Week 1 2014-15 School Year

I love new school years!  I love going into stores the middle of July and eyeballing all the new school supplies that I don't need.  I restrained myself this year and made a list of only the things we needed and PRETTY much stuck to that list.  There were a few extras that I just HAD to have :)

We started school on Monday.  Just Math and a couple other things, but we started.  CC started on Tuesday and I was busy in preparation for that almost all summer.  I'm tutoring Foundations and Essentials this year.  It's going to be a little hectic, but I think I'm definitely going to enjoy it.  I have a great group of 6 kids, Spencer included, in Foundations (the morning class) and 12 in Essentials (the afternoon class). I can't believe we have so many students enrolled, being a new campus, but I am so excited!  

This week in Foundations, we learned about Columbus, Latin Prepositions, what an infinitive is, 4 types of tissues, the beginning 7 events of our timeline, skip counted the 1s and 2s, and the states and capitals of ME, NH, MA, RI, & CT.  We also did an experiment about Blinking and the retina.  We learned that the retina only holds an image for 1/16 of a second.  We learned about OiLS and how that applies to art.  

Each week is going to be pretty much the same.  Here are our curriculum choices for this year:  

Spencer:  EEL:  Grammar Charts, Task Analysis, Editing Exercises, Grammar Rules

           IEW:  US History Based Workbook, vocabulary

                Math:  Finish Saxon 5/4 & move on to 6/5

Andrew:  EEL:  Grammar Charts, Task Analysis, Editing Exercises, Grammar Rules

               IEW:  US History Based Workbook, vocabulary

               Math:  Finish Saxon 3 & move on to 5/4

Carson:   Language Arts - PAL - Reading, First Language Lessons Grade 2, PAL - Writing

               Math:  Saxon 2

           

All 3 boys will be doing Spelling, History, Science, Fine Arts, and Latin together.

             History:    Scholastic's "All You Need to Know About American History" book, 

                             CC Timeline Cards, Usborne History Encyclopedia, and Kingfisher  

                             History Encyclopedia

            

             Science:   CC Science Cards, multiple texts on subjects learned in CC

             Fine Arts:  CC covers basic drawing first 6 weeks, learning the tin whistle weeks 

                              7 - 12, Famous Artists weeks 13 - 18, and Famous Composers

                              weeks 19 - 24

             Latin:         Prima Latina

             Spelling:    Spelling Plus

I am hoping we will have a fabulous year.  Ellie sits in for most of the boys lessons and pretends she is doing "school".  Lots of reading books, coloring, drawing, and playing for her this year.  She listens as we do the CC Memory Work weekly, so she's getting that too without knowing it.  Songs make everything fun... even if she doesn't know what an adverb is, she's got the song with the definition of it down pat.  

Here are our students for the 2014 - 15 school year of King's Glen Academy!

lexington county museum

Thursday we went to the Lexington County Museum to learn about Native Americans.  The boys learned about Native American games, legends such as ‘How the Turtle cracked his shell’, different furs that they were able to feel, food the Native Americans grew, the way they wove baskets, and they also were able to make a small clay pot.  One interesting fact that I didn’t realize was that the Cherokee Indians didn’t wear the feather headdress like I thought Indians did.  They wore the simple turbans like the tour guide is wearing here, that had a few feathers tucked in the side.  So I am learning right along with the boys ☺

talking about legends

the boogie man mask

catch the stick game

you had to shake the basket and count how many rocks had a black mark on them, and whoever had the highest number won…

