Lakeside Homeschool Update

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!

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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Studying The Vikings

The girls and I started studying the Vikings in February through reading Leif the Lucky.

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. 

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Impromptu Lesson

E(2) said she was building a boat with the pattern blocks, and O(5) said "That might be longer than the baby!"  So we found a yardstick to measure the blocks and found out that they were in fact longer than our new baby friend.  We also measured O and E and talked about the features of a yardstick.  It was a fun impromptu lesson on measurement!

Fossil Cookies

We studied archaeology in our homeschool last week, so I thought it would be fun to make fossil cookies with the girls.  The girls were surprised (we rarely bake cookies) and delighted!

We made super easy peanut butter cookies...we mixed together 1 cup of peanut butter, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 egg.

We rolled the dough into balls and pressed imprint "fossils" into the dough using our playdough stampers.  We baked the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes at 350.




  Fun and simple!




(please excuse E's dirty fingernails...they are not actually dirty, but are dyed with tie-dye).






The inspiration for making fossil cookies came from here.

O as Teacher

O(5) had fun pretending to be the teacher on our 2nd day of homeschooling.  She said that she was an "old time teacher" so the students didn't get to choose their activities...they had to do what she said!  She was a very strict teacher!  (she's checking my paper in this picture)



I love that we can wear our pjs all day if we want to, and O loves to wear her mob cap during homeschool. 

Water Transfer Contest

On our first day of homeschooling, I went to the laundry room to put a load of clothes in the wash and when I came back upstairs, the girls were having a contest...they were using several different kinds of droppers to see which one was the best/fastest at transferring water.  What fun!

Magical Duct Tape Mirror

On our first day of official homeschooling, O(5) got VERY involved in making a "magical duct tape mirror."  She was very engrossed in this activity.  She had so much fun and was so proud of herself.   She covered both sides of a piece of paper with silver duct tape.





She proudly gave this magical mirror to her daddy for an early Father's Day gift :)




After she finished making her mirror, she told me the steps involved in making the mirror and we took turns writing the steps down.



I LOVE this type of spontaneous activity, and it's one of the things I think we'll love most about homeschooling.

Math Manipulatives Exploration

We started our first morning of homeschooling with free exploration of math manipulatives!  Fun!  We all LOVED playing with our new balance.  Both girls have always loved the geoboard, and they really enjoyed working on it on our 1st morning of homeschool, too.  I had fun playing with the plastic square manipulatives, and both girls liked the cuisenaire rods.  I can tell that we are going to have LOTS of math fun this school year!