January 12-16 wrap up

         So obviously you can see I've decided to date the wrap ups instead of do them by x weeks.  This past week has been interesting to say the least. We lost two days of school. One was due to last minute baby sitting and the other we ended up grocery shopping and running errands all day and then had a den meeting for cub scouts. Even with 3 days we got a lot done.



George did this art craft. He filled the whole thing in with glue and then picked the different colors he wanted and filled it in.

Sitting at his desk working on his work.

His charts for Spelling! Like said in a previous post every time he completes a level he gets a sticker over that level.

This was taken at the beginning of the week and he did a level of reading so now he has another sticker on this chart. He is averaging 2 levels a week in reading.

Working on his math. This week he was doing two digit addition with carrying. He was not very found of this at all but got the concept and did very well with it.

When he struggles with the math he makes a number line to do the math. He kept turning around and yelling at me to not get a picture so I was very lucky to get this one in.

Yes George does have a Mohawk hes been begging for one. And end of the week means fun friday hes able to count tickets and cash them in. He had 20, the magic number for the glow in the dark dough he wanted. He was so happy!!!

So their you have our week! We got a lot done and George loved it. Hes also still grabbing books and reading. You would think the dogs are sick of hearing them but they listen nicely. Can't wait to see what next week has in store for us!

Books, Books and more Books!!! We love Scholastic

So as previously mentioned in Kindergarten posts my first scholastic book order we utilize scholastic reading club formerly known as scholastic book club.

This is a great asset to class rooms both public and home school.  For home school all you need to do is contact them to have your school added and then you can order through them as a class. We have done this every year. Every year I find new tips on how to get the most for my money. I wont lie books cost a lot of money these days and I don't have a fortune to spend just on the library on top of the curriculum.

I have just placed my second order this year. Before I tell you about the savings I got on my second order I must first tell you about my first order.  So in September they had a deal that if your order was over 50$ you got 32 coupons for 5$ free books. With that set in mind I set out to spend 50$ because thirty-two 5$ books is a value of 160$.  In a catalog in September they had a birthday coupon pack of 32 coupons for 5$ books for if I believe was 34$ which again the book of coupons is a value of 160$. So I was 34$ towards my 50$ minimum I picked a game for 10$ and then a book.

I got my box and all 64 coupons worth $5 books a value of  $160 which brings me to this  order I just got.

Box 1 came on Monday, containing 53 books! I did order 3 duplicate books, and box 2 came on Tuesday contained 33   books and again ended  up with 3 duplicates.  The duplicates will easily find find their way into another home.  Through the year George can earn book coupons and cash them in when I make an order so he was thrilled to do that. He had two this time which he had one from the first day of school and one I gave him for coming back from Christmas break. These are also available for 15 tickets in the fun Friday box, These are Georges picks, The rest of the pictures are also from box number one.

This is the crystal kit. The only thing that I actually had to pay for in the box along with shipping the cost for box number 1 including shipping was 13.50

I apoligize for the ones that did not rotate.  These ones are some smaller chapter books which we can read one chapter a day and also a joke book. George is horrible at jokes so hopefully this will help. the book with the girl on it is another that I got a double of. One came in a pack with other books.

Again some small chapter books.  George is at that age where he likes books that the story grows after each chapter but isn't at a reading level where he can read it himself. Lucky for him mom loves to read.

Some nice simple classic characters.

Some level 1 readers so George should be able to sit down and sound these out and read these with me.

Animals and toothless.

A few misc ones that I couldn't fit into another category.

We love national geographic (I did end up with another copy of the penguins and polar bears)

A bunch of level 1,2 and 3 readers.

More readers.

Now we are on to book  box 2.  All I spent on this box was the shipping which was 3.50.  Have I said we love scholastic in our house! George has been pulling books out since we got them!  Kids can never have to many books and when you can get all these for next to nothing why not?

So here are 3 lama lama books.

 Amelia Bedelia  a classic One is a chapter book so it'll be a lot of fun!

 We are huge magic school bus fans. Watched all the shows and now the books! This has been Georges favorite so far!

I won't lie I bought Bark George just for the name.

A few chapter books including the classic Pippi Longstocking.

Ok a mouse on a motorcycle, yes def a book George would love!

Second grade rules in a book I bought in September but it was bundled with something else, but it has a new home waiting for it. George liked the character so we cant wait to read the other one.

Both of these I bought in the first box, opps. I need to pay more attention when I order but alas they have too are going to new homes. Glad to be able to give back to others.

And this here is a game. Not sure how its played yet but figured animals yep George would love.

And here is a picture of box 1 and box 2..... Now to get the books from the box and to the library... gonna take a lot of work means I have to clean the library again!

So their you have it 86 books, 1 card game and a crystal kit for 16.50, My trick is to be sure in September to order the birthday coupons. Spend enough to get the class coupons and get the bonus points. Doing all this helps gets major savings on future orders.  Hope you liked seeing the new books we got in the school room and if you use scholastic seeing how we save the most. If you use scholastic feel free to share your ways to save. 

First week back!

