I read a sentence!

           Yesterday we were doing some work in our Starfall curriculum (www.starfall.com), and part of the lesson involved using a cute little book and sentence strips to help read the book. First we went through the sentence strips one by one, and read the sentence. We've been working on the sight words A, is & for, so the only things they couldn't read had pictures. I was actually pretty impressed with how fast they picked it up! It was also pretty great to hear them get excited and say "I read a sentence!!" and "I read a story!!!" :-)

Lime Juice and Baking Soda Experiment!

         I know I'm a few days behind... but it's been... well... interesting around here the last few days. Haha. Wednesday was Andrew's only day off so we had a mid-week weekend day where we went to the splash park near us and they had a blast. Yesterday I didn't get around to posting since I had to deal with a kid in my condo complex stealing a box I had gotten from Origami Owl... yeah... bad evening. ARGH. But...moving on. Before all the madness the last few days, we did a super fun science experiment that turned into an art project (well sort of...haha). Here is the link to where I found this experiment:

http://www.pisforpreschooler.com/home/lime-juice-and-baking-soda-experiment

       I got some little metal pans from the Dollar Tree, 2 for $1. Then I just spread a thin layar of baking soda on the bottom of the pan, and grated chalk onto it in different colored stripes. In retrospect, I think next time maybe I'll stick with 2 colors...after using 4 colors for a few minutes it just kinda turns into a really unattractive green/brown color. After I got that all ready, I called them into the kitchen (by the way you're REALLY gonna want to do this in the kitchen or somewhere fairly easy to clean...) and showed them the pans. Then I used that super handy flavor injector again and used it to squirt the whole pan with lime juice! It fizzed and bubbled and was pretty cool, and once we added enough lime juice, we used it to finger paint! The boys LOVED it and asked me to do it again the next day! I kinda had to go with a no on that one because there was baking soda everywhere! These pictures are totally for fun, and thanks to a constant flow of baking soda falling off of them when dry... not really able to be kept. But it was FUN!

New Stuff!

       Today wasn't exactly what you'd call a "productive" school day... lol. They woke up this morning,  and Wyatt said he really wanted to try watching a movie we bought last week. What is this movie you ask? Well none other than the family classic: The Goonies!! That's right, The awesomely amazing Goonies. This was something that couldn't be interrupted of course. :-)
         After the movie was over, we all loaded up in the car, and ran to grab some awesome games I found used on one of those local Facebook selling groups. We got 5 new games for $10! They already played the one on the bottom for over an hour! We also got some work done, and did a super awesome science/art project again... but more on that tomorrow! For now, the glory of The Goonies and new games are more than enough. :-)

Alphabet Book & Journal!

       At the end of every week (or in this case the beginning...) we will create a page in an alphabet book, as well as write whatever they want in their journal they picked out. I took 27 pieces of construction paper and punched holes and tied them together with yarn to make books and labeled the outside of them. Of course the first page in the book would be letter A, so we searched through old magazines and found upper and lowercase A's as well as A words and pictures of things that start with the letter A! The cut everything out themselves and glued it into the books as well! It was slow going at first, but they got the hang of it and did a great job! Then we moved on to their journals. Wyatt has the Avengers and Wade has the Spideman, so they got them from their backpacks and we got started. I just told them to write whatever they felt like writing, if possible if they could remember something they did from the week. Wade decided to write letters, and Wyatt drew a picture of an earth, sun, moon and letter A. :-) They both really liked doing it, so we're looking forward to doing letter B next!

End of Week 1!

      Well, week 1 is done! Whew! We got pretty well caught up this weekend by just doing two sections per day, with 1 left for Monday since I wanna take our time on it and be fresh! Saturday they did abcmouse stuff and starfall (more info on that later) and today they did time4learning and k4 (more on that later too). 
      They seemed to especially like todays activities,  especially the "blast offs" we did and the K4 games. On time4learning, a blast off is a workshet you do after you did an online activity. The worksheets today involved cutting and using a glue stick, which is comparative in excitement to them being told they get to a park or movie or something for some reason...haha. They also got to use their dot to dot markers and play two different alphabet games. Today when we were done, Wade said "Thanks for the learning today Mom! It was so much FUN!" I call that a big fat win for week 1 of Kindergarten.  :-)

