He can READ!

Corbin read his first book all by himself yesterday. He was so proud! I was so proud! We celebrated by eating popcorn for lunch. Hadley is so close, she just needs a little bit of help anymore. YAY YAY YAY! I just can't get over the excitement.

We went through a slump last week. The kids didn't want to do much. I didn't feel like doing much, I was much to frustrated with the house. Then, yesterday everything just got better. The kids did a lot of work at their own request. Corbin finished Singepore Math 1A today, he is excited to get started on 1B tomorrow. They are both more than halfway through their HWT books. Since he started actually reading he is enjoying doing ETC now, too.

We've been doing a lot of talk about plants. How they make food, what they need to grow, etc.

I discovered the kids like to act out stories. I found a great book in the library that has short plays that teach about something in history. We've been acting them out much to the kids enjoyment.

I took books that teach how to draw animals out of the library. Hadley is really enjoying that. We do something almost every day since I've had it.

In other words, last week school sucked. This week has been so, so much better. It is starting to be warm enough to go outside to do school, too. That is super nice.

Tomorrow, we are having an Earth Day celebration with our homeschool group. We can't wait!

Unschooling for the week

Due to the crazy weekend, colds and general feelings of ickiness we are unschooling this week. Today, we planted seeds outside. Poked around at a bunch of ants. Put up our window view nest box, and placed nest friendly materials such as dried grasses, newspaper and string nearby. We looked at kidney bean number 2 to see how it was growing. We read books. We played outside. This is the plan for the rest of the week until we all feel normal again, or at the very least are sleeping better and over our colds. Wednesday we do have a field trip planned to a local living museum that is hosting a homeschool day. That should prove to be a ton of fun.

Of steam and potatoes

I love when natural learning comes from being curious. Yesterday, Corbin got the idea to put a cardboard tube on the top of his humidifier. The results were fun.

Combo of yesterday and today:

Corb and Hadley both did Singapore, HWT, and ETC.

Science-We talked about the parts of a tree and their functions. We started a potato growing in a jar of water. We read "Seeds" and " A Seed is Sleepy".
Health-We read "The Busy Body Book". We talked about what our bodies need to move and grow. We discussed ways to keep our bodies busy.

We read "What is a Noun?" and played a few Mad Libs to start learning parts of speech.

We discussed the duties of a Squire. Yesterday, he fed all of the animals to fulfill his Squire duties. Today he is going to go on a Quest(I still need to figure that out..hmmm). We read 2 more chapters of "Knight Before Dawn". Corbin did 2 worksheets that involved phonics and "knight" words.

The plans are to dye Easter Eggs later today if it gets warm enough to go outside. I hope it does. I really don't want to do it inside.

Week of Knights

Corbin requested to learn about knights, kings and castles for school. I obliged. We are starting off with a week of knights. I might have over planned considering all I have to accomplish this week(Hadley's bday) but I think we will get to do it all.

Both Corbin and Hadley did ETC, HWT and Singapore Math today.

Since Easter is this week we are taking time to read books and do activities involving Easter. Today we read "Max's Chocolate Chicken" and we designed our own eggs(paper print out of a plain white egg that they colored).

We started doing Science/Nature this week. Today we talked about the different parts of a plant(Stem, root, leaf and flower) and what their role is in helping the plant grow. We read "How a Seed Grows"-a Lets Read and Find Out book. We planted flower seeds. We also planted 12 kidney bean seeds in plastic egg halves. In 3 days we are going to take the first one of the ground to observe any changes. In a few more days, we will take another out..and so on until the plants are out of the ground.

For Art we looked at Picture That with Knights and Castles. We looked at and discussed a painting of the battle of San Romano fought in Italy.

As an introduction to Knights we learned about the steps it takes to become a Knight. Page, Squire, Dubbing then Knight. We read the first chapters of "Knight at Dawn", "Joan of Arc", and the section about becoming a knight in "Knights and Castles"(a Magic Tree House Research book). For this week I am going to have Corbin follow the steps to becoming a knight ending with a dubbing ceremony on Friday. Today he is fulfilling the requirements of a Page. He is going to serve dinner to us, practice his manners and be kind to ladies. The kids did a listening skills worksheet on knights.

