and camels...SO much fun! We've also been studying cave people and cave paintings, so we've played with the figures from the prehistoric toob, and we turned out treehouse into a cave complete with cave paintings.
I was so excited one day when Elliott asked O what she'd learned in school that day, and she looked at me with a confused look and said "We didn't have school today did we?" We had had "school" for 2 to 3 hours that day, but she was having so much fun that she didn't realize it!
We do Language Lessons for Little Ones each day (usually 2 or 3 lessons at a time). O does well, but doesn't enjoy this too much. Although, she is starting to enjoy it more within the last few days. She also reads several leveled readers from Reading A to Z each day. She is starting to enjoy this more, too. She does not like to read very much, so I don't want to push her too much and make her hate it. Thankfully, she has started realizing that she can read well and fairly easily if she will just focus and do it rather than fussing and pouting about not wanting to do it :)
We have been doing one lesson of Rightstart Math per day. This is a fun and quick math program. O likes it, but it's hard to tear her away from her play to actually do it. She LOVED math when she attended Montessori Preschool, so I think that math will be MUCH more fun for all of us when we have a school room and we can have everything set up and arranged just right.
I have lots to post about our homeschool days, and I hope to find the time to do so soon!
Chasing Cheerios
Friday, July 20, 2012
Burgess Bird Book for Children
We have recently started reading the Burgess Bird Book for Children, and we are loving it so far. While I read the first chapter, the girls colored or painted a picture of Jenny Wren.
I printed bird cards from That Resource Site, and we have enjoyed playing Memory with them. 
After studying birds for a while, O(6) was inspired to perform a bird puppet show! 
We also enjoyed watching this egret. He was in our front yard, and we were able to get pretty close to him before he flew away. 
Here is a link to the Burgess Bird Book. We have the free kindle version on our ipad. After reading one chapter each morning, we look up the birds on the ipad and see pictures and paintings of the birds that we've read about, but the most exciting part is listening to their songs and chirps.
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Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Studying The Vikings
The girls and I started studying the Vikings in February through reading Leif the Lucky.
In addition to Leif the Lucky, we have read several other books on Vikings that we enjoyed. Here are the links to a few of them...
O and I had fun playing a Viking game included in the treasure chest.
The girls also enjoyed coloring pics of Viking longships while I read to them about Vikings.
Both girls LOVED this book, and we read it very frequently (until we had to return it to the library). I loved listening to my 2 year old tell me all about the Vikings based on what she learned from this book!
In addition to reading Leif the Lucky, O(5) and I started a lapbook. All of the components of the lapbook came from Dynamic 2 Moms...here is the link. This is a WONDERFUL resource, and it was a fantastic 1st lapbook for us to make! Once Elliott was diagnosed with his brain tumor in February, we put all of this on hold. We finally picked it back up and finished the lapbook about a month ago! O was SO proud!
In addition to Leif the Lucky, we have read several other books on Vikings that we enjoyed. Here are the links to a few of them...
In addition to reading lots of books and making a lapbook, we had LOTS of fun exploring a Vikings Treasure Chest that I bought off ebay.
O and I had fun playing a Viking game included in the treasure chest.
The girls also enjoyed coloring pics of Viking longships while I read to them about Vikings.
Links to Amazon are affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Chasing Cheerios.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
A "Little House on the Prairie" Party AND a Giveaw ay!!! (details of Giveaway at the end)
O(5) told me that she wanted to have a "Little House on the Prairie" party for her 6th birthday shortly after Elliott's brain tumor diagnosis, and I was so thankful to her for giving me something fun to think about! We've been talking and planning ever since! Her party was this morning, and it was great!
We hung dress-up clothes from our clothes lines for the children to dress up in as they arrived at the party. My niece was proud to stay by the clothes to help the children choose their clothing and get changed.
Our first activity was embroidery. I read the children the book, Summer in the Big Woods, before introducing the activity. We gave each child a small embroidery hoop with a piece of embroidery floss knotted onto a needle. We drew heart patterns, and they embroidered using a straight stitch.
