Two Week Review: March 30 - April 12

These two weeks were busy, busy, busy.

Scooby-Doo had his speech therapy (of course).  He also did a few workbooks in one sitting.  I guess he really wanted to learn... or maybe he's possessed...  His therapists say he talks all the time for them.  Just a word here and there.  But does he talk for me?  No.  Of course not.  Why would he?

Optimus Prime & Bumblebee had some t-ball/baseball confusion.  First they were on t-ball, then baseball, then back to t-ball, then the league manager called me at home to ask if I wanted to put them back on baseball.  Ummmm, let me think about this.  NO.  Let's just pick something and stick with it already, people.  Their first game is on Tuesday.

They did good with schoolwork.  Two more days and we will be completely caught up and then I case ease off of our insane schedule.  So, onto what we read!

Optimus Prime:
Ready for Kindergarten, Stinky Face? by Lisa McCourt
Handy Manny: Pinata Party
Reader's Clubhouse: Nick is Sick
It's the 100th Day, Stinky Face! by Lisa McCourt
I Can Read! Phonics The Berenstain Bears: The Chipmunk
The Giant's Garden by Cindy Leaney
What's Wrong Mrs Wolf? by Cindy Leaney
I Can Read! Phonics The Berenstain Bears: Search for Gold
Jungle Journey by Cindy Leaney
Nice News by Cindy Leaney
The Circus by Cindy Leaney
Barron's Reader's Clubhouse: Doc Block
Barron's Reader's Clubhouse: Too, Too Hot
Curious George: Librarian for a Day
An Amazing Machine by Cindy Leaney
Rooster's Alarm by Ian Smith
The Talking Telescope bu Cindy Leaney
Curious George: A Winter's Nap
Night, Night by Sue Graves
Happy Halloween, Mittens! by Lola M. Schaefer
Eloise Decorates for Christmas by Kay Thompson
No New Pets! by Hans Wilhelm
I Spy Thanksgiving

Bumblebee:
Handy Manny: Pinata Party
Ready for Kindergarten, Stinky Face? by Lisa McCourt
It's the 100th Day, Stinky Face! by Lisa McCourt
Reader's Clubhouse: Nick is Sick
I Can Read! Phonics The Berenstain Bears: The Sleepover
Station K.I.D.S. by Cindy Leaney
Rachel the Shy Jellyfish by Cindy Leaney
I Can Read! Phonics The Berenstain Bears: Family Fun
An Amazing Machine by Cindy Leaney
The Circus by Cindy Leaney
Nice News by Cindy Leaney
Curious George: A Winter's Nap
Barron's Reader's Clubhouse: Doc Block
Barron's Reader's Clubhouse: Too, Too Hot
Jungle Journey by Cindy Leaney
Rooster's Alarm by Ian Smith
The Giant's Garden by Cindy Leaney
Curious George: Librarian for a Day
Night, Night by Sue Graves
I Spy Thanksgiving
No New Pets! by Hans Wilhelm
Eloise Decorates for Christmas by Kay Thompson
Happy Halloween, Mittens! by Lola M. Schaefer

I cannot wait for them to figure out this reading thing.  Optimus Prime almost has it down.  He should by the end of the summer.  Bumblebee is going to take a LOT more work.  But if one of them would get it down it would be easier on all of us.  Then I could really focus with the other...  This summer, we're pretty much going to be reading all the time.

Anyway, I have to go and practice today's reading with them now.

Quarterly Curriculum: February - April 2014

Ahhhh, here it is, our curriculum again.  Posted so I can start getting ready for next quarter.

There was panic this quarter.  The schedule I had written was thrown out when Scooby-Doo started speech therapy every day for two hours a day.  Driving the half hour there, spending the two hours there, and then driving the half hour home was too much for us so we shelved most of our schoolwork for about a month and just focused on reading until we got our stride down.  Then we had to go back and cover all that lost ground.

Optimus Prime & Bumblebee:

So, our schedule was schoolwork Monday-Friday with Saturday & Sunday off.  I was not happy about this, but I had to work with what I was given...

Handwriting - Practicing handwriting (mainly numbers and letters), some counting, some letter sounds, etc.
Days - Monday & Wednesday
Textbooks - Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade K (American Education Publishing), Brain Quest Workbook: Kindergarten (Workman Publishing Company).
Number of Pages - 3

Science - Learning about different animals (broken into units) with some reading comprehension thrown into the mix.
Days - Monday & Wednesday
Textbooks - The Complete Book of Animals Grades 1-3 (American Education Publishing).
Number of Pages - 1

Spanish - Practicing Spanish vocabulary (broken into different units) and comprehension.
Days - Tuesday & Thursday
Textbooks - The Complete Book of Starter Spanish Grades PK-1 (American Education Publishing).
Number of Pages - 3

