The End of Preschool

You can tell that I was ready for something new by my notes. I started the year documenting every single thing we did -- books read (and when we read them), crafts done, side notes to self on how the lessons went, etc;

As you could maybe tell from my last post, my notes started to include less and less. . . now that I am looking at our final month (4/20 - 5/31) it is a simple spreadsheet that was pre-typed that listed the date, the letter focus, what day in the Bright Beginnings book we were using for Math, Language Arts and Bible (at this point, I knew we weren't going to use it for a full 36 weeks so I was picking and choosing the lessons that I thought we could benefit from since most were pretty simple anyway), the animal focus, the job focus, the geographic focus and any literature units.

I also knew by this point what we were going to be doing for Kindergarten. Sometime in April, Gregg and I sat down and decided that it was time to move on from FIAR and try Sonlight. I wanted to make sure I covered the remaining FIAR books that I was interested in (and that my library carried), so we just added them in.

4/20-4/24 brought us the letter "M." What a fun week this was!!!! My wonderful friends from Homeschool Share and various blogs from around the globe, along with our amazing family members, sent our girls postcards and letters this week so we could focus on Mail! Our occupation was Mail Carrier and our literature unit was Meerkat Mail. I used this unit from HSS, along with lapbook pieces from Mailing May, Boxes for Katje, and printables from USPS and Enchanted Learning, to learn about the mail system, writing letters AND track the mail the girls received from around the globe. My favorites were postcards from England and South Africa!!! What I failed with was getting letters sent back out. . . I had wonderful intentions but I STILL have not gotten any stamps (just ask my two father in laws who have yet to get the lovely Fathers Day cards that are sitting waiting and addressed! Luckily for my father, he lives next door so I couldn't mess that one up too badly. Martha Stewart, at least in this regard, I am not!) Just thought I would be real there for a moment about my correspondence flaws. . . now, where was I? Oh yes, school. Our animal focus was Meerkats and mice, and our geographic focus was Mexico. We used a wonderful unit from HSS for this -- The Old Man and the Door -- and we absolutely loved it! My favorite part of this week was eating Mexican food every single night! Since moving to Houston, I have fallen in love with Mexican dishes and collect recipes whenever I can (so if you have any, please send 'em!)

This weekend, Gregg's dad and step mom came up for a visit and we all went to Texas A&M for their Vet School Open House. As I mentioned, Jordan says she wants to be a vet, and even though she is young and we definitely won't pigeon hole her, it is a total fit. . . just like Cali, my dare devil child, saying she wants to be a firefighter is a total fit! Anyhoo, we went down there and had a wonderful time. They make it so child friendly, and our first stop was the Teddy Bear Clinic! They brought animals from home, and after getting dressed from head to toe in Vet gear courtesy of A&M, they were led into an exam room where they became Assistant Surgeons!!! They received diplomas with their picture taken "while in surgery" and felt very proud of themselves. Afterwards we had a tour of their three different huge buildings -- where they do large animal surgery, small animal surgery, where they kept reptiles and the like -- and went out to the petting zoo they had set up. We saw zebras and camels, pigs, goats, horses, donkeys, and other animals, and then -- an interesting highlight -- we were allowed to stick our arms INTO a "fistulated cow." I trusted them at the moment that it wasn't hurting the cow, and looked it up later to make sure (it doesn't. . . go ahead, google it. . . I'll wait. Crazy huh?!?) but what an experience! We ended the trip through the reptile exhibit where the girls took a picture with a HUGE snake wrapped around their neck!

4/27-5/1 The letter "N." I must admit here that while I added my own ideas for animals here and there, many of them were used from our Zoo Phonics curriculum. Their animal for letter "N" is Nigel Nightowl and since we hadn't studied owls yet, I thought "Why not?" We read Owl Moon and Owl Babies along with a few others that I didn't record. We read New Coat for Anna as well. Our occupation was News Reporter and this was SO much fun! We read lots of different non fiction books on newspapers, watched a Blues Clues episode on it and I told them things I learned in school (Broadcast Journalism major at LSU) and then we made our own newspaper. The girls also had to interview my husband and my mom, and they did very well -- they had to choose their own questions and then ask them, I wrote the answers of course. Our geographic focus was New Orleans and I used the Louisiana Multi Book Unit Study I wrote for Homeschool Share, along with all the books listed there, and had a blast! Again, we ate food the entire week that went with our geographic focus, but that wasn't that strange since we eat like that normally, ha!

5/4-5/8 Was a combination of "O" and "P." We learned about the Octopus and Penguin, officers in the military and police department and Paris. We read Officer Buckle and Gloria, Lentil, Oxcart Man and Paul Revere's Ride, which strangely enough the girls absolutely LOVED! We did a variety of octopus crafts and dressed up like Penguins, watched lots of videos on both animals, and did a few lapbook pieces from HSS. I pulled pieces from the Officer Buckle unit and a variety of other sources for a lapbook on police and safety, and pieces from the Lentil unit for a lapbook on our military and patriotism.

5/11-5/15 "Q and R" had us doing a fun lapbook on rabbits -- pieces gathered from a variety of books on the HSS website -- and on Queens and royalty. We learned about Russia and read Little Red Lighthouse, Miss Rumphius, and Muncha!Muncha!Muncha!. We had fun this week, gradually getting lighter and easier with our days and falling into a lot of more cuddly reading and watching videos that went with our topics -- maybe that coincided with the increasing temperatures outside, ha!

5/18-5/22 "S and T" We were supposed to learn about snakes, tigers, surgeons, tailors, and Texas. . . we didn't do any of that. We did read The Boy Who Held Back the Sea, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening and Truman's Aunt Farm. The lapbook on that got scrapped and I did forget to purchase an ant farm, BUT as luck would have it, a HUGE ant pile appeared outside our front door so we were able to watch the real thing, ha! The only real learning that happened that was structured was an impromptu lesson on Scotland. My father is a personal trainer and massage therapist. I workout with him on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, followed by a short P.E. lesson he does with the girls. After he is finished with us, he then has a massage client meet him at his house (next door) who happens to be from Scotland. I casually asked if he could ask her for ideas, and she actually came by with tons of goodies for the girls! She gave them thistle soap (apparently that is the flower of Scotland), a stuffed bear with a sweater of the Scottish flag, a beautiful decorative statue and pictures to look at! The girls loved it all and hearing her voice -- and they were very interested after that. Luckily, HSS is amazing, so I was able to hop on the Internet and print out lots of great things from Wee Gillis, Frog Went a Courtin' and a few other units, as well as crafts from DLTK, Enchanted Learning and a few other sites, and had a lapbook ready to go within the hour. I think my dad was pretty impressed with what we were able to come up with so quickly, and the girls loved role playing the different stories we learned about Scotland for the rest of the week!

5/25-5/29 "U - Z" HA! As I mentioned, we were in combining mode and I was in burned out mode, PLUS my girlfriend Sandra was coming over with her girls for a playdate and she was interested in both Bright Beginnings and Zoo Phonics. I decided to just finish it all up, picking and choosing my favorite lessons to finish out the week.

Gregg and I took the girls to the FEAST homeschool conference in San Antonio (awesome) and we went to SETHSA here in Houston (really good), and the girls and I did two units in June -- Pirates and a combo week on ice cream and chocolate (the units are at HSS, along with complete book lists....the girls loved all the pirate books and we all loved The Parrot Tico Tango)

The rest of June was spent organizing the house and deeper cleaning, and LOTS of relaxing! I also got everything ready for the new adventure of Kindergarten that started at the end of the month. I am SO excited to start sharing about that journey!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!