Preschool Parable of a Sower/Gardening theme Mon 2/25/12

This week the littles are gong to learn about sowing seeds.  As I've stated before we use hubbardscupboard.org as part of our curriculum.  I then add in the rest of the activities based on it.  This week is the Parable of the Sower.  So, I've planned some activities to go with it.
In our texture box I put ground coffee, beans (for seeds) and fabric flowers.  I also added a couple of spoons for scooping and two clear dishes for collecting.
Art activity I had three different kinds of "seeds" (beans), green paper and I made the glue brown by adding some brown paint (to look like soil) for Monday. Wednesday-Fri I plan to do gardening collage, sponge painting flowers, I have to think of one more art activity - I'll have to add when I think of it! I may have them paint a planting pot and plant a flower seed they can take care of!
Writing Table/center - index cards, popsicle sticks, markers, tape and planting/gardening words.  I am going to try to make some sort of gardening journal during the week to add to our center
Circle Time books -  today, Monday we will be reading The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle.  The other days are books on Parable of the sower, but we don't have them yet.  A requested some from the library, but I have not yet checked to see which ones they didn't have so I can get them from Amazon.
Science center/table - gardening books on Monday,  Wednesday will be gardening tools, Thursday hoping to explore seeds (various seeds, magnifying glasses and books, and Friday plant them.
Easel- Monday - red and white paint (left over from last week), over paper, Wednesday brown paint, big brushes, Thursday and Friday I'll see.  I may add some sort of gardening item to paint with, I have to think more about this one and look over my gardening stuff.

 This is our texture box, with the ground coffee, flowers, beens, dishes and spoons

 Here is little number two, K "sowing seeds" - our art activity of gluing beans onto green paper. You can see the little dish with the stick in it, that's the brown glue.

Here is K enjoying the texture box - she loves this box, she also loves dumping the contents on the floor, but I close it if she does that.  :)

I'm posting pics from Monday that I have taken.  Only three so far, but I'm planning on adding more!

One additional comment, we don't do the letter of the week they way they have it.  We're putting together an alphabet book and also I'm writing words for the current letter. I'll put some of the most recent letters in the literacy center with playdough, road letters and cars (road letters from makinglearningfun.com).

My Father's World

      This school year we began using My Father's World!  I had many reasons for choosing, but when I made my final decision was after attending a homeschool convention and taking two workshops for My Father's World.  We are using AHL - high school for our 9th grade ds and ECC for our 7th grade dd.  I am not using the MFW preschool curriculum.  When I purchased the two for my older children, we barely had the funds for that.  Currently I have been working with using a free online preschool curriculum from hubbardscupboard.org.  I also add in my own "style".  Having studied and earned a degree in Early childhood Education, I could not, not incorporate it!  It is a combination of Reggio Emilio, Montessori and Waldorf.  My older two children were trained this way before entering the public school system.  4 years ago we began our homeschooling journey!  
       The pictures above:  the top picture is our little K, age 2 and quite spunky - she was "helping" with our world cake for ECC - Exploring Countries and Cultures.  The beauty in the middle is our dd A - 12 1/2 and so very helpful with the little's (we also have a 4 year old), preparing meals, shopping and entertaining the littles.  The other beauty is my mom.  I was so thankful she was at our home this day, she helped get A started on her world cake.  The middle picture is A taking charge of the decorating.  The last picture, obviously our finished "world cake".  A fun and delicious activity!  I plan to take some more pictures of what she's done, but realized after looking, this is the only one we have!  We're still working on making this curriculum work for us.  We love My Father's World, but A is not a worksheet kind of kid.. at all!  So recently I've been trying to give her more creative ways of covering the geography material that includes a lot of worksheets.  She is supposed to be make a sugar cookie of Europe and decorating to show the bodies of water.  I need to look around for some ideas too.  We've worked out science.  Instead of using the Apologia General Science (she looked it over and was not at all interested - which I figured) I have had her choosing an animal or two from each country and create lap/notebook pages.  In addition to that, I get out a bunch of books on the other science topics listed: deserts, rain forest, forests, lakes and ponds etc.  She has to read those books along with doing some of her own research.  She is currently researching lakes and ponds and enjoying learning about them very much!
       Our oldest is N and he is a 9th grader doing AHL Ancient History and Literature.  He's been quite a challenge lately to educate!  He doesn't mind what he has to read, but does not like "wasting time" doing things like - science experiments for Biology!  I have recently began a new "schedule" for him.  He has made some comments about going back to public school, which I know he really does not want to do - he's gotten quite comfortable with having light work on Friday's and beginning his weekend early.  That said, I needed a way of keeping better track of what he's doing and the time he's spending.  I found that he was rushing through his assignments, doing them very poorly just to get done.  So I implemented a "period time schedule".  Basically he's now having to spend 40 minutes in each "class(period)".  I make sure he has 8 per day.  We've got some scheduling change to make. Here in our state, they have to take art or music.  So, I started him on the clarinet. Why? because I got one practically for free and we still had the cd on learning how to play it from when he was in public school.  He's not like that choice.  I'm going to explore some other options for him to try.  He enjoys drawing little cartoon type characters so I'm going to see what I can get form the library for him to try out.  He's a very bright young man and needs to be challenged, but he also needs to apply himself.  We're still working on some heart issues with him.  I know he's had a good foundation in the Lord, even though he did attend public school.  So, the roots are there!
         Our two little ones, whom I refer to as "the littles" are very busy and keep my going all day long!  As I stated above I do a preschool with them, but not MFW.  I'm excited however, to say, in the fall, little J, who will be 5 in October, will be starting MFW Kindergarten! YEAH!!!  I'm excited about it.  I'm planning on moving slowly through it though.  I don't want to rush him.  We'll see how it goes!  The Lord is helping me with making the plans for our current school days.  I'm going to be adding much more about that and photos too!  I hope you've enjoyed reading this very long post!  God Bless!

