Bambi's First Week of School!

Bambi has finished her first week of  6th grade!

Like Thumper, Bambi was ready to begin this year!  She too loves her work space, though we aren't finished setting it up.  Again, for the month of August we are schooling 4 days a week....taking Friday's off to hang out with some of our friend's in public school and to help ease our way back into the groove of things!

Bambi started this week with Saxon 6/5, finishing Daily Grams before we start Analytical Grammar in January, Phonetic Zoo A, IEW Writing Middle Ages Theme Book, Mosdos Press Pearl (see our Focus On sheets I made to go along) & book basket, Health, Fiddle lessons, and Spanish.  We will add the rest in September!  You can see her yearly curriculum list on the 2014-2015 Page.

Mosdos Press, I believe, is going to be a winner for Bambi & Thumper.  Now I wish I ordered a set for Flower.....

I will have Bambi work on Mosdos as "Lit Day" for 3 days of the week.
First, we discuss the Focus of the story together, filling out her Focus On sheet as much as she can before reading.  Then, she reads the story.....this week we read the first half together going over literary devices and analytical questions together....then she read the rest herself.  She filled out her Plot Diagram, I won't have her do this portion for every story, and then we discussed.
I also had her work on a worksheet from the student workbook dealing with "Characters" in the story.

She picked out a personal reader for the week.....Black Beauty!

Workbook Page

Bambi's Workspace......Not completed but still useful!  She likes working in the classroom, undisturbed!

We are back to Phonetic Zoo this year after using Logic of English for 5th grade.  I feel like Bambi has more of a handle on her phonograms, but she still placed in PZ Level A.  We are taking this one day at a time!  She does like the set up for Phonetic Zoo much better than LOE & All About Spelling.  

For Writing this year, Bambi is going to use IEW Medieval Writing theme and Essentials in Writing Grade 6.

She likes variety....so we will work on IEW 2-3 weeks and then EIW6 1-2 weeks continuing in that pattern until we complete both.  I don't expect to finish IEW Medieval this year, but we shall try. Also, we are starting EIW at the Composition section instead of the beginning.  The beginning of EIW6 is mainly grammar and sentence structure.  I feel she has that under control so we'll be starting in the middle.

Thumper's First Week of School

Thumper had a great first week of 3rd grade!

We started August 11th this year....a week later than usual.  For the rest of August, we will be schooling for 4 days a week....taking our Friday's off!  We have some friends that haven't started back to public school yet and Friday's give a great opportunity to get together with them before summer is over!

For the month of August, Thumper will be working on First Language Lessons Level 3, Essentials in Writing grade 3, Logic of English Cursive writing, All About Spelling Level 3 (Please see my student workbook pages I made for this), Math Mammoth/Saxon 3, Spanish, and reading with Mosdos Press Opal & selected books in his book basket.  You can check out his yearly curriculum on the 2014-2015 Page!  In September, we will incorporate the rest of our subjects, like science & history, and I'll post here about that then.  

This year Thumper has requested his own work space.  We set up our phone station by the fireplace in the living room for him and he absolutely loves his area. He truly works better knowing he has his OWN space and not just the kitchen table.  It's not big by no means, but it's his! 

I was unsure of how Mosdos Press would be for Thumper.  The stories are pretty long, or longer than what he is use to reading in one sitting.  He impressed me by the fact that he just wanted to keep reading on!!  Mosdos Press Opal was a hit!  Below are some pictures of the inside of his book, the Eyes On sheet I created, workbook page, and a craft he made to go along with his story of the week.  We are planning to use Mosdos reading 4 days a week throughout the year.  He will pick books from his basket or shelf for silent reading and to read aloud to me!  He picked some of the sweetest books to start with for August.  These books were read by both of his sisters when they were about his age.  They are called The Lighthouse Family by Cynthia Rylant.  There are four books in the series.....I can't seem to locate "The Storm"......

We used Mod Podge & colorful tissue paper to decorate his jar, which was a craft to go along with his story.

Turned out beautiful!

First Language Lessons 3 is a continuation of Levels 1-2.  I made worksheets last year to go along with Level 2 and I am somewhat happy that I don't have to create those again this year!  But, I may make some study sheets as we learn more if I feel it is necessary.  I will post them if I do!

We are gearing up for our second week of school starting tomorrow.  I will post here more next week about All About Spelling showing how we use our student workbooks!  We did hand our board this year on the wall where I can lift it off to move to the living room near Thumper's workspace area.

Essentials in Writing worked well with Thumper last year.  He didn't have much trouble at all with it.  He is not use to writing a whole lot but we are going to work on that this year.  He will also finish the last half of Writing With Ease Level 2 in the second semester.

Buzzword Poster and Printouts for Jr. Analytical Grammar

Before I post about our first week of school for the 2014-2015 school year I wanted to share this document of Buzzwords used in Jr. Analytical Grammar that Bambi used for her 5th grade year.  We printed these out, she cut them out, and pasted them on a poster board.  It was VERY helpful for her to look at the poster as she went through her lessons instead of looking back through her book.  We also typed up the Six Deadly Splits to add to her poster.  I do not have these as a printout. Also, on the header of the printout, I state that there are 15 buzzwords, but there are 19 in all for you to cut out.   Bambi plans to use her buzzword poster for Analytical Grammar this year, which we plan to start in January after our Christmas break.