History/Geography - Map reading, directions, land-forms, continents, etc.
Days - Tuesday & Thursday
Textbooks - Scholastic Success With 1st Grade Workbook (Scholastic Teaching Resources), World Countries, 50 States (both of these workbook were from Target's dollar section) .
Number of Pages - 2

Art - Painting, other activities, etc.
Days - Friday
Textbooks - None.  Just a weekly project
Number of Pages - N/A

Logic - Same/different, patterns, opposites, mazes, dot-to-dots, word searches, crosswords, etc.
Days - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Textbooks - Big Puzzle Play (School Zone).
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Math - Addition, subtraction, fractions, counting by 5's & 10's, time, money, etc. 
Days - Monday - Friday
Textbooks - Addition, Subtraction, and Time & Money books from Dollar General and Target.
Number of Pages - 2

English - Learning the difference between vowels and consonants, learning how to sound words out, synonyms, antonyms, compound words, rhyming words, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, sentences, punctuation marks, reading comprehension, etc.
Days - Monday - Friday
Textbooks - Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade 1 (American Education Publishing), Scholastic Success With 1st Grade Workbook (Scholastic Teaching Resources).
Number of Pages - 2

Spelling - Spelling words & units
Days - Monday - Friday
Textbooks - None, just loose worksheets.
Number of Pages - 1 1/2

Some final notes:

• The schedule had to get slimmed down a bit since Scooby-Doo is starting speech therapy.
• The first week of each month will just be our "core" subjects (Logic, Math, English & Spelling) and our Concept Week.  Trying to tackle "core" classes, "secondary" classes, and a Concept Week all in one week was too much.  
• Baseball in March and April!
• Sight Words has been dropped.  I only intended to do it for one quarter.  This semester most of our spelling words will be sight words.
• Art will just be once a week, and it will be a project.  No more coloring books (for now, at least)!
• Letter & Number Practice has been combined into just Handwriting.
• Reading Comprehension has been dropped.  I'm not too happy about this, but I had to slim down our schedule so it was combined with English.  We'll have to see if we like this or not as time goes by.
• Since our schedule has been slimmed down so much we're going to use what (little) extra time we have learning how to read.  We'll be spending A LOT of time on one-on-one reading to make up for the very basic schedule.

Scooby-Doo:

Scooby-Doo isn't preschool age yet, but he loves watching his older brothers do their schoolwork, and he likes to feel involved so I decided to start doing schoolwork fairly regularly with him.  This quarter we have a "real" schedule written up, but if we don't stick to it, I'm not going to worry.

• First off, we are dropping our book goal.  He just hasn't been interested this past month, so there is no point in setting a goal he has no desire to meet.
• We have the goal of 1 page (front & back) a day in a Colors & Shapes workbook.  He finally getting his shapes down and he's trying to figure out his colors.
• We have the goal of 1 page (front & back) a day in an Alphabet workbook.  He's starting to recognize letters so I don't want to stop!
• We have the goal of 1 page (front & back) a day in a Counting workbook.  I'm excited over this, since he already knows how to count to 10.  I thought about dropping the alphabet books to do this, but since he's starting to get that I don't want to.  So we'll just do both!
• Lastly, Scooby-Doo is currently doing speech therapy.

Concept Week #12: Knights

Knights was kind of a mellow concept week, so I really don't have much to say.  I really couldn't find many worksheets (which was fine) so all we really did was read about knights in our book and do knight themed puzzles in our jigsaw puzzle book (which was called Knights and Castles Jigsaw Book).  And we read another Time Traveller book (The Time Traveller Book of Knights and Castles) so my kids were super excited.

To flesh out this post a bit more I'll point out that we talked more about the "mythology" of knights rather than the "truth."  What do I mean?  Well, I didn't get into things like church politics, state politics, rapes, murders, oppression, slavery, ignoring the knights code, Crusades, etc.  In my kids eyes knights are heroes and I figured they're six, they can live with that myth for as long as they want.  So what they learned about was the ideal situation.  Where knights always followed their code, where lords never attacked a neighboring land unless they had too (and not because they wanted to spread their own territory), where the words rape, torture, and genocide don't exist, where religious or state politics didn't determine who should live or die or who should marry who, where people were civilized and not... human.  More of a Disney version of knighthood with clear good and evil than a A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones version which is far more accurate and truthful.  

So, they learned about how castles worked, why knights obeyed their lords, what a serf was, why serfs served the castle, political marriages, etc.  All of which is true, and accurate... and the ideal which is only part of the reality.  

These last three concept weeks (Pirates, Viking/Norse Mythology, and Knights) were more about the fun aspects than the truth.  Granted, I did tell my kids that these people killed other people, I just omitted than some of these people were bad people.  My kids still live in the world where good always triumphs over evil, and I'm not ready to burst that bubble yet...   

