Tot School!

Buttercup as always is enjoying the world around her:

Taking a nature walk.

Her very own Nature Journal

Picking Daisies

Running in the grass.

Spinning

Planting Seeds

St. Patrick's Day fun

Blocks

Lacing animals

Counting CD's

Stashing crayons in her pockets for later

Wooden block trail.

Alphabet magnents

Weekly Wrap Up!

We have had a busy couple of weeks with school. The weather has been very nice, so we finally started our nature studies/journals. You can see a post about it here

We started The Carnival of Animals for music study, which has been really fun.
I bought these two Bible study guides from Ebay Bible Beginnings: And It Was Good! and

Bible Beginnings: Precious In His Sight
They are set up with lessons that go for 5 days. We have been doing one each morning before school. These are super thick books, and we are starting with the Old Testament. I have found them very easy to follow, and the kids enjoy them too. Sweetpea started the majority of her K work this week. There was just no point in waiting on it she is very ready. Right now she is finishing ETC primer C, Horizons K, Handwriting Without tears K, Hearts and Hands from CLP, and Phonics Pathways. I have some other things I will start with her soon also. Buster is just plugging along with his work and should be done with most of it mid May. This week we started multi-syllable word mini pyramids in his Reading Pathways. He had a lot of fun reading these and looking the words up in the dictionary. Buster and daddy finished rodents, and read about Elephants, Woolly Mammoths, and Horses this week. Here are some other things we did:

My husband set up a kids computer, and the kids can take turns playing educational games while I work with the other on basics.

Sweetpea really enjoyed Jumpstart Kindergarten this week.

Buster playing Jumpstart Spanish

Sweetpea's drawing. I drew the bunny on the right and she copied it on the left.

Happy St. Patrick's Day


We planted some seeds, so far they have yet to sprout ;(

We had a fun day at the park with my sister and her kids.

They found treasure! Someone had dumped a bunch of pennies.

Counting their loot.

A tree fort.

I ordered some owl pellets from Ebay. Daddy and the kids had fun digging through them.

Rodent skull

Busters Jounal drawing from this week.

Check out http://www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com/

for more weekly wrap ups.

Nature Study!

I have had great intentions of starting nature journals with the kids, but winter in the north west is very wet, so it hasn't happened. Buster has been begging me ever since he heard of nature journals, so I bought these off of ebay like a month ago. My Nature Journal Of course you could use any old sketch book, but I wanted a little direction. Not to mention I found them for 5 dollars each. Anyways yesterday happened to be a gorgeous day, and when my husband came home he suggested we take the kids for a walk at the duck pond nature trail. What a perfect opportunity to bring our journals. I grabbed them right out of our Friday bucket, because by Friday the weather could be terrible, and off we went. The trail provided many great learning opportunities. You can follow our walk in pictures.

Here I am explaining the journals to my very attentive pupils. ;)

I bought Buttercup a little sketch pad, so she wouldn't feel left out.

Buster was delighted to find some fungus.

Some lovely green moss. We found quite a few things to teach us about decomposition.

Buddy taking in the sites.

An animal hole we found. Not sure what lives in it, but Sweetpea was sure it was menacing.

Buttercup dancing along.

Love this pic. My husband takes great pictures.

He found the trail quite relaxing.

Buster discovered an ant hill.

Playing Pooh sticks.

Buster's sketch for the day. Sweetpea decided to run off at the end of the trail, so she was in the van with daddy while we sketched.

He drew toadstools, water, log, grass, and a duck. The duck has three legs. Buster was thinking four legs, but I stopped him at 3.

Some links for you about nature journaling.

http://homemade.truepath.com/nature2.htm

http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/2009/10/outdoor-hour-challenge-autumn-series_09.html

http://www.connecting-with-nature.net/journal.html

Weekly Wrap Up!

My husband put in for this week off in January, and we decided to make it our spring break. On Sunday morning we drove to Portland and checked out OMSI. It was 2 dollar day, so we all got in for 10 dollars. Buster and Sweetpea really enjoyed it, but Buttercup wasn't feeling to good. That evening at our hotel Both girls got sick, so we spent that night and the whole next day at a hotel with sick girls. Buster and daddy did some science reading. On Tues. I called the kids Dr. from our hotel and made an apt. for 4. We did a quick run through the zoo it was their 2 dollar day, and drove straight home. We just made it in time for the girls apt. Both girls had ear infections. We spent Wed.-Thurs. at home with grouchy kids. I called and made Buster an apt. for Fri. morning. Buster woke up with a rash, and Dr. said he had strep. Buddy was heading the way of the others, so he is being treated also. Buster is pretty bummed to be missing his last basketball game tomorrow. We were also supposed to go to cousin T, and K's b-day parties. It's back to school Monday.

They had a NASA exhibit right now.

Relaxing in his Ergo


The fam on infrared


Kid's area

Samson the T-Rex

Sick baby

He slept awesome at the hotel

Going home

The new Africa area at the Oregon Zoo

Check out http://www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com/ for more weekly wrap ups