Sneak Peek of the Coming Week

Around the House

Mom's work -

• My Operation 2012 tasks, including working on the daily decluttering calendar from My Simpler Life.
• Slide back into a normal blogging here on Rockin' Granola and begin documenting our homeschool days again.  I'm not sure that I'm ready to start doing this daily again, as my hands are pretty full offline and online right now, but I'd like to start at least getting a couple of days a week.   If nothing else, I want to pick the camera up and take more photographs.
• Start planning for next year:  fifth grade for Jillian, kindergarten for Max (age 6), preschool for Lucy (age 4).  I think I'm going to use A Little Garden Flower's fifth grade book as my anchor for fifth grade, as well as their geometry book. 
• Keep up the habit of doing a weekly blackboard drawing for the kids (something I used to do, but stopped when baby Mia was born last August)
• Find our magnifying glasses to use this week!  I know they are around here somewhere ...

Homeschool

We'll be doing activities from Little Acorn Learning's King Winter ebook this week, which you can get for FREE.  Follow this link to Eileen's blog to find out how.

Preschool (Lucy, age 3) and Kindergarten (Max, age 5)*:
Snowflakes, Tolerance with Little Acorn Learning
Oak Meadow Kindergarten
*Max is having an age 5 kindergarten year and will officially start kindergarten at age 6

 

4th Grade Main Lesson block: 
Jillian's main lesson is on Math, using Christopherus's fourth grade materials

A Reason for Handwriting Cursive C  
daily spelling practice
six trait writing
reading for at least 30 minutes a day

Jillian is also joining in with Little Acorn Learning when she wants to and has been doing very well as my "helper" with the younger children.

You might notice that some things on Jillian's list have changed.  I did some re-evaluating and we made some curriculum changes.  It isn't always easy for me to let go of my plans, but when something isn't working, and we've truly done our best to make it work for us, it is a good thing to make changes.   


I'm so glad we changed things around!  The past three weeks it feels like we have, finally, hit our groove this year.  The first semester was really bumpy, for a number of reasons and some of them had nothing to do with school and everything to do with life.  But this second semester it feels like things are falling into place.  I love that feeling!

In the Book Basket

• Snowflake Bentley - by Jacqueline Briggs Martin and Mary Azarian
• Winter board book - by Gerda Muller
• The Snowy Day - Ezra Jack Keats
• The Tomten by Astrid Lindgren
• The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett
• The Story of the Snow Children by Sibylle Von Olfers

Rhythm

Monday - Purple Day, MLK jr. day

• Nature Study - talk about how no two snowflakes are alike and then head outside to explore the truth of this
• Enrichment - listening to Sparkle Stories (my kids love the Martin and Sylvia stories)
• Artist Study - we've been following along with Confessions of a Homeschooler's The World's Greatest Artists Unit Study, Vol. I and really enjoyed it.  Now we're branching out on our own, continuing with these wonderful books introduced to us by the unit study.

Tuesday - Red Day

• Painting day - watercolor painting
• Enrichment - examine snowflakes w/ magnifying glasses (Little Acorn Learning)

Wednesday - Yellow Day

• Coloring -coloring with beeswax crayons
• Enrichment - making paper snowflakes.  I found some templates for Jillian and I to use to make more complicated snowflakes.

Thursday - Orange Day

• Handwork/Crafting - Jillian and I are creating a felt map as we continue to discuss geography.  This is our inspiration.  We'll also be needle felting a King Winter today (Little Acorn Learning).
• Enrichment - make a bird seed snow angel
• Games - A Sleigh-Ride in the Playroom (Little Acorn Learning)

Friday - Green Day

• Practical Life - monthly home fire drill (this is going to take some motivation as it is cold!)
• Quaver Music
• Friday Night Nest - family movie night  
• Enrichment - make snow lanterns as a family (Little Acorn Learning)
  

 

What are you going to be up to with your kids this week?

Graphics on this post were purchased from Country Patch Collections.