Overwhelmed

We've been working on cleaning up the classroom the last couple of days, and I must say that I'm a little overwhelmed. Not the daunting task of homeschooling two kids though. The thing I'm having difficulty with is the massive amount of material we have. I've been trying to organize things so that we can find them when we need them and such... and we just have so much! I think I had less things that were so far ahead it would be easier. We have high school and college level texts! I don't have anywhere else to store them... so they are weighing things down and making ti hard to make the preschool and grammar school materials organized and easily accessible. I don't think I want to get rid of the materials as we may need them at some point... but I just don't know how to make the room function for us. It doesn't help that Adam's eventual twin size bed is stored in there right now either. There's no other place to store that really either though. I think part of why I haven't been as good about getting lesson plans and such done is simply because it's so hard to see what we have, and get things organized. It ends up being so much more work than it should be! Anyway.. I need to to get back to that and see if I can't get it a little more organized. Any thoughts or comments on this problem would be much appreciated!

Caterpillars and Dinosaurs!

Last night we found some caterpillars in our back yard, so Reagan is keeping one in a bug box in the classroom so that we can watch it . She's familiar with the process of how a caterpillar changes into a butterfly, but it's always fun to get to watch!
Daddy has a vacation coming up, and we're going camping. Reagan is really excited to go camping, and was asking several times a day if we could go yet. We even drove to the camp site (it's quite near where we live) the other day and looked around to get an idea of where we would like to get our spot. Reagan counts to 10 easily, and know many other number, though not all in order. So we thought she might have fun counting down the next 10 days until we go camping! I wtore the number on sticky notes for her and she put them in order from 1 to 10. Now each day we will count backwards 1 until it's time to go camping!Last night Reagan chose a sheet of Barney stickers as her potty prize, but she wasn't allowed to open it until today. She was so excited by them we took the opportunity to learn about dinosaurs today. Mommy made a dinosaur coloring sheet.. stegosaurus by request! Then wrote DINO in the corner, and Reagan copied it. Here are her coloring, and "DINO."Regan has been using an empty container as a drum, so to tell it apart from the newly emptied ones that are trash, we did a bit of art today and wrapped the drum. Reagan decided she wanted to draw lollipops on it so that became the theme. She did a great job maing circles with lines for sticks! Drawing actual things instead of ust coloring or scribbling (other than letters) is something pretty new for her, and we're very excited about it!We have also started receiving some great educational magazines recently. Yesterday we sat down and read through the entire first issue of Your Big Backyard that arrived. We learned about chipmunks, Reagan helped read a short story.. telling me which words the pictorials represented, and finally read a story about a groundhog going into hibernation.

Goldilocks Info

As promised, here is the information on that excellent edition of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears. The story is very well done too, and reminds children about things they should and should not do.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Retold y Jim Aylesworth, and Illustrated by Barbara McClintock.

Mama Bear's Porridge Cookies
Baby Bear love to help Mama Bear bake cookies!

Before you begin:
Preheat oven to 350F
Grease two large cookie sheets.

Sift into a big bowl:
1 1/4 c flour
1/2 t baking soda
1/4 t nutmeg
1 t cinnamon
3/4 t salt

Add to flour mixture and mix well:
3 c rolled oats

Beat together in another bowl:
1/4 c butter (Cookies made like this will be light and crunchy. For moister, richer, and chewier cookies, use 3/4 c butter.)
1 c dark brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 c white sugar
1 egg
1/4 c milk
1 1/2 t vanilla extract

Add the sugar mixture to the flour and oatmeal mixture. Mix until all ingredients are moist.

Fold into well-mixed batter:
1 c raisins
1/2 c walnuts
(For variations, you can mix and match the same amounts of coconut, peanuts, and/or chocolate chips.)

Drop mixture y tablespoonfuls onto greased cookie sheets. Bake for 8-12 minutes, or until golden brown. MAkes 40 cookies.

Make sure you have a grown-up help you.

And they were...just right!

The Past Week In Education

We've done so many things this past week... and I have been so bad about writing them down. :-(

Most recently... Tuesday in fact, we did Goldilocks and the Three Bears again. Reagan really loves the version of the story that our library has, and is going to be so disappointed when we have to return it this week. We read the story and made Mama Bear's Porridge Cookies at her request. I will make sure to post the recipe, as well as the edition of the book before we have to return it in a couple days.
The best part of helping make cookies!That night, Adam was wondering where his cookies were!
We did a day where we learned about transportation last week. The main thing we did was to make a collage and talk about different types of transportation. Reagan told me which each item was, and a little about it as she glued them down, and then we made a list of all the kinds of transportation she could think of. This was reinforced at the fair as we discovered another kind of transportation... tractors!
We went to the county fair, and used it as a great hands on learning experience about farm animals. Reagan was full of questions and answers about the many animals in the live stock exhibit. She was also very interested in the Farmer For A Day program, and practiced counting to one by collecting one of each of the different items. It was a great learning experience about where our food comes from and how it grows. And although it was a little tough to get her started on it, she was able to figure out where to look for the things she needed by us asking her questions. She was very proud to have gotten a ribbon for being such a good farmer, and it is now hung on her bedroom wall next to her gymnastics medal.