 

pinecone basketball

 

throwing arrows made out of feathers with rocks attached to them for weights, and corncobs through the wreaths…

catch the rabbit game…they threw the stick to try and hit a ball that two other kids were rolling to each other…

lacrosse

same catch the rabbit game

learning about different skins

a papoose that a chief’s wife would use

halloween fun

I usually don’t decorate for Halloween.  I start to think at the end of the season I’m going to stock up on clearance decoration items for the next year, and I usually don’t. But one thing that we did last year that the boys enjoyed was making salt dough ghosts, so that’s what we did this year too. I found it on the Family Fun website and it looked easy, and I can handle easy with not a whole lot of instructions.  The kids really enjoyed it and walk by our “Halloween decoration table” and play with the ghosts every now and then.  We also made paper bag trees and used paper lunch sacks instead of the big grocery paper bags.  We’ve just now added some other spooky characters that I found in a kit at WalMart today for $5.  It was modeling clay and instructions on how to make a few Halloween characters…just something to channel the kids desire to do something crafty.  They’ve been wanting to work with clay ever since we went to the Lexington County museum yesterday and were able to make a small clay pot in conjuction with learning about the Native Americans and how they lived.   I’ve been needing to incorporate some fun, crafty things with the kids, so I was glad I found some easy ways to accomplish this. 

    His head fell off Mommy!!   OOOOOOHHHHHH…I’m scared…    Shaun had just come in from work, so don’t mind his stained clothing…it was muddy that day!!    Shaun’s ghost he made and Carson thought we were making snowmen…     Getting ready to be cooked in the microwave…           

    

Carson enjoyed playing with the scene the most.  We read the book “Five Little Pumpkins” and he made 5 little orange pumpkins to sit on the gate, like in the story.  Then he placed them on the tree to make a pumpkin tree…he has some imagination. 

week 2

A lot of these pictures are going to start looking the same, because I take just about the same pictures everyday.  A few of them I want to look back and see how the kids are progressing.  And also because I am a slacker and fall behind on updating this blog, I need a reminder of what exactly we did do. 

 

Week 2, we started out each day with the boys writing a little something about the date, their name and then a random sentence that I came up with.  Some mornings I let them spell words out themselves in the random sentence and some mornings I would help them spell it out.  Carson has to jump in to and thinks he can write just as good as the other boys can and has to have his picture taken and has to see his face in the camera or he pitches a fit.  We also started out with the pledge, star-spangled banner, prayer, and calendar time.  We would count the numbers in spanish as we went through what day it was in the month.  We did the weather some mornings and also let them color in what day of school it was. 

 

       

        

Andrew really enjoyed putting together 3 letter words with the phonics cards from our A2 program. 

   

The boys are obsessed with catching critters they find in the backyard.  This particular week, they caught about 50  grasshoppers and crickets then decided to put a frog in the same bug box.  Who knew that frogs at baby grasshoppers ☺

    

 

I bought this hat from the dollar spot at Target after I took Carson to the doctor and he wore it the whole day…   

  

 

We worked on simple addition for Andrew and double addition with carrying for Spencer.  We learned about place values so that it hopefully would make a little more sense.  The boys worked in a few workbooks that I had got from the Target dollar spot.

 

After our frog and grasshopper/cricket encounters, I had the kids draw in their nature journals about the animals.  I used the Usborne Draw Animals book and a page off the internet on how to draw crickets. 

 

We read about Nephi and the brass plates this week and I found a song off of LDS scripture rock that dealt with 1 Nephi 3:7.  I LOVE these songs and the kids do too because they’re fun to dance to and it helps them learn the scriptures. 

 

            

    

Andrew helped me set up the new September calendar. 

   

 

MATH

* Place values

*Skip Counting by 3’s

*Dreambox computer games

Andrew – Practice writing numbers, workbook

Spencer – Double digit addition, workbook word problems…simple addition and subtraction

*dot to dot puzzles

 

LANGUAGE ARTS

*Rain, Rain, Go Away rhyme – ‘ay’ words

*Started McGuffy Readers with both boys – Andrew…primer, Spencer…1st reader

*Read “Dinosaurs at Dark”

*Listened to “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” and others by Beatrix Potter on CD

*Played Hooked on Phonics Spanish game…Spencer dressed up like what he thought a Spanish person would dress up like and grabbed his cowboy hat, tomato stake to use as a guitar and let me know this is what Spanish people did. 

*Andrew – 3 letter word puzzles

 

And to see what the boys did that weekend, go to my family blog…