Crazy Friday

      Today was one of those days where you just don't sit down from the time you get up until you're going to bed. Oy. Of course since today was Friday, it's library day! Plus we had errands to run, and we only had a short amount of time before Andrew had to take the car and go to work. So basically we got up, ate breakfast, got dressed and left, and got back with just enough time for him to get to work. Ugh. Plus we still had learning to do! I gave them a bit of a break and didn't make them go through everything I wanted to cover today, so we'll just do some work here and there this weekend while Andrew's working.
      Since we had sort of a short time frame to work with before dinner (I never make them do any work after dinner time, even if my OCD is screaming at me to get it done... lol), so we did Abcmouse, worked in our learning to read book (more on that another time), practiced some letters/numbers (S, s, n, J and #5), and did their math lesson on Time4Learning.com. Time4Learning offers a kindergarten curriculum that you pay monthly for, and they offer other grades as well (not sure how far it goes...haven't had time to explore beyond kinder). It's not too bad so far, the animation is definitely nowhere near Abcmouse, and for some reason some lessons sound like they were recorded in an auditorium, but the boys don't seem to notice too much. We do Language Arts, Math and 1st Grade Science through them. Today was Math, and we covered same/different things, which included 6 worksheets to do after the computer lesson/games. They did great, and enjoyed doing it all! I included a few pictures of them doing their Math lesson. :-)

Finished Project - Flowers!

        We followed through on Wade's plan from yesterday this morning of turning our colorful coffee filters from yesterday's experiments into beautiful flowers! I cut out the stems and leaves last night, and the glued it all together today! They have literally been begging me for a reason to use the glue, so they were SO happy! They turned out awesome!
       We also did about 3.5 hours of other stuff that I'm just way too tired to go through right now, but they did great. Not to mention we were so busy I forgot to take pictures so that's an issue too...  Anyway, tomorrow is library day, so off to rest for tomorrow's adventures.  :-)

Day 3 - Science/Art - Primary/Secondary Colors

        The boys learned about primary colors this summer, and yesterday/today they learned about the secondary colors! In order to have some fun with colors and color combining, I found this little science/art experiment that they loved! Here is the link to where I found the experiment (It's experiment #2):  http://www.buzzle.com/articles/kindergarten-science-experiments.html

        Before I brought them over to the table, I colored some random circles on a coffee filter and dropped the water on it to see how it would spread and what it would do. Of course, as soon as I did this, they realized I was up to something over there and they had to come check it out and do it immediately! :-)  Wade drew big circles around the outside of the filter and one big circle in the middle, while Wyatt decided to make about twice as many small circles all around. Then I used my handy dandy flavor injector (it's all I had...lol), and dropped water droplets all over their "pictures". Then we just let them dry for probably 3-4 hours (though it was likely dry before I realized it was...) and they were dry and beautiful! Wade thinks we should take them, add a stem and make them into beautiful flowers! Sounds like an awesome plan to me, so I guess I'm cutting flower stems from construction paper after they go to bed! Once they are turned into flowers I'll post a new picture! We've had tons of fun the last few days, and I'm even reigning in my OCD about not being behind since we're a few sections behind still from Monday! ;-)  Go us! LOL! On to Day 4 tomorrow! When you look at the pictures, mine is on the far right, Wade's is the middle one, and Wyatt's is the left one!

First Day of Kindergarten!

       Well, we did it! We made it through the first day! Well, technically we made it through part of the first day, since we only did 3 of the 5 things I had planned. This wasn't due to a lack of excitement or ability, but we had already planned the afternoon for playing with the daughters of some of our good friends (they're 6 and 5). We spent just shy of 3 hours in school before they came and they did great!  They love their new backpacks!
       We did charts, read some books, learned about the parts of a book, did some uppercase/lowercase matching games, puzzles, abcmouse, letter practice, and colored a few pictures and drew a picture of themselves. I had them answer some first day of school questions before we started and their answers were pretty awesome. :-)  It was a great first day, and we're all looking forward to tomorrow! :-)

Kindergarten eve...

       Well, tomorrow is the big day! Our first official day of Kindergarten!! We spent the weekend cleaning the house and just chilling out as much as possible. We also got our morning charts area all set up, as well as the pocket charts we'll start using in a few weeks! We have our day of the week chart, weather chart, season chart, and alphabet chart. I'm sure eventually we'll add more, but I figured it was a good start. I'm a little anxious (what else is new...haha) about starting and hoping they like everything,  but really excited too! I can't wait to give the boys their new backpacks! :-)  Wish us luck!

Just keep planning, just keep planning...

       The evening after my preparation post, I finished week 3 planning.  I just wanted to give you an idea of what our weeks are looking like! I'll go into more detail about the specific parts of the plan as we go along, but this is the basic outline of our week. Obviously since this is the first year of school I've never exactly done this before,  so I'm not exactly sure yet how long each thing will actually take (we have to do 4 hours a day), but I think we can do it! I guess we'll find out on Monday.... :-)

Library Day!

