Cootie Catcher

 The boys recently saw a commercial with a cootie catcher (some call them fortune tellers) in it and I told them I would make them one.... but I thought there must be a way to make something educational out of this at the same time! I know, I'm such a mean mom. Ha ha. The boys have both been a little slow with their times tables, so I thought this would be a fun way to get them to practice.

What are some things that you do to kill their fun, I mean, incorporate math 

practice in to your school day? 

(Hey, they had fun and they even made a few more on their own! GASP!)

Daily Organizing

With A Beka I'm realizing that there is a lot of paperwork that goes along with everything for the day.

This is what our school room typically looks like by the end of the day!

So I decided I needed a better way to plan out the week and keep all these papers separated and ready for the week. This has been my solution and has been working really well!

At the beginning of the week, I tear out all of the papers needed for the week for each subject. I then separate them by lesson and place them in order that they do their lessons. I found these tri-fold ones at Walmart and they work perfectly! I put the sticky notes on them just to show how I organized them by day. After the papers have been corrected, I note any grades in the grade book, then place all the papers from the week in a file folder with that week's number on it.

I hope this has been somewhat helpful to you. I would love to hear from you. 

What ways have you found to organize the massive amount of papers that come along with homeschooling?

Field Trips

So, September is just about over, but we've managed to get two field trips in all ready! 

The homeschool support group for our state put on two field trips this month. 

The first was to the Henry Knox Museum called Montpelier. 

We were given a tour, but a woman in period costume. We learned some interesting things, such as the ornamental carvings in his headboard and footboard are carrots and sausages!

They also had a couple of stations set up to make butter and to try some games.

We had a picnic on the grounds afterward. It was a beautiful day. 

On the 23rd, we went to the local high school to listen to a symphony put on a production of 

Peter and the Wolf. My husband and I had seen this when we were younger, so we were glad we could share this with our children. If you haven't seen it, it really is a neat production for kids. It really helps demonstrate the different "sounds" of the orchestra along with a narrated story. 

I am very thankful for great homeschooling support in our state! 

A big thank you to the Homeschoolers of Maine for putting these outings together.

First Day of School

To begin our day, I surprised the boys with a little treat on their desks. Their Aunt Melissa had found these cute shark bags and so I thought it would be a great theme for our day. 

In the gray shark bags I put these sour octopus candies and wrote on the bag, "Go attack those classes!" In the blue bags I put a bunch of colored goldfish crackers. The water is IQ H2O just to keep with the theme.

        

Here are my two big boys! I can't believe they are in 4th and 5th all ready! Where does the time go!?

They seem to be enjoying our "new" way of homeschooling. I, however, need to get used to not being the instructor/teacher every minute. Although I do think that they really need this more formal style of school and will do well with a more structured day.

Hope you all had a great summer... I know we did!

Our Year Begins

Well, we have begun our 5th full year of homeschooling. I can't believe it's been that long! We originally put our oldest son, Bryce in to a Christian school for kindergarten, but halfway through the year decided that we should be teaching him at home. This began our homeschooling adventure and we haven't looked back!

We have used a variety of curriculum over the years and again, this year, we are trying something new. We have found things we love and... well, things that we will never use again. However, this year we have decided to try A Beka online school. We felt that the boys needed something a little more structured and Bryce really enjoyed it while enrolled at the Christian school.

We are using 4th grade A Beka for both boys. Bryce will be in 5th this year and Avery will be in 4th. We chose to do 4th grade for both as I have always taught them together, usually a year ahead for Avery. However, A Beka's math program has been rumored to be pretty advanced and tough, so I would rather give them a strong foundation, than to push them in to something they are not ready for.

I am hoping that by having someone else doing the actual instruction/teaching of the lessons, it will free me up for doing some more hands on projects and activities with them.... and so became the reason for this blog. A place to keep track of our year and hopefully to be better about keeping a record of our days.

So welcome to our classroom and to our homeschooling journey.
May God be glorified in all that we do!