Weekly Wrap-Up: Our Last First Week of Kindergarten

Well she went and did it. My baby started kindergarten last week. It's a bit bitter sweet as it's my last time through it. My last baby officially school age. But Mackenzie was at music camp at church so it was a good time to get Kayleigh started with out any distractions.

If you're wondering what Kayleigh is using for kindergarten click HERE.

Bible

We're working our way through Egermeier's Bible Story Book courtesy of Sonlight Core A and the Bible Study Guide for All Ages courtesy of The Review Crew. (Read my review HERE.)  Kayleigh also memorized her first Bible verse from Sing the Word: From A-Z, also from our Sonlight Core.



Check out how well she did. Don't mind her crazy hair. She was going for some curls like sissy. lol

Doesn't she look cute with her curls?

Math

We didn't do math this week. We're starting slow. But we'll pick up where we left off in Math-U-See Primer soon. We'll be starting lesson 9, place value.

Language Arts

Well naturally we did a lot of reading, we are Sonlighter's after all. We started her very first chapter book this week, The Boxcar Children. I've been a little nervous about how well she would do with chapter books, she likes to be read to, but she is very different than Mackenzie at this age. This one
can't sit still and be quiet for very long. So I was very surprised with how well she did listening to this book. She was very interested in the characters and was angry on Friday when the book wasn't on the schedule. So we read ahead. Shew!!  I hope this trend continues.

We finished our week with a Boxcar Children snack of blueberries and cream. Yummy!!! She was so excited. Last year, after her dx of type 1 diabetes, extra snacks were a little more difficult. She was on multiple daily injections and that took away a lot of our eating freedom as we're expected to keep a more regimented schedule for meals. This year, however, both girls are now using insulin pumps and, while it has it's own set of challenges, it makes fun snacks a lot easier.

She started All About Reading Level 1. She did so awesome!! I'm so proud of her.

She started off last year really eager to read and then it fizzled out a bit so I didn't push it. The last thing I want is to make her dread school and reading.  It was a challenge for me because Mackenzie was a very early reader. She taught her self and was reading fluently before she started kindergarten. Kayleigh however is a very different creature so I didn't push her. We'd work on it when she wanted to and drop it when she wasn't interested.

Plus it breaks my mommy heart when I see kids pushed beyond their ability because big brother did this at this age or because mom has some ridiculous notion that every child should be doing the same thing thing at a certain age. The best party of homeschooling is being able to go at the child's pace and not be dictated by curriculum or age so it irks me when I see that. Okay, it also makes me want to throat punch people some times, if I'm really being honest. lol So I try really hard not to be like that so I don't have to throat punch myself or turn my kid off of learning.

I think this level is even more fun than All About Reading pre-1 and she loved that one. Level 1 has tons and tons of games and using the letter tiles just thrills Kayleigh. She had so much fun with it!!!

We also read The Story about Ping and did some activities from this cute printable pack from Royal Baloo. There was mapping, phonics, math, sequencing, and lots of other fun stuff.

Naturally, one of our year round read alouds is a Mother Goose book so I got Literature Pockets: Nursery Rhymes to add some fun crafts to our year. This week we worked on the Little Bird pocket.
She memorized the poem, made a little book, "rewrote" the poem, and made a puppet. She worked so hard to color neatly which was a pleasant surprise since she usually just makes a quick scribble and calls it good.

She's still doing things like handwriting and Explode the Code but that's not that interesting so I didn't take any pictures. lol

Science

First up this week was dinosaurs. We were reading a bit from The Usborne Internet-Linked Children's Encyclopedia  and Kayleigh brought in dinosaurs and matched them up with the ones from the book. So cute!

She also made a dinosaur with hand print spines. Thank you pinterest.

We also talked a bit about the season and made this ADORABLE paper bag book on the seasons.  I found this awesome project over at Delightful Learning. Michelle is so clever.

Lastly she got to do her very first science experiment. She was so excited! She learned that even though something looks empty it's not. It's filled with air. All she had to do is push an empty water bottle and watch the water force the air out making bubbles. Which she did. Over and over and over and over and over. You get the idea. lol

Other Stuff

Not much other stuff going on at the moment. lol We did our art study for the week. We're working our way through the Come Look With Me series for art appreciation. First up is Come Look With Me: Exploring Landscape Art With Children. She loves to look at art so I knew she'd enjoy that.

