Easter Activities

We have been busy doing some fun Easter activities this week, so I thought I would share what we have done so far in case anyone is looking for some easy ideas for Easter.

Each day we are reading the Easter story from one of our Bibles.  We have so many different Bibles for children and all of them are a little different, so it’s good to read a different one each day.  Our first day, after we the Easter story, I focused on Palm Sunday and what happened that day.  We acted it out by pretending to put coats and palm branches down on the ground (we used blankets to pretend).  Then everyone had a turn to pretend to be Jesus riding on the donkey over the palm branches and coats.

Afterwards we made a very simple craft.  The kids glued down a path, then put palm branches (green construction paper) and coats (scrapbook paper) down onto the path.

Then they colored a picture of Jesus riding a donkey to put on the path.

Their finished projects.

The second day I used Resurrection Eggs to tell the story of Easter.

Inside each of the eggs is a a little symbol of part of the story.  So, I would tell part of the story and then have someone open a certain colored egg to find the symbol for that part of the story.  The kids really enjoyed this activity!  Later in the day while Hunter was outside playing he asked if he could come in to do the Easter “actibity” again.  They had to do it again later when Rich came home from work so he could see it too.

Then we made a craft.  First they colored their papers with Colorix silky crayons (we LOVE these!).

After they finished coloring they added a little bit of water with a paint brush.  The Colorix blend together like water colors.

Then we glued on a grassy hill and crosses.  This is Haiely’s finished picture.

Hunter’s finished picture

Harper never really finished hers- she’d be happy to color and glue and do crafts all day long.

 Be sure to check back and see what else we do this week!

Curriculum 2015-2016

So, I never posted about the curriculum we are using this school year.  I thought that now that the school year is winding down I could post about what we used and how we have liked what we are using.

Preschool:

For Hunter this year, I am using Sonlight P 3/4.  This isn’t an actual curriculum with lesson plans though, it’s just a list of books with an activity suggested for each book.  You can do it in any order you wish to do it.

These are the books that came with Hunter’s curriculum.  We have not read all of them, but so far he has enjoyed all of the ones we have read.  We tend to spend several days reading and rereading one book, so more than likely we won’t finish everything this year.  They are all great, classic books that every child should have.  I also add in lots of other books to go with whatever theme I am currently using for Hunter.

These are the other things that came with Sonlight P3/4.  We absolutely love the Colorix- they are so neat!

For the most part it’s hard to consider Sonlight P3/4 an actual curriculum.  It’s really just a lot of great books that I use and then build my own curriculum around those books.

Fourth Grade:

For science this year we have been using Elemental Science, the Zoology Sassafras Science Adventures.  Hailey reads a portion of the book (which is written as a story and is very interesting!)  and then there are notebooking assignments to do.  We both absolutely loved it at the beginning.  Sometime after Christmas time Hailey got really tired of doing the notebooking/logbook assignments.  They were the same thing for every unit and I think she just got bored with doing the exact same thing for each animal.  There were a lot of hands on activities that I added in, but she begged not to do the logbook anymore.  So, right now she is still reading the book, but I am not making her complete the logbook.

For Language Arts we started out using:

• Spelling- Sequential Spelling.  I recently switched to a different spelling curriculum.  There isn’t anything specific about it that I didn’t like, I just don’t know that it’s the best way for Hailey to learn to spell.
• Grammar and writing- Winter Promise 4th grade- Solving the Mysteries of Grammar.  We are still using this for grammar.  We recently reviewed Here to Help Learning for writing and I am planning to on sticking with that for writing.
• Handwriting- A Reason for Handwriting D.

For history we are using Sonlight Core D.  I love the books that are included in this history curriculum.  The only thing I don’t like is that there aren’t any hands on activities, so I have been adding them in on my own.  Hailey loves doing hands on projects and that is what helps her remember what she is learning about.  As much as I love this curriculum I am going to switch next year to something that has hands on activities included.

These are the readers and read alouds we are using, also part of the Sonlight curriculum.  Both of us have really enjoyed all of the books.  The books all have to do with what we are learning about in history, which was great at the beginning of the school year.  About a month ago Hailey mentioned that it felt like we were doing history all the time and she wanted to read books that are not all historical fiction.  So, for right now I am reading the readers and read alouds and letting Hailey read non-history related books.  Right now she is reading The Candymakers (the only book in our curriculum that is not a historical fiction book) and both of us LOVE this book!  I think it’s our favorite book of the whole year!

We use Teaching Textbooks for math.  It’s not Hailey’s favorite subject, but it is working, so we will continue to use it.

These are a few other things we are using.

• Bible- The Discoverer’s Bible
• Health- Developing Good Health
• Critical and Creating Thinking Activities, 4th grade

Hailey was excited about her tall pile of books!