The children then moved to the next quilt to make scented satchets. Each child chose a piece of cloth which they filled with their choice of dried lemon and orange peels, dried rosemary, dried chocolate mint, and dried lemon balm. Once they filled their squares of cloth, they tied them together with yarn.
We then moved to the clothes washing area. The children LOVED this activity. They took turns washing clothes using a washboard and then hanging them on the line. After the party activities were over and the cake was eaten, they all gravitated back to this area to wash more clothes!
They had fun hammering nails into this piece of wood.
The children loved walking on these logs that we arranged in the shape of a 6! My dad cut these logs for O to use as seats at her party, but since they were wet from rain, we decided to set them up as an "old time" playground! My mom thought of the idea to set them up in the shape of a 6, and O was very excited about this!
The next activity was making butter! We gave each child a small jar that was filled about 1/3 of the way with heavy cream and a marble. The children shook the jars until they had butter. One child's marble broke through the glass and cut her finger, so be careful if you do this activity. Luckily, we had a grandaddy with a first aid kit nearby!
We put an old butter churn next to the butter making station to add to the authenticity. After the butter was made, we spread it on biscuits for the children to enjoy. My mom also made fig preserves (with figs from our fig tree) to spread on the biscuits. This was a huge hit!
After they finished their biscuits, the children shopped at the mercantile. We gave each child a tin bucket (from Target) filled with 20 pennies. Everything at the mercantile cost 1 penny each, so they were able to buy lots of goodies! O and E were the proud shopkeepers at the mercantile (O said this was her favorite part of the party!).
We've been making goodies to sell at the mercantile for the past few weeks (the girls love to play "Laura and Mary" while they craft). We had a tray of lace, button lamps, and corn husk dolls on this table.
On this table, we had small balls of yarn, large pickles, cookies (molasses cookies and tea cakes made by O's grandmother), and candy!
We had apples and biscuits on the next table.
We made homemade lemonade (using the lemon squeezer in the picture) to serve in mason jars at the party. The children loved the lemonade!
The idea to set up a mercantile came from this blog via Pinterest.
After the children finished shopping at the mercantile, we had cake and ice-cream. O has been planning her cake decorations since February, and she was very pleased with how it turned out! She originally wanted white icing so she could pretend it was snow, but I suggested tinting it green to look like grass since it is summer. She thought that was a good idea. I laminated Laura, Mary, and Jack paper dolls to put on the cake, and O drew a log cabin which I also laminated. She drew lines with a butter knife and said it was the garden, and she asked me to put the candles in the garden.
The children played with the hoop and stick and dropped clothes pins in old glass milk jugs as the last activity.
Four of the children at the party (one of them was O) were wearing dresses made by Cheri at Ashleys Attic. She is offering a 10% discount to readers of Chasing Cheerios. When you check out, put chasingcheerios in as a coupon code to get 10% off your order through August 15th!
In honor of O's birthday, Cheri has offered to do a GIVEAWAY of an apron and bonnet set!!! To enter the giveaway, go to her Etsy store, Ashley's Attic, and browse around for a while. Come back here and leave a comment telling me which item you like best in her store. A random number will be drawn to choose the winner 1 week from today (July 22, 2012).
Our girls received these pioneer nightgowns for Christmas, and they love them! O's pioneer dress is similar to this one, and it is perfect for our little "Laura."
Btw, I've had this blog closed to comments, but it's (obviously) temporarily open for comments again in order to host this giveaway :)
Links to Amazon are affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Chasing Cheerios.
We hung dress-up clothes from our clothes lines for the children to dress up in as they arrived at the party. My niece was proud to stay by the clothes to help the children choose their clothing and get changed.
Our first activity was embroidery. I read the children the book, Summer in the Big Woods, before introducing the activity. We gave each child a small embroidery hoop with a piece of embroidery floss knotted onto a needle. We drew heart patterns, and they embroidered using a straight stitch.
