Muffin Tin Monday-4th of July

Today's theme for Muffin Tin Monday is all about Red, White and Blue since 4th of July is this upcoming Saturday. Our tins this week are simple but were really fun to make and the kids loved them!! My 4 year old actually asked several times throughout this past week, "How long before we get to eat out of our muffin cups again?". I'd say Muffin Tin Monday is definitely around to stay at our house:-)! *I served these Saturday when the kids each made an American Flag craft.*

Here's what I used this week:

• mini pretzel rods dipped in white candy melts with red/white sprinkles
• red punch to drink
• frosted blueberry muffins with red/white sprinkles and an American Flag
• toothpick fruit kabobs with blueberries, bananas and strawberries
• vanilla yogurt (with more sprinkles, of course!) for dipping rods and fruit
• Pilsbury Ready to Bake American Flag cookies, yes, with more sprinkles!!

Head over to Her Cup Overfloweth and see what all the other patriotic tins look like today--I am:-)!

Fourth of July Crafts-American Flags

The kids made some American flag crafts this weekend and I thought I'd share them since 4th of July is quickly approaching!

Their flags are simple, but turned out cute and they had fun making them, so I'd say that adds up to a great craft:-)!

Here is the one Hanna made:





She made this using:

• 1 piece of white cardstock
• 1 piece each of white, blue and red felt
• 1 pipe cleaner
• white craft paint
• rubber cement

1. Glue white felt onto cardstock.
2. Cut 7 red felt strips and glue down onto white felt.
3. Cut a blue felt square and glue onto the red strips.
4. Use the handle of a paintbrush to make stars.

Joe made an American flag windsock:





He used:

• 1 piece of blue cardstock
• white craft paint
• red and white crepe paper streamers
• Elmer's glue
• Hole punch (we used a star punch)
• String for hanging

1. Paint white stars on the blue cardstock and let dry.
2. Glue crepe paper streamers onto backside of cardstock.
3. Fold and staple into a circle.
4. Punch holes on either side and attach string for hanging.

We are looking forward to learning about the history and meaning of the 4th of July this week and having some yummy 4th of July snacks and treats too!

*Check back later this week for another July 4th post with the rest of our craft projects (we have two more to create!) and to hear what we learned as well!*

Fifth Grade--Week Three

Hanna's third week of 5th grade homeschool was short but sweet, completely laid back and very "unscheduled". This all due to our being on vacation until Thursday. I hadn't really planned on any formal lessons for her this week. However, she ended up doing a bit of work anyway--fun work.

Crafts
Hanna and Joe both made a carp kite as featured from The Crafty Classroom and ABC & 123, and both listened as we read together from our pond life books.

History/Research
Hanna did a brief report on Children's Day in Japan. Here is what she and I both learned from her research:

• Children's Day was originally for boys only.
• Carp kites were flown to represent the boys in the home, the largest kite representing the oldest boy and so forth for each son in the household.
• Girls had their own day celebrated on a different date also referred to as "Doll Festival". Dolls were handed down from mothers to daughters through generations.
• The two days were combined in 1948, however, many households still choose to celebrate Children's Day as a day primarily for boys.

Science Projects
Hanna made a bird feeder this week from her Apologia Zoology 1-Flying Creatures course. She made this birdfeeder using:

• a gallon size juice bottle
• wooden dowel
• twine
• birdseed
• help from dad using the drill

This was a really simple feeder to make. Basically you drill holes in the juice bottle for the twine (to hang it from), two holes on either side near the bottom for the perch and two larger holes above each perch so the birds can eat the birdseed.

We took the easy way out and purchased the suet instead of making it:-). She is observing each feeder over the next week to see which feeder different types of birds prefer and so forth. She enjoyed making the feeder and is really enjoying watching the birds (and squirrels too) eat from the feeders each day. I'll have to update this post when she concludes her observations on each feeder.







*I received her new ELA curriculum, Language Lessons by Sandi Queen, and Grammar Ace, in the mail today. They look super!! So much more appealing to both Hanna and myself over the Rod and Staff ELA. We are both looking forward to getting started on these next week when we go at school full swing again! I will update on how we like these programs after we've used them for awhile.*

Preschool Week Ten--A Little of This & A Little of That

~Joe is 4 years, one month old~

Joe had a very informal, laid back week of Preschool this week due to our being away on vacation the majority of the week. We didn't have a theme or a letter of the week, we really did do "a little of this, and a little of that".

