My Star Students

Here are this year's students, posing for their yearly beginning-of-the-year pictures.  We always take our pictures, print them in Jumbo Wallet size on our Epson PictureMate Dash, then glue them to the front of our "All About Me" books, in which we record pertinent information about our physical selves, as well as our likes, dislikes and abilities. 

 

This is Maddie, who grew three inches in the last year.  She is 4, but I keep forgetting that because she acts (most of the time) like all of her 6 and 7 year old cousins.  My personal goal this year is to remember her age and treat her accordingly.  She is very excited about school, and I'm trying hard to make it fun for everyone by playing games and keeping our daily lessons short but meaningful!

 

This is Angie, my 7 year old bundle of boundless energy who can't seem to sit still for much of anything, but has an amazing amount of concentration when it comes to completing arts and crafts.  She will literally climb the walls if left to her own devices for too long.  She also prefers hands on learning activities, and I've told her I'm working on it and she's being patient with the worksheets and reading we've been doing so far.

 

Although not one of my students, when I saw the filename "Girl with Nice Boots" on my computer, I couldn't help but open it and see what it was, because I never name my photos.  And this is what it was, courtesy of Angie (who really prefers to be called Angelyn, but who settles for Angie because I never remember to call her Angelyn unless she's in trouble for something :) )

Amazing Handwriting Worksheets

If you search exactly that, "amazing handwriting worksheets", in Google, you're very first hit will be this fantastic and free site for making handwriting practice pages in three different writing styles with multiple options for what to put on a page.  It is FULLY customizable. I can't say enough good things about it.  If you need quick handwriting worksheets, this is your tool!  (But don't be fooled by the giant DOWNLOAD buttons in the middle of the page.  That's just for a PDF creator, which you don't need, unless you want to save your worksheets for future printing by printing them to a PDF generator instead of your printer. Or you can photocopy the one that you're going to print out.)  Scroll down the page a bit to find the three choices for writing styles and begin!

When I practice handwriting with my littles (who are 4 and 7), I use this worksheet generator.  I put 4 different letters on the page (one per line) and then 2 short words that use the current letters or letters we've already practiced on past sheets.  The first letter on each line uses arrows to direct the writing.  The second letter on each line is simply dotted, with no arrows.  Then I ask for 5 beautiful copies of the letter on their own.  I sit and correct as they're doing it to avoid bad habits.  Then, immediately after finishing the line, we choose the best example from the five and put a tiny reward sticker above it.  This provides incentive to both finish the work and to do it well.  We always enjoy choosing the best one. When we disagree about which is the best, the child gets to choose. Notice that we're just looking for the best among the five that the child wrote, we're not looking for perfection.

And stickers from the local Dollar Tree are always useful!

Organizing Our Day

Now that Angie is in 2nd grade and Maddie is advancing through Kindergarten level work, I find that in order to keep them engaged and advancing, I have to keep myself more organized so that I know what we've done and where we're headed.  One of the ways I'm trying to do this is through a daily/weekly scheduling process. 

I've long thought (or wished) that planning a semester in advance was the way to go.  And I've actually made the plans several times, but never followed through on them.  So this year, I'm trying to live one week at a time.  It's just enough so that I know where we're going, but not so much that I can't rearrange things easily if we end up doing something other than school on a particular day. 

And to keep the kids in the loop, I've made a weekly check-off chart and daily detailed plans to let them each know (and remind me!) what we're doing each day.  We've used it for two days already and it seems to be going alright.  Now I just need to find a way to make them visible and easily accessible and we'll be in a groove!

Encouraging Independent Reading

My girls are not prone to sitting and reading on their own.  So, to encourage a bit more independent reading, I constructed an incentive chart:

Ok, so it's perhaps a bit bigger than your standard incentive chart, but I had these apple die-cuts from Dollar Tree and I just couldn't resist incorporating them into our schoolroom! If I wasn't so pressed for wall space, I'd have filled out the top of the tree some more, but as it is, I was cramped with our calendar space to the left and Angie's workfolders to the right.

So, each time they read  a book they get to write the name and author on an apple and hang it from the tree.  We're two days into the school year and already they've each hung two apples. I'm not even putting any constraints on what kinds of books count.   If you read it, you can hang an apple!

Use What You've Learned

We discussed the layers of the Earth today, using a nectarine as a model and coloring the layers on a worksheet.  After disbanding and heading outside for some playtime in this gorgeous summerllike weather, the kids began putting their newfound knowledge to use as they dug a giant hole in our as-yet unplanted garden.

 "We're digging down to the mantle, Mommy," Maddie informed me.

 "Oh, really," I said.  "Just be careful that you don't create a volcano." 

"Never mind, I'm not going with her," Maddie returned quickly, pointing at Angie who was still wielding her shovel.

Young Writers Club Week #4: Angelyn

I wish for wings.  If I had wings, I would have pink wings.  I would be a small garden fairy.  I would plant flowers everywhere.

Field Trips: Montclair Art Museum

Our outing today was to the Montclair Art Museum.  Each month, the museum hosts a homeschool art class for 4-8 year olds; each month, the theme is different.  This month's theme was seasons, weather and time.  We first toured the gallery, looking at particular paintings that illustrated the theme.  We saw some abstract pieces and some realistic pieces.  The tour guides asked the children how they knew what season it was, or what time of day it was, or even what the weather was.  In some paintings, the answers were obvious and in others open to interpretation.  I was pleased with Angie's participation; she offered a couple of answers and observations and went along with the group with little concern for where I was in the room.  Maddie, being just a bit on the young side, stuck by me or her sister, preferring me when her sister went ahead with the group.

For the art project, we learned how to use pastels and a smudging technique to create a really interesting effect.  We tore a strip of paper in a curvy, mountainous way.  Then we colored with the pastels near the torn edges of the paper.  We laid the torn paper on top of our working paper, chalked side up, and smudged the chalk onto the working paper, across the torn edge.  The effect was to make a clean, sharp delineation between the softly smudged colors and the paper itself.  It was really wonderful and we all enjoyed making our own pictures of mountains and grass and whatnot. 

We thoroughly enjoyed the program and we'll be back again next month.