Our Year in Review 2010-2011

We've finished our year of kindergarten, 2nd grade, and 5th grade. I often worry about what we're not getting done. I thought it would be good to look back over the year to see what we did accomplish. We had a really good year. We didn't travel as much as some years and we didn't move during the school year, which made a big difference in how much we got done and allowed us to finish the year earlier than usual.

My biggest worry for this year was officially adding in a third child when it seemed like there wasn't enough of me to teach two some days. I have to say I was really surprised by how well it worked out. Kindergarten lessons don't take too long and Colin did a little more independent work. I also tried to do as much with them all together as I could. I would still like to start our day earlier, but we did make a little progress on that.

This was our first year having a room just for school. We loved it and I don't think we could ever go back to doing school in the kitchen or dining room again. It was great having everything together and being able to display all the projects the kids did.

Language Arts

Molly
The biggest success of the year was helping Molly learn to read. I remember teaching them to read was my biggest concern when I first started homeschooling so having the third one reading feels great. She hadn't been too interested before and didn't even know all the sounds of the letters when we started the year. She picked that up really quickly though. She made it through lesson 109 in Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading and is reading lots of books.
Her handwriting improved a lot using Handwriting Without Tears.

Caleigh
She started Spell to Write and Read this year. She completed through list L-4. She's done very well learning all the phonograms, rules, and markings.
She did all of First Language Lessons 1 and about half of First Language Lessons 2.
She started learning cursive with Cursive First. We did all the lowercase letters and worked on learning to connect them.

Colin
In Spell to Write and Read, Colin started the year on list S and made it all the way through list Z. He tested at grade level 11.2 after finishing.
I had him start over with Writing Tales and he completed all but the last section. He still doesn't like adding in creative details, but his summaries have improved.
He did all of First Language Lessons 4.

Math

Molly did RightStart A.

Caleigh almost finished RightStart C.

Colin finished RightStart E and Life of Fred: Fractions.

Science

We did Exploring Creation with Astronomy. We learned about the sun, the moon, the planets, comets, meteors, asteroids, famous astronomers, astronauts, space travel, stars, and constellations. The kids really enjoyed it and loved all the experiments. They often said it was their favorite subject. Some of their favorite things were trying astronaut food, making hurricanes in a bottle, making sun bread, a salt dough volcano, and phases of the moon with Oreos.

We also did a few science things as part of some unit studies. We studied clouds, the water cycle, friction, butterflies, leaves, apples, migration, hibernation, pandas, ducks, Australian animals, owls,
groundhogs, and snow.

History

I'm so glad I decided to combine all the kids for history. When I did Story of the World Volume 1 with just Colin, it often got pushed to the side when we got busy with other things. Having everyone doing it made a big difference. Before starting SOTW Volume 2, we spent a few weeks talking about the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans to get the girls caught up. We were able to finish all of Volume 2. We read tons of extra books and did lots of projects. Some of the favorite projects were a medieval feast, making Viking ships, ships in a bottle, sand art, and mosaic cakes.

Geography

Before starting history this year, we did a unit study on map skills. It was review for Colin, but I think the girls really needed it to understand.

We used the maps in the SOTW 2 Activity Guide to go along with our history study.

We also did a lot of geography in our unit studies. Some places we learned about were: Greece, Rome, Egypt, England, China, Japan, Australia, France, Norway, Russia, Ireland, and Canada.

Art

This is the only subject where we didn't finish what I had planned. We started out okay, but then it kept getting pushed aside.
We only got through 8 lessons in Artistic Pursuits.
We used Draw Write Now to draw things that went with what we were studying.
We also used Discovering Great Artists a few times.
We studied Norman Rockwell to go along with a field trip to see some of his work. We also studied Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.
We did lots of crafts and drawings to go along with our history, science, and unit studies.

Unit Studies

Maps
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Greece and the Olympics
Ancient Rome
Mr. Gumpy's Motor Car
Butterflies
Autumn Treasures (DNG): Apples, Leaves
The Story about Ping
Grandfather's Journey
Australia
Mirette on the High Wire
Vikings
Owl Moon
Robin Hood
Groundhog's Day
Russia
Katy and the Big Snow
Plague
Ireland
Christopher Columbus
Canada
Leonardo da Vinci

Activities

Some of the extracurricular activities the kids participated in this year were baseball, basketball, roller hockey, ice hockey, First Lego League, and a geography fair.

Field Trips

Linville Caverns and Falls
Bugfest
Greek Festival
Yates Mill Harvest Festival
Optometrist Field Trip
NC Zoo
Walt Disney World 
Christmas activities at WDW
Vikings
Picking Oranges
Grand Asia Market
NC Museum of Art
Raptors Program
Ripley's Aquarium
NC Museum of Life and Science
Strawberry Picking
NC Museum of History
NC Museum of Natural Sciences- February, May
Downtown Raleigh
Blowing Rock

Our Week: Shakespeare, Elizabeth I, and Finishing Astronomy

Three Rs

Math: Molly finished RightStart Level A yesterday. She was so excited and wanted to know if she was finished with math forever. Colin finished Life of Fred: Fractions. I had Caleigh stop her regular math because she's getting ready to start some new concepts that I want to wait for until after we move. She's just been doing some review work this week.