The children then moved to the next quilt to make scented satchets. Each child chose a piece of cloth which they filled with their choice of dried lemon and orange peels, dried rosemary, dried chocolate mint, and dried lemon balm. Once they filled their squares of cloth, they tied them together with yarn.
We then moved to the clothes washing area. The children LOVED this activity. They took turns washing clothes using a washboard and then hanging them on the line. After the party activities were over and the cake was eaten, they all gravitated back to this area to wash more clothes!
They had fun hammering nails into this piece of wood.
The children loved walking on these logs that we arranged in the shape of a 6! My dad cut these logs for O to use as seats at her party, but since they were wet from rain, we decided to set them up as an "old time" playground! My mom thought of the idea to set them up in the shape of a 6, and O was very excited about this!
The next activity was making butter! We gave each child a small jar that was filled about 1/3 of the way with heavy cream and a marble. The children shook the jars until they had butter. One child's marble broke through the glass and cut her finger, so be careful if you do this activity. Luckily, we had a grandaddy with a first aid kit nearby!
We put an old butter churn next to the butter making station to add to the authenticity. After the butter was made, we spread it on biscuits for the children to enjoy. My mom also made fig preserves (with figs from our fig tree) to spread on the biscuits. This was a huge hit!
After they finished their biscuits, the children shopped at the mercantile. We gave each child a tin bucket (from Target) filled with 20 pennies. Everything at the mercantile cost 1 penny each, so they were able to buy lots of goodies! O and E were the proud shopkeepers at the mercantile (O said this was her favorite part of the party!).
We've been making goodies to sell at the mercantile for the past few weeks (the girls love to play "Laura and Mary" while they craft). We had a tray of lace, button lamps, and corn husk dolls on this table.
On this table, we had small balls of yarn, large pickles, cookies (molasses cookies and tea cakes made by O's grandmother), and candy!
We had apples and biscuits on the next table.
We made homemade lemonade (using the lemon squeezer in the picture) to serve in mason jars at the party. The children loved the lemonade!
The idea to set up a mercantile came from this blog via Pinterest.
After the children finished shopping at the mercantile, we had cake and ice-cream. O has been planning her cake decorations since February, and she was very pleased with how it turned out! She originally wanted white icing so she could pretend it was snow, but I suggested tinting it green to look like grass since it is summer. She thought that was a good idea. I laminated Laura, Mary, and Jack paper dolls to put on the cake, and O drew a log cabin which I also laminated. She drew lines with a butter knife and said it was the garden, and she asked me to put the candles in the garden.
The children played with the hoop and stick and dropped clothes pins in old glass milk jugs as the last activity.
Four of the children at the party (one of them was O) were wearing dresses made by Cheri at Ashleys Attic. She is offering a 10% discount to readers of Chasing Cheerios. When you check out, put chasingcheerios in as a coupon code to get 10% off your order through August 15th!
In honor of O's birthday, Cheri has offered to do a GIVEAWAY of an apron and bonnet set!!! To enter the giveaway, go to her Etsy store, Ashley's Attic, and browse around for a while. Come back here and leave a comment telling me which item you like best in her store. A random number will be drawn to choose the winner 1 week from today (July 22, 2012).
Our girls received these pioneer nightgowns for Christmas, and they love them! O's pioneer dress is similar to this one, and it is perfect for our little "Laura."
Btw, I've had this blog closed to comments, but it's (obviously) temporarily open for comments again in order to host this giveaway :)
Links to Amazon are affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Chasing Cheerios.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Outside Movie Night!!!!!!!!!
For years (about 4), I've wanted to show a movie onto a big screen in our front yard for an outside movie night, and we finally did it a few weeks ago! We had about 20 people join us for our first outside movie night, and it was a huge success! The kids sprawled on sleeping bags and ate lots of popcorn and candy.
We watched Dolphin Tale which was interesting for everyone from kids to adults. However, it was a little long, so most of the kiddos were swinging or climbing on the jungle gym during the last 20 minutes of the movie. We handed out glow stick bracelets to all the kids, and they had fun running around while they glowed. It was a fun night, and I'm hoping to do it again soon!
