First Week Back After Break

I know, I have been a little slow with posting lately. Between, school, normal house hold duties, my part time job I recently got and the holidays I was way more busy than normal. Since Christmas things have calmed down and I am finding time to finally update the blog and tell everyone just how well things have been going. This was our first official week back from break (we did some stuff last week but nothing "on the books") George was more than ready to get back into the classroom and start learning again. He really enjoys learning and loves being homeschooled. He usually tells me once a week how much he loves me teaching him. Melts my heart. Since my last blog we have sort of re done our weeks. We take Monday's as our "gym" days you could say. We play lots out side, do tons of crafts that honestly I don't want to do during the week and then Tuesday-Friday we spend in the classroom working in our workbooks and doing our other various activities we have planned. I hope everyone had a good holiday. I know my family was very blessed this year. Not only did we have Robert home for yet another Christmas we where able to see our families again which means the world to us. Family is everything!

So onto "our week"

We worked this week on how to write our last name. George was a pro at this. The first two days he did this I had Rockow wrote on the board and he just copied it on his paper.

This was the end result

We then made a train. Which we had to put the wheels on, paint and then add stickers. He had a blast with this. Sadly this stickers didn't stick on very well.

Then we got a game called Dinosaur Math from scholastic. The board has two sides. It comes with four dinos and three dice. One dice is an operation dice and the other two have numbers we play the easier side so you don't use the operation dice just add the two dice together and move your dino. George had a blast doing this game. You would all be proud to know that George is turning out to be a good math student. Now that numbers have clicked he loves math! He uses objects to help get through the math problem but he loves doing it! So proud of my lil man. Here's him playing dino math. I am playing with him but since I'm taking the pic obviously I'm not in it. lol.

An addition page hes done, and a subtraction page. He is always asking for more of these. So I just make some up and hes happy. Hopefully in the next two weeks we start getting into some more math stuff for him in some more books, he has a transitional math book and then a math book. He just finished his Get ready for math book, which is where both of these pages came from. It shocks me how good he can be at this stuff. Some pages he had to do what number comes next, easy but I thought for sure what number comes before would trip him up. Not a chance. He didn't even count out loud to figure it out. Didn't skip a beat nothing. He knew just like that. Even on the ones that had two blanks before he would fill out the closes to the number then the next one. He didn't ask me how do I do this one or anything. Just did it.

And of course I am head over in heals in love with the games from The Learning Journey. We have now added Mathematics to our collection (we have mathematics, numbers, bingo, and spell-it.) they can all be found on amazon.com for around 13$ or so. These are so nice because they are so durable. George also loves puzzles so he loves them. We do bingo probably three times a week, that's not a puzzle one but one side has the pictures while the other only has the words, so it will grow with the child. Here's the mathematics and George doing it.



We got the Super Why game, which helps with reading skills. When you land on the person you have different tasks, Point to the correct uppercase letter, point to the correct word, point to the letter the word ends or begins with, or say a rhyming word. This is a lot of fun so its great for a school activity! George also enjoys it. It'll be nice next week since we will be all about rhyming.

After only two days of seeing his last name on the board and writing it George now can write his last name all on his own. So proud of him. Now its a daily thing to at some point write his first and last name together. This was today's

We have this really cool "word caterpillar" as we learn a new word and he can identify it and read it he gets to add the word and watch it grow. We add words on Friday after hes finished he calender notebook which has his weekly words. This week he got to add all 4 of his words. He was so happy. And I was very impressed. They where words he has had in the past and just struggled with. Finally he got them (Is, We, Me, At) He wanted to put them on himself.

Doing some math on the board and then a few more sheets we did today just because he loves it so much.











