Discrete Schooling

The girls are often doing schoolwork, and they don't even know it!

They love playing with paper dolls, and since we are studying Josephina (American Girl) this month, they had fun playing with their Josephina paper dolls while listening to a Josephina audio book on the ipad (via Tales 2 Go).

They LOVE to catch caterpillars to observe in this habitat.  They name all of their caterpillars either Katie or Lily, and whenever they spot a new caterpillar, they shriek with excitement "There's Katie!"

We learned so much during a recent visit to a local botanical garden.  The girls loved this living wall.

We had fun interpreting this art at a recent art festival.  I loved hearing their impressions of what they saw.

O(6) had fun practicing shooting her bow and arrow while building the skills of concentration, focusing, and attention to detail (among many others!).

We have 2 tadpoles that we observe daily.  We've loved watching them grow and setting up their habitat.  We were excited to discover 2 tiny snails in the habitat, which is perfect since we are studying mollusks in science!!!

We love playing with the magna-tiles!  They built a cathedral complete with an attached graveyard.  We've been studying lines of symmetry in math, and magna-tiles are great for illustrating this concept!

O(6) has finally admitted that she loves to kayak!  This makes me SO happy since I LOVE to kayak, and I've been trying to get her to love it for years :)  When we are kayaking, we have fun looking for egrets, turtles, blue herons, and fish.  We also go out to the middle of the lake and sit completely still and silent to practice making silence and absorbing the peace of nature around us.  O has gained so much confidence and seems so joyful as she kayaks around the lake. 

Most of our schooling is discrete schooling with only about an hour or 2 of formal lessons each day (for O).  Fun times at Lakeside Homeschool!

One More Month...

is feeling a sense of dread/relief after finally scheduling Elliott's brain MRI and follow-up appt today. If I sound like a crazy basketcase at times over the next month, it's because I am! I can't wait until June, so this will (hopefully) be over for another year!

We Love Word Fun!

We love this book!  Word Fun is a fun book that is a great compliment to O(6)'s grammar book, First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind.  

We have fun reading a section or 2 of this book during breakfast or lunch each day.  After reading each section, we have fun playing the games.   This book covers nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, interjections, and propositions.

This is a great book for first and second graders, and E(3) also loves it and has learned so much from it.

Becky- I think Sadie will love this book as much as O and E do!

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Cheerios Books!!!

You can find these wonderful bilingual books (English/Spanish) in boxes of whole grain Cheerios now! We love Cheerios (obviously!), and I always stock up when they offer books in the boxes of cereal.

We love all 3 of those books, but Where Is Home, Little Pip? was our favorite. E(3) was so engrossed in this book that she clasped her hands together and tears came to her eyes as I read the book. I rubbed her back and assured her that everything would be ok, and her face glowed with joy when we finally got to the happy ending.

Nature Walk Bingo

I REALLY love taking walks with the girls.  Unfortunately, they usually don't want to go, so I have to make them.  Once we get going, they enjoy themselves, but it's hard to tear them away from their play that they are always so engaged in.

However, these Nature Walk Bingo cards motivated them to get moving, and we had a WONDERFUL walk today!  Both girls were much more focused on noticing their surroundings, and we saw so many things that we usually would have overlooked!

E(3) was reaching down to pick up this flower, when we noticed the bee in it.  We observed the bee for a few minutes before she picked up another flower.  She sniffed the flower and then had pollen on her nose for the next hour or so.

We were sad (but intrigued) to find this dead baby turtle.  The girls insisted that we take it home, so I carried it home on the leaf (I was a little squeamish about touching it, and it was covered in ants).  We buried it when we got home.  There is an ongoing discussion about whether or not we will eventually dig it up so that we can have the shell for our nature collection.

We saw this dead fish by a tree.  It was pretty far from the lake, so we are guessing that a bird accidentally dropped it there.

The girls LOVED walking through this field of thousands of tiny yellow flowers.  Their goal was to make it across the field without stepping on any flowers.

We stopped to touch the bark of trees along the way since their cards had "rough bark" and "smooth bark" listed as things to find.

The Nature Bingo cards came from Ladybug magazine.  You can find a printable black and white version here. 

