School

We just did reading today. We did our usual phonics work and read another chapter in our book. 

This is a sight word game. Basically, you hide a treat under one of the cups (they each have a sight word written on them) and she guesses which cup by reading the word. She wasn't ready for this and after ME getting frustrated, I switched games.

To a jerry rigged BINGO. I just laid out her cards and then called out a word, which she identified. Between sets we reviewed her words. She actually liked this so much, we wanted to play it again tonight before bed.

We hung out with Aunt Laurie and Ella today. Poor Aunt Laurie was very sick with food poisoning. Uncle Jeff got home and we got to see him a little too. It was pouring rain all day but still both girls kept asking to play outside.

Looking for love

Maggie and I were driving home and listening to Carly Simon. The song "Me and Jenny" came on. The chorus is: Two hot girls on a hot summer night; they were looking for love.

Maggie asked, "Mommy, can we go out on a hot summer night and find love?"

Pancakes and the Zoo

We met up with Aunt Laurie and Ella today for breakfast and a trip to the zoo.

These are Maggie's pictures. She loves taking pictures.

While we kept a very fast pace (Ella kept saying, "More."), we actually got to see a lot. It was so nice being there and it not being packed. One of the many benefits of homeschooling.

Where is that monkeys face? Creepy.

Can you tell Maggie dressed herself?

At this point my camera died. :(

Lauren's and my co-op

This is the template I pre-prepared for the kids to do the geography/map skills project I had planned.

First the kids ate, including hummus as our food from ancient Egypt. 

Maggie was already wearing her tutu so Kyrie went and changed and they danced in the living room while Lauren and I got things ready. It was so cute.

First, writing and spelling. Lauren took the girls and did a map lib-like activity with them. I helped the boys do harder mad libs. It was quite entertaining. Then the boys wrote stories. 

The girls did spelling with Lauren. She had each girl be the teacher for the other. 

Then we started geography. We wanted to cover map skills before we continue going over places so I got a cute Dr. Seuss book that discusses maps and read it to them. Then we practiced cardinal directions on a real map. They all seemed to get it. We'll definitely review it every time we do geography.

For their project, I wanted them to understand how they live in one place that's in another and on and on. This book has a picture of each kid in front of his/her house that says "My House." Then I printed black and white pictures of Keller, Texas, USA, North America and Earth to show: My City, My State,  My Country, My Continent and My Planet. I think it'll be easy in the future to refer to it. It turned out great!

Next was history. We were learning about ancient Egypt this week. There were so many cool projects to do but NOT enough time. I wanted the kids to "write" their names in hieroglyphics. I pre-printed the girls' symbols and just asked them to color, cut and glue them. But the boys had to find the symbols and draw them.

Notice a lack of Maggie there. Yeah, she was DONE. The girls started getting tired and it was just too much. Not sure what we're gonna do about that.

Then we made pyramids. The kids painted the template and we added salt to give it a similar texture to sand. We didn't actually put them together because by this time ALL the kids were done. They were swinging between angry/acting out and BOUNCING OFF THE WALLS!!!