Monday, August 31, 2015

What We've Been Reading - August 2015


"What We've Been Reading" is a series here at Children of the Church to both keep track of what we are reading and to share with others what we have been reading in our home.  Reading is such an important part of our daily lives and also our homeschooling journey.  Thank you for following along and please feel free to share what you have been reading as well so we can all learn together!

August 2015

Children's Book List (Our children are 5 1/2 years, 3 1/2 years, and 2 years old):
My Book List:
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Friday, August 28, 2015

Our Adventures with Before Five in a Row - We're Going on a Bear Hunt

 
This week our book that we are studying with Before Five in a Row is We're Going on a Bear Hunt.  We adore this lovely story of a family who goes on a fun adventure in search of the bear and the journey that they are on!  Here are a few things that we did this week for learning fun!
 
First, we decided that it was proper to go on a Bear Hunt of our own, so out we went to a park right behind our neighborhood to re-create our own story and Bear Hunt. 

We went through the long, wavy grass!
 
 Through the deep, cold river!
 
Searched the thick, oozy mud!
 

Through a big, dark forest

 
 We didn't find a snowstorm in August (like in the Book), but we did do some super awesome nature exploring along the way with flowers, spider webs and animals who do live in the woods near our home.

 We were getting a little scared that we MIGHT run into a bear!!

 Finally we found a cave at the nearby park and our middle child graciously decided to act the part of the bear with a giant ROAR!

Then for our afternoon snack we had Chocolate Pudding (or MUD) and Teddy Grahams as we read the story again and talked about the sequence of the story!  This was such a fun way to incorporate the story to our snack time!

 
 
One morning after reading the book we worked with these sequencing cards to see if they remembered the order of the story and where they went on their Bear Hunt.  Our 3 1/2 year old put the pictures in order and then our 5 1/2 year old matched the correct phrases with the pictures!
 

 
We always talk about a Bible Verse or idea that also relates to the story and this week we learned Isaiah 41:10 "Do not fear for I am with you, do not be dismayed for I am your God."  Our children discussed how they can talk to God or their Guardian Angels when they get scared!

 
We continued with fun activities from Homeschool Creations and again worked on our tracing, word/letter recognition, re-telling the story and lots more fun!




 
We have big plans for next week to go to our city zoo to explore and learn more about the Bears in combination with this story and our book for next week Blueberries for Sal.  Plus, we have started CHC's Explore the Continents and we are currently studying the animals of North America!
 
See more books that we have "Rowed" on our Homeschool Page!
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Thursday, August 27, 2015

Pregnancy Update

 
I am officially in my third trimester now and doing well!  As we are only a few months away from meeting our newest member of our family I think often of what he will be like and about what God's plan is for his life and talents.  I think about how he will fit in to our family and join the crew of brothers that he has.  I cannot wait for those sweet little moments in the first days, weeks and months of his life!
 
We were lucky to get another little glimpse of our little guy this week and he is growing, growing, growing!  He is approximately 2 lbs 11 oz and is simply a little miracle!  I do need to ask for your prayers though, as he is currently in a breech position (with his buttocks down instead of his head).  Because of the past history of my other pregnancies and deliveries and our oldest son resulting in an Emergency C-section if this little guy does not turn on his own in the next handful of weeks I will need to have another C-section.  I know that it is not the end of the world to have a C-section, especially if the baby and I are both healthy, but I would prefer not to!  Your prayers would be greatly appreciated!
 
Our sweet little boy, we cannot wait to meet you! 

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Tuesday, August 25, 2015

School Time Fun

 
 
We've been talking a lot around here about what we have been doing with Five in a Row (which we are LOVING by the way), and fun liturgical learning, but we are doing a lot of other learning activities as well.  We are using Seton as our core curriculum for our oldest two children who are completing Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten/1st Grade.  The other thing that we love about homeschooling is how it provides us so much great time as a family to do other fun learning activities.  Here are a few things that we have been up to!
 
It has been important to find ways to keep our 2 year old interested and occupied if he is awake when our oldest children are doing book work.  We have learned that puzzles are his favorite way of keeping busy!  We have a rack of puzzles on our bookshelf and he will sit and do puzzles for 20-30 minutes at a time!
 
Our 3 1/2 year old loves everything artistic (music, drawing, playdough, painting, etc).  One day I found him on the floor making drawing after drawing of people.  The one of our family will be one of those early art pieces that I will treasure for a long time!



We love to find ways to have what I call "educational breaks" during school time where the boys have play time with activities away from book work that still help them develop important skills.  Our oldest two have been loving playing with Legos during this time and have recently gotten a few fun Lego kits!  I can already tell that Legos will probably be one of our top wish list items on Christmas and Birthday lists this year.  It is such a great activity to work on fine motor skills and also following instructions!

Our 3 1/2 year old will also commonly be found around our house playing with our Saint Peg Dolls.  He loves to make up stories and have them interact.  You will hear him in the other room saying "Don't worry Mary, St. George will protect you and then St. Nicholas will bring you a present!!" 


Our 3 1/2 year old is also working through Seton's Pre-Kindergarten curriculum and doing such a fantastic job with everything!  He especially loves the Math and Phonics.  He also has been working a lot on his writing and has been spelling so much all on his own!  The other day he wrote all of our names all by himself without even asking how they are spelled!

 

We are so thankful for an amazing homeschool group here in our hometown that hosts many fantastic educational and faith based activities to participate in throughout the year.  This year our boys were very excited because the field trip was visiting a near by firehouse.  We learned a lot about all of the equipment and had a blast touring the firehouse!


We also love fun learning toys like Alphie, which was a Christmas gift that our middle son received for Christmas that has been a big hit ever since! 
 
Another new interest at our house is using Stencils during drawing/art time.  I think it gives them a lot of satisfaction when they are not quite sure how to draw different vehicles, animals, etc by themselves to use stencils to make a picture just how they like it!
 

 
So, there are a few fun learning activities that we have been up to in our home!  I hope you are having a wonderful school year as well!
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Friday, August 21, 2015

Our Adventures with Before Five in a Row - Goodnight Moon


Here we are, continuing our journey of great literature with Five in a Row!  This week we dove deep into the classic Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown!  We have always loved this book and it was so much fun to learn more about it and apply fun learning to the themes of this book!

One of my favorite parts about doing Five in a Row together with our boys at this age is that it is truly involving them in learning all together.  Our oldest son (5 1/2 years old) simply adores reading the books to his brothers and I think they really like when he is the one reading to them!



Then came fun learning activities from Homeschool Creations Literature Based Printables!  We worked on learning what pairs of socks or mittens meant and sorting them from singles to pairs.  We also counted stars and labeled them with the correct numbers.  Our oldest son loved working on rhyming words from the book and also making up silly rhyming words of his own!


We also received a fantastic collection of Usborne books after I hosted a Facebook party earlier this month so we dove into the Big Book of Stars & Planets to learn more about the Moon and more!  I cannot tell you how much we are loving these books, especially the Big Book collection which has fantastic graphics and interesting facts!

 
Since we were learning so much about the moon we also pulled out another one of our favorite books Happy Birthday, Moon by Frank Asch.  We love this book and learning about using our imagination!  We also did a fun craft of painting moons, with craters using water bottle lids!
 
For a little lesson with Religion we studied the Creation Story including when God made the difference of day and night!  We read Gensis 1:14-19 and made a fun craft with all of the different days of Creation and used our Counting on Faith Book that helps us learn to count a lot of great different aspects of the Faith including days of Creation!
 
 
 See more books that we have "Rowed" on our Homeschool Page!
 
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