Sonlight Bible Tracers wks 19-27

I have just uploaded the Sonlight bible tracers for the third nine weeks of Core A. They are on my Google Docs. Some problems I am still having - I am unable to combine my pdfs that I create. If anyone knows of a good program that will do this, please let me know. I have not completed the pocket chart strips for these bible verses. Reason - I am not sure anyone is using these and I don't want to take time to create these, if that is true. If you are using the pocket charts that I have created, let me know and I will complete the charts for you. I hope these are a blessing to you. Again, if you find mistakes, please let me know so I can fix them.

Sonlight Week 4

Finishing Sonlight week 4, we learned many things. We finished reading My Father's Dragon early and began Elmer and the Dragon since we had time before our next book.  Here are some of the activities we accomplished this week.

We are still practicing our tallies and one way that we did was by playing a game all week. We would take turns and roll a die, marking tallies for the numbers we rolled. The sheet went to 100.

J worked on ordinal numbers, what animal is first, second, etc... This work was in addition to her work in the math book. I feel that it doesn't review these skills as much as I would like so I find ways to review them.

Our mystery letter was T so here she is working on her T page. She is laughing because of the underwear picture on the alpha pages. She thought this was hilarious.

J is practicing her reading. This is a simple word family reader from Scholastic but she is doing it.

I added a new activity for working with her sight words. She is using a large push pin for a bulletin board. J is tracing over the letters of her sight words with the push pin. This is a take on the Montessori map tracing. J also discovered that when you hold it up to the light, you can see the word - pretty cool.

More Wikki stick word practice. We will use these cards for other review.

Word family houses, these are great and we are hanging them on a wall to practice. These were found at Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten for free. She has several downloads available and we have used or will use them all.

J made a chariot from a paper cup. It is a little wobbly but cute. We read about ancient Roman times for Social Studies.

We also made a catapult - super cool. It is really to shoot marshmallows but if we had any marshmallows from 'Merica, we wouldn't be shooting them from a catapult. We chose pom poms. It shot the pom poms very high but it was difficult to aim. We were trying to knock down a tower of paper cups but we could never get it right. So we just had fun shooting pom poms everywhere. The directions for this was found at Devin Collier.

In this photo, you can see what we were aiming for and what we missed.

Lastly, we made a Roman dessert called Honey Cakes. These were gone by the next day! They were really good, the family loved them. So, we have finished another week with Sonlight.Hope your school week has gone well.

Book of the Week - tot

Our book of the week is a family favorite - Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault. Many teachers use this book early in the school year to work on alphabet recognition. It is a great book with wonderful repetition. Here are some of the activities we did for the tot. Most of these activities can be found in my tot bag post here. My other tot bags can be found here.

Here is a picture of Kaleb's activities buckets. It is hard to see but I added all of the items I placed in his tot bag.

First thing we tried was playing with the magnetic letters on the palm tree. He is truly concentrating on this.

Here Kaleb is working on the monkey puzzle that I created from some files. It is magnetic which he seems to love anything that sticks. I had grandiose ideas of showing Kaleb working through my tot bag but he had other plans. I changed the sensory bin to acorns for fall and it was the end of all other things.

Even J got into the action. They played with the nuts all week. Kaleb had no interest in other things so I will bring out the tot bag another time. Oh, well, best laid plans...right? So we are off to another great book - The Napping House by Audrey Wood. I have another tot bag in the works for If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. So stay tuned.

Book of the Week - Kindergarten

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is a family favorite. It is a great book for alphabet recognition. But since J already knows her alphabet and sounds, I decided to take it a little further. Here are some of the activities that we worked on for the week.

This book seemed to be the perfect opportunity to teach syllables. I taught J to clap her hands while saying a word in order to determine how many syllables it had. I found this game, complete with picture cards here. J would choose a picture, determine how many syllables, then add it to the mini pocket chart. She did really well with this.

Since J already knows her alphabet and sounds, we worked on beginning sounds for words. She had to look at the picture, determine the beginning sound, and write the letter. I am working with her writing, trying to get her to write the letters correctly. This as well as other great free worksheets were found at Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten.

J worked on beginning sounds by stamping the letter that each picture began with. I have lost the link to these, sorry.

We used our five senses to explore a coconut and we did an experiment. The chart idea and printable pages came from here.

J predicted that a coconut would sink because it seemed so heavy. So, we tested out her hypothesis.

Imagine her surprise when it floated. We then spent some time opening the coconut.

Here is a picture of the inside of our coconut. I was able to crack it open with some effort. We will peel it and sample some at dinner. You can tell she is a tad worried about this. A funny thing that she said is that the coconut smelled like lotion (haha, I have a lotion for Bath and Body Works that smells like that)! We also watched the Scholastic video for Chicka Chicka Boom Boom which I own but you can watch it on here.

We finished yet another great book week and can't wait for our next book - The Napping House by Audrey Wood. And...I am working on another great tot bag - one based on the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff. Stay tuned!

