World Travels With Delbert and Dinah

When we did kindergarten we selected Little Passports as part of our curriculum. We really loved it and Jayne loved getting a package in the mail every month. Then we had some big life changes and knew that it just wasn't in our budget. So we finished the second half of the school year by creating a DIY Little Passports type series called World Travels With Delbert and Dinah. It was a hit with our son and with our readers.

We stopped when kindergarten was over because our little guy's interests had moved from geography to math, go figure. Below I have the entire series linked. As we near our move to a new country, geography is beginning to perk our son's interests again. So, we are considering bringing the series back. What do you think? Would you like to see us bring it back?

World Travels: Introduction

World Travels: Guatemala

World Travels: The Netherlands

World Travels: Ireland

World Travels: Saudi Arabia

World Travels: Australia

 

 

Books My 6 Year Old Loves to Read

I am going to stick with my reading theme today and share some of my six year old son's favorite books.

Elephant and Piggie Books by Mo Willems

These books are his number one favorite right now. They are easy for him to read. They don't pose much of a challenge for him. They are so funny and silly though. He reads them over and over again. Anyone who is willing to listen will be read one or six of these books. The enjoyment level is high and his reading fluency has improved drastically from reading and rereading this wonderful series.  

 

Little Bear By Else Holmelund Minarik

This series is a classic and a TV show. My little guy doesn't remember the show but has fallen in love with the Little Bear books. This series introduced him to the joy of chapter books. Each book has four stories/chapters that add to one cohesive theme throughout the book. The text is difficult enough to challenge him but not hard enough to frustrate him. He loves the stories and the characters. We even enjoyed a chapter this morning from Little Bear's Visit.

 

Fly Guy by Tedd Arnold

This chapter book series is short and easy to read. It is easier and shorter than Little Bear. That is one of the reasons my little guy loves Fly Guy. He really enjoys all the silly adventures that Fly Guy goes on. Sometimes Fly Guy simply goes on a road trip, but sometimes things get more wild like in Fly Guy and the Frankenfly.  

 

The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner

To be fair he hasn't actually finished one of these. Book one was the first chapter book he attempted. He is at least five chapters in though and really gets into the story. The text is challenging for him quite often but he makes it through each page quite well. One of the reasons he has shelved this book for a while is that he really needed to feel the accomplishment of finishing books and this one will take quite a long time for him to finish. He is really drawn in by the story and characters. I think this book will be back in his hands soon because he really wants to see what happens to these four orphans living in a boxcar.

What are some of your kiddos favorite books to read? I know my little guy would love some recommendations!

The Reading Prize

One of my goals in Jayne's education is to instill in him a love of reading. I love to read and I want him to also. I taught him to read, so it is time to start instilling.

The reading prize was born!

It started off that we would give him a prize if he read. We had no idea how it would go so we basically made it 1 book for every dollar that the prize cost, a chapter book counts for 3. It turns out that the prizes were very motivating and we knew that we needed to change tactics or we would go broke in no time at all. So we modified our plan to be more sustainable.

How it works:

He reads X amount of chapter books (3 regular books = 1 chapter book) and he receives a prize. Each time the goal goes up one more chapter book.

Right now Jayne needs to read 6 chapter books or 18 non-chapter books. We realized that the price of the prize was not the key factor so much as the desirability of the prize. Now, instead of spending $5-10 on each prize we selected a Lego education minifig set. We can separate them into tiny themed sets and he can earn one at a time. The one we ordered is the community figures. We will split it into 17 separate prizes. Since we used some Amazon rewards on it we got it for $40 and that makes each prize $2.35 each. That is a much better deal and is a quality toy.So how is this all working out for that love of reading? He is reading like a maniac to get his prizes. His biggest reading day he read 10 books and 1 chapter from a chapter book. He has also been reading for fun. He loves the Mo Willems Elephant and Piggie books. The rule is that it has to be a book he has never read before to count toward the goal. He has been reading these books over and over though, simply because he loves them so much. The goal is to eventually phase out the program, but for now it is really inspiring him and I can see his love for reading grow.



How have you helped your kids develop a love for reading?

 

 

Bean Plant Experiment Finale

What did we learn? Sun and water give the best affect, of course. We also saw that water and sun are not equally important to plants. A plant can still grow and produce beans without water, albeit stunted. No sun and  the bean plant is doomed to death. Plants 1 and 2 both have bean pods growing now.

Ping Pong Science

We did a fun and easy experiment this week. Put a small dent in a ping pong ball. Fill a cup with hot (but not too hot) water. Put in the ball and cover. The air inside the ball warms up and expands, pushing out the dent.

