Week 6- Sonlight, Moses and Missionaries!

Moses in a Basket Handprint Craft

 
We had a great first FULL week of school without any illnesses and special events to focus on! If you are interested in the activities I do that are additional to Sonlight, you can follow my Pinterest Boards where I have separate Sonlight Core A pins for 5 weeks at a time.  This week's projects are here.  The first five weeks of Sonlight Core A can be found on this board.

Some of the highlights of our week were:

•  Continuing with our All About Reading lessons and filling in our stars on our Progress Chart, 
• Skip counting by 5's in Math-U-See, 
• Learning about the early life of Moses and doing the Moses in a Basket Craft
• Flipping eggs with sight words on the back,
• Reading Surprise Island- the second book in the Boxcar series,
• Learning about St. Patrick, St. Augustine and Boniface as missionaries,
•  And last but not least, Lily got her part in our homeschool co-op's Christmas Play! She will be Cindy Rella...one of the toys in the story. She has about 9 lines and can't wait to practice them and go to her practice every Tuesday afternoon. 

Math-U-See

All About Reading Progress Chart

We loved watching this funny cartoon from Veggie Tales about the story of St. Patrick..it really helped the kids to remember who he was. 

Source: youtube.com via Kristen on Pinterest

 

Sight Words- Egg Flip Practice

This upcoming week, we will be exploring the 10 Commandments, Medieval Times
(going to try a Lapbook), Starting Here's a Penny, telling time, and more All About Reading Lessons! For the future, I am scheduling a field trip to go to the Medieval Faire near us called Camelot Days, in November!  Should be a fun week!

Thanks!
 

Week 5 - Sonlight, Birthdays and Teeth!

 This week was again not a typical week as we had my mom come into town to celebrate Lily turning 6! We enjoyed a wonderful birthday dinner on Tuesday (thanks mom!), a first lost tooth that fell out in a pear on Thursday,

and a Cowboy/Cowgirl party on Saturday...whew, I'm exhausted.

Our homeschool week was kind of sporatic, and we did a lot of work in the car on the way to different events or shopping for the party. I'm excited for next week because we will have our first TRUE full week of school. I am very ready to get in a groove and rhythm.

As far as schooling topics for the week, we continued on with our Math-U-See. We only have 10 lessons left, and then Lily will head into the Alpha book. We are really loving this curriculum! Our All About Reading is coming along nicely as well. My mom even pitched in a taught a lesson or two.  One of the activities we did was play Letter Sound Bingo. The girls liked this game a lot.

 We explored the Vikings, and made fun masks that made us feel like big burly men...

I wanted to talk a little bit about how we used the birthday party to teach about the time and era of the Cowboys heading West. We panned for gold which the children enjoyed immensely. I used this tutorial from Restless Risa.  We talked about why the cowboys headed West to search for gold.  Each child got to bring home a little bag of their own gold. 

 
The children also learned 'Wild West Lingo'. lassoed a horse, shot a bank robber (with a marshmallow shooter),  learned how to line dance AND roasted marshmallow s'more pops over a fake campfire while singing camp songs. Overall, the party was a huge success!
 

Week 4- Sonlight, Joseph, and Madeline

Joseph's Coat of Many Colors

I almost cringe as I write this, but our family is still in the throws of sickness. This is a record for our family...three solid weeks of one or many of us being sick. My husband and I are just now getting over the flu and now the baby has it.

Nevertheless, we pushed through and did accomplish most of what was on my lesson plans sheet!

I wanted to talk about a few changes that I made with the Sonlight Bible Curriculum for Core A. The daily reading was getting a little monotonous and Lily wasn't seeming too interested in what she was hearing. I want to make the Bible come alive to her, and mean something to her. So I decided to examine what stories were suggested for the week and then do a 'character' study on the main people in the stories. So this week, I decided to focus on Joseph from The Old Testament. We did a fun 'Coat' Craft shown above from Challah Crumbs, and the girls (even my 4 year old) actually absorbed the information which I am thrilled about!

Lily really enjoyed transforming her name into Hieroglyphics using DiscoveringEgypt.com. This was a great site that allowed us to dig deeper into the early Egyptian Civilization. We really love the Usborne Book Living Long Ago that comes with the Sonlight Curriculum. Lily enjoys the small excerpts that explain about food and travel.

We also 1/2 Rowed the FIAR book Madeline , and the girls had a grand old time trying to make the Eiffel Tower out of vanilla wafers and marshmallow fluff. I would call my attempt a 'Tower FAIL'. When I went to nurse the baby, I came out and found an entirely different type of Landmark of the mess variety...I'll post more about our FIAR Madeline experience a little later this week when we finish! But for now, enjoy the picture of the mess I found when I came out of the baby's room...

The sticky marshmallowy mess on my dining room table

 We are moving along with our Math and All About Reading. Lily is definitely beyond what we are going through right now, but I just want to make sure she knows all the basics before moving on. 

