Karate & Two Wheelers

The kids are still in karate, loving their class!

This summer one of the goals on our "Summer Bucket List" included Jayden learning to ride a bike with no training wheels. Well, last Saturday he did it!

He is beyond thrilled and has been riding practically every day since he got the hang of it!

Touch A Truck

Last week we went to a local event called Touch a Truck. This features several vehicles that the children can climb in and explore.

As soon as we got there the children gasped. There were two campers there which, up until I learned the difference a few minutes ago, we all thought were RVs. They have been talking about buying and living in an RV forever now. Naturally, the first stop was to check them out.

 

We spent about an hour there, getting in and out of different vehicles including a police car and firetruck.

Week 2!

J & C have been doing  amazing with their school work! This week we are incorporating history (2x a week) and science (2x a week) into our schedule.

Jayden got 100% on his math and spelling tests the first week of school. This week we moved on to Lesson 2 in spelling.

 For writing and grammar, Jayden practiced identifying subjects, predicates, and verbs.

 

Caitlin really surprised me by asking if she could do 3 pages of addition in her workbook.

Last year we used preschool number worksheets from Confessions of a Homeschooler. They have become too easy for Caitlin so I printed out her free and AMAZING kindergarten number worksheets here. Caitlin will practice writing the numbers 1-20 in standard form and word form as well as do a number search located on the bottom. I put the pages in a book with page protectors. She uses dry erase markers so that we can get the most use out of these pages without having to continuously reprint!

We restarted The Story of the World for, oh I don't know, the millionth time! Jayden was especially anxious to continue at the part we left off, but none of us could remember what happened. This school year we also have the activity guide to go along with our history curriculum so this will be the LAST restart!

The introduction included words such as history, historian, archeology, and archeologist. Along with reading the introduction, I found an adorable craft at the Dollar Store to show a little bit of our history.

Note the crown Caitlin drew on her head!

I love how Jayden drew Caitlin's hair!

I put our clothes line back up in the living room to display their fine artwork!

Back to school!

I love the smell, look, and feel of new notebooks, crayons, and pencils. Brand new school books with no creases just look especially pretty to me. I am so excited that we are back to school! Initially the kids did not share my enthusiasm. I tried hyping it up for about a week prior to beginning, but that didn't spark much interest. On Monday, August 5, 2013 Jayden officially began second grade and Caitlin began kindergarten.

The entire week we focused on math & language arts (spelling, writing, grammar), as well as our routine 30 minutes of silent reading for Jayden and 1 book of reading for Caitlin. I wanted to ease them back into school instead of thrusting them back in full force.

Jayden's Language Arts curriculum is definitely an improvement over last year's curriculum. Last year we used a free LA curriculum which wasn't terrible, but definitely did not seem as detailed as this curriculum. I really love that this curriculum has very little prep time and we can just open it up and go with it. The assignment is clear and there are no frills with it that can be a distraction. I also love that Jayden can do this with very little guidance from me if I need to help Caitlin with her work.

 

For writing, Jayden learned about "subjects" and "predicates" and the role they play in a sentence.

For grammar he worked on proper sentences, including capitalization and punctuation marks.

This is his spelling list 

I love that the definitions for his spelling words are on first page of each new week. Initially he was worried that he would have to look up the definitions. When I looked over the teacher's manual, one of the first things it says is that the definitions are there to introduce the words to the students, not for them to fret over. For some reason, this made me feel really calm and it made Jayden very happy! He likes looking in the dictionary but he doesn't want to have to do it.

Math is still a review for Jayden in the early chapters of Math in Focus. He is finishing up his addition section.

This lady came dressed for success. Wearing her compass ring and her Victorious necklace, she was ready for her first day of school. She is still not officially a kindergartner, but she will be doing kindergarten work for about 30 minutes a day. 

We found this workbook in Target in the dollar bins! It says grade one but it is definitely much easier than first grade work.

 She worked on counting items up to 10, and practiced writing her numbers 1-10. 

She is up to the green books (the last color of books in set 1) in her Bobs books!! She complains about reading but when it comes down to it, she laughs and enjoys herself with these books. Once she completes the next set, we will buy her the next level of books. Caitlin is working on blending sounds such as ch-, sh-, th-, etc.

I wanted to reminisce with you about how small my children looked last year, when they started pre-k & 1st grade. I went back and searched for our first day of school last year. I finally found it and saw... no pictures! I completely forgot that I somehow messed things up last year and the images were deleted from my blog. Oh well!

Here are my babies when they started school last year.This is the boy who went from reading at a second/third grade level, to reading Percy Jackson books. Seriously, he is reading "The Lightening Thief" right now for his quiet reading time!

 And this is the girl who went from recognizing her alphabet to reading!

These kids never cease to amaze me!

Karate Belt Stripes!

This week in karate was a special week. The kids got to test for their very first stripe in karate. The practiced all week long. They made sure to focus on everything Sensei said. Jayden was nervous but they both did fantastic!