Books
We read our books about Pond Life along with some of our other favorites from home.

Crafts/History
Joe made a carp kite craft from The Crafty Classroom that was featured at ABC & 123 this week. This craft was so much fun to make and turned out super cute! Making this craft and reading our pond books and books from home were my only true plans for this week, however, making this craft led to our studying a little more about carp fish and their history. Joe learned about Children's Day in Japan and how these flags are flown on this special day.





Geography/Science
Joe learned that carp fish are native to Asia. He learned to locate Asia and Japan on our world map and learned what carp fish look like, what they eat, and a few other basic facts on carp fish and their habitats/habits.

This wraps it up for this week! Not too much, but it was a nice break. We had a great vacation and had fun with our little bit of learning time we did have and look forward to going at it again next week!

Pond Life Project Week Three--Sort Of....

With us being gone most of this week on vacation I hadn't really planned on us doing much in the way of "formal" school this week. But....we did end up studying a bit on pond life in a round about way. We also continued to read in our Pond Life books a few nights this past week. The kids and myself are really enjoying these books and all of us are learning alot!

I wanted to make one of the kite crafts from The Crafty Classroom featured on ABC & 123 this week, and it was a carp kite. This led us to study about carp fish. Here is what we learned this week about carp fish:

• they are native to Asia
• they were introduced in the US in the 1900's for weed control in ponds
  
• they live in freshwater ponds
• they feed on vegetation such as pond weeds
• they average between 2-4 feet in length
• they can eat more than twice their body weight daily sometimes making them a threat to pond habitats
• it is illegal to stock certain species of carp fish in some US states
  

We read online about carp fish and looked at pictures of carp fish online too. These are some pretty interesting fish with a very interesting history in Japan. Read about this and see our carp kite crafts here and here.

Picnic Table Talk-Celebrating Father's Day

This week's topic for Picnic Table Talk at ABC & 123 is Father's Day. We celebrated our Father's Day this year while on vacation. This was the first year I have ever spent Father's Day away from home so it was a bit different. We also left our youngest behind so we could have some one-on-one with our two oldest, so this was different too. Despite these differences though, we enjoyed Father's Day and celebrating the amazing dad in our family very much. He is a special guy and we are so blessed to have him. Instead of crafts or dad's favorite dinner, this year I packed our cards and gifts and the dad in our family chose his favorite place to dine out. Our dad opened his gifts first thing Father's Day morning before we headed out for our day's activities. We spent the bulk of our day at MagiQuest, one of our dad's favorite places to "play" while we were away. Even though this place is for kids, our dad likes it (I think) as much or more than our kids:-). After MagiQuest we went out for a yummy dinner and ended our day with a walk on the beach. The kids and dad enjoyed trying out his new metal detector--one of his Father's Day gifts and a "toy" he'd been wanting for quite some time.

Our dad goes above and beyond each and every day to give 110% to myself and our children. He is such a wonderful father and husband and my best friend. He is a hands-on dad who is kind, loving, tender hearted, compassionate towards nature and man, soft spoken, patient, generous, creative, fun.... He is my Knight in Shining Armor and we live our fairytale each day together with our children.

Happy Father's Day! Don't forget to stop by ABC & 123 and see how others celebrated the dads in their lives too!

Muffin Tin Monday-Copy Cat Week

Today's theme for Muffin Tin Monday is "Copy Cat". For my muffin tin this week I've chosen a beach theme. I actually made and served these for the kids on Friday for lunch to start off our family vacation to the beach. I thought this would be the perfect kick off for our vacation. I am tying this into our weekly theme for school since we plan on visiting some educational places while we are away at the beach!

