Back in the Swing of Things!

This week we started home school and I finally prepared a menu again after not having one ALL summer!
After a bit of rough start on Monday, we went outside and made a new friend!

Lots of Straw

A hard worker

Meet "Franklin"

My eldest is 4 1/2 and since we did preschool last year, he is working at a Kindergarten/1st grade level. I am still making up my own curriculum based on others I've found online.  We are doing less worksheets and more hands on this year!  We've started Teach Your Child to Read in a 100 Easy Lessons.  The first lessons are a lot of review for him but we are moving quickly and he is already sounding out words in our Bob Books. We're also using flash cards to learn sight words and are learning about short/long vowel sounds.  When school supplies were on sale, I picked up a dry erase board to encourage proper handwriting and he loves it! It has shapes, numbers and letters on it to trace.

Handwriting practice

 For math I printed out a 100's chart.  I really like this one b/c you can customize it - I printed out a counting by 2's chart and a 5's chart and laminated them. We're also learning to tell time, roman numerals, even & odd numbers, simple addition/subtraction, lacing activities, patterns and comparison.
I found this great book, Simple Science Fun, for our hands on science lessons! So far it has been great!

Excited Student

A kabob skewer thru a balloon w/out popping it!

My middle, 2 years, is doing the phonetic alphabet, sign language, number recognition, reviewing shapes and simple counting. 

Busy Bee

We also do a Bible story/lesson with a craft every Monday and learn our memory verse for the week.
Friday is extra-curricular - Music theory-the ground rules for starting piano and eventually guitar; computer time; field trips and/or playdates.

More to come, stay tuned!!

MadCounty Mama