Milestones

Isn't it so exciting when your children move onto the next stage? Zebra came to me at the beginning of the month and said "Mum, I think I'm ready to read Chapter books" She picked out Naughty Amelia Jane by Enid Blyton and started reading. Since the beginning of the month she has read 14 books! I gave her a new notebook and said she has to write the date she finished the book, the title and author of the book in it. She is reading an Enid Blyton book in 2 days!!!!

Reading was such a struggle for her and now she had done it :) I am so excited for her!

Wombat has taken his first step! Which again was so exciting. Godwilling he will have an opperation on his eyes in 3 weeks so as that gets closer I will be blogging less as we plan and prepare for the 8 hour drive to our nearest specialist. It was so exciting that he has progressed so far as we did not expect him to walk before the op.

Magic School Bus Lapbooks

We love the magic school bus DVD's and books and now with Zebra reading chapter books I bought her the set of magic school bus chapter books. I also found this website which has a lapbook for each magic school bus book.

Button Snake

The Activity Mom has a very interesting activity here - a button snake.

This would make a good workbox activity for preschooler or for a boy who need to learn to button but is not interested in playing dress up or dolls. Great fine motor activity.

Apple and the Arrow Unit Study

We have almost finished our reading of the Apple and the Arrow.

I used the Unit Study at Homeschool Share for the oldest two and we made a Lap n-Note for this book using the Homeschool Share resources.

Rabbit Trails we went on

1. Medieval Times including castles and knights.
We briefly looked at the Medieval Times using the following books and resources:
Living in a Castle by Rupert Matthews - a very simple castle book we borrowed from the library.
Castles, Pyramids and Palaces (an Usborne book) This was another library book. There was really only one page on Castles in this book but the whole book was interesting if you wanted to see different buildings.
Pendragon Castle (a Panorama Pop-up book). This was a fun one as it popped up and showed a real castle in Britain.

Medieval worksheets here including parts of armour.
Notebook pages from Robin Hood Unit Study at Homeschool Share which can be used with this topic.

This page will take you to all the Homeschool Share Connections for the Middle Ages. If you are looking for books to read that cover that time period this is a good starting place.

Costumes:
Zebra wants to make a dress-up. I think she was really after making a knight costume! But here are some of the sites I found while looking for ideas.
Medieval Lady Costume (scroll down)
Lots of ideas here for authentic dress-ups including how to braid a crown (I am not showing Zebra this link or guess what I will be doing EVERY morning for the next few weeks!)

Setting up a Dress-up Box

Games for the Workbox
Medieval Tic Tac Toe
There are games and so much more at this site

Other People's Lapbooks
Medieval History Lapbook from Dawn @ My home sweet home. Here is the Medieval History Unit Study Dawn taught.

2. Apples
We used the cards from Montessori for Everyone to show and learn the life cycle of an apple. This is a free download (On this page - under Botany Life Cycle of an Apple). Zebra used these cards to make a circle wheel book to go in her Lap n-Note showing the life cycle.

Here are all the Apple Connections at Homeschool Share - this is a good starting point if you are looking for apple books to read.

Other People's Apple Lapbooks/Lap n-Notes:
Apple Lapbook @ Albright-News
A is for apple from Ami @ walking by the way. This has perfect ideas for a preschooler.
Work Box Activities:
For Bunny I had a apple alphabet match puzzle (From Child Care Land Scroll down to Apple Alphabet Puzzles). We used only the letters she had learnt so far and had to match the capital to the lower case.

Apple Tree Maths Mat from Homeschool Share (under Preschool Workboxables or Math Workboxes) There is also a apple file folder game here too

More Resources:
I did not use these but want to save them as I think we will use them the next time we study the Middle ages in more detail.
This homeschooling Mum has collected HUNDREDS of links on the middle ages all on one page. How great is that
Build a castle activity (older children).
A good read on toys in the middle ages.
Games played in the middle ages.

Live and Learn has a apple lapbook - I am not really impressed with their lapbooks as most of the pictures are colour and we don't have colour printer at home and if you print them black and white they come in shades of grey and are hard for the kids to colour. It is free though so it might be of interest to someone else.

Sonlight P 4/5 The Starting Point

I have the old Sonlight PK Core but have listed below are the books for the new P 4/5 Core, some of these are new books. This page is a work in progress as I slowly upload the things we have done and are doing as we work our way through this core again and again and again. (There are still 2 more at this stage to enjoy these books!)

Bible
Family-Time Bible in Pictures

World Cultures
The Gods Must be Angry
New Toes for Tia
People from Africa
Then and Now
Things People do

Read-Alouds
American Tall Tales
Children's Book of Virtues
A Child's Book of Art
Classic Tales of Brer Rabbit
The Complete Adventures of Peter Rabbit
See here for all my links for Peter Rabbit Unit Study
Eric Carle's Animal Animals
The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book
Milly-Molly-Mandy Story book
Stories from around the world
A Treasury of Mother Goose Rhymes
Uncle Wiggly's Story Book

Peter Rabbit Unit Study

I have just posted about our Peter Rabbit Study but the dates went wrong and so it saved as an old post! If you are interested in reading it please see here

Language and Thinking for Young Children

by Ruth Beechick and Jeannie Nelson

As this book is used in both Sonlight K and 1 I am going to put all the links here rather than post them double. Again this page is a work in progress.

