Apple Fact and Opinion

Today we worked on more story elements.Our concentration today was fact and opinion. We talked about apple facts and opinions. Using pinterest I found this great teacher's blog with a ton of free apple teaching ideas. Here is a link to her site. http://whattheteacherwants.blogspot.com/search/label/Apples





Next, I decided to kick it up a notch for David. I modeled facts and responses (we did this in 9th grade in my public school way back when) for him and then asked him to write a few on his own. We used the facts that he could remember from the story of Johnny Appleseed (Stephen Kellog's version). Here are pictures from today's lesson.

Can you Guess Who We've been studying about?

I decided to give the boys a break from our traditional reading curriculum. So this week we are doing a book study on Johnny Appleseed! I love this story. More pictures to come!

The rest of the 100th day.

In order to practice counting to 100 the boys love this snack activity for the 100th day.

This is by far John's favorite activity!

Aliens with Valentine hats

I put up our February calendar and my little one says, "Mom I don't like the hats. They look like aliens with Valentine's hats." He also ran quickly and told his dad this morning that we needed to get me something for Valentine's day. (That's my boy!)

We are celebrating 100 days!

For our 100 days celebration we each made a shirt with 100 things on it.

We also had (at David's request) cinnamon rolls shaped like the number 100.

We played a fun tally mark game and then counted by fives to 100.

We also predicted where 100 steps would take us from our front door. The boys were a little off with their predictions. This is all we have done so far I will post more later.

Another Good Start

David was a little nervous about having to start back to school. Now that we are well into the year he is doing well.

Sweet brothers.

John is starting Kindergarten this year. He is so excited. Can you tell?

This was a "box" activity for John the first week back. Goes really well with the ten apples up on top book.

Ten Apples Up on Top center activity up close. I got this at making learning fun http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/ApplesUpOnTopMathIdeas.htm

John was so excited to review the letter b with his batman preschool pack from http://1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com/2010/10/batman-preschool-pack.html

He loved these box activities. I use "box" activities when I need John to be busy while working with David. Things are going way more smoothly than I thought they would be. Homeschooling two children is not that bad. :)

"A" Post

Today we are starting our first day of school. John's curriculum does a letter/sound a day! Pretty fast huh. I'm not sure how we will do but I think high expectations are important and most of the time our children will rise to the occasion. Anyway, I found these cute videos to help us with our letter sound association.

This video was a little babyish but he liked it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cGwUfXv-X4

This was really cute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tif2a8vXeAA&feature=fvsr

to teach both long and short a and review writing them

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBAuIzZttP4

I also wanted to read John the book Ten Apples Up On Top but our local library didn't have it so I looked on youtube and found a dad reading it for his children. Here is the link if you are interested. We are having a good day. I'll post pictures from our first day later.