Last Week In Pictures

Here are some pictures from last week...another great week of school.  Another 5 days to enjoy being with my kids, seeing them learn, seeing them struggle (and overcome!) and hearing the giggles and the questions and the outlandish statements.  I LOVE these little people!

Levi playing with dominoes (scanning, counting, and matching)

We are waiting on Alaina's new math book to arrive so in the meantime, we are taking some time to learn about different kinds of graphs and charts and the information we can get from them.  We did bar graphs, pie charts, and line graphs. It's interesting to me how much I learn and understand when I try to teach.  Obviously, I know how to read a graph.  But when I had to explain it to someone else, it made me have to put words to their differences and when you would want to use each.  For example, bar graphs show relationship of items/amounts,  line graphs show change in items/amounts, and pie charts show percentage of items/amounts. 

A throwback to eight grade English!  To this day I still have, "Lolly lolly lolly get your adverbs here" running through my head! Alaina needed to work on parts of speech and truly understanding them, so I downloaded some Schoolhouse Rock from iTunes and then we read stories and worked on identifying parts of speech. (Language arts).

I made a "finish the word" game for Caleb to help him see how the same letters can form different words and also so he could pay close attention to ending sounds in words.

A little shape time for Caleb

A quick little "follow the path" maze I made for the boys..helping the little piggy find its way home.  (tracking and fine motor skills)

Alphabet time for Levi

Cutting practice is one of Caleb's favorite activities, so we do it 3 or 4 times a week.  I just draw different paths to cut on various kinds of paper (cardstock here). I can't believe how much his fine motor control has improved!

I have been working with Levi on senses and understanding how they work individually and how they work together.  We did various activities like playing "I Spy," doing a hearing test, smelling foods while blindfolded, and the kids' favorite, a blind taste test. (Science for Levi, but everyone else joined in).

Now that Alaina has button sewing almost perfected, we moved on to backstitch.  She's a natural! (domestic education, fine motor skills)

We are continuing our study of Kenya with lots of stories, interesting info, and some fun projects.  Here the kids are "hiding in the jungle" with the African tribal masks they made.

So, as you can see, we are still having lots of fun together, and hopefully learning a lot along the way. But most of all, at this age, I want to instill in them a love of learning and a curiosity about the world around them.  I want them to love to learn.  If I can develop that in them, then it doesn't matter where we live, where they school, or who teaches them...the love of learning will be there and they can take that love and discover and uncover anything they want!

Comments

[shelby]

I just LOVE your weeks in pictures! I so look forward to them! Very inspiring! Thank you for sharing!

[Darcy]

WOW! So I saw the pattern blocks, they looked fun. Ran out and bought them and they have been SUCH a hit! Thanks for the pics. I love reading your blog. This is my first year homeschooling and I have had such amazing days and such awful days...It's SO good just to see what other's do during the day to day.

Thanks!