We're off to see the wizard

We are currently reading The Wizard of Oz. We are trying to read at least one chapter a day. Listening to MiMi read, I realize that we need to work on sentence syntax. She will put pauses or emphasis where there shouldn't be or just read a flow of words when she should have stopped.

The kids painted tornadoes yesterday. They learned how lines can make show movement.



Here's my tip of the day:
If you don't have paper plates or an art palette wrap a regular plate with saran wrap. Clean up is easy.


After the paint dried the kids drew a swirling pattern with gray marker over the lines.
MiMi's:

Bobo's:


Yesterday we read the tornado books and today we reviewed the important aspects from the book. We divided a manila piece of paper into three columns: Warning signs of a tornado (For Bobo I drew eyes since he can't read), Safety Dos (checkmark) Safety dont's). I wrote out phrases from the book (drew pictures for BoBo) and they kids categorized them.




We all know that Dorthy kills the Wicked Witch of the East. We used that as a stepping stone to learn compass points. This is something that we will continue to work on as we slowly learn about the US states. So far the kids only know Kansas, Texas and New Hampshire. I was only able to ask a few questions such as, "Kansas is _______ of Texas."


I think the kids enjoyed making the scarecrows the most.

We just used paper sacks and filled it up with paper to be recycled. We then tied the top with a terry band. The kids added the features.
Here is a good book to introduce brain functions:


Over all a productive two days with still a lot to cover. The kids aren't bored yet! I just feel like I'm lacking on the brain still. I don't want to be too elaborate, but I still feel like I can still do more.

Wizard of Oz

What child does not love this story?

In this unit we will study rainbows, tornadoes, the heart, and the brain. This unit will probably last two to three weeks as we explore the characters and climate of the book.

We will kick off our lesson with tornadoes.
Library books:






We will be creating a tornado in a bottle and watching the movie Tornado Alley

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!