Homeschool Update

Ok, I can not believe that it has been over a month since I last posted something.  I do not even have a good excuse! Things have actually been going pretty smoothly around here.  The kids have stayed fairly healthy this winter and school is moving right along.  It hit me the other day that there is only three months of school to go! We are in the process of discerning what to do about the next school year.  We said in the beginning that we would take it a year at a time and reevaluate how things are going each year to make sure we are making the best schooling choices for our children.  I am currently looking into other homeschool curriculum, just to see what all is out there(we are currently using K12).  Nothing has been decided yet and I’ll let you know when we figure it all out!

Anyway, I thought I would just give you a quick update on school.  As I said, things are moving right along.  It really seems like it took the whole first half of the year to get settled into a routine; we still have our days, but for the most part, homeschooling is working well for us!  

Here is a look at what we have been up to.

We kicked off the new year with a unit on penguins.  The girls loved making these little thumb print penguins.  They turned out so cute!

We practiced our graphing skills by charting how many fish the colorful penguins ate.
Click here to download the penguin graph.
Click here to download the penguin. (just print him out on different colored sheets of card stock)

Monkey-Do loved matching up the black and white shapes  to make these silly shape penguins.
(sometimes my teacher habits get the better of me and I just can't help decorating a door!!!)

I made this penguin using a large cereal box.  I cut a slot under his beak so we could "feed" him.  Monkey-Do matched up rhyming fish and fed him two at a time. Rapunzel did this activity using sight word fish.

These water bottle penguins were fun to make and made a cute decoration for our classroom.  I found the idea here: http://recycledawblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/penguins-made-out-of-water-bottles.html

We also did a unit on winter.  Our story for the week was "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats.
I found this wonderful "Read Build Write"  activity at Homeschool Creations

We recreated the last scene from the story and wrote our own ending.

We had a ton of fun playing with "snow" (shaving cream)!!!

This activity was one of my favorites.  I wrote the letters of their names on paper plates.  The girls had to "build" their snow man by finding their letters and putting them in the right order.  (not sure what is up with the costumes!?!)

Rapunzel's finished snowman!

So, there you have it. Just a little look at what we have been up to.  I have some things I would really like to get posted; hopefully it won't take me a month this time!!!

-Rachel