Buzzwords 1-19 Printouts

Homeschooling in NC for Newbies!

I thought this was helpful for those that are homeschooling in NC that are just jumping in!

http://www.slideshare.net/KerryJones3/step-by-step-guide-to-homeschooling-in-north-carolina

All About Spelling Student Workbooks!

We have gone through Levels 1-2 and part of 3 in All About Spelling.  This year we gave Logic of English a try.  I do like how LOE is set up and how well Thumper is learning from it.  He really misses the simplicity of AAS and has asked to go back to it for next school year.  So I'm going to let him have his way on this one and go back to AAS for 3rd grade.  He doesn't struggle too much with spelling.  He feels that with LOE it just drags out too long and enjoyed the quickness & thoroughness of AAS.

I made student printout sheets for Thumper's student workbook.  It includes Level 3 and Level 4.

Please feel free to print them out for your child.  There is an instruction sheet on page 1 of each level explaining how I make my books and some quick tips.

I ended up making Level 1 & 2 as well.
I am planning on making a Spelling Quiz Printout File for all of the levels below.....soon!

Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4

Spelling Quiz Printout
Level 1-2:
Level 3-4


I will come back soon and post about our yearly wrap up and what we are looking forward to for our next school year!  Till then........

Apologia's Chemistry & Physics Update

I have been slacking this year with blogging....had high hopes at the beginning of the year, but you know, life happens.....living in the moment happens.....can't document everything!  We started the year with Real Science 4 kids Chemistry for upper grades with Thumper & Bambi.  It was not clicking with them at all!  Some of the experiments were working but the reading was just too confusing for them.

I wanted Chemistry & Physics this year together so I bought Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics through Apologia.  I read the text and edit a lot of the reading.  It is very wordy....I skim through to pull out the main ideas of the lesson....Bambi notes any science terms and they both write narrations on what they learned from my reading/lecture.  I bought the Jr. Journal for Thumper so he would not feel left out when Bambi does her journaling.  I definitely could have just had them create science notebooks like we did last year instead of spending the extra money.  But it is all there....they don't use every sheet of the notebooking journal, which in my opinion has told me that this was a waste of moo-la!

Experiments have been great!  We don't do every single one of them though..... It is a little annoying if you don't do an experiment because the text following it talks about that experiment.  This is why I read it and not the kids!  So far we have finished up to Lesson 7...... (The first 5 lessons of the book is Chemistry & the rest of the book is Physics) The kids want to get to the Electricity, Magnets, and Machines so we will be jumping ahead to finish out the year with the last three lessons of the book.  Next year, we will study the rest of the topics of Energy, Thermal Energy, Light, & Sound, using this book and most likely adding in our Kingfisher Encyclopedia. (Flower does jump in with our videos and experiments...she is studying the same topics but using Science Fusion.)

Through the year we have used Discovery Education videos (sign up for their free month trial then order from this site b/c it is sooo much cheaper) before and after lessons.  Study Jams (Free) is another great supplement....concept videos are short & sweet and work well to start the lessons off.  The kids have been watching Popular Mechanics for Kids on Amazon Prime and they absolutely LOVE it!  (If you have Amazon Prime then all the seasons are free for you to watch)  I think they learn more from watching those videos than they do in our science lessons!

I'm adding some pictures below of some of our experiments we have done in Apologia's Chem & Physics.  Though I have mixed feelings about this book....I do like the consistent lay out and schedule it provides.  I seem to tweak just about everything anyway....I don't feel I would be happy with just one resource anyway!  Here you go!

Lesson 1:  Density

Lesson 1:  Buoyancy

Lesson 1 Project:  Lava Lamps!  This was neat!

Lesson 2:  Learning about Solid, Liquid, and Gas Atoms.  I don't think this was an experiment in the book.  I think I got it from somewhere else....they enjoyed doing it at snack time.  This really cemented the idea for Thumper!

Lesson 3:  Atoms and Chemical Reactions.  We immediately moved from a cookie sheet to a big bowl once we realized what we were about to do!  This one was fun!

  

Lesson 3:  Atom Anatomy, protons, electrons, neutrals using m&m's....

Lesson 4:  Making a Polymer ball!  

        

Lesson 5:  Colloids....making butter from cream.  We loved this!  The kids did it all week!

Lesson 5:  Homogeneous Mixtures.

Lesson 6:  Making a Newton's Cradle

Greek Feast!

We have been learning so many great things about Ancient Greece!  We are coming to an end with Greece and decided to throw a little Greek Feast.  To prepare for this feast, the kids researched some foods that were eaten in that time period.  We made a field trip to our Greek Market to see some of the products from Greece.  There was a lovely lady that worked in the bakery that gave the kids a lesson on Greeks while I shopped!   We also found some music that the Ancient Greeks may have listened to and of course we dressed the part!  Plenty of activities after our yummy feast!

 Greek Sweets!

 Greek Rose Water.... it wasn't as good as we thought!  I would suggest adding it to a beverage, like lemonade.  Don't drink on its own!

The feast begins!

Ionic Column

Eating like the Greeks!

Making eyeballs for the "Cyclops" game!  Pin the Eye on the Cyclops!

 Greek Designs........ Painting terra cotta pots.