Two Week Review: March 16 - 29

These were a busy two weeks.  Scooby-Doo went back to speech therapy and my mom came to visit for a week, plus we did Ostara (Easter) while she was here and I had to make homemade candy for that (Scooby-Doo has severe allergies and store bought candy is rarely safe).

So, what did we do?

Scooby-Doo was so happy to go back to speech therapy.  During their spring break he was so grumpy and moody, and he kept trying to climb into the car and buckle himself into his car seat.  We did some schoolwork, but not as much as the last two weeks.  He also sang his abc's for his therapists which was a first.

Optimus Prime & Bumblebee were sad their fitness class was over with, but t-ball starts next week so they got over it pretty quick!  Now I just need to figure out how to schedule that in everyday...

They are still doing just fine on their schoolwork, and they've been real good about doing extra pages.  I fixed our schedule to reflect what it was initially supposed to be for the quarter, and by that schedule we are only two weeks behind.  So, we'll keep squeezing in a little bit here and there and we should be completely caught up by the end of the quarter.  Then I'll go back to updates about their regular schoolwork.

What did we (they) read?

A LOT!

Optimus Prime:
Fancy Nancy The Dazzling Book Report by Jane O'Connor
Brownie & Pearl Take a Dip by Cynthia Rylant
Brownie & Pearl Hit the Hay by Cynthia Rylant
Brownie & Pearl Go for a Spin by Cynthia Rylant
Brownie & Pearl Step Out by Cynthia Rylant
Handy Manny: Cookie Rescue
Handy Manny: Bunny Trouble
DK Readers: Homes Around the World
DK Readers: Ponies & Horses
Brownie & Pearl Get Dolled Up by Cynthia Rylant
Brownie & Pearl Grab a Bite by Cynthia Rylant
Brownie & Pearl Make Good by Cynthia Rylant
Reader's Clubhouse: Ted Saw an Egg
Step Into Reading: Barbie: Horse Show Champ
Curious George Race Day by H. A. Rey
I Can Read Phonics! Batman: Feline Felonies
Lego Reader: Help is on the Way
Mop Top by Sue Graves
Dad's Cake by Margaret Nash
Oh, Jet by Jillian Powell
Freddy's Teddy by Clare DeMarco
Alan and the Animals by Evelyn Foster
Harry and the Horse by Sue Graves
Station K.I.D.S. by Cindy Leaney
Rachel and the Shy Jellyfish by Cindy Leaney
I Can Read Phonics! The Berenstain Bears: It's Not a Frog
I Can Read Phonics! Superman: Bizarro

Bumblebee:
Fancy Nancy and the Boy From Paris by Jane O'Connor
Brownie & Pearl Make Good by Cynthia Rylant
Brownie & Pearl Get Dolled Up by Cynthia Rylant
Brownie & Pearl Go for a Spin by Cynthia Rylant
Brownie & Pearl Grab a Bite by Cynthia Rylant
Handy Manny: Bunny Trouble
Handy Manny: Cookie Rescue
DK Readers: Ponies & Horses
DK Readers: Homes Around the World
Brownie & Pearl Hit the Hay by Cynthia Rylant
Brownie & Pearl Step Out by Cynthia Rylant
Brownie & Pearl Take a Dip by Cynthia Rylant
Step Into Reading: Barbie: Horse Show Champ
Reader's Clubhouse: Ted Saw an Egg
Lego Reader: Help is on the Way
I Can Read Phonics! Batman: Toxic Terror
Curious George Race Day by H. A. Rey
Harry and the Horse by Sue Graves
Alan and the Animals by Evelyn Foster
Mop Top by Sue Graves
A Cake for Dinner by Sue Graves
Dad's Cake by Margaret Nash
Freddy's Teddy by Clare DeMarco
A Talking Telescope by Cindy Leaney
Super Sale by Cindy Leaney
I Can Read Phonics! Batman: Batman's Friends
I Can Read Phonics! Batman: Meet the Super Heroes

27 books each.  That's more than double what they read for the previous two weeks.  That's just short of 4 times what they read the two weeks before that.

Optimus Prime is doing great with his reading.  I'm hoping it'll come together soon for him so I can stat focusing on Bumblebee.  I always thought Bumblebee would get this reading thing down first.  If they keep at this pace they're going to prove me wrong...

Science Experiment #2: Can Flowers Change Colors? (Part 2)

I'm sure you've seen this picture kicking around facebook:

Well, I was curious whether or not it would work, so I figured it would be neat to try.  However, we already had so many mugs of flowers going in the house so I decided to break our experiment up into two parts.  So, we did this part the day after we were done with the first round of flowers.

Supplies:

• some white flowers (we used carnations)
• knife to cut the flowers 
• glasses/mugs
• assorted food coloring
• paper clips

First, put your water and food coloring into your cups/mugs.  We used 5 drops of food coloring again, and the colors were green, yellow, red, neon pink, neon yellow (not green, honest), and blue.