Tot Tuesday

If you give a boy a basket.....

he will.....

make a.....

mess!

Look What I Did!

Living here we have had to forgo items that we like to eat because they are either hard to find or just not available. Some items we can bring in because they are small or just too hard to make like ranch dressing and maple flavoring (for making syrup). I am getting used to making items that we crave. Here is what I made this weekend.

I started with a ton of tomatoes and had to remove the skins...

And I ended up with salsa. I made salsa, wow. We haven't had salsa in a long time. This is one item that we have long forgotten about here until I found several packages of salsa mix in the canning section in America this summer. The nice part of this is that I didn't have to can it. It can be frozen. It definitely had a kick but it was good. 

I also made doughnuts. Another item that I found in America this year was a doughnut pan. I only bought one (should have bought 2 for a dozen) but I love it. I made doughnuts for the first time this weekend and they turned out great. These doughnuts are made in the oven and not fried, so they have to be better for you - right? I discovered they also make a mini doughnut pan. I definitely want one! We have doughnuts here but they tend to be pricey. This was a nice alternative to buying them, not that I am against buying a box of Krispy Kremes every now and then, unless of course I can find a suitable recipe for my pan.

I have made pickles, maple syrup, salsa, doughnuts, funnel cake, tortillas (I can find these now), applesauce, tater tots (time consuming but so good), bagels (didn't turn out well), pretzels, and various other things I have tried. Sometimes, you just miss some of the food from your home country. If you have a recipe for Krispy Kremes without the use of shortening (unavailable here), I would love it. Thanks.

Sonlight Week 3

Week 3 of Sonlight and we are still moving. We finished The Boxcar Children last week and moved to My Father's Dragon for our read-aloud. We totally finished that in a heartbeat. J loved the story and I am in the process of trying to get the next two books in the series so we can see what happens. Here is what we did this week...

In Bible, we learned about the importance of obeying God. We read about Adam and Eve and discussed ways we obey God.

Our letter of the week, which we call the mystery letter, was M. J practiced writing her M's and she created an letter page.

J is working her Wordly Wise book 1. We do about 2 pages a day.

In Reading, we practiced our word families. She would flip the cards over and read the words on them.

For My Father's Dragon, she created a backpack with pictures of all of the items Elmer took with him on the adventure. She was so enamored by this story, she found items around the house and packed her backpack as well.

We worked in some math for our read-aloud. In the book, Elmer ran into 7 tigers in the woods. We found 7 wild animals (not all tigers because we didn't have 7) and we figured out how many eyes they had, how many feet, etc... Homeschool Share has a free lapbook for My Father's Dragon. It has some awesome printables.

In Social Studies, we finished reading about the Egyptians and made Egyptian bread.

It was actually pretty good. We ate it with butter and honey for dinner.

In Science, we read about different types of destructive weather and we made a tornado in a bottle. Luckily for me, I had a tornado tube that I brought from America when I taught in the classroom so we didn't have to use duct tape. J added some red food coloring and purple glitter. When we read The Wizard of Oz, maybe we will add a little house and a cow!

As a final project for Science, we made a weather vane. Here, J and Kaleb are testing it to see if it works. We will put this outside on the balcony and check the air currents. (at least I know that Kaleb is ready for blowing out his birthday candles!)

Another busy week for our learning. I am glad it is going well. J has loved all of the books we read and she keeps begging for more. Hope you had a great week as well. Next week, we have a new book - Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and we will be working with the sight words up and a.

Book of the Week - Kindergarten

Our book of the week was I Went Walking by Sue Williams. This book will help us to continue our color words and begin our sight word study of the words I and see. Here are some of the activities that we did based on our book.

J continued learning our color words - she wrote, stamped, cut out, and put them together.

J worked on a farm sheet that I found. She determined which tiles were words and which were letters. The worksheet was found at Maggie's Kinder Corner. (sorry I don't have the direct link for the worksheet but she has tons of stuff and alot of it is free.)

J learned her first sight word - I and wrote it. This worksheet comes from a book that I purchased from Scholastic.

We read a sight word book from Scholastic with the words I and see to practice.

She created a picture using our farm magnetic shapes.

J practiced writing tallies using this farm game that I found. I printed the wheel with farm pictures, added a brad and a paper clip. She spun the paper clip and added a tally to the animal that it pointed to. Sorry I don't have the link to this file.

J is working with her sight word I.

I pulled out the wikki sticks that I purchased in America and J traced over her sight words. Wikki sticks are fun, they are wax like sticky strings that can be reused over and over again.

For one last review of our sight words, I gave J some sticky flags and she flagged all of the sight words in the book. The book worked well for her sight words - I and see.

One last fun thing we did for colors and our book was an experiment using colored vinegar and baking soda. I used four colors to tint the vinegar and gave J a dish full of baking soda. She used an eye dropper and added drops of colored vinegar to the baking soda. She certainly was surprised at the result. This was a quick and easy thing to do.

Well, we finished practicing our color words and will move on to another great book - Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. See you next week for the book of the week.