Our homeschooling journey

This blog is moving :)

2013-04-06T09:19:00.001-07:00

Please visit our new home at Sunflowerous Days. I'm still learning the ropes of the new blogging platform and I hope our new blog will be an exciting place to visit. There are just a couple of posts up so far and I will be posting there from now on. Please drop by !

This week:learning about Jane Goodall

Last week of March

2013-03-31T17:35:00.000-07:00

After a long winter, the spring finally came, we had the most crazy weather with hot sun and snow storm in the same week, now it is warm again, we'll see if it lasts...But first leaves appeared almost overnight, such a delight!

What have we been up to this last week of March? Let's see...

Monday: We repeated what we know about Italy, D. read a Magic Tree House book on the subject
We also learned about one point perspective using this helpful lesson from smArt class blog.

Tuesday: D. is currently raising shrimp for his science class at co-op and he's very excited to see how they will turn out. Kids received a microscope as a present from my sister and of course attempted to look at shrimp- alas, too small to see properly still, we did compare leaves and algae meant for shrimp food though, successfully. Kids were fascinated by the difference in texture.

Wednesday: The nature is waking up, we decided to repeat what we knew about plants' life cycle (new info for C. since she's old enough now to understand these things better). We read The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle and planted a couple of seeds in egg cartons. Will they grow?

Thursday:We read up on endangered animals and watched Chipanzee movie from Disneynature. The movie was very sweet and interesting too. We did "finish the picture" art journal page, inspired by art projects for kids.

We also did a little Japanese language lesson (last two years' studies inspired us both to try and master it), which D. absolutely loved, he studies hiragana using workbook found here.

Friday was more or less uneventful, D. practiced his piano, he's preparing for a small recital and his special challenge is to play ensemble with his friend for the first time.

Saturday: We went to Barnes and Noble for the egg hunt, when we get home we decided to keep it artsy and made a decoration for our table. Russian Easter is still pretty far away so we might do something else as it approaches.
Our first project was to paint blown-out eggs, inspired by a lovely post here. So we blew out three eggs, got our acrylic paints out and set to work. We had lots of fun, D. stuck to "Starry night" theme, C. painted pink and orange background and I messed around with putting spots in warm colors. The outcome seems to be pleasant enough.

C. also did some stamping with white acrylic paint over green construction paper to create a meadow for origami bunnies that we made. Instructions for these bunnies are extremely simple, D. had lots of fun folding.

We hung our eggs on some branches we cut off of the tree in front of our house.

Sunday: Today was calm, kids played a lot by themselves, read some, hanged out with grandparents...Taking a deep breath for a new week

Our reading highlights of the month are up at Our Bookshelf Blog, please stop by and check it out :)

When it felt just like spring..

2013-03-23T13:13:00.001-07:00

Winter had no plans to give up

Before we knew it...

2013-03-21T17:14:00.001-07:00

The spring has come, it means more time at the park, earthworms waking up, birds singing...and new window display:-)

The best season of all 2012- second week of December

2012-12-19T11:44:00.000-07:00

Our quiet holiday preparations continue. As I've written before, I have toned down on crafts this year and try and vary activities. So the second week of December we:

Day 9: We read "Buying mittens" by Nankichi Niimi, since it became a holiday tradition for us of sorts. Kids traced their hands and decorated mittens using wax crayons.
D.'s creation:

Day 10: Christmas lights gazing. We drove around looking at pretty lights.

Day 11: Kids unwrapped new books in the morning. For C. it was "The Beasties by Jenny Nimmo, plus a chapter book for D.

Day 12: We went and bought our holiday tree. This year due to our home library (uncontainable) growth there was no room for a big tree, so we just got a tiny tree to put on a table

Day 13: Family movie night - Harry Potter! We also did some cute paper flowers for our trees with friends:

Day 14: D. and I tried our hand in origami again, and yet again were not quite successful. My dream of having a paper crane mobile in the kitchen is still far from reach it seems. We did have fun though (mixed with frustration) and managed two not quite pretty paper tables. We decided to make it our goal next year to master origami.