Another change in our school room!

School room 2012-2013

I had to make more changes in our school room, it was driving me crazy the way it was.  I had been online searching for something, can't remember what now, but I came across "littleredhen4.blogspot.com" and saw her pictures of her schoolroom.  I loved the way it looked and wanted to do something similar with ours.  I could tell her room was bigger, but the layout would work in our room too.  For now our computer desk is taking up more room than I'd like, but the desk was free!  As soon as we get some "extra" money I plan to purchase a tower style computer desk I've seen at walmart.com.  It will then go in the corner where I have our filing cabinet but, not sure where the filing cabinet will go, it may just stay, be be moved over where the desk is.  Once that is completed I'd like an oblong table to go in front of the window so everyone can use it comfortably, although everyone is using the little round one now, but that can be a problem when the "littles" are using their writing/literacy center stuff and the "bigs" are doing school work too.  I am pleased with how it looks now. Of course it never looks this nice during a school day!  But if it did then the day wouldn't be as productive! :)

 This is the listening center - I have books on cassette to go with some of our picture books.

 The colorful shelves hold the writing center and literacy center supplies.  The top boxes are labeled with the contents in the box.  The remaining boxes are Aa-Gg (Gg is on the floor - it holds some books to read) they contain literacy activities. Directly to the right of them are supplies and workbox "boxes".  I use the three draw things.  Currently we are working on getting back to the workbox system.  Next to them on the right, the dresser, holds art and craft supplies in the first two drawers.  The bottom on is scrap paper, newspaper/grocery flyers and old magazines.  The top holds our construction paper trays, finished work trays, scissors, markets, pencils, pens.. etc.  The laminator has it's own home, but I'm using it a lot right now!  The little round table is for creating and working.  As I said, it was for the "littles" but the "bigs" end up using it too.

The picture above is a silly picture, but I put it up because behind my "littles" is our "circle time" area.  I have books for our current theme, plus pictures to go with our theme.  When this was taken, our theme was "winter".  The pink in the picture - to the right - they are not normally there!  They belong to "big" A.  Up above the books, behind the curtain, is our calendar.  I cover it up when we are finished.  Also, I have a circle time board we do, that folds in three and stores there too.  "Big A" is behind the littles in the picture reading her "Window on the World" book for ECC - Exploring Countries and Cultures.

I also have a math center - shelves that contain six boxes I place math activities in.  The top of the shelf is the home for our guinea pig Smores.  Currently the bottom shelf is storage, but I plan to make that our science shelf.  We do have a science/math "table" too. It's our science center/math/science table.  I originally planned for it to be the science center, but I do place math activities that go along with our theme and besides, math and science are often grouped together with many early childhood activities.  We also have an easel.  I am so grateful for it too!  My beloved Aunt Gloria had gotten it from someone and brought it up to us.  She is now home with Jesus, but I have so many reminders of her, like the easel.  I also made a texture box.  Some call it a sand and water table, but the early education degree program I learned and received my degree from calls it a texture table.  I call it a texture box - we don't have room, nor did I need, a texture table.  I bought a larger plastic box from the store (I think they are called sweater boxes - it's a 16 Qt. container), labeled it texture box, put extra strength velcro on the bottom sides, stapled the other part of the velcro to this little table (another "gift" from Aunt Gloria") and there I have it!  I had to velcro it down so the littles wouldn't try to carry it all over the house!!  I actually made this before our youngest little was even a though!)  We are also fortunate to have a playroom.  It's very small, but holds alot!!  I use it for storage too!  In another post I'll have to get pictures up of our playroom! It needs more labeling, but right now, I'm thankful it's tidy - well, except for A's area!  Barbie/Monster High/crazy craft holding land!  She and I discovered an awesome site on YouTube called "myfroggystuff".  This woman makes all kinds of doll things from recycled materials!  So awesome!  BUT.. A saves too many things for crafts she's not even planned yet!  I'll get on here again soon to add pics and some info from our themes.  I'm going to try to put the lesson plans up too!  I'm still new with this blogging stuff!  Right now, I'm just trying to get on here more.  Have a great day!