With a very anti-climatic end, we finished our school year. I taught in a classroom for 7 years and the end of the year was always such a huge deal with countdowns and wrap-ups; class trips and field day. Homeschool? Well, we just finish up our books and play more. I think that in future years, I do want to attempt to play a year end trip - something fun to look forward to during the last few (boring) weeks of school to keep us all motivated. I do still need to get a year end photo of each of the boys but this week, they are having fun at their grandparents house so the photo will have to wait just a few more days.
So, this is what I've been up to over the last week.
This is our "new" wall. I am so horrible at remembering to take "before" photos before I start taking stuff down :-( We've had two posters on our wall for about two years - an simple ABC poster and a simple # poster. Well, the boys needed better pictures showing but the upper and lower case letters and just a new look at numbers so I found these over at
Confessions of a Homeschooler which is great since they coincide with the curriculum I used with the boys for preschool so the pictures are familiar.
I also have added minutes to our clock. So, it's not 100% perfect because we need to move some pictures that are currently on the wall but for now it works. The numbers are free over at
Teachers Pay Teachers.
The other big thing that I'm working on is putting together our entire summer plan. Originally I was trying to find all free worksheets for review but, then I found a couple of fabulous review packets at Teachers Pay Teachers (which I will link up to a little later) that gave me every single thing I needed for the entire summer. Added to that I found a whole set of free sight word practice sheets to use and I had everything I needed for our review portion. Finally, each month will have a very loose theme based on science and art. For example, May our theme will be plants. We will learn about them, do some crafts, and do some science (like plant our garden!) My goal is to have our entire summer planned and in those file folders that are peeking out from under those stacks of papers in the photo above by mid-May.
Right now, my summer plan is pretty simple.
Monday: The free day - nothing planned for Mondays. This will allow me time to put everything together after busy weekends and, if I get super daring, I may go grocery shopping on Mondays with the kids. (I'll probably do it one week and never again HA)
Tuesday - Art - I like to do art projects early in the week so if something needs to dry to get sent home, it has time to do so and still leave my house by Friday.
Wednesday and Thursday - Review days. We will do "school work". Review worksheets and phonics. The plan is just to have about 30-45 minutes of work
Friday - Science and/or field trips. Fridays are great days for science experiments outside and/or to take a field trip. We are all ready for the weekend so taking time out to do something fun related to learning is always good.
This schedule may or may not change - I just want to have a routine so the boys know what to expect each day. Most of their summer days will be spent playing though :-)
Finally, we've been working on learning to tie shoes. I have wanted to get this book for a long time but it is very hard to find and therefore, even used, it was often selling for $60.00 (seriously!). I finally found it for $12.00 and snapped it up! We have discovered that Darryl has to work with them on this though . . .because I tie shoes backwards . . .I'm lefthanded! We were trying to follow the pictures in the book and I got so confused HA!
