A Ballerina at Work

While E(3) is in dance class, O(6) has fun doing her schoolwork at the desk in the dance studio dressing room. We save math workbook pages to do at dance, and O loves this!

Revolutionary War Studies

I just found this post that I wrote and saved a few months ago, but never published.  Hope you enjoy it :)

O(6) was excited to receive her American Girl fun pack last month, and we've been studying Felicity ever since.  She received Felicity paper dolls, Felicity short stories, and parchment paper and a quill pen.  Both girls loved writing with a quill pen.


We've enjoyed reading the Felicity Mystery book, Felicity short stories, and listening to the Felicity audio books via Tales 2 Go on our ipad.  In addition to the Felicity books, we've read many, many books related to this time period.

Both girls love playing with Redcoat and Continental Army toobs.  E(3) is somewhat obsessed with General George Washington, and she loves to play "George Washington and the Drummer."  She has had her fairy toob figures teach George Washington to fly, which has been very entertaining.

We have several of these "If you lived at the time of..." books, and they are fun to read.


George the Drummer Boy was one of E(3)'s favorite books.


She loves playing with our drummer boy.  I'm always the drummer boy while she is George Washington.

While I was reading the book, E said "turn back, turn back!" I turned back to an earlier page, and she quickly matched  a figure to the page.


E's favorite book about George Washington is George vs. George.  This is a wonderful book, and we've all learned a lot from reading it.

Both girls liked Sam the Minuteman. 

We all LOVED reading Sybil Ludington's Midnight Ride.  We returned this book to the library about a month ago, and E still talks about Sybil.

Healthy Lunches/Dinners While Traveling

We recently went on a road trip to New Orleans, and it was SO much fun...one of our best vacations ever!  We spent 4 days in the car, and I was determined that we would  not feed the children fast food while we were traveling.  I am happy to say that we only stopped at one fast food restaurant during the whole trip (chick fila), and that was just because they have an indoor playground, and it was pouring down rain (we liked for the kids to run, jump, and play every time we stopped).

On our way to New Orleans, we ate lots of fresh fruit and vegetables.  The girls had oranges, grapes, baby carrots, bell pepper, peanut butter and jelly spins, celery, and organic lollypops for dessert.

When we got to the hotel, they had cheese melts on whole wheat bread, avocado, apples, grapes, and oranges.

 Shortly after leaving New Orleans, we stopped at Target and stocked up on fresh fruit and vegetables for the long drive home.  We had hummus and guacamole for dipping, string cheese, turkey, carrots, grapes, and raw green beans.  Delicious, easy, and healthy!!!

More Initial Consonants Work

We finally made it back to our school room after more than 2 weeks off!  It was quite an adjustment to be back in there, but it ended well...phew!

E(3) had fun completing this initial consonants work.  I printed and laminated these cards several years ago for O(6), so I'm not sure where they came from...I'm hoping someone will recognize them and let me know, so that I can add a link.

To do this work, E(3) named the picture, said the sound for each letter listed, and then circled the letter that matches the picture.  She was leaning over on my lap and snuggling me the whole time she worked.  At one point, she paused in her work and looked at me and said "When I grow up, I'm going to make art to put in museums and be a ballerina."  Love her!

Sorry for the long break...

We left for a super fun and amazing road trip on Valentine's Day and didn't get home until Sunday night.  I unexpectantly had to work on Monday (and then again on Wednesday and Thursday), and now sweet E(3) is sick.  So, I'll be back next week with some new and exciting bloggy goodness :)

More Preschool Reading Work

E(3) LOVES to do reading work!  I do NOT make her do this work...I give her the opportunity, and she either takes it or doesn't.  If she doesn't want to do the work, that is absolutely fine.  I follow her lead, and right now she wants to read like her big sister! (but she spends most of her time engaged in pretend play, listening to us read books to her, and playing outside...she spends less than 15 minutes a day doing reading work and only about 3 days a week....I don't want to push reading on her as it is not really developmentally appropriate for a 3 year old.  However, since she wants to read desperately, I'm not going to deny her. She's having fun, and that is what is most important!)

She loved reading simple words using the sandpaper letters last week!

E loves the spinny speller!

Since O(6) is doing All About Reading Level 2, E(3) was THRILLED when I ordered All About Reading Level 1 for her!  She begged to read the stories and was disappointed that the lessons didn't have her reading stories right from the beginning.  She loves reading the words on the green cards, and she had fun making the words on the Spinny Speller match her flashcards.  I love that the lessons are so short and engaging for her.  We haven't done any of the worksheets yet...I'm not a fan of worksheets, but E really wants to do them, so we probably will.  (I'm not a fan of flashcards, either, especially for E's age, but she loves them, so she reads them).

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Valentine's Paper Dolls

I'm so excited about the Valentine's paper dolls from Lily and Thistle that we are giving our girls for this special day!  I realized that the paper dolls would be the perfect activity for a Valentine's party with their friends, so they'll be getting them a little early....pics to be added after the party.  (I wanted to post this now so that you would have time to by your own set for your sweeties!).

Click here to go to the paper dolls.  I'm especially excited about the included subscription for the Outfit of the Month club (Around the World)!

More Valentine's Work

I wrote letters and numbers on these shiny heart stickers for O(6) a couple of years ago, and we use the same ones every February.  E(3) has LOVED working with these letters.  She asked me to make words for her to read, and she did a fantastic job reading them. 

E(3) also enjoyed putting the hearts in the container...one heart per opening.  She started off using chopsticks, but ended up using her fingers.  It was too difficult to pick up the stickers with chopsticks...even for me!

