In our little bubble.....

Just a warning ahead of time....I'm hormonal.  No, not pregnant.  Only PMS overload.

Hand over the chocolate and keep everyone quiet and no one will get hurt badly.

Now, on to what we've been doing in our little bubble this week.  As you know, G and I are on a Kinder homeschool adventure and it has been eventful.  As a first time homeschool mama/kinder teacher I have really had to reset my brain into planning and organizing mode.  I'm still not as organized...as in planning a month ahead of time....but we have a little groove going. 

It's been a lot of fun to witness him learning and growing right in front of me. He loves anything to do with math and science and could really care less about handwriting perfectly.  And don't even think about handing him a coloring page and expect him to take his time....he blows through those things like Nobody's business.  He just wants to finish so he can move on to the next thing. 

I've had to get pretty creative and have found amazing people to follow on Pinterest to inspire me.  I've also become a little obsessed with Teachers Pay Teachers. 

This week, we read The Little Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves.

I am a complete cheap queen so printing up paper after paper turns me off....I freehand a lot of what we do.  I am creating it for one, after all.

This old chick was super easy to create and we had a good time putting it together. 

Here is the old gal before being colored by the maniac. 

I drew outlines of each thing we needed to fill the Old Lady's tummy and let G cut them out himself.  I know this will not make the most perfect line....but who cares?!  It's his project. Let go, and let them cut!

While I was prepping her tummy goodies he colored the Old Lady. 

After he finished coloring her top half, arms and shoes we stapled her body parts to a baggie, leaving it open. 

Then we read the story again letting him help retell the story while filling her tummy.

Getting a almost 6 year old boy to retell a story is pretty painful.....this was not.  He loved it.

Here is our Old Lady.  I think she's pretty cute!

I realize that it looks like she might have a purple Hitler 'stache but I promise you she doesn't.  It's her lipstick. Get your head out of the gutter.

She ate everything that you need to make a scarecrow...sorry for the spoiler.


 

After our book craftivity we had some science fun.  B was home for his Friday off so I put him in charge of this little adventure.  He was excited and ran to get the supplies......

Diet Coke and Mentos!

Yep, explosion time.

Who doesn't love explosions?  Everyone does!  They're fin and messy and sometimes loud. 

Almost 6 year old boys especially love explosions.

They enjoyed it so much that we did it all over again after the big kiddos got home!

This time B got smarter and G got braver.  Although, he wasn't wet when he walked away.  The boys called him The Matrix.

Let me know if you guys have any great experiments your kids enjoy!

Staying on top of things is not my specialty....

Yes, I have been absent from this little blog for awhile.

Life happened.

Kids.  Sports.  School.  You know, the old excuses. 

I've missed writing but to be honest when all the little kiddies are nestled in bed, and about the only time I have to write, I am watching whatever I have on the DVR or passing out while reading.

Everyone's good here. 

Hubby's back on days so we are back to our usually crazy schedule, not the uber-crazy schedule where I have to enlist help from everyone in the Universe.

T's playing football every Tuesday night....and loving it.  Or maybe, he just loves hanging out with girls afterwards.  Either way, he's happy.

R is into her soccer and has a new found love for doing extensive makeovers on herself on the weekends.  I might have to hide all dark eyeshadows...she seems to have a penchant for them.

G is nutty as always....did amazing his first 6 weeks of Kinder here at the abode and we look forward to enjoying the rest of the year. 

This weekend we have 2 soccer tourneys.....one local and one an hour away.  Needless to say, I miss my husband.....Saturdays are just not meant to be until soccer season is over.  He coaches both R and G's teams, which leaves me running all over the place with T's Division 2 team. 

Luckily, we have lots of family that is able to make it to games as well. 

On a random note,

here is what G and I did today for school time......thought you might enjoy and want to check out the sites themselves that gave me the inspirations.

We loved the Word Family Spider activity!  I saw the pin on Pinterest but they were called Sound Spiders and used WH, CH, SH.....but when I saw it I immediately thought about word families.  G seems to enjoy working on word families, probably because it's an instant gratification thing...he sounds it out once and he pretty much gets it. 
Which is fine with  me, we will roll with it. 
Let me be real honest, when I see pins I usually just gets inspiration from the picture and do what I will with the project in the end.  With this one, I never even went to the site until I needed the link for you guys.  So,  that said, it came from The Lesson Plan Diva, but the link just to took you to her homepage.

