The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Yesterday I finished making felt story board pieces for the Eric Carle book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar."  LO loves the book and loves playing with the felt pieces :)  Here is a picture:

Digging in Dirt

Thursday we went to Hidden Pond again for a class on "Dirt and Decomposers."  Basically the kids dug in the dirt looking for worms and then they fed the worms to the turtles.  LO (little one) thought it was the coolest class ever! :)  Here are some pictures:

Numbers 1 to 3

Today we started our official math curriculum!  :)  We are using Right Start Math Level A.  LO (little one) totally loved his first lesson!  :)  He loved using the tally sticks and color tiles to sort.  Here is a picture :)

The reason I chose to use this curriculum with LO was due to the hands-on manipulatives and games that it offers.  We found it at the VAHomeschoolers convention back in March.   I was browsing the various math curriculum tables.  LO was with me.  He was not interested at all in the other curriculums that I was looking at and chose to look at other tables while I talked with the vendors.  He is the one that found Right Start Math.  He was like "Mommy!  Mommy!  Come over here!  I want to play with THIS one!"  :)   I didn't buy the curriculum that day but instead posted my interest on the BBC (Babycenter) Homeschool Board.  Another homeschooling momma wrote me back that she would sell me the entire Right Start Math Level A kit including all the "extras" (i.e. the high quality wooden abacus, the extra Games, the extra manipulatives, etc.) for a very discounted cost.  After discussing the offer with my DH (dear husband) I decided that this was the way to go for our math curriculum this year.  :)

Letter "A"

Today we started our Catholic Icing Preschool Curriculum!  :)  LO (little one) loved it!  I was actually quite surprised how much he enjoyed it :)   He usually is not a crafty kind of guy, so I was worried that he would not like the curriculum.  I pondered buying the curriculum for at least 6 months.  I ended up buying it at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Homeschool and Parent Conferences back in June.  FABULOUS conference!  At the conference I totally hounded Lacy about it and must have asked a million questions.   She said that she thought that even a kid who was not so crafty would like the curriculum.  She was totally correct! :)  Thanks, Lacy!   He also totally loved the songs and the prayers. :)  He even learned to do the Sign of the Cross :)  He was totally excited when he father came home from work today.  He met my husband at the door with his artwork and said "Look Daddy!  Look what I did in school today!"  (with a huge grin across his face)   My husband responded with "That's great!  Did you like your teacher?"  Ha ha.  Luckily my son responded with "Yes!" :)   When we sat down for dinner I reminded both of my men that we needed to start with some prayers.  LO immediately put his hands together in prayer and then did the Sign of the Cross all by himself :)   It was a proud moment for the homeschooling mommy :)  My husband then asked LO about his day.  LO responded that he learned the letter "A" and that he made an "Angel".  My husband then asked the logical follow-up question of "What letter does the word 'angel' start with?"  LO looked at him very proudly and said "The letter 'A', Daddy!"  So then my husband asked him if he could see a letter "A" anywhere.  LO proudly pointed to our art easle and said "that's the 'A', Daddy!"   Ah, another great homeschool moment :) 

Here is a picture of LO's angel :)

Here is a picture of our art easle with the letter "A"

We also started a unit on "The Very Hungry Catepillar" today.  We went to Walmart and bought materials for a felt board and then I put together our board.  :)  My first felt board story is going to be "The Very Hungry Catepillar".  We have previously ordered catepillar eggs in the Spring and had them hatch into butterflies.  LO was so impressed with this concept that he wanted to do it again.  So I decided that if he loved it so much, that it should be a full unit :)  Here are some pictures.

This week is "Student Photo Week" on the Not Back to School Hop.  So the picture above is my homeschool student on his first real day of PreK (3 years old).

Homeschool Skedtrack

Today I worked more on homeschool scheduling.  I found this free homeschool tracker and am setting it up.  Homeschool Skedtrack  I'm not sure how much I am going to like it.  It is a pretty traditional kind of layout.   I do like that I can make a transcript using it.

Our Weekly Schedule (tentative, of course)

So this post is more to get myself organized and ready for preschool.  If I don't have some structure, things will never actually happen.  I am a total planner.   I have 5 "curriculum" that I want to do this year with LO and there are 5 workdays in a week, so I am going with basic here.  

So here goes my weekly plan for our "curriculum".

