Homeschool – Page 17

January 23, 2012January 18, 2017

Advent 2011 – Truth in Tinsel

Through my various online homeschool buddies I heard about an ebook that came out called “Truth in Tinsel“. It’s a wonderful daily advent devotion for little kids that isn’t as over their head as some of the Jesse Tree books. You do a daily reading from the Bible with the children and a simple craft that goes along with it. Then there is a discussion section at the end. Nadia and I had some great conversations during this and she had some really sweet responses to the readings and questions that followed. Each craft is a small ornament to tell the story of advent – I bought little trees on clearance in January for when the girls do this together in 2012.

Advent 2011

Nadia working on the scented dough to represent the frankincense and myrrh.

Advent 2011

Here are our crafts (we missed the crafts on some days -but still did the readings with all our other activity in December, but we almost completed the full 24):

Advent 2011

Light, Kingdom, Zechariah

Advent 2011

Gabriel, Mary, Mary and Elizabeth with pregnant bellies

Advent 2011

Song, Sun, Joseph, Joseph’s pillow (for his dream)

Advent 2011

Bethlehem, Stable, Clothes, Sheep

Advent 2011

Shepards, Temple, Star

Advent 2011

Wise Men, Gifts

November 21, 2011January 16, 2017

Art Level 1 – First 6 lessons

This year we decided to buy an art curriculum to do with Nadia. It’s DVD based and we have seen it at the homeschool bookfair each year. It’s called “Atelier” and you can find out more information here. The level 1 is for ages 4-6 and has 3 modules and each module has 6 lessons. They have a supply kit you can also buy, but we have so many arts and crafts supplies I decided to wait on the list and see what we might need. I had everything except the fabrics, drawing pencils, liquid starch and oil pastels. I also picked up a new set of paintbrushes that I am keeping fresh just for this program. Here are our supplies for the year:

Art Lvl 1 - 1st 6 lessons — Click on the photo to see album

Art Level 1 - 1st 6 lessons

The Kimball Art museum was just finishing a Picasso exhibit when we did this “Hands and Flowers” lesson so we took the girls to see it. This is one of the great things about being in an area with so many wonderful museums.

Art Level 1 - 1st 6 lessons

I LOVE this mixed media family portrait!

November 14, 2011January 16, 2017

Autumn Treasures Unit Study

We got the Autumn Treasures unit study of Amanda Bennett’s site, unitstudy.com, and it took us much longer than usual due to our busy month, but it was great. I started by getting about 15 books from the library and printing some extra activities from Homeschool Creations. We learned a lot in this study just like our past ones on seashells and robots. We started with Do a Dot pages to get warmed up and start our discussion about fall (even though it was still pushing 100 in these parts)

Autumn Unit

Just like the other units there were a lot of fun videos to watch including how candy corn is made and how an apple press works. We learned about Johnny Appleseed and his travels – Nadia enjoyed all his crazy hats, especially the cooking pot. I have already done blog posts on the monarch butterflies and apple pie bites that we made, but here is a little view of the rest of our unit.

Autumn Unit
Nadia is working on her fall tree in this photo.

Autumn Unit
A puzzle for the back of her lapbook.

Autumn Unit
Learning the life cycle of a pumpkin – here she is with the pumpkin she picked out at homeschool day at Mainstay Farms.

Autumn Unit
Families are encouraged to go on a nature walk each day and collect items. Then enter the highlights into your unit study work book. Here are some of the things Nadia found along the way.

Autumn Unit
Leaf rubbings from our nature walks.

Autumn Unit
“Fairy” Amelie and Nadia on a nature walk.

Autumn Unit

Autumn Unit
Amelie was saying, “art art art art” over and over while I was working with Nadia so I went to see what she wanted. Then I realized that she was drawing “hearts.” Pretty cute!

We got the idea for one of our other cooking projects from the Mama Jenn site. These were messy and fun to make and tasted yummy!

Autumn Unit

Last of all, here is her completed lapbook.

Autumn_17

Autumn_18

November 7, 2011January 16, 2017

Homeschool Day at the Zoo

The Fort Worth Zoo has homeschool day every fall and this was our first year to attend. The main thing I have to say here is how WONDERFUL it was to not have my little girls competing for space with all the school groups. No offense teachers, I have gone as a chaperone in past years with my KIDS HOPE kids and it’s wild. 🙂 For this day it was basically a bunch of moms and their kids, but they also had special keeper chats and craft areas.

Nadia told me her favorite part of the day was seeing the chimpanzee baby holding on to its mommy. I tried to get a photo, but it was iffy through the glass.

Homeschool day at the zoo

What Amelie has tried very hard to tell as a “story” was our adventure with the elephants. Several of them were fairly close to the fence and I was getting the girls in position to take a photo as the elephant was throwing sand up on itself. Then a huge gust of wind came up and everyone standing there had sand in their face. The girls were wildly grabbing at me and trying to wipe their eyes and I was trying to clean my own eyes. Other people around us were just as startled. So Amelie will say, “ephant, eyes, sand, ow” and I know exactly what she is trying to remind me of.

Homeschool day at the zoo