Mountain Climbing

A long weekend in the Summer, no work or kindy on the Monday... what do you do?? Climb a mountain of course.

Theses photos have been sitting in my draft folder for 3 months now, waiting for me to write about them. On Waitangi day - the 6th of February hubby and I decided we should take the kids on a bush walk.  There were so many options to choose from so I visited the Department of Conversation website.  The Ruapane lookout looked promising at only 1 hour each way.  We expected it would take longer as George was walking but if we started first thing in the morning we would be home in time for lunch.  I packed up a morning tea and off we went. 

The walk started out fine, with Grace in the Mei Tai on my back and George setting the pace with his Dad in front. But after about 20 minutes into the walk we accounted lots of mud, the track almost looked washed away.  The tree roots where exposed and we found that all of us had to climb rather than walk getting very muddy.   Hubby and I talked about turning back a few times but decided to keep going thinking the washed out part would only last for a little while.  Turned out it was that way until we reached the rocks. 

Why we didn't turn back when we reached the first rock face I don't know, with a LOT of help George managed to get to the top with hubby above and me below lifting him.  When we reached a 2nd rock face and manged to climb it I asked a couple going down how much further we had to go, only about 10 more minutes they said but they also told us that it only got worse.  This was enough for me, I barely made it up the last rock face with Grace on my back, I wasn't going to risk the kids just trying to get to the look out. 

George, Grace and I found somewhere to sit and sent hubby off to the top.  We were all hungry so I got out the morning tea only to find it was lunch time, we had been climbing for 3 hours and still had to get back down.  We made it back to the car 2 hours later. 

While it was fun and hard work next time I'll put in a lot more research into choosing what walk to do. 

At the start of the walk, both kids ready to go. 

View from the picnic area only 5 minutes from the carpark

My feet before we reached the mud.

This is what the walkway looked like for most of the walk.

Lunch on a rock face

The side of the start of one of the rock faces

George taking a rest

Daddy on his way back down after visiting the top without us. 

Homemade handheld blackboard

The below video is what sold me on the Handwriting without tears program, it looked simple and fun, plus I could buy it from a New Zealand company.

I still wanted to cut costs anywhere I could and as the slate boards are $17.25 each I decided there must be a cheaper way.  The Warehouse did have some cheaper blackboards but they were bigger than I wanted

As I already had some chalkboard paint I decided to have a go at making one myself, but I couldn't make just one for George so had to make another for Grace.  

I grabbed some cheap $2 wooden photo frames from The Warehouse, removed the glass and the stand from the back.

I gave the wooden back two coats of the chalkboard paint and while I was waiting for that to dry I decided to paint the outside frames with the kids favourite colours. 

They both LOVED them.

 

Curriculum planning

As George is nearing his 5th birthday which is the age children in New Zealand typically begin school, the pressure is building to get into some kind of routine with his education.  I also think it's time I spend some money on some material to use this year.


Alphabet
Letter of the week
We will continue with this curriculum from Confessions of a homeschooler and focus on a different letter each week to match the same letter we're learning in our other curriculum.

Alphabet Mazes
These are great to use to help reinforce the learning from the other curriculum we are using.


Handwriting
Handwriting without tears
I've watched several videos of teachers and children using this curriculum and have ordered it from a New Zealand supplier.  I'm hoping it arrives this week so we can start is ASAP.


Reading
Fitzroy Readers
A homeschooling friend introduced me to these reading series and I've ordered the Early Pack.  I already have several book shelves full of books including many early reader packs but nothing that builds up and reinforces previous learning as you work through the series as the majority of the books I own I got in clearance shops.


You Can Read
A homeschooler Mum or I should say Mom as she's American has put together this great program for her own children, working with sight words.  While you can get this for free I have to paid the small fee of $10US so I can access it early and support her work. 

R.E.A.D. I.T. reading journal
One of the schools my care kids go to use this reading journal, after dropping off the kids one morning I asked the office if I could buy one from them.  Since that day we've been using it every night with George, after his bath George and Daddy curl up on the bean bag and read a book or two.  George is excited about all the awards in this book which you achieve every 25 nights of reading. Now that I can buy them myself rather than getting them through the school I plan on using these journals every night.


Art
Worlds greatest artists unit study
I got this unit study for free and not sure when I'm going to start using it with George but I will keep it in mind for later in the year.

Pinterest
Pinterest is full of art projects we can do together if we lack any inspiration, but to be honest we don't really have  any issues with coming up something arty or crafty to do.


Math
I am still working out what I'm going to use for Math, I'm currently looking into Math-U-See, which I've read a couple of good reviews and I have found a New Zealand distributor.  I also like Right Start Math especially the use of a Abacus instead of rods, but I have yet to find a New Zealand distributor and it appears to have American currency in the program, if so it may not be worth spending the money to import it if there are parts which I can not use.  I've emailed them to find out more about this.   The last one I'm currently looking into is Singapore Math and found some of their work book at the Book Depository and as it's free postage I've ordered one.


Geography
Little passports
This has been my most expensive purchase to date, and I'm hoping it is worth the high cost.  This is a monthly subscription where your child is sent a package from two characters called Sam and Sofia as they travel the globe.  As I am not from America or Canada I couldn't purchase the monthly subscription but they did sell the 24 month product to me and it is being shipped to me in one lot.  One of the reasons this cost so much was the $90US shipping cost.


Music
I plan to take George with me to Music 4 Kids at our church every week and when he shows some interest I will teach him the recorder and maybe piano, we will also dance around to play music.  I will wait until he's older before we do any real study on music.