She also did her first lesson in Draw Write Now, Book 1. Check out her chicken. Sooo cute!!! I tried to get her to color the background but she was having none of that.  Now that's the Kayleigh that I know. lol

Kayleigh had the idea to hang up her work, at least the stuff that wasn't in a book. So we now have her "Wall of Work." She likes to show it to her daddy each day so that he can see what she did. So I think that we'll keep it up for a week and then take it down over the weekend so we can start all over again the next week. And then I can just snap a picture and not have to store all of that paper. WTG Kayleigh for a great idea.

And that pretty much sums up my last first week of kindergarten. How was your week?

Linking to Homeschool Creations, Weekly Wrap-Up.

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Weekly Wrap-Up: The Not-Back-to-School Celebration

It was back to school week for the public school kids but, for us, it was back to the museums week. We  have patiently been looking forward to the day when the museums would be empty again and that day finally arrived. This year, for our Not-Back-to-School celebration, we choose soup at UNO's for lunch and an afternoon at The Children's Museum of Virginia. It was a beautiful afternoon. We practically had the place to ourselves. We saw more staff members then other visitors. Just the way that we like it.  Woot!


Public school wasn't the only thing that started back up this week. It was back to music and art classes for the kids. And Kayleigh is finally old enough to take a class herself, preschool music. She was so excited to finally do smething besides wait for Mackenzie to finish her classes. She came out of her class proudly holding her very own music book. So cute. Mackenzie is continuing on with art and private piano. She came out of class with a list of new piano books that she needs. She absolutely must stop progressing at such a rapid rate. lol With music class came lunch in the YMV lunch room. Yay a bunch of noisy kids acting weird. Just like public school. I guess I can check off socialization.

Mackenzie

Mackenzie's load hasn't changed much. We still haven't added in our Sonlight studies. I've decided to hold it off until after our move in a few weeks. No sense starting a great book only to have to put it on hold.

Our latest science lesson was on whales and it was totally fascinating. Obviously, we knew that whales were huge but some of the comparisons that the book made were mind blowing. The heart of the a blue whale is the size of a VW beetle. Holy cow! And the blood vessels are large enough for a baby to crawl through. Those examples really put the size of these creatures in perspective. I've decide that we will be going on a whale watching trip this winter when the whales are "in town." We're super excited about that.

We're almost finished with our Monet artist study. This week one of her assignments was to make a copycat painting of one of his works. She did an amazing job! Especially considering that she was using water colors instead of oils. You can see how it came out at the end of the post. I had no idea how talented she was at art until I started paying for her to take lessons. lol

Kayleigh

Kayleigh plugged full speed ahead after her mini-break last week. She got right back into all her learnin'.

I made a bit of a change for Kayleigh in regards to her All About Reading lessons. Basically the book is divided into three sections: Capital letters, lowercase letters, and phonics. She is currently in the second section, letter 'd', but she is more than ready for the phonics portion. So I decided to do both at the same time.  She's doing them 4 days a week instead of two. The lessons are really short and she loves them so she didn't even notice. Since we weren't very far into the second section, it won't take long to get those sections lined up.

The fun part about the third section is that they have a "Tasty Alphabet" activity for each lesson. Since we're quickly working through a-d, and we covered a/b this week, we made applesauce in the crockpot. Both the girls helped chop the apples and the both certainly enjoyed eating it.

She finally got to work in her Handwriting Without Tears book. Unfortunately it was just a coloring activity and she was over coloring for the day. lol Not that she likes it on a good day. We also practiced her grip and learned a song about the proper way to hold a pencil. Or crayon in her case. She liked that better than the coloring.

We read lots of fun stories with our Sonlight reading and she got to pretend to be a "hotel waitress" to go along with one of our books. She was not interested in pretending to be the "hotel maid" though. lol Smart girl. I'm hoping this book, Things People Do, has a section on massage because I should would like my feet rubbed. ;o)

Other Stuff

Not only did we head back to music class but soccer has started up too. I'm a little nervous about how Mackenzie's ankle holds out since she broke it earlier this summer. She was given the go ahead but she's pretty wimpy like her momma. She's only had one practice so it's hard to gage. Her first games are this weekend so we'll see how it goes. Kayleigh also starts soccer tots this weekend. She usually refuses to play so I'm not expecting much. We stopped bringing her before the season ended last year because she never wanted to do more than play on the playground. I wouldn't be sad if that happened this year either. lol Mackenzie's games are at 9 & 10 and Kayleigh doesn't play until noon. It's a long morning with a lot waiting.