Reagan also drew this picture last week.. I think it pretty much speaks for itself... this is the first time she has done anything clearly like this... all of the labeling was done based on where she said things were.
Our work on understanding change, reversible change, irreversible change, and transformation is continuing. There are about 5 episodes of Sid the Science Kid that deal with these topics together and separately. It's great to watch along with activities, and to use for review. Reagan has started requesting the show, and usually sits and really concentrates the entire time. Every day she makes sure to water the seeds we planted, and has noticed that some look like they are starting to sprout. It's such an amazing experience for her, and she's really enjoying it.

A couple other things we do daily, and writing in her joural.. a "free write" while I'm getting her school things set up. She has a notebok, and can write or draw whatever she wants in there. Then she tells me what it is, or about it. We also always talk about the weather. Reagan has become quite the weather expert... telling us weather changes throughout the day. The other day she even got philisophical with it, stating about tomorrow, "It might be a sunny day, it might be a rainy day, but it'll be a day." We also always to slate time where she practices writing numbers and letters on her dry erase slate, or in her dry erase slate book. I'm hoping we can develop more of these good practice routines that teach a lot, and that Reagan seems to really enjoy! :-)

Growing

On Tuesday we learned about growing!

We watched an episode of Sid the Science Kid called Shrinking Shoes that teaches about growing and transformation. In the episode they look at beans that they have planted and how much they have grown. One of our projects for the day was to plant some beans that we can watch grow. Reagan is really excited about her beans, and love checking every day to see if they've grown, and to make sure they are watered. We also talked about how plats grow, and did a project where Reagan had to put the stages of plant growth in order, and then told me about each of the stages.


1. SEED: Get the water and you put it in the sun so it will get bigger.
2. PLANT: It happens, and it grows bigger, and bigger, and big!
3. BIG PLANT: It has a flower on it's top. A sunflower on it's top.

Then Reagan told me an impromptu story that I jotted down on the back of her paper;
Once upon a time, there was a sunflower on this plant. It was tired of growing, and growing bigger. And that's what happened to the seed.

One of the other things they do in the show is measure how tall Sid and his brother have grown on a doorway in the house. Reagan recently got a new growth chart that we hadn't yet put up, so we did that as part of our lesson too. She was excited to help put it up and make her first mark for how tall she was. Sorry I don't have a picture of that! She is super proud to be 3ft. 3/4 inches tall!

We'll be continuing this study by checking on the beans as they grow, and planting more after these have spouted, so that we can compare how much the different ones have grown. And of course we'll be checking to see if Reagan has grown any more too. :-)

Although it's unrelated to growing, we also made Jello on Tuesday as part of our work. We have a Jello US flag mold, and were supposed to make it for Patriot Day, but didn't have enough Jello, so we were making it a little late. It is quite tasty though!

Oh So Behind on This

Wow, it's kind of embarrassing how far behind I am on blogging about school activities. We've been doing some un-schooling recently, and that may be a contributing factor. It is fun, but Reagan really misses doing her school work on a regular and scheduled basis, so I'm going to be working on some solid lesson plans and getting back to that some here in the very near future.

We have discovered a new TV series that Reagan loves and has been introducing her more to some basic science ideas. It's called Sid the Science Kid, and airs on PBS in the mornings just before one of her other favorites, Super Why! I'm really looking forward to building some lesson plans around the shows since they talk about concepts, and then give you some really great, simple projects that you can do with your own child. We were doing this a little with Super Why as well, but have had some problems with finding the stories at our public library.. quite a disappointment.

One of the things that we have been learning about recently is Halloween. I know it may seem a little early for Halloween, but all the books were available now, and as the holiday gets closer, there choices will me much slimmer. So we took them all out, and have been reading all kinds of different Halloween stories. Reagan is very excited about it, and understanding a little bit about the holiday has helped her to decide what she would like to be this year. She's decided to be Cleo the poodle from the Clifford series , and Adam is going to e Clifford. Of course there are no Cleo costumes out there, so I'm going to have to make one. I like doing this.. but was hoping for something a little easier this year. lol

Reagan has also been enjoying doing more cooking, and is really excited about the tomatoes and peaches that we have been harvesting out of the back yard!

Although we haven't done a lot of worksheets recently, Reagan have been practicing in her slate book. She now can write several more letters. She now can do; W, M, O, X, I, J and V, and has done a D. She's been working on some other ones as well, and is really excited to practice her letters. It's also been a huge accomplishment for her recently that she can sing the alphabet without mistakes every time! She loves singing the alphabet, and an array of other songs including 50s rock and country tunes. lol

We also recently found a frog in the front yard, and have been doing some bug explorations; looking at different bugs outside, and talking about them. We've looked at grasshoppers, listened to cicadas, and are currently keeping a now pupated caterpillar. Lots of fun!

I promise I will try to update more often!!! Sorry it's been so long, but it surely hasn't been because we're not doing things or learning.