Letter C

Today ends our first full month of school.  It has been a very busy month full of learning and fun.  We have definitely gotten into a good routine and with the exception of the occasional struggle to keep Ben entertained it could not be going better.  Our days begin with Bible and then math.  We take about a 30 minute snack/ play break and then go into our language lesson.  We end our school time with our science lesson because those are always fun, hands on, and usually outdoors.  So far this schedule is working well for us.  We are done in time for me to prepare lunch and then the afternoons are filled with naps and play.  We do our chapter book reading at bedtime.  I love ending the day with a good story! Here is a look at Week 4:

This week we studied letter C.  Our daily themes included cats, caterpillars, camels, cars, clowns and clouds.  Monday was our cat theme.  We made a letter C cat and I painted the boys faces.  We read cat books and watched cat videos on YouTube.  

my cute little cats

Tuesday was "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" theme.  My boys have always loved that book.  We made caterpillar crafts and snacks.  We even used it as an opportunity to study the days of the week. 

Here are the boys later that day eating a snack and watching Tom and Jerry while sitting in boxes. ha

Ben coloring a caterpillar

Cruz coloring some sheets for a caterpillar booklet we made.

They enjoyed learning about camels on Wednesday and singing the song "Sally the Camel".  YouTube has been a great resource for us to learn about different topics.  You can learn a lot of fun facts from a 2-3 minute video clip.

This "not so little" creature surprised us one morning while doing school.  He jumped up onto our screen and had us all running for cover.  ha  Thankfully David came to our rescue by catching him in a bucket and releasing him in our front yard. 

We went on an outdoor treasure hunt and made a mobile of our finds.   Cruz chose a straw, a metal hook, a leaf, a piece of tile, two shells, a piece of wood, and a piece of blue cellophane paper.  We have it hanging in our school room.

Thursday was our car themed day.  We made this capital and lower case letter C picture.   How fun is that for boys!  I am following two different websites for our letter of the week crafts.  I am thankful for wonderful blogs that help out homeschool moms like me.

Our snack was these "cars" made out of apple wedges and grapes.  I used a slice of Kraft cheese for the road and brown M&M's for the