Blueberries for Sal row

For our Five in Row this week we read Blueberries for Sal.

We made our own Blueberry playdoh.

We also had Blueberry muffins and blueberries for snacks.

And we made a blueberry painting:

Since Shelby Lynn wound up with strep we didn’t get much more accomplished other than reading the story every day, but she really liked it.

We also started a Fine Arts Academy, she does dance, art, music theatre and yoga. Unfortunately they had to call me to come pick her up because that is when she started running a fever. But she liked what she was able to do:

We also got our reading glasses this week:

She is not very happy about them!

Kindergarten weeks 2-3

Weeks two and three got combined because we were still battling sickness, this time poor Shelby Lynn got strep! But we were still able to accomplish a lot.
So I figured out how I wanted to keep track of our plans and started typing them out instead of trying to fill in the squares in those lesson plan books and it worked much better. I also dropped some curriculum we were using and added Little City Kids curriculum which is free to our plans. So far we are enjoying it, especially since it started with the dinosaurs, which are Shelby Lynn’s favorite!! I think I will do my blog posts in two separate ones for each one. One on our Little City Kids curriculum and one for Five in a Row. Here are some activities we enjoyed:

(Making clay dinosaurs using one of our toy ones as a model)

(Making a dinosaur terrarium to replicate a rain forest)

(Dino Sensory Bin)             (Moving like a dino)         (Dino Sandwiches)
Painting a Dinosaur was also fun:

We also made dinosaur fossils while listening to what the earth might have sounded like when there were dinosaurs:

And what didn’t work this week:

our jello layers to represent the earth’s layers. My jello would not set up!!! I have no clue what I did wrong, but here she is getting ready to make it, lol.
We really like our Little City Kids curriculum and it is FREE! Of course this is in addition to our Saxon phonics and Alpha and Omega Math, which I don't take pictures of.

Kindergarten week 1

Make Way for Bronchitis Ducklings! So this post is a little past due, because once again I have bronchitis. I finally figured out what is causing it though. We have grass! In Virginia all we had was a patio, so there was not any ragweed or mold spores. And while I love our backyard, I will make sure on lawn mowing days to leave the house from now on...good excuse to go shopping, right?
So for the first week of homeschool we rowed Make Way for Ducklings. We also did our Saxon phonics and math lessons. I think I learned the most this first week. What did mommy learn? Well, I learned to chill out and go where our lessons take us. While it is good to be organized and have a plan, it is also good to explore and let her take some control of the learning. So I have changed some of our curriculum and have found in the second and third weeks of school that we have been actually more productive!!! Well back to Make Way for Ducklings,
We start off our mornings with Calendar time. I tried doing a notebook like I had seen some families do and while they looked great for others it just wasn't working for us but here we are trying it:

We also worked on following directions:

Practiced our cutting skills while cutting out our words that start with L (this is something I am not sure we will continue, we didn’t really use them.

We are using Saxon Phonics. Here is our first attempts at writing L:


For Literature we are using Five in a Row curriculum:
This week we rowed Make Way for Ducklings.
Using the bean bag as a nest while listening to the story:

Later in the week she used the bean bag as a nest for her stuffed animals and played mother duck:

Our vocabulary words from the story (I didn’t continue this for the next story but I think I will try it again for this week’s row). I called out the word and she had to find it. She also gave me the definition of the word. When I was making up the cards I was really surprised that she knew the definitions!:

We went on a walk to see what we could find that had the /l/ sound in it:

We also started our Nature Study group this week:

After exploring a neighborhood pond, we went back and had our bird snack and attempted to make bird calls. We also enjoyed listening to a story about Jenny Wren.

It was a good start to Kindergarten and I was able to figure out how I want to do things, so I think we were pretty successful!

A Whole New World

A whole new world, stepping through the keyhole, down the rabbit hole, whatever you want to call it, we have embarked on an adventure! One minute we are in Virginia selling our townhouse and buying a sweet little farmhouse

and the next, we are high tailing to Long Horn Country in Austin, Texas! Why Texas, why now? Well why not??? Actually, we figured this was the perfect time to move because Shelby Lynn is not yet in school and schools were one of the deciding factors, along with cost of living, southern charm and graces and of course Miss Melanie and her family, and since the purchase of the other home fell through we took a leap and cannonballed right into the heart of Texas. I came on down to find us a place

and Jay will be down hopefully in a month. I am already in love, just look at some of the adventures we have already had…

waiting for our plane

finally ready to take off

Once at Aunt Melanie’s we dove right into having fun and making memories!

Pretty Texas Cactus

Fourth of July fun

We decided to go to the parade in downtown Round Rock, it wasn’t all that grand but we still enjoyed getting out.

After the parade we grabbed some sandwiches and had a quick picnic in the park.

And went exploring,

having a tantrum, err moment

the round rock of Round Rock

On Friday we drove to Waco and visited the zoo

Tried the famous donuts that were featured on Man vs Food,

And my favorite thing, visiting a Farmer’s Market, this one was in downtown Round Rock, I can’t wait to go to more

And some of the best times have been just hanging out at the house and playing