January 19-23 wrap up

Boy has this week been a fun an exciting one! We did some crafts that taught how water can move. This week we ventured into the planet of Venus!!!!!  Starting this week and for the rest of the year we are reading chapter books, a chapter a day and at the end of the book we will be doing book reports. We hung new classroom decor. We witnessed an awesome stare off between Lilly and Buddy. We took lots and lots of photos and oh yea in case you m missed it we blogged an entire day!!!!



Here was the famous stare off!!! Lilly was even growling at Buddy so he got up and got closer to her, She got louder and eventually got up and walked away. It was very amusing to us!

Like I mentioned we are reading chapter books now. The first book picked by Robert is The Mouse and the Motorcycle. George is LOVING the book so far. He gets so happy when we bring it out. Its the last thing on the planner every day to kind of keep him going. If its a cliff hanger ending he gets very bummed that he has to wait an entire day for the next chapter.

George is rocking his mow hawk here and working on a journal.

I've talked many times about our "Life of Fred" books but I wanted to show you a page from the your turn to play chapter. George is still loving the book very much! He looks forward to the days we do the Fred book which we do twice a week.

Here's how George answered. He uses a spiral notebook, that I number then I read him the questions.

The craft!!!! We used coffee filters folded them up and cut little chunks out of and then dyed them in water with food coloring. George was shocked how quickly the coffee filters absorbed the water. It was a lot of fun. George said the water "slithered up like a snake" I found that very funny.

We put them on trays to dry.

Then George decided to wear one on his head. hahaha. Such a goof ball!

Working on language arts.

We read about the volcanoes on Venus and went ahead with the activity to make one. We put a small glass dish on a plate and surrounded it with flour.

We melted butter. George did a great job.

Then poured it over the dish. At this point the butter represented the lava flowing and we checked it a few hours later and it was cooled and hard which represented the rocks on Venus.

Working on his math journal he does everyday.

Here was what he did that day. Hes coming along far and doesn't need much help anymore just for me to read the question under the date and the today's problem.

Working in a journal, Again doesn't need help very often and if he does he will just come to my desk and ask.

That's a giraffe and a swing set in case you needed to know.

These were George's spelling words this week. He did really good. He claimed he spelled the first one right but I didn't see the letters correctly. So he needs to work on his penmanship.

After he reads a bob book we write a sentence about it and he copy's it into his journal then draws a picture that follows along.

While I read his science text he plays in the knetic sand. This really helps keep his focus on listening to what I say. We talk back and forth about what I read too.

All the things we talked about we wrote on the big white board. George liked seeing this and I think its a great stepping stone to teaching him how to take notes.

We hung up the coffee filters!!!!!  They look amazing in the school room.

George doing some work at his desk.

If you ever wanted to see my lesson planner!  Its pretty packed,

My desk doesn't look much better.

George complains about my flash so he insisted that I take a picture of myself. Turned out kinda cute so I figured I would include it.

Facts about Venus and that's his drawing of a volcano.

In his draw write now book we drew birds. He did in the end color them but I didn't get a picture of that.

George is getting very good at solving for the unknown. So proud of him.

So this has been our week all wrapped up nice and tidy with a bow. George did a great job this week and hes doing amazing. While doing reading George is doing less sounding out and said that reading is getting easier and that makes him happy.

Typical Day

      So every week I do a quick wrap  up and show some pictures of what we did but I thought I would do a very nice post on what a typical day is in the school room.


The first thing we do is what we call our morning work. This is stuff that George has learning to work through primarily on his own. He will come to me for little assistance in reading or if he has a question. To get through all of this takes him about 30mins to 45mins. Depending on the day. On Wednesdays we switch things up and instead of reading a "bob" book we make our own story and he copy's that. You will see more about that further down the post.



We always start the morning off using our calendar math journal. Here George does some math based off the date and then weather. He does this all on his own. I just assist in reading the questions to him.

After that we move onto our correct the sentence daily journal.  On this I read him the sentence and together we find the problems and I write in my read pen the corrections and then he takes the journal to his desk and writes the sentence corrected.

Following that we move to what is called my first writing prompts journal. This journal has the begging of a sentence laid out for  him so all he has to do is fill it out with the ended and then draw a picture that corresponds with it. George doesn't enjoy coloring very much so I don't worry about having him color.

After this on Wednesdays we do our poetry journal. We don't do this everyday just on Wednesdays. This is something I read to him and then their is a simple question he has to answer and write his response to, It's a nice way to get them exposed to poetry.

Following this we move to the daunting task on Wednesdays which is when we create our own story, I say this because George HATES writing. He has expressed this many times. To create the story we use a build a story flipbook. So he picks the character, setting, and conclusion.  He enjoys picking them out and creating a story. I have to sometimes steer him in a direction to keep the story following the outline he picks but the more we do it the better hes getting. I then write the story on our big white board and he cops it in his draw and write journal. That's the part that can take a lot of time in the mornings.

After just working with George on the story here is what he came up with today "The little boy was turning one. The dog got into the fridge and ate the cake. The mom caught the dog. The neighbor kept the little boy and gave cake ingredients so the mom could bake a new cake. Then the boy had a birthday party."    Now the real battle is George writing the story.


This will end what we usually call morning work. We will take a break and do lunch and some down time and then come back and do math, language arts, spelling, reading, history and read our chapter book.   We are currently on a rotating plan with history and science we do them on alternating days and today happens to be a history day.


Usually in math he does two pages a day but if George really grasps a topic we will alter the amount he does. This week he is skip counting but 10s which comes easy so we are only doing one page a day and then the "test" page on Friday.

 Following that we move onto language arts. Their are several parts we skip in the book because we cover them in our spelling and reading programs and I think it would be to much for him to use to different programs going at two different paces to try and keep up with. So we use this primarily for the grammar.

 Moving forward  we go to spelling. We do almost all of our spelling on our magentic dry erase board. Once a week we spell on paper. Today happens to be that day. We are working on the short e sound.  He does 14 words a week and usually always spells them all correct.

After spelling we go to reading. Reading is another subject we usually do on the magnetic dry erase board. Sometimes we use the flash cards, sometimes we use pages from the activity book, sometimes we read from the readers that come with the program and sometimes like today we read from the fluency pages. I usually split this task up into 2 days just because its a task that he generally does not enjoy. Its a lot of random words and no fun.  He did rather well today after being reminded of the sound the short e makes.

Once this was done we moved onto history. This year for history we are traveling the world with "Sam and Sophia" We are in the state Iowa. We learned about their ice cream festival he related this to the grape jamboree festival we go to.  I found this rather boring so I did not get a picture. I apologize.






We ended the day with continuing our story "The Mouse and the Motorcycle" We just finished chapter 3. George is very into this book. I read him a chapter everyday. On Fridays we will answer a few questions about the book and then once we finish it we will do a book report about it all. We will continue with reading chapter books the rest of the year. He does get frustrated when we stop. He wants me to keep going. Looks like we may have a book lover on our hands.

So that's a typical day in out homeschool room. George loves it and so do I. We spent about 2 hours and 45mins today and the only reason it took so long today was because of him having to write his story in his journal. That's def his least favorite task of the whole week.