Thursday, August 29, 2013

Tricky Thursday

Today I am going to attempt the daring...a pulled pork bbq recipe WITHOUT pork!

I hope it goes well!

Dried tvp granules soaked in warm water
Chicken and rib bbq sauce
Leftover biscuits
Cheese

I will post a pic, if it works out well.  Wish me luck!

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Planning to do list

Here is my to do list:

Laminate stars
Write out passages from How to eat fried worms in improper grammatical form
Use red marker to edit passages using editting symbols
Create poster board for reading stars
Create poster board for monthly reading trackers
Create flash cards for hooked on phonics set 2
Create poster board for postcard project
Create poster board for book and movie comparison
Create poster board for tv/game time allowance

School planning- part 3

I bought the stars you see, hopefully, to use as a reading log for our wall.  I am looking for something cute to draw on a white poster board with an inspiring reading/ star quote.  I hope i' ll find something.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Distraction projects

I figured that with all my planning it would be good to come up with a few activities or projects that are not school centred but fun centred therfore giving the  kids the idea that they are being given a day off, or afree day. They would be  learning something anyway, but kids like a break from scholarly learning.

1. World license plates - a cool site to see all the different license plates in  the  world.  Using Ontario plates guidelines they can create their own vanity plates to put on the wall.

2.Family newsletter - write about what they are learning, loving, hating, things they've seen and  done etc.

3. Postcrossing.com - postcard program with people worldwide

4. X-Mas thumbprint ornament project with photo glued to one side.

5. Create a country

6. Artist appreciation- learn about an artist,  view some of their work, recreate a piece your own way...add names and dates to abc book

7. Grow bulbs in water indoors, measure and chart their progress

8. Glow in the dark bowling at home- use plastic pop bottles filled with water, crack a glow stick and put one in each bottle and close tightly, trydifferent kinds of balls to find one strong enough to knock them down but not break open.

9. Treasure hunts- using pictures, words and riddles or clues

10. Bake cupcakes and decorate them to look like dirt and worms

11. Activities from 3 puzzle books

For now these 11 will do, but as ifind more i may add them here and on my pinterest page if it is an online tidbit.

School planning- part two

Alright, math will be relatively easy/ straight forward....each has an hour of one on one tutoring time with me, our visual math dictionary, and whatever manipulatives they need, as i've got plenty!

Let's just hope baby cooperates with my time managing methods to get this accomplished!

I have devised a unit study for Chet to learn about nursery rhymes.  Our first unit will be Little Bird.  So, there will be a lot of bird projects, writing practice, cutting and pasting and colouring. We will then pick a bird to learn about and create a poster board to highlight interesting facts. There are also 1-2 minute cartoons on youtube for a bunch of rhymes so it'll be fun to see it another way.

Language learning will be done at home this year using the free program from BYKI.com in hungarian as this is my hubby's family heritage. We will also be using our hungarian/ english dictionary and the hand full of picture books we already own....hmmm maybe a new one would be good, maybe one where we can also own it in english for context.

Chet will also be receiving half hour reading lessons from Hooked on phonics kits from chapters. They do really work well for him after enjoying phonics cartoons from leapfrog.

For group work we will be doing exercises from crime scene who dunnits, dr.dooriddles, and some comprehension detective assignments. Alexwill do more detailed assignments from the comp.detectives on his own.

I have a writing assignment book called 1001 writing projects, that i haven't yet decided on how often it should be done. They only take about 15 minutes to do, so i wonder if Alex already has too much to do to use this every day or every second day.

It's hard to decide how their work load "feels". Is it sparse, too busy, too long, too easy? I mayjusthavetotryit as it is for now and wait and see.

As i only want to plan for september to see how everything plays out i won't worry too much, i can edit or add in october.

School year planning- part one

Alright writing this post a second time as i forgot to save it.

I need a place to write out my ideas for this school year so i don't lose it, rewrite it to three different notebooks that I have going and to see if it makes sense at all.

So for September:

• How to eat fried worms : • each day a chapter will be read aloud
                                               •Alex will correct/edit a passage from the chapter        that I have written out incorrectly
                                               •Chet will write out the corrected version of the passage for handwriting and reading practice
                                                • both will draw pictures for various assignments
                                               • Alex will have writing assignments at the end of the book as a review and one as an ending rewrite
                                                • both will create a poster for nightcrawlers research project(science) internal anatomy, food sources etc.
                                                • compare to movie
                                                 • vocabulary and dictionary research for unknown words used in the book