June Learning~

I follow lots of people who recommend wonderful picture books,
and I LOVE clicking over to the library site and putting them on hold.
We have read SO many lovely stories like these~

I also love putting out invitations for the youngest three to build their reading and writing skills~

I placed sight words with moveable letters, and Calla matched them, read them, and played for an hour!

We also recorded these fairy tales together with her helping me make the turn the page sounds~

 We also love playing our Shark game comparing two cards and placing them in the correct shark cup.

One of our favorite writing activities is recording our memories from photos we take and print~

EK has been allowing a dead bat to decompose so she can preserve the bones.
She goes to check on with a mask on to protect from the horrible smell~

 She also worked hard to organize all the shells we got from the beach
and now they are all beautiful displayed on our nature shelf.

We have also read lots of our Science book along with these wonderful nature books~

The books gave us ideas of beautiful coral~

 so we colored darkly on sandpaper and then cut coral shapes from it.
I ironed it into nature journals and they wrote about it~

The SumBlox have been so fun with our math activities~

We watercolored our new hymn and scripture while listening to our Little House read aloud~

Ella found this adorable turtle and kept him for a few days before releasing him back into a patch of wild strawberries~

Puzzles and Morning work~

Window Words was a super fun way to practice sight word reading and writing~

 We read them, copied them, and read them again~

 Everyone loved this fun activity~

 Even the big girls while they practiced their vocabulary words instead of sight ones~

Another stack of wonderful library read alouds and Calla's new math book~

Photos of all the things EK has created for nature shelf~

Evie found some frog bones out near the pool and brought them in to tape into her nature notebook~

One afternoon, a baby rabbit got stranded down in a area near our basement so EK put on gloves and rescued it~

 We took these precious photos before she released him back into the yard.

 EK was able to preserve the bat bones so we ordered a shadow box online~

And displayed it by lightly hot gluing it to the backing~

 Looked just like it came out of a nature store!

More Photo Stories~

Books for a new year of learning that we ordered from Amazon~

This is Calla's favorite book and she loves to read it over and over~

EK and the boys were required to do standardized testing this year and after three long days of it, we loaded up and went for blizzards to celebrate~

 Good job testing taking kids and kids who found something to do!!!

Building forts from reading The Little Red Fort over and over~

Writing to our penpals is a favorite thing around here to so if you're not writing~

find something else to do that you love!
That's exactly what they did!
It was a wonderful month of learning even in the middle of the summer!!!

Space School~

With the upcoming Solar Eclipse, we spent the week Space Schooling.
Here are a few of the things we did...
I found this ebook online from the publisher of our Science and we followed it for a couple of days~

 Making mobiles of the eclipse.
We also read lots of Space books and painted crayon resist space art~

Payne is a space nut so this was the greatest week of his life!
We learned so much from the many YouTube videos we watched and recorded ideas in our nature journals~

We were excited to get our solar glasses~

For Friday Free Write, we did a little art project and they wrote what they knew about solar eclipses~

It was a GREAT week and Monday is going to be awesome!!!!!

My Nature Loving Children~ {Nature Walk Wednesday}

We gathered around our table for Bible and prayer before heading out into nature for inspiration to draw and paint~

Everyone pulled on their rain boots and instead of me leading this nature adventure, they lead me! Back into the woods we went~

 They shared their hideout where they play Boxcar Children collecting trash treasures~

 They crossed logs and stood at the foot of the base of a tree that fell over in the wind~

 They scampered down a deep embankment into the creek~

 AND the scariest part for me was watching SJ walk across a fallen log covered in ferns {over the creek} to the other side AND back~

 She was quite proud and I was quite relieved!

They swung from vines and pointed out the back of our house~

 They showed me all the collections and  beauty in our backyard~

 We ended up at our big outside table to listen to a cute story Mr. Gummy's Outing~

While sketching and painting about our own.

We are SO thankful the weather is giving us beautiful springlike days outside!!!

"We are all meant to be naturalists, each in his own degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things."    ~ Charlotte Mason

Office Grand Opening~ {Spelling You See & Brave Writer}

For spelling this year, we chose Spelling You See using three of the levels~

It has been fantastic! There has been huge growth in all four of our kids using it. There are two activities that kind of bores EK when she comes to them so this week, we found a solution. Actually she thought of it, and I just said yes.

We opened an office with old computers, and our spelling became super fun when the girls came to the TWO boring activities...

The way the curriculum works is EK has a passage every week she copies parts of each day. There are also word chunks she must code in the printed passage then in her own. About the 4th lesson, she must write a short passage of her own but this is often overkill because she is writing everyday anyway.

The 5th lesson I dictate the passage to her, and she writes IN CURSIVE (yay, getting handwriting in too) the whole passage being mindful of her spelling. THIS was getting stressful and boring SO...

I pulled out my old Dell and Macbook (SLOW as a snail), and we opened a Kid Home Office. NOW when they girls come to the oh so boring pages~

They aren't so boring anymore. They are learning to type with correct finger formation and loving every minute of it~

When they typing is complete, we print it out and glue into the spelling book.

The BEST news is the Home Office has appealed to ALL the kids and they are found to be typing (WRITING) all the time. I hear them say, "I'm writing a blog like mom. I'm working for Cisco like dad. I'm making a list for the grocery store." They don't realize THIS is REAL writing, and they think it is FUN~

We also use Brave Writer for our Writing curriculum, and have introduced a few projects to the girls. One was a secret code project where EK had to create coded message and have someone decipher it. It was fun for a couple of days and she lost interest. Yesterday I saw her in the Office and asked, "What are you doing EK?" She answered, "Making a secret code for SJ." 

Confirmation that the right time AND the right medium is what makes learning fun, meaningful, and healthy for children. 

Maybe a Home Office is just what you need for a Learning Boost!!!