Grade 5 (2011/2012) - Current Plan

We're always fine tuning and making adjustments here and there.

LANGUAGE ARTS
- Growing with Grammer 4
- Various Reading materials.
- Creative Writing assignments from various topics
- Penmanship various letters and thank-yous to family

MATH
- Singapore Math (5A & 5B)
- Various online computer games
- Various Worksheets for practice

HISTORY/GEOGRAPHY
- K12 History (Grade 5)

SCIENCE
- K12 Science (Grade 5)
- various topics (including Junior Badges and other subjects of interest)

LANGUAGES
Considering either French or Spanish Rosetta Stone
Re-visiting ASL

ARTS/CRAFTS/MUSIC
- Extra Curricular Art Projects
- Junior Arts, Crafts and Music Projects
- extracurricular classes as appropriate

EXTRACURRICULAR
- Swimming
- Piano
- Junior Girl Scouts
- Soccer
- outside classes as interest deems necessary

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If anyone out there reading has an absolute favourite program that they want to share, I'd love to check it out! :)

I will continue to update as we progress through this year! :)

K Science

Yes, i have been a bad blogger. My excuse is 3 kids keep me busy and schooling at least 2 of them has posed gigantic challenges this year! LOL! Its May now, and we're slowly settling into a routine (gufaw, gufaw - that's a tongue in cheek giggle for those of you that aren't familiar!) :)

So today I present you with our learnings. The middlest has been slowly working through her Science and History materials. We're doing Kindergarten this year, and on no set schedule, just when I feel that we've been slacking too much or she has been playing far too much time on online games.

Anyway, now that the formalities and apologies are over! We've been learning about the 5 senses courtesy of Aliki's "My Five Senses" book. We've been studying the sense of smell, so this morning I had her sniff the spice cupboard with her eyes closed and a few random selections from the fridge. We compiled a list of things she liked the smell of, and thing she didn't like so much!

So her 5 fav smells are Oranges, cookies, flowers, perfume and lemons
Her 5 not so fav smells are rotting apples, rotting food, paint, poo, and we put skunk on there because he was cute to look at! :)

We then experimented with how smells travel through the air. So one bathroom smells of bath and Body works Twisted Peppermint body spray (which I dislike!) and the other of lavendar Aromatherapy mist! She sat on one side of the room while I squirted the scent into the room and when she got a wiff, of it she let me know. It travelled slow and she has a stuffy nose... but it worked! :)

After that we made a digital collage of her fave and not so fav smells, which we glued into her notebook.

Changing Gears

So Middlest, would technically start kindergarten this fall, but she's smart as a whip already and highly distracted. I've known for a while that find a curriculum for her would be tough! we signed on with K12 for History and Science, and short of tying her to a chair, getting her motivated is tough! So I'm switching out again.

I've been looking out the Oak Meadow stuff that I had ordered, what now seems a century ago - for Oldest. I think it might be a good fit. It's definitely more open ended, short sitting times, and more hands on natural, which might work for her.

She hates reading (the process) but loves being read to, so this is a good opportunity for her. We're gonna run with it. I just need to get my hands on some beeswax and beeswax crayons. (the chick in the Blic, here looked at me like I had 5 heads when I asked for beeswax crayons, like what is wrong with the regular kind! and then wouldn't help any further.)

So that's where we're at. The oldest is gonna follow along with the art stuff, and keep on with her mixed bag of things, and if all goes well maybe we'll phase in what Middlest is doing for Oldest too. We'll see!

I'm actually excited again! :)

Curriculum & Passport

So a while ago I had decided to go ahead and get some Kindergarten material for my rambunctious 5 yr old who wouldn't start Kindergarten in the 'schooling' world until this coming fall (December Birthday!) Not so much to "teach" her stuff but to drive her in a direction that doesn't involve spending vast amounts of time playing computer games - like ToonTown, or Webkinz & the like - or whining that she bored.

So our first adventure into the schooling world of History and Geography (in lower grades Social Science) we'll be touring the 7 continents. Our material has some good info, but I'm hoping to play it up a little with some additional craft activities and fun! We've gotten our passports together! We'll take a look at our Real passports and compare them to the fun one that I made up for dd. We also made some suitcases to pack up our continent appropriate clothes and any souvenirs we plan to bring back!

