Unit 1, Dinosaurs

After we got our Oriental Trading Company order, the girls decided to abandon Harry Potter, and learn about Dinosaurs. I sorta knew that was going to happen! 

Okay, I'll be updating this post as we go, not creating new posts, so once we're done all the info will be in one easy post. 

Today is our pre-start. We're jumping in tomorrow, but we're dipping our toe in today. So I booted up Netflix, and got them watching Walking With Dinosaurs from BBC. They are watching with their sketch pads, in case they feel like drawing what they see. Poor Pia is upset that she "can't" draw dinos. I can't wait until she discovers she can :)

Our letter for this unit is M, and our vocabulary list:

herbivore

carnivore

omnivore

scale

reptile

bones

extinct

plates

Jurassic
Triassic 
Cretaceous

Note, I changed up the vocabulary list.

I'm blogging as we go right now!

Ok, to start, we labelled all the dinos we got from our OTC order. Then we picked one that we liked the most, which is the Triceratops. While I was googling for info on these, Nana was writing out her vocabulary words, and Pia was doing Mm tracing/writing sheets, and early writing exercises. I got those here - really adorable, free print sheets. We also used Mm sheets from here.

While googling, I found another awesome site for all things Dino - here. They have information sheets, coloring pages, math sheets, etc. I printed out a few different ones, in preparation for our posters - we will be creating posters for each dino for information retention. 

After we finished up our letters/vocabulary, we moved onto math for Nana, and more Mm work for Pia. Pia did an M letter search, from the first school site, and some M coloring. Nana did some simple dino addition (numbers, no pics) from the learning page site. After we successfully completed those, I printed out coloring pages of a Triceratops for our posters. We colored and cut those out and set them aside. Next, we headed outside with our dino fact sheet - we talked about how much space a Triceratops would take up, and counted off their length together. They especially loved this part! 

Once back inside, I had Nana work in her phonics workbook, doing a few word searches/writing practices. Pia worked on some more early writing exercises. Now we're breaking for lunch!

Sight Words (and more pics)

In addition to our vocabulary words, we're also doing sight words. I borrowed a list from here, and I bought some "word strips" which are just heavy duty, lined paper strips. I've written about three words on each, and I cut them out and hung them around our room for easy access/visibility. There are 42 words total, so I'll do two words per unit, and then we'll have reinforcement/review for the additional 10 units.

 

 This is our letter/number/word wall. The very bottom has the alphabet upper and lower case, just above that are numbers 1-10, and on top, our sight words for the year.

Crappy close up :)

This is our "sharing" wall. Within units, the girls can pick things they are proud of, or their favorite part of the lessons, and we'll hang them here. It's an easy way to share with Daddy. I'll feature them on the blog, too.

And finally, the girls! They requested that I take their pic.

Our Day

We don't always start at the same time, and I'm still trying to find our groove. I find that the kids and I are much happier and productive if I create a schedule.

M starts off the day with reading. While she reads, I work with Bobo on phonics. M joins in later. Next we work on handwriting. For M, she just writes random words and phrases on handwriting paper and B traces his letters. Spelling and vocabulary is next. I introduce the words with just a blind pretest. I dictate the words, while M tries to write them out. After I correct the words, she rewrites them in her composition notebook and practices. Throughout the week, we use those words in dictation sentences, fill in the blank, crosswords, or just another test. I do these subjects everyday. We haven't started math yet, but I plan to do this every day as well.

For the other subjects, I touch a few days a week. I would love to get a group together to do science projects.

Ancient Egypt

We started by reading Ms. Frizzle's Adventure's Ancient Egypt and The Best Book of Mummies.
It lead to so many subjects. We identified it on our map and pinned the Egyptian flag (I have mini magnet flags), and since it's in Northern Africa, I introduced the continents of the world. 

Because the Egyptians' beliefs in many gods and goddesses, we discussed the difference between facts, opinions and beliefs

Vocab/Spelling words for this unit:
Egypt
Africa
Nile River
scribe
mummy
tomb
pharaoh
god
goddess
Cairo

I still have many activities to do. The kids are excited about making a pyramid. You can make it with sugar cubes, but I'm going the easy way and just the template on the Crayola provided. I also plan on having the kids decode hieroglyphics.

Our space (pics!)

Finally! My sister has been asking for pictures of our "space" and I'm delivering :) To illustrate how huge this is, I still had Christmas pictures on my card. Most of them are probably only interesting to me.

Most of our storage space is in our playroom. The majority of actual teaching will likely be in the dining room for comfort. But these are pics of our playroom.

 This is our map area - North and South America. The rest is yet to come!

 Storage area.

 Drawer 1 - glue and sticky tape.

 Drawer 2 is sorta sad. Erasers and pencil sharpeners.

 Holy scissors, right? A lot of them are from my scrapbooking days.

 Markers, other markers and colored pencils.

 Paint! Watercolors, glitter paint and more.

 Mamas drawer. Tape, thumb tacks, stickys and stuff.

 Paper. We have heavy duty sketch paper, random colored paper, old scrapbooking paper, regular construction paper.

 Craft junk. Ribbons, beads, glitter and so much more.

 This is the organized corner. Those folders you see are our units. Each unit has a folder, with the vocab list and pertinent ideas/information. The piles are the workbooks that don't "go" with any particular unit. The right is Nana's, the left is Pia's.

 Our US map.

 This is Pia's pile - her sketch book, drawing tablet, etc.

Nana's pile.

