Tuataras Daily Log

Tuatara by Simon Willison, on Flickr

Well today went well and having a time schedule and mine craft as a reward is still working.

Started off with the painting of the labelled bones on her skeleton puzzle from yesterday. She did half before she started losing interest. She is not a big colouring type person, so what she did was great.

Then it was getting close to lunch time and Tuatara wanted to make some banana pikelets. So she got out all the ingredients and followed the instructions. Measuring as she went and mixing as she needed to. Brought up some great discussions on fractions e.g I have a 1/2 cup measuring cup, but the recipe asks for 1 1/2cups. So how many of the 1/2 cups do I need to make 1 1/2 cups.

I have been wanting to get Tuatara past this hate of writing. So today I said she would do some writing. She could either write a story or I could find her something to copy (to practice writing nicely). She asked to copy something. So I found a page on the Internet with Halloween poems for kids. She could chose which one she wanted to copy. Then she edited it before she showed me. Awesome effort, no tantrum or tears.

Next she did her spelling list on Spelling City online. She chose the crossword, word search and sentence scramble. When we start a new list, I let her see the list of words for the first 2 days. Then after that she does it without the list.

Then next she did maths on Study Ladder. I have noticed her resistance to want to try to tell the time off a wall clock. So it was good timing that study ladder maths was about telling the time. She did reading a calendar, a time worksheet and telling the time in quarter to and quarter past. We will practice this more in the future.

Last of all for planned activities is 2 pages out of her English Workbook. I am not a fan of English and grammar, so I like using a work book for this. She practiced using apostrophes.

She is now enjoying her reward of mine craft for an hour, YouTube after, probably an episode of 'The Amazing Race' tonight and dad and her reading books together in bed.

Tuataras Daily Log

Tuatara by Simon Willison, on Flickr

Well today was a much more productive day than usual.

I am not sure if knowing she had to get everything completed in a time schedule worked or not but it is what we went with and for today it was a successful day

1st we did a timeline of events that have happened in her life, out of her Unit Study 'All About Me'. She had to write down the dates that certain things have happened in her life and then put them in the right order on a time line. Things like what day was she born, what date was her sister born, what date was her brother born, when did she ride a bike for the first time, when did she read a book for the first time, that kind of thing. She was very good at finding the information as she used her photo album that I have with written captions underneath most pictures with dates.

2nd thing we did was draw an outline of her body on some brown paper you use to wrap up boxes or parcels when posting them. Then we used life sized images of some of the organs of the body, to glue on to the body outline in the right places.  Once these were glued on, Tuatara needed to summarise the information given and write a short explanation of the function of that organ. After Tuatara had completed this, she decided to add some personal touches of painted nails, boots and some jewellery to her out line of her.

3rd We watch 'The Amazing Race' online as a family and it brings up lots of interesting things to discuss, like the country, any interesting landmarks that they visit and any history around that, and also the relationships of the people and how they treat each other under stress. What's a nice way to talk to people and what is not. We decided to also find these countries or 'pit stops' on a map of the world and draw a line from one to the other, to keep track of every country they go to in each season. We hope to, as long as the interest is still there to watch each season and plot in a different colour for each season, where they go and then make observations of which country is visited the most.

4th We watched 'Stanley the skeleton' on YouTube and then put together a life size print out/ puzzle of a human skeleton. Then Tuatara glued labels of the names of some of the bones on to it. Tomorrow I am going to get her to colour in each bone in crayon or paint to highlight that bone.

5th Tuatara went on Spelling City online and played games that help her to practice her new list of spelling words for the week. She got the reward of painting her finger nails in nail polish and an hour on mine craft and free time on YouTube till dinner time, for her awesome effort today. Fingers crossed for another productive day tomorrow

Tuataras Daily Log

Tuatara by Simon Willison, on Flickr

Well yesterday we had a shocker of a day. Tears and tantrums again. But I think it did us good to clear the air and talk about how we feel in regards to a few things home education wise. In the end we gave up and Tuatara wanted to make play dough.