To help us out along the way, we'll be using a book I happened on, while searching for craft ideas. I mean really this should be fun more than anything so it will be memorable for her. At least as far as I'm concerned. I love this book. It is awesome! But then I love most of the books by this company and wouldn't be upset if someone gave them to me as gifts! LOL!

We're also getting started on some Science, which isn't quite as fun at the moment, but we'll get there. We've been doing reading for months and she gets it, but she doesn't "get" it just yet so we're pluggin away and havin some fun! :)

So there you have it! I'm hoping to post some pics and links as we go through our continents journey but as always I get called away and things get busy! So I'll try but make no promises on the whole follow through! :)

Inches and Stalactites

We started the year of with a bang! In just over 2 weeks we've managed our 2nd snow storm. Totalling 6 inches of snow - which we measured with a tape measure! LOL! I could have sworn there was only 3 inches but alas I was wrong!

These 6 inches warranted an official snow day! I figured the school kids will get 2 or more days off as the roads are impassable, so why not! we were ahead of the game anyway!

At the same time, we looked at the icicles hanging from the roof our our house and determined that they were fast growing Stalactites that you would find in a cave. The drips down on the ground form the stalagmites but we aren't really interested in those! :)

At the same time DD#1 is progressing through History and Science, while DD#2 is learning to read and the basics of math!

on the Shelf

Time keeps passing by much too quickly and before I know it, I've missed a bunch of posting. sorry! I'll try and be better, but make no promises! Needless to say much catch up has been happening here.

Our library run this week besides yielding us $0.90 in fines (for being one day late) also yielded us an arm load of books. I ended up renewing Fletcher's Poetry Matters, because I wanted a better look through it! Also renewed the Shark books one last time so we can get a really run on the work! New this week are Samantha, the Unschooling Handbook and Pony Pals

M: is reading Samantha's Collection of Short Stories along with another AG book which didn't make the photo cut. She has restarted Heidi, and we're working through Poetry Matters (though I need to be more diligent about that!)

S: is working through a Shark Lapbook for science so we're reading Shark books! She is also listening to The Runaway Pony (we couldn't find the start of the series! LOL!)

ET: is currently listening to whatever someone will read her... but I'm hoping to get a little more diligent about picking up entertaining books for her.

I: am working my way through the 39 Clues (starting book #5), trying to find a new approach to homeschooling (ie unschooling and more!) Working through Poetry Matters.

in other news : M is making her way through history and we are currently in Mexico and S. America, learning about the Maya, the Aztecs, and the Inca. She is also working through her Science though at a much slower pace. S is working on reading and remembering that you can't get to 20 if you miss 16, 17, and 18. M is faithfully fulfilling her obligations to the Book It challenge (of 4 books per month.) And S is just getting comfortable with reading and learning that she has to understand and listen to hear more. Its hard to sit and listen when you're 4 (almost 5.) ET, our youngest pupil, we'll she sits with us when we read and I'm working on getting M to read to her during school while I work with S. My goal is to get ET loving books too!

future hopefuls : M is making noise about wanting to learn to crochet (which is exciting to me!) I've been making swap squares for blankets and scarves for some friends and I guess this peaked her curiosity! She is super busy with sewing this month - for an upcoming GS meeting and also Christmas plans. She seems to really love sewing. S has decided also help me put together some Christmas gifts. She picked the fabric and will also sit and help sew it on the machine! Me, I'm dreaming about Roving and Drop spindles! LOL! but have so many crochet, knit and sewing projects on the go, that its almost impossible to get there.... after Christmas I guess!

Anyway happy thursday!

Dinosaur Lapbook

I can't believe I never got around to posting S' pride and joy! Her first REAL lapbook!
We did Dinosaurs (sorry pic is sideways!)



All books and printables were found at HomeschoolShare under the Creation based Dinosaur Unit Study.

Because we weren't studying the religious aspects of dinosaurs and I personally don't share the same philosophy or views as the creators of this lapbook we left some things out. We do still have big blanks in our lapbook just because we never got around to putting the finishing touches on it before S proudly ran off with it! LOL!


She loves this book though it is lacking a bunch of info... She seems to be able to re-tell me the facts easily from this book, so its a really cool tool.

We might finish it up soon and play with it by adding things that are important to her. But it was good fun to do... and it was our first lapbook.