State Geography Fair

04 Tuesday Mar 2014

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Field Trips, Home, MFW, My Father's World Adventures

As part of our local homeschool group, us parents are expected to volunteer at least once during the year. So, I decided to organize a “State Geography Fair” for our group. Each family chose a state to learn about and share during the event. This is great fun, educational, and can be as wildly creative as you would like! As a plus, this fits in perfectly with our MFW Adventures study this year – studying US History and Geography!

We chose Alabama, since that is our “home” state.

Our “Welcome” Table – Decorated with 4th of July Decorations!

We set out anything USA we might have at home – puzzles, Leapster interactive maps (my favorite), US geography games, etc. These were to entertain kids if they got bored. It worked!

We made my grandmother’s cornbread (but gluten-free version) complete with a cast-iron skillet, and bacon grease. Needless to say, we didn’t have much left over to take home!

Our report, and several books from our library

Our finished display! (The strings are attached to tourist brochures, connected to the cities they go to on the map!)

Roll Tide, by the way!

Organizing this event was super easy. Beyond booking the room, the majority of the work was just keeping track of which family was doing what (trying to avoid duplicates). And sending out an occasional encouraging email to keep them on track. It was great!

Learning Resources and Ideas!

Tri-Fold Display Boards – If you want/need these, I found some VERY CHEAP at the Dollar Store!
There are tons of ideas you can use to learn about your particular state! The library, Internet, state senators, and more. I’ve seen great items in the Target Dollar Spot section in the past!
Maps – Learn about the topography of the state.
Postcards – Perhaps write different people from the state and get them to send you postcards from different areas, telling you about their home town. What’s it like to live there?
Flat Stanley – might be a fun project for this!
History – Any particularly important historical events connected with the state?
Food – Is the state famous for any particular foods?
Animals and Plants – What are the state plants or animals?

Here are a few online resources that I have personally found – obviously mine tend to skew toward the elementary years, since that is what I have.

Here are part of the instructions I sent out – perhaps this will help you with ideas for your own group event!

Parents,

Please create a display and have your children ready to talk about the state (in an informal capacity) to those who come around and visit your “booth.” Think colorful, educational, interactive, and fun!

You are more than welcome to tailor your child’s educational experience to your child’s age and ability. But also remember that those visiting will be of various ages. Of course we can all learn something from any age group – but it might be a good idea to have your child practice talking about their state before they arrive. Maybe even practice some things that younger/less advanced kids might want to know, verses older/more advanced kids (and adults). Just a thought we wanted to throw out there!

If you choose to have a food item to represent your state, please have plenty to share! Please make sure it is labeled carefully with any known allergic ingredients. Also, if you are going to need to plug something in, please let us know WAY in advance, and bring your own power strip. But also know that we can’t necessarily guarantee we can accommodate. We will try! Also, please be responsible for any items you might need to serve that food, plates, napkins, plastic silverware, etc.

Catching Up – What We’ve Been Up to This Fall!

25 Monday Nov 2013

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Girls, Homeschool, MFW Homeschool Highlights, My Father's World Adventures

I wanted to share with you some pictures of what we’ve been doing this fall!

This year, we’re focusing on American History.

One of our first activities was to create boats and “float” them across “the ocean.” I didn’t really have time for that, so instead, the girls and I made paper boats. And then the girls decided that we MUST have Christopher Columbus on the boat. They refused to believe me that Queen Isabella didn’t join him on the boat (seriously, my girls are going to come up with a princess- theme in everything).

Queen Isabella and Christopher Columbus

When studying colonial America, we made our own Tri-Corner Hats . . .

Our Tri-Corner Tri-Color Hats!

Then we used our own Qwill Pens to practice signing our names for the Declaration of Independence!

We also made Hasty Pudding, and decided it’s absolutely revolting.

When we have time, we add in music lessons with Mommy. We don’t get to do this as much as I and the girls would like. But here are the girls playing a concert for Daddy on their new recorders. By the way – recorders are not as easy to play as I thought! How many instruments I’ve played, and I think I might have to give myself a few lessons before we attack those again.

A Recorder Concert for Daddy Before Bedtime

We also joined American Heritage Girls! We are having a blast with that – the girls are really getting into it.

We’ve also done quite a few field trips this fall, in addition to our Colonial Williamsburg/Jamestown trip. More on those very soon.

And that’s it so far!

Bread of Life

25 Friday Oct 2013

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Homeschool, MFW Homeschool Highlights, My Father's World, My Father's World Adventures

Here’s a great activity adaptation we did while covering, “Jesus is the Bread of Life.”

