"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!

 

Our Adventures with Before Five in A Row - Caps For Sale

I cannot believe how much fun we are having starting to do the Before Five in A Row Curriculum again!  Bringing it back out this year I was assuming that I would use it focusing on our 3 (almost 4 year old) and 2 year old, but I am surprised how much our 5 1/2 year old is loving it as well!  This week we rowed the classic story Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina.  It is a silly story about a peddler who is selling caps and decides to go and take a nap in the country.  While he is napping near a tree monkeys take ALL of his caps except for one.  The peddler tries many things to get his caps back from the monkeys and finally gets them back and continues on his way by the end of the story.  Here are a few things that we did this week to learn more about our reading comprehension and fun!

Our two year old is loving participating and listening to the stories and truly feeling like he is part of our school time with the big kids.  We found a little monkey costume that we have and acted out the story of the monkeys taking the peddler's caps.  Our three year old thought that dressing up as a monkey was pretty fun as well and he also went around our basement finding as many caps has he could and then counted them all (he found a total of 11)!

Our next activity was aimed at our 5 1/2 year old and he LOVED it!  He has been learning to count by 2s, 5s and 10s in his Seton math book and also learning about money so we took out caps and had a sale with his brothers.  In the story the peddler sold his caps for $0.50 so our son's job was to pay his brothers with different combinations of $0.50 for each cap.  He counted out 50 pennies and put them in groups of 10, counted out 10 nickels, 5 dimes and 2 quarters!  He really had a lot of fun working on his math skills with this game and applying it to the story.

Another activity that we did this week was playing a fun game of Simon Says or Monkey See Monkey Do!  In the story the peddler gets frustrated and he points at the monkeys and they just point back at him.  Then the peddler stops his feet because he is so frustrated about the monkeys having his caps and the monkeys just stop their feet back.  Finally, the peddler is about to just walk away and he throws the one cap that he has on his head down on the ground and the monkeys all throw their caps down from the tree!  Our kids all had such a fun time both receiving and giving instructions to copy with this game.  Since our 2 year old has recently learned all of his body parts and basic skills like jumping, etc he thought this game was especially fun!

We continued expanding on our lessons using Homeschool Connections Literature Based Printables and had a great time matching rhyming words, working on what letter different words start with, etc.  Our 3 1/2 year old especially loves these activities and working on his basic skills.

 

When we start the week reading the story for the first time I have been reading it aloud to everyone, but as we progress throughout the week our 5 1/2 year old reads more of the book aloud to his brothers.  I will read a page and then he will read a page and we go back and forth.  This has been so great for him to practice his reading skills and increase his confidence with reading!  I love that most of the books in the Before Five in a Row and Five in a Row curriculum are at a pretty basic reading level.

 

 

The peddler in the story carries all of the caps on top of his head has to balance them all as he walks around to sell them.  We did a fun, simple physical activity of trying to stand up straight and walk while balancing a book.  The boys were surprised how difficult this was to do!

Also, one page of the book talks about the peddler looking to the left, right, up and down when he was searching for his caps.  We have learned directions in the past with the big kids, but we reviewed them this week and our oldest was teaching his brothers how you can make an "L" with your left hand to identify which direction is which!

 

One thing that we have been working on with our 2 year old is learning his colors, so we did this again this week as the peddler had black, brown, grey, blue and red hats.  We have color flashcards that I laminated a few years ago that I keep stored together to bring out and review as each child is learning their colors.  We also have these laminated flashcard sheets that I made for numbers, letters, seasons, shapes and more.

 

Finally, we also took a visit to the zoo after reading Caps for Sale one day to watch real life monkeys and their behavior.  The monkeys are so much fun to watch to see how they all interact and play and we had a great time.  It was especially a fun zoo visit because traditional school has started back in session in our city so it felt like we had the zoo to ourselves.  Perfect for some hands on learning!

 

 

 See more books that we have "Rowed" on our Homeschool Page!