Weekly Wrap up

Lots of photos this week as we had a very busy weekend.  With hubby home from work I find I can have more time with both Rocket Boy and Ladybug while he gets time with Jellybean.  

I found a great free curriculum online and had great plans on following this with the kids, I only ended up spending one day on this, but I will go back to this when I can, most likely over the summer when Ladybug is home from Kindy. 

We made rain inside a jar

 

Ladybug started swimming lessons, and even though it's not required she had to have a swim hat and goggles just like her big brother. 

 

We made mail boxes and post cards to post into the mail boxes. 

Painted glass doors with shaving foam paint. 

Had fun with some science experiments.

 

Washed cars for some pocket money.

And of course Ladybug had to help with some baking.

And that was just our weekend.  This week was Rocket Boys first swim safe session.  Swim safe is swimming lessons every day for the 5 day week, as this would most likely wear out Rocket Boy I decided to keep this week light, I had lots planned but after the first day I decided to ignore those plans and just let Rocket Boy lead the way.  He did complete some 'book work' but only when he decided to.

Rocket Boy did really well with his swimming, while he's been attending swim lessons for a couple of years how, he has only been improving at a snails pace with weekly lessons.  This week with swimming every day he finally mastered his 'rainbow arms' and is moving from level 1, up to level 2 for next session. 

The hardest part of swim safe was keeping Ladybug and Jellybean happy.  After meeting another homeschooling family with a child the same age as Ladybug and seeing her wonderful bag of tricks she had to keep her boy occupied, I went home and copied some for the next day.  We had play dough and some toys, books, straws and shapes for sorting, a colouring book and crayons and then we even risked bringing the iPad one day as well.  There was a playground at the swimming pools as well which Ladybug LOVED but as it rained several days during the week we weren't able to use it every day. 

    

I started an alphabet box, more on this to come. 

Made some cloud dough with flour and baby oil which Ladybug enjoyed playing with and did really well at keeping it in the tray and off the floor. 

 

Rocket Boy only did some work on his Math U See curriculum on Monday before swimming, completing lesson 11 - Unit Bars.  He has been waiting to be able to use all the different unit bars since we first started this program. 

Ladybug started letter F from the Letter of the Week program.

Letter of the Week

I managed to find some time for some one on one with Ladybug so got out the Letter F activities from the LOTW curriculum 

Colour puzzles, after finding the pieces and putting them together we went over the colour names. 

Number floor cards, Ladybug needed some help with this as she doesn't known her written numbers yet, but Rocket Boy was keen to help as he clearly remembers the fun he had with this program when he was younger.  We used these cards in several ways, first with them spread around the floor, I would call out a number for colour and Ladybug and Rocket Boy would jump onto the correct one.  Then with help Ladybug lined them up in order and counted both up to 10 then back to 1 over and over. 

Puzzle.

Lacing card.

Upper and lower case sorting.

Letter tracing.

Still to do - the Handwriting without Tears letter F pages, but as I follow Ladybugs lead and she hasn't shown any interest in this yet and I'm not going to push her. 

Tuataras Daily Log

Tuatara by Simon Willison, on Flickr

Well today we changed things again, as I think Tuatara likes change, but then don't we all.

I wrote a list of things I would like us to do today and Tuatara got to choose which ones she wanted to do first. I have also started to write next to each activity Tuatara completes in a day, what topics she is covering, to remind myself that she actually covers a lot in her day.
1st - Multiplication Sheet (Maths). A circle worksheet where she needed to fill in the blanks for her 3 times tables.

2nd - Do an activity out of the Human Body Unit Study (science, reading, spelling & handwriting) Reading about the different bones in the skull. The worksheet was a bit advanced and didn't really give enough information to help label the diagram of the skull given. So mum helped by finding a labelled diagram of a skull on the iPad.