Here is our version...a little more festive and more our speed.

I drew a circle in white crayon onto a black piece of construction paper and I cut out the strips of paper for legs.  I let him pick the colors and the amount of eyes (after showing him how to look up facts about spiders on the computer), and I wrote which word family we would be using.  He cut out the circle and did everything else.  I showed him how to do an accordion fold and he went to town. The googly eyes are key here, people. Grab a bag. Use them with wild abandon.  

We went over the -ick word family and all the words we could think of. 

I liked using the -ick family because we related it to Halloween and all things icky, spooky and scary.  Although, he told me that he wouldn't be scared of anything.

There weren't many creepy words other than sick but it didn't matter....

You could totally let them finish the spider themselves by gluing the legs on  but we wanted to hang it pretty quickly so we used the stapler.

For math time, we used the Haunted House idea I fell in love with the minute I saw it on Pinterest. 

This came from No Time for Flash Cards (who is brilliant, by the way).  You can use this in so many ways.....number recognition, sight words, letter recognition, addition/subtraction.  G loves math and is pretty fast with adding and subtracting.
We like to use what we have for crafts and projects instead of running out for a certain supply if we don't have to.  We had a paper bag from the grocery store, markers, paper plates, and sticky tack. Done.

Here is our version....he loved it and wanted to do it over and over again.  This is a keeper.

Hope your week is grand......let me know what you're up to this week!

Kindergarten Warrior.....

Is it only Wednesday? 

It feels like it's Friday....but maybe that's because this is the time of year when I start to question my lack of a clone.

Everyday is filled with something.  I know I am not the only parent going through the madness of school/sports/homework and everything else under the sun. 

Here's a sample schedule of just one day of my week.....please keep in mind that right now, B is on nights so I'm basically a single mom (praise to you, single moms out there because I do not know how you do it, you're amazing.)

Today (Wednesday)
Breakfast for kiddos
Take T to school, leave at 6:30am
Take R to school, leave at 7:45am
Homeschool for G: 9am-around 12:30/1pm
Laundry/Clean/eat bon bons
Get dinner prepared
Store? Probably
Pick R up, get in line around 2:45pm
Pick T and friends up from football practice early to head to Algebra tutoring by 4pm
Clean rest of the house
G's Tae Kwon Do: 5:45-6:15'ish
Small Group at our house for 7th/8th grade boys, 6:30-8
Shoo Small Group out
Get kids bathed, in bed, with prayers said and not hair on their head harmed.

Whew!


How many of you have daily schedules like this?  I see you, out there Moms of the World. 

I appreciate you.


Discovered a little Math trick with dice today while getting prepared for another game that involves dice. 

I have found that G responds to games much more than sitting down and just drilling him. So, when it comes to math, which is not my favorite, I love to find things to get us all a little pumped about it. 

Dice math has been a HUGE help.  G loves the rolling the dice and coming up with answers that are on his worksheets, which I have found randomly on Pinterest. 

Be sure to check out my board, Kindergarten Power!  for all of my latest finds.

This morning I was getting our dice prepared for another game I was looking up on the ever helpful Pinterest when I thought "to heck with this, I have a better idea!"

And the game Dice War was born!


We got out 2 pairs of dice and his dry erase board. 

And we basically played the old fashioned War (or Battle) played with  cards but played with dice. 

This activity helped G with counting and adding.  He loved being able to make his own tally marks on our scoreboard too.

 

 

You need :

 

A dry erase board to keep score easily

4 dice

 

That's IT

 

You each get 2 dice.

Roll them on the table and whoever gets the highest added together wins a tally mark on the scoreboard!

 

It's a tie?

Roll ONE die and see who wins out of that round, that's the winner of the tally mark

 

We played to 15 points.

 

G completely destroyed me. 

15-5

 

And he loved it.

 

He is starting to remember his doubles and adding to 10. 

 

I have a feeling this will be a keeper.

 

Enjoy!