Week 4 - United States and Forests continued...

It was another fun week in the USA! The girls learned so much and had a great time. Here are some of the highlights of our week. Every morning, Kaylin and Annlee begin by doing their Progeny Press study together.

On Friday, they got to celebrate finishing their 4 week study with an art project. They were supposed to paint a picture that showed perspective. Maryella also got to participate (because she begged when saw paint!) and I decided to try it as well.

I think they did a pretty good job! Top row is Maryella's and mine, bottom row is Kaylin's and Annlee's

While they are doing that, Maryella and I work on her reading and phonics.

We also spend our morning doing all kinds of other things... They practice typing skills

Read books from our book basket

Work on Math

Sometimes working "on the go"! Here they are schooling while Elianna takes dance class.

Spelling tests on Fridays

After lunch, we do geography and science. This week, we attempted to color a map of the US only using 4 colors and not letting any of those colors touch. It was a tough task! Kaylin got it though! And after working on various activities like this for 2 weeks, Kaylin can label 31 states, Annlee can label 26, and Maryella can label 6!

We also do a lot of crafts with our geography which makes it really fun. Here we were working on a quilt project at our own little "quilting bee" - just like the early Americans.

Final product

Here are our vocabulary cards for this week - butte. Maryella did hers all by herself this week! Kaylin's is the one that looks like the sunset. Annlee's is on the bottom.

When Elianna comes home, she sometimes asks to do school. I've been letting her do some fun projects with the letters she's already working on at preschool.

These past two weeks, we've been working on lapbooks for the United States. These were our first ones ever and we had lots of fun with them! Here is the inside of them

Another view of the inside

Forest and animal booklets

I think the favorite thing was making little forest animal booklets. The girls drew all these animals and had a ball with that! The ones above are some of Kaylin's as are these.

Here are Annlee's

And Maryella's. I think she got a little tired with her last few, lol.

Here Maryella is working on decorating the outside. She did that Statue of Liberty completely by herself! Wow!

They were all so proud of them! (I know Maryella doesn't look it here, that's a different story altogether, haha)

This picture makes me smile. Elianna was so interested to see the lapbooks. Annlee read everything to her and it just made me melt!

To celebrate completing our 2 weeks in the United States, we ate lunch at Steak and Shake. We wanted to do barbeque, but we got vetoed. I guess you can't get much more American than hamburgers and milk shakes!

Stay tuned to see where our "travels" will take us next week! I'm pretty sure at least part of our adventures will include some new curriculum... More on that later, but here's what I will be in the middle of all weekend!

Our Classroom

I've been wanting to show off our school room for a while now but wanted to wait until we were into our school year just a bit. Things are rolling right along now, though, so here it is... without further ado... our Clay Academy Classroom!

Our library/reading nook/music room The books are organized by reading levels on the shelves and it's all labeled so they can go get a book that they will be able to read well. The little red box is our book basket. These are books that go along with the country and ecosystem that we are talking about. Right now, it's full of United States and forest books. The girls love looking through these! Jeff made the yellow bookshelf by the window to hold all the National Geographic magazines that my dad passed along to us. Those are awesome to have since we can usually find pictures of anything we are talking about in there! On top of that bookshelf is a keyboard, some recorders, and our CD player. We've played some CD to go along with our studies, but we haven't gotten to the recorders or keyboard yet. They just play with those right now in their free time. On top of the other bookshelf are two file boxes. One holds books, crafts, and other things for our upcoming countries we will be learning about. The other box holds materials that we will use in the next 4 years for the history curriculum we are using.

This sofa is where we have our Bible time together in the mornings. We also use that map on the wall to mark where the missionaries we are reading about are from.

This is Kaylin's desk that Jeff made.

Annlee's desk that Jeff made.

Our supply dresser - holds all our craft stuff, extra paper and pencils and such, games, flashcards, puzzles, etc. On top is a file box with some file folder games I've made. Maryella's leap frog books are up there, as well as some drawers with more supplies (mostly my stuff - stapler, tape, permanent markers, etc). There's also a globe game up there that I got for $5 at a consignment shop and some play money that we will be using soon. Also - I love our clock on the wall! That was a pinterest idea!

