Preschool Corner: All About the Circus!!

For the past three weeks, B has been working on a circus unit study!!  He had a lot of fun learning about what a circus is!  We read books on the circus, watched a movie and worked on his writing/colors with the colorful FREE UNIT STUDY.

B looking through one of the fun circus books!

Two of the books we read!

Movie we watched!!

I downloaded the unit study online for free from HomeschoolCreations.net (FREE UNIT STUDY)!  It had so many different activities to do from games to writing!  We will be definitely be utilizing this site again in the future.

Here are some of the activities we worked on from the unit study

B working on writing the cotton candy color name :-)

We finished up our unit with a super cute clown puppet!!
http://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/circus/mclown.html

Wordless Wednesday: My Silly B and I

Our Homeschool Schoolroom

One of my favorite places in our home is our schoolroom!  I love how it feels and looks.  I love how my kids have a special place that is just for school.  I love watching the boys in the schoolroom working on puzzles on the floor at night.  I just love everything about it!

While I understand that it is not possible for everyone to have a schoolroom in their house and some people who homeschool do not feel the need for one, we love having ours and see its many benefits!

When the boys enter our schoolroom, it is time for school.  They are now in a learning environment with little distraction.  They each have their own space to do their work and they love helping me decorate their areas.  When we decided to take L out of public school and homeschool him, he was very sad he wasn't going to be in a fun classroom anymore.  I decided to do what I could to fulfill that need for him and he is now very happy with his very own room (that he shares with his bro of course ;-)

I LOVE seeing other homeschoolers' schoolrooms and how they have it set up, so here are some pictures of our room!  

Here is L's part of the school room!  There is a large whiteboard behind the map!  His desk is in the middle of the room.

Here is B's corner!!  He has his own comfy chair :-)

Reading corner!!!

I wanted to show our bookshelf (it is actually a room divider bookshelf, very sturdy)-- one of my homeschool mommy friends had blocked off the doorway between her schoolroom and dining room with a bookshelf and I thought that was brilliant!!  I did it too and now I do not have runaways during our school time ;-)

Inexpensive Homeschool Portfolio Folder

Anyone who homeschools can agree, we all have a plethora of papers/projects/artwork that have taken over our schoolrooms and houses!!  I like to keep our schoolroom clean and organized- and it is for the most part... except for the piles of papers from past weeks that are all over the place!  

I REALLY wanted to buy each of the boys one of these from Lakeshore Learning:

But at $20 each, I can not justify it at this point in the school year.  I will wait until August when they have their big sale!!

So, while at Kroger the other day, I saw these guys on sale for around $3.00 each and grabbed one for each of the boys.

 They will do the trick, but not very personal and a little boring looking (because that is so important ;-)!  I decided to pull out my new friend, Mod Podge and make it look a little prettier!!!

I used scrapbook paper and traced out the letters

Mod Podge, baby!!

Lay out the letters AND... Mod Podge, baby!!!

VOILA!!! 

Organization makes me SMILE :-)

They are super cute and will work for the rest of the school year!!

Preschool Corner: Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?

I just love doing lapbooks with my little B!!  He has so much fun reading the book everyday and then doing a craft or activity that goes along with it!  His favorite part is being able to show daddy his work at the end of the week!!  I really like doing a theme every week with him, along with book work (letters/numbers/handwriting).

Last week we did, Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? lapbook!  It was a lot of fun!!  I downloaded it from www.homeschoolshare.com- CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD FREE LAPBOOK

Front of Lapbook

Inside the lapbook- here are a couple of the activities he did, along with a game in the bag!

Back of his lapbook- he had to glue on all the healthy foods that Jesse ate!

Here is the game that is included in the free download- Laundry Letter Match!!!  B had so much fun doing this!

If you have a preschooler, you should definitely give this lapbook a try :-)

Martin Luther King, Jr. Unit

This week, we did a unit on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  I have always been fascinated with MLK.  I love that he stood up for what he believed in and never backed down... all while doing it peacefully!  It took a strong person to be able to take on our country and try to change the way people treated and segregated the African American community at that time.  I appreciate what he did and thankful God sent him here to help make the world a better place!!

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I downloaded this unit study off of the Teachers Pay Teachers website- it came with a printable book that was wonderful- it made it easy for both my seven and three year old to understand who he was and what was going on during this time in history!  I highly recommend it for younger kids!!  CLICK HERE FOR UNIT STUDY

The unit study also included this cute MLK color, write and cut!  L wrote, "Peace, Equality, Freedom."

Here are a couple other resources we used

Here L is watching MLK's most famous, "I have a Dream" speech

Here are the three additional books we read throughout the week

I also downloaded from the Teachers Pay Teachers website, a MLK paper bag template- the boys had fun coloring and glueing them on their bags :-)  CLICK HERE FOR PAPER BAG TEMPLATE

I feel that both boys learned a lot about MLK this week and also have a better understanding of what life was like over 50 years ago.

Cold Fall Day

We started our Saturday, freezing our tushes off at L's soccer game at 8am.  It was 37 degrees out with a "feels like" temp of 33- my toes were sooooo cold, it took forever for me to warm them up when we got home!  

We were so PROUD of L at his game, he scored his first goal ever!!  It was the best feeling to watch his excitement and see his face just light up.  He was on top of the world for the rest of the day.

After that, Hubby and the boys went outside to rake the leaves in the front yard- they had so much fun jumping in the pile of leaves!!  I was "updating" my hair, okay who am kidding... I was coloring my hair inside while they were doing it, so I ran out there quick and snapped a picture (before anyone could see me- haha)!! 

Later in the day I decided to run out and go shopping to get all the things that I have needed for the past month.  I have been on Weight Watchers since August and have lost nineteen pounds... so I have needed a new pair of jeans and such.  B wanted to come with me so bad and was super pumped when I told him he could come!  As soon as I pulled up to the store, I looked behind me and B had passed out!! 

He did so great while out shopping with me.  We went to three different store and ended with picking up dinner.  Not one single complain and he enjoyed his time with mommy :-)

Busy, Busy, Friday!!

Today was another busy day!  For us, Fridays are for finishing any schoolwork that we didn't get to throughout the week- plus Spanish, art and our science experiment.

For Spanish today, we talked about "mi casa."  So, after completing the lesson, L was to go outside and  draw a picture of our house.  He really liked doing this and spend a lot of time getting it  "just right" ;-)

After we completed L's schoolwork for the day, we took off to meet up with friends from our homeschool group at the roller skating rink!  Our local rink has homeschool days once a month and the boys just LOVE going and skating with their friends.

Taking a break from skating!!

Since both the boys are still learning how to skate, we rent a "skate mate"- it helps a ton!

When we got home, B still had science to finish.  We talked about different animal habitats and he had to figure out in his book which animal went with what habitat.  After that, we made an ocean habitat!!  B, who is three, really thought it was fun!

What we used: a clear bottle (we used an old vitamin bottle), water, oil, glitter, blue food coloring, shells, rocks and fish stickers.

Add it all together and hot glue the cap on (with moms help of course)

Voila!!  Our sea habitat!!  B wanted to put in a lot of blue food coloring, so it turned out pretty dark, but he was very excited about it.  It is very pretty when you shake it all up!