As promised, here is Mackenzie's beautiful watercolor. She painted it in about an hour. I loved watching her use the techniques she's been learning in art class. I couldn't have taught her all of that. I like to look at art, not create it. lol

 Kayleigh did some watercolor painting too because she didn't want to be left out. She's more of an abstract girl though. She also made a self-portrait as part of her Artistic Pursuits lesson. First she drew herself and then she glued on some "hair and a dress." She loved it.

And that was pretty much our week. Did you do anything special to celebrate not going back to public school?


Linking to the Weekly Wrap-Up, Preschool Corner, Photo Collage Friday, and the Homeschool Mother's Journal.

Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with a Visitor or Three

There wasn't much going on in the way of formal schooling this week. My sister and her family were in town so we did a lot of hanging with them.

We went to The Mariner's Museum on one of the rainy days. My nephew, 15, is very into that sort of thing so it was a good fit for him. My sister enjoyed wrecking havoc and taking goofy pictures with us. Goofy pictures at Mariners is a tradition for us and our friends. It was good to see that my sister could hang with the "big dogs" like us. It's very important to me that you're willing to do whatever it takes to get the shot. lol

And I saw some scrimshaw (art on a whales tooth) that I hadn't noticed on any of my other trips here. We're starting a lesson on whales so I took a picture of it. lol

We even let them drag us to the beach. On the main strip. With all the annoying tourists. It was a bit of a rainy type of day so the crowds weren't bad. I bought the girls boogie boards and Mackenzie is quite good at it. So we're going to to the beach again tomorrow with some friends. We have to get our $6.99 worth out of those boards.

We also took them to Water Country because that's just a good time. I didn't take any pictures except for some crappy ones with my phone. But fun was had by all. Our friends met us up there so Kayleigh had her bff there and she loved that. And I had someone to sit in the kiddie area with me while everyone else rode the rides.

When they left we did some school lite. Mackenzie didn't do much more then finish up what we didn't get to on Friday and continued on with math and science. Kayleigh finished her Friday work and did a little more LA.

I had her do a cut and paste craft with her memory verse from last week. Just cause Colossians 3:20 is a favorite of mine. ;o) And she worked on her All About Reading lessons went on to 'd'. We made Dd shaped cookies out of cookie Dough just for fun. And cuz we like cookies.  We also did a sink/float activity to go along with something we were reading with Sonlight. Kayleigh insisted that everything was going to float. She was correct 2 out of 8 times. lol


I'd like to say that we'll get in a full week next week but that would be a big 'ole lie. We start music classes up again and we have our annual "Not-Back-to-School" outing to celebrating the PS kids going back to school and clearing out of our favorite hang outs.

What's been going on in your homeschool?


Linking to the Weekly Wrap-Up, Preschool Corner, Homegrown Learners, and Homeschool Mother's Journal

Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with A LOT of Science

That's right we did a lot of science. In the form of experiments.

Mackenzie

We're finishing up the last lesson in our Apologia Anatomy from last year as well as finishing our first lesson in Apologia's Swimming Creatures.

In anatomy we were studying growth and development and all of that. Including DNA. So we made an edible DNA strand that we saw all over pinterest.

It was simple. It was fun. And tasty.

The directions are HERE. (P.S. We are now done with anatomy. So only one science lesson for us.)

We also worked on our Try This! and project activities from lesson one of Swimming Creatures of the 5th Day. We did them co-op style with our friends who are studying the same thing. They didn't get to do any of their science experiments last year so we're making them this year. lol

One of their projects is to make an Ocean Diorama. Each lesson they will add examples of the types of animals they studied. This week they created the box and put in some animals from the abyss.  They also had a demonstration of how water pressure effects your body using a ballon and a 2-liter bottle. They made "wind currents" using a tub of water and mini fans. The book suggested using hair dryers for that. Water and hair dryers? LOL No thanks. Lastly they demonstrated how water temperature can effect currents.

She has 3 more lessons left in MUS Epsilon and one more in Growing with Grammar. Then she can start her next level. Yay! IEW continues to go well. She's loving those keyword outlines. We'll start lesson 2 next week.

In the world of home ec, she baked my husband and I some yummy carrot cake cupcakes. From scratch. Cuz we both turned 41 this week. I'm a day older. And wiser. lol

Kayleigh

The first thing I want to share is this: Progress. We are off the dreaded "starter level." Thank goodness. We were so happy we thought about throwing a party in celebration.

