First Day of Homeschool 2012

School has finally started back for us... Yes! I know it's late! But that is the beauty of homeschooling.  Since we had vacation and then birthday parties and everything else that pretty much switched schedules and routines upside down, today was a challenge to get back into a "routine"!!! I didn't get through our entire lesson plan for the day, but we got the majority done and I winged it without our "board" for the week - I'll have that done for tomorrow.

For this school year, we are using a curriculum for different subjects, here is what we are doing:

K4 Abeka Curriculum:

• Phonics/Reading
•  Writing
• Math/Numbers

This curriculum is basic and after going through a couple of lessons out of each book, I am realizing we can pretty much skip ahead, for my little guy was bored! Thank goodness I had extra stuff planned in our lesson.  Not sure if I'll skip completely ahead or not, I'll give it the rest of the week to decide.

 K5 Discipleland Bible Curriculum:

• Amazing Old Testament Heroes
• Amazing New Testament Heroes

I love Discipleland Curriculum!! I used it for 5 years in children's ministry and I still believe it to be the BEST hands down.  This Kindergarten level is the right level for him and breaks it down to his understanding, plus what little boy doesn't love superheroes?!?! It's great stuff and my little guy is super excited about Bible time!

So onto our first day of homeschooling and getting back into the swing of things.

Here is our schedule:

• Opening Prayer
• Circle Time
• Bible Time
• Discussion Time
• Math Time
• Art Time
• P.E.
• Phonics/Reading (Language Arts)
• Dramatic Play
• Science Time
• Creative Movement
• Writing
• Closing Time (Review/Prayer) 

I don't set a time for our schedule as some days we start in the morning, some days in the afternoon and then some of our "times" for each day are short/long depending on what is planned.  I like to have "freedom" to move within our schedule.  And luckily, Michigan doesn't have a set "time frame" that you have to abide by, but we usually total about 4 hours of school time each day... though my little guy would LOVE to do it ALL day long! :)

For our Circle Time today, it wasn't as long as I planned it to be, we cut it short because my little guy was getting restless, but we covered the following:

• Songs/Rhymes
• Calendar & Notebook
• Weather
• Letter Mailbox
• Sign Language for Letter "I"
• Reading "My Letter I Book"

Here are some pictures from our circle time:

 

On the left side is our Memory Verse (Philippians 4:13)

On the right side are "Fall" Songs

All of these came from 1+1+1=1.

You can get the Memory Verse from the Letter I Pack.

You can get the "Fall" Songs HERE.

 These are Letter cards that came with our Abeka curriculum. I hung these up

to improvise until I finished our school board for the week.

"My Letter I Book" came from a free download that was offered awhile back,

in a pack called 'Exploring Letters in My World'.  We will add this to our "I" Lapbook.

When you open it, it's a pre-reading book with "I is for _____" and there are LOTS of

"I" words, like island, igloo, indian, iron, iguana, etc.

 

 Our mailbox hides a magnetic letter 'I' within it and

I put the "I" words from 1+1+1=1 within it.

We sing a little song, open the box, discover the letter and it's sound,

then review all the "I" words.

You can print the 'I' words in this pack HERE.

 

Calendar Time!!!

He is officially in charge of this.  He leads me in the songs, counting the days,

and then asks me to help him with the "date" for the day (as in saying Wednesday, October 10, 2012).

The above 4 pictures are new for this year! I printed off a Calendar Notebook from Homeschool Creations.  This covers each month, where he writes in the "date" number for each day (only I'm having trace at the moment), then colors in the star with the "date" number that matches today's date, and he traces the month's name.  The other page allows you to pick what "season" the month is in and color in a graph for the weather each day - today was "cloudy" here, though I think it could of been snowy... brrrrrrr!!!

Here are pictures from our Bible Time:

 His Workbook from the Discipleland Curriculum!

We learned that Adam and Eve needed a hero!!!

 He traced shapes of things that God created:

sun, moon, star, fish, bird, hippo

 This was a game from the curriculum...

You had to pretend to do superhero things, like,

- Fly across the room (only he flew our dog across the room here!)

- Shoot fire out of your hands

- Shoot icicles out of your ears

and when you realized that you couldn't really do these things only pretend

you got to drive home the point that God can do the impossible!!!

Thus why we all need a hero!

More work in his workbook, he crossed out all the pictures that couldn't save the world leaving Jesus as the superhero!!!

Here are pictures from our Art Time:

The project is incomplete as it took awhile to dry, so we'll finish it tomorrow! :)

He painted a piece of construction paper that we will turn into a teepee

and then we'll discuss about homes Indians lived in.

The glitter glue bottles were great for fine motor skills... took some effort to squeeze

them and "dot" them in the right spot he wanted.

Here are pictures from our Math Time:

 We worked on Number Recognition, more than counting, as my little guy can count to 100 by himself.

Our curriculum gave us these cool number posters, so I had him find "1" of something, "2" of something that were the "same" thing, and "3" of something that were the "same" thing.

So we have:

1 - Mailbox

2 - Hot Wheels Cars

3 - Monster Trucks

This was his FAVORITE game of the day!

Pumpkin Size Sorting File Folder Game

I hid the pumpkins all over the house and he sought them out, then

raced back as he found each one to put into the correct size column (small, medium, big).

Here are pictures from Writing Time:

I just introduced how to write Letter I today, we didn't work on writing the

actual letter on paper or anything.  I first had him trace the letter poster with his finger

then we wrote the letter in the air with our fingers, just to give him an idea of the

correct format first.

This worksheet came from 1+1+1=1 in the Letter I Pack.

This was just introduction for today, we'll work on the actual writing process tomorrow.

He is getting WAY better at staying on those dotted lines now though. :)

Here are pictures of a start to our Letter I Lapbook:

This is the front cover work for our lapbook.

He colored the ice cream his favorite flavor, Blue Moon, and the cone peach.

He didn't want to color the "I", so he wrote the letter instead in the correct format!!!

We'll glue it to our book tomorrow, it was getting late at this point.

When daddy came home today he told him all about his school adventures and was excited to show him his "painting" and tell him that Adam and Eve needed a hero! We had a fun time before bed playing the Super Why ABC board game and Trouble.  It was a great day!!! :)

Want to download my lesson plans for the week, Click HERE.

*You do not have to have my curriculum to use these lesson plans.

Have fun and be a blessing!

~Bekah