Summer Fun

We are enjoying this beautiful weather! This week we went to a local water park that we have annual passes for, swimming at our Aunties house twice, today is our home school groups swim party at another water park, then tomorrow swimming with friends. YES I love summer, we spend lots of time outside in the yard and riding bikes, trikes and scooters too.
However we are still doing school time, it takes about one to two hours a day and we do it in the morning so we have the rest of the day to play. I have finished planning for the first half of next year, all I do is create book lists for each week that we are going to read. Then for Kayak we are starting to teach her how to write so I have a letter of the the week and we will read books, do crafts related to that letter. Star has only Kumon rhymes, and Explode the Code for workbooks I plan on going at her pace and if we need more we can get them if not great :)

Free Free Free!

Teach your child so many languages with this free website! http://www.hello-world.com.

From Caterpillar to Butterflies

Been too long.....

Starting the garden
Kayak at the childen's musuem


Again this blog has fallen on the back burner so to speak! We have been soooo busy planting gardens, watching over caterpillars, My husband's parents are here from Morocco, and we have been planning what we are going to use for Star next year. So I have thought about updating all the days or at least weeks activities but it seems impossible for me to sit here when I can be playing outside right now :) Our days typically go like this right now......up at 7:30-8:00, eat and TV until 9, read together do some school, go to park or play group, then home for lunch and nap, after nap lately has been the water parks until dinner time or they close, then home, baths and bed by 8:00. We have 5 caterpillars that are transforming and are in the puppa stage now so hopefully we will have butterfly's soon. We are doing lots of outdoor activities now and identifying plants, flowers, birds and bugs so this is what we will continue through the summer. When we start Kindergarten in the Fall we are going to use the Charlotte Mason method which is what we have done all along. It is Literature based and the lessons are short 20 minutes each. you use living books to get the children to learn from real experiences rather than workbooks or fictional books. We have read all the recommended books so far and like the fact they are learning and don't even know then we just ask questions to make sure they get it or draw a picture. When Star is able to write a little neater I will have her write the narration. We are still going to use 100 easy lessons, and Explore the Code. Sounds fun right? Time to go make lunch and off to the water park!

The Owl box

So if you are interested this is a very cool ap on your iphone ustream. We have been recording videos and sending them to grandparents since I figured it out last week, but then I came across this http://www.ustream.tv/theowlbox and know we are addicted! I first saw this posted on a homeschooling group but I didn't check it our until I was uploading our videos and it was a live shot of this owl Molly that was watching over her eggs, we saw one hatch Max! The girls keep telling me let's see what molly is doing, oh she is sleeping, or look she is sitting on him, they love it! This is not what I intended my iphone to be used for but it turns out that it has lots of educational aps that the girls use and learn from. Besides watching Molly today we did our regular lessons then changed out the boxes in the schoolroom, we read Little Woman and some Robert Frost. Now it is nap time for Kayak and Star is playing her leapster then we are off to the park :)

This is some small manipulative's that the girls use to count and sort, I love this storage bin!
Our neighborhood birds had a baby that we have enjoyed watching
These are great games that we play and love
This storage bin is from Target and holds tons of school toys, the smaller containers are from Ikea. We have rice and beans on this day that they practice picking up with plastic tongs and transferring to the ice cube trays. Then tangagrams, lacing blocks, widgets, puzzles, blocks, screws, and some instruments. I change most of the stuff out every week to keep them interested.
These are some of the many books we are reading right now, today we also read The Little Princess. I let them pick books off the shelves all day for me to read, then Star has to read at least 2 to us, and these 3 we are reading over the next couple of weeks.

Some of the books we love

Games from 1+1+1 blog

Star balancing on wooden blocks with a spoon on her nose, typical day for her :)