I didn't copy every idea for my muffin tin from the same person, so I am listing each link with the item it goes with:

• ocean water to drink (blue Kool-Aid)-Casa Camacho
• banana octopus (me)
• watermelon wave-Mother Is Not Concerned
• sailboat-Paid in Hugs
• beached whales-vanilla pudding with crushed honey teddy grahams and stauffer's whales on top (me)
• starfish sandwiches-Mother Is Not Concerned

The kids were already all revved up and ready for our upcoming vacation so this muffin tin was definitely a success!! Stop by Her Cup Overfloweth and see what everyone else "Copied" this week too!

Preschool Week Nine-Letter "Kk"

~Joe is 4 years old~


This week our letter of the week to go along with our Get Ready for the Code lessons was the letter "Kk". We continued our lessons in the "Code" for phonics and handwriting. Joe also used some file folder games and the consonant cards from Homeschool Creations to reinforce alphabet and phonics skills.



Books

Crafts
"Kite" was the first thing that jumped out at me for a letter "Kk" craft. Joe made a simple kite this week using construction paper, glitter, glue, several mosaic tile pieces and yarn. Very, very simple but he enjoyed it alot! (I'm finding out some of the most simple ones are his favorites.)



Math
We continued on with our Abeka daily math lessons this week. We played a few math/sequencing centered games with dominoes. We also got out our Perler Beads and Joe worked on patterning and sequencing to make a kitty.





Science
We studied a bit about kangaroos since it fit our letter theme. We looked at maps and practiced finding Australia. We read books about kangaroos and learned about how they carry their babies, what they like to eat, different places they live within Australia and how they keep themselves cool.

We continued on with our pond unit study. Read all of the details for that in this week's Pond Life post--we had lots of fun on our trip to a pond!!

Joe and Hanna also had a pond themed Muffin Tin Monday lunch! Another great week!

Fifth Grade-Week Two

Hanna had a very productive week! Things went so smoothly this week incorporating the ideas we came up with last week! I think the four day work weeks will be good for her, with us using Fridays for conference and test time. She got alot of work done this week and felt very good about herself, homeschool and her work. She is loving homeschool as much as I am--such a blessing!

English/Math
Hanna continued with her daily Rod and Staff ELA and Math lessons. Math is going very well, no problems and she is very pleased with the Rod and Staff Math. ELA is another story. This was our area of weakness and much frustration last week. We spent lots of time on this subject and we both concluded the beginning of this week that Rod and Staff ELA is not a match for her. It assumes she has much more prior knowledge of ELA than she actually has and moves at a very fast pace with lots and lots of busy work. She needs a more basic ELA program. I have discovered that much has gone lacking in her ELA/Grammar studies in public school and we are going to have to spend some time playing "catch up". After much research (and lots of great help from my friend, Michelle, at Delightful Learning) I have decided on Language Lessons-Elementary Level 1, by Sandi Queen for her new ELA program. I also plan to supplement this program with Grammar Ace. We will begin it next week and hopefully things will work out with this new curriculum. I'll let you know!

Wordly Wise 3000 Book 5
Another great week with Wordly Wise. I don't foresee any problems with this course at all. I will not generally include this in my weekly posts. It is old ground for her, and just new vocabulary to cover each week.

Science
Hanna completed Apologia Zoology 1, Flying Creatures, Lesson 2 this week. She studied about parts of a bird, what makes a bird a bird and made a detailed diagram of a bird and it's parts.





Hanna also continued working on her pond life project, both the research and mural aspects of it. Read more about our science study on pond life in this week's Pond Life post.

History
Hanna completed lessons 4-6 from History Odyssey-Ancients, Level Two this week. She studied about the Sumerians, Hittites, Mesopotamia, and the building of the Ziggurats in Ur.

I can't say enough about how much she enjoys her Science and History curriculums! They are both great finds!!

Books

Pond Life Project-Week Two

Both of the kids continued to work on their pond life projects this week. We took a "field trip" to a pond and saw pond life up close and personal. While we were there we saw turtles, tadpoles, minnows, a pond skater, fish, ducks, cattails, reeds and lily pads. The kids fed the ducks, fish, turtles and minnows bread. Some of the turtles were pretty large and were taking some big bites out of our bread! They loved watching all of them eat. We talked about all that we'd read and learned earlier in the week. This was Joe's first time being at a pond like this and seeing so much live pond life in action. He soaked it all up and has been talking about it all week. Hanna loves anything to do with critters and nature, and had just as much fun as Joe.