Home Ec.  
I bake several times a week and spend time in the kitchen every day as I mainly cook from scratch and make our own bread, George sometimes joins me in the kitchen.  I used to let him choose something for us to bake, go shopping together for the ingredients and then we would make it together.  I hope to get back to doing this at least once a fortnight but would love to do it weekly.


Calender
Daily Calendar
1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 1 is a great blog and website for so many home school ideas and resources and here is another one I'm using with George.  I haven't been consistent with this but hope to change that as George enjoys this when I do get around to doing it with him. 

Well that's it for now. Will see how things go as everything I've order arrives and we start getting into it.

My poor neglected blog

Life has been busy, so busy that some things had to give... and this blog was one of them.

I work from home, doing home base childcare and I love it!  I went from having no care kids and now have nine children enrolled with me, I don't have all of these children at once as legally I can only have four children five years old or under including my own.  With all these kids I'm running all over the place, also George has playmates every day so finding time to do some schooling with him has been hard.

Grace has decided to stop having afternoon naps.  I don't know if this will be it for naps for her, as she does sleep once a week but this has really put me out, no longer do I get one on one time with George while she sleeps (and before I pick up my care kids from school and kindy)  I struggle to get house work done, and no longer get any down time for myself during the day.  I know this has affected my mood and I've got less patients for my children these days.  I have also started snapping at my kids which I hate.

This might sound strange but I think I need to morn to loss of nap times, or maybe that is what I've been doing, then I can get on with my life and work out a new routine, one which I can celebrate not being tied to the house every afternoon for Grace to sleep.

This weekend I'm going to re-organise all my homeschooling stuff and start afresh with George.

Digging for Dinosaurs

We've started the letter D this week and our theme is Dinosaurs.  Usually I would wait until the end of the week - or when we finish the theme to post but I thought todays activity deserves it's own post. 

As George had two friends over this afternoon I thought I would get them to dig for dinosaurs.  I had 7 dinosaurs I had made earlier with Plaster of Paris and hid them in the sand pit.

George was right in it digging away and found two within a few minutes but his two friends took a little convincing.  One friend got bored and left for the swing after finding just one, the other friend found two before he headed off to the swings.  George didn't give up and found three and kept digging and searching for the last one only giving up when he saw I had all the paint set up and ready to go.

Everyone was keen to paint the dinosaurs so the swings where forgotten and paint went all over the place, but mostly on hands.  One friend wanted purple so we experimented with mixing different colours until we got something that resembled a colour she thought was purple. 

George's friends took their dinosaurs home and these three are Georges and Graces finished Dinos

Caution: Wet Paint!

Grace LOVES to paint!!  She asks to do it every day and while I love to let her lead me in what play we do I am starting to run out of paint.

We paint with Do a Dot markers on fabric

We paint with brushes

We even put paint in water and bubbles

We paint Thomas on the fence

  

We use our hands (which is my favourite - and I'm not being sarcastic, I truly love it when she uses her hands for the tactile, sensory experience she gets while painting)

We paint at playgroup

Other things we've done which I don't have photos of or if i do there are other children in it are:

• Painting with shaving cream
• Painting with silver beet (chard)
• Painting with food (yoghurt, icing, chocolate spread etc)
• Painting with cars
• Painting with fabric
• Painting with sponges
• Painting with food dye over crayon

It might seem like we do a lot of painting but there are so many other things we can still do with paints we haven't even tried yet.  But before we do I really need to go buy more paint

C is for Caterpillar

When I started the Confessions of a homeschooler - Letter of the Week I knew I would keep it play based and child led. So when George wanted to do other things and life got busy it was the first thing to go so letter C took us just under a month to complete.  Here are some photos of what we did get up to. 

We started off letter C with a the book "The very hungry caterpillar" and some playdough play, I couldn't help putting together a caterpillar for George to find when he got home from kindy.  Grace wanted one as well so I had to make another one quickly for her but I didn't get a photo of it. 

Upper and lower case puzzle

Do a dot C page - you'll never guess George's favourite colour??

Size sorting - small, medium, and large

Playdough letter making

Cutting practice 

Poke page

Patterning

Floor mats, as usual I call out the number and George finds and jumps on it.  Grace also loves to join in and jumps on a number as well.  I also get George to put the mats in order, this time I got him to do it from 10 down to number 1.

George sorted and placed the caterpillar pieces in order from 1 to 20.

I placed the caterpillars on the leaf, and George had to count them and then find the correct number.

We made a egg carton caterpillar - separate post to come later

I put all the milk bottle top letters needed to complete this activity and no more, George then pulled out a letter and decide if it was upper or lower case then place it on the correct mat. 

Lacing

Jellybean graphing.  George had to count the caterpillars and then place the same amount of jellybeans across the graph underneath.  If he got it correct he was allowed to eat the jellybeans.  It did take in a couple of attempts on the larger numbers before he could eat his treat. 

Cutting a gluing.  George only cut out one circle before asking me to finish them for him.  He's not really into cutting but I try to get him to so some each week as he is improving. 

A long time ago I brought a book with pages to write the different letters of the alphabet.  I cut off the spine of the book and place the pages in a clear file folder.  When George writes with a wipe board pen on the plastic it can then be wiped off and the page used again.  I dug out this book this week and George loved it.

There were many many other caterpillar themed activities we completed during the last month as well as many other fun which I want to post about.  I need to get back into the habit of writing in the evenings before bed.  We've already started letter D so hope to be posting about that next week.