We listened to some holiday music, here is our favorite song of the week: Mika Nakashima-Yuki no Hana (Snowflakes)

Our books this past week can be found here, some holiday reads included.

The Best Season of All 2013- 1st week of December

2012-12-09T10:58:00.000-07:00

It's this time of year again!
This year we are continuing our tradition of activities-filled advent calendar.

This year even though I planned making something really stylish and unusual for a calendar, I ended up drawing a tree by popular request from kids. Under each ball there is an activity written for us to do. This year instead of mostly crafts I went for "special moments", this way none of us will be worn out by the end of the month.

Day 1: We made our traditional window display, coffee filters colored with metallic watercolors. This time we cut out gigantic snowflakes.

Day 2: We put some lights on the bush outside our window

Day 3: Baking cookies together!We made also out long time favorite chocolate cookies recipe here
Day 4: Lego Christmas trees:

Day 5: T-shirt decoration, I bought some white cotton t-shirts in Michael's (adult size too :D) and some fabric paint. We did our best painting some holiday pictures on them, kids had lots of fun and now wear these tees to bed and around the house.

Day 6: We attended Polar Express Story Time in local bookstore

Day 7: We made an attempt to create a snow jar. I was inspired by this pinhowever, kids didn't want to use any of their small animals and by the time they made up their minds it was too late to go hunt for new ones :) So D. just made a penguin out of playdough (weird color is due to the fact that all black dough was gone for some reason), a small fir was picked outside. Just add Epsom salt and here we have a snow jar (rather a candidate for "nailed it" meme I think) that kids pronounced "weird, but Christmassy"

Day 8: Snow!, so much snow outside! Kids are looking forward to rolling in it and cleaning the sidewalk. ~~We are supposed to attend a concert today too, but I'm no sure about driving so far away, so we might not go after all~~
We ended up going to see Denver Young Artists Orchestra and we had a marvelous time! Harry Potter suite was wonderful and put us in a holiday spirit.

We are reading books from Holiday List I made last year. So far kids watched "Chronicles of Narnia: the lion, the witch and the wardrobe" and Russian "Snow Queen" movie.

Happy Holiday Season to all!

It's been a while...

2012-10-18T14:53:00.000-07:00

Wow, I haven't touched my blog in a long long time it seems. But here I am again, and I will try my best to keep it up. We have started our third year of homeschooling, 2nd grade for D. I was going to start "serious" pre-school for C., but since she's not due to start K until 2014 anyway I decided to let her grow like a weed for maybe another year or so :) Somehow I want to keep her "a baby" a little bit longer. Especially since she picks so much up from our lessons with D. anyway. So far our school year (all 2 months of it) was pretty busy. We went for a few hikes, D. and I saw a ballet and Denver Young Artists Orchestra performance for the first time, it seems that classical music becomes much bigger part of our life. D. finished his first hip=hop dance class and is asking to let him take it again. He's also preparing for his second science fair along with other homeschool students in our co-op. It's so beautiful outside, we can't get enough of these crisp, autumn days, when there's so much gold outside....

Our May at a glance

2012-06-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

We had and incredibly busy May, finishing 1st grade, sorting various troubles at home etc. Nevertheless we had fun too. Here are our activities at a glance: We made candles using kit by Shure. Nice, calming activity, although there was some struggle for who gets to hold the blow dryer to warm the wax:

We learned about Japan

We visited giraffes:

Created pinball machine for marbles (Thanks to my amazing friend for hosting this activity)

We started our Ancient Greece unit, D. is absolutely mad for myths and heroes. His passion may be best seen in his M.O.C. -Minotaurs' labyrinth:

We read a lot, check out our May round up post for reading at my book blog.

We made another summer-y window display

We planted a container garden, our caterpillars from Insect Lore have arrived and now we are eagerly awaiting their transformation.

