Our Homeschool, Week 11: "Christmas"

Last week was Christmas, so of course we drew inspiration from our Christmas board!

Bu really liked his felt gingerbread man. I helped him with the face and he decorated the rest, hence the boot as a bow-tie :)

Below, there are a few of our tabletop activities...We did some penguin counting and I made a Christmas tree with letter ornaments so we could work on our letter recognition. He loved that Christmas tree! We also worked on color sorting "presents" and made some gluten-free salt dough ornaments as an art/sensory activity.

This was a last minute stroke of genius that hit me LOL..I wanted a quick little something to give to extended family for Christmas, so I just had some 4X4 photos of Bu with Santa printed up. I couldn't find appropriately sized envelopes and felt just a photo was a little wimpy, so I got to thinking! I set up a station with paint so we could make handprints on the back of the photos...then, when the handprints were dry, I laminated each photograph. I made a hole with a regular hole puncher (making sure to avoid Santa's head and the handprint on the back!) and strung a ribbon through. Voila! Instant ornament! Everyone loved them, and they were so easy and quick to make!

This week, we're learning about rainbows with our Rainbows board...We'll also be using this New Years Eve pack on the 31st, in case anyone else wants to print it! 

Target One Spot for Homeschooling Supplies

I LOVE Target! I especially love their One Spot...it's always the first thing I see when I walk into the store, and my favorite place to linger. There's usually some sort of educational game or book available, but the best is finding random items that you can turn into activities! (By the way, this is totally not a sponsored post...I wish! I just love finding homeschooling supplies and activities on a budget, and I'm an oversharer LOL)

The number matching and letter matching games were each $1. They each come with wooden clothespins that your child can use to clip onto the cards to select the appropriate answers. The number game has numbers drawn on the pins so they can match the number to the appropriate amount of dots, while the letter matching game  has plain pins that are used to select the appropriate starting letter of the picture on the card. The last item was also $1...it's number sequencing puzzles. We introduced these last week and Bu loved them, so imagine my excitement to find 16(!) for $1(!)

These were each $3...it's a felt gingerbread man and a felt snowman, with all sorts of fun felt goodies to decorate them with. I'm planning to use the gingerbread man this week as part of our Christmas week, and saving the snowman for when we study Winter.

Lastly, I got each of these knick knacks for a dollar apiece. The garland will be put together today, it's just paper bands with sticky ends that we will link together. Good practice for coordination! The felt snowflakes will be used for a color matching activity with a sensory twist. Speaking of sensory, I LOVE burying little fun erasers in bins of dry beans, rice or cereal and helping Bu pick them out. Easy sensory activity that requires very little pre-planning!

What fun goodies have you incorporated into your at-home activities lately? I'm always searching the One Spot and Dollar Tree for fun items, let me know what you find so we can share ideas!

Our Homeschool, Week 10: "Trees"

This week, we worked on activities from our Trees board! We repeated the leaf-matching activity that we first tried out in our "Autumn" themed week. Yay, versatility!

I think Bu's favorite activity was this "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" themed task. We used our handy alphabet magnets to practice letter recognition on this tree worksheet. We repeated this activity 3 separate days throughout our week, Bu really liked it!

Speaking of "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom," here's the guy reading his copy! He's loved this book since he was teeny, so it was nice for him to work with something familiar this week.

We did our usual pre-writing activities and a do-a-dot, which are pretty popular around here. Pictured below, you can see that we did a puzzle that has numbered pieces. Bu loved hearing me count out each piece as we laid them side by side, and he clapped every time I reached "10" and the tree was revealed! We did this activity at least twice, he was really into it. We also worked on identifying colors by matching pictures of leaves to pictures of their corresponding color crayon.

We didn't get to it, but this could be a great week to introduce the concept of planting and maybe even plant a veggie or herb so you can talk about the process and eventually reap the rewards of your patience!

Next week is Christmas, so of course, we'll be using our Christmas board! We have a lot of fun planned. I hope everyone has a great week and holiday!

Currently...

Doing: Going through all my receipts to see what I can try to get reimbursed through my son's homeschooling grant! ::fingers crossed::

Working on: STILL handling the med waiver stuff 3 months later...

Watching: Classic Who! It's a little tedious so far, which I expected...but how can I call my a proper Whovian if I don't watch the original series?

Loving: how fantastic Bu is doing in all his therapies...there's so many wins every single week, it's really encouraging and awesome

Anticipating: Christmas! and the rest of the holidays! I love all the family gatherings and memory making around this time of year.

Our Homeschool, Week 9: "Weather"

This week, we worked on a weather theme. We had a short week because we went to DISNEY WORLD from Wednesday to Friday, but we did do a few activities off our Weather board before we left. Below, you can see pre-writing worksheets, a letter recognition activity, and lacing cards that I got from Pinterest.

We also traced "W' for weather, did a do-a-dot (we love those!) and did a fun matching activity with photos of different weather concepts.

And of course, the learning doesn't stop just because we're on vacation. We took a break from hot and rainy south Florida and had some breezy, chilly weather in Orlando...and we also learned about different weather systems and habitats on Living With the Land in Epcot!

Next week, we will be working on activities from our Trees board. See you then!

Our Homeschool, Week 8: "Dinosaurs"

This week, we had fun working with our Dinosaurs board. I LOVE dinosaurs! There were a couple of activities that we didn't get to because of time restraints (we had a lot of doctors appointments last week) but I'm happy with what we did do!

I was expecting him to place 2 or 3 stickers at most, and probably involving a fuss. He placed the ENTIRE sheet worth of dinosaurs. He picked where each would go (including on the sun and in the volcano smoke), placed it on the paper and "pat-pat-pat"ed them down. His first completely independent art project (besides my prehistoric jungle background lol) 

We had fun watching these grow...who am I kidding? Bu wasn't interested in the slightest! LOL I was plenty excited for both of us, though, and I can see how most children might be into this "just for fun" activity. It could be a great segue for talking about absorption and cellular structure with slightly older kids. 

A few examples of the activities and crafts we got to later in the week. We pretty much kept to art activities and reading our favorite dinosaur book, with some counting and letter recognition activities mixed in. We kept it fun and light, but there's many ways you can take the theme of dinosaurs into much more "scholastic" territory.

Next week, we'll be working on our Weather board. It'll be a short week, because we're going to DISNEY!!!! We're so excited!