So that was our week through photos. It was a very good week. George worked hard and had a lot of fun. He is doing good. Amazing me with how good he is at math. I can't wait to see how much he enjoys the math books over the next few months. I may have to go buy more. Next week he has his middle of the year evaluation. Just a little evaluation to see how hes doing, see the progress hes making, where he could still be needing more help, and for the school board at the end of the year. I have been keeping all of his work. I am going to have tons to show for how much he has learned. Also next week he will do his Get ready to read book, and work on rhyming. Once those are done we will focus a lot on math, along with learning days of the week and months of the year. Hope everyone has a good weekend, as always feel free to comment. Anyone can!

2 months down!

Amazing! I sit here getting ready to type the blog and couldn't figure out how long we have been at school. I look at the calender and realize its been over two months! ALREADY! Where has time went. George is surprising me  everyday. He has his good days and his bad days. We did take last week off. Robert was on leave for two weeks and for the last week I figured it would be nice to sleep in lay around and relax and just enjoy all day with him. And I tell you it paid off. When we started back up this week George was completely re focused and ready to go.

Numbers are starting to click. I say starting to because well someways like yesterday he got 0-6 perfect and then 7-10 about 80% and then today, he didn't want anything to do with it. I think the break and the new things we have added are the reason for it.

Georges "calender notebook" has expanded to include his weekly sight words. We do 4 per week, and follow You Can Read! program. Its been great. We don't use all the printables but we use a good portion of them. So far we have done week 1 and 2. George gets some of the words every time. A, I, Me, See and then The, Can, And, You he gets about 70% of the time. We know try to read story's together in school and when we get to those words I point to them and he reads them. He LOVES doing this with me and I love doing it as well.

Like I said we got some new material added these past two weeks and throughout the blog you will see pictures of them along with links where to get them. So without any more waiting here are some pictures!

First up are a few pictures of George working on the new pages in the Calender notebook. This one is a sight words page. It has four blocks and he writes each of his sight words everyday.

This one has all four words in a different font, and he has to circle each one in a different color.

A hidden words page! The pages I print don't have the words wrote on them so I just add that so he can see it.  And he crosses it off as he finds them. All of these pages are in a paper protector so their dry erase throughout the week and then on Friday I pull them out and he actually fills them out normal and I date them and store them.

Their is also a puzzle for each word. George loves puzzles so I think this is his favorite part.

Their are a few other pages I don't have photos of. One is a daily sight word which he writes in a few different spots and says the word every time. Theirs also another that has the words by a few dots to make a shape (think square an triangle) and he connects the dots to the same words (connects three I's to make a triangle, 4 see's to make a square)

Here I wrote a few sentence's on the board using the word see and made him find it and circle it.

This was a new game I found and printed off here and its a simple puzzle. I laminated it so it lasts longer. George loves this!

Again wrote a sentence and had him find the word of the day. (and)

This week the words are I can me you. You can see the little strip next to the notebook. This he gets every week and has the tracer lines for the words. I write a sentence on the board and he copy's it into his notebook then we circle the word of the day. (here it was I) The sentence. I like to play outside.

One of the new games we bought. LOVE THIS! And they have others that are the same idea. I only purchased two to start with but will definitely be getting more! Find it here. for 12.99 Its very sturdy pieces. I did divide it up into 4 groups. 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20

Four Georges birthday he got a subscription to Highlights, high five magazine (Thanks Grandma and Papa) This is going to be a great assets to our class and I can't wait to start using it. Probably going to be this coming up week just because I already had this past weeks lesson plan done when we got this.

Just like the numbers this one is spelling. Find it here! for 12.75 (note amazon prices to change so they may go up or down, this is just what they are today)  This one has 10 3letter words and 10 4letter words. I divided it up between 3 and 4 letter words.

George is working on the Match it numbers!

What it looks like all done!

I thought it was pretty impressive he could draw a star. So I took a picture of it.

Working on the sentence of the day.

Here he is doing another number game. Found here  This one isn't a puzzle so he doesn't enjoy it as much but he will still do it.

Today I let him try out the 3 letter words in the match it spelling. He had a lot of fun. Then we read the words sounding them out.

