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!

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!

 

"First" Day of School 2015-2016

When we homeschool year round I am not really sure when our official first day of school is, as we kind of just flow from one thing to the next.  But, I do still want to have those special memories and keepsakes to watch our children grown and change each year.  We decided that each August, as traditional school begins, we will do some special beginning of the year activities to commemorate our journey!

Ryan - 5 1/2 years old

 Connor - 3 1/2 years old

Luke - 2 years old

Our Crew - August 2015

 

We also have started a special growth chart (made from an old piece of wood from our house) where we measure each child as they grow each year.  Along with this we trace their handprint each year on construction paper that I then laminate and write the year on.  We will keep all of these handprints together for each child on a special ring to watch how their hand grows through the years. 

 

 

 

 

Finally, we have a fun little interview with the children to keep to always remember what some of their favorite things are, what their handwriting looks like, etc!  Happy "New" School year! 

   

 
 *Signs from YellowBlissRoad.com

Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary

On August 15th, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary.  It is on this day that we celebrate Mary be brought into Heaven, body and soul.  When we die we wait for our bodies to be reunited with our souls in Heaven, but Mary the Mother of God did not have to wait because she was without sin. 

There are many Marian feast days in which we celebrate Mary throughout the liturgical season and this one will always remain truly special to our family.  Today, August 15th, was the due date of our little saint Samuel who we lost by miscarriage earlier this year.  I know through the experience of losing Samuel that God and Mary have truly untied our family closer together, and we look forward to the day we can all be together as an entire family in Heaven.  Today to remember our sweet Samuel we went to the cemetery and prayed the Hail Mary as a family.  We also wrote messages to Samuel and sent them in balloons up to Heaven.  This was a little way that the other children could feel like they were involved by sending messages and prayers on this special day.

 

To learn more about Mary and the Assumption we continued with our great Art 1 book from Seton by making a banner for Mary.  We took the picture of Mary that the book provided, colored it, used cotton balls for the clouds, glitter and crayons to decorate and put it all together on blue construction paper!  It was a lot of fun!

 

 

 

We also made the Assumption Cake with the recipe from Holy Heroes to eat with our lunch!  As it says at Holy Heroes "The Angel Food cake reminds us of the angels in Heaven, and the berries are blue, for our Blessed Mother."  We also did add some whipped cream on top for clouds as suggested!  It was a yummy treat to help us celebrate the Assumption of Mary!

 

 

 

Mother Mary, pray for us!