3rd - Spelling City online (spelling, technology & reading). Tuatara chose a couple of activities to help practice her spelling words before she did the test. She did a crossword, word search and hang mouse and got all her words correct in her spelling test, which she was super happy about.

4th - Bake Pikelets for lunch (reading, maths & technology). Tuatara read and followed the instructions on the pikelet bottle mix and flipped them over carefully in the fry pan. Then the best part, got to eat them

5th - Monopoly (reading, maths) Tuatara has moved on from wanting to be a player and just hand out properties to wanting to be the banker. She kept telling me off if I gave her the answer when it came to giving out change  Monopoly is such a great game for practicing addition, subtraction, multiplication and its a lot of fun too

6th - Mine craft Arts & Crafts (cutting, gluing, reading and following instructions). Tuatara needed to read instructions, then cut out, glue to card, cut out again, then fold and put together an 'enderman', 'Steve', 'dungeon base, ender world base and mine craft base', 'creeper'. Tuatara lost interest after cutting and gluing one of them, so we will return to this activity at another.

7th - Mine craft for 60min. Tuatara created a treasure hunt, where she put clues on signs. As she was showing me it, she realised she had forgotten a couple of things, so needs to go back and fix some.

Finished off the day watching some more The Magic School Bus on YouTube.

We also have a family thing where we climb into bed and watch The Amazing Race on the laptop. We are going to extend on this for the next season and place on a map of the world map pins, then tie a string to each pin to show all the places they go on each challenge.

It's Science!!

Last Christmas Rocket Boy was given a book from his Aunty, I keep meaning to use this with him, but life gets away from you sometimes and you put the book on the shelf and forget about it.  We had to move the book shelves when we were re-organizing and I found this book again.  After showing Rocket Boy we had to start right on it so on to the first experiment.

Bubbling wizard's brew.

You'll need: a clean glass jar, white vinegar, food colouring, glitter (we didn't have any), dish washing liquid and baking soda.

I choose to do this on the door way to our backyard.  I had Jellybean with me playing on the floor inside and Ladybug, and Rocket Boy were outside with the tray in case of a mess i could have closed the door and just used the hose to clean up.

Half fill a glass with the vinegar

Add a good squeeze of dish washing liquid to the jar

Add several drops of food colouring and sprinkle in a little glitter if you have it on top of the vinegar then with a spoon give it a gentle stir.

Ensure the jar is somewhere you're happy for the contents to overflow before the next step.

Add a heaped teaspoon of the baking soda.

Then watch

The foam that pours out of the jar is formed by a chemical reaction.  When the vinegar and baking soda mix, they make lots of tiny bubbles of gas.  The bubbles churn up the dish washing liquid, making lots of foam. 

Later on we expanded on this experiment using different kinds of vinegar's, and liquids we found in the house as well as different powders such as baking powder, cocoa, and flour to see what reactions they had. 

Mail Time

I'm always looking for ways to get Rocket Boy to practice his handwriting outside of his Handwriting Without Tears work books.  Last week someone linked to a post on How We Learn about setting up your own post office.

I filed this away thinking I could use this idea one day.  That one day was during a weekend when Hubby was home and able to spend time with Jellybean while I worked with the older two.  I grabbed two empty boxes, pulled them apart and then put them back together inside out.  This makes it easier to paint.
I also cut a hole for posting on the fronts, and a flap in the back so Rocket Boy and Ladybug could remove their mail.

I gave them the do-a-dot markers to decorate their boxes.  Rocket Boy quickly added a few dots to his and then declared his finished.  I had to encourage him to add more to his, but it was still more box coloured than painted.

Once finished the new mail boxes were installed at the doors of their bedrooms just waiting to be filled with mail. 

But what mail... I printed some postcards on the kids favourite colour card, for them to write cards to each other.  Ladybugs were just scribbles but Rocket Boy really wanted to write a birthday party invitation to his sister.  With a little help with spelling he completed this and posted the card into her mail box for her to find.