Mondays - Dinosaur Train PBS Lessons (science/history)
Tuesdays - CatholicIcing preschool curriculum (letter of the week)
Wednesdays - RightStart Math Level A (math)
Thursdays - ProgressivePhonics.com (phonics/reading)
Fridays - My First Piano Adventure (music)

Lets see how long we can stick to a schedule :)

Our other weekly activities include:

Tuesdays - Homeschool Park Day
Wednesdays - Gymboree Sports Class
Thursdays - Library Playdate and Farmers Market
Fridays - Homeschool Park Day

So we are looking kinda busy :)  But I think it is all "good" busy; ya know what I mean?

Homeschool Room

What room?  :)   So we live in a small townhouse.  There is no designated room for our homeschooling. :)   We learn everywhere we go and usually it is not at home.  We are constantly traveling and doing things around the area (like the Connecticut dinosaur park and the Hidden Pond Nature Center).  When we are at home we use the dining room and living room (which is really just one room to begin with) for our studies.  We tend to sit on the couch or at the table.   The pictures in the previous post of our "homeschool bookshelves" are about as exciting as it gets for our "school room".  We also do work a lot outside on our deck for our messier projects like the dinosaur plaster of paris fossils mentioned in our previous post.  The deck is right off of the living room so it's really an extension of the same space.  It would be nice to have a true "school room" but I kinda like that our life is totally integrated with our homeschooling :)

Dinosaur Train Lessons, Dino Dan coloring pages, and National Geographic Little Kids

Wow!  I just checked my "views" and my blog has been viewed 143 times already!  Now THAT is pretty cool :)  Thanks for reading!

Today we are vacationing.  Little one is watching some "Dino Dan" and doing some coloring pages that I downloaded from the Nick Jr. website.

One thing that I forgot to put on my "curriculum" post that we will be doing this year are the "Dinosaur Train" lessons from PBS.  Have you seen these AWESOME lessons yet?  If not, you need to check them out!  Especially if you have a dinosaur lover like I do :)

It's rainy here today so we will probably be pulling out some books and magazines to read.  We have a subscription for little one to "National Geographic Little Kids".  Fun and educational, what could be better? :)

Anyway, thanks again for reading.  Have you "subscribed" to my blog yet? ;)

Fun Field trips and more :)

Today we started the day with a class at Hidden Pond on leaves and trees.  This included a walk on the trails and then some time in the nature center.   So much fun!   Little got to touch many creatures :)

After our adventures at Hidden Pond we went for our weekly library visit.

And then we finished our "learning" by going over the days of the week, the seasons, and the month.

And that has been our day so far :)   Now he is asking to paint our plaster of paris fossils from the other day so I guess that is what we are moving on to next :)

The Schooling Never Ends :)

After my last posts, my little one continued to do educational activities.   :) 

He played "Color Clowns", a Discovery Toys game, all by himself quietly on the floor.  It's an awesome color matching game! 

He then insisted on making "fossils".  So I pulled out the plaster of paris and we made 3 dinosaur fossils :)  Check out the pictures.  Good thing I bought 25 pounds of plaster of paris from Home Depot the other day! (If you are going to do lots of projects with plaster of paris buying it in the big bags at Home Depot instead of using the small bags from craft stores is really the most cost effective option.)

Now I know the question you are asking is "why did she buy 25 pounds of plaster of paris?"  The answer is that we just went to "Dinosaur Park" in Connecticut.   And we chose to do the track casting.  Check it out! :)  It's really super cool.

Not Back to School Hop

Homeschooling Organization

Here are pictures of our homeschooling bookshelves :)

The beginning of our blog :)

Today I made the big decision to start a blog.  It's my first attempt (so be nice)!  :)  I started this to keep track of what we do in our "homeschool".  The basic idea is that I will write what we do and how it goes each day.   For a little of background, my little one (a boy) is 3 years old, so we are going to be doing preschool type activities.

Why did I decide to do this today?  Because I was on my Babycenter.com "homeschool" board and saw a post about "Not Back-to-School Blog Hop".  It sounded like fun but I needed a blog to participate :)  So here I am. 

So this week is "Curriculum Week".  Our homeschool curriculum is:

- CatholicIcing.com - preschool curriculum
- RightStart Math Level A
- Progressive Phonics
- Piano - My First Piano Adventure

Anything else we do is just what we do anyway in our life :)

Today we have done actually none of the curriculum listed above ;)  Oops!  We did some Starfall.com and the Magic School Bus Dinosaur Kit.

Anyway, thanks for reading :)