Solar System

This year I tried teaching science to the boys but the topic they chose was the human body. It took us way too long just to get through the intro and some of the first chapter thus I quit. It actually caused Matthew to become a germ-a-phobe.

After some thought, however, I realized it wasn't science but the topic that was making learning hard so I decided on a new topic without the boys input and I chose space.

What a great choice, if I do say so myself. I chose Exploring Creation with Astronomy from Apologia as well as their Junior Notebooking Journal and it is so much fun. We do little bits at a time and we have only finished two chapters; the intro and the Sun. The model above was after the introduction. We learned the name of the planets and also learned to use a mnemonic device to remember their names.

Here is the one we created together:

Matthew Vacuums Every Monday Joyfully, Sometimes Under New Plants

We have included Pluto for now because as we study each of the planets, we can decide what we think about its Planet-tude (invented this word).

Just thought I would share a little snap-shot of our schooling thus far.

B...B...B...Baking

Matty and I are working on the letter B right now.

Tuesday I decided he would help me bake cookies and he could use his new alphabet cookie cutters.

May I just say it was a very silly idea to choose something so time consuming when you have a three month old who isn't always terribly happy.

Once we had done one of every letter, I got out the bigger cookie cutters so we weren't working on it all day.


I love the elephant and lion.

Any other 'b' activities you can think of?

Tivafies?

I ordered a little alphabet curriculum for preschool and kindergarten for Matthew a while ago and we are VERY SLOWLY going through it. When I say slowly, I mean we spend up to three weeks (sometimes more) on one letter because we are in and out all the time.

We are only on letter B right now but here is a picture of Matty working on an A activity:

He loves doing the activities. After the first day of doing it he kept asking:"Mom, can I do a tivafy? I want more tivafies."

This bodes well for us. I just have to figure out how we can do it more regularly since the only time we can do it is when Levi isn't awake because he wants in on the action but isn't a very delicate child. He throws and tears and crumples.

I hope to put together a basket for Levi full of fun activities for him to do while Matty and I sit together to do some things but until I have room to be organized its kind of on hold.

Homeschool File Folder Activity

Some ladies from church and I decided to put together some folder activities and do a file folder exchange.

I chose transportation as my theme and these are the folders I put together:

The cover is meant to be a colouring activity.


Inside is a seris of activities in pockets, a rhyme, a lacing activity and a pattern activity.
Im excited with how it is turning out. I hope the little ones enjoy them.

Pom Poms and Spoons

Yesterday the boys were getting bored so I decided to introduce a new activity to them that Matthew enjoyed and Levi played in his own way very happily.

I bought little pom poms from the dollar store a while back for Matthew to sort into containers by various colours. However, that has become boring so we decided to do a transfering activity.
I got out some ice cube trays and handed Matty two spoons. Using the spoons he was to pick up the pom poms and put them into the little holes of the ice cube trays.


He concentrated really hard on this activity and really enjoyed himself.

Levi enjoyed getting in on the action and actually needed to get right on the table to do his part.
Simple yet captivating for them. What more could one ask for?