22 August - 26 August 2011

McKenzie's curriculum:
Language Arts:
Upper/Lowercase matching
Alphabetic order
Beginning letters
Ending sounds
Spelling
Story Order
Belongs together
Does not belong


Math:
Count and write
Missing numbers
Dot to dot
Greater than
1 More
2 More
Less than
1 Less
2 Less
Number writing
Number find



Charlie's curriculum:
Language Arts:
Question words
Present-tense verbs
Past-tense verbs
Is vs. Are
Plural Nouns
Comprehension
Sequencing
Making Inferences


Math:
Subtraction
Greater than vs. Less than
Fractions
Ordinal numbers
Counting pennies



Both Girls  are working on:
Science:



Social Studies:
Map History
Reading Maps
Imaginary Travel
Goals
Family Tree

15 August - 19 August 2011

McKenzie's curriculum:
Language Arts:
Smaller, Larger, same size
Search and count shapes
Same and Different
What belongs together
Rhyming words
Opposites
Alphabetic order
What is missing
Story order
Letters Before, After, Between

Math:
Guessing and Checking
Ordinal Numbers
Shapes and Counting
Finishing pattern
Observing and Classifying
Relating words and pictures
Counting and graphing
Less than / Greater than
Number writing
Count and match
Count and write

Social Studies:
Household chores

Science:
Living and Non-living
Cause and Effect 


Charlie's curriculum:
Language Arts:
Transportation words
Rhyming words
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Statements
Questions

Math:
Coin value
Coin counting
Addition
Missing number Addition
Subtraction
Double digit Subtraction




Both Girls are working on:
Science:
Body Parts and Functions
Bones
Muscles
Digestive System
How our senses work

Social Studies:
All About Me booklets

Primary Picnic

Today is the Primary Picnic for Charlie's "school"/homeschool enrichment program.  We will be having a picnic lunch with other families with K-3rd graders, as well as meeting the teachers.  We were very involved with the program last year and got to know most of the teachers in and out of Charlie's classes.  This year there are a couple new teachers, and will be several new families.  Charlie is in first grade and will be switching classes with first and second graders, rather than just staying in the first grade class.  She has; Art, Music, Gym, Hands-On Science, and Robotics!  She is super excited that she got to pick two of her classes this year.  Daddy and I are not surprised that they were both Science classes!

8 August - 12 August 2011

McKenzie's curriculum:
Language Arts:
Lowercase letters
Beginning sounds
Missing letters

Math:
Observing and counting
Sequencing
Logical reasoning
Making pairs
Counting
Addition
Subtrction
Less than and Greater than
Numerical order
counting pennies
Graphing


Charlie's curriculum:
Language Arts:
Spelling
Long vowel sounds
L-blends
S- blends
"Sight" words
Animal words
Kitchen words
Beach words
Food words
Tea words
Color words
Number words
Action words
Transportation words


Math:
Double digit Addition
Sequencing
Sorting
Subtraction
Measurements
Shapes
Telling Time
Coin Identifying
Coin Counting

Both Girls are working on:
Science:
Season
-Chlorophyll
-Carbon Dioxide
-Photosynthesis
5 Senses

Social Studies:
All About Me booklets

1 August - 5 August 2011

McKenzie's curriculum:
Language Arts:
Letter Printing
Beginning letter sounds
Letter blends

Math:
Number Printing
Counting
Number words
Graphing

Charlie's curriculum:
Language Arts:
Beginning and Ending Sounds
Spelling
Short and Long vowel sounds
Hard and Soft consonant sounds
Read two books to McKenzie(listed below in Science)

Math:
Counting by 1, 2, 5, 10
100 chart
Place value
Less/Greater than (with the alligator mouth)
Addition

Both Girls are working on:
Science:
Seasons
-4 seasons
-what causes the season changes
-differences between seasons
-Book "What is a season?"
-Book "Why do leaves change colors?"
Senses
-5 senses
-using our senses for each season
-purposes for our senses

Social Studies:
All About Me booklets

Evaluations:
Charlie:
letter recognition
letter sounds
frequent words (most call these sight words, but we do NOT teach sight words, as the frequent words become sight words with reading experience!)
writing accuracy (letters, upper and lower, and numbers)
number recognition 1-100
counting by 1, 2, 5, 10

McKenzie:

letter recognition

letter sounds

writing accuracy (letters, upper and lower, and numbers)

number recognition 1-20

counting by 1, 2, 5, 10

These evaluations will go in their testing file, and they will be re-tested/evaluated periodically throughout the year.  There will be more things added to the test and they will outgrow some items.  To "outgrow" items, they must have it perfected, 100% correct, 3 times in a row.

