Homeschool Journal Highlights

Monday

Character trait of the week

Little Miss acted out the Tale of Benjamin Bunny with her Nins from Grapat. This was to practice sequencing and to encourage her to be more specific with her details when telling me a story. After sequencing she went over the story again and she pointed out all of the prepositions and how they connected the sentences together.

We also took the time to dig deeper into learning about Lavender and Tobacco. What the differences are, the health risks that using tobacco brings, what lavender is used for, etc.

The curriculum mentions to draw a diagram of a bunny if we hadn’t already done so, but since we had, Little Miss asked to draw one of a squirrel.

We also took some time to do creative activities. This is a little art garden with their Grimms Rainbow and Leonardo Sticks

We didn’t get to the knitting project that was for this weeks handicraft, but we will eventually get to it.

Books for Mondays book basket

Tuesday

Using our Farm Anatomy book we went over the diagram of an onion. She drew and labeled the parts in her Leuchtturm journal she puts all her lessons in.

We dyed muslin dishcloths instead of handkerchiefs. We used beets, turmeric, and red onion skin. If you use turmeric, make sure to rinse before you wash it with other clothes or wash separate in case of bleeding.

Wednesday

Little Miss took a good forty minutes reading in her rabbit care book, where I had her write some important notes if she were a rabbit owner. (I don’t mind the incorrect spelling for these quick notes she takes.)

For her typing lesson, she wrote her own rabbit story. She needed to have story where she added quotation marks for her Language lesson we were working on this week.

We just printed out a picture that would fit the day’s theme for her to color while I read our read aloud.

Books for Wednesday

The Velveteen Rabbit // Pet care guides for kids Rabbit // How Does My Garden Grow

Thursday

We read so many pleasant gardening books today! We are planning on making a garden this spring and it was the perfect oppertunity to come up with some sort of a garden layout plan. This is what Little Miss thought our garden should look like and what we should grow. I’m really excited to start this process, not only to grow some of our own food, but to teach the kids these skills.

Lynni bug was teaching her brother colors.

Just getting some fresh air. The rain never stops us from having a good time!

Lynni Bug volunteered to help daddy make dinner! We had pancakes, scrambled eggs, and ribs from the night before. She really enjoys daddy/daughter time.

Books for Thursday

We are the Gardeners Food Chains and the Food Web in Our Backyard Secrets in the Garden The Curious Garden

Friday

We took today off for Valentines Day.

Independent time

Saturday

Little Miss and I had mommy/daughter time at a local greenhouse while Little Man and daddy were at home playing.

I taught Lynni what the symbols meant on the back of the plant tags so she will be able to help pick out plants for different parts of the yard.

We decided we would get some herbs while we were there.

They had so many baby chicks for sale! We spent a good ten minutes looking at their cuteness.

Thanks for joining us on here and reading what we’ve been up to!

-M

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Homeschool Journal Highlights

Welcome to the second week of our homeschool journal!

I didn’t get around to taking pictures of all of the books that we used this week; these were the main ones.

The Busy Tree ||OWLS ||White Owl Barn Owl ||Follow the Water from Brook to Ocean || The Tree Book || Because of an Acorn ||The Barn Owl || Tell Me Tree || Trees, Leaves, and Bark || Where the river begins

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When we finish reading, I like to have Little Miss give an oral summary of the story. This time she told the story back to her grandpa and gave an alternative narration on how the story would unfold if Nutkin had been respectful, as ‘respectful’ was our character trait of the week. I love to see how she gets more descriptive each time she gives a narration. It’s also very entertaining to hear what she comes up with.

After reading I told her that she could take a break to bake with my sister, who was here for the day while my niece was in school. They both love to bake and my sister is the baker in the family and is here almost all week during school hours, so Little Miss gets quite a bit of baking lessons. They treated us with some scrumptious vanilla cupcakes and homemade Italian butter cream frosting.

The gorgeous vanilla cupcakes Miss decorated and piped.

For science, we reviewed bodies of water. We covered bodies of water last year, but it was a good refresher and another reason to make some fun salt dough! She used the salt dough to create land forms, which she placed on blue construction paper to illustrate the different bodies of water.

Tuesday

Adopt a tree day! Little Miss and I LOVE this idea. Unfortunately, we don’t have any trees in our yard. We told her that this summer, we would plant a tree or two in our yard, but until then we would find another tree to observe. We went to one of the parks in our town and she finally found one that was perfect. These were some pictures she took of her tree:

Her tree

The roots

Lichen growing on the tree

Acorn caps that were found around it

Quiet time after the park

Wednesday

We spent a lot of time outside, even though it was raining most of the day. The kids enjoyed splashing in the puddles!

Testing out new rain boots.

I was particularly excited about Wednesday’s handicraft because we got to felt acorns. Little Miss and I have seen felted acorns on Pinterest and thought they were really cute, but we never thought to make any before. You can use acorn tops you find outside or order them from Amazon.

This is the felt that I ordered for our felting projects. It’s a great starter kit that comes with a variety of colors and the tools you need to get started.

Little Miss felted acorn caps.

While Lynni bug was getting her copy-work done, I was playing with Little Man. He is at the stage where he loves to drop objects into containers. Here I just have some of our Spielgaben balls that he likes to drop in his Inbucare box

Thursday

Today we just started the morning with free reading time while I gathered everything up for our fun activities for the day. She read about 20 minutes and then we began reading all of our books about our favorite bird, the owl! Some fun facts she gathered from our readings

• Scientists believe they have been around 65 million years.
• The male is smaller than the female.
• One ear is higher than the other. The higher ear hears the sounds from above and the lower ear hears noises from below.
• They can’t move their eyes, but they can turn their necks 270 degrees.

Our owl illastrations.

Another activity I wanted to bring into this lesson was dissecting an owl pellet. Little Miss wasn’t too sure about that, but she did it. We found two mouse skulls and something else we couldn’t identify. A lot of the bones looked alike to both of us, so we didn’t finish putting the skeleton together. It was a lot of work and challenged her attention span (and mine too). I found this really affordable owl pellet for our science lesson. It includes one pellet, a dissection pick, and an owl pellet bone chart showing the skeletal structure of their prey.

Talking about owls brought up a trip we took last April, where we attended a presentation on owls. These are some pictures I found from that trip.

During free time we got out our spielgaben and Lynni made an owl with the loose pieces while RT rolled the pieces down his slide.

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She ended the school day with finishing up math on the swing.

Friday

Friday morning was started with all of us cuddled on the couch with the cozy fire going. We were reading our living book, Over the Hills and Far Away: The Life of Beatrix Potter as our history for the week. Little Miss wanted to show her brother where Beatrix was from, so we pulled out our Maps book.

After our English lesson, Little Miss gave me examples of everything we covered for the week. She gave examples of helping verbs, contractions, and interjections. When all of the “formal” schooling was done, we went outside and looked around for things that were interesting to us to put them in our natural journals. We didn’t get very many pictures because we were so focused on what was around us.

A spider on our garage door and a mushroom. Pictures by Little Miss.

When it was time to come in we were ready for our tea time and baked the treat of the week: honey and peanut butter cookies! They were SO good. I tweaked the recipe just a little, because I didn’t have enough honey. I think everyone liked it less sweet. I gave Little Miss a choice of books for us to read while we drank tea, and she chose A Time to Keep.

That’s a wrap for Week Two! Make sure you check out Week One if you haven’t already!