This week both kids worked on more "critters" for their pond murals. We aren't going to "put them together" until all of our creatures are finished, so no pics until the finished project.

In addition to that, Hanna worked on a written report she is completing on pond life. Joe and I continued to read books about pond life and talk more about pond habitats and critters.

I made a pond themed Muffin Tin Monday lunch for Hanna and Joe. They were so excited when they got to the table and saw it!

Muffin Tin Monday-Pond Life

This week for Muffin Tin Monday I chose to do a pond theme since we are doing a unit study on pond life for science right now. Here's what I used to fill our muffin tins this week....

• one toy duck
  
• "fish eyes" (grapes with the centers cut out)
  
• celery with pnut butter and raisins, we are calling this "flies on a log"
• sliced cucumbers for "lily pads"
• pb & honey sandwiches cut out in a fish shape
  
• "dirt" pudding with gummy "worms"

I have one of these ready for lunch today for each of my two oldest! The kids are anxiously awaiting their muffin tins! They remember after only one week:-)! Make sure and head over to Her Cup Runneth Over and see what everyone else did this week--and maybe even join in yourself:-)!

Fifth Grade--Week One

This was Hanna's first official week of homeschool! As I have mentioned several times over the last few weeks we are doing homeschool throughout the summer since our baby will be here mid-September. Hanna has been anxious to start and was ready, actually asking me if we could begin only a couple days after she got out of public school. I "convinced" her to take a little time off before we began. Our first week was very successful from a few different standpoints. I will talk about our productivity and what she did on an academic level in this post. I figured out lots of great scheduling and organizing techniques we are utilizing beginning next week that I will address in a different post.

Hanna is hoping to get all of her lessons finished up most weeks in a four day school week, Monday-Friday. This week she did accomplish that. She is satisfied with all of her curriculums we chose (thank goodness) and feels comfortable with their content and the way the lessons/assignments are laid out.

English/Math
She completed lessons 1-4 from Rod and Staff English and Math. So far these lessons are just review from 4th grade materials, so no problems.



Wordly Wise 3000 Book 5
Hanna will complete one lesson from this book per week. Since she has used this book beginning in second grade until present, no surprises here either. Great way to learn new vocabulary and also works on reading comprehension.

Science
This week Hanna completed lesson 1 from Apologia Zoology 1, Flying Creatures. She began her notebook for the course and learned alot about notetaking skills!! This week's lesson defined zoology and discussed the basics of classification, extinction, flight, biomes and touched on a few bird facts. She also completed short reports on Carolus Linnaeus and five biomes.



Hanna also started her pond life project. Hers, just like Joe's, will be a unit study completed over the course of several weeks. Hanna's will be more in depth than Joe's and done independently.

History
Hanna completed lessons 1-3 from History Odyssey-Ancients, Level Two. She began her history notebook (science and history are both notebooking based curriculums for her), timeline and map 1. She really enjoyed her work time in both science and history!

Spelling
Hanna didn't have any spelling words this week. I am pulling her spelling words each week from any words that are misspelled throughout her weekly writings/reports, as well as from her history and science lessons from the previous week. She will begin weekly spelling next week.

She had a super week! I was impressed with how well she did and how well she worked independently. I did my best to find curriculums for her that would encourage as much independent work as possible. She has been in Montessori school and is used to independent lessons and I wanted to continue that in our homeschool. I am very satisfied with our first week!

Figuring Out Fifth Grade

I learned alot this week as Hanna began homeschool! I'm sure there will be much, much more ahead to tweak, figure out and learn, but I am very satisfied with all that we accomplished and figured out our first week. I would like to share a few ideas that I am going to incorporate into scheduling and organizing to make things easier for Hanna and myself.

I am a fan of baskets and bins for organizing everything!! I have them everywhere for everything and think they make homelife run so much more smoothly! That said, I have a very large canvas tote/bin for Hanna to keep all of her materials in for homeschool. She can simply carry this tote to her room or wherever she is studying at the time and have everything all together. (We have some bookshelves designated to textbooks and all of our textbooks are kept here.) Joe and myself also have these same totes for our school materials. I love Sue Patrick's workbox system and will probably switch to this method when Jack begins homeschool to further organize everything, but for now the totes are working for us.