I'd like to say that she made some great reading progress but I can't. I'm not sure what they're trying to teach them other than typing skills. And maybe spelling. I'd kind of hoped to teach her to read before we tackled spelling. But at least there were no tears. But that might be because she only did one round of the new level. lol But I'm choosing to remain hopeful.

Naturally, we read a lot. Which is good because we like that. Sonlight had some fun suggestions to go along with some of our stories. When we read The Greedy Farmer from The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book she was comparing liquid volume by pouring milk into cups of different sizes. I'm not going to lie and tell you that she gave a hoot about the mini-math lesson. She was only into the pouring and the drinking of the milk. When we read Tiger Tries to Cheat she had a blast acting out the story with some of her stuffies. She also built the Tower of Babel with blocks but I didn't catch a picture of that. Sorry.

We worked on lowercase b in All About Reading pre-1. She did her little craft, practiced blending with the puppet, and I finally got around to making a salt box for letter tracing like I've been planning in my head for months. Because it was so hard to to find the 30 seconds that it took to prepare. In my defense, the real issue was remember to by a box for it. A 97 cent pencil box from Walmart did the trick. She loved it and used it to draw every letter except for b. lol J was a favorite for this activity. Who wants to place a bet that when she gets to J, she won't want to write it? The odds are in your favor.

We had a blast with our Language Lessons for Little Ones this week. We read a poem about caterpillars and butterflies so I decided to turn it into a little science lesson. (I told you we did a lot of science.) We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and talked about the life cycle of a butterfly. Then we made a life cycle craft using various band aids. How cool is that? Pinterest rocks!! And now I have a lot more band aids in the house.

This week in Handwriting Without Tears , we learned about Mat Man. And body parts. And counting. So versatile. lol We sang the song, built Mat Man, and then she drew him. Everybody loves the Mat Man song.

We did do math. I just didn't photograph any of it. =o)

Oh, I forgot to share our Bible verse for this week. Colossians 3:20. I love it! It's never a favorite of the kids though. I can't figure out why. lol

So how did your week go?


Linking up to: Weekly Wrap-Up, Collage Friday, Preschool Corner, and The Homeschool Mother's Journal.

Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with a Sixth Grader

Yes, you read that title right. My first born is now, sniff, a sixth grader. Sniff, sniff. Against my wishes. Can you believe the nerve of this child? I should probably ground her.

In fact, I think I shall. And I'll give her extra math. And make her write a ten page report. By hand. And fix her liver and onions for lunch. That will teach her to squash all of this growing up.

And that is not all that this little girl did this week. She also got baptized. In the very ocean that God created with his own hands. The idea of being baptized in the very oceans that God mentioned creating in the Bible thrills me. As does the thought that maybe the water from Jordan, where Jesus was baptized, had made it's way to the Atlantic where my daughter was baptized. How exciting that thought is?

I will not ground her for this type of growth though. In this case I will rejoice with her and be a proud mama.

Now on to the rest of our Wrap-Up...

Mackenzie

As I mentioned, against my will, Mackenzie started sixth grade this week. We haven't started up a full load yet as we haven't started back up with our Sonlight studies  yet,  but we did start some of our new items and are finishing up a couple of other things. We did miss our Sonlight though.

We started our Institute for the Excellence in Writing this week. If you've read my blog in the past, then you'll know that finding the writing program that best fits our needs has been a challenge. We did really well with Writing With Ease but Writing With Skill didn't click with us the same way. Since I've only heard rave reviews about IEW, we decided to give it a try. So far so good. Just one week in and I'm ready to rave. Key word outlines? Genius!! Mackenzie was very excited about writing this week. Always a great way to start off the new school year.

We are finishing up our last few lessons in Math-U-See Epsilon. We got a little behind in it due the amount of math programs we reviewed last year. She was supposed to finish it up this summer but she was lazy about it so she has to start off sixth grade finishing last year's math. Bummer. lol

She's also working in Life of Fred fractions and loving it. The original plan was to just do a LOF lesson after completing each MUS lesson. But she thinks it's hilarious and does it every day without complaint. Math win!

And, as a mom, you just can't complain when your child wants to do extra math. It just wouldn't be right.

We're also finishing up our Growing With Grammar lessons from last year. That's not because of anything Mackenzie did or didn't do. It's because we started off the year using Advanced Language Lessons (follows First Language Lessons) and then in January the author decided that she wasn't going to finish writing ALL after all so we had to find something new. Despite the late start with GWG, she is almost finished with it. Then on to the level 6. Woot!