Second, cut the stems if you need to shorten the flowers (also, leave the stem longer than what you will ultimately need for the ones going into more than one color - trust me on this).  Then, for the flowers you are putting into more than one glass of water cut the stem like in the picture above.  Now, I didn't buy roses because they are expensive, so I bought carnations.  These stems were far too thin to cut into quarters, so I cut them in half and put each half into it's own cup.  We only did this with 4 of the 10 flowers.  The other 6 we just put into it's own cup (more on that in a minute).











I want to say, this was a MAJOR pain in the butt.  The picture above shows the flower hanging out hovering above four different cups, completely happy and content with life.  Yeah, not so much.  The stems did NOT like being cut like this, and I had to paper clip them to the cups.  And they didn't like that either.

So, after a couple of days the flowers were changing colors.  It took a little longer for the ones sliced in half, but they changed too.

Now, for the flowers in just one color, after they changed colors we swapped them around so that they all ended up in another glass than the one they started out in.  This has nothing to do with the facebook picture, I was just curious if they would turn into two different colors this way as well as the other.

Final results?  Those placed into two glass DID turn into two colors, just not as vibrantly or strongly as those placed in one cup:

Green and yellow

Blue and neon yellow

And, the one's that were swapped around did get a tinge on the ends of their petals of the second color:

If you look closely, the green one here has a neon pink tinge at the end of the petals.

Now, why leave extra stem for the ones going into two glasses?  Because this killed their stem and the dead part had to be cut off to try and prolong the life of the flower.  The flowers only made it a couple of days before I had to pull them out because they were dying.  The flowers in one color at a time were doing just fine and could of stayed in the cups for a few more days but I felt bad for the half-dead ones so I took them all out to clean up the mess.

The half dead flower that was cut in half.

Final opinion, though?  I wouldn't go slicing up these flowers again.  It almost killed them, and honestly, I felt really bad.  Also, what's the point of doing this if the flowers won't survive the process?

However, overall these two projects showed my kids that yes you can change the color of flowers with food coloring and it also showed them just how water effects plant life.

Science Project #2: Can Flowers Change Colors?

I remember buying green flowers for St. Patrick's Day at school when I was a teenager.  (I went to a Catholic school, so of course we celebrated St. Patrick's Day by wearing green carnations and going to church.)  I believe it was my dad who told me that they colored the carnations with green food coloring in the water.  So, since my kids can't buy green carnations from a school (if they would even sell them anymore, they probably don't) I decided to turn this into a science experiment for March.

Supplies:

• white carnations
• knife (if needed)
• glasses (mugs work just as well if your children have broken all of your glasses)
• assorted food coloring

First, cut the flowers if needed.  Your probably will, I have no idea who you would even buy short stemmed carnations from.

Then, fill the glasses/mugs up about half way with some water, and have your kids put in about 3-5 drops of food coloring.  Enough to get a strong color.  Then add the flowers, we put two in each cup (our colors were purple, neon pink, green, yellow, and neon yellow that looks like neon green but honestly it isn't).

Now it'll take a few days to fully happen but your flowers will start to change color.  The green started after a couple of hours.

Green, yellow, and neon green did beautiful.

After a coupe of days, and doubling the food coloring twice purple and neon pink only tinted at the edges.  Maybe the colors were too strong/deep to fully color the flowers?  We have no idea.

In the end we gave up on the purple and neon pink and just put the flowers in a mug on the table.  They lasted about a week, long after the bouquet said it would on the packaging.

A close up.

Concept Week #11: Norse Mythology

This concept week was a blast.  My kids are obsessed with vikings (courtesy of the "How To Train Your Dragon" movie - I can't wait to read the books with them), so they got to learn about Leif Ericson discovering North America, the way vikings and their slaves lived, and about their gods too.  We didn't have many worksheets.  Education.com failed me, and I had a hard time finding age appropriate ones anywhere else online.  Still, they learned a lot.

We covered the more famous myths as we worked on a scrapbook of the gods:

DEFINITELY, our most ambitious (and fun) project to date:

And for our book we read The Time Traveller Book of Viking Raiders.  (Two l's, that's not a typo, the book is British.)  It was a neat book where you go back in time and read about how a fictional group of vikings would have lived.  You read about how they build their houses, who lives in the houses, how the slaves were treated, how their ships were built, how they went raiding, what they did when they weren't raiding, etc.

It was a really good book, and they have another one in the series called The Time Traveller Book of Knights and Castles that I think we'll pick up for our next Concept Week.  We have leftover pages in the scrapbook, so I'm thinking we'll just keep adding other mythology groups to it.  Maybe Celtic next?  Not sure.  All I know is if your kids are as crazy about vikings as mine, you should do something similar.