First Grade Curriculum Choices

It is almost time to start a new school year at our house. We are changing up everything. I am also happy to report that, wile it was not the determiner, we were also down by half for our budget too. We are really looking forward to trying out our new goodies, but for now I will just share with you what they are...

Illuminations 1 is our core model this year. It is kind of strange because it is just a downloadable file that includes your curriculum choices to buy separately and the year planned out for you. It has set up for 3-8 grade and high school as well as adjustments for younger learners. If we like this curriculum we can use it 3 times over! That is something I can wrap my mind around!

Mystery of History is the glue that will be sticking our whole year together. MoH is a chronological whole world history from a Christian world view. Bible history is included and put in with more common history for a chance to see what order it all happened in. Mister is a huge history buff, at 5, and so a curriculum focused around history is going to be right up his alley. All the readers on the reader list build upon the lessons learned in MoH. This can also be used 3 times.


Life of Fred is our math focus for 1st grade. Mister has fantastic reading comprehension and learns so much from reading books. Life of Fred teaches math through the story of Fred's life. It also shows how math is used instead of the typical worksheet format he will be learning the practical uses of the math he is learning. We can run through the books each year till he moves up in 4th or 5th grade.

The Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide is one I don't know much about. It can be used through graduation. I will have to give you more information when I have started using it.

Grammar Punk looks fun. We are going to give it a shot. It uses dice to write sentences. It can be used through 3rd grade. I don't have this one yet, so I can't give you much on this one either.

For Science we will be reading through the mass of free kindle books I have been collecting over the last year. Mister will be learning all about animals from all over the world.

Bible is going to be covered a bit in our history lessons anyway so I think we will just read a chapter from Mister's bible each day. Of course, we will also have to watch What's in the Bible too. After all it is fun and we all learn from it!

We will continue working with Alpha Phonics and then we have agreed to let him have Magic Tree House and Boxcar Children books to practice with after that. We are really looking forward to the next school year but for now we are just having fun finishing up kindergarten!

Kindergarten Curriculum Review

We are almost done with the school year and I thought it was high time I shared my thoughts on all the curriculum we were using. I should mention that we will not be using any of these choices again next year but that is not because we didn't like them. One main reason is that we want to be more compact for our move into the mission field. 

The Sonlight core curriculum has been mostly good. There were a handful of readers that Mister did not really get into but we did find some new favorites. I would definitely use Sonlight again and plan at least get some of the readers from future years. Their book list is very good.

 

All About Reading Level 1 was a big hit at our house. Mister loved the hands on activities and it all stuck. It is very slow paced compared to Alpha Phonics, which we switched to when he finished level 1. We have been very happy with Alpha Phonics. It is very basic but he has already advanced past what he would have learned over the course of a year in All About Reading level 2 and we are still doing kindergarten at our house. Plus, Alpha is available on the Kindle so that is great for compactness!

I have to say I am not a big fan of All About Spelling. Some of the beginning activities helped him get started, but it would be just as easy to just have him spell words as he learns to read them. I don't think I would do a spelling curriculum again for Mister.

SonLight science was okay. I was disappointing to find that there was a box of supplies that needed to be ordered separately on top of the box that was included. I did not order the extra box. We are nearly done with all the science and have added a large pile of science books besides as we read them all faster than the schedule suggested. I would skip Sonlight Science in the future.

We ended up skipping Horizons math (shown above). Instead we went with Math U See. Mister got it and whipped through the workbook with ease. He did not like the math blocks and we started using Squinkies instead for much more fun and homeschool happiness. I wasn't feeling the Math U See groove this year and with the added fact that they are conforming to common core standards, I will not be purchasing from them in the future.

Handwriting Without Tears was done quickly. It lasted about 1/2 the year but Mister loved it and his handwriting is looking great, when he makes sure to do it correctly and not just mess around. This was a great choice and I am glad that we were able to use it. I would absolutely buy HWT again!

Little Passports got cut in November and we started doing our own series on the blog (World Travels on the side bar). Little Passports was fantastic and I highly recommend it. We just felt that we could spend less and focus more on what we wanted him to learn if we created our own. Plus the goodies we buy are just for him and are things we will actually use and he will love.

Dance also got the boot. We felt Just for Kix was way to commercial. Every dance class they were trying to sell us stuff (t-shirts, bags, ect.). It was hard for Mister because it was all geared toward girls. We did start using some awesome workout apps on the kindle and we have been walking and biking every chance we get.

It has been a great year! We still have a couple of months to go since we are schooling year round. Most of his curriculum is going to be finished this week though. We are going to do a long unit on Little House in the Big Woods. Mister loves the book as far as we have read it and we will be incorporating lots of activities too. 

