Detectives, Preschool Painting & LEGOS

Isaac and I started a "Detective" unit study this week (this is one that Isaac was driving me crazy about doing, he was so excited...)
This looks to be a great unit study! Today we talked about the role of a detective and how investigators use sketches of criminals in their work. Isaac selected a photo of someone, and practiced doing his own sketch of their face. We also dusted for fingerprints! That was super fun!


Graham did a little painting today using Lego Duplos as stampers and also painted with a golf ball rolling around in a pan. This child is all about anything hands-on, especially if there is a mess involved in some way.


I always consider LEGO building as part of our school day (Isaac doesn't know he's learning when he's playing with his LEGOs, so don't tell him!). Today he made this little creation, which I thought was so great I had to take a picture of it. Love that little astronaut floating in space!

Washington & Lincoln

We completed our President's Day unit study last week. This was a great freebie from www.homeschoolshare.com. Here are some of the components that we completed:
Famous quotes about Lincoln and Washington, Where do we find Washington or Lincoln's face?, History of President's Day, When were Lincoln and Washington born, when did they die, Vocabulary words about President's day. And, Isaac wrote his very first essay about what he would do if he were president. It was fun to see what he would come up with without my help. He wrote the following (with several spelling errors, which I had to just let go for the sake of creative writing!) "If I were president, I would let people free and let people do anything. I would fight for our country."
We read several really great books with this unit study, which included the following:

my first sensory bin & Bolivia lapbook

I have been wanting to do a sensory bin with Graham for awhile now, and finally got around to it. We are working on the Transportation Preschool Pack from Homeschool Creations, so I decided to do a transportation sensory bin. Believe me, Graham is DEFINITELY a sensory kind of kid. This child's whole world is a sensory bin. He is constantly into my things, exploring and finding new ways to play with them (not always so much fun for me). Anyway, needless to say, the first test drive of the sensory bin proved to be successful. He played with it uninterrupted for about a half hour. Here is a run down of what's in the bin:

*Polished rocks
*Multiple matchbox/monster trucks
*Discovery Toys stackable dump trucks
*A spoon
*A small amount of play dough (for making tracks, etc.)
*A small shovel
*A small plastic measuring cup
*Play dough roller for rolling out playdough or dropping rocks through
*Two packs of transportation stickers--puffy and foil.
I used mostly what I had, and spent about $4 on some new things at the dollar store to make it new for him.
He had lots of fun scooping and pouring the rocks (he loved the noise!). He made tracks through the play dough with his cars and trucks. He filled up the dump trucks and dumped them out. He decorated the box with the stickers, which are removable and can be re-decorated.


Have you ever noticed this child is half naked in every posting? He has a major aversion to clothing right now. We are working on it.
Isaac just finished his Bolivia lapbook



We picked Bolivia because that is where our Compassion child lives. We both learned a whole lot more about Bolivia. Lots of fun!

China

We are all done with our China unit study! This was such a great unit study, way better than I anticipated. When Isaac chose it, I was a bit surprised, but it was a really an enjoyable study for both of us.
Here he is with his lapbook:


The paper dragon he made:

Here are some pictures from "Chinese New Year" night at the library. Dave took him and they both had a great time. Love this picture:

Practicing chopsticks:



Making his paper dragon:

There are some fabulous chinese-themed children's storybooks out there. Here are a few we read:

More lapbooking fun: LEGOs and a Batman Preschool Pack

Sometimes when I blog about a project we have just done, I say "It was a lot of fun" and then I ask myself...was it fun for me or for the kids? Usually, the fun is a little less evident on their part. But, with the LEGO lapbook we just completed, I can honestly say Isaac had a lot of fun. (click on lapbook to see it bigger)

We learned about the history of Legos and about the company itself. We learned the process of making LEGOs and the Scientific ideas behind why they fit together.

Isaac got most excited when he did some graphing of how many LEGOS of various colors he had in a cup. I didn't know he would enjoy doing something like this, but he did!
He also had to do some adding and subtracting as he guessed how many LEGOS were in a cup, how many he actually had, and how much he was off on his guess.

Graham did a Batman Preschool Pack recently (click here to find out more), and had lots of fun with that. This child is a sponge, and soaks up every moment of "school" that he can get. He wakes up in the morning asking me if we can "do school." Hope that love for learning lasts!

Graham did a good job "catching the bad guys" and practicing his pre-writing skills.


I found a great website recently (I always say I couldn't homeschool without the internet, and that is totally true!) with all kinds of activites you can do with preschoolers. This is one of the ideas that came from childcareland
He had lots of fun sorting fake gemstones into a muffin tin by color. Kept him busy for probably 20 minutes, which is a record for Graham!



We are wraping up Isaac's study of China right now. As our final activity, he is headed to the library night for "Chinese New Year" night...how perfect is that? Great timing! He will be making a paper dragon and practicing his skills at using chopsticks.

Progress: the first two months of the 2010-11 school year.