Since I really didn’t want to make a napkin holder, I loved this idea that was passed to me on Facebook. The idea was taken from these websites:

Printable “Bread of Life” Craft Booklet
Salvation Sandwich Idea
How to Make a Salvation Bracelet

Back to (Home)School!

09 Friday Aug 2013

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Homeschool, Homeschool Mother’s Journal, MFW Homeschool Highlights, My Father's World 1st Grade, My Father's World Adventures

We started Homeschool again last Monday!

I have been stressing out all summer about the “starting” of school this year. How will I get things done? Can I handle it with everything else I have to deal with? Really, all of that didn’t help with the burnout I was dealing with either. In fact, taking the break this summer didn’t really help, either. You wanna know what did help?

Starting school again!

Yeah, so apparently my girls and I just thrive on a routine.

The first month of break they loved it – with company visits, the trip to the homeschool convention, VBS – they enjoyed all the free time to play. But by early July, they were over it. I mean, what kids ASK for school? Homeschool kids, apparently! The only problem was I just wasn’t organized and ready!

So, I finally finished getting prepared, and the classroom/office cleaned up. Wow, that was a feat in and of itself! 🙂

Here are my girls, ages 7 and 5, before entering the room!

Looking for ideas to make the first day back to school cool and fun, I found leftover balloons from the girls’ birthday parties and part of the leftover helium tank. As soon as they were asleep in bed, I went to work and filled the balloons until the tank ran out.

So Monday morning, this is what they walked in seeing:

By the way, if you decide to do this, do NOT turn on your ceiling fan while there are balloons in the room! Just a PSA!

And here is the view directly from the door, of the classroom side of the room. Enjoy this picture, it probably won’t be this clean for another year!

The balloons were a big hit, and the girls got a kick of them floating down as they started to lose their helium. They ended up taking them all down to the playroom after school to play with them more.

Now, someone spied in an earlier post that I had wrapped “presents” on their desks when they arrived! And yes, that is true. What were their presents, you ask? Why their workbooks, notebooks and school items, of course!

Before they opened these presents, I sat them down and told them that I wanted them to always remember that getting to homeschool is a gift, a gift not everyone gets to have. (This is something I’ve told them many times before.) I want to make sure they appreciate that this is a wonderful opportunity we need to treasure while we have it, and to understand that not everyone gets to homeschool, for whatever reason. This is my personal belief about homeschooling and I want to impart that on the girls. We’re not better than those that choose public school, we’re not worse. But being able to spend our time together and learn at home – that’s a gift we have in our family right now that we should treasure.

And yes, you can give kids an empty box with wrapping paper on it and they’d love it — because I gave them their school notebooks and binders wrapped up and they thought that was just the coolest thing ever! (They had seen them before, so it wasn’t “new.” That was what cracked me up!)

I also had a special snack for the afternoon wrapped up as a gift on my desk, to open after lunch. They each got a box of animal crackers and a page about an activity to do with the animal crackers (making a graph of how many which animals were in the box).

And then it was time to buckle down and start school!

Now that we’re past our first week of school and going through our second, I’m very happy to report that everything is going very well so far, and much more smoothly than I expected! And we are all looking forward to school this year!

Our Homeschool Curriculum This Year

09 Friday Aug 2013

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Curriculum, Homeschool, MFW Homeschool Highlights, My Father's World, My Father's World 1st Grade, My Father's World Adventures, Organization, Practical Tips, Saxon Math 1, Saxon Math 2

So, it’s time to talk curriculum!

This year I was in quite a conundrum. There was just no way I could handle two full curriculum programs in the limited time I have to teach this year. I need to streamline my teaching, while still giving them a solid well rounded education.

So, after staring at the curriculum for HOURS (or what at least felt like hours) I finally came to the solution. I turned Adventures into the “family-style” curriculum – similar to My Father’s World Family cycle.

Since we’ve already done My Father’s World’s 1st grade program, and because we turned it into a full family affair, I just couldn’t see the point of doing it all over again. So, we’re going to do the full Adventures program, and use MFW’s 1st grade program for the phonics and reading program.

So we will do all of the Adventures together. Our oldest is using Saxon Math 2 for math, and Spelling by Sound and Structure and First Language Lessons for her Language Arts. Our youngest is using MFW for the reading program, and Saxon Math 1.

And I am so STOKED! Seriously, the Adventures program year was what drew me to My Father’s World in the first place! And what better place to study American History than right by Washington, DC!!! We already have our first field trip planned and I am so excited!

