Our Homeschool, Week 28: "Earth Day"

This week, we followed our Earth Day board.

We had a lot of fine motor practice this week. Puzzles, color sorting with wooden beads, and magnet play. With the magnets, I lined up the entire uppercase alphabet and had Bu match the corresponding lowercase letter. I might try this again in the reverse, since I noticed I usually have him match the lowercase to uppercase letters rather than vice versa.

We watched the Extraordinary Earth episode of Rachel and the Treeschoolers. We also caught the Earth Day special of Bubble Guppies, Bu is a big fan of the characters. We had another sticker activity where we decorated a park scene with trees, plants and insects. Lastly, it wasn't part of our "curriculum", but Bu found a puzzle of a map of America, and he asked to try it. I was shocked that he correctly matched 10 states (albeit not always properly oriented) before he lost interest.

UPCOMING THEMES

April 25 - Robots

May 2 - Mother's Day

Our Homeschool, Week 27: "Construction"

This past week, we worked on our "Construction" board. We've had construction across the street for almost 2 years now, and Bu loves watching the machines work from our porch. I had a feeling he'd enjoy this theme!

We worked on fine motor skills with our Nuts and Bolts set, worked on a brand new "tool set" themed puzzle, and built up towers with our cardboard bricks to learn about the concepts of "up" and "down". We also watched an episode of Magic School Bus that corresponded to the theme of the week.

We worked on our first ever interlocking-piece puzzle this week. We also read lots of books about buildings and structures. We had a lot of fun with this theme!

UPCOMING THEMES

April 18 - Earth Day

April 25 - Robots

May 2 - Mother's Day

Our Homeschool, Week 26: "The Five Senses"

This week, our theme was the Five Senses = touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing.

We had a short week, because we had to travel upstate for our annual specialist appointment. Our schooling mainly consisted of field trips, but we made it a point to label everything we touched, saw, heard and smelled...and had an interesting "taste" experience when Bu realized ocean water was salty. He bit me through my shirt while we were swimming at Cocoa Beach! LOL 

I look forward to revisiting this theme next year, when Bu is a bit older and maybe ready for more in-depth activities. The great thing about this theme is that there's always a new way to apply what you learn!

UPCOMING THEMES

April 4 -  Five Senses

April 11 - Construction

April 18 - Earth Day

April 25 - Robots

May 2 - Mother's Day

Currently...

Haven't done one of these in a while, so I thought I'd do one from Melbourne!

Doing: laying on a hotel bed with my son and husband

Watching: "The Waterboy"

Learning: that we all fit comfortably on a queen size bed, but not for long lol

Thinking about: Bu's specialist appointment tomorrow morning

Eating: nothing now, but we'll be having Chick Fil-A for the first time tonight.

Loving: the calm I'm feeling now, i.e. Before the storm

Anticipating: getting the appointment done so we can take Bu to Cocoa Beach, and then Disney next week! 

Our Homeschool, Week 25: "Circus"

We had our Circus theme last week...unfortunately, Bu was sick (and actually still is) so we didn't do a whole lot. I'm earmarking this theme to use again at the end of our "year". An advantage of homeschooling is being able to move things around as we need to! 

Here's a bunch of activities I had printed out, but I'm just going to save this in our binder until later :)

We tried out Time4Learning this week. Bu liked the activities we tried, but he was frustrated with operating the mouse. He was clicking the scroll-wheel and moving the whole page instead of clicking the button to select, and so this didn't last very long. I was able to keep him more engaged with this than with the ABCMouse, though, so it looks like we're going to need to get a new mouse!

Here's an example of some the work he did in therapy this week, too. He is asked "where is the circle? where is the triangle?" and he has to place a sticker on the shape he's asked for. He got 100% right independently! He's also doing great on his independent circle drawing, and they've started working on window panes so he can practice making crossed lines. The first one was the therapist, and the last one was Bu and her together, but the other 4 windows were Bu independently. Not bad at all for his first try! He's also been practicing ordering numbers from 0-9. He tends to get the 8 and 9 backwards, but otherwise, he's got it! We also bought a custom jigsaw puzzle with Bu's (real) name as the puzzle pieces. He loves it and it's going to make it very easy for him to learn to spell and recognize his name. A great example of using the way your child likes to learn to your advantage!

Here's hoping Bu feels better soon so we can get to work on our next theme!

UPCOMING THEMES

April 4 -  Five Senses

April 11 - Construction

April 18 - Earth Day

April 25 - Robots

May 2 - Mother's Day