Journey to Excellence

I mentioned previously that I had been contacted by CSN to review of some of their products. It was difficult to decide what to order, but I ultimately decided to take advantage of some free educational materials. I have six different products to review, and I will review one each Monday for the next six weeks. I had always seen "dot markers" and thought they looked cool, but never bought them. I took this opportunity to get some because I knew Brynne would love them. And, she does! I got the Picture Me a Princess Creative Activity Book to go with the Sponge Tip Applicators. It's just fun to color a picture with dots! As much as she likes to just have fun playing with them, I really wish I would have gotten them for her when she was younger. They would be so great for learning to write letters and numbers, and when she was first learning to write her name! I plan to have her use them in math assignments, for addition and graphing and grouping numbers. The quality ...

This was another abnormal week. Brynne woke up on Monday morning with a cold, so we did a lot of school that morning just sitting on the couch. By noon I realized she was running a fever, so school was over for the day for her. On Tuesday she had a cough, yucky nose, headache and fever all day. There was no school that day at all, for her. Although she woke up Wednesday morning fever free and almost miraculously healed, things ran pretty slow for her on that day. Thursday and Friday we had a lot to catch up on, so we kicked it into high gear and got as much done as we could. Here's all we did get accomplished this week. Brynne ~ 1st Grade She did some awesome things this week, and I hope I can get them all documented here. In reading we have moved onto grammar and we started this week with nouns. It amazes me how she immediately picked up on it! She can easily classify if it's a person, place or thing. On one of her noun worksheets she was asked to pick one of the ...

Next week's focus book will be A Mother for Choco written and illustrated by Keiko Kasza. Choco wishes he had a mother, but who could she be? He sets off to find her, asking all kinds of animals, but he doesn't meet anyone who looks just like him. He doesn't even think of asking Mrs. Bear if she's his mother-but then she starts to do just the things a mommy might do. And when she brings him home, he meets her other children-a piglet, a hippo, and an alligator-and learns that families can come in all shapes and sizes and still fit together. Keiko Kasza's twist on the "Are you my mother?" theme has become one of the most highly recommended stories about adoption for children. Discussion ~ Brynne and I will discuss what a mother is, what she does, characteristics, etc., and then read the book discussing each encounter she has and why she thinks each character is or is not Choco's mother. Compare and Contrast ~ We will make a Venn Diagram about th...

Things have been a little quiet at our school this week because Brynne has been sick. We are hoping to do some things today. But I had to share a **smile** moment from my older daughter who attends public school. If you were to know her you would know that she is the master procrastinator! She's been working on a research project about Carrie Underwood. While watching her two favorite DVR'd shows yesterday afternoon she paused it and said, "I think I'm going to go ahead and get my report done and turned in now and I'll watch t.v. later." Huh???? What have you done with Kyndal???? And that's exactly what she did. And she turned it in electronically at 7:30 p.m. (when normally she would have stayed up all night doing it and turned it in at 7:56 a.m. this morning when it was due by 8:00 a.m.). Later she said, "Wow, it feels good to be all done with it early so I can just relax." Duh .... (I didn't say that.) And, the paper was five pages inste...

This is just a test post. My last post did not give a place for comments, and I don't know why. Seeing if it was just a fluke.

We have almost completed a full month of our For the Birds study. And, I have to say, I have enjoyed it probably more than Brynne. My older kids laugh at me because of my obsession with birds. They bring me such joy! Here are the books we will be reading for the month of February (and March before Spring Break) ... January 31st ~ A Mother for Choco by Keiko Kaska    February 7th ~ Stellaluna by Janell Cannon and any version of The Ugly Duckling February 14th ~ We will not have a book, but instead will be participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count from the 18th-21st. Before those dates we will re-watch Your Backyard so that our bird identification will be easier. February 21st ~ United Tweets of America by Hudson Talbott. On January 17th we will have the opportunity to attend Homeschoolers Day at our state capitol. I will make Brynne a State of Oklahoma notebook to learn as much about the state as possible before we go. The week of February 21st we ...

School got "interrupted" this week. We were off Monday for Martin Luther King, Jr., day. Then we were off again yesterday and today because of the snow. When our public school is out, so are we here at home. Two of my kids go to public school, so we stick with their schedule. Although we didn't have school yesterday, the kids had a blast playing in the snow! It was a perfect day! We had 2-3" of powdery white stuff, the temperature hovered right at the freezing mark with a slight wind, but the sun was out making it almost hot when playing. We have the best sledding hills in the neighborhood, so many neighborhood kids took some time sledding in our yard. My kids played outside for hours without stopping. It's pretty overcast and cold today, so I don't know how much snow time there will be. It might be a day of board games instead.  So, what did we do when we were doing school? Brynne ~ 1st Grade Brynne is still moving right along with her 3 R's ...

Next week we will be using the book Edward the Emu , written by Sheena Knowles and illustrated by Rod Clement, as our focus book. Tired of being an emu, Edward decides to try being like other animals at the zoo, but he soon discovers that being himself is the best after all. We may not get to start our activities until Tuesday, because our snow days threw me off this week and I didn't get the book ordered until today. It is coming from another library, so it may be a few days before we get it. The majority of our activities come from the following website:  www.det.nt.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/.../ EdwardTheEmu .pdf . We will be doing the following: Emu facts ~ We will learn facts about emus here . At the same time she will color a coloring sheet and write in facts. Map Skills ~ As we read the story we will draw a map of all the animals Edward visits. Measurement ~ We will make several playdough snakes and then measure them. Charting ~ We will make a chart of t...

Now that the giveaway with CSN is over, it's time to concentrate on reviewing some of their products! I am very excited that they contacted me with this opportunity! With over 200 online stores to choose from, the choice about what to review will be difficult! I have poured over the websites, at all of the many products including toys, educational materials, housewares, rugs and modern duvet covers . Now I need to get back to picking my products. The review(s) will be coming soon!

Time is REALLY running out to register to win a $25 Gift card to use at one of the over 200 CSN online stores! Go here to register by NOON today !!!!

The internet is cooperating for the moment, so I thought I should get my Weekly Wrap-up done while it is. We had another great week! By being more organized on the weekends, (getting all grades inputted, lesson plans for both kids complete, all copies made and workboxes filled) we are hitting the ground running and I don't feel behind all week. It's been nice. Now I'm going to implement the "science experiments basket" recommended by Samantha at To Be Busy at Home. Scrambling to locate materials for experiments and projects is my biggest weakness. So this week I'll get all supplies and materials ready and in a basket so it's all ready for the first day of school. Brynne ~ 1st Grade What a fun week! Our focus book this week was Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems.  We did the following activities: A "shapes" bus with the pigeon driving A storyboard where Brynne is trying to convince me that she should get to conti...