So this is our homeschool curriculum for the year:

My Father’s World Adventures (2nd Grade)

My Father’s World 1st Grade – phonics and reading portion only

Saxon Math 2

Saxon Math 1

Spelling by Sound and Structure

First Language Lessons

And I’m augmenting by adding:

Confessions of a Homeschooler’s Road Trip USA forms (I couldn’t resist)

Last year we learned a lot about our children’s learning styles. One is HIGHLY verbal, and one is HIGHLY auditory. So, at convention this summer I went just a little crazy when I found all these song books with CDs. Our oldest is also and extremely kinesthetic learner. Which is a bit of a challenge for me, since I am not. I spent a lot of time last year trying to come up with new and different ways to make learning “active.” So, this year I bought some Bananagrams to use for Spelling. Anything I can do to make that more interesting and fun, right?

And finally, I do plan to add in some items from Scholastic Teacher Express. They hold $1 Deal Sales a few times a year, and well, I couldn’t resist. The stuff was so darn cute, and my girls tend to really like it. And heck, it’s a dollar!

And here is the explanation of how I’ve actually set up and organized our “stuff.”

Here is the first half of our folders for the year (the rest are in another bin on top of our bookshelf). Each child has her own folder, but both folders are organized together. The front pockets hold the videos we own that already match our reading material, and the other holds paper clips. I went through a LOT of paper clips.

Any books that we already own that match what we’re studying? They are sorted with the folders as well. That way I don’t have to go looking for them later!

I sorted each day’s handouts and clipped them together. I know I said last year that it was complete overkill, but ya know what? I also never had to think last year about what needed to be done that day. I just pulled out that day’s stack and did it. So, I ended up doing it again. With two children, it just felt necessary in order to make sure we didn’t miss anything.

I wanted to pull my hair out the entire time I was doing it, but I know it will be worth it during the year.

And here is a copy of my planning template. The one for our youngest is only slightly altered. I did all my lesson planning on these charts. This is a simple table created in a Word document.

While I don’t have to really do much record keeping this year, I know I will next year after we move. And just in case the future state wants to “question” our records or plans, I thought I better keep good records starting this year. It will at least be good practice for when I have to do it “for real.”

It will be easy (I HOPE) with these forms. All I will have to do is write the date across the top of the column, and them mark off items as they are completed. I should be able to easily track number of school days or other information needed in the bottom margin, if necessary. (And for only recording number of school days needed, I will use a blank form of this to track field trip days, etc. Since that’s not expressly written into the lesson plans here.)

I’ve had some express interest in this document and so, I’m sharing it here. I can’t claim complete credit, since I adapted the idea I saw from someone else! With a bit of tweaking it should work for most any curriculum.

2ndGradePlannerTemplate

Enjoy!

Another Year, Another Post About Organizing Homeschool!

07 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by MP31W! in Uncategorized

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Homeschool, MFW Homeschool Highlights, My Father's World 1st Grade, My Father's World Adventures, Organization, Practical Tips

FINALLY . . .

Yes, I finally finished organizing for homeschool this year. At 11:45pm Sunday night, about 15 minutes before my deadline! We started school on Monday and I was determined to have everything done before then. (Of course, once I started I realized there were a ton of copies I hadn’t made and still needed, but that’s beside the point, right?? Ha!)

First off, of course I decided not to fix what isn’t broken! I love that our classroom is combined with my office, and the layout of the room is working well. So, that is staying. Pretty much everything is staying, except everything remotely related to preschool and kindergarten curriculum. Wow, I had so much stuff to get rid of! This last time through I came up with an entire laundry basket of stuff left, even after passing along a huge bin of stuff!

So, here is our classroom for the year:

Behind our door, we have our file holder, and weather chart.

Just to the left of the door is our felt calendar.

SONY DSC

Inside each girl’s desk, we store their workbooks and binders, and their pencil bags are right beside their desk.

New this year! A file box to hold all of our “art” books. My girls love to draw, so I stocked up on various “How to Draw” type books. They love them. I make copies of the pages they want, so the books are completely reusable.

Here is our school bookshelf, which is jam-packed this year! On top are various science project kits and curriculum related games. The blue bag with numbers is my “prize bag” for the girls. The flower bag is my supply bag with more pencils, crayons, glue sticks, etc. (We have more stocked up in the basement. Just no room up here to put it!) And the brown tote at the top is our curriculum, all organized for the year.