20 Mintues of Reading Excitement - Reading Logs

Summer library reading programs have ended now, but my kids wanted to keep coloring everytime they read.  I wanted to keep that excitment, especially since Green Bubbles doesn't really enjoy reading very much, so I decided to make them their own reading sheets.   Keeping to the same rules, they can only color one piece for every 20 minutes of reading, but I adjusted Little Miss' reading goals to be shorter, just under 3 hours of reading total for her reward, while Green Bubbles kept to the 5 hour reading reward. 

Rewards will be something I pick out from the dollar store except for Green Bubbles 10 hour reward which will probably end up as a minecraft mod or map.  The summer reading program was dogs so the kids were coloring dog bones.  I wanted to change it for our normal school year so I let the kids pick what they wanted to color.

Green Bubbles picked bears.

Little Miss picked owls.

How do you encourage reading in your home?

Preschool Cat Theme

We finished up our cat theme last week.  This one wasn't as big a hit as I had hoped, but the kids still had fun.

For our gross motor game, we pretended we were cats and crawled and meowed all across the carpet in our school room.  But, inventiably, the kids both ended up climbing onto me and Little Miss called me a horse again.  It happens every single time I'm on the floor with them!  Not going to lie, it's really cute and I love it.

I had Little Miss make this cat craft.  All I did was cut out two circles, one a little bigger then the other, two triangles for ears, two paw shapes, and a C shaped tail.  I let her glue everything down herself and made the face using a white crayon when she was done.  We have a history timeline in our school room that is just yarn and clothes pins.  We haven't used it as a time line in awhile though and I'm not sure how much Green Bubbles got out of it last year anyway but it has been repurposed as an art line.  Little Miss insisted her cat be put up on the line as soon as it was done.

We also did some of the printables from 1+1+1=1 's cat preschool pack.  I was able to get Green Bubbles to review some of the things we learned last year in a very informal way without sit down instruction.  School is starting back up soon and I wanted him to have a refresher before we dived back in.  We practiced numbers 1-20 and the alphabet.  I gave Little Miss things to color from the pack and let her do the patterns page which she just whized through. 

And, as always, we read a lot of books.  There are a LOT of cat books out there so I only picked our top 5 that we read to share with you.

Pete the Cat: Rocking in My School Shoes - I think I must have been living under a rock to not have heard about Pete the Cat.  He's popular, has a lot of books and it is easy to see why.  There is a lot of repetition in this book and Green Bubbles loved trying to guess what Pete was going to sing next.  Little Miss really didn't care for it at all, but it was a little older for her.  It's also a good book since we're starting back up in school soon!  Even though this book is a public school type book that talks about classrooms and libraries, it is still a cute read.

Kitten's First Full Moon - This was a perfect Little Miss book.  It's the story about a kitten who thinks the moon is a bowl of milk and his adventures trying to get to it.  This is a classic story and one I'm going to buy for our collection.

James Herriot's Treasury for Children: Warm and Joyful Tales by the Author of All Creatures Great and Small - We actually read Moses the Kitten by James Herriot but this link is for a book of a lot of his stories and I highly recommend it.  We actually own Moses the Kitten but checked it out from the library because it has run off somewhere for the time being and I wanted to make sure we read it again.  It's the story of a little kitten who is saved by a county vet and nursed back to health by the farmers and a pig.  All of his stories are very sweet.

I Must Have Bobo! - (Note: The picture above is of the sequel but I like this one much better).  The first book in the series is really sweet.  It's about a boy and his sock money, Bobo.  Bobo is his security blanket and best friend.  But watch out for Earl, the cat!  He loves to take Bobo.  Little Miss and Green Bubbles both loved looking for Earl on each page waiting to see when he'll make his move.

Cat Up a Tree - This was a great book.  Cats keep getting stuck up in a tree and no one will help get them down!  We also used this as a counting book for Green Bubbles because more and more cats end up in the tree.  (25 at one count!)

Weekly Wrap-Up - Lazy summer days

It's Friday!  Time for another weekly wrap-up.

Do you ever feel like your living in a real life ground hog's day where every day seems very much like the other?  I'll be excited when school starts back up just so we're back in a routine and our days change.  Summer always seems to be a free for all of schedules and routines.  Some weeks we are crazy busy, and others we never leave the house.  This week was the latter. Part of me is cherishing it since I know once school starts back up and summer is over we won't be having any more weeks like that. 

Green Bubbles wanted to do science so desperately that we are starting back on Monday but only adding in one subject at a time.  Our offical start date isn't until the 18th but we usually start back early, adding a little each day until we are back full time.  We missed Nature Study this week, but next week will make up for it!  