We started our new science, Swimming Creatures of the 5th Day, and it's going well. We've been skipping the experiments and projects because we're going to be doing those as a group with our friends. So we'll do that stuff next week. We're excited about working with our buddies.

We were happy to get back to our Visual Latin. Always a lot of fun. And we got back to our composer studies. This week we studied Verdi. We're also adding back in our artist studies that we didn't keep up with last year. We're using COAH's World's Greatest Artist units as our guide. I think having something scheduled will help keep us on track.

Mackenzie also started working in her Artistic Pursuits' book. I bought this because she had decided not to take art at Young Musicians of Virginia, but she's since changed her mind. But since I already bought the book, and it's self-led, she's going to do it anyway. This week she was learning about outlining objects.

All in all, our first week of middle school was a good one. Attitudes were in check, lessons completed in a timely manner. Here's hoping week two goes just as well.

Kayleigh

Week two of preschool is complete. It went really well for the most part. Except when it comes to a review item. There is one thing we're reviewing that she just hates. Just mentioning the name of the item makes her cry. With tears. For real. The poor, poor dear. I think when we get past what I will call the "training phase" she will be fine and even enjoy it. But at the moment it's a never-ending, tedious nightmare. Ugh!

That photo is tragic, isn't it?

Bible

We're onto letter our letter B verse in My ABC Bible Verses. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God. Matthew 5:9 Avery timely one for a household with two girls who love to bicker. I choose kindness as our Virtue for this week. I might stick with it for next week because Kayleigh has really been struggling to be kind lately.

Math

Our little math trio of Math-U-See, Mathematical Reasoning , and Family Math for Young Children: Comparing has been working out really well for us. This week I traded our Family Math activity for something I saw on pinterest. I put number cards and paint cards in our education cubes and she rolled a number and a color. Then she dot painted the correct number of dots using the correct color with our Do-A-Dot markers. She loved that.

Also please note, her spectacular coloring skills on her MUS page. The best I've ever seen her do. The little minx has been holding out on me. Again. All this time she just scribbles a few scribbles and calls it good. Now that I know she can color neatly...

Language

Naturally we've been doing a lot of reading for our Sonlight core p 4/5. One of our nursery rhymes this week was Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater and the IG suggested making pumpkin pancakes as an extension. Well I didn't feel like standing in the kitchen flipping pancakes but I'm am determined to incorporate more "making memories" activities into our school so I decided to let the girls make pumpkin cookies. One of our favorite fall treats. Yum! So bake them they did and they were delish!!! I helped with the icing because they had lost interest by then. But they were baked to perfection. I give them both an A+!

Notice that Kayleigh discovered a new way to clean the beater. She's nothing if not creative. And determined. lol

And thanks to Michelle over at Delightful Learning. It is her blog that inspires me to spend more time "making memories" instead of stressing over the 3Rs all the time.  She is everything that I wish I could be. But instead of beating myself up for not being as creative or organized as she is, I decided to do better with the personality that I was given. And drool over her blog in-between. She has tons of great ideas. Some of which I'm able to incorporate. Love her!

I am still loving Language Lessons for Little Ones. (Which I discovered over on Michelle's blog, btw.) This week Kayleigh had to do her first narration. And she did a great job. I was so impressed. She choose a story that we had just read in Uncle Wiggily's Story Book, one of our Sonlight read alouds. I still can't believe how well she did. Maybe she's a natural? lol



We still haven't touched the book in Handwriting Without Tears. We're still having a lot of fun playing games that help us get used to the wood pieces. And we did a really fun activity that had us drawing "free style" to classical music. We choose Vivaldi's Four Seasons and had so much fun! Who said handwriting had to be boring and tedious?

Other stuff

This week's Artistic Pursuits' The Way They See It  lesson was on telling a story with your crayon ala Harold and the Purple Crayon. So of course we had to read Harold and the Purple Crayon . Then Kayleigh drew her own crayon adventure about her guinea pigs on a mountain. She was quite pleased with it. lol

Do you know what else I like about this book? It includes a picture study using a famous work of art with each lesson. This, of course, will help with the skill of narrating. Hooray!!!!

And that dear readers was our week. How did your week go? Well I hope!

I'm linking up to the Weekly Wrap-Up, Homeschool Mother's Journal, and Photo College Friday.