Weekly Wrap-Up: Peaceful Edition

Hello Cyber Friends! It's time for the Weekly Wrap-Up hosted by Kris over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

We had a good week. No we had a great week. It was great because it was peaceful. We defeated 2 problems that have been a hinderance with school.

Problem # 1** was defeated by accident.

** The Problem (#1): The Wee Tot...Don't let the smallness and cuteness fool you. This little miss can drag a school day out an extra 5 hours without a lot of effort on her part. A lot of noise, a huge mess, and sheer determation leads to a long day. And a lot of clean up.

The Solution: On Monday we forgot to turn the tv off in the living room. We were too lazy to go in there and shut it off. For once, being lazy worked to our advantage. We found that the Wee Tot would wander out of the school room and sit in front of Nick Jr., thus sparing us from the havoc that she creates, each and every day, causing our school day to drag on for many more hours than necessary.

I probably should feel guilty about letting her watch so much tv, but I don't. Getting school finished before lunch is sooo worth it. Yes, that's right, I said before lunch. And I think we could've done it even if we'd been working on a history pocket this week.

Problem #2 is: The Mouth- This one, while a bit larger, is also very cute. However the mouth on her is not. We are going through a lovely phase that involves whining, a certain tone of voice, and some disrespect in the form of arguing or talking back. We do not like it. In the end she doesn't like it. We have tried several tactics, none of which have been working. But now, we've found the solution.

The Solution: The Accountable Kids program. I saw it on a blog. I checked it out. It looked good. I bought it. I thought it had possibilities in the long term. I had no idea how quickly it would work for her. I haven't yelled once all week. (At least not at her. LOL) It's a miracle!

So here's our run down on academics.

Math:

She's working on x7's this week. She wants to go back to the x9's. She likes those better. She aces all of her tests but I'd like to see her speed pick up. She worked on Math U See's online drill site today.

Language Arts:

She revisted some old poems that's she memorized and reviewed adverbs. Exciting stuff, I know. LOL

Science:

Weather, weather, weather. We talked about the water cycle and precipation. We learned that Virginia Beach averages about 50" of precipation a year. So we measured to see how deep that would be. That's a lot of rain. Of course that was nothing compared to Kauai, which averages 460". Yikes! We thought it rained a lot when we lived in Guam but it turns out that Guam only averages about 100".

We also did an experiment where we "made rain". We used a bowl, HOT water, plastic wrap and ice. I think Mackenzie was expecting more rain. Like a rain storm. LOL

Social Studies:

We learned more about the Continental Army, or lack there of. We learned how they fought, what they wore, what they endured. We read from The Landmark History of the American People and Winter at Valley Forge.

We also learned different ways children could contribute to the cause from reading Phoebe the Spy (true story) and Toliver's Secret. We're still working on the latter. We're planning a trip to NYC sometime in the future and Mackenzie and I were excited to learn that the tavern in Phoebe is still standing. We're adding that to our list of must do's while we're there.

Mackenzie also did a map assignment from Knowledge Quest Maps. She loves those assignments as they are similar to the mapping assignments she did last year when we supplemented with SOTW activity guides. Here she is learning how to use an historical atlas to complete the assignment.

Extras:

Since Wee Tot wasn't terrorizing us, we got do a couple of art lessons. We use I Can Do All Things by How Great Thou Art. We worked on shading with lines and making ellipses. It's a true miracle!

Tot School

~Kayleigh is 23 months~

Hello fellow Tot Schoolers!!! I hope everyone had a great week.


We did a slightly better job getting in some Tot School last week. It helped that I wrote down my plans instead of just trying to remember my ideas. We didn't get to everything but we managed a few things. She's just so difficult during big sis's school that we never have time to finish her activities.


In a perfect world, she'd do 20-30 minutes of Tot School before we started Mackenzie's school and then do 20-30 minutes after. Sadly, Mackenzie's school takes 5x longer then necessary because we're constantly starting and stopping to deal with Kayleigh's "spiritedness." We wind up finishing Mackenzie's work while Miss Thing naps and then we have just enough time to straighten a bit of the tornado Kayleigh leaves in her wake and start dinner before Daddy comes home. Although I doubt Daddy can tell we've cleaned anything, such a mess that child makes. LOL

It's hard to be mad at her because she either had has such a happy look on her face or one of such distain for you that you can't help but laugh. Needless to say, one of the things we're going to be working on for Tot School is cleaning up your own mess.


Now that she's getting older I'm starting to expose her more purposely to things such as shapes, letters, colors, etc. So I'm start to organize her school around that with some fun "theme" activities thrown in the mix. So for this week I had planned to touch on circles, red, A, 1, and more on our winter theme. We touched on 3 out of 5. LOL

ABC's

Mackenzie read Kayleigh the Little Scholastic Alphabet book. A lot.



Kayleigh made the cover for her Alphabet Book that we are going to be making thoughout the year. She used dot-to-dot markers and regular markeres. She worked for about 45 seconds before she lost interest. We got the cover from Totally Tots.






She made her A page for the book. Our A is for ant page also touched our shape and color of the week.

She loved painting the ant parts red.