But I really do hate being couped up in the house all day and an entire week of it is getting to me.   So, we are either going to the library to turn in our summer reading logs since tomorrow is the last day or, if we can convince Daddy, we are going to hang out at Disneyland!  Maybe both...  After all, summer should always end with a bang.


So rather then bore us both with trying to remember what my week was like each day, here's my pictures that just show it all! Our end of summer fun, lazy days.

She discovered the butterfly book I bought her at the library last week.

Megatron cuteness! 

Megatron hates water, but the older two enjoyed the kiddie pool.

This is what happens when toddlers refuse to go to sleep two nights in a row.  She crashed early.

Linking this up to Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers .

Freebie - Minecraft Coloring Pages

I did a search for Green Bubbles for some minecraft coloring pages recently and do you know what I found?  Nothing!  I don't know if I just wasn't searching the right way or if somebody really never made any.  So, in the interest of sharing, here's a few that I made for Green Bubbles. 

I made a cake, creeper, sword, and 'golden' apple.  These are the things he's most interested in right now.  There may be more in the future depending on how interested he is in these.  (Link below).  If you download these please leave me a comment so I know there's interest!

Download Here

Homeschool Planning Part 2

This is the 2nd part of my homeschool planning post.  To see part one go here.  Part two will talk about digital planners.  There's quite a few choices of digital planners.

If you have a little extra money, Homeschool Planet is a great online planner.  It's a little on the pricy side at $65/year, but they do offer a free 30 day trial to see if you like it and how it would work for you.  The 30 day trial is awesome.  It allows you to enter in each subject separately and plan out the entire year if you so wanted quickly by autofilling in lessons, e.g. Chapter 1 - 14 spread out over 14 days, 14 weeks, or however you want to break it down.  If you miss a day, say for a fieldtrip or sick day, the planner can shift all your lessons down making it easy to stay on track without feeling far behind or having to reenter everything by hand.  And if you need to miss only one subject, like if you needed extra time to review a concept in math before moving on, you can shift just that one subject. 

There's also an option to make to do lists, grocery lists, check lists, etc.  You can have them emailed or text messaged to someone as well.  Text message your grocery list to your husband, email check lists to your older children for independent learning.  Kids can also have their own log in to check off the lists themselves without being able to edit the actual planner.   During my trial period I also figured out how to create supply lists at the very beginning of each week that we would need for history and science activities and library lists at the end of each week for the books I would need the following week. Everything is also printable if you prefer to have hard copies instead of digital.

If your like a lot of homeschool families I know, $65 is a lot for a planner though, no matter how cool it is.  There are free online planners as well.  Besides just plugging everything yourself into google calendar you can try cozi.  Cozi is a free app and website that allows you to schdule everything. From their website, "It helps you manage the chaos of family life with a shared calendar, shopping lists, to do lists and more. Cozi keeps track of everything from school schedules and sports activities to grocery lists, meals and chores — all in one place the whole family can access anytime, anywhere."

Cozi, similar to Homeschool Planet, allows multiple log ins for the same calendar and also allows texting lists to family members.  They email you a weekly summary of everything on your schedule as well.  You can color coat things to different people for your family to quickly see at a glance who has a doctor's appointment or who needs to go to that field trip.  

What type of planners do you like to use?  Online, paper, a mixture of both?  Leave a comment and let me know what works for your family! 

Homeschool Planning Part 1

Not going to lie, it feels like Christmas!

We got most of our curriculum in now, only missing our math.  Green Bubbles was just as excited as I was.  Well, maybe not.  But he did ask to start school almost right away just because he wanted to do those magic school bus kits!  If you haven't tried them, you really should.  They are fun, follow the scientific method, and are perfect for hands on learning for the younger crowd.  I'm making him wait to do them when we hit that section in our science and he can't wait.  I like having something for him to look forward to that he's that excited about.

So what do you do when you get new books in?... Plan!  I'm delving into these books.  Many of these are new for us this year. There's as many different methods for planning as there are homeschoolers.  Some plan out the entire year in detail, others go monthly, or weekly.  Some homeschoolers plan it out the day off and really just fly by the seat of their pants.  I have totally done all of the above methods before as well and may I recommend NOT doing the last one.  Scrambling the day off to put together supplies only to discover your missing something important (where's the tape?!) is not fun.  Planning the entire year out doesn't work well for us either because things always come up that get you behind track and then you feel the pressure to catch up the entire time which is a losing battle.

So, I'm trying a new method this year!  I still want to see things out pretty far in advance because I'm crazy like that.  But I don't want to attach any of it to a specific date.  Donna Young is a great website to use if you want to make your own calendar.  Her forms, calendars, and planners are all free to download so it's very budget friendly. She has everything you could ever need there from How to Plan for beginner homeschoolers to Household forms for chores, shopping lists, and housework.  There are even handwriting sheets, math worksheets, and pretty much a form for anything you can think of.  I highly encourage you to explore it for yourselves.