Hanna has a clipboard with a storage compartment underneath that she keeps all of her uncompleted work in each week. On the front of the clipboard I have created a weekly assignment sheet for her to clip on. Each Friday we have a conference and discuss any concerns either of us have from the week, have a spelling test and go over assignments for the upcoming week. Afterward, she fills out her upcoming weekly assignments sheet.

Here is our weekly assignment sheet.
Weekly Assignment Sheet

Publish at Scribd or explore others: School Work Magazines & Newspape Books Non-fiction ebook blogs

I have also created a "I Need Help" sheet for her. She keeps this clipped on the front of her clipboard as well. If she has any problems with her daily lessons she fills out the sections on the sheet and places it, along with all of her completed work for the day, in my tote. This way when I check her daily work each night I can refer to the sheet, see if she needs any help and be prepared to explain it to her in detail the next morning before she begins new lessons. For me this helps me to be better prepared in what I need to teach her, know where she's at and cut out alot of "question asking" each day.

Here is our "I Need Help" sheet.
"I Need Help" Sheet

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Magazines & Newspape How-to-Guides & Manu help self

This is what is working for us for now. As we figure out more/change things I'll post more. We had a great week!

Preschool Week 8--Letter "Mm"

~Joe is 4 years old~

We had a very busy week! I am figuring out how to incorporate my daughter's homeschool in with doing Joe's school,(as of this week)and so it(along with all of the other usual) has been a bit hectic for me at times. Overall it turned out to be productive, fun and so worth every second! I've felt like an "official" homeschool mom this week and I have to say, it is wonderful! I feel so blessed to be able to be at home with my children period, but to be so involved with them now in their learning each and every day is a feeling I can't put into words. I am so, so very thankful to my Heavenly Father and a very supportive, helpful, encouraging husband who make this possible!

Our Letter of the week was "Mm". We continued with our Get Ready for the Code lessons for handwriting/phonics and also used a couple of our file folder games to reinforce phonics and alphabet.

Books


Crafts
This week Joe made a macaroni "Mm" and we started our pond project that we will continue to work on for the next few weeks. The macaroni "Mm" is a "classic" craft for the letter "Mm", so nothing for originality this week:-), but let me just say, Joe loved doing this! Something so simple, but he really enjoyed it. We made a monkey puppet, that you can read about in my ABC & 123 Picnic Table Talk post, lots of fun!!



Math
We continued our Abeka math lessons, Joe used his M & M math books and we began Muffin Tin Monday, incorporating it into our school time for that day since the theme was numbers and counting.



Lapbooks
I made a lapbook for this week from Homeschool Share based on the book, If You Give A Moose A Muffin. It contains math, a little phonics, story sequencing, tic tac toe, weather, and some "moose facts". It is a pretty full lapbook, great pictures and Joe had lots of fun with it. Here are pictures of the front cover, inside and back cover. I used 3 file folders to make this lapbook and there are also game pieces for tic tac toe and the muffin math mat.







Science
We studied about moose, read lots of books about them and watched a "you tube" video clip on them too. As I mentioned earlier, we also began our pond life project which will be a science unit study for our family over the next few weeks. This was our main science for the week. Joe thoroughly enjoyed our pond studies this week. He talked about the things he learned often at meal times around the table and I was amazed at all he is soaking up! I plan on a "field trip" to a couple nearby ponds the next two weeks to see pond life up close and personal.

We really had a wonderful week. Very fulfilling for me and lots of fun for the kids!

Pond Life Project-Week One

I came across a really fun pond project at Totally Tots, Once Upon A Book and wanted to share it. I decided we were going to start it this week and do it as a pond unit study, art project and science project all-in-one. I plan on doing this over the course of a few weeks and adapting it for both Hanna and Joe. Here is what we plan on doing:

Preschool Pond Project
Joe is going to pretty much follow the project ideas that come directly from Totally Tots for his pond. We are going to make a pond mural, fill it with pond critters and read books about pond life. We plan on adding a little to our mural each week and reading different books about pond life each week as well.

