First Week of Homeschool

Last week was our first week of homeschool.  We began by talking about Christopher Columbus... since it was Columbus Day.  The kids made a bunch of "Columbus" crafts throughout the week.

Columbus puppet & watercolor/handprint ship

Sail boat pattern blocks

Columbus hat

We also made a stand-up character and read a little emergent reader book.

Both boys worked on learning to tie shoes.  SS is getting to be quite the pro!

SS also read a few sight word books to VV (who was more interested in taking a picture right back at me.)  The sight word books focused on "big" and "little."  We also used this book to learn the word "I."

SS really enjoys the pattern blocks so I found him a pumpkin pattern.

For art/science we painted little clay pots that I found at Target for $1.  They are shaped like jungle animals.  The set came with a seed bag to put inside the the animals will grow "hair."  Unfortunately, we haven't been very good at watering them, so no sprouts yet.

One of the scripture stories we discussed was the tower of Babel.  The boys built towers as tall as they could while I read to them from the Old Testament Reader.

We've been talking about autumn and the leaves changing colors for a few weeks.  On Friday we went to a nearby forest and collected colorful leaves (and rocks, pinecones, and whatever else they picked up.)

We talked about the letter "F" this week as well.  We used printables that I found from here, and here along with a handwriting book I picked up at the PX. 

We've practiced animal flash cards, played computer games on www.starfall.com and http://www.kidsastronomy.com/fun/make-a-planet.htm, did a pumpkin file folder game from here:

did math worksheets and activities relating to "over, above, below, next to, behind, in front, left and right.  I have a darling video of them (that won't upload!) doing an acitivity where I tweaked an idea found here and made it a little more interactive for the boys.

Almost every day we read from these books:






and we've been reading a chapter a day from:


So far I think homeschooling is really helping SS.  JJ misses preschool but is having fun at home.  He's doing the same things as SS- so basically doing kindergarten.  It's funny to see how they each excell at totally different things.