summer ART school {picasso}

Posted on 2012/06/04 by daisyeyes

This summer we are working our way through different artists and recreating some of their art work or art traditions they inspired. Picasso was the first artist my rooster picked. To begin with we looked at some of Picasso’s art online and the first project was making portraits inspired by Picasso. I found the idea here and honestly it stressed my children out (as it did hers).

My son is a perfectionist and at first he thought this activity was fun. When it wasn’t coming together (aka matching up perfectly) he became really frustrated. We talked about how Picasso’s art isn’t “perfect” but very mismatched. He didn’t even finish it and honestly I didn’t push him. It’s summer.

My daughter is all about lovely and pretty things. Picasso’s portraits aren’t lovely and beautiful. She ended up going with it (with an agreement that she could add a penguin and some flowers to decorate it!)

Next up we talked about Picasso’s blue period. This activity came from the art book, Discovering Great Artists. The idea is that you take one color and mix different shades of that color and then paint a picture using those shades. This was really hard! We had a lot of fun mixing the colors and finding different shades, but when it came to painting with them it was difficult!

Here is a glimpse at our results

Picasso was ok, but honestly he is totally not my favorite.

Next up Degas…he makes the ballerina in my little chick very happy!

a schoolish post

Posted on 2012/01/23 by daisyeyes

It’s been a while since I’ve shared any learning/schoolish posts. We aren’t “homeschooling” anymore, but I’ve become a very firm believer that even though my children are primarily educated at school, we are still partners in their education and our house is going to be a house of learning too. We are getting ready to embark upon this science book starting in February. The Rooster is all about fish…he’s like a walking encyclopedia of fishing lures, fish types etc and is about to DIE that we are going to take a Netflix fast and he won’t be able to watch all his Discover Channel, Animal Planet and whatever else fish shows! Hopefully we will be using all the time on our science studies. The goal is to finish it by the time school starts up in mid-July (our system goes year round) and culminate our study with some sort of dissection of a fish. We have also adopted a couple of spots on a stream through Tremont and hopefully that will play nicely in with our swimming creatures study. I’m so excited about this spring!

In the meantime, I’ve started to do some kindergarten work with the Chick. She is in a preschool program, but it’s a blended program with students who are considered at-risk, learning English as a second language and typical preschoolers. That said, she is ready to start doing some Kindergarten work and while she gets some at school, I wanted more. So when the Rooster works on his homework after school, we do her “homework” together.

I’ve been struggling with how and what to teach her with and finally decided to use these three things:

Explode the Code: book 1. I love, love, love this series and it was one of our favorite things to do when we were homeschooling. She passed the pretest with flying colors, so we are starting with book 1. We’ll go slow and not push it, but I’m super excited. For someone who doesn’t have a clue about teaching phonics, this is a lifesaver for me.

I’m pulling alphabet review stuff from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Her stuff is amazing! For now, we are working on the A-Z Beginning Sounds Game.

I actually printed these at half size (I’m a stickler on making my colored ink last). Looking at the little letter dots I realized they would fit perfectly under these clear glass gems I had in my craft stash. A little modge podge later and voila! Fun little letter gems.

We are also starting very slowly on learning our kindergarten sight words. I found this awesome group of printables from 1+1+1 (which is also a phenomenal blog) and made a special reading notebook for the chick. She has about a 5-10 minute tolerance for this, but I really didn’t expect more than that. Each list of 4 words has a great variety of activities and is easy for a momma to get together.

As we get into our science work, I’ll be sure to post some updates of the fun things we do.

learning the abcs

Posted on 2011/04/21 by daisyeyes

I’ve been way to lax on working with the chick on her letters. She knows them all and can write most all of them, but she needs to work on learning the sounds. I’ve seen tons of activities like this all over the web, but most recently saw it in Small Magazine and it finally got me motivated. I knew the little chick would get into it because she loves to have her picture taken.

Here’s the process we took:

1) I had her write down 5 letters. I was going to go through some dictated order, but decided that giving her more “control” might be spur her along a little more…it did.

2) After writing the letters, she picked one and we talked about it’s sound and words that start with that letter. Then she had to go find an object that made that sound.

3) We took pictures of her holding or doing that letter.

4) I made little cards for our first group of letters and put them in a special book for her.

After we get through all 26, I’m thinking that we’ll go back through and add the short or long vowel sounds that we were missing and maybe we’ll add sight words or something like that too.

grow a rainbow

Posted on 2011/04/19 by daisyeyes

Last week at story time the librarian read this book and reminded me what a treasure it is for preschoolers. I checked it out and we read it a few times and this week we did a little mommy and chick project with the book.

