October!

October has been a full and busy month for us! There are TONS of pictures of our month, which included school, library, tea time Tuesday, petting zoos, pumpkin picking, pumpkin painting, library time, an amusement park trip, Halloween parties, trick or treating, hula hooping, swim lessons, and Sugar Skulls (while learning about Dia de los Muertos). I think that about covers it!

Minecraft

Earlier this week we went to our local library to participate in a Minecraft event. Minecraft is HUGE in our house! So huge that we decided to put our school work off for the afternoon and head over to check out the party!

J & C had so much fun there. They created a Minecraft version of themselves, played pin the tail on the pig, colored pictures, made torches, and we took pictures by the giant Minecraft art displayed on the walls.Of course they enjoyed a Minecraft inspired snack as well!

  

 

Bravewriter- Tea Time Tuesday

We are less than a month into the new school year and already making changes to our curriculum. While I love the foundation we are building with Soaring with Spelling, Growing with Grammar, and Winning with Writing, it feels like we are just going through the motions in Language Arts. Both of my children love to write (how lucky am I?!) but I feel like these books aren't giving us the fun aspect of learning that we need. Jayden wouldn't complain about assignments, but LA was never met with the same enthusiasm as his other subjects. So we decided to ditch Grammar and Writing books (they both love their spelling book for some reason) and go in a different direction.


I kept hearing people rave about an LA program called Brave Writer and finally did some research on it. I decided to bite the bullet after a discussion with a fellow homeschooling mom and, two weeks later, I think it's amazing! The best part is that my kids LOVE it too! Like, REALLY love it!

Last week we started what will be a new weekly routine- Tea Time Tuesday. We spend the evening sipping tea or hot cocoa in our "fine" teacups, and we enjoy a snack by candlelight. We come dressed to impress and read poetry. We discuss the poems and/or images as well as vocabulary words.

 

These are the poems we chose (we each picked one or two and read them aloud) and some notes I jotted down about what we discussed.

Book- Something Big Has Been Here (all of the poems chosen rhymed)

Poem 1: “My Neighbor’s Dog is Purple” by Jack Prelutsky

Why do you think someone would want to paint a crocodile?

C- so no one eats it

J- crocodile is an undercover sidekick

Poem 2: “You’re Eating Like a Pig Again”

Vocabulary: scolded, fathom, snout

Do you think he was already a pig?
J- yes because he already had a snout in the picture.
C- yes, I think he grew up like a pig.

Poem 3- “I did Not Eat Your Ice Cream”

Vocabulary: swipe

Do you think the narrator did all of those things, or his/her sister?

 J & C- Both

Book 2- Firefly July- A Year of Short Poems (all of the poems chosen did not rhyme)

Poem 1: “A Happy Meeting”

1.    What do you think this poem is about?

J- a love cycle

C- rain and dust are a family because they join

Poem 2: No name written by Alice Schertle

Haiku (3 line poem- first line has 5 syllables, second line has 7 syllables, third line has 5 syllables)

In the alley a

stray cat drinks the round white moon

from a rain puddle

     What do you think of the illustration?

C-I thought he was drinking milk. His tail is up because he was wagging it because the water is good.

J- It’s weird. It seems like he really is drinking the moon.

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We are all so excited about Brave Writer. We will be doing lots of fun things with this program!