In His Grip: First Days of School 2012

I'm back!!!! I haven't blogged in a very long time but we have been super busy with many things going on this spring and summer. In March Miss Merry Ellen made her arrival. Then we spent much of the summer playing baseball. My mom is currently undergoing chemo so we have been going to visit her and spend time with her in south Louisiana too. I am looking forward to getting back into the routine of our normal schedule. We can't wait for AWANA to begin again. :) For more information on AWANA at FBC click here.

School is back in session at Perrin Academy and we are busy, busy, busy! I am so thankful that God has given me the opportunity and the means to homeschool my sweet kiddos. Sometimes it is challening but it is ALWAYS worth it. Thankfully Merry Ellen is a very good baby and we get alot accomplished while she naps. Here are a few pictures to share our first few weeks of school with you.

My big second grader!

My sweet Kindergarten boy!

Merry Ellen's first day of "school"

The boys working on their calendar binders. This binder contains all of our morning activities. Jake's is a little more advanced than Jared's. In their calendar binders they both have to do things like chart the weather, complete a calendar, make tally marks, work on place value, and work on shapes and numbers (Jake in cursive, Jared in print). Jake has a few additional pages where he has to make the date with money and make up number sentences with the date. Jared's has a few pages Jake's doesn't have. Jared has an "Alpha Art" page where we use his thumb print to make items that begin with every letter of the alphabet. Jared also has a page for sight words (which we will begin after Christmas) and word families.

This is Jake doing workshop. I love workshop and used it often when I taught school. Basically there are task cards he completes independently while I work with Jared.

This year I am also incorporating a curriculum called "Galloping the Globe." We will cover the seven continents and countries within each continent. The first week we focused on naming the seven continents. The boys made paper mache globes and labeled them. They were fun but they sure were messy. :)

I also bought them inflatable globes to color each continent as we cover countries on that continent.

We learned about China first. The highlight of the unit on China was spending a great deal of time studying the panda bear. Here the boys (and Merry Ellen) were watching a live panda cam. It was really neat. After watching for a little while we realized she had a baby which is even more extraordinary because pandas rarely have babies in captivity.