When you are homeschooling, sometimes the progress is almost invisible. It's sort of like when your kids grow. When you see someone you haven't seen in awhile, and they remark, "Wow, they have really gotten taller!" you are a little surprised because you didn't notice. It happened so slowly, that it was almost invisible. So it is with teaching your children and watching them learn. Sometimes, I want to pound my head against a wall because it seems to be so pointless. Other days, I swear they would be better off in school. But then, I get those glimpses of moments when I am absolutely amazed by the progress. I stop and consider where we were last week, last month, last year, and I am proud. Proud of my sons for learning and working so hard and proud of myself for having the diligence (through Christ) to keep going when the days are so long and seemingly fruitless. Isaac is really excelling in math this year, which is a complete surprise to me. He is almost done with a full level of Math, and is almost ready for the next. Reading has been a little slower, but I have been making myself remember where we were even at the start of school, and he has progressed substantially. He is reading brand new material with very little help, and his expression is improving. His reading comprehension has always been incredible. Even when he was poking around at every other word, he was understanding what he was reading (even when I had long since tuned out!). We are still working on accuracy. Isaac does better with sounding out words in the context of the sentence. Again, this could be the reading-comprehension thing. Right now, I am really trying to drill home long and short vowels. He has weeks where he is better with long vowels, and weeks where he is better with short. I suspect that eventually it will all come together for him. He has also expressed interest in reading alone, which is the first time he has done this. He asked me to purchase star wars early-readers for him (which I did) and he said he wanted them in his room where he could read them alone. Writing progress has been a bit slow. The A Beka curriculum starts out with cursive in first grade. Isaac was doing fine with cursive, but I noticed his printing was really lacking, so I decided to go back to printing until after Christmas, and then we will pick up cursive once again. We have done several unit studies. We have studied Ancient Egypt, Dinosaurs, Knights and Castles and we are currently doing a study of the human body. Some of Isaac's lapbooks (click to enlarge): I am also enjoying working with Graham on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays. We do our work when Isaac needs a break. I have also been doing mini-unit studies and lapbooks with him. We did "Mrs. Wishy Washy" for a week, where we learned about clean and dirty, how to wash our hands, and what things belong in the city versus the country. We did a lapbook on "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" also for a week, where we did story sequencing, comparing sizes, and we did lots of other fun stuff (there are lots of learning possibilities with this book!). We also checked out tons of other Eric Carle books which we have been reading at night. Graham is currently doing the human body study with Isaac and I, and his lapbook components are obviously geared to a pre-school level. Some of Graham's lapbooks: Today, I traced each of their bodies on paper (I knew that old seamless paper from my photo sessions would come in handy someday!) and they got to decorate them any way they liked. Thank goodness Graham did not use primarily red, otherwise his would have looked like a crime scene. Isaac has been doing really well with scripture memorization for AWANA this year. He recently completed the 23rd Psalm:
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More on lapbooks

Lapbooking is my new obsession...I am still trying to figure out a way to make it less for my enjoyment and more about Isaac learning something. But, I have to say that I think it is really fun. Lapbooks are basically a scrapbook (using a file folder re-configured about a thousand different ways) of any topic of interest. It is a nice way to preserve facts that you learn about a topic, and is fun to look back on. The first lapbook we did was on Ancient Egypt, which was an online unit study that we used, along with other things that I had.

In this two week unit study, Isaac learned about the pyramids, made a mummy, learned a little bit about the religious beliefs of the ancient Egyptians, studied the life of Moses in the book of Exodus (in detail), studied the life of Joseph in the book of Genesis (both stories obviously having much to do with ancient Egypt), made a copper bracelet and book and learned about heiroglyphs. To cap off our unit study, we watched "Prince of Egypt" and "Little Joe" (veggie tales), which are about the lives of Moses and Joseph respectively.
In our American History class, we are learning about the symbols of the United States. I had Isaac pick one of the symbols (the Eagle) that he wanted to learn more about, and we did a brief two day unit study and lapbook about Eagles.
Here is my favorite place to find downloadable lapbooks.
Our next two week unit study, chosen by Isaac, will be on dinosaurs and fossils...should be tons of fun!

lapbooks and lesson plans and unit studies...oh my!

So, being a "newbie" to this whole homeschooling scene, I didn't realize there would be a whole education language that I would need to identify myself with. Not ever having had a child in the school system, or having any education in teaching per se, there have been lots of things that I have had to familiarize myself with. Honestly, I didn't even know what "unit studies," "lapbooks," or "workboxes" were until fairly recently! What I have realized is how much all of these things can add to our homeschooling experience!
Recently, I decided to incorporate unit studies into our workbox system (whoa...I am getting REALLY complex here). I made a list of a ton of topics that I knew Isaac would enjoy studying (i.e. ancient Egypt, the continents, the rainforest, and on and on). Because these things are not part of our core curriculum, I decided to make them part of our workbox system. That way, we can feel free to spend as much or as little time as desired on each topic. I had Isaac pick what topic he wanted to study first, and he chose Ancient Egypt! What WONDERFUL resources are out there on the internet for this topic. It is almost overwhelming!
I happened to have a book from the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Ancient Egypt activities for children, so I have mostly used that this week for our unit study. Isaac got to make a mummy using a doll (should have been a Barbie, but we don't have any of those around here! So, Bob the Builder had to take one for the team), toilet paper, tape, oil and salt.




He also got to practice writing his name in hieroglyphs, and did some drawing Egyptian-style.
Next week, we are planning to delve further into the Ancient Egyptian world, and we will be making a lapbook (our first) on Anciet Egypt.
My mom told me once that homeschooling would eventually become fun for me, that it would be akin to my scrapbooking hobby. I didn't really believe her, and until now, felt like it was pretty much just another thing on my long to-do list. This year, the light has come on for me, and I am truly enjoying this process!