What We Learned This Week

We learned much more this week in our homeschool than just academics. I learned alot too. I’ll start with what I learned. I learned to relax a little. I learned it’s ok to take a break and to back off a bit and just have a little more fun. I am finally realizing that one of the advantages of homeschool is being able to make it work for your family—as to when you school, how you school and what you teach.

School has been very difficult for me the past 8 weeks. It is so hard to teach Hanna and Joe while Jack runs around and Jesse is sometimes awake and being fed as well. I finally figured out (with some advice from my mom) that school works best for us in the afternoon when the little ones are asleep, or at least Jack, and we can concentrate better—all of us.

I have also decided no more pictures of schooling. It’s just too stressful and honestly, pointless—to me—to interrupt school and teaching time to snap pictures. Sure, finished projects, craft pictures, but no more during work and teaching time. I realized I have been letting blog linkies and other homeschool bloggers' activities dictate alot of how I do our school, and that is so totally ridiculous! I am going to go back to pure fun—teaching, learning and loving alongside my children—not in front of them with the camera. This week went so much better for all of us!

Lastly, we are taking it easy until January! I realized two weeks ago we were halfway through our school year already because we started in June, so we are going to enjoy this wonderful time of year. Hanna will only be doing ELA, Science and History. Joe will be doing phonics and math. He actually read his first word on his own this week—hot! I look forward to seeing how he develops each week with his reading. Of course, we will be doing LOTS of book reading and crafting:-)!

On to our week….We spent this week reading books about Thanksgiving and learning about Pilgrims and Indians. This was Joe’s first year really learning about Thanksgiving. Hanna and I both shared our knowledge of it with him, and took turns reading to him. We enjoyed reading:

• One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims
• Twas The Night Before Thanksgiving
• Thanksgiving Mice
• This Is the Turkey
• A Plump and Perky Turkey
• Setting the Turkeys Free
• The Fire Fighter’s Thanksgiving
• Let’s Celebrate Thanksgiving
• The Thanksgiving Bowl
• I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Pie

I also printed off some non-fiction Thanksgiving info from Apples 4 the Teacher.

From Itty Bitty Bookworm Joe made an adorable dream catcher. He spent lots of time weaving the yarn through the holes in the paper plate. He didn’t want to stop. He worked really hard on this project.

Hanna made a cool dream catcher too, from That Artist Woman. She put her own twist on her dream catcher and did a great job.

Joe built log cabins (another great Itty Bitty Bookworm idea!) modeled after the Pilgrims made from Lincoln Logs.

Hanna found more lizards. She found lizards each day she was outside this week, one day she found four! I love that she still enjoys finding “critters”. I will be sad when this phase of childhood innocence is gone. I take pictures each chance I get of her with these findings.

Next week we have a bit more to do with our Thanksgiving studies and will enjoy Thanksgiving dinner together as a family. We’ve already started putting up our Christmas trees and decorations throughout our home. My goal is to have everything decorated for Thanksgiving dinner, except our live tree—we always put that up the day after Thanksgiving. I LOVE this time of year!

Recipe for Service (and cookies too!)

Monday night we had a really fun and memorable Family Home Evening that I’d like to share. It was nothing out of the ordinary, but it was a first for us of a tradition I hope to keep. It began by me taking Hanna and Joe out Monday afternoon to shop for the contents of their (our) Operation Christmas Child boxes. I am so glad we decided to participate in this wonderful project—we will do this each year from now on. We did two boxes this year, one for Hanna and one for Joe. Hanna was really impacted by our shopping experience. It hit her that we were buying for children who are much less fortunate than we are. She talked alot about this during shopping and later at home, and put alot of time and thought into the gifts she selected and her hand made card. Joe was very sweet too, and he picked out things he’d enjoy having and made a precious card as well.
For our Family Home Evening lesson I selected an activity from our magazine The Friend, copied it, had Hanna cut it out, and I presented it.

We will be putting a puzzle of a house together over the next few weeks. Each piece of the puzzle is centered around an attribute that a home/family needs to be happy.

This week we put our first piece of our puzzle together and focused on the attribute/act of service. We talked about serving one another in our home and serving others. We also talked about how serving each other and serving others is the same as serving Heavenly Father and our Savior.
After our lesson we put our Operation Christmas Child boxes together. The kids made their cards and our boxes are ready to go!


We made and ate Autumn Surprise Pumpkin Cookies for a treat. These are so quick to make and taste good too! You can find the recipe *here*, (scroll to page 15).