Preschool Reading Work...Or Not!

Lately, E(3) has not been interested in "doing" school at all.  Each morning while O(6) is doing her school work, I offer to do a lesson with E.  She says "No, thank you," and off she goes.  While O is completing her lessons, E(3) spends her time digging up earthworms in the dirt, observing bees buzz around the Azalea bushes, following our cat around the yard, inspecting the blueberry bushes, etc.  She creates games and a wonderful world of pretend play.  Honestly, I'd much rather her spend her time engaging in free and creative play in nature with little restrictions (she has to stay within the fence...we live right on a lake) than inside doing  "school" lessons.  She has the rest of her life to read, but the time for engaging in creative and open ended pretend play is now!

I admit that earthworms make me feel a little squeamish, but my girls LOVE to play with them.  E(3) names her earthworms and will sit and play with them for hours. (In this picture, she was excited that she created an earthworm ring!)  What a joyful childhood they have!

Life Cycle of a Frog

A friend recently gave us a jar of tadpoles, and we have enjoyed creating a habitat for them (a larger container with more water, weeds, and sand) and observing the tadpoles.

I bought these life cycle of a frog figures from Michaels, and the girls (especially E) love them!

The girls traced around the figures to draw the life cycle of frogs.  O(6) has plans to make a book.  Fun times!

Lake Observation

The girls and I have LOVED the warm weather over the past few days. We've spent hours playing outside, and they've gone swimming everyday. The water is cold, but they don't mind! This afternoon we walked down to our friends' house and laid down on their dock to observe the underwater lake life. We only saw one fish, but it was big and very exciting!

Color Your Costume

E(3) chose this color your costume set as her souvenir from the New Orleans Art Museum, and we have had so much fun coloring it together!

The girls and I spent at least 3 or 4 days working on this costume.  Luckily, we all love to color :)

The markers didn't last long, but luckily we had extra fabric markers in our craft bin.  Once those started running out, I bought a new box of fabric markers...it takes a lot of ink to color this costume!
The girls haven't worn this costume much since they finished coloring it, but I'm sure they will eventually.  It was well worth the money because it provided us with many hours of family fun whether they wear it or not :)

I searched around and found a website that sells these costumes...here it is.  I love the geisha costume, so I'm fairly certain that one of my little loves will be getting it for her birthday :)

One year ago today...

Elliott's benign brain tumor was removed via craniotomy one year ago today.  In some ways, it seems like last week, and in other ways it seems like it was all just a bad dream and I can barely remember it.  We are so incredibly fortunate that his recovery was fast and remarkable.  His follow-up MRI will be soon, and we are hopeful that there will be no regrowth of the tumor.

Caroline (American Girl) Day

The girls received the Caroline paper dolls and activity book in their "Caroline" (American Girl) fun pack.  We've really enjoyed reading the books, and after we finish each set of American Girl books, we have either a party or playdate to act out the characters.  We were excited that my niece was able to join us for our "Caroline Day!"

We had fun playing the board game that came with the set of Caroline books.

We had hoop races.  I won every time :)  It was very windy and cold, so we didn't do this for very long.

We had bean soup and cornbread for lunch.  We made butter to go with our cornbread, and it was delicious.

We went down to "Lake Ontario" to get water.

The girls dipped their feet in "Lake Ontario."  It was COLD, so we didn't stay out for long (this time last year we were already swimming...I don't like the weather this year!)

The girls had fun dressing up, and O(6) was especially excited to wear her new hoop skirt.  E(3) danced with her corn husk doll, and we attempted (without success) to make hankerchief dolls.  O(6) and E(3) recited poetry, and O wouldn't let me take pics since there were no camera phones in 1812 and she's a stickler about authenticity.  This was a fun day, and I can't wait for our Marie-Grace/Cecile party that is coming up soon (we had to postpone due to the terrible viruses that have struck the girls recently)!

O(6)'s Daily Work

At O(6) request, she is learning to write in cursive.  She has wanted to learn to write in cursive for years, but when we tried last summer, she wasn't ready and she didn't enjoy it.  When we tried again a couple of months ago, she was ready, and she LOVES it!  We are using the Handwriting without Tears cursive workbook.