So this was our first week back from Christmas break. It was definitely nice to get back into the school room. George was happy and ready to go.  This week we did take Wednesday off along with the public schools. This week we completed a lesson in math on skip counting which George found very easy. We got through a lesson in spelling and two lessons in reading. We finished up our lesson in science on Mercury.  So here are some pictures of the week!

Christmas is over so that means new border! I put up the winter one.

Since we started skip counting by two I showed him how making groups can make a mutiplication problem. At this point in the book it was just skip counting by 2's

Every year I like to make a new police id kit. It has all his info in it, finger prints as well as a new photo of him. He likes doing this. Who wouldn't finger prints are fun!

Here's the finger prints.

In science we had some experiments to do. Here we are making craters. We put flour in a bowl and dropped marbles. Different heights and sizes.

For a fun go to activity I pulled out the pocket volcano.

We filled the chamber with baking soda and then added vinegar. Dad sat in and watched it.

Then we added baking powder and put it under water to see an under water volcano.  George liked the above ground volcano more.

At the spelling/reading board making words.  I give him a word and he writes it. This week we also added 3 constant vowel teams. Sh, Ch and Th.

Our other science activity was to make mercury. To do this we made a salt dough recipe and then used marbles and pencils to make craters. George wasn't to found of making the dough. He found it to be sticky.

Here he is using the pencil to make the craters. The dents it makes are representing what asteroids would do.

The end result.  Then leave it out to dry.

All in all it was a great week back. George also made some crafts and in his draw write now book he drew a dog. I didn't get pictures of that though. George is also up to 16 tickets then decided to save them so he got a bonus. He is wanting to save up for the glow in the dark dough I have. 

We are looking forward to next week and the rest of the year. George is loving his work. His favorite would have to be the other math book we use called Life of Fred. It is a story (technically a series) about a 5 year old math professor named Fred. It basically shows the children through the story how math is used in real life examples. Currently Fred is on a boat that sprung a leak and went ashore. George was so mad when the chapter ended as a cliff hanger. We do 2 chapters a week,

So that wraps up this week! 

October/November/December

Wow has life got away from me! I haven't posted an update since the end of September.  I'm going to take the blog to basically do an update of October, November and December. I will start by saying one of the things we love about homeschooling is the flexibility. We can take time off just because. We can have school in the morning afternoon or night, We can do Monday-Friday or we can do some on the weekends. We can take a week off for no reason. We can be flexible if someone gets sick.  We dont have to have snow days.  So with that in October, November and December I think we did half a month each month. October is always a crazy month because of birthdays. I think we did still get in two weeks though. November we had thanksgiving so although we did two weeks we spent a lot of time talking about the Indians. Also we ALL managed to get sick. School with a sick kid or sick parent is NO FUN! Then we had December which meant two weeks off for Christmas. I was only planning on one week but I had an injury and needed emergency surgery so we needed that extra time.  

So during these months I didn't manage to get many pictures but I got some! So lets check them out.

Here is George sitting at his desk doing some work.

We spent some time learning about the sun. You saw in the last post we melted chocolate, Here we are making an eclipse. Sorry the photo isn't better. I have a flashlight pointed at the earth, George is holding a ping pong ball to make the eclipse.  He found this to be very fun. And like usual we have Lilly over watching. You also see an extra chair in the school room. We where re arranging to fit the Christmas tree so this is only temporary.

Working on our magnetic board with our spelling and reading tiles. George has found this to be a great tool and helps make spelling and reading fun!

I tend to use the lip to set up books we use for the day. Here is math and science.

 Must  have been a fun Friday. Dad is helping count tickets! He did eventually save till he got 30 to get the big ticket item in the fun Friday box and he was super happy about that! He is back to saving his tickets.

 School in pajamas why not? lol  Again you can see the ledge I use for books.

And somehow that's all the pics I got. I am trying to keep my camera in the room and get more now. Maybe that along with updating this blog will be my new years resolution.

George is dong good. He is working on lesson 5 of our math book (unless we have a full week we don't really do math it needs to be their every day) He is loving the math. Reading and Spelling he has done up to lesson 8. Reading is really kicking now that hes got all the sounds each letter makes. Sometimes he will just take a guess at the word so as long as i'm their to prompt him to sound it out he gets it.

Science we have done through lesson 3. Each lesson takes two weeks. Week 1 is reading the text and week 2 is the experiments. And who doesn't love those!!!!  He is still hating writing, but he does the work I ask. Language arts we are on our second book of! Partially because we skip the phonics and spelling in each lesson because we do those in other books.

Although I didn't have many pictures to share of school I decided to go ahead and show you the Christmas pictures we got!





Starting the unwrapping!!!!  George was so happy to get home that night and see that Santa left a lot of presents!

What Santa got me a target! How awseome!

The last present a gift from mom and dad.

He got his new bow!!!!

Christmas was good in the house. George got what he asked for, a new bow and a ninja turtles body pillow and comfetor. He got various other archery things, a few games, even a microscope with slides!  I'm going to make an effort to update this again of Friday with how are first week back from break has been.