This was a wonderful lesson and such a rewarding activity. I am anxious now to find more ways that our family can serve together over the Christmas season.

Bread Slice Bird Treats and Leaf Art

Each year after we read Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf, by Lois Ehlert, we make treats for the birds out of bread slices, just as described in the book.

You simply cut out bread with cookie cutters, punch a hole in the bread near the top with a paintbrush handle, brush the bread cutouts with beaten eggs, dip in birdseed and let dry. Once dry, string and hang in your tree!

Hanna also made a leaf art picture to go along with this book:

Joe made one similar to this a couple months back:

This is one of our favorite Fall books and activities. Fall is such a fun time of year!

To see what others are doing this week in their yards with birds head over to my friend Shannon's and check out Naturally Curious Tots.

Daniel and The Word of Wisdom

It is very important to me that my children grow up with a strong moral foundation rooted in the gospel and their Heavenly Father. I believe it is important to not just show up at church on Sundays, but to LIVE a life each day outside of Sunday services that is pleasing to the Lord. I feel that my children need to be taught much more about the gospel and their Savior than can be learned in an hour of Sunday School each week at church, and I try to do my best to take advantage of the teaching moments that present themselves at home or while we are out and about. Now, I am far from perfect, but I try my best to do these things with them.

This week I saw a perfect opportunity to teach Joe about the story of Daniel and The Word of Wisdom, instead of the food pyramid for healthy eating and living. The Word of Wisdom is a health code that we, as Latter-Day Saints, live by. I started by reading to Joe the story of Daniel from the Bible and from our Old Testament Stories reader. We discussed how Daniel chose the right and obeyed The Word of Wisdom by politely refusing the food and drink offered to him by the King, and then went on to show by example how healthy living would benefit himself and others.

After this discussion, Joe colored the activity I’d printed out from a book I have for religious based activities, and we put it together.

After it was put together he had fun feeding Daniel healthy foods for a healthy body.

I also put some personal hygiene items in a bin and we discussed the importance of caring for our bodies in that way too.

Lastly he put on his skates (well one of them at least, he and Hanna are into skating with only one for some reason right now) for exercise—something else we need to perform at our best, and remain in good health.

I really enjoyed preparing this lesson and presenting it to Joe. This was only the second religion based lesson I’ve worked into our school time, but I plan to do many more. We both had fun, and it felt good teaching him things that he will not only need to know in this life, but in the next as well.

Learning Through Love-4K Fun {To Market To Market}

This week our preschool theme was good health for your body inside and out. Our main books were To Market To Market, by Anne Miranda, and the story of Daniel from the Bible. We finished up the letter “Vv” in our Code lessons and practiced writing and reviewing the letters A-G in our daily Language Lessons.

Joe and I had fun playing Boggle Jr. together a few times—he’s doing so good spelling the three letter words without looking at them first. I wanted to see how he would do writing words on the chalkboard as I randomly called some out. Honestly, I didn’t think he’d be able to do it. Well, he surprised me! Not only did he do it, but he did it quickly and didn’t want to stop. I don’t even know how many he wrote, but here he is writing a few.



We read the Books: (to see all we are currently reading check my Shelfari in my sidebar)

• To Market To Market


• the story of Daniel from our Old Testament Stories


• The Thanksgiving Bowl


• This Is The Turkey


• Scarecrow Pete


• The Scarecrow’s Hat

Joe had fun with produce and kitchen scales. Hanna taught him how to read the weight on the scales after he placed items in the bowl. He did this several different times throughout the week—he loved it! I got this idea from IBB.



Also from IBB, I picked up several different grocery store ads and called out numbers from 1-100, then had Joe find them throughout the ads. Next, we used the ads to find healthy foods and junk foods. We talked about the differences of each, and why we need to eat more healthy foods to keep our bodies strong. (I will share our activity based on the story of Daniel this Sunday.)

For a sensory/motor skills activity, I filled a bin with birdseed, gave Joe funnels, spoons, cups and bowls and let him practice scooping, sifting, pouring and funneling. He did this all week long when the weather was nice outside and loved it—favorite activity of the week!



Joe made a play doh turkey:



a dinosaur collage….:



….and another cool turkey craft that I’ll share with you next week along with some more fun Thanksgiving books!

We used our Kumon workbooks, cookie sheet/magnets and flannel board/felt numbers for math. We practiced writing numbers, recognizing them from 1-100, tangible addition and number families.

