First weeks of Homeschool

Well homeschooling for us has "officially" started and I had no idea how busy we would be!!  September seems to be absolutely crazy busy with activities, beautiful weather, playdates and relatives visiting.

We are still managing to do tons of amazing things though.  Here is a summary of our first few weeks of homeschooling.

I haven't had a chance to take too many pictures as we have been so focussed.  We have been working on basic math facts and counting money.  L and I have a school store and we each take turns being shop keeper.  L is now adding up two items and giving change.  This has really helped her confidence with numbers.  We have also been measuring perimeter and area of objects with non standard measurement.

We recently listened to the book The Rescuers by Margery Sharp and Lina completed her first book report on it.  She absolutely loved doing this and is looking forward to doing another.

The beauty of homeschool is you can throw all plans out the window if something more exciting comes up.  On one of our morning walks we came across a perfectly intact dead dragonfly.  What excitement!! We brought it home and spent the morning studying it.  I printed off the dragonfly booklet and a part labelling booklet for L from Montessori Print Shop.  L studied each part of the dragonfly first with the magnifying glass and then with the microscope.  Once she'd learned all of the parts she made up her own booklet.

The weather here has been absolutely gorgeous so we having been taking full advantage in the afternoons.  One afternoon last week we took a picnic and headed up to Mount Washington.  Sooo beautiful.  L and I took the opportunity to do some nature journaling.

This Koi fish painting was a fun effective art project.  We followed the tutorial from Art Projects for Kids.

We are slowly finding our groove and both thoroughly enjoying our time together.  These are just a few of the things we've done.  I'll be posting about the other projects in separate posts.

Meet Frank

I found a tutorial for this adorable mouse and when I showed it to L she just had to make it!

While I was doing another project she spent the afternoon felting up the head.  She felted the nose and eyes and I helped with the ears and tiny paw.  

L was thrilled to have this little guy as a new addition to her room.  A relatively simple needle felting project for a Sunday afternoon and so effective.

I you would like to try it yourself the tutorial is from Pip's Poppies.  While you're there take some time to check out her other amazing creations.  Truly inspiring.

Human Anatomy- Internal Organs

I had pinned this cool idea from The Pinay Homeschooler ages ago and finally we got to try it out ourselves.

After finishing the nervous system I thought it would be fun to do an overview of the internal organs before we move on to the respiratory system. 

I downloaded the three part organ cards from the Pinay Homeschooler's blog and got out the clay.  L was already familiar with most of them but was interested in reading about their roles and functions in the body.  We then set to work making the organs out of modelling clay.  This was fun!  As you can see there are two sets of each organ as I joined L for this activity.

After we had finished we drew an outline of ourselves on some cardboard and looked up what the organs look like on the inside of our body.  We then attempted to put them in their correct places on our cardboard bodies.  Wow we were amazed at how much is squashed into the insides of our bodies!

Next up the respiratory system.....

Human Anatomy - The Nervous System

The next stop on our journey through the human body is the nervous system.  Once again we took out several books on the subject from the library.  

L added the nerves and spinal column to her body by using green embroidery thread dipped in glue.  She braided some of the thread to make the spinal column.  Once that was finished she glued on a brain inside the skull and labelled it.

We talked about how the brain is the main control centre of the body and how it sends and receives messages through the nerves and spinal column.

Next L made this super cool brain hat which can be found here.  I want to say a huge THANK YOU to all of those hardworking people who share their work for free with all of us.  You are so kind to share your learning tools with everyone!  L loved this activity.

We talked about all of our senses and what parts of the brain controls them.  We also did some brain games on the computer and looked at optical illusions. 

 One of our favourites was to look at a picture of many objects and try to memorize them for 1 minute.  We then waited for a minute and tried to recall them.  We both remembered over half which is supposed to be pretty good.

I finally got around to making some play dough for our next brain activity.  We looked up a brain model on the internet and L made it out of play dough and labelled the parts.  When she saw the picture I took she asked if she could edit it with an online editor we use.  This is her finished product. Much more spectacular!

To finish up the nervous system I wrote out cards for each part of the brain and what it controls.  I then wrote out different actions or things we do such as "taste a lemon", "watch a movie" "walk on a balance beam" and L had to place them under the correct part of the brain.

Next we are going to move away from systems for a bit and delve into the internal organs....

Graphing and Charting

What's the easiest way to poll a lot of people quickly?  Facebook of course!

Last week I asked on my FB page what all of my friends and family's favourite ice cream flavours are on behalf of L.  Once the results were in I showed L how to make a tally chart.  After doing this she was able to determine which flavours were the favourites, how many people responded and how many flavours were chosen.

We went shopping for some school supplies yesterday and L was excited to get started in her new graph paper booklet.  I showed her how to make a bar graph and here are the results.

I also wanted to show L one more way to see the results of a poll or survey so I decided to show her how to do a pie chart.  Haha I quickly realized this involves some math!  Yes I had to call in reinforcements in the form of hubby to help to get the correct percentages and make up the pie chart.  L coloured each of the sections and made the colour key.  I really wanted her to do this because it is such a great visual of the results.

Stay tuned for more charts and graphs this summer!

Banyan Tree Oil Pastels

This is such a stunning yet simple art project.  I followed the directions from this site

First off L and I looked at different pictures of Banyan trees on the internet and talked about where you would find one and why they look how they do.

We then drew an outline of a tree onto our paper and painted it in with black acrylic paint.  L added her branches as she was painting.

Once the paint had dried we started colouring in each of the spaces with two colours trying to blend them together in the middle.  We both decided to have our trees in the water and therefore colour reflections.

This is L's completed work.  I love how she added the sun.  Now that she knows what the project is all about she said next time she will fill more of her page with branches.  I'm proud of her for sticking with all of the colouring as she had a lot of white space to fill.

This is my tree.  I really enjoyed doing this project along side L.

We have decided we are going to try this project again and make a whole forest of these magnificent trees!

Human Anatomy-The Skeletal System

Our main project this summer is the human body.  

The first system is the skeletal system.

I traced around L onto a large piece of cardboard and then we cut it out.  We are gradually going to add every system onto L's body cutout.  I printed out a child sized skeleton and we cut it out and then L assembled it and glued it onto the cardboard.

Next was labelling all of the bones.  L used a sheet that I printed out for her to learn the bones and for labelling.

We spent a few days talking about and learning the names of the bones.  We played Simon Says touch your ...... as well ask just asking family members to touch a bone for L to learn.  I found a fun site where L could drag and drop the names of the bones onto a skeleton.  After all of this fun review L knows her bones!

  

Next we moved onto what actually makes up a bone.  We used one of the books we borrowed from the library to find a diagram of a bone and then we made this model out of a pool noodle, felt, a large straw and some embroidery thread.  It was a two person job as one had to hold the bits while the other used the glue gun.

After we had finished L labelled all of the parts.

The next day we learned about different types of bones.  I found this great printout explaining about the different types and then she coloured them in on the skeleton.

We also talked about joints and how they work and read about them in our library book.  We talked about how they have cartilage between them to keep them from grinding together and looked at another handout on the different types of joints.

 A fun game of joint charades followed where I wrote down some actions such as kick a ball, hop on one foot, throw a ball and then we had to act them out and say which joints we were using.

L finished off by labelling the joints on her cardboard body.

To recap I wrote out some research questions for L going over all of the things we had learned, L labelled all of the bones and joints once again on a handout and made a title page for her binder.

Next up the nervous system!

*If you would like to find any of the resources I used please take a look at my human anatomy Pintrest board*