Even more fun then painting, I finally let her use the glue stick. She was so thrilled.

She was less then thrilled when I took the glue stick away because I was not going to allow her to glue things to the table. I tried to distract her by having her draw legs on the ant. Didn't really work well. LOL

The finished product. You can see her anger in her work. LOL

Oh, I got the A is for Ant project off of Teacher Filebox. It's not a free site but I love it. Basically, it has printables from almost every book Evan-Moor has published. I use it a ton for my older daughter. Just having all the History Pockets at my fingertips makes it worth every penny for me.

She also played the letter-zoo game on the Fisher Price website.

We also "made" an A snack. Mommy diced apples, with a little cinnamon and sugar, and put them in a baggie. Kayleigh shook them up to mix them. Turns out cinnamon makes her break out. She wound up with a lovely ring of red all around her mouth.

Shapes

Our shape for the week was the circle. I thought it would be so much fun to go on a shape hunt like the other tots seem to enjoy. I had a little bag already for her to put the circles she found into. I thought she'd have so much fun. I need to stop thinking. She was not interested and it made her angry. Very angry.

3 days later she found this. Brought it too me and said "Here you circle" and then walked away. Little monster. LOL

We played with her Lauri Shape and Peg Stacker and talked about the shapes.

We also did her Melissa and Doug chunky shapes puzzle but I didn't get any pictures.

Colors

Other then painting the ant red, we didn't do any other activities with the color red. LOL

She did get this fish puzzle from Grandma for her birthday. (Next week, sniff, sniff). We talked about the colors of the fish.

My favorite thing was how she "cheated" while fishing. She wouldn't hold the rod and "catch" a fish. She'd hold the magnet and stick it to the fish. Less room for error that way. LOL

I'm not going to lie. We didn't do a single winter themed activity. I made them. They're cute. We tried them last week. She doesn't like them. LOL Wouldn't even consider touching them this week. Not the mitten matching. Not Feeding the Snowman (numbers). Not the cute Snowflake Shape Book Carisa created. She doesn't like dressing the snowman either. At least she can't rip them anymore now that I've got a laminator.

I'll suppose I'll try again with Valentine stuff next week. LOL I'm toying with the idea of doing stuff with converstation hearts but I know she'll refuse to do anything but eat them. How do the rest of you get your tot's to play with food but not eat them? LOL (And aren't I supposed to be encouraging her to eat her food and not play with it?)

Be sure to check out what the other tot's are up to over at Carisa's.

Weekly Wrap-Up

It's time for the Weekly Wrap-Up hosted by Kris. It always amazes me how quickly the week goes by.

Our week was crazy and I'm not sure why. Due to the "big snow" a lot of stuff was cancelled yet we still managed to get behind. Something about being "snowed-in" makes you just want to lay around doing nothing I guess. We managed to finish up what we needed to but for a while that didn't seem likely. LOL

Here's our run-down.

Bible:

We talked about Jesus and water this week. LOL Sounds strange but He sure did have some interesting miracles involving water. Water to wine, walking on water, stopping a storm. Not to mention creating it.

Science:

We continued our study about weather. We talked a bit about clouds this week. Mackenzie was supposed to track the clouds in the sky for a day and write down what time of clouds she thought they were. This assignment pained her because we had "icky" clouds because of the unusal snow we had. She was in tears because she wasn't sure what kind of clouds they were.
Bless her heart.

Math:

She's starting to work on her 7's now. Specifically counting by this week. She has decided she doesn't like 7s. Apparently 7 isn't her lucky number.

Social Studies:

The American Revolution is really picking up. We learned that we annouced our independence on July 2 and declared it on July 4. We learned that Thomas Jefferson wrote it based on ideas that people held around the world because he really wanted everyone to understand that this decision wasn't one made lightly. We learned that this wonderful document has motivated and encouraged countries around the world, past and present. We looked back on the pictures we have when we went to see the Declaration of Independence at our local library. We're planning to take a trip to D.C. over spring break (because we want to go with some P.S. cousins) and we're excited to see the copy with the signatures.

Mackenzie has started reading Meet George Washington and is hoping that we'll be able to hit Mount Vernon when we head up to D.C. She was excited to learn that it isn't too far from where we live. I haven't been there since 8th grade, so I'm excited too.

We finished Johnny Tremaine. Of course it was awesome. And sad, as great books often are.

Language Arts:

Still working on those prepositions. And Mackenzie memorized A Time to Talk by Robert Frost.


And yesterday we celebrated a very special day.

9 Years of Mackenzie

My Baby is 9!!!

Wahhh!!!

Feb. 4 2001

Feb. 4, 2002

Feb. 4, 2003

Feb. 4, 2004


Feb. 4, 2005

Feb. 4, 2006


Feb. 4, 2007

Feb. 4, 2008

Feb. 4, 2009


Feb. 4, 20210

Chasing Picture Perfection Assignment: Portrait with Shallow Depth of Field

It's time for another photo challenge with Stacie over at Chasing Picture Perfection. This time we're practicing using shallow depth of field. Which, in simple terms, means blur the background so the subject pops.