Learning about the Telephone
Download the printables from DLTK here I like how Home Grown Hearts as made it into a magnetic Fridge game. This would make a good centre or poster workbox activity.

Core B - Introduction to World History part 1

Core B prior to April 2011 called Core 1

I am cheating as I want all the girls together on the same level - easier for me, so this page adds some more in for the older kids. This page will be a work in progress as I slowly add to it - collecting for later and reviewing as we go. Please check back later as we add to it. (Note: we started Core B in January 2011) History & Geography: Eat your way around the world. This article has some interesting ideas on eating the meals from the countries you are studying.

EGYPT Tut's Mummy Lost & Found, The Usborne Time Traveller Fantastic Egypt Lapbook to download and make - I love that you make a 3D pyramid - how cool is that. It also included hands on ideas and a notebooking page for Tutencarmen. (You will need 'Living Long Ago' which is a K book to re-read when doing this study) Make a mummy. This post from Jamin explains what how to do it. There is an ancient Egypt Lapbook and unit study at Homeschool Share here ANCIENT CHINA The Great wall of China, Little Pear (RA)

Check out Jimmie's Squidoo Lense on Ancient China then use the lapbook at Homeschool Share to go with it. Free lapbook and unit study from Homeschool Share

GREECE

The Greek News, Detectives in Togas (RA) and

Greek Myths for Children (RA)

Archeologist Dig for Clues

From Akebu to Zapotec

George Muller

Missionary Stories with the Millers

The World Series

Read-Alouds

Charlotte's Web - look on my download page for lots of downloads we made to go with this book

Favourite Poems of Childhood

Follow my Leader

Henry Huggins

Homer Price

Mountain Born

Mr Popper's Penguins

Homeschool Share has a unit study and notebooking pages for this book.

For younger children who want to do penguins HSS has a penguin filefolder

Hands of a Child has a Penguin Project Pack

Understood Betsy

The Year of Miss Agnes

Gooney Bird Green

Mrs Piggle-Wiggle My girls LOVED this story there are 2 more books in this series that we bought and read.

The Wheel on the School

Sonlight World History

I discovered today a fantastic blog with lots and lots of downloads (especially for Sonlight) Here is her page for Sonlight World History - I am not sure whether these are for Core 6 or earlier, but they look great anyway.

Australian History Study

I Love Sonlight and FIAR but neither has a huge lot on Australian History so here is the beginning of my Australian History Study. I am using the book Our Sunburnt Country by Arthur Baillie as the spine for the study and supplementing as we go through it. I expect to do this a few times over the years going into more detail each time as the kids get older, so once again this page will be a work in progress.

Downunder Literature sells a resource called Australian Book Traveller which is similar to FIAR except these books will help you travel around Australia. I really would love to get this as I think it will fit perfectly into what we are already doing. They also have a free timeline of Australian history to download.

Australian Maps to download

Very basic one here to fill in and label

Map and Quiz

Map Puzzle here (this is a computer game)

Australian Flag

Here and here or at Homeschool Share

Downunder Literature has a Flag Lapbook

Australian Resources at Homeschool Share

Looking for Tot School ideas to explore Australia while the bigger kids study it?

This post @ Creativity Abounds has some fantastic ideas.

Our Sunburnt Country Unit Study

Chapter One

Lots of links here about the dream time

Stories of the Dreaming listen to stories from the different states of Australia.

More online audio stories here and here. Bunyip stories here


More about the dreaming here this site also leads to more links such as tools and technology which is another topic covered in Ch 1


Rabbit Trails - Look at other stories about Creation from around the world. More links here and here

Looking for pictures for your chore charts or for workbox schedules?

This site is perfect http://www.visualaidsforlearning.com/products/index.htm

We will also be using this for Wombat as we start using sign language and pictures to help him communicate.

Sonlight ???'s

Ok - I love the Sonlight program but I am not sure about the LA. We are at week 4 with Reading with Easy Readers(LA2). For spelling this week the words are under, problem, number, basket, winter, escape, magnet, bandit, sister, picnic!! Anyone spot a link between these words? My daughter took one look and the "I can't do this..." started. I haven't been learning the rules as they don't fit with THRASS but we have been doing the spelling so far.

Looking at the Sonlight program as of Core 3 there is no spelling anyway, so should I just get a spelling program now and start it? I don't want to end up with too many things to think about so was hesitant to add in anything else but the spelling is just not working for her. Any thoughts on what to do?

i-pod Listening to the Bible

I love our ipod - We really need more than one for use in our school. Everything that can goes on the ipod for the girls to listen to (and yes it goes in our workboxes!). I have found it helpful for listening to times tables, handwriting sequence and many other things and now we have added listening to the bible. I have used this site to download the bible. It is the KJV which I personally really like. It then gets copied to the ipod and listened to. We are going to start listening to it during breakfast time again as we have let the daily reading slip and it really is time to pull this habit back into our routine.

In the past I have set it up on the computer and the girls have listened to the sunday school story of the week from the bible chapter.

Any other uses for ipods or bible audios in daily life would be appreciated. How do you use it?

Currclick has a mini unit study on Gladys Aylward free this week only. Perfect to go with your Reading Aloud 'Hero Tales' (In reading through my lastest sonlight catalogue I can't find this book in the book list so it must be only in the old K Core)