This coming week we will be taking a look at the Vikings, and doing a few fun things with that, along with studying Job. Should be a great week!!

Thanks!
 

The Seasons {Craft Tutorial}

I shared a photo last week of our Seasons craft to go along with The Berenstain Bears' Big Book of Science and Nature  and I wanted to share a little more photos and explanation of how we did it. My inspiration came from a post by The Art of Teaching. I wanted to add a little more to it, so I used her wonderful craft as a jumping point.

Here is what you will need:
Template from The Art of Teaching Site
Watercolor paper
India Ink- This is needed because it won't run when using watercolors.
Watercolors
Multi-colored Tissue Paper
Scissors
Glue- Old fashioned Elmer's worked best for us

Template for tree

If your child is old enough, he or she could sketch out the frame of the tree and draw the lines on watercolor paper as shown in picture above. If you are just going to use crayons like the original craft, you could just print this template out on a regular piece of paper.

Once  the sketch is dried, you can begin to talk about the different colors one might see in the different season. Your child can then paint the background of the tree in the colors of their choosing according to each season. Then have your child paint the tree itself.

Once this is completed, grab your tissue paper. Cut the paper into strips, and then into squares.

The next step is to ask your children again what colors would go with each season. We started with winter, and the girls had fun pulling out greens, blues, whites and dark blues.

The children can then start gluing the squished up pieces of tissue paper in the proper season section. I think this craft turned out beautiful and would highly recommend it as a keeper for years to come!

Thanks!

Week 3- Sonlight, Pink Eye and The Seasons

Our week was still filled with sickness. We had a double ear infection, and four pink eyes in the house... I'd say we were in full on infirmary mode. So again, we didn't get as much accomplished as I had on my lesson plans, but I feel pretty confident that Lily is learning!

We are WAY ahead on the Sonlight Read Alouds... We finished My Father's Dragon last night, which is not even started until Week 5. I have decided to take a little detour and spend some time reading more of The Boxcar Children series since my girls loved the first book so much.

Lily is doing very well at her Math-U-See, and it seems that one lesson a day is appropriate and just the right amount of work for her. She loves using the manipulatives (shown above) that come with the curriculum.

Lily also loved writing a story based on the picture of the boy and his robot...She could have gone on forever about their relationship!

Our favorite activity by far was our watercolor and tissue paper Seasons Tree. We read through the first part of The Berenstain Bears Big Book of Science which takes you through the four seasons. We loved reading the rhymes and looking at the funny pictures!

My next post will be a tutorial of how we made our seasons craft!

We did however, slack a little on our history this week due to all the sickness. I reserved a bunch of books on Egypt and we will be reading them as we continue our study of Early Civilizations. 

Thanks!

Week 2- Sonlight, Isaac and Coracles

 Our flooded pond behind our house

This week started out a little crazy, and finished out crazy. 

Hence, we did not get to all I had hoped for this week but we did do all of the basics. 

And we even got to make our Coracles with the neighbor!!

We had Tropical Storm Isaac to deal with and had tons of rain

 which caused regular schools to be cancelled for two days.

 My middle child goes to preschool, so we had everyone in the house for two days. 

We also were touched with a bit of a 24 hour bug, 

which in a house of 5 people becomes a 'week long family bug.'

Claire playing in the water...fish were swimming on top of the grass

We accomplished all of our Math-U-See lessons for the week which is still pretty much review for Lily but she enjoys it (I've got a Mathlete on my hands).

We finished up The Boxcar Children, and started and finished Dolphin Adventure for our Read-Alouds. 

We are now about 2 weeks ahead on the read-alouds so after our next book,My Father's Dragon,  
 I think I am going to get out the next book in

 The Boxcar Children Series from the library,

 Surprise Island (The Boxcar Children Mysteries #2) .

 The girls enjoyed narrating the two books in their own words....

  At the end of the school year, I will compile these narrations and turn them into a book. I think it will be great memories for the girls as they grow older!

Here is a look at our Coracle that we made as part of our study of the earliest civilizations...
We tried to float them in the bowl to make sure they worked.
The craft instructions were in the Usborne Book Living Long Ago
 that came with the Sonlight Curriculum. 

The directions called for pipe cleaners but we used Bendaroos because that's all I had on hand.

Overall, the kids had a great time seeing if their coracle would float,
 and then making little men to float in the raft.
But of course, the most fun is seeing how much weight you need to sink the boat!

 I started our All About Reading Curriculum with Lily, and we both really like it. 

Our wall is set up that has all of the tiles on it.

I didn't get a chance to start the book Madeline with Five In a Row series

 due to the Library being closed,

 so we are anxious to start it this week!

I'll share more about the upcoming week with you in my lesson plans for Week 3 post on Monday!

Thanks!