Our homeschool weekly wrap-up #1

We had a pretty good week this week for homeschool.  We are doing a pretty laid back schedule this summer, at most 1-2 hours of school each day if we don't have something that takes us out and about.  I've also managed to get our workboxes back up and running, and our school area has finally been organized and completed which makes it all so much easier.  Our school room is now in the dining room, and we work primarily at the dining room table now.  It's so much easier for me to work with everybody.  I'm excited for our new set up and will share pictures soon!  It looks great!  I'll do a post about that soon.

Anyway, on to our week... 

Tot school 
Aric really loves anything cars, so I found this Tow Mater paper craft at family fun.  It's pretty sad looking.  I didn't really take the time to do it right, just kinda threw it together.  He liked building it with me though.  After I got the body together that was it.  Didn't even put the tow hitch on or anything.  It was fun for our tot school time though.  Aric will sit still for these kinds of things.  (And yes, I ended up hot gluing it)




These nuts and bolts were a big hit for tot school this week.  I loved how the bolts were a certain shape and you had to match it up to the nuts.  He had fun matching the colors and shapes, and we even did a few patterns.  These were from the Target dollar spot.

I love how in this picture he is matching the shapes up.  He picked these nuts and bolts out several times during tot school to play.

Here is one of the patterns he made.


Before 5 in a row
We rowed the book, Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?  For those of you who aren't familiar with Five in a row, I'll explain a little.  Five in a row is a study of a story for 5 days, usually over the course of 1 week.  You read the story every day and do activities that revolve around the book.  It's a great program, and I'm glad I picked Before 5 in a row because these books are a little easier so that both the 3 and 5 year old can participate.  For example one activity was to have the child hold an american flag while reading the story for that day, and finding all the pictures throughout the book that looked like a flag or had red white and blue.  My boys loved doing this.  I put the book and 2 small American flags on sticks into the workbox for Aaron, because I was planning on having both boys participate.  We discovered a lot of red white and blue themes throughout the book.

I also printed up the lap book from homeschool share for Jesse Bear.  We didn't finish it all this week, so pictures of that will come soon.  But we did have a bear dress up morning.  I let them dig through a box of scraps of fabric and let them pick out their bears clothes.  Aric also really loves reading Goldilocks and the 3 bears out of his Preschool (needs to know) book, so he was really excited to make a bear for that too.  On the left is Aaron's bear, and on the right is Aric's bear (Aric even put shoes on his).



Nature study
I am trying to get us back into a regular nature study again.  It really is one of our favorite things to do.  I'm also very excited about this board.  It's a part of our new school dining room decor.  I have wanted a better way to display all the kids school work and this is one of the new things I did.  The pages displayed here are the things the kids observed during our star gazing night.  On the left is Aaron's page.  He is really into drawing stars since I taught him the "easy" way to draw a star by connecting lines.  He also drew the moon.  In the middle is Aric's page.  He tried drawing the moon, and the stars as best as a little 3 year old can.  So cute!  Then there is April's.  Of course her I see box she drew her own horse constellation.

Here they are out stargazing.  They got to stay up late, and we put our half tent up and laid the blankets out.  Aaron even fell asleep out there!


Mom's favorites

Aric got this race track for his birthday.  It's like a mini pinewood derby track, so fun!  He loves it and wanted to get it out several times this week.  The whole track is a very smart design.  And, yes, that is a very spotted dirty carpet.  It needs to be cleaned or replaced.  I am dreaming of laminate flooring.

April is doing a download and go unit study on horses so I got her this horse puzzle to work on one day.  Not to mention the fact that she absolutely loves horses.

Target dollar spot is my favorite.  Here is another fun toy I picked up for fun in the workboxes/tot trays.  They stick together.  Aaron likes these.


Some other things we did this week were:

• Visiting with Aunt Michelle (Hubby's sister) and her 3 boys.  The kids always love to see their cousins.
• Seeing Grandma and Grandpa too.  
• Going to the fountains
• Going to Borders bookstore to see what kind of store closing deals we could find (not very much discount yet).  I was surprised at how many people were buying so much.  We ended up bringing home 2 small lego sets, a birthday present, and some books on tape. 
•   We had a lemonade stand.  The kids worked real hard on making the signs, and figuring out how to best get people's attention.  But, mostly just for fun.  They made 3 dollars from 2 customers :-)
• We went out to the lake and let the kids jump in.  They had a blast.

I am linking this up to weekly wrap-up at weird unsocialized homescoolers.