E was proud of the long word that she made.  After she finished making it, she said "Read it for me, mama!" 

Valentine's Work

The girls were excited when I found these cookie cutter hearts from last Valentine's Day!

Both girls had fun putting the hearts in size order.

After putting the hearts in order in a line, they put them inside each other to check their work.  Fun and simple!

Last Week in Review

Here are a few highlights from last week...

The girls found the flower button board that I made for O(6) about 4 years ago.  O loved it, but E was only moderately interested.

We had a Valentine's Day themed homemade playdough playdate.  The kids helped make the playdough and then had fun playing with it. 

We cut hearts from flour tortillas to make heart shaped cinnamon and sugar tortillas for a playdate snack.

Goobi magnets are the most chosen work in our school room!  E(3) had fun making different shapes.

The chocolate playdough was a little crumbly!  It made a mess, but clean-up was fairly easy.

O(6) enjoyed her Rightstart Math lessons this week.  She created and solved math problems using the balance, and then recorded the problems in her notebook.

E(3) enjoyed spreading out and looking at the cards from our Impressionism memory game. 

We took a long walk on a beautiful day! 

E is running to me with her arms open for me to pick her up.  Love!

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Bird Song Identification Game

The girls and I have had so much fun playing our bird song identification game! We take turns wearing an eye mask while someone else chooses a bird from the basket and squeezes it to hear it's song. If you guess the bird correctly, you get to keep the bird. They beat me every time!

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10 Tips for Homeschoolers to Stay Organized...Guest Post by Jo from My Organized Chaos!

I am happy to have Jo from My Organized Chaos as the first ever guest post on Chasing Cheerios!  Jo's blog, A Bit of This and That, was one of the first blogs that I ever read years ago before I started Chasing Cheerios, and she has always been an inspiration to me.  

Jo Ebisujima is a Brit living in Japan, she has been raising her bilingual son in a Montessori environment and is the founder of My Organized Chaos, where she helps busy moms to organize their home and kids so that they have more time for the fun stuff.

Make A Home For Everything: This is my mantra and I say it because it works. If everything has a specified home it is much easier to keep the place tidy and organized, (and much easier to find things when you need them).

Storage Bin and Boxes: Perfect for keeping things looking neat and tidy on the shelf. Make sure they are well labelled and you keep the contents according to the labels.

Store Subject Items Together: This might be easier said than done, depending on the size of your home but having subject zones make it easier for you to grab what you need when you need it.

Learn The Art Of Rotation: Often we have too much 'stuff' to have it all out on the shelves at one time. If that is the case, rotate your activities. Using a seasonal basket or shelf is one easy way to introduce rotation. I also recommend setting a time each week to swap your shelves around. Rotating items keeps them fresh for your child and having less on the shelves makes it look better, tidier and more organized and makes it easier for your child to decide what to study with next.

Use Colour Coding: If you have more than one child then colour code your binders, the children's notebooks etc. Alternatively use colour coding for subjects, Montessori makes good use of this and it makes it easier for bother teachers/parents and the children. Whatever your labelling system of choice is, be sure to stick with it for the year to prevent confusion.

Set A Week To Declutter: It is easy to over accumulate 'stuff' so set a week aside before the start of your school year to give your homeschool area a good de-clutter. Throw out, or pass on anything you no longer need or your children have outgrown.

Family Schedule: You can do this on paper or on the computer but try and get the whole family into the habit of keeping up with their schedule making. We use google calendar for all our scheduling, we all have our own calendar, a family one and my husband and I have our work schedules on there too. It is easy to check at a glance to see if a new event will clash with something else.

Pinterest: Use pinterest to keep project ideas and lesson plans all in one place. Set up boards for each topic or subject then anything you stumble upon as you are surfing the net can be kept all together in one place, much easier than wading through hundreds of bookmarks.

Specify Your Work Area: So often we end up having homeschool bits all over the house. Decide where is the work area and make sure that your child has all the items they need at hand in that area. Of course you can have different zone, they might have a writing statoin in one room and a study and experiement are in another room.

End Of Day Clean Up: This should be applied to everywhere really, when you and your children have finished for the day, tidy everything away so that you have a nice clean desk/room/kitchen to start on the next day. Having to clear away the previous days mess before you can et started for the day is a downer and a waste of precious time, much easier to get it done at the end of the day.

The next My Organized Chaos e-course kicks off February 18th, the doors for early bird registration are open now.

Monday at Lakeside Homeschool

You can expect to see fairly frequent posts without too much wordiness since I recently learned to blog from my phone!  It is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much easier and faster than before, so blogging is actually fun again!  However, I'm not very good at typing on my phone, and autocorrect just kills me (if I say something that makes absolutely no sense then you can assume that I have been autocorrected).

Now that I am (temporarily) on my desktop computer, I'll add captions for these photos.

The girls LOVE our world map, and we sing the continent song each morning while locating the continents on the map.  Lately, we have been focusing on Great Britain (since we've recently finished reading The Secret Garden), France (since we studied Picasso in January), Canada (since we are reading the Caroline American Girl books), and Russia (since we are studying Tchaiovsky this month).

Our smartglobe is also used frequently by the girls.  They love to listen to the national anthems of the different countries.

O has recently become interested in the knobless cylinders (they came from Montessori Outlet, I think).

Both girls love these blocks.  They came from Lakeshore (I think).

Inchimals are always fun!  E was putting them in order and having lots of fun doing it!

Toob animals are always a hit with E!  These animals are from our South America bin.