Adorable Tot School or Preschool Free Printable

An additional blog that I regularly visit is 1+1+1=1.  She has wonderful ideas, printables, etc.  I don't know about you, but at my house, Doc McStuffins has become a new favorite cartoon very quickly with my 3 1/2 year old.  When I saw her free printable, I knew that SnowCone would be thrilled as she LOVES every activity that is available in the printables.

We are soon heading to the beach for some R & R, but I already have Doc McStuffins FREE Printables printed & ready to use once we get back the following week.  Hope you are able to enjoy them, too!

Awesome United States State Capitol Song

I love following Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler.  In fact, I would probably be considered a stalker to her blog by today's standards.  I have to share with you a video that she posted on her blog about a REALLY catchy tune that will be great in learning our state capitols this year.  Here is the US States song & video.  Why not have fun while learning them?  Mango LOVES a good beat so I can see us getting some PE in with this as well, lol.  Let me know what you think!  This will be great for MFW Adventures or any student studying their US capitols.

My Father's World Adventures, Week 2

Glow in the dark WWJD bracelets (ignore SnowCone & her runaway tongue)

JESUS sun catchers

SnowCone had a tea party in the midst of our project

We have thoroughly enjoyed this week.  We made "WWJD" or What Would Jesus Do glow in the dark bracelets.  They are to remind us to live like Jesus, and I love being reminded when it's dark & scary ;o)  We also made JESUS sun catchers for the girls bedroom windows.  It was an easy, but messy project.  We used crayon shavings and placed them between two pieces of wax paper.  We also placed the letters JESUS inside the wax paper.  We heated it with an iron to make our sun catchers.  The girls had a lot of fun with it.  Well I will have to admit that SnowCone disappeared in the midst of the chaos to have a tea party with her "friends".  I left our school area to find about 20 stuffed animals sitting at my kitchen table.  Why not?  She even set the table for each attendee.  The people at All About Reading would be proud to know that Ziggy the Zebra was also in attendance.  Mango said, "How awesome is that for her...she's having a really cool tea party!".  She continued to tell me that this project was one of the best...ever.  I'll take that as a good sign.

Every girl deserves a midmorning tea party

We also started reading about Squanto, who was an Indian boy from the Patuxet tribe.  Squanto lived in Jamestown.  He became friends with the Pilgrims.  We will continue reading it through the next couple of weeks.  Reading about the pioneers settling in Jamestown is always fascinating to me.  I can get swept away and feel like I am right there with them.  Oh wait, that goes for any book that I read ;o).  We also talked a lot about Pocahontas, the Indian Princess that saved Capt. John Smith's life while she was a young girl.  She was a friend to people of Jamestown.

I haven't known for sure if the girls were absorbing much from Speekee Spanish.  I was quite impressed when we visited our local Mexican restaurant, and my oldest said, "Hola, Que tal?" to our waiter (Hi, how are you?).  Of course, he responds, "muy bien, y tu?" and she said, "muy bien".  That was pretty neat seeing it come to life.  I purchased Speekee last fall before we ever decided to homeschool.  I am not sure if we will continue with it after our year runs out or if we will try Rosetta Stone Spanish, which is what is recommended by MFW.

I have learned a lot about SnowCone (3 1/2 years old) these last couple of weeks.  She's all about a project.  She wants to sort, cut, glue, build, draw with dry erase.  She couldn't care any less about coloring a piece of paper.  It is really fun to watch them experience new things.  She has learned so much this week just from listening in on big sis's fun as well as her own.

My Father's World Adventures, Week 1 Complete!

**  For the purpose of this blog and to withhold the names of my precious ones, my oldest will be referred to as "Mango", and my youngest is going to be "Snow Cone".  These names are both their choices.  Can you tell that it is one hot summer day here?  The Pre-K and 2nd grade signs for our first day of school came from this Pinterest site.

Mango is now in 2nd grade, and Snow Cone is 3 1/2 so we are doing Pre-School with her.  We had an amazing week of homeschool this week.  All of my fears & doubts have gone away as we successfully completed our week.  We actually enjoyed it!  

Our main curriculum is My Father's World-Adventures.  Through MFW we have US Geography, Bible, science, art, music & more.  We add Math & Language Arts to it, and we are all set.  For math, we chose the curriculum that came recommended by MFW which is Singapore Math.  For Language Arts, we chose First Language Lessons by Jessie Wise.  It is has been given very high reviews which is our reason for selecting it.  We have also added the spelling curriculum which is All About Spelling, Level 2.  We are also studying spanish through Speekee.  Many of the print outs and ideas that we will use come from Pinterest.

Reading her Bible

Working on their Bible project

We spent the week learning many things.  First is that Jesus means "The Lord Saves" in Greek.  The girls also learned what their names meant, and how special they are to us.  We talked about how The Old Testament is like a mysterious puzzle in that it tells of the events leading up to Jesus's birth, but we don't actually see those things take place until The New Testament.

In Math, we started at Singapore Math 1B because there were some things that she needed to learn that were not covered last year where she attended.  However, we are breezing through most of it quickly. 

We also started in First Language Lessons, Level 1.  This particular level discusses several parts of speech that also were not covered in her previous first grade class.   I want to make sure that she is introduced to the basics before moving on to Level 2.  She also memorized a poem, "The Months", this week as well.

In Art, she drew Christopher Columbus's boat, Santa Maria, and then she made a large bookmark out of it.  She also learned how to draw a log cabin through the art curriculum that came with MFW.

We did start at level 2 for Spelling because she did really well last year, and I didn't want her starting off with the complete basics since she was past that.  She has already had a handful of light bulb moments this week while learning some of the new spelling rules.  She also loves being able to spell words on the magnetic whiteboard.  Stay tuned as next week we just might have to put some of the rule breakers in jail.  I'm sure that will be fun!

We studied about a boy named Pedro that traveled from Spain to the US with his family on a ship.  We learned about what it was like to be a pioneer like Pedro and his family.  We also made our own versions of Columbus's boats, the Pinta, Nina & Santa Maria.  We put them in the big bathtub, and we provided the wind to race them from Spain to the US.  It was so much fun.

We also learned Spanish with Speekee.  Speekee settings were at the park (el parque) and at the restaurant (el cafe).

Snow Cone studied the letter N and did a lot of sorting, cutting, writing, and pasting.  We also have My Father's World Pre-K curriculum for her and she was able to utilize many of the learning toys that are provided as well as some others that we have made here at home.  Many of our printouts come from the Letter of the Week curriculum by Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler.  Her site and blog is a joy for homeschooling moms and dads!  

Overall, this was a super successful week.  I am so proud that our new adventure has turned out to be even more rewarding for all of us than we expected.  Mango told me several times throughout the week that "homeschool is AWESOME!", which made me quite proud that she is enjoying it so much.  She also asked me on Friday if we could continue to do school on Saturday.  She said she "just LOVES it".  Of course, I told her that we all need a break until Monday ;o).  Momma has to have some time to plan children's church as well as prepare for next week.  I know every day won't be a walk in a park, but I know that the rewards from this week and the weeks to come are absolutely heaven sent.

*This blog will be an attempt to document our homeschool journey as well as help our fellow homeschool friends.