Instagrammin'

We have settled into a lovely tune of free range learning these days. I have started my own classes now, and have been volunteering with a few organizations. All of these things, plus the girls' busy gymnastics, sports and swimming lesson schedule keeps us on the go a lot! I have not been doing a very good job keeping up with our school blog, which makes me a little sad because we do SO MANY fun things, and I will most likely forget all about them without a written record!

I am gong to try something new in the next few weeks, which will hopefully become months, and primarily use Instagram to record our learning adventures. If you have an Instagram account, I hope you will follow us at @CreatingCuriosity and see what we do all day! If you don't have an IG account, I will have a feed here for you to view as well, which you can see is now at the top of the blog!

I know you don't want to miss these cute little faces and their escapades. <3

OctoberSchool

Some people name their "home schools". I haven't, but as I wrote that title, I thought if I were going to, "OctoberSchool" would be a lovely name. October is such a crisp month...beautiful days and cold nights, nature changing colors all around us. I often have a clue of the weather when I get out of bed, but the winds will change and what started out as a warm, sunshine-y day may require a thicker sweater. That describes homeschooling rather well for me. Stunning, unexpected, constantly adjusting, but slightly predictable...

We have been having a lot of fun this month with our learning. In my continued efforts to organize our time better, I made the kids chore charts, and a school chart for Delaney.

 

You can find these super cute printable cards here.

The school chart is basically a list of the things I would like to accomplish, and whatever Delaney adds that she would like to do as well. Some days we get to take everything off and put it in the finished box, some days we don't, but it gives us a good visual plan and is working well for both of us!

Sophie has continued to practice writing her name. Delaney is a big helper, and encourages her a lot.

Yay for school in pajamas!

 Sophie has also started learning some sight words. Playing Memory is her favorite way to practice.

 

Delaney learned about Georgia O'Keefe, and loved her big, vibrant paintings. The book we read about O'Keefe explained that she painted things the way she saw them, so others could see them her way. Delaney tried her hand at some Georgia-esque paintings of her own.

 

Sunset, O'Keefe style, by Delaney

Sophie painted a rainbow of h's.

We found our Halloween Pre-K pack and Sophie practiced counting, matching shadows and matching words with pictures, based on initial sounds.

 

 

The girls have been playing a game I have from when Hailey was kindergarten-sized, Penguin Math.

Sophie gets to spin, move her penguin and then count out the correct number of mini M&M's to match the number she lands on.

 

Delaney gets to spin, and has to add the number she lands on to the number on the spinner.

 

 

And then, of course they get to eat all of the M&M's afterwards. :)

Getting Into Good Habits

I have been using the Starfall Kindergarten curriculum for 3 weeks now, and I love it. It has been so easy to adapt for homeschool use. Delaney loves Backpack Bear. He joins us for class daily, and sometimes brings his friends, the Turtle, Rex, and Baby. They have to sit quietly, though, or they get in trouble. :)

We begin at 8:30am daily, and our schedule looks like this:

Calendar - days of the week (recognizing the words and ASL), months of the year, counting 1-31, & if we feel like it, we check the weather. It is almost ALWAYS sunny, so we usually only check if there is something interesting going on outside, or Delaney feels like adding a sticker to the graph. I supplement the calendar with www.starfall.com's calendar activity on some of the days. 

Action songs if we need them. Our favorites are "Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes", "If You're Happy and You Know It", "Tooty-Ta" (Cullen is a pro at this one!), and "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear".

Morning Letter (which is found in Backpack Bear's backpack...a much anticipated moment!) - reading a familiar format, finding sight words, counting words in sentences, punctuation.

10 minutes of more.starfall.com games or songs. I generally use this time to give her a little break from me, and I do some quick morning chores. I make sure to set a timer, though, so I don't get distracted and forget to come back to school!

Literacy activity(ies) - this is usually a focus on an alphabet letter/sound, rhyming, sight words (current sight words: at, an, the, love, I, you, we, me, a, is, see, for), writing letters, reading/sequencing a book, etc. The amount of activities that we do correlates with the attention span of the day.  Delaney had an AMAZING attention span this morning...she did not want to play any computer games, she wrote in her journal, played a sight word game, read and sequenced her sight word story, practiced writing alphabet letters and wrote a "letter" to her dad. Other days, we will play on Starfall for awhile, read her favorite story books and draw a picture. 