Spelling: Colin has finished the final spelling list in Spell to Write and Read. I'm going to have him review phonograms, rules, and reference pages. I'll probably quickly go through the last lists with him again next year. They do recommend doing each list twice. He and Caleigh both took diagnostic tests yesterday. His grade level was 11.2. I'm so glad we found this program when he was getting ready to start 1st grade. It's really taught us both so much and Caleigh is doing well with it now. Caleigh's mastery level was the same as the list she's on and she got a few words correct that she hasn't been taught yet. Her grade level was 3.3, which I think is great for her first year since she's getting ready to start some lists that will quickly make that go up.

History

We learned about Queen Elizabeth I. We read Good Queen Bess by Diane Stanely and Colin read Who Was Queen Elizabeth? by June Eding.
We also learned about William Shakespeare. We read Bard of Avon, A Child's Portrait of Shakespeare, Welcome to the Globe, and some of the Shakespeare Can Be Fun series.

Science

We reviewed to finish up our study of Exploring Creation with Astronomy. We read some books that we hadn't gotten to earlier. We had a themed lunch, made a rocket cake, did some mini-books for their notebooks, and made aliens from play-doh. See more about that and pictures in this post. We had a few more things we planned to do, including making a solar system to hang from our ceiling, making a model of a rocket, and making some spaceships from a book I have, but we'll save that for after we move since we'd just have to put it all back in a box anyway.

Art

We did a lesson from Artistic Pursuits, where the kids drew landscapes with oil pastels.

Everything Else

We met with Colin's First Lego League team to divide all the Lego pieces among the boys and to let the kids play. This picture is right before we took the table apart. We're going to miss getting together with them.

They had fun playing Wii

I took the kids ice skating on Tuesday.

Astronomy Review

The kids have had so much fun learning about astronomy this year. We spent the week reviewing what we had learned.

I found these plates and napkins on clearance at Target a while back and just had to get them. I made them star shaped sandwich, cut mango with a star cookie cutter, used banana slices for the different phases of the moon, and the strawberries are from a pack of space food.

The kids helped make a rocket cake.

We read some of the books we hadn't gotten around to yet. They did space themed puzzles, played with a space felt set, and played with astronaut sticker books.

We used mini-books from Homeschool Share for our notebooks.

They used playdough to makes aliens.

We went to the Museum of Life and Science, which has a section for space.

Our Week: Astronauts, da Vinci, and the Printing Press

Three Rs

We're very close to finishing up a few things. Colin already finished his regular math book. He's almost finished Life of Fred: Fractions and is working on Challenging Word Problems. Molly is also almost finished with her math book. This week she's done a lot of skip counting and she keeps asking why she has to do it every day. Colin has started on his last spelling list in the Spell to Write and Read book and is just about finished with his grammar program. I can see the end in sight and am just trying to keep us all on track for a little longer.

History

We started the week reading about Gutenberg's invention, the printing press. We read Breaking into Print, Johann Gutenberg and the Amazing Printing Press, and How a Book is Made.

Using directions in the SOTW activity guide, we made potato prints.

We also used broken pieces of spaghetti to make words like a printing press, an idea I saw here. This was good because it also went with our study of Leonardo da Vinci, who we found wrote backward in his notes.

We also learned about Reformation and Counter Reformation. We read some books to learn more about the Catholic faith.

Art/Unit Study

To go along with studying the Renaissance, we learned about Leonardo da Vinci. We read lots of books, did some art activities, and Colin made a lapbook. Read more about that here.

Science

We finished Exploring Creation with Astronomy this week by reading about the International Space Station and how to become a NASA astronaut. We read books about astronauts, what it's like to work in space, and living in a space shuttle. The kids were fascinated about how they just float around, how they have to eat, and how they go to the bathroom. I got them some space food to try. They all really liked the ice creams. Molly didn't like the strawberries, but the other two did.

Everything Else

Molly lost tooth #2 last night.

The eggs in the nest on our front porch hatched this week. The picture isn't very good. They just look like fuzzy balls right now.

 

Today we're going on a field trip.

Our Week: Constellations, Beginning the Renaissance, and Michelangelo

The kids keep watching the nest on our front porch in anticipation of the babies hatching. We also found a nest in a tree next to our back porch with some beautiful eggs in it. I let the kids make their own bird nest from Rice Krispie treats. You can see pictures of the bird nests (the real ones and the edible ones) in this post.

History

It's probably only when your kindergartner is homeschooled that your dinner conversation includes your 6 year old telling Dad that she learned about a man who kept marrying different women to try to have a son and then he even had two of their heads cut off. Yes, we learned about Henry VIII.

We also learned about Martin Luther and the Ninety-five Theses.

