Our First Two Weeks of School 2018 (1st and 3rd grade)

Our homeschool year is off to a good start.  We are finding our routine and getting back in the groove rather easily.  We have completed two weeks of lessons so far.  Here is a look at a few of the things we have been doing.

We begin our school days by saying the pledge and singing a patriotic song.  In the previous years they have learned the pledge to the American flag and the Christian flag.  This year I am adding in the pledge to the Bible.  We rotate which one we are going to say each day.

This year in Bible we are reading through the book Leading Little Ones to God and reading scripture passages from the Bible.  Our first theme has been "Looking For God" (how to see God through His creation and hearing his voice when He speaks).

Here is Cruz reading one of our Bible passages.  It makes my heart proud to hear him read God's Word.

This year we are doing World History.  We are using this book along with A Child's History of the World book.  We love Sonlight!  This is from Core B.

During a recent study of the first settlers we made a simple loom using yarn and cardstock paper.  My boys love hands-on learning so any time I can incorporate that into our lesson they are very happy.

Cruz really enjoyed it and ended up doing the front and back of his.  

Most of Ben's language lessons so far have been review.  I have worked in a lot of games for him to make it extra fun.

sight word Bingo

matching words with picture cards 

We do a lot of reading.  This year in addition to his Sing Spell Read and Write readers I also added in the Sonlight Grade 1 readers to give him extra practice.

In between lessons and while I am working with Cruz he rotates between keyboarding lessons (Keyboarding Without Tears), ABC Mouse, and Explode the Code online.  

 Here is Cruz doing a recent language lesson.

Cruz taking his turn on the computer while I work with Ben.  He also does Keyboarding Without Tears and Explode the Code online.

My boys have always loved Science.  It is their favorite subject.  I save it for last to end the day on a good note.  We are doing Sonlight Science B this year.  We are starting out the year in this Usborne book about animals.  Sonlight uses a lot of Usborne books and so far I have loved them all.  We have already learned many cool animal facts.  We read the book pages, answer a few workbook questions, and then check out the video links on the subjects we are studying.  We love watching the videos.  It just makes our lessons come to life. 

here they are watching a video on honey bees

These are the resources we use for our science experiments.  We watch a video that explains them and then we try them out ourselves.  My boys would do experiments all day long if I let them.

The experiments did not start until week 2.  Our first ones were about water.  We learned about the different shapes that water takes depending on its container. We tilted the containers sideways to show that the water stays level.  We also poured water out on the patio and discussed why it ran everywhere. Here I filled water in four different containers and the boys had to guess which one held the most.

Here they are pouring the water into four cups just alike.

They were surprised to see that all of the containers were holding the same amount of water. When they were done they poured the water back into the different containers.  They waited for their daddy to get home so they could quiz him on which one held more.

 On our last experiment we put colored water in a plastic tube and tilted it side to side.  The water level stayed even.  They really loved playing around with this one.

fun with science

 In our art lesson we learned about contour drawings.  For practice they had to choose a stuffed animal and draw the outside edges of it.

Lastly, in our read-aloud literature time we are kicking off the school year with Charlotte's Web.  We had read it when Cruz was in kindergarten but are going back through it again.  I love our read-aloud time.  It is probably my favorite part of school.  Thanks to Sonlight we get a wide variety of literature to enjoy.

I know I have said it numerous times in the past, but since it is the first of the school year I will go ahead and say it again-