Want to know what we are using for 1st grade? Joins us again tomorrow to find out!

World Travels: Australia

G'day Mate!

Our last adventure was very dry in the desert, but this time we found ourselves wet, wet, wet! We landed our balloon in Australia. Not on the western side, because that is mostly desert and we had just come from one of those. We landed on the eastern side of the country where most of the people live. Did you know that Australia is a country and a continent?

We met a visitor to the eastern shore, Adam. He was about to head out into the water to explore the Great Barrier Reef. Adam invited us to go with him and we couldn't resist. We rode with him on a boat to get to the reef.

We snorkeled in the water. It is kind of like swimming with a giant straw in your mouth so you can keep breathing while you swim. Delbert took a huge breath and swam 35 feet under the surface to see the sharks, but I liked staying near the top. The sharks in the reef were very friendly and safe to swim with. We saw a lot of beautiful and big fish. After a while a deadly water snake came along and we all had to get out of the water. 

We had a great time exploring with Adam. We even found some itty bitty fish toys to play with as we float away to our next great adventure. See you then!

Mister's own dad went to this country so we already have some fun stuff to play with. We have a bull whip, an alligator skin bracelet, and a boomerang. We are still getting a fun goody for him too though and we are sticking to our squinkie theme because he just loves them and he uses the zinkies a lot for math. He will also get to hear lots of stories from his daddy's trip. We will only have our Amazon Prime membership for 1 more week, so we may not get any videos in. He will have a blast tossing the boomerang around and hearing lots of stories though.

The picture this month is from here: http://madasamarinebiologist.com/post/35278601428/scinerds-coral-autopsy-reveals-great-barrier
Poor Adam didn't get a single good shot on his trip of the reef.

The Great Outdoors

School day in a bag

What better place to do school than outside? On Friday we were able to do that for the first time this year. It felt great. Plus I let Mister run laps around the house between subjects. It helped him to keep moving and fit in some extra Phy Ed time at the same time. I like to kill 2 birds with 1 stone when I can.

Now that spring is finally here, fellow northerners know what I'm saying, we are switching up our daily routine. I know that the summer will be hot and we will be trapped in my bedroom with the AC on during the afternoons. That is prime school time. So we are going to do all of our outdoor activity in the morning  have lunch, then hit the books. So far it is working out great. By the time we hit school time Mister is ready to be quiet and sit for a while. Tucker likes it too because he has been going on lots of doggie-dog walks (yes we really do talk like that at our house).

Bean Growth

Now that it is spring, we have finally begun learning about seeds. This is happening inside of course since we have a high risk of snow here in Minnesota.

Here are our beans (3) the day we planted them. The baby food jar has about an inch of water (do not allow them to be completely submerged as it stunts the growth) and the center is full of paper towel.

This is at 1 week. The leaves were straight up in the air the next day and there are lots of  roots.

This is just 2 weeks and 2 days. We transferred them to dirt and now the experimentation can begin.

If we go from left to right on the plants above, the first will get sun and light, the second only sun, and the third only water. We are also charting their growth. The experiment is supposed to go 1 month, so we will see how they fare till then.

World Travels: Saudi Arabia

Hello!

This month we landed somewhere very hot! We landed at the edge of an ocean of sand called The Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia. We met an Arab boy named Fadil. He came with his camel to see our balloon. 

Fadil brought us to his home at Al-Khamasin. There were even more camels there because this is an important area of the country for raising them. We visited with Fadil's family and told them about our adventures so far. They told us some wonderful folk tales from Saudi Arabia. 

When it was time to leave, Fadil gave us a book to read during our long days of flying in our balloon, 1001 Arabian Nights. We can't wait to read some more of their fantastic folk tales! 

Till next month,

The photo from this month is from this site: http://americanbedu.com/2011/11/02/saudi-arabia-how-empty-is-the-%E2%80%9Cempty-quarter%E2%80%9D/

This month I decided to browse some goodies and let them inspire the month. Mister has developed a love for Squinkies and when I saw this Aladdin themed set (which is also not ultra girly, yay) I knew I needed to look into Saudi Arabia. 

The middle east is a rocky topic for many people, but they are still people just like us and with interesting geography. We shouldn't let the bad news broadcasts sway our thinking of an entire people group. They never share the good things happening in a country after all. Soooo anyway...back to geography...

Our goodies this month are the Squinkie set shown above and a Children's version of Arabian Nights.

I also found this show that is free to watch with Amazon Prime, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations which has an episode on cuisine from Saudi Arabia. We will probably have to watch the Disney Aladdin too.

I would love to hear what you added to your Saudi Arabian studies this month! Just share in the comments.