As the Big Yellow School Bus Rolls By and My Child is Not On It

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Traditional school is starting this week in my city.  All of the school supplies have been on sale at all of the stores, the lunches are being packed, the backpacks are getting ready,  andthe yellow school buses are coming, but my child is not going to be on it.  See, my husband and I made the choice to explore homeschooling our children two years ago now and we have fallen in love with being their primary educators.  Since then we have learned so much in our home together, about our faith, our family and a lot about our world.  Our son has started to learn how to read, how to count and a lot of other wonderful skills.  But this year is different.  This year is very different because, although we have kind of been on this journey of homeschooling for the past few years, this is the first year that our son would be getting on that big bus and going to school.  He would be starting Kindergarten this week, and that simple fact makes all of this seem very BIG! 

My husband and I still have no big concerns with either public or private education.  We have received both types of education ourselves in our past and both had many positive experiences.  More than anything we feel very called to homeschool and that it is best for our family right now.  We are very open to always exploring our options for each individual child each year as we continue on this journey. 

All I know is this year, I am so happy to be where we are.  I am so happy that our children are thriving at home and that they are surrounded every day by the love and support of family.  I am happy that we live in a town with a fantastic homeschool community where our children have made and spend time with wonderful friends with fantastic activities.  I am so happy that our children love learning, and the way that homeschooling has become truly a way of life in our family that they don't understand why they wouldn't do school on a Saturday.  I am so happy that God continues to give me the graces to be called to this vocation as not only their mother but also their teacher. 

So this year as that school bus passes each day I will pray to God to bless our family on this homeschooling journey.  I will pray for God to bless me with patience, love and guidance, and for our children to be blessed with a love for God, a love for each other and a love for learning.  I also keep all of you in my prayers as well as the new school year is starting and that you are adjusting to new schedules either in traditional school or homeschooling!

Our Adventures with Before Five in A Row - If Jesus Came to My House

 

We used the Before Five in a Row program two years ago now when our oldest son was 3 1/2 years old and our middle son was just turning 2 years old and loved every minute of it.  We did not use the program at all last year (except pulling out some of our favorite books of the shelf for reading fun), but started again this year!  We will also be adding some of the Five in a Row books this year.  On top of reading the books and using the manual for fantastic activity ides we also use Homeschool Creations Printable Packs that follow each of the different stories. 

 

This week we "rowed" the book If Jesus Came to My House, which is the sweetest story about a little boy who learns that he can "welcome" Jesus into his home by being kind to others.  The vocabulary in this book was perfect for our oldest son (5 1/2 years) to read most of it all by himself with out help and the entire book is written in rhyme, which helps so much learning rhyming words!  Even our two year old loved the illustrations in the book and pointed out common words for him like "puppy, apple, etc".

 

Using the Homeschool Creations printable pack our oldest two worked on writing and tracing words from the story.  I laminate a lot of our school pages for Before Five in a Row so we can use them over and over again and organize them in special folders, but this year I also bought these awesome Reusable Dry Erase Pockets.  The only possible negative of these pockets are with our 3 1/2 year old writing with his left hand I am a little worried that he might smudge the dry erase marker (although this week he did just fine).

In the story the little boy takes Jesus out into the apple orchard to pick the very best apples and we did an activity where we picked apples from the tree and then matched the number of apples to the numerical number.  Our 3 1/2 year old also really loved the activity of taking images from the book and having to identify the letter that the word began with.  Since he loves letter sounds and phonics so much this activity was right up his alley!  Our 2 year old was trying to do some tracing activities, but mostly simply enjoyed just following along during the story time!

We learned the Bible Verse Isaiah 41:10 "Do not fear for I am with you..." and talked about what we do when we get scared.  The boy in the story had a scary place in his house where he saw shadows on the wall at night time.  We talked about how God is always with us!  We also had some fun making our own shadows in the wall!  We also went on a walk and bike ride around the near by lake after reading the book one day and the boys picked flowers and talked about the flowers in our own garden, just like the little boy did in the book!

Another day, we had our very own tea party and spoke of how we can be kind to our friends, like Jesus, and invite them over to our home. We also spoke of how when we host people we like to offer them food and drink and be generous and kind.

We had a lot of fun this week rowing "If Jesus Came to My House".  We will continue to show you the fun we are having with Before Five in a Row and Five in a Row as our Homeschool year continues!