Summertime Week 1 -- Looks and Links

This summer has required some planning.  For the past 4 years, use of the campground pool has kept us busy every afternoon so I never felt like I needed to limit use of electronics.  Not to mention we had other activities that took us out of the house various days of the week.  This year, though, I knew that I would need to do some intentional things or there would be a lot of TV and X box going on!  I'm not opposed to either - it's summer time after all  -- but I'd like the kids to step away for a bit each day.  There is a theme each week that pertains to what we do in group time in the afternoon.  The morning has some review/individual time. 

This weeks theme is: Oceans

I introduced the schedule to the kids as follows:

-- 10:45-11:45 - Individual Time
-- 1:30-3:30 - Group time (This time varies depending on our activities)

Here's week 1:

Individual Time:

I purchased packets for review for each of the kids.  Each day there is a work page that covers math and language art skills that they have to complete.
First Grade
Fourth Grade
Fifth Grade

These packs are awesome because I don't have to do the work.  It's just a matter of printing off the work pages and putting them into a notebook.  It also includes the teacher pages for easy correction.

Besides the review page, the three oldest have to practice Multiplication facts and take timed tests each day.  The first grader is practicing adding and subtracting.

All the kids are also supposed to read for 15 minutes each morning.

Josh and Nate are supposed to practice piano and complete a handwriting page in their book until the book is complete.

Keeping it real:  The review page took each of the kids between 25-35 minutes to complete on Day 1.  Since individual time is only hour it is a tight fit to get everything done in that time frame.  I'm hopeful that as the weeks progress they will get faster :-)
2. By the second day they were MUCH faster and were able to finish everything in the hour plus even have a few minutes left to find something else to do.

Group Time:

Monday - Our friends were gone today so the boys got a free day.

Tuesday: We started our fun about Oceans - this is not in depth teaching by any means but rather just some fun info and activities.

I found some great "theme packs" at Education.com so I purchased a one month membership so I could download everything.

From the packet we completed a Ocean Salt Evaporation experiment, an Ocean Animal crossword puzzle and they started coloring book marks. (For the record, we worked on the bookmarks for three days and Josh and Nate are STILL not done HA!  They are going for perfection!!)

Wednesday:

We completed the Ocean Zones work sheet found at Simple Everyday Mom.  She has several great ideas for ocean studies included on this page.

We also did a color by number worksheet about Ocean Zones but I can't locate the link for that at the moment.  Here's a photo:

Finally, we completed a craft from our theme pack - a port hole.  It was a super simple but fun craft and they look really cool.

Thursday:

First we did an ABC order page about Hammerhead Sharks which can be found HERE.

Then we did this really cool Ocean Math Activity.  The kids had to roll dice to build their ocean scene and then do some math problems using their scene.

Friday - Our Friday schedule only includes the individual time in the morning (just enough to pull them off electronics for a bit) but the bonus this week was that our two friends were gone so the boys got a free day :-)

I think week one went well.  They don't love the individual time because my boys feel like it is "School" no matter how many times I say it is review HA!  But, they have told me they really enjoy the group time activities.  On average, we are spending about an hour in group time