There is our week in a nutshell!  The girls are flying through their worksheets, which means we will get more hands-on learning time, and may have to break out so things at higher levels.  Never hurts to keep progressing.  We may be through the "beginner" stuff really early, but we are use to making up our own curriculum, and filling in as needed.  It should be interesting to see what experiments and projects we get ourselves into.  We will be doing another rocket launch in a few weeks, so keep an eye out for that!!

I will be scanning all of their worksheets and uploading photos of our whiteboard activities (the ones I remembered to take photos of), and updating this post over the weekend.

Our Schedule

We have several playdates and activities planned this week.  On our activity/outing/playdate days we cut out our afternoon schedule.  We do all of our academics in the morning before our "fun time".  Our schedule allows for Language Arts, Reading, Math, Science, and Social Studies to be done first thing in the morning, so that only our scheduled Art, Computers, and Physical Education get messed with.  We do these activities all the time and on the weekends, so we are never lacking in variety!!  Well after all of that babbling, let me list our schedule out for you.

 4- Mommy's time for e-mail, getting school prep done, morning chores, and cooking breakfast
 5- eat breakfast together, cleans up, and gets ready for our day, Pet Chores
 6-Language Arts/Reading
 7- Math
 8- Science
 9- Social Studies (Geography, History, etc.)
10-Computer Time
11- Lunch and Clean up
12- Outdoor or Art time
 1- Bike Ride or Free Time
 2- Housework/Chores
 3- Dinner Prep
 4- Dinner, Clean up
 5- Bed Time Routine, Housework (Mommy)
 6- Bed Time, Housework (Mommy)

On our outing, field trip, etc. days, we leave between 9:30 and 10.  We take work to be done in the car if we do not meet our 4 hour minimum.

We also set a cleaning schedule, to "deep" clean one room a day, so that our house stays maintained.  This part has been the hardest to stick with.  So far, our WHOLE 2 days...has gone well.  Now that we have a strict schedule (our first year with a full school routine) it seems to be easier to keep up on, and to get the girls to help!  We have a reward chart for when they help with extra household chores.  Each chore earns 1 sticker.  When they reach 10 stickers, we go to the used book store, and they get to pick out any, age-appropriate book they want.  Sometimes they get school books, some times they get reading books, any are fine with us, as long as they stay encouraged to read and learn!

Our cleaning schedule looks a little like this;
Monday: Laundry Room, School (easy to clean at the beginning of the week and maintain throughout)
Tuesday: Bathrooms (Charlie's Homeschool Enrichment Program day, so we try and keep it light)
Wednesday: Kitchen
Thursday: Living/Dining Room (one big room/area)
Friday: Bedrooms
Saturday and Sunday: makeup (anything we didn't get done throughout the week)

2011-2012 School year is here!!

Today is our first day of school for this year!  We have set a very full schedule.  We will have Language Arts, Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies (Geography, History, ect.), Art, Physical Education, Computers, and Life Skills (housework, pets, cooking, healthy habits).

The girls have a time schedule to follow throughout the day.  They have a few small chores to be done daily, just to be a part of this family.  They will have several opportunities to earn stickers on their charts.  Their "Extra Credit" Charts earn them a book for every 10 stickers.  We take them to the used bookstore and they get a book of their choosing!

They also have an opportunity to earn extra credit in their schoolwork.  They have extra workbooks and worksheets that they do to earn extra credit.  We have not set up a reward chart for this yet.  We will be discussing the choices on rewards.

I have a notepad where we are listing all of the activities they do daily.  This is a place that Daddy can write down the things they do with him, like building, gardening, science experiments, etc.  We write the time length and activity.  This way the girls will get credit for their hard work.  We have to track the hours of schooling they do, and we figure it is better to record everything, instead of forgetting something.