Let's Make Some Slime!

So our orginal plan for the school day was to read about and make maps (a Marin favorite). But Marin ran across a You Tube video about making slime. We happened to have all the ingredients....SO....maps were postponed and a little science "class" began. :o) The girls had such a fun time and they loved using all the measuring spoons and stirring and watching it magically turn into slime. So, so, so, cute. And so, so, so EASY.

Learning Our ABCs!

One of the main things we  (mostly Hollis) will be working on this school year is learning her letters and letter sounds. There are so, so, sooooo many fun ways to teach the alphabet but today I'm going to share three of our favorites. In the past we have done a letter of the week type of curriculum and did a craft project with each letter. That was fun and great and wonderful. But a couple of weeks ago, we attended a homeschool convention where I went to a class on whole brain teaching. It was so interesting! I have actually signed up for another free workshop on the same topic next month. But the speaker shared ways to bridge both left and right brain thinking so that a concept could be easier to learn, master, and recall. She mixed a lot of black and white information (for left brain learners) with colors and stories (for right brain learners) so that we are using are whole brain to learn new things!
So I came home and searched blogs and Pinterest for a new way to teach the alphabet. But....I couldn't find anything with this approach! I found gestures for the letters on one blog. And I found poems for each letter on Pinterest. But nothing where the visual, the auditory, and the kinesthetic all matched. So, I got busy and made them for our girlies! And we LOVE them. We have been practicing all week just looking at the posters and telling the stories. It is AMAZING how many gestures and sounds they remember simply from remember the picture and stories! This whole brain learning stuff works, ya'll!!!

Drinking her juice and saying /j/ /j/ because every juggler needs his juice to be strong enough to do all that juggling!!!

 Marin is telling the stories and listening to the sounds in the whisper phone! 

This video was after hearing our Alphabet stories twice! She remembered so much having all those "clues" to pull from! Way to go, Hollis! 

 If you are interested in this alphabet set, just click on the picture above! 

Other favorites.....SONGS!!! If we can sing it, we have fun with it!

This is a simple song using letter magnets! You sing it to the tune of "Five Little Ducks" but instead of ducks..."five little letters went out to play. When the teacher calls /z/ /z/ /z/ /z/....only the letter ____ came back." She has to decide which letter was being called home and pull it down. Loves it. And it is SOOOO simple. You could easily write the letters on a white board and the student erases the correct letter.

This last activity was actually one of my very first games I ever made for the girls. It is an I Spy ABC game.

 I have the student flashcards printed and laminated (larger sizes available) but they use a dry erase to circle all the letters on the card. Again, super simple but reinforces letter recognition! You can find it in my by clicking on the picture above.

 I'm linking up with The Inspired Apple for her AlphaBoom link up! Go check out all the other wonderful alphabet ideas! 

Summer Fun

Our summer has been busy, busy with pool days and play dates and ice cream runs! The girls have loved the summer activities but this Momma is ready for a routine!! Shhhh, don't tell them. We have been doing more indoor playdates because it is soooo HOT. Even the pool feels like bath water so indoor we go! I will take AC with that thank you. But here are a few of our latest play dates...

Today we met up with some of best neighbor friends at good ol' Chucke Cheese. Pass the ibuprofen please. The girls LOVE it, of course, and had a wonderful time! Again, the horrible phone pictures. Sorry family!

Crazy kid. 

Last week, we went BOWLING. Best Play Date Ever. It was so easy. They had this little ramp for them to roll the bowls down and they kept up with the order all by themselves. It was perfect! We love our buddies!!

Summer has been a blast and we love all these sweet little friendships! 

Why we are homeschooling....

We have decided to homeschool for a few reasons. Although, we have done "tot school" in the past, this year we will be a bit more serious. Well, as serious as preschool and pre-kindergarten can be, you know? We will still be flexible but have a little more structure to prepare us for next year. So....why are we homeschooling?


Reason #1: We really love this guy. Love him. And his work schedule...stinks. So, in order for us to ever have any family time, we really need the flexibility of homeschooling. This is by far our greatest motivation for homeschooling.

Reason #2: Our learners are pretty unique. We have a "quick to get it" learner and a "needs a lot of time and practice" kind of learner. Both are incredibly smart and gifted but I know from my personal experiences teaching, that sometimes those are the exact kiddos that get left behind. Not by any fault of the teacher (I was one of those teachers!!), it is just so hard to juggle all the different levels plus the content that is required to be covered. So for this time and season, we want to guide our girls' learning at a pace that is appropriate for them...that fits their learning styles...that fits their interests and personalities...and that offers them the most growth possible as little learners.

Games....this girl loves some competition! She is listening to the sounds and blending the words to find the picture on her Bingo board. This game is in my store. You can find it here. 

This is my latest math center I made for Hollis. She was so excited to try it out. She scans the code to listen to number poems and traces the number in her book as she listens along. She is my super independent learner. She wants to do it all by herself (even if she has no idea what she is doing). See my problem?? :o) So this fits her perfectly! She gets so much practice recognizing numbers, writing numbers, and listening to the number poems....AND she can do it all by herself! 

 Making play doh using our five senses! These activities are perfect for both girls. They love "cooking" and play doh was a perfect little activity for the day. 

Reason #3: Travel. Because of Burke's job we are in a unique position where we do have some opportunities to travel and show the girls so much of our country and our world. We hope to do that a lot with our homeschool. Again, the flexibility of it allows us to travel to places on the off seasons which makes it more affordable and possible!

Our first BIG trip....Disney World! We are pretty excited!!!
There will be no learning done there, btw. Just rides and Princesses, and Peter Pan... 

The pictures in this post stink because my phone is so much more convenient than my camera. Gotta work on that....

Our School Room

I have a small addiction to rearranging, so this may be changed soon. But for now...our little school room is ready for a new year. Here's a little peek...

Our table with their work baskets. Hollis has the red basket and Marin is the blue. I put all the work/games/books that will be needed for that day in the basket. 

 This is a peek inside the gray bin on the side of the table. This one is all of our ABC activities. Hollis will be doing a letter of the week type program, so she can choose a game to do each day. The white bin is our math basket. It has similar math games in it.

Our pocket charts for centers and maps (the girls LOVE maps). 

Inside the closet, I store all my teacher supplies. It's, uh, very organized. *wink wink*

Here is our boards wall....magnet board, calendar board, and white board. The white board was actually a Home Depot shower board that they cut for us. We have 2 others just as big. But they work perfectly.

And there it is! We were going to start at the end of August with our school district. But our "headmaster" requests we start earlier. He's a tough one.