Since it's my daughter's birthday tomorrow (even though I'm trying my best to pretend she's still a baby) I decided to photograph her. This might be one of my favorite shots of her. Except that she looks too grown up.

90mm, F/4; ISO 200

Tot School

Kayleigh is currently 23 months

Hello fellow Tot Schoolers! I hope all is well with you. We've been busy, busy, busy. Hence our absence from blogging. Between Christmas, a trip to Michigan, hubby being home, adjusting to "back to school" with my older dd, and a demanding/opinionated tot, something had to give. Blogging drew the short straw.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with it better. Maybe...LOL

Our holidays were nice. Kayleigh got a lot of things just perfect for Tot School. Hopefully they'll make into some photos. I got a laminator (Woot!) so that's been fun.

Now we just need to make Tot School more consistent. I've been failing miserably at that. Kayleigh is very, shall we say, high maintenance and she's been making Mackenzie's school difficult and long. And third grade is a priority before Tot School. So it's been sporadic. But we have been doing some things. When she's willing.

So here's some of activities, as of late. Some are from before Christmas. LOL Since the holidays we've been working on a winter/snow theme, a very loose theme.

Clearly, this was a before Christmas shot. I got the Nativity stickers from Oriental Trading.

These pictures are particularly exciting to me. I asked her to draw me a circle. And she did! Sorta... I'm more excited about the "she did" then the actual circle-like drawing she made. She rarely does what she's asked. LOL

In this shot I feel like she's mocking me saying..."Don't get used to this lady." LOL

Here she is playing with her new Magneatos. Fun, fun!!! Big Sis likes them too! Thanks for the recommendation, Carisa.

Here she is matching colored mittens that she can't destroy thanks to my new laminator. Yay! I would like to tell you where I got the mitten game but I can't remember.

Oh and be sure to notice that the game is on a tot tray. I picked those up when Carisa mentioned that OTC had free shipping on any amount. I snagged those and some stickers. Right now, I'm just putting activities on the trays to train her to keep her "work" contained. It's nice in theory.

And this was the one and only time that she actually would play the game. It was a resounding "No" every other time I brought it out.




She's decorating her snowman with pencils and binger markers. She worked on this all through out the week. I just left it on her little desk and she wandered over whenever she felt like it. The hardest part was getting her to wear the paint shirt.





We discovered tried this activity in a moment of desparation. She likes to empty all of the drawers in our school room while I work with Mackenzie. This particular day she had discovered the pony beads hidden away. I hadn't let her use them before because of the choking hazards. But we were desparate to get on with school so we sat her next to us with a small cup of pony beads and a pipe cleaner. She loved it! And I only had to get on her 3 times for putting them in her mouth.

And as a special surprise, God sent us something we never see here, to add to our winter theme. Snow! I think the last time we saw this much snow was 7 years ago when my oldest dd was the same age.

Oh my! I almost forgot. Kayleigh is now an athlete. She is "playing" basketball with other tot's through our local homeschool sports league. She loves it! For the first 15 minutes anyway. Then she wanders off for the remaining 15 minutes and reappears when they bring out snack. LOL

Aren't they adorable?

Be sure to check out the other tots over at Carisa's.

Weekly Wrap-Up

Well it's time for the Weekly Wrap-Up hosted by Kris over at Weird, Unsocialized, Homeschoolers.

We had an interesting week with a couple of nice surprises. And as a bonus, I'm going to post some old pictures because they're finally off of my camera.

Bible:

Our topic this week was Jesus Prayed. We stick-figured through some of the times and places that Jesus spent time praying to His Heavenly Father.

Math:

Mackenzie started her 4's times tables this week. She's doing well with multiplication. I am going to work on her speed next week.

Science:

We were talking about weather this week. There was an experiement but we haven't done it yet. I hope to do it tomorrow.

Speaking of weather...we had some unusal weather here at the beach today. Snow, and quite a lot. At least 4/5 inches in our yard right now. More then we saw in Michigan last month. We went because we wanted to see some snow and only got a dusting. LOL We should've stayed home. We had fun this morning playing in it.

History:

We're still enjoying Colonial times. We've hit the start of the American Revolution. The Battle of Lexington and Concord has been covered. We've also been reading a lot about Paul Revere.

My second nice surprise was Mackenzie's first-ever report. (Actually that was our first surprise because the report came before the snow. LOL) I asked her to write a mini-report about Ben Franklin. It was a surprise for several reasons.

Firstly, it was fabulous! It was more then I had expected from a child who's never written one and who's never been exposed to the writing process. We use Writing With Ease and First Language Lessons for LA and they approach writing differently then most programs. I gave her a couple of graphic organizers on writing a paragraph and set her loose.

Secondly, she did it with a cheerful attitude. I was expecting a lot of whining, griping, and complaining. What I got was excitement. I about passed out on the floor. A true miracle.

My scanner's down or I'd have scanned it in. You'll have to make do with photos of it. Maybe you'll actually be able to read it. LOL

Language Arts:

Prepositions, prepositions, prepositions. 'Nuf said.

Now here are some pics of school days past. Dissecting Owl Pellets with Daddy