        Every Friday, we take a trip to the library. There are two within about 5 miles from our house, so we switch off going to each one every other week. It usually takes us about an hour once we're there to play, look at books, and check out all the dvds and books they want. We always do dvds first since they're the first shelf in the children's room, then they play while I pick out "my" books (also known as the books from the kindergarten reading list I made), then we pick out the ones they want before we leave.
       According to the library, you can check out up to 22 dvds, and who even knows how many books. Today when we went to the library we returned 27 items, and left with 28 more. Haha! Yay for the library! I honestly never realized how amazing libraries are until now... plus now you don't have to use the evil card system! Lol! Next time we go I'll take a picture of the insanely awesome book return and check out areas! It seriously blew my mind.... the first time I used them people probably thought I was insane for continually repeating "This is SO cool!"  :-)   Next time we go to the library, they'll officially be Kindergartners!!!

Preparation

         You might wonder to yourself exactly how much work goes into planning a "curriculum" for two kindergartners? I mean, they just color and stuff right?!? To that, I say.... HAHAHAHAHAHA! Kindergarten used to be that way, but not anymore!
        The list of what they should know is a little scary,  but totally doable. I decided that a visual may help most in this situation.  The picture I've included is pretty much the constant state of my bed, also known as my daytime prepping area.   Actually its probably more organized thsn usual in this picture...haha. All this stuff, this is all out just to plan one week of their schooling. ONE WEEK. Im currently working on week 3, which is only moderately terrifying considering we start next week. I figure as long as I stay ahead ill be fine right.... RIGHT?!?  Lol. Seriously though. Back to work! 

Chores

About a month after we started abcmouse, we also implemented a handy dandy chore chart! The boys love to help, so I figured they would be excited anout it and they were! (I know, I know, enjoy it while it lasts.. lol) Each row on the chart has 10 spots for 10 stickers. Each day they do chores, they get a sticker. Once they've completed a row of 10, they get $2. Now, I dont know what the going allowance rate is now a days... but $2 made them happy so whatever works. We usually have 1 big cleaning day a week with just picking up in between, and they are always ready to help. Some days they ask to do chores, some days I ask for help, but either way they help a lot and I love to see how excited they get about a sticker. :-) 

Summer School

         This summer (well part of it anyway) we decided it was a good idea for the boys to work their way into school by starting abcmouse.com in late June. Abcmouse.com is an amazing website (you may see it advertised on pbs constantly during the day). There are 6 levels total with two levels of preschool, two levels of pre-k and two levels of kindergarten. Now, this where my (what I call) OCD kicked in...lol. I could have likely started them on pre-k or kindergarten and they could've done the material with no problem. But...if I start something, I like to do it from the very beginning. Make sure that you have all the base knowledge before you move on to the later levels. So, naturally this meant we must start at level one. Plus, that way it'll last the whole school year. 
         The website works so that you can follow the learning path through the levels, or just pick activities to do. We did the learning path starting with level 1. They love it! There are books, puzzles, coloring, games and more. Plus there are printables that I print out and they color (alternating days of painting,  markers and crayons) and then we do separate letter practice if they covered a letter in their lesson.  Since it was all we were doing, and it was summer, we just did them whenever they wanted during the week. It ended up taking us just shy of two months and they're done with level 1! Which is amazing timing since our Kindergarten starts August 18th!! I put pictures of a few random assignments they did and the chart the filled out as they completed lessons. They did a great job! 

Introduction!

Hi there! My name is Heather, and I'm the mom to two amazing little boys named Wade & Wyatt, and married to my husband Andrew (we have pictures with him too, but apparently we need new family pictures done because none are anywhere near recent...) for 8 years. I am also an Origami Owl Independent Designer in my "off" time... lol. We decided, once our boys were born, that we wanted to homeschool them. Now, of course, there were a lot of pros and cons and decisions on our part (that aren't going to be discussed here), but we ultimately decided this was the way we wanted to go with our boys' education! So, here we are. Beginning the homeschooling journey in less than two short weeks and I'm SO EXCITED! I'll be posting more about prepping and getting ready for "school", but honestly, there are only so many hours in the day! So, more coming soon about our Kindergarten journey and Teaching Twin Boys at Home!

NOTE: I won't be putting EVERYTHING we do everyday on here, only bits and pieces, so don't think that what I show is all we do! Trust me, the week I spend preparing each week of their lessons says otherwise... ;-)