Historical Napkins

We enjoyed the Living Long Ago book that came with our Sonlight curriculum. It often has fun little activities to tie in with what you are learning. This was one such day.

We learned about dinner parties in the 1800's and the book showed us how to fold napkins. It was so easy and I was able to use this new found knowledge to thoroughly impress some dinner guests of my own not long after. Who says only the kids are learning in a homeschool?

100th Day

The 100th day of school was a whole week ago. As my computer gets worse, it is harder to get posts up. We are looking at a replacement, but have not decided yet. Back to the topic at hand...

Happy 100 day!

We did 100 everything! It was nice to have a little break in the monotony that our classroom can sometimes be. Here is what we did by subject:

• Math: Sort 100 shapes into groups of 5 for skip counting practice
• Science: 100 drops of water experiment
• Reading: read 100 words
• Reader: Ready, Set, 100 Days (free with Kindle lender's library)
• Art: Use the 100 shapes to make a picture
• Bible: read psalm 100
• Also: made 100 day glasses, listed 100 people Mister knows, and had a 100 lunch

You can find some of the activities in my homeschool board on pintrest (I am crazyelephant). Sadly my computer is dying so I can't get the links up.

Volcano!

On Tuesday we read The Magic School Bus Blows it's top. Thursday we crafted our own volcano and Friday we set it to erupt.

Sculpy on a formed pie tin make the volcano. Baking soda, a few drops of red food coloring, and vinegar make the eruption.

What to do with a clay volcano? We filled the center with polyfil and glued it to a piece of felt. Add some cut up red felt and you have yourself an instant volcano play set!

World Travels: Ireland

Hello!

The wind blew us to Ireland this month! We landed at the Cliffs of Moher. The cliffs overlook the Atlantic Ocean. There were so many birds! The sea birds make their homes in the cliff face.

While we were in Ireland we learned all about Saint Patrick. He was brought to Ireland as a slave, escaped, and then came back to share his love of Jesus with the Irish people. It is an exciting story from the history of Ireland and Christianity. 

We had a lot of fun exploring this beautiful island and found a lucky four leaf clover. We look forward to sharing our next stop with you too!

If you are sharing with your kiddos this month, it is perfect timing! Ireland is a great topic for March and learning about St. Patrick. Here are some things we will be doing to add depth to our letter...

The Cliffs of Moher has a fantastic website, complete with virtual tour. I plan to do that with little guy and this is the address: http://www.cliffsofmoher.ie/default.aspx

I am ordering a fun clover cutter as his special gift. At $8.63  (on Amazon) it is still far less than the $15 I was spending on Little Passports, in case any of you are keeping track. We will use it to make quesadillas for St Patrick's day with green tortillas, of course.

We will be reading about St. Patrick in I Heard Good News Today which was a part of our Sonlight curriculum. We use this book sparingly as Little Guy doesn't like to read it much.

Man V Wild has an Ireland episode, SCORE! We did one of these with the Guatemala lesson and  Little Guy still talks about Guatemala. It really brought the lesson to life for him, so I will use these as much as I can!

I hope you are all enjoying my World Travels series so far! We certainly are. If you would love to see a favorite country or share a country you have visited, let me know in the comments section. The next 3 months are covered and then any locale is fair game!

Floating Peanuts

Water + baking soda + vinegar + Peanuts = Floating
Yeah, so what's happening? Well, peanuts do not normally float, let me get another cup with just water in it.  Okay, so sometimes they float and sometimes they sink. What are you trying to show me?

Here, let me add the baking soda and vinegar to the plain water with peanuts...
water + peanuts + baking soda + vinegar = Ohhhhhh!
Order matters...you learn something new every day, even when you are a mom!
This went with our Magic School Bus Gets Baked in a Cake book for science.

Lots of Learning

We had a great homeschool week! This is the windmill generator that Mister got with his World Travels letter. He put it together with his Daddy during "boy night". They had a blast with it!

Jayne finished All About Reading Level 1! After a long hard think, I decided to give Alpha Phonics a try as our next level. Mister seems to really like it and I was able to get it for free from the Kindle Prime lenders library. We loved AAR, but it is very slow paced and Alpha Phonics will end with him at a 2nd-3rd grade reading level. He is looking forward to the many Boxcar Children and Magic Tree House books we plan to spend the saved money on.

He drew a picture of how he felt about my having covered his face in stickers!

Adam got a chance to read to Mister on Friday, giving me a vocal break. This book really sucks our  Little  Guy in! It is Usborne's Time Traveler. They read 10 pages!  I usually cut him off at 6 because I know I need my voice for all the other subjects. I expect that I am going to have quite the reader when he has the skills.