Monday, July 30, 2012

School planner

Our school planner


After years of just writing our field trips on the family calendar, I caved. Field trips, family info just started to mix together and become lost on the calendar.  Most of you know that our family is about to get larger through adoption this next year it couldn't get any better to get this new system started, and work out the kinks.  Well lets dig in and see how I have our planner put together for the year.


First step was finding the right planner for me (The teacher).  I think I spent a good hour looking at all the planners at target before going with this cutie


The front cover I have a list of our homeschool friends and their number so that we can get together and play.

I just have a post it note as this list is always changing.  This is where I write down field trips that are in the works but not yet scheduled.  This keeps them fresh in my head as they get lost on our homeschool board

as you can see I didn't get a huge planner with big squares as this isn't where I am planning our school days, it's only for planned field trips and my blog schedule.  You can see I only have 2 colors written in as of now.  I went out and got a 5 pack of pens of different colors and let K pick his color.  He picked green so he's my green child.  His binders are green his folders are green etc.  my notes are purple.  So this year I figured this planner would work for us as right now I have 1 kiddo and even when we have placement or another child/ren I am only writing down field trips and most will be with K so just will need to add their color dots to trip details.  I hope that makes sense. 

This is where I write our center details for school.  Starting in the fall I start our centers three times a week.  There will be a centers post coming soon which will explain how I am doing centers for math,phonics/language,art


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Friday, July 27, 2012

Spelling with letter stamps

A Fun way to work on Spelling

I pulled out our letter stamps  to practice our spelling words for the day.  Our only issue was we only have 1 O and we are working on our double oo words this week.




After about a minute my smarty started to read the words,spell the words as he looked for the letters; Once he had all the letters for the words he would spell the word again as he stamped the page.





Thursday, July 26, 2012

Counting odd numbers by 2

I dont know about you but my child has been having a hard time with the consepect of counting by twos for odd numbers.  He knows the number two is even and when he thinks of it odd it's just confusing.

So I thought of a way to help him see even and odd numbers by counting by two's.  Since doing this he's picked up his even and odd numbers and now understands no matter where he starts counting from he skips 1 number.




Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Field Trip: Pizza Gallery

Pizza Gallery
7/24/2012


We have arrived and to quote K " to the best field trip ever"  The boys are admiring the art work all around the room.


The hardest decisions are being made here....Lemonade,sprite or water  LOL!
where they wash the dishes

In the Fridge
All those boxes on the top shelf is cheese..YUM!  Dough ready to go in the back

Most important job of making pizza is washing your hands



Mom are you watching???

Learning how to properly put on pizza sauce

All done and ready for the oven



My pepperoni pizza chef hat

I'm a chef!!!!




Monday, July 23, 2012

Homeschool Gymnastics

Homeschool gymnastics Open gym

Our group started with just K and now we have at least 10 kids on any given friday.  The kids leave sweaty and tired at the end of an hour


Lots of bouncing fun





Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Learning to Add using a plate..Preschool 3-4

An easy way to teach the Little's how to add.

Great lesson for the Preschooler

All you need
1 child's divide plate (I got mine from walmart in the baby/toddler area for $1.00)
Math manipulative's (Buy them or make them)


I had my son write out the math problem and than figure it out using the plate, but you can do it the other way around as well, which might be a little easier for the younger preschooler.



Hope this helps with teaching the Little's Math

Also a great way to teach
less and more
counting


Photo Wednesday..

                                                        Breakfast and Snacks prepared

Yogurt with granola
Banana slices
Vitamins
Pop tart

Snacks
Small PB/Jelly with yogurt covered raisins a jelly bean and walnuts
2 who nu cookies
kiwi
trail mix (peanuts,banana chips,cranberries, dry mango,granola)

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Rockledge gardens.... Part 2

This is part 2 of our trip to Rockledge Gardens.

You can visit part 1 here



While at the garden you just have to go in the butterfly garden.  This place is just pure bliss if you like butterfly's.



Just look at how gorgeous this butterfly is.  Love the Polkadots

Here is a chart that they have inside of the butterfly house.  We had a great time looking for all the different  butterfly's.  We couldn't find a few of them because of season but found a few different types.



Zebra butterfly. 


Not for sure but I think these are the Monarch caterpillars munching away on parsley
Didn't see any Monarchs in the butterfly house but they were all over at the garden

Monday, July 16, 2012

Teacher Filing box

My teaching filing box and all it's glory :o)


Lets take a peek inside and see how I use my filing box



Here it is in a nutshell..or a filing box for that matter.  The first slot I just keep guidelines that I put together each year of what I want to cover within the school year (one for our Summer schedule which is a half day schedule and one for our fall schedule which is a full day 9 month schedule)

This is where I jot down ideas that pop into my head or I find online (Pinterest/blogs etc.) related to schooling
Also a great place to keep my school blog ideas
Our school calendar color coded for easy reading.  We school based on a 4 weeks on 1 week off schedule.  Just seems to work well for us

Math center plan sheets and or printables stored here
I also have one for Phonics but it's empty at this moment so didn't take a photo

For all the school related catalogs that come in are stored right here for easy access for when I'm looking for something for a certain subject matter.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Rockledge gardens Part 1

On a whim I took K over to the Rockledge Gardens as I've heard some great things about the place. We arrived and walked in and all I can say is WOW!  In fact cant wait for family to fly down and take them to this garden, it's just that cool.

As you walk around the garden there are lots of workers who KNOW the plants and willing to teach you what they know about the different types of plants.  They know so much I'm planning an adult field trip here shortly with the husband as we start the planning for our landscaping.
Fee is whatever you end up buying for your home garden.



The fountains

 K and i just loved this pond.  They had tadpoles near all those pretty lily pads.  I'm going to have to ask if they sell tadpoles, would love a couple for the classroom


 I love red doors and this one was no different. 

                          As you can see these plants have shade over them so they don't fry in the Florida sun.

there are road signs like this all around the garden.  This place is huge they even have a map that helps you find what your looking for.

A lemon tree..look at how gorgeous these lemons are.  I think I want a lemon tree if our yard :o)

 One of the worksheets we got as we studied Bamboo plants. 


 The Cactus garden.  Lots of close up learning went on here.  K didn't touch but he was in aww of all the different types of cactus

 Some upside down trumpets as K called them

K said these flowers look like little banana's


                                                    Some flowers around the garden
Even a little train track around a flower bed
 A grasshopper that K found and tried to catch.  Yeah that never happened but he had fun trying

Check Back for Part 2