Monthly Archive: August 2011

Starting Our New Routine 5

Starting Our New Routine

Sorry about the endless postings about our ocean unit… just a couple more and that’s that!  Blogs are funny because they sure don’t show the whole picture. From looking at our blog our days are consumed by oceans!!  Heh heh! Well, that’s not at all accurate.  I read and read, planned and planned and finally the older kids started back to school last week. As you’ve seen, ED has been...

4

Ocean Animals — the real deal

Even though it was quite a drive for us, I decided a trip to the aquarium was in order with all our studies of ocean animals. We went last week. We sure had a terrific day! We all LOVED the jellyfish displays!   We were so lucky to see the octopus moving all around!       Everyone loved the sharks and we were lucky to see the sharks, sting...

LD turned 8 4

LD turned 8

LD turned 8 almost two weeks ago.We had a family celebration on his big day since my brother-in-law and nephew were here on LD’s birthday.  Then we had a small party for friends last weekend. He likes Harry Potter and is reading through those books — thus the Hogwart’s Castle cake (or my attempt!!)

2

Ocean Animals and Their Groups

I made this activity for my older kids (5 and 8).  You can download and print these sheets here: Ocean Animals and Their Groups  You can download and print these sheets here. There are two pages. You might want to make a colored circle on the back of each of the three related cards. Use a different color for each animal. That way, the kids can check their own work as needed. ...

1

Sewing Ocean Animals

We haven’t done that much sewing here at the Homeschool Den, so when I saw these cute projects over at future girl‘s blog I thought they’d be perfect. The kids each chose their own project. I thought they turned out pretty cute! DD made the octopus. LD made the jellyfish. ED made the fish. DD and LD did the sewing completely on their own, although I threaded the embroidery thread...

Earthquake 8

Earthquake

The east coast just had an earthquake.  The news says it was 5.8 on the richtor scale — and what that meant for us was lots and lots of shaking and rattling. A few things fell of our shelves in the pantry, but we don’t see any other damage at this point. We read that the Capitol, Pentagon and White House are being evacuated.  It sure scared us!

0

Ocean Activities: School of Fish

Why do fish swim in schools? We cut up little pieces of tin foil and paper to be our fish. First we dropped in one.  It was easy to spot. Then we dropped in a whole lot of fish and tried to follow just one with our eyes. It was much harder to follow one in the midst of many others.  We talked about how there was safety in numbers....

Ocean Animals Math Game for Preschoolers 4

Ocean Animals Math Game for Preschoolers

I made a preschool math game for ED.  ED worked hard to cut out all the pictures.  In the picture to the left, she rolled a 10 and I rolled a 1.  We each chose that many ocean animals to put on our gameboard. Then ED spun the spinner and it came out “even.” I showed her how to make partners and that she had all partners, so she had...

2

Ocean Activities: The Ocean Zones

The ocean is divided into different layers. The zones differ in temperature, water pressure and available nutrients.  Marine organisms live in different zones according to the amount of sunlight that reaches there. Sunlight Zone: More than 90% of marine life lives in the Sunlight Zone. Twilight Zone: Animals that live in the twilight zone must be able to survive cold temperatures, an increase in water pressure and dark waters. There are no plants in...

Ocean Activities: Parts of a Fish, Parts of a Shark 0

Ocean Activities: Parts of a Fish, Parts of a Shark

While ED has some basic ocean matching out, DD and LD are working on slightly more challenging work. They’re learning the parts of the fish, parts of the shark and the zones of the ocean and the animals that live there.  (More about the zones tomorrow.) The kids can check their work by folding down the answer key under the picture. I got the parts of the fish page from...

Skip Counting Songs for learning the 6s, 7s and 8s 3

Skip Counting Songs for learning the 6s, 7s and 8s

Late at night my brain often whirls with ideas.  Last spring I put the skip counting patterns to familiar tunes since LD is working on his basic multiplication facts.  For example, I put the 7s to the tune of ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat.’  LD learned that so well I went back and created another tune for the 6s and the 8s which he’ll be working on again this fall....

3

Preschool Routine, Tuesdays

ED’s Tuesday Routine: So you heard yesterday that I’m planning to use biome/habitat themes with ED this fall. This is what I have planned in a general way for Tuesdays: Arts and Crafts (based on the theme) Montessori Math Beads; Math Activities Science Sorts (Long post and link to my 30-pages of notes, etc.!) Arts and Crafts The girls painted boxes to make a diorama. Now all this needs is...

0

Preschool Routine, Mondays

ED’s Monday Routine: The idea of planning all this is so that I can change up ED’s activities, keep them fresh, interesting with the minimum of thought on my part.  I expect to skip days, but then I’ll just pick up on the appropriate day and continue on.  The routine is (hopefully) to make it easier on me to keep things engaging for ED. Mailbox Letters and Scavenger Hunt Montessori...

Our Homeschool Room Setup 0

Our Homeschool Room Setup

I often enjoy having a glimpse at other people’s homeschool setups.  We had quite a small house over in Australia, but we are now blessed with this amazingly large, airy homeschool room. We have bright colorful workboxes. Each kid has their own row, but I do not fill them every day with new things. Instead their basic subjects get stored here (including the manipulatives, new games, activities and printouts).  It...