How to Grow a Rainbow

1. Read a book and make a list (I will brag and say that yes, she wrote most of those letters after me calling them out!)

2. Head to your local garden center (in our case Walmart) and pick out the colors you need.

3. Bring them all home and plant them up (and make sure you have enough dirt…sadly we didn’t)

March Sensory Box

Posted on 2011/03/02 by daisyeyes

Our March Sensory Box in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. The box is blue, which makes everything inside it look blue, but I promise it’s all green! I’m hoping to get a little activity sheet together for the chick to do in conjunction with this box…we’ll see!

What’s inside:
split peas (which actually don’t smell great…fyi)
green puff balls
a small set of St. Patrick’s Day trinkets/buttons
a few gold coins
some gold pipe cleaners
some green shot glasses I found at Target in the Dollar Spot
a green garlic roll thing-a-ma-bob

a little preschool bookmaking

Posted on 2011/02/08 by daisyeyes

I found this book at the library last week and remembered I had a great little activity to go along with it in the old teacher files.

The girl and I set to work this morning, cutting out little mice, words and pictures to make our little re-creation of this great book by Ed Young. It’s the old folk tale of the blind mice who try to figure out what this big thing is down by the pond. Individually they each think it’s a different sort of object as they only feel one part of the big thing. The final mouse has the idea to feel the whole thing and discovers that it is an elephant. Working together and looking at the sum of the parts is more effective than just one part of the whole.

This book is a great way to work on colors, ordinal numbers (which for us was just counting numbers) and days of the week. If you are interested in the stuff to make your own, let me know and I’ll try to scan some stuff in.

Holiday Sensory Box

Posted on 2010/12/06 by daisyeyes

Here’s our holiday sensory box. I have to tell you that this one has not been the favorite of the past ones. (so far the popcorn is winning out). I had originally intended to do colored rice, but the coloring the rice part and the rice all over my house part just kept me from doing it. I had a smart friend who suggested colored paper stuff and that is what we did. It was a big hit for about the first week, but it is waning for sure. I’ve already got a great one in mind for January!

Here’s what’s inside:

colored paper (for wrapping)
faux presents
little poinsettias
toy soldier ornaments
a felt nativity set
gold “marbles”

*I bought almost everything for 50% off at Hobby Lobby, except for all the little packages. Some I had from years past and I also bought a pack at the Dollar Tree.

ending

Posted on 2010/11/16 by daisyeyes

We are ending our homeschool adventure…with the Rooster at least. The hubs and I have been praying for a month now about our Rooster and schooling. We’ve visited the local school (which, have I mentioned is top-rated and is within walking distance to our house?) and are heading back again in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, we both really feel strongly this is the direction the Lord is taking this little man.

In pondering the end of this season of schooling my son, here are the things I have learned/observed:

1) Making a schooling choice is a lot like choosing to breastfeed.
Too many opinions ( ___ is the ONLY way to feed/educate your child),
too many choices, (can’t even begin to list them all)
too many unknowns (what if you can’t?)

2) Homeschoolers are not necessarily well-behaved, responsible children.
I think I had this crazy misconception that if you schooled your children then they would magically just become these well-behaved, responsible children. Ha! If you could spend a couple of days with me at some of these local classes that we attend, you would be very surprised. Today I watched the teacher get kicked, a disrespectful student refusing to stop and a mom standing there and watching the whole thing yet doing nothing.

3) It takes more than one.
A lot of our struggle is that the Rooster is alone. Yes, he has his sister but she is 3 and not necessarily the motivation he needs to get his work done. I am convinced the reason why most homeschooling families have 19 children is because it makes it easier. It’s more like a classroom, where there is peer tutoring, motivation to get done and motivation to behave. There is only so much motivation a 35 year old mom and a 3 year old sister can provide.

4) Peer pressure isn’t such a bad thing.
We didn’t choose to homeschool this year because of peer pressure, but it was a side point. There were behaviors that our guy was picking up on and the ability to “choose” his friends was comforting. But, as we have watched him this Fall, we have realized that he needs peer pressure. He needs to know what he is doing is what he is supposed to be doing (or what he isn’t supposed to be doing) and he learns that best from watching others. He is an observer…always has been. It’s taken this Fall for us to really realize that when his kindergarten teacher told us, “he needs his friends” it wasn’t because he needs his friends, but because she saw what we now see.