Here he is doing the newest addition to our collection of number stuff. This is called Number Maps
I  printed off some of the pages here and laminated the pieces. I  lay all the maps out and then I hold the pieces which have different things to could like, 3 dots on a dice, 3 butterfly's the number 3 and then three tally marks and he just matches them up.

A close up of the number 9. They all look the same.

So that was what we have been up to. I am getting ready to place another scholastic book order to get beginning reading books so we can read more together. I like to say George is up to numbers 0-6 without a problem. I want to say thanks to everyone who came out Sunday and helped celebrate Georges birthday. Hard to believe little man is now 5. He did have a check up with his pedi where he informed us George is doing amazing and way beyond where most kids are at his age. That his hand eye coordination is amazing, his penmanship is great and that he knows and can write all of his letters is great. He told us we made a great choice in homeschooling this year and that George is looking amazing! Of course he is, its mine and Robert's kid. Lol. have a great weekend everyone. Remember I changed settings so feel free to leave a comment!

Been a long 3 weeks..........

So it's been a long 3 weeks since I last wrote an update. George is doing good. Moving along nicely. We are still struggling like crazy with his numbers though. I try a little each day but am not pushing it to much. The more I push the more he rebels so sooner or later it will click. He just finished all his abc's. He can match them all up and knows alteast 80% of them. So we are still working on them everyday. This week we started our calender notebooks which he LOVES! And starting next week we are going to be doing our sight words. We will get one pack a week, and each pack has four words. Some of the stuff with them will be included in our calender notebooks and other stuff we will just add throughout the week.

We got our second order of books from the scholastic book club so I was very excited about that. Anyhow onto our days through pics!

Here George is doing a cut and paste that follows a story. He was very into the cutting, and I must say he is getting very good!



Here he wrote some sentences. Well he copied them, A big cat, I love dogs, and I can write

He wanted to paint one day so we did. I was very proud of how well he did on his house! His painting is getting great! It's no longer just scribbles.

He decided to make a project, lol. He just cut the paper and glued it how he wanted. Nice to see his imagination.

Pattern Blocks! he loved them! These are amazing. Their are three pages (front and back) that have each piece mapped out and three pages front and back that just have the colors and the 12 that are black and white. Those will be awhile before he gets to. He struggled a little at first (I also didn't realize I grabbed one that just had the colors) but he got the hang of it.

Working hard at it

All done!

We did a mickey mouse pack. Everything was mickey. Here is a page of the characters that I cut in half and he had to match them up and glue them together.

I am hoping that some number shows help him. Here he is watching a leap frog show on netflix. They also have abc's and phonics and a few others. So far he has done both the number ones and today the abc one.

I got my laminator!!!!! I love it! Saves me so much time and so far works amazing!

Daddy happened to be home one day while we where in school so he made a quick stop in the room and helped George a little with letters.

Newest game I made (with my laminator)

Each gingerbread asks for a specif number of buttons and he just stacks them onto it.

Working on the sentence for the calender notebook

Weather for the notebook. I think this is his favorite part

Once a month name writing.

Here he was telling me no more taking pictures mom, lol.... Guess I like to take to many pics for him.

He finessed the Big ABC book! 320 pages

ZOO FIELD TRIP!!!!!!!!
Who doesn't love markets

Me and George

In front of the lions

George and Grandma walking

Gorilla

George was showing up the way a gorilla beats his chest

Feeding lorkets like a pro

It took forever but we finally got one on him. This made his day

He was really playing the orangutan

The played peek a boo and made lots of funny faces! I died laughing

Cute pose

Baby Rhino

George and the wolf!

Looking at the seals

George loves his turtles!

George was the one who pointed out the baby kola!

Kangaroo George

So that was the last 3 weeks for us! George is amazing me every day! And for anyone interested I changed some settings so everyone can leave a comment regardless of if they have a google account so feel free to leave a message! Have a great weekend!!!!!!!!!!!!!!