Journal - I am especially excited about this...It is the first time she has used actual letters to write a "note", then dictated it to me. I will have to write a whole post about the development of writing skills.:)

Sequencing her story

Portrait of Dad from earlier this week

Learning family names

We finish up with structured activities around 9:30am. I had planned to do this Monday-Thursday, but Delaney was so brokenhearted that Backpack Bear didn't have a note for her last Friday that I decided we will have school every weekday and continue to adjust our plans to fit her amount of interest. I have been so happy and impressed with her so far. She is learning quickly and enjoying everything we do...it is rarely a challenge to get her to participate. I have to act a little silly sometimes, but hey, I do that all the time anyway. :)

I teach math and science throughout the day with whatever we are doing, unless I see a skill that she needs to focus on a little bit, or an activity that is fun and fits in with what we are doing. Delaney can count to 20 now, and recognize most numbers through 30. Cullen has been doing some beginning addition with her, and we do subtraction all through lunch, right? I have a workbook for extra reinforcement, but I use it pretty sparingly. When she is in the mood, she will blast through 4 or 5 pages, so I save it for those moments. 

Now that we have successfully completed 3 full weeks and developed a schedule that makes everyone happy, I plan to add more art into our plans, as well as trips to the library and various places, so we don't just sit at home with each other all day. If there is any local activity that you know of and could share with us, please do! Also, any comments or ideas are ALWAYS appreciated! 

Needing a Plan

I am not always the most structured person (my husband is laughing right now..."are you even the least structured person?") I tend to appreciate the grey area a lot. I need goals and plans and schedules to keep myself on track, and even then I really treat them all as guidelines rather than rules.

I have been working on the same skills with Delaney for a few weeks...counting to 20, number recognition, abc order, etc...I had a busy weekend and did not write out what our plans were for the week. I assumed since we would be doing basically the same things that I could wing it and we would be fine.

Apparently, I need to write it down.

We only had "school" twice, and it was not the usual organized experience. We still had lots of fun, and she most likely learned something, and granted, it was a pretty crazy week since we were preparing for vacation, but that said, it reminded me that having a plan is absolutely necessary.

When I student taught, my best lessons were the ones I was completely prepared for. My worst were the ones that I looked at, thought "of course I know how to teach that" and went for it. Those experiences taught me that preparation is one of the best ways to be a good teacher, among other things.

We are back to a schedule now. :)

There are many, many options for writing lesson plans. I like this simple template from www.abcteach.com:


http://www.abcteach.com/free/l/lessonplan.pdf

They have many others, and if you Google "lesson plan template", you will find about a zillion more free downloadable templates.

I modify this simple one a bit and write the subject at the top of the column, and the lesson/activities in the boxes.

I am 100% better and following my plan when I use this. It is unbelievable how simply writing it down affects my efficiency.

Hailey is home for the summer now, and we will be working on math, Saxon 7/6, and improving her writing with Writing Strands 3 until school begins again. I am going to utilize this template to plan her lessons also, and she will be able to check her sheet and work independently. I think it will work well.

Organizing Materials

One of my friends recently asked me if I have any ideas about how to organize materials for various ages. My organizational skills are something that I am constantly striving to improve. Most of my materials are for ages 3-6, and honestly, they are just packed in some Rubbermaid bins in the garage. I really need to sort them. I generally go through them every few months and attempt to rearrange and categorize. I have one bin that is "getting ready to read" and "reading" stuff, but I will have to sort through it for applicable materials as I need them.

As far as stuff I am using on a regular basis, though, I love the Sterilite shoe bins. They are clear, so I can easily see inside them. They are just the right size and shape for stacking, and fairly small, so I am limited as to what I can put inside. This is a good thing for me - they force me to only store a specific activity or group of objects that actually are used at the same time.

I have been putting my materials that I plan to use during the week in these caddies...

I bought them at Joann Fabric and Craft when I taught kindergarten, and they have been extra useful.

I plan my goals, then put what I plan to use during the week in the caddy. This way, I am not wasting time and losing Delaney's attention while I am trying to figure out where I hid stuff. Also, it is making me think ahead to what I want to accomplish. I sometimes get ahead of myself and plan far too much, then feel like a bad mom when we finish about 1/4 of it. The size of this caddy is nice because it is just large enough to hold a reasonable amount of materials for a week or so. I am hoping it helps me to stay focused and feel more accomplished when we use everything!

Our current goals are:

• Alphabet order
• 1:1 correspondence
• Recognize numbers through 20
• Rhyming
• Letter "t" words

For this week, the caddy has some alphabet cards, some number flashcards, m&m's, unifix cubes, and  some letter "t" flashcards.


I think this will work well for day to day use. If you had more than one child, you could have a separate bin for each. Older children could learn to find their bin and complete their work independently. In fact, Delaney is already catching on to the system, and got her bin and activity out for me today.

For long term storage as the girls get older and are using different leveled materials, unless the organization fairy comes my way and blesses me with a better idea, I will probably just continue to use the big bins that I can store in the garage until I need them, with an inventory of what is inside of them taped on the side.

If you have a good idea or something that has worked for you, please leave a comment! I could definitely use some inspiration in this area!