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

 

 

Vacation

Last time I mention our vacation. We didn't take a moment to relax, but we had tons of fun and here is a photo montage of our trip...

Como Zoo in St. Paul on Monday

Driving School at Como Town (next to Como Zoo)

Science Museum on Tuesday

Mall of America on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. A certain little mister of our has become a fan of roller coasters with his favorite being the log flume...go figure.

Homeschool Fun: Dinos

 We had dinosaur week! It was so much fun. No pre-k pack for us, we worked from The Mailbox's Preschool Plans Day By Day. I really like the book. Since it is geared to actual preschools, we can't do all of the activities or need to adjust them to having only 1 kid in class.

One of Jayne's faves, as usual, were the art projects. We made dinos out of foamie shapes and in the pics he made a dino puzzle into a fabulous work of art!

Homeschool Fun: Space

Space week has come and gone (last week) but I thought I would share the big art project. Here are the supplies we used: Black construction paper, foamie stickers, lids from various containers, and a stamp pad.

The first part of the project was to make the stamps. It was super easy! Just put the foamie stickers on the lids. I do believe that the lids shown here are from a gallon of milk, a medicine bottle, and BBQ sauce. The space stickers came with his bike decorating set. We also used basic shapes for a previous stamping project.

Part 2 was to have a blast stamping! We used a silver pigment stamp pad. It worked great because you can see it really well on the black paper. It really pops.

Jayne had a great time making his space picture. He even had to make a second one to share with a very lucky grandma.

Homeschool Fun: Teddy Bear

Teddy bear week was very hands on. Jayne liked that a lot. I took most of the activities from The Mailbox's Preschool Plans Day by Day book. It has lots of great activities and art projects in it. Jayne's favorite was playing teddy bear toss. He even posed with all of his teddies.

He also spent some time playing his Pooh Bear preschool game on the computer while I did some sewing. He seems to be getting the hang of it now. I can tell it is easier to understand the instructions for him now. He got to have a game night with his uncles too and we played the What's in the Cats Hat game, his favorite.

Homeschool Fun: Thomas the Train

Jayne plays trains

This week, and the next 2 weeks, we are taking it easy. We are going a little lighter on the school lessons as we get the house ready for Jayne's birthday party and finish getting ready for school to start for the fall. This week we did Thomas the Train week. I really liked that we used his Thomas the Train magazine for his lessons because they come with a 14 page workbook inside. Jayne was excited to put up the poster in his room when his workbook was finished at the end of the week. We also watched Thomas movies on our netflix and played with his Thomas trains as well. We broke out Jayne's new set of pony beads as well and he got some practice lacing. I think we will make that a part of our art week quite often. I can tell it is working on his pencil holding muscles!

Next week is hot dog week! Jayne is pretty excited. I wasn't able to get all the parts I wanted done for the pack due to my computer, which is still not doing well, but it should be good for our lightened week. I also found A Hot Dog Program on netflix and will get it sometime during the week, but SHHHHH, don't tell...it's a surprise!

Homeschool Fun: Happy Fourth

I hope everyone is having a great time celebrating the fourth of July! We had a blast doing all kinds of holiday events and also got in some homeschooling fun.

Jayne spent some time doing firework tracers. He started at the firework and when he got to the explosion he made all kinds of fun sound effect and motions to portray the fireworks going off.

He did many patterns with his firework pattern cards too. He is starting to get the whole pattern thing. We even did some harder patterns too and I showed him how you can go back and look at what came after the last card the last time and that helped him a lot.

He really enjoyed graphing too. It was his first graphing experience and he loved taking turns to roll the dice. He liked coming up with interesting ways to mark the boxes too.

Jayne is so excited to start "official" school in the fall. We have found some really great preschool packs online and I have made some to go with his mailbox curriculum as well. He was happy that I found the fourth of July preschool pack at http://www.2teachingmommies.com/2011/06/4th-of-july.html. It gave him a taste of what is to come and I think it is going to be great!

We are still working on Head of the Class this summer and doing lots of trips to the library. The library is also having 6 presentations for different countries this year that we have been going to. Jayne loves getting a sticker for his little passport and there is usually a candy from the country. Last week was about Germany and the week before was about Russia.