Elementary School Pond Project
Hanna is also going to make a pond mural, but hers will be much more detailed and she will not be using any templates for any of her critters. She is going to do a more in depth study of pond life and complete a report on ponds/pond life to go along with her mural.

Today they both painted the backdrops for their murals.


I plan on posting our progress each week as we work towards completing our projects.

Muffin Tin Monday-Counting & Numbers

I have decided to join in on Muffin Tin Monday's. I've looked at this blog carnival for a couple of months now and thought it looked like so much fun. Didn't know if I had the creative juices to follow in the footsteps of some of the more experienced "muffin tinners", but am giving it a try! I will usually include these posts on my family blog unless the theme is "school/learning" related as it is this week.

This week's theme is Counting & Numbers. I decided to make a game out of this for the kids. I filled their tins with trail mix items and gave them a set of dice. They took turns rolling and whatever number the dice landed on they counted out that many of one item and filled a ziploc bag. They continued taking turns rolling, counting and bagging each item until they had enough for a trail mix snack. They enjoyed the game and loved the muffin tin concept! I think this will be a much anticipated new tradition on our Monday's!

Make sure and head over to Her Cup Overfloweth and join in on Muffin Tin Monday's!

Preschool Week Seven- Letter "Bb"

Joe is 4 years old
We just wrapped up our second week using Get Ready For The Code (Book A) and I am still completely satisfied!! Keeps Joe's attention and the repetition is great--since each week's workbook pages follow the same pattern week after week he was able to remember how to do most of them, which enabled him to work independently for a few minutes at a time each day.

With Get Ready For The Code you don't learn the letters in the typical A,B,C,D and so forth sequence so we actually repeated letter "Bb" this week. (We had already covered letters A-E.) Although Joe will continue to learn the correct order of the alphabet with file folder games and other activities our letter of the week theme will follow our Get Ready For The Code lessons from now on.

Our letter of the week was "Bb". Our theme was bears. We focused all of our activities this week on bears.

Books


Crafts
This week we made a storyboard using the animals from the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? I printed out each animal from the book and had Joe use poster paint to paint each one. I used varying painting tools to teach him about painting with texture. Here is what he used to paint each animal:

• brown bear-a feather
• red bird-an apple sliced in half
• yellow duck-textured paintbrush from Alex
• blue horse-textured paintbrush from Alex
• green frog-bubble wrap
• purple cat-textured paintbrush from Alex
• white dog-printed this out--didn't paint
• black sheep-printed out--didn't paint
• goldfish-small foam sponge

*Joe did not paint the white dog and we had no black paint:-) so I also printed a color copy of the black sheep. Joe used the Funky Artist Paint Brush Set from Alex to paint the duck, horse and cat.*

After the storyboard animals were complete I had Joe use them to retell the story in his own words. We worked on this project all week. He really enjoyed it!



Math
We continued to do our Abeka daily math lessons this week. In addition to these daily lessons, Joe completed a Gummy Bear Graph (he loved this!).



Bear Lapbook
I made a Bear lapbook for Joe this week. I pulled lots of different activities from different sites for this book. I usually get my lapbooks primarily from Homeschool Share, however, this time I used about 6 different sites for the contents. Below are all of the links for our Bear Lapbook.

• "Bb" book
• rhyming word pairs
• button pattern cards
• lesson ideas for Brown Bear story
• bear tangram
• gummy bear graph

The lapbook contained vocabulary cards, patterning, counting, a bear tangram, letter/sound recognition, a color scavenger hunt (lots of fun)and rhyming pairs.

Science
We read lots of nonfiction books about polar bears, brown bears and grizzly bears. We talked a little about their similarities and differences, habitats, physical features and living habits. We took a trip to the zoo this past Saturday and looked at the brown bears there. Joe talked with a zookeeper about how they take care of the bears. She shared with Joe some facts about brown bears and showed him a few of their brown bear "artifacts".

We talked about the constellation Ursa Major and how it means "Great Bear". We looked at some "real" pictures of the constellation on the internet--Joe enjoyed learning about the constellation. We will look for it in the sky on our next trip to the country!