Photo Rails Project

I did a little project today for the hallway that leads to the office/schoolroom. I made clip art rails for photos, drawings, copy work, etc. You know all the cool things you want to hang up or display. It was a super simple project and cost under $5.00 to make. I used a 1x2x96 piece of wood, a package of clothes pins, white paint, and some scrapbook paper with my cricut. The wood was about $3.00 and the pkg. of clothes pins were $1.00 at the dollar store. I already had white paint and plenty of scrapbook supplies. I got the idea and directions from
http://www.knock-offwood.com/2010/01/plans-clip-art-rails.html

Love the knock off wood blog, there are so many good ideas, I have tons of projects on my to do list.

DONE with 1st Grade!

We are officially done with the 1st grade. We have finished our planned
curriculum for this year. There was reading, math, science, handwriting, experiments, activities, bug club, TaeKwonDo, and questions, lots of questions.

This was a fun year and I felt a more comfortable homeschooling this year. I have already started getting ready for 2nd grade. I wanted to list a few things I felt we did right and some things I want to change for next year.


Things We Did Right

1. I was more laid back about scheduling class time. After lunch worked great for him.

2. Breaking up the day by having some play time between school time.

3. Letting Dad so science experiments with LittleBit on the weekends. Having Dad help with schoolwork is good for everyone.

4. Slowing down to take our time on interesting topics such as the Olympics, mummies and pirates.

5. Reading, Reading, and more Reading


Things I Want to Work On

1. School back in the school room! Somehow we started doing school in the living room instead of the wonderful school room we converted my office to. He does great working in the main room of the house but it is driving me crazy! I want to at least get back into the school room for our "official" work time.

2. Just a little independent work time. He wants me to be there and helping with every single thing. While I don't mind, I would like to see just a little independent work, maybe one worksheet by himself.

3. More hands on work. He does so well learning through visual and hands on learning. I want to make sure we incorporate as much of it as we can.

4. More googling and research! He comes up with so many interesting questions while we are reading or studying a topic, I want to spend more time looking up what something looks like, what causes that to happen etc. It leads to so much learning and interest in new things.

5. Be willing to stop our forward progress to study a subject in depth. We did this some this year and it was great. It is easy to get caught up in, we need to get this far in the book or we need to finish this workbook by a certain date. Being able to study something in depth is one of the big advantages to homeschooling.



We will offically start 2nd grade in mid-July but we will still be learning. We are doing Apologia Botnay this summer along with a little math, handwriting and of course reading.

LEGO Math

Today we practiced counting with Lego's. How many Lego pieces do you need to get to 100 Lego dots? We were able to practice counting by 2's, 4's addition and subtraction all while playing with Lego's.

This was a great way to practice counting by 2's and 4's. I also showed him how to multiply the rows to find the number of dots per piece, since we have been doing a little multiplication in Singapore math. He was able to practice subtraction, the goal was to have exactly 100 dots and when he had to many dots, he had to subtract and then find a Lego with the correct number of dots.

Magic School Bus A Journey of the Human Body Science kit

Today was a rainy, stormy, miserable day, the perfect day for science experiments. Today we got out our Magic School Bus A Journey of the Human Body kit. It was a lot of fun. You do need 2L bottles, we made do with a juice bottle and a water bottle. There is huge poster of the human body with facts to read and stickers in put the body together with.
Little Bit check his lung function.



Learned how a diaphragm works, made a stethoscope, and how muscles make your body. Plus he had hours of fun blowing up the balloons and letting the air out of them.

Weekly Review

It has been a fast week, we have been busy getting ready for LittleBit's first TaeKwonDo tournament, trying to finish up school work for the 1st grade, and working on the garden.

I told LittleBit once he finished his work in history and math that he would be finished with 1st grade and be ready for 2nd grade in July(when I officially register him). I was giving him options for his end of the 1st grade treat and he chose to go to the Adventure Science Center for a day. I was surprised, he picked this over Chuck E Cheese, Legos, or the bounce factory. He is a man on a mission now, he is trying very hard to finish his math book. He is asking to do extra math before bed, pulling the workbook by himself to work on it, this is a complete opposite from his usual behavior when it comes to math worksheet time!

He is also practicing chess, he is determined to beat Dad at a game. He is playing Learn Chess on his nintendo, reading the instruction booklet that came with his chess set and setting up the board during the day to work out scenarios.

Watering his vegetable seedlings

Science experiment with Dad

Collecting dandelions for a botany experiment

Weekly Review

This week I realized we are almost finished. We have about 2 weeks of work left to do and then we will be moving forward. I can't believe how fast it has gone by. Although, there are days I do wonder, will this day ever end or exactly why was it we wanted to homeschool. It is worth every minute.

I wanted to give a status of the curriculum we are using this year, talk about summer plans and give a review of Botany.


Handwriting without Tears - it caused tears. We have been doing copy work instead.
My First Language Lessons - it is a two year program and we will use it next year
Spelling Workout - will continue to use lightly and for copy work
Story of the World - 10 chapters left to read
Singapore Math - completed 1A and intensive workbook for 1A, 2 sections of 1B left to complete
Lifepac Bible - Finished
Magic School Bus Experiments - we have done many experiments with plenty left to do
Reading - We read everyday


We should be finished with the current curriculum in the next 2 or 3 weeks. Since we have decided to switch to all year round school, I will begin purchasing our next books. I am planning on a lite program through June.


We will continue with botany, copy work, some math, experiments and reading from May through the end of June. Along with his vegetable garden, bug club, animal encounters, and other summer activities we will be busy. I feel a year round schedule will work better for us and allow more break times for spring and fall, when the weather is nicer.




Exploring Creation with Botany Review
I am going to mention botany once again, I realize I have talked about it a good deal but I do really like the program. There are 13 lessons in the textbook and I thought we would do a chapter a week and be done in 13 weeks; boy was I wrong. We are only able to read 1 or 2 pages at a time. There is a great deal of Latin root words and terminology, difficult concepts and projects to do. This is an in-depth immersion curriculum, it is written in a easy to understand format for children without "dumbing down" the terminology or concepts.

Both LittleBit and I are enjoying and learning so we will go slow in order to completely grasp and understand the lessons taught. I don't usually purchase companion books with the curriculum, but I did purchase the Botany notebook/journal. It was worth the $16.99 price tag. LittleBit loves finding new things to add to his journal. He is always bringing in a weed, leaf, or flower, asking to borrow the camera to take pictures etc. It uses the outdoors and household items to create fun projects to explain and reinforce concepts in the book.

Butterfly Lecture and Egg Hunt

Today our local recreation department had a butterfly egg hunt and lecture on butterflies. We are very lucky our local parks and recreation department has so many good programs that work so well with homeschooling. LittleBit's favorite is Bug Club.


Today he learned about what butterflies eat, where they grow, how they grow etc. They went on a hunt for milkweed, did not find much, it is a little early yet. He learned about what kind of plants you can grow in your own yard to attract butterflies. We have now added parsley and basil to our little vegetable garden. It was a great morning and we will go back in a couple of weeks for more egg hunting and then next month it will be larvae finding and counting.