That wraps up our week.

Long Night Moon and A Fun Experiment!

*I am linking this post up at Adventures in Mommydom's Science Sunday. Check it out for more great Science activities each week!**

We read the book Long Night Moon, by Cynthia Rylant this past week. This is a book about the moon and what it means to Native Americans. It goes into detail about the meaning of the moon for each month of the year. It is a beautifully written book and to me is poetic. This book is thought provoking and touching, a peaceful read. I enjoyed it very much.

I decided to do a short moon study along with this book. I found a Science experiment online that was super simple and super quick. I took a soccer ball and covered it with tin foil.

After that Hanna and I took turns shining a flashlight on our “moon”. While we did this, Joe walked around the table looking at the different phases that the flashlight made as it shined on and around it. After we did this for a bit, we looked up moon phases online and discussed them.

From our Nature Circles we got the idea to go outside at night, which we did, and look at the moon. While outside we discussed the differences in moonlight vs. sunlight—how they both feel on our skin, how they both light up the trees and so forth in different ways.

This was fun for all of us and so simple too!

Matisse Inspired Collages

Hanna studied about the artist Henri Matisse, and made a Matisse inspired collage for this week's Open Ended Art.

We briefly read and discussed Matisse first in the books, Oooh! Matisse, by Mil Niepold & Jean-Yves Verdu, and When Pigasso Met Mootisse, by Nina Laden. I checked both of these books out from our local library.

I found *this art lesson* at Deep Sparkle Art and she created a name collage.

Joe made a collage too. I did not give him any guidelines. I just let him have fun. He made, of course, "a dinosaur with claws and teeth", as he told me:-).

Make sure and visit my friend Shannon at Mommies Wise Little Bookworms to see what others created this week for their Open Ended Art.

Learning Through Love-Playtime!

Jack had a fun week. He enjoyed playing both at home and at his Nana’s house. He still enjoys his time at the school time with Joe. I try to find things to occupy him during his “table time” and am hoping to add to his learning toys at Christmas.

Play doh seems to be a big hit for him right now. He enjoyed playing with it with Daddy and Hanna.

He got back in the kitchen and had fun whipping up lots of different delicacies for each of us.

He rocked out on the bongos.

He enjoyed building with Legos alongside Joe.

He had fun playing with his brothers.

At Nana’s house Jack enjoyed playing dress up with Elmo….

….And going for a clothes basket ride.

Now you’ve seen what my Happy Jack enjoyed this week Learning Through Love—what did you do? Link up below and share!

Leaning Through Love-4K Fun {Food Fun}

This month all of our Preschool studies are going to be centered around food in some sort of way. This week we focused on smelling foods and spices and incorporated in a bit of science (the five senses) as well.

In our Code lessons we studied the letter “Vv” and Joe made this letter “Vv” picture from No Time For Flashcards.

In our daily Language Lessons we reviewed the letters F, E, D and B, both their sounds and writing them.

I pulled out our letter magnets and cookie sheet to see if Joe could spell three letter words that I called out. Guess what?! He spelled five really quick, with no problem! I cannot believe how this is clicking for him all of a sudden. It makes me so excited and is so fun to see—so rewarding. I love it! Here are some he spelled:

We read the BOOKS: (all books we are currently reading are in my Shelfari in my sidebar)

• I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Pie
• Setting the Turkeys Free
• Long Night Moon (We did a Science experiment with this one that I will post later.)

From IBB I printed out story sequencing cards for I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Pie, and also had Joe draw a picture of a lady and tell me what she would swallow if he were writing a book. His lady would swallow balloons.

For Arts and Crafts this week we made turkey prints from a butternut squash:

Joe painted bread with milk that was tinted with food coloring. Afterward we toasted it and put his choice of topping on—pnut butter. He really enjoyed this activity—another great idea from IBB.

This week our Science bin contained: bread, food coloring, paintbrush, butternut squash, salt, flour and assorted spices.

We cut open and examined the inside of a butternut squash before making our turkey prints. Joe thought it was really neat that the inside resembled that of a pumpkin.

From IBB we also talked about the sense of smell and smelled different spices. On a separate day I pulled out the spices again to see if Joe could recognize them with his eyes closed just by smelling. This was a fun game. He got two out of five right.

We took it easy in our math studies, just used our workbooks for various math activities and number writing practice.

I think that wraps up our week. Now, link up below and let’s see what you did in your Learning Through Love this week. For rules of participation before you link up, click *here*.