That's it! Once we get more fun stuff, I'll take more pics!

Materials

I know this varies so much from family to family. I wanted to share what we got, in case anyone was looking for ideas.

The basics, of course - paint, paint brushes, markers, colored pencils, crayons, construction paper, printer ink, clipboards, printer paper, erasers, pencil sharpeners, paint cups, google eyes, jewels, scissors, feathers, glue, tape and little puff balls. Then I got some more things specific to our units. I'm going to link them up.

Alphabet/Number books
Apple Fraction Game
Magnetic Calendar
Break Your Own Geodes (squee!)
Make your own telescopes
Mini Dino Skeletons
Dino Dig Kit
Life Cycle Charts
Bug Learning Charts
Fruit and Veggie Poster Set
Human Body Flip Chart

None of this stuff is necessary. It's all just extra fun. I really can't wait to get our order! There are a few other things I've got my eye on, but they were out of stock.

I also got the girls each:

A sketch pad, for when we're out and about.
A story book - which has writing paper on the bottom and a sketch area on top.
A writing tablet.
A journal.

Each day will we have 30 minutes or so of journaling. That's time for them to just be creative. And I get to keep the journal for memories.

We also stopped by Lakeshore Learning and I picked up a few things. A Preschool skills book - which is mostly cutting/gluing/numbers/etc - things for Pia that we need to concentrate on this year. I also got her a Language Journal, which has all our letters and numbers, and words/pictures she can refer to. For Nana I picked up a State standard test prep for grade 1. It's really for me, to make sure we're on track. I have a visual now for what she *needs* to know, and it helps me. We also picked up a daily language practice journal for her. Its purpose is really comprehension, sentence structure, and things like that.

Last week I popped in the Dollar Tree and holy supplies!! They have a TON of resources for homeschooling, and cheap! I got each of the girls three workbooks: Subtraction, Phonics and Long Vowels for Nana, and The Alphabet, Sequencing and Colors/Shapes for Pia. For $1 each! I also picked up a map of North and South America and the US, to go along with our globe.

The dollar spot at Target is also a great place to look for things to supplement your teaching. We found workbooks on Dinosaurs, Space, Fire Safety, and Science experiments, again for a dollar.

None of this "stuff" is necessary to be successful with homeschooling. Things don't make the journey - but I'm still excited about them!

Great Resources!

These are things we either currently use, or will use in the future.

CIA World Factbook - this is updated weekly, and has all the information you could possibly want on every country in the world.

Lesson Pathways - this is free curriculum and links to support different concepts.

Homeschool Math - Awesome math worksheets you can easily print. The first grade section has addition, subtraction, money, time, etc.

1+1+1 - Tons of great resources here. It's called "tot school" but it has things that you can easily apply to bigger kids, too. Lots of great ideas and printables.

Two Teaching Mommies - these ladies do unit based learning, too. I grabbed their dino pack for our unit on Dinosaurs - some really cute stuff!

Free Reading - a completely free reading curriculum. I haven't played with it a whole lot yet, but it looks awesome.

Progressive Phonics - I love this program and I can't believe it's free!

Kid Zone - lots of great printables, and some really awesome science experiments!

Starfall - of course :)

More Starfall - this is a *paid* portion of Starfall that's new - it's pretty awesome with a good Kinder skill set.

Mr. Q's Lab - really great science support for homeschoolers. They have a monthly news letter with science experiment ideas, and their Classic Science curriculum is free (and awesome).

I will be adding to this post as I find new, fun resources!

Check in!

I know we've been absent lately, but it's summer, and we're enjoying it!!

But, school time is looming, so I've been doing a lot of prep work for us, and I'm set to begin next week.

After a lot of thought/research, this is our plan:

I sat down with my girls, and we chose 26 topics that interest them. I then tied a letter into each "unit" - because we're also doing Pre-K for my 4 year old. And letter learning can't hurt the 1st grader. I honestly don't know how long each unit will last - it depends on how it goes and if we veer off in other directions. I imagine if they are super interested in something within a unit, I can write a new unit on that topic. I'm going into this with the promise to myself to be flexible. And which unit we work on is completely up to the girls.

I like workbooks. I know a lot of hsers don't, but I do. I'm using them in my own way, as a follow up to what I teach, but I'm still going to use them.

Here are the units/letters we're doing. Some of the letters tie in nicely, some only make sense to me. As I complete each unit, I'll post the details with links/books/printables/tips/crafts. I will also link them up on the sidebar for easy navigation.

For now, here's our list:

Apple – A

Dinosaurs – M

Food Groups – N

Public Service Workers – R

Zoo Animals – D

Farming – C

Harry Potter - P

Royalty – Q

Butterflies - U

Space – S

Oceans - I

Flowers/Plants – K

Water - H

Machines - Z

Bodies - B

Earth - L

Cooking - F

Pirates - J

USA - O

Bugs - G

Birds - X

Christmas - W

Valentines - V

Thanksgiving - Y

Weather – E

Travel – T

Within each unit we will touch on several things, relevant to the girls ages. Colors, shapes, letters and early phonics for Pia (age 4), reading, spelling, phonics, geography, math, science for Nana (age 6). Each unit will have a vocabulary sheet with 9 words. These are *not* the sight words that we will be using throughout the year, but additional, more challenging words to learn and recognize.

So, that's our plan. I'm sure it will change 100 times over the school year, and I'm sure we'll hit some bumps in the road. It's ok though, I can't wait!