Here is Maryella's area.

This is Elianna's little spot. She can sit at her little desk or on the floor and pull out one of those boxes on the shelf and play with whatever is in it. Most days, she's at preschool, but she does enjoy checking it all out when she's home. The entertainment center holds the tv and dvd player, some homeschooling books, future curriculum I may use, some cds, the printer, etc. Not much going on there.

My desk... it's hard not to let this become a catch all area. I've got my laminator, curriculum that we use when they are with me, etc. My scrapbook stuff is all in the tall dresser desk, but sadly, I haven't pulled any of that out in a very long time. I keep meaning too! The tackle box on the floor behind my chair holds our Math U See blocks. Those clip boards on the wall are to hold recent art projects. To be honest, I'm not loving that spot. We'll see if those stay, lol.

The dining room is where we do our geography and science together.

Here are the whole room views. So far, it seems to be working out really well for us. I think the girls like having their own little spaces to work. I like having us all together where I can see everyone. This room has become my favorite spot in the house and I love going in there at nights to work on stuff. It just feels good in here!

Week 3 - USA and Forests

Lots of fun this week! We started off with school on Monday even though it was Labor Day. We were going to be taking Wednesday off (more about that in a minute), so we went ahead with business as usual on Monday. It was actually pretty fun because the girls got to show my parents how they do school at home. Marmie even took part by reading to Maryella and helping Annlee with some of her work. The girls loved having her in their classroom!

And when school was over for the day, Elianna had fun playing dress up with Marmie!

We discussed all the layers of a forest on Monday. I printed out pictures of animals and the girls got to stick them beside the correct forest layer. This was probably one of their favorite activities all week long.

We have been spending the week beginning to learn the names and locations of all 50 states.

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Maryella can tell you where Florida and Alabama are, but after labeling their maps all week, the other two girls have gotten pretty good! Here is one of Kaylin's attempts at naming all the states from memory.

We are in the process of making all the components for a lapbook about the United States. Here, Maryella is drawing a fox for her forest animals booklet.

We made bean and seed necklaces and talked about Native Americans one day.

Sometimes, with our geography and science, Maryella gets a little bored or things are over her head. One day we were looking up rivers of North America in an atlas and labeling them on a map. She's always welcome to take part in whatever we are doing, but she wasn't feeling it this particular day. I pulled out some reusable animal stickers and a forest background and she made her own little forest scene by choosing which animals would belong there.

These were some bookmarks we made in our Bible time one day when we were talking about the book of Matthew being written originally in Greek. They say Matthew.

Our earthworms from week 1 had done their thing and it was time for one last check - they had really moved those layers of dirt and sand around! We bid farewell to them in our front yard and I think they were probably ok with that, lol.

On Thursday, Elianna came home from preschool wanting to do school at home like her sisters. They are talking about the letter M, so I pulled out a quick craft for her to do and she was very excited. She even had to take it to school the next day to show it off.

Our other exciting thing for the week was our first Zoocademy Class on Wednesday! The Jacksonville has a homeschooling class once a month for 6 months and we are trying it out this year. The girls loved it! Maryella's class discussed the difference between living and non-living things and they got to touch a rabbit, a snake, and go see the komodo dragon. Annlee's class talked about amphibians and got to go behind the scenes at the frog area of the zoo. Kaylin's group talked about the animal classifications and the 5 types of vertebrates. They all came out all smiles and can't wait to go back. Getting to go to the behind the scenes parts of the zoo was their favorite part!

One other little note about our week, we are going to be making some changes in Maryella's curriculum. She's been doing Rod and Staff reading and phonics. She's doing fine and actually doesn't mind it too much, but it just isn't quite what I'm looking for. We have ordered All About Reading for her and I'm anxious to try it out when it gets here. It got awesome reviews and looks like lots of fun! I would also like to try to find some readers for her to work through. I'll try the library first, but in the meantime... does anyone have some good recommendations?