We also finally made it to the Renaissance, which we learned was a time when people began relearning things that had been forgotten and making new discoveries. We found out that art began to look more realistic and studied Michelangelo. We read Michelangelo by Diane Stanley and Michelangelo by Mike Venezia. I taped paper to the bottom of tables to allow the kids to lie down and paint, an idea from Discovering Great Artists to represent Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Caleigh's bunny

Colin's bunny with eggs



Molly's- big egg at the bottom, grass, eggs, rainbow, some people at the top



Science

We read all about constellations. We made a constellation planetarium by punching holes in a shoe box in the pattern of the big dipper and shining a flashlight from the other side to show it on the wall, but I wasn't able to get a good picture of it.  We made some constellations on paper by drawing them and putting glitter glue on the places where the stars are, an idea I found here.

We also read about some events that led to space travel, the first rockets in space, the Space Race between Russia and U.S., and the many great accomplishments of the 1960s.

Everything Else

 

Molly was very excited to lose her first tooth this week.

 

 

 

 

Colin scored his first goal in hockey and I was lucky enough to catch it with my camera. See more including his celebration in this post.

 

 

 

 

And just because she looks so pretty in this picture, here's Caleigh.

 

I love close-ups where you can see the freckles she swears she doesn't have.

 

We spent today on Easter activities. The kids made handprint bunnies, painted ceramic eggs, read lots of Easter books, and had an Easter themed lunch. Tonight we're watching a couple of movies and making some Easter cookies.

Our Week: American Kingdoms and Stars

The Three Rs

Molly had lots of fun with her phonics lessons this week. One day she reviewed all the ways to say /A/. I wrote words on cards and she had to take them and place them on the items they named. Here she is with the ones she placed on herself.

I don't know what's going on with this crazy pose. I have a hard time getting a picture of her without her doing something silly.

Another day she learned that ea can say /E/. She had to read some cards with ea words. Four of them said, "Eat a Treat." When she read those correctly, she got to have a Hershey kiss. She thought that was great, but had to make it out to be even better since Colin was working across the table from her. She kept telling him how good they were.

Colin finished RightStart Level E this week. Now he's reading through Life of Fred: Fractions and doing the bridges until he gets back to where he was before we took a break from it.

History

We spent a little time finishing some projects from our Christopher Columbus unit study. You can see more about that here.

For the rest of the week, we learned about the American kingdoms of the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas. I found quite a few books to go with each of them.

The girls used popcorn kernels to learn how the Mayan and Aztecs would grind maize into meal or flour.

Science

The material this week seemed to be the most difficult of our astronomy study. We learned about stars, black holes, supernovas, and light years.

We used a balloon to demonstrate how the stars are moving farther apart from one another because the universe is expanding.

We made an astrometer to measure the brightness of stars. Unfortunately, it's been cloudy so we haven't had a chance to try it out yet.

Art

The lesson was about using photographs to help you see details of the object you're drawing. The kids chose pictures from magazines.

By: Caleigh

By: Colin (of course, it's hockey themed)

By: Molly
Since it may not be clear, that's a deer on the left side.

Everything Else

Colin had hockey games on Sunday and Monday. There hasn't actually been anything else this week. I got sick as soon as we got home from KY and didn't feel well the whole week. I ended up skipping all of our activities. The kids didn't seem to mind and spent their free time skating in the driveway or sitting in front of our dining room window watching some birds build a nest on our front porch. When we moved here a year ago, we discovered a nest with eggs very close to where this one is now and the kids loved watching it until all the birds flew away. They're excited about getting to do it again.

Here is the mama bird in the nest. She's been working hard building it.

Our Week: Columbus, Pluto, and Traveling

We've spent a lot of time on the road this week. My husband had a meeting in Kentucky so we tagged along. We drove most of the day on Wednesday. Then we met my cousin and her family for dinner. Thursday, Chad had his meetings and the kids and I stayed at the hotel, where I made them do school.

Thursday evening we met some good friends for dinner. The girls had such a good time giggling with their friends they hadn't seen in a long time.
Today (Friday) will be spent driving home.

Science

We finally made it to Pluto. The kids have been waiting for this because they really wanted to discuss why it isn't a planet anymore. We looked at the arguments for and against Pluto being a planet. The arguments against weren't able to change any of their minds though. In addition to that, we read about Pluto's rotation and revolution, size, moons, how it sometimes moves closer to the sun than Neptune, and the New Horizons spacecraft that is on its way toward Pluto.
We also read some books about the Hubble Space Telescope.
Since it's so cold on Pluto, we made ice cream for this week's project in our new ice cream maker.

History

This week was all about explorers. Our main focus was Christopher Columbus. We read a few books about his life and the voyage to the new world. We read books about and discussed whether the kids believed Columbus actually discovered America. We used the In the Hands of a Child Christopher Columbus lapbook for our notebooks. Using Draw Write Now, the kids drew Columbus' ships. We also made a paper mache earth, ships in bottles, and jello boats. I only have a picture of the jello boat with me, but I'll be adding others to a separate post with more details about our study of Columbus after we get home.

Other explorers we learned about were Vasco de Gama, who sailed around Africa to reach India, Amerigo Vespucci, who realized that Columbus had actually found a new continent, and Ferdinand Magellen, who thought he could sail west and go south around South America to reach India faster than going around Africa.

Everything Else

Colin had Robotics Club. He had two ice hockey games. He played goalie in one of them, but was a player in the other one for the first time.