5) It brings you closer together.
This is a hard one. In some ways, this schooling experience has brought us closer. I feel much better apt to create some very special experiences on school breaks etc and I didn’t do that before. It has brought brother and sister together in many ways, but in other ways it has driven us all apart. I do feel strongly that this 1-on-1 experience for the Rooster has been good, but has also made him very self-centered. His world in so many ways has shrunk and no amount of field trips for a few hours here and there is going to make a difference with him. It’s also been hard for he and I. We are two peas in a pod and while I have learned so much about him and how he ticks this Fall, I’m ready to just be mom again and not teacher-mom.

6) Telling others you are quitting homeschooling is MUCH harder than telling them you are.
I was paranoid about sharing with others that we were homeschooling. But once you even set your foot into this community, it’s so hard to move out. There is SO much guilt. This goes back to my first point. I think I’ve been learning that it doesn’t have to be a one size fits all philosophy for schooling. If you have one in public school, one in private and one at home…that is ok. It’s the idea of praying for that specific child and doing what’s best for that child…not necessarily the whole. And it could easily be that it does fit the whole. In our case, it doesn’t.

There you have it. My top lessons I’ve learned. Would I homeschool again? Sure. I am beyond grateful for this season and what we’ve all learned. The chick and I may keep on going with our school for a long while (she and I are NOT two peas on a pod…more like a pea and a carrot). I’ve learned so much about my children and I’m still processing through all the things the Lord has revealed with me.

i just might be a homeschool drop-out

Posted on 2010/10/27 by daisyeyes

About this time last year I was loving my job. Well, maybe not loving, but things were good. About a month later we started realizing that the strain of both of us working was too much, the chick started having some issues in daycare and I started thinking about other employment options. In the course of applying for those said options, the idea of homeschooling popped up. If you’ve read this blog at all over the last few years, you know that homeschooling is something that I really wanted and longed for. I was beyond myself with excitement and fear when I realized that this was the path the Lord was leading us down.

Why did we choose to homeschool? First, because I knew I wasn’t going back to work at the same school and we didn’t want to keep the Rooster there if I wasn’t going to be there. Second, the school we were zoned for is a 1200+ student school. I wasn’t ready for that. Third, after working for that county for a year, I really didn’t want my son (and daughter) in said county. Fourth, we wanted that opportunity to shape his friendships etc etc. Fifth, because this is truly where the Lord was leading us.

Looking back, I can easily see it was because God knew we would be moving. And it wouldn’t be a small move either, but a move to a different city and different county. I’m beyond grateful that we didn’t start (or keep) the Rooster in a school, only to pull him out and start over again. As hard as our hardest days have been, being together every day through this move has made it all easier in so many ways. While life was stressful before and after the move, I can’t imagine how it would have been if we would have been balancing school and school schedules through it all.

But, it’s been hard. I knew that the Rooster and I would butt heads big time. I knew that it would be hard for us. We are both mopers at times and both have a hard time moving on from disagreements and frustrations. I knew that it would be hard for the chick. I knew that I would have to “push” her off at times so that I could focus on schoolwork with Rooster. I knew that everyone who homeschools has days they hate it. I knew that the first year pretty much always sucks. But I’m beginning to think that our season of homeschooling was just that…a season. We started homeschooling partly because of the school district that we were zoned for. Now we can walk to school and are zoned for some pretty awesome schools. It’s hard to keep struggling through these days when I know what’s around the corner.

Is it all a loss? No way! I have enjoyed watching my son’s reading take off. I have loved watching him totally get a math concept. I have loved watching him interact and play with his sister more and more. I have loved watching him hole up in his room to listen to his latest book on CD.

But…it’s all beginning to take it’s toll. The rough times and bad days are building up and I am beginning to realize that in some ways I am losing out on time with both of them. It’s crazy to think that sending my son back to full day school would mean gaining time with him, but it would.

Am I giving up? I hate to see it as that. And I don’t know what the answer is right now. I just know that I am praying and praying for wisdom and in the end I am waking up enjoying each day that we have at home all together.

Who knows what tomorrow might bring?

5 Little Pumpkins

Posted on 2010/10/24 by daisyeyes

If you have kids in preschool you should be familiar with the poem “Five Little Pumpkins“. We are having a pumpkin theme this week so I whipped up this little activity for my chick to do this week to work on one-to-one correspondence counting to five. I found these little erasers in the dollar spot at Target (also a set of vampires and cats that we’ve been using for sorting) and taking the idea from here, created this little printable to share.

pumpsonafence

(sorry the color is so off, my color printer is on it’s last ink legs and I’m so tired of spending money I can’t seem to break down and buy a new cartridge!)

Happy Halloween!!