From there I downloaded her quarterly planner, one for each subject.  I pulled out the All About Reading book and wrote one lesson in each day on the planner.  Since it is a quarterly planner I am able to get 9 weeks planned out on one piece of paper (per subject of course).  Then, as we actually do the lesson, I will then write it in on a weekly planner that I also got from Donna Young to check it off our list.  I know that last step isn't really needed and many people could skip it completely.  We have to turn in a learning log of what we covered every month and it is much easier to create these monthly logs when I  have a weekly lesson plan to look back on.  Or, I should say, an accurate weekly lesson plan that didn't get behind because I was only writing in what we ACTUALLY did that week.


I put all of these into a 3 ring binder for myself.  I divide the quarterly forms under different dividers by subject.  I put a school calendar at the very front of my binder with all holidays and vacation days marked for quick review.  There are also dividers for field trips, unit studies, notes, weekly schedule that I fill in as we go, and a weekly calendar that includes lists for library books needed that week and supplies we need for our history activities or science experiments.

Of course, these are all paper planner resources. Check back tomorrow for part two in my homeschool planning post all about online planners.

Note: These are my honest opinions.  I was not given anything, or even asked to write these reviews. Nor do I receive anything if you follow the links.  I just like it and wanted to let others know about them.

Nature Study - County Fair

The County Fair is a summer tradition for us.  We don't do the rides and games though since our kids are still so young.  When we go to the fair it is much more nature study then anything else since we spend our entire time visiting all the animals.  This year we made it an event with our nature group and were able to share it with friends. We Care Wednesdays allow you to get free admission with a donation.  On the day we went it was children's books which I have plenty of! Kids 5 and under get in free as well so it worked out well for our group. 

We all meet up at Centennial Farm which is there year round. If you follow the link right now you can see a live webcam of one of the pigs at the fair. The farm is a great place for the kids to see all kinds of farm animals they wouldn't get a chance to see with living in a city.  We got to see chickens, goats, pigs, cows, and sheep.  And of course, since it's the fair, we got to see baby animals of all of those as well.  The kids got to review the vocabulary of the animals: ewe, bull, chick, piglet, calf, and more.  Little Miss' favorite was the two little calves they had while Green Bubbles was particularly interested in the piglets. 

 

After the farm the kids all went to check out the bees where they got a chance to find the Queen bee in a hive, and earned a sticker by doing so!  Most of the kids, including Green Bubbles and Little Miss, also got a chance to make beeswax candles too.

Now here's where it gets real.  It's getting hot here, and I was baby wearing Megatron so I probably didn't have the best patience level this day.  Green Bubbles and Little Miss were pretty naughty that morning as well and we almost didn't go to the fair at all.  They both weren't listening and were just running amock in the house.  We went because it was with our group and I'm glad we did because I don't know when we would have made it another day.  But it also means everyone was a little on edge.

This came out when Green Bubbles announced he was hungry and had to eat.  We had lunch less than an hour beforehand for exactly this reason so I was frustrated.  But we stopped and got a fair favoriate, funnel cake. (Sorry for the shadow in the picture).

Keeping it real... pushing Little Miss in the stroller, babywearing Megatron, and carrying a funnel cake and drink all at the same time does not work well.  The drink flew and the entire thing spilled.  But this is why you have friends with you!  I was about to lose it but our nature study buddies helped out.  We managed to find a good table for everyone to sit.  We ate our cake, but Green Bubbles complained the entire time about everything.  The heat was turning up at this point which I think contributed to the problem.

So we went indoors next and checked out the kids explorium.  Here the kids got to make a bracelet out of pipe cleaners and little beads, explore the principles of  buoyancy placing beads and other objects on pipe cleaners to see how slow they could get it to sink, played a fishing game, and pretended they were archeologists.

It was lot and hot still though, and Megatron just woke up so we took a pitstop at the baby station right next door where I was able to change diapers, refill out water bottles with cold water, and nurse Teddy.  We all felt better after that and ready to take on the rest of the fair!

Of course, we ended up walking right by a splash pad before we managed to do anything else.  It was still hot so I let the kids play.  That was probably my mistake.  They both got wet, Green Bubbles was soaked. They had so much fun but were just to wet and cold to keep going through the rest of the fair so we ended up leaving shortly after.  I'd glad we did it though.  Even though we didn't make it over to the livestock area or the pig races, I would much rather leave on a high note then with crying and complaints!

 

I'm linking this post up with Homeschool Mother's Journal.