When the weather is nice, we have school outside.  O(6) wrote her sentences with sidewalk chalk before identifying the nouns and verbs in the sentences.  She is doing her First Language Lessons in the picture.  She usually loves her language lessons, especially the poem recitations and stories for narrations.

Both girls love creating with the Handwriting without Tears letter forms.

O(6) had a great idea to make reading fun!  She asked me to write her new reading words (from All About Reading Level 2) on the driveway, and she would ride her scooter over them as she read.  She zoomed so fast that she only had time to read 2 words!

She then decided to throw a hula hoop at the words and read the words that the hoop landed on.

We are using Science Odyssey Life as our science curriculum, and the girls had fun digging for earthworms (they only found 2 and they both escaped, so we had to buy worms).

They created landforms with clay for our homeschool class.  I was surprised by how engaged they were in this activity.  I thought it would take about 20 minutes, but they worked with the clay for more than an hour and would have worked longer if we hadn't had to stop for supper.

O(6) finished All About Spelling (AAS) Level 1 in December, and we took a couple of months off before starting Level 2.  Lately, we've been using the moveable alphabet for the AAS lessons rather than the magnetic letters.  We both like using the moveable alphabet much better!

O(6) learned how to tell time recently, and we've had fun playing games to review these skills.  It's been a great introduction for E(3) to learn about telling time, too!

So, there's a look into some of the things that O(6) is doing as part of her first grade curriculum. In addition to these things, O(6) is about to finish The Story of the World, Volume 1 (we'll finish this week), and she recently finished Writing with Ease, Level 1.  For math, we are doing Rightstart Math and Singapore math.   I'm hoping we'll finish most of her lessons in April or early May so that we can start our summer curriculum...it's going to be so much fun!

Glow in the Dark Easter Egg Hunt

The girls had so much fun having a nighttime glow in the dark Easter egg hunt! To make the eggs glow, I ordered a set of led finger lights for amazon and put one in each egg. Thanks to Amber for this super fun idea!

Unfortunately, we've only had one glow egg hunt so far because both of the girls have been very sick with viruses. We're missing most of the Easter festivities, and we've canceled lots of fun plans. Luckily, the girls felt well enough for their egg hunt to find their prizes from the Easter bunny this morning!

Yummy Lunch

It always surprises me that the posts about the girls' lunches generate so many emails and hits. So, since this is an easy post to write and since Elliott mistakenly made the comment that he thought the kids weren't eating healthy enough (this highly offended me and I now take frequent pics of their food...he quickly rescinded his complaint!), I'll be sharing more of their simple and healthy meals.

The girls loved this lunch...they had watermelon, boiled shrimp, salad, and walnuts. Deeeelicious!

"Painting with Scissors" like Matisse

We studied the art and life of Henri Matisse during the month of February.  We read a couple of books about Matisse (library books that I don't remember the names of) and looked at his works of art.  After learning that Matisse stated that he "painted with scissors" when creating his collages, I decided that this would be the perfect project to wrap up our study (we also did this art project at our local Montessori school...fun!).

I put a stack of construction paper in the middle of our kitchen table, gave the girls scissors and glue sticks and white cardstock, and told them to cut shapes to create a masterpiece.  O(6) immediately decided to create a rainbow scene.  E(3) loves to copy her sister, so she also decided to make a rainbow.  E(3) had trouble cutting the way she wanted to, so she told me exactly what she wanted and I cut for her.  She did all of her planning and glueing.

O(6) LOVED this activity and was completely engrossed in her work.  As she worked, E(3) decided to make rainbow hills rather than a traditional rainbow.  She then decided to turn a couple of her hills into trees.

O(6)'s finished masterpiece.  I think she did a beautiful job, and she was so proud to present her art to the Montessori class as an example before we did the activity with that group.

E(3) was also very proud to present her artwork to the Montessori class, but she seemed a little disturbed that the children thought that her rainbow hills and trees were popsicles!

We have almost all of the Touch the Art books, and the girls LOVE them.  These books are a wonderful introduction to art!

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