Looking forward for fun June!

Learning about Japan- 2012

2012-05-16T14:24:00.000-07:00

In 2011 we learned a lot about Japan, the time has come for us to refresh some of the information and learn some more. So last week it was all about Japan in our house

Our activities:

We read and wrote some haiku.

We learned how to say some words in Japanese. Using

Let's Learn Japanese Picture Dictionary

We played Otedama game. How to make otedama.

our otedama

We played math game called Shiritori math game, which basically consists of making up new number sentences using the answer from the previous number sentence.

We made some oregami (yay! this year it was much easier that last), we listened to the music (great tracks from Orange Range: Hana, Kizuna, Silent Night , some excellent stuff by Joe Hisaishi , lullabies)
We read some great books, check out our Reading about Japan book list over at our "bookshelf" blog.
Finally, we tried some Japanese food, kids are definitely warming up to miso soup, but still wouldn't eat sweets, oh well, more for me :)

First Grade is finished

2012-05-07T08:22:00.001-07:00

Well, almost, anyway. There are two more weeks left to co-op lessons. D. insists that we have to "learn" through the summer too (which we will, our days just will be even less structured). We learned a lot this year, I especially learned a lot about my own capabilities and I certainly have better idea of what I can and can't do, how to organize and mostly what NOT to do. I can tell that this year was much more challenging and that I was definitely too naive thinking that I got it all together jsut because Kindy was so smooth and easy for us. Now, about curriculum. Our co-op lends us books for the year, but this year I noticed that I rely on my own resources mostly. What we used:

Writing:

Coursive Writing worksheets generator for handwriting

We played games

First Word Bank by Ruth Thomson, as well as Thesaurus helped us a lot.

You Can Write Awesome Stories really breaks down writing process for kids and gives exercises to practice each element.

Math

We used
Primary Mathematics 1b Textbook (Singapore Math)

Grade 2 Word Problems by Kumon are great but really repetitive, so I had to pick interesting bits from the book.

Reading
Our home library as well as public library is an endless source of great books.

Science
I mostly followed whatever they were doing in co-op and supplemented with various books from the library. I got Activity Book Teacher's Guide (Scott Foresman Science, First Grade) from the co-op, but we hardly touched it.

History
Again mostly my own resources, such as a number of websites and books, Core Knowledge Series were of some help, but I didn't rely on them too much.

Art

The Usborne book of art ideas and variety of art albums are our sources this year. Geography National Geographic Atlas Of The World and Not for Parents Travel Book helped us with our culture/geography studies. So here we are, having had a nice year, ready for summer.

San Francisco trip

2012-04-08T10:30:00.000-07:00

Last week was spent in San Francisco, such a great trip it was! We visited all of our favorite place and some new ones. Here are some snapshots of our favorite city.


Palace of Fine Arts

Exploratorium nearby is a nice place to play around and experiment.


Golden Gate Bridge

Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park

California Academy of Sciences and De Young Museum are also wonderful places to visit in the park.


Japanese Tea Garden

San Francisco Botanical Garden across the street is amazing.

We walked all through the park and came to Dutch Mill and Tulip Garden

Dutch Windmill

crossed Golden Gate Bridge

and arrived to Muir Woods

cable car ride next day

Sea lions at Pier 39

We also met our friends, re-discovered the city by visiting little nooks in the streets, eating at local cafes and just inhaling this amazing cool air, that we are going to miss come hot Colorado summer. Five wonderful days. And some books to remember our trip:

This is San Francisco by M.Sasek

Good Night San Francisco

The Cable Car and the Dragon by H.Caen

Maybelle the Cable Car by Virginia Lee Burton.