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Halloween Balloon Countdown
Since O's birthday balloon countdown has been such a hit with both of our girls, I have started thinking about a time we could do this activity (other than birthdays). I don't want to overdo it, but I think 3 times a year would be perfect AND I think Halloween would be the perfect holiday for a balloon countdown!
Here is my plan... (I don't usually share ideas before I do them, but I decided to this time just in case anyone else wants to give this a try). I'll use orange and black balloons and alternate colors on the balloon garland. In each balloon will be a few pieces of candy (a big deal around here since they don't get it that often) and a slip of paper describing an activity. I LOVE candy corn and candy pumpkins, so that is what I'll put in the balloons.
Here is the list of activities so far...
a trip to a pumpkin patch to buy a pumpkin
carve a jack o'lantern
make glow in the dark slime (putty)
make pumpkin pie playdough
watch a (non scary) Halloween movie outside via the projector and eat pumpkin poop (cheeze puffs)
nighttime driveway bowling with glow sticks
bake and decorate Halloween cookies
paint faces
make and eat caramel apples
make a Halloween ghost tree
When I was talking this idea over with O(5), she asked if they would get a can of whipped cream to spray in their mouths (that has been her absolute favorite birthday balloon activity/gift...she said "that was the best day ever" and today when I let them have another mouthful of whipped cream she said "you really are a good mom!") Anyway, I said that a can of whipped cream didn't seem very "Halloweeny," and she said "It is if you put orange and black sprinkles on top!" So, we may add a can of redi-whip and Halloween sprinkles to our list of Halloween activities/gifts :)
Here is my plan... (I don't usually share ideas before I do them, but I decided to this time just in case anyone else wants to give this a try). I'll use orange and black balloons and alternate colors on the balloon garland. In each balloon will be a few pieces of candy (a big deal around here since they don't get it that often) and a slip of paper describing an activity. I LOVE candy corn and candy pumpkins, so that is what I'll put in the balloons.
Here is the list of activities so far...
a trip to a pumpkin patch to buy a pumpkin
carve a jack o'lantern
make glow in the dark slime (putty)
make pumpkin pie playdough
watch a (non scary) Halloween movie outside via the projector and eat pumpkin poop (cheeze puffs)
nighttime driveway bowling with glow sticks
bake and decorate Halloween cookies
paint faces
make and eat caramel apples
make a Halloween ghost tree
When I was talking this idea over with O(5), she asked if they would get a can of whipped cream to spray in their mouths (that has been her absolute favorite birthday balloon activity/gift...she said "that was the best day ever" and today when I let them have another mouthful of whipped cream she said "you really are a good mom!") Anyway, I said that a can of whipped cream didn't seem very "Halloweeny," and she said "It is if you put orange and black sprinkles on top!" So, we may add a can of redi-whip and Halloween sprinkles to our list of Halloween activities/gifts :)
O's Yummy Breakfast
O(5)'s breakfast looked so delicious and pretty that I took a picture and decided to share : )
She had a banana and dark chocolate almond butter on a whole wheat hot dog bun and loved it! She was proud to eat a peach that she picked from our tree (but she didn't finish it because she said it was too mushy...it really wasn't), and she liked the fresh blueberries and fresh strawberries.
E(2) chose to have her banana on the side, but she also loved the dark chocolate almond butter on the whole wheat hot dog bun. She will only take a small bite of a peach and will only eat 2 or 3 blueberries, but I'll continue to offer it to her...eventually she'll like fruit!
She had a banana and dark chocolate almond butter on a whole wheat hot dog bun and loved it! She was proud to eat a peach that she picked from our tree (but she didn't finish it because she said it was too mushy...it really wasn't), and she liked the fresh blueberries and fresh strawberries.
E(2) chose to have her banana on the side, but she also loved the dark chocolate almond butter on the whole wheat hot dog bun. She will only take a small bite of a peach and will only eat 2 or 3 blueberries, but I'll continue to offer it to her...eventually she'll like fruit!
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