Christmas Crafts

Since it’s almost Easter I thought it would be the perfect time to finally post about some of the crafts we did at Christmas time hahaha.  One day I’ll be all caught up with my posting, but today is not that day.

One of the projects we did was with oil pastels on black paper.  I found step by step directions for an Oil Pastel Christmas Tree in a Snowstorm.  I followed the directions and showed Hailey and Hunter what to do, step by step.

Of course, Harper wanted to be a part of our crafts too.

These pictures are the ones that Hailey, Hunter, and I did.  I love how they turned out!!

Our next project was a really cute Reindeer Portrait from ARTventurous.  First we drew the reindeer with a black oil pastel.

Then we painted them.

Hunter painted his reindeer too.

Harper painted herself, the table, and her reindeer.

Our completed reindeer.

This Jesus in the Manger is the project I had my preschool class do at Christmas time at our homeschool co-op.  This is the picture that Hunter made.  They turned out so cute!!

Here to Help Learning Review

Hailey has always loved writing.  She is very creative and does a wonderful job at writing. Teaching writing seems like such a huge task and I really want to make sure I do a good job of helping Hailey to become an excellent writer.  But, I want to make sure I keep writing fun since she loves it so much.  I have been really struggling to find a writing curriculum that we both enjoy.  We were recently given the chance to check out Here to Help Learning, a writing curriculum that I had never seen before, and I was thrilled to be able to check it out.  We could pick which level we wanted (more on the different levels below) and I decided to try Flight 1 Essay Writing for Hailey.

Here to Help Learning is a writing program developed by Mrs. Mora, a homeschool mom of over 20 years.  She created this program to help parents and co-op teachers to be able to make teaching writing fun.  The lessons are based on the theme of going on a flight. There are 2 different levels of Here to Help Learning and within those 2 levels are 3 different flights you can take.  The first level is geared for children in 1st-3rd grade and it teaches paragraph writing.  Within the paragraph writing level you are able to pick from the 3 different flights.  Each flight has 32 lessons to cover one year of writing curriculum. The flights do not have to be done in a certain order, but rather can be done based on the interest of the topics in the flight.

Click on the picture above to enlarge and you can see the different topics you can pick from in each paragraph writing flight.

The next level covers essay writing and geared for 4th-6th grade.  There are three different flights in the essay writing, each one has 32 lessons to cover a year of curriculum.  Once again they can be done in any order.  Flight 3 will be working towards writing and publishing a 6 chapter book, so you might want to save that one for last- but you certainly don’t have to.

Click on the picture above to enlarge and you can see the different topics you can pick from in each essay writing flight.

Once you have decided which flight to do you can start the lessons.  The lessons are done online with Mrs. Mora as your teacher.  You will spend 2 days each week completing the lesson.  The first day you do the lesson which has 5 parts in it, and includes:

• Pre-Flight Checklist- this is where Mrs. Mora is dressed as a flight attendant and helps you make sure you are ready for your flight.
• Flight Check-In- in this section you will check in work from the previous class, get new worksheets for that day’s lesson, and review the purpose of writing verse.
• Take Off- this is where the writing warm up takes place as well as going over the work that was done during the previous class.
• Full Throttle- this is the main part of the lesson where the Mrs. Mora guides the students through the part of the writing process covered that day.
• Flying Solo- the last part where the students are given an assignment to work on.

The second day in the week that you use Here to Help Learning is the day the students actually work on the flying solo assignment.

How did we use Here to Help Learning?

I decided to use Flight 1 of the Essay writing with Hailey (age 9, fourth grade).

Hailey’s favorite part of each lesson is the writing warm-up.  Hunter (4 years old) and Harper (18 months old) both love to watch the lessons too.  Mrs. Mora is very entertaining and really does making writing fun.  Hunter and Harper always come running to watch when they hear us start a lesson.  They were all working on their writing warm up in this picture.

When Hailey realized we would only be using Here to Help Learning 2 times each week she begged to do it every day.  She always asks me, “Are we doing the fun writing today?”

Here Hailey is reading what she wrote on her webbing outline.

Mrs. Mora gave several great suggestions for creating a good environment to write in.  So, Hailey got everything all set up and got to work on her first rough draft.

Hailey working on her first rough draft.

Hailey read her first rough draft to us.

After we went over her second rough draft together, Hailey wrote her final copy.

Then Hailey made a presentation folder for her essay.

I can not say enough good things about Here to Help Learning.  I absolutely love it!  Mrs. Mora really does make teaching writing and learning how to write fun!  Not only is it fun, but the lessons are excellent.  Hailey learned so much from just one flight.  I am planning to continue using Flight 1 Essay Writing this year and then finishing it up next year before we move on to Flight 2 Essay Writing.  I can definitely see us sticking with Here to Help Learning for our writing curriculum.  I highly recommend this curriculum!!

Hailey’s review- “I loved it!  The videos are so much fun.  I give it 5 out of 5 stars.”

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