Other-They watched a video about John Deere tractors-to go with planting seeds.

Decompressing

I've been taking it really easy on Corbin this week. He needs a fairly long decompression time after having his schedule messed with(our weekend away). He is doing much better today. He wanted to do more formal learning today. They have both been doing their HWT, ETC and Math but I've been letting them both chose when they want to stop. Usually I plan Corbins out to how far I want him to go that day. We've been reading a lot. We watched a video about families in Sweden. We baked some cookies. They spent a lot of time outside. All easy relaxing things to allow Corbin his time to readjust.

All this decompression has left me with ample time to plan school for next week. Corb has requested to learn about knights, castles and kings. Giddy-up that sounds like fun. Next week is all about knights. I am going to have him go through the week as a page, squire and finally a knighting ceremony. I found a bunch of fun activities. We are also going to start up some Science/Nature study.

Friday we may go meet with a homeschooling group. They are going to playing group games. Not sure what that means but they seem like a fun group. Corb was showing some resistance to going to chess this week so we may just skip it since we are "going to town" on Friday.

Lumber, Nature and Maple Syrup..oh my!

I might get some pictures up here later. No book learning Thurs-Sun. Thursday and Friday were busy packing for the weekend. I figured since our entire weekend would be full of learning we were good.

Saturday-We visited the PA Lumber Museum. Learned about the "Civilian Conservation Corps". Very neat museum set up with buildings to represent what a lumber camp would have looked like. Corb, of course, liked the train the best. After the museum we headed to the PA Grand Canyon. Where we were once again reminded of Corbs' fear of heights. We ate a picnic lunch in one of the many pavilions provided at the top of the mountain. We talked about how the canyon was formed and found a lot of interesting things to discuss in the forrest.

Sunday-We visited 3 different Maple Syrup Farms. We got to see the process from tap to jug. We saw demonstrations on making candy, cream, cotton candy and sugar. It was fun to compare what each farm did differently or the same. It was also interesting to hear the stories each farmer told. One told us about a bear that chewed on his tap line tube, then he showed us the tube with bear teeth marks. Another man had a hook hand. One place had been doing this for over 40 years. We discovered the steam coming out of the sugar shacks smelled like maple syrup, which is delicious! At another place we learned about a beetle that is making its way into PA that destroys maple trees.

We stayed in a cabin in a nearby state park. That lead to more discussion about nature. As we drove along we saw many beaver dams and homes. A new thing to us since we don't see that much down our way. We made plans to get books about beavers from the library so we can see inside a beaver home. The kids also played around with spelling/reading and some everyday life math.

The children weren't very into their book studies, and I can't blame them with the warmer weather outside. Finally starting to warm up again. We spent a lot of time outside exploring today. We spent some time looking for signs of Spring. We found daffodil and tulips starting to emerge from the ground. Also, buds are forming on the trees and lilac bushes. Robins are everywhere. It is has grown noisier with all of the birds calling. We heard a woodpecker. We also discovered a dead Robin that one of the cats had caught. Hadley got a little emotional about it, but we got through it.

Phonics:
-Corbin ETC 1.5 pg 19-20
-Hadley ETC 1 pg 15

Handwriting:
-Corbin HWT pg 21-26
-Hadley HWT pg 17-19

Math:
-Corbin S1A pg 98-101
-Hadley SKB pg 7-10. She also used the multi-link cubes to demonstrate "greater" and "lesser" numbers.

Art:
-Both "Come Look With Me: Exploring Landscape Art with Children". Fun book that gets children to really explore famous works of art. There are a few questions for each painting. Today we looked at "Hunters in the Snow", "The Lackawanna Valley" and "The Oregon Trail".

History:
-Both I read another chapter of "Ben and Me" out loud. Then we watched a video from the library about Benjamin Franklin.

Other Books: "Sugarbush Spring", "If You Give a Pig a Pancake" and another chapter of "Charlotte's Web".