City by the Bay: A Magical Journey Around San Francisco by Tricia Brown

Fly High, Fly Low by Don Freeman

Field trip to DAM- games to play in the art museum

2012-03-22T19:06:00.000-07:00

Another wonderful field trip provided by our homeschooling co-op! We visited one of the best museums in Denver in my opinion- Denver Art Museum. Our first visit was a great success, this time around a docent was leading the tour and activities were more varied. It was a great learning experience and some games kids played today we played at home before, some were new. Next time we come or even just look at art in albums, remembering today's art adventure,we will play the following games:

1) Face expressions on portraits. It's a good idea to discuss what kind of mood a person on the portrait must have been and try to guess what kind of personality the person on the portrait had.

2) Tell a story. The docent offered children an opportunity to make up a story while looking at a Japanese scroll painting. I remember making up stories while looking at paintings one of the favorite quiet games of my childhood. Another interesting way to play would be to find a picture that would continue the story- that might be easier to play if there are several pictures of the same artist or the same style.

3) Imitate a picture. Creating living pictures was a popular entertainment before the age of radio and TV. It's a good idea to try and imitate a pose on a picture.

4) Find a color. Pick a color and try to find it on a picture or all the pictures in the gallery. At home we tried to play it bingo-style using playing cards sets from different museums.

5) Live inside a picture. Pick a painting and try to imagine yourself inside it. Where would you hide? What does it feel like? This activity was a favorite of my son's today.

Last days of winter

2012-03-07T15:33:00.000-07:00

With all this warm weather (minus today's icy drizzle) spring is really in the air. There were a few of winter books though we had to finish. So we decided we'll squeeze in one more winter art project.

We read Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner and talked about lives of animals in winter. The artwork in this book is really nice, it shows very nicely how animals spend winter under the snow.

This book prompted us to talk about our winter, how we spent it (lots of fun times outside and inside). We decided to keep a "window" opened to winter with a special round drawing. The idea for this project came from Discovering Great Artists: Hands-on Art for Children in the Styles of the Great by MaryAnn Kohl. We drew a big circle on a white sheet of watercolor paper tracing a pot lid. D. cut out this circle and drew his favorite moment inside using oil pastels (sledding downhill with friends). We then glued our circle drawing on a piece of black construction paper, D. also added snowflakes around drawing.

Railroad Museum of Colorado

2012-03-05T10:11:00.001-07:00

This Saturday we went to the Colorado Railroad Museum, we went there once when D. was little, this time it was bigger crowd, with C. and grandparents too. What a great museum! Lots of trains from different periods, lots of information about railroads in Colorado, miniature railroad with little trains running, narrow gauge train rides. Wonderful outing.

Museum has a free day event on MAY 5, not to be missed.

Checking-in

2012-02-12T17:53:00.000-07:00

Wow, am I a bad blogger this year :D

Our January was very challenging indeed, we managed to do school, read a lot and learn about a new country, but there were difficulties such as two new additions to our busy household- my sister came to visit and brought her sweet but demanding cat with her. Kids are overwhelmed with all the attention (5 grown ups around them) and so am I. I'm not sure I can do inter-generational household again. We had a small crisis regarding D. learning Russian, while his ability to write improved, his willingness to read it diminished, we tackled the problem, but I still have to remind him to speak more, and push him to find an appropriate word instead of just switching to English. Boy, am I grateful we homeschool, I don't think I'd be able to raise kids bilingual if I had to compete with school so much. Our math activities suddenly became "too easy" (c) for D., I'm trying to be more creative with our activities,it's trial and error so far. D. enjoys roller-skating classes, he's getting really good and asking for inline skating hockey classes (we'll see). He also continues his clay classes and learns piano with grandma. Baby C. started pre-school, she's slowly learning to read now, turns out she can count pretty well and knows her colors (oh joy of having an older brother), her English is far superior to D.'s at the same age (which is one less worry for me I guess).

Books we read in January can be found here.

Plans for February are to learn as much as we can about Ireland, to re-organize our home for leaving enough space for everbody, to re-think our math curriculum. I also need to find French curriculum for small children, D. keeps asking to learn and I need more structure in our lessons.

Learning about Morocco- part 3

2012-01-22T11:23:00.000-07:00

This week we read some more about Morocco.

"The Butter Man" by Elizabeth Alalou tells about a boy's childhood in Atlas Mountains in Morocco.

Zorah's Magic Carpet by Stefan Czernecki is a fairy tale about one curious woman and her desire to see the world.

My Father's Shop by Satomi Ichikawa tells a simple story about a boy playing in his father's carpet shop and playfully learning words from different languages from tourists.

We talked a little bit more about Morocco's culture, looked at photographs online and listened to the music. We also did a mosaic art project. The idea for the project can be found here.

D. drew a design of an archway and picked some colors for his mosaic. We did not have tiles so I just used paint chips from a home improvement store and cut them in small pieces. (Paint chips (as I discovered via pinterest) are awesome for children crafts- they are sturdier than construction paper and come in much wider variety of colors)

Learning about Morocco -part 2

2012-01-15T21:41:00.001-07:00

This time we learned all about Sahara desert and people and animals that inhibit it. We talked about Tuareg people and read One night by Christine Kessler. This lovely illustrated book talks about life of a Tuareg boy. The story is about deep connection within a family and with surrounding nature.

We also read The Storytellers by Ted Lewine to repeat all that we learned about Morocco last week.

D. drew a picture of a camel crossing desert. We ate some couscous that I made and drank mint tea just like people of the desert.

Snowy evening

2012-01-11T17:09:00.001-07:00

Today we woke up and found spectacular snowfall outside. D. had wonderful time shoveling snow on the patio and we enjoyed some hot cocoa in the afternoon.

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to read more poetry, especially to kids, so today we read Stopping by the Woods on the Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. After reading and discussing the poem we did a little art project. The inspiration came from a handout for art teachers my mom brought for me from Motherland.
Here's the process
1.Child paints winter evening background on a wet paper with watercolors. D. used blue and some purple.
2. Fold a piece of card stock and draw half a tree on the fold. Carefully cut the tree out creating a stencil.
3. We used Faber-Castell gel sticks and gouache paint, but I think kid's paint will work fine too if not too diluted to stencil trees. We used black for trees standing further away (higher on the sheet), blue for those in the middle and brown for the closest trees. We added accents with metallic colored gel sticks and white paint.We also added falling snow.

Fun and simple art project.

Learning about Morocco- part 1

2012-01-05T18:22:00.000-07:00

Second half of the first grade has started. A little bit slow too.
This month we are learning all about Morocco.

Today's lesson was a brief introduction to the country:
-we found it on the map and learned basic facts such as capital, official language and flag. We also learned some fun facts from Not for Parents Travel Book.
-we looked through Mirror by Jeannie Baker (I write more about this book in my new children books blog)

-D. made a Hamsa the Good Luck Charm art (inspired by a project found here).

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T09:33:00.002-07:00

Happy 2012 to all my friends and visitors!

Sea voyages crafts

2011-12-26T07:41:00.001-07:00

The month of November was dedicated to learning a little bit about adventurers and travelers, I posted a book list a few weeks ago (will post and extended one soon in my book blog). Now it's time to share two crafts that we did.
1. The inspiration for this craft came from here. D. was very excited to make a playscene of his own. He painted all over a cardboard box, I scanned and printed some boats from our favorite books, we coated it with some modpodge and voila!

2. We learned about Ancient China in the month of November, we talked about inventions, so making a compass was a good idea. Instructions how to make a compass at home can be found here.

The best season of all- days 16 through 22

2011-12-21T18:53:00.002-07:00

Wow, what a week, we were so incredibly busy every single day I could hardly catch my breath.

We had some great activities and I learned one important thing- I simply planned too much for us to do :)
Anyway, here's a little round-up of what we've been up to the past few days.

D. loves to sew so much he asked to try out embroidery, his first piece is very simple of course, but in holiday spirit:

Saturday we went roller-skating again and D. met Santa (for the first time too, since I'm not a fan of mall Santas :)) It was also a day of surprise treasure hunt arranged by Daddy. The reward is a small chest with coins :)

Sunday: Baby C. turned three! (she insists she's "twenty-seven" though) D. selected a present for her (little pony) and it proved to be her favorite.

Monday: Daddy left to visit his parents overseas and we had a quiet day watching snow fall. D. also made a little picture book of his own.

Tuesday: Fun with friends in the afternoon.

Today: I took D. to the movies, we watched Hugo, which we both enjoyed very much. In the evening kids made a bear den and stayed there, talking, snacking and reading.

We read
The Story of Holly and Ivy by Rummer Godden, lovely, magical story about Christmas wishes and need for love.

Now we have a glorious snow fall outside of our window, there's nothing better than waking up with skylights entirely covered with white blanket- looking forward to the morning now :)

the best season of all days 12,13,14 and 15

2011-12-15T19:26:00.001-07:00

Busy days, fun with friends, awesome field trip, some crafts, learning about nature...

We talked some more about nature and made a bird feeder. We are still waiting for little guests to arrive, it's really warm outside so they aren't so hungry I guess, even a squirrel haven't visited for a few days.

We read "Who's Been Here" by Fran Hodgkins- a lovely book about our animal neighbors

We have a tradition- 10 days before Christmas we have little elves coming to our house, if children are especially kind to each other, they get small gifts from elves. D. made a special sock for little C. so elves can put some gifts for her. He already tried his hand in needle felting the other day when we made ornaments for the tree, this time it was his big project, he enjoyed it very much.

We read "The Twelve Days of Christmas" illustrated by Jan Brett

Yesterday was the most fun field trip with our co-op to The Little Shop of Physics in Fort Collins. D. had a great time trying all the experiments. They are having an open house event in the end of February.

Today D. and I went for another roller skating lesson at Skate City, D. looooves these lessons.

We made a little pine cone elf to guard our tree and bookshelves. It was a bit challenging because pine cones that we found have tiny spikes on them, but it's a fun project. Inspired by this craft.

We read Tiger's Adventures by Nick Butterworth- another favorite for my kids, especially little C. who's very much into tigers these days :)

My mom was in charge of yummies these past few days, tomorrow it's back to the oven I go, kids are begging for more cookies :)

We watched
While You Were Sleeping

the best season of all- day 10 and 11

2011-12-11T20:31:00.001-07:00

We had a lovely, quiet week end.

Children are very happy about having the tree up. Little C. keeps exclaiming "The tree came to visit!" and she touches ornaments all the time.
Yesterday we made our first ornaments of the season. We took out thick felt sheets and sewn up couple of birds. It was D.'s first big sewing experience as well as needle felting. He loved every minute of it. His bird was an owl and now it guards our tree. He did most of the work himself :)

I made a little dove, C. helped by messing with my thread and picking our sequins :)

Yesterday we read
Toot &Puddle I'll be home for Christmas by Holly Hobbie- another delightful little story about piglets

Today was another quiet day.

We read The Wild Christmas Reindeer by Jan Brett.

I'm back to baking, made marble cookies using this recipe.
The cookies are quite good, but too much work somehow mixing, and separating, and chilling the dough.

We watched Serendipity tonight, very nice:

the best season of all- days 8 and 9

2011-12-09T19:58:00.001-07:00

We had another lovely day yesterday- our friends invited us to a roller skating lesson for kids- it was so much fun! It was a first time for D. and now he can't wait to go back for more.

We made our traditional Cranberry Muffins (they were gone before I could take a picture :D)

We read some more winter poetry in Russian yesterday.

Today D. was in co-op all day and afterward we went and got our tree! We decorated it more sparsely this year to leave room for some more hand made ornaments that will be created. Kids are naturally very excited and this year little C. could really help with decorating.

No baking today, thanks to my friend who brought us a cheesecake :)

We read "Little tree" by E.E. Cummings from our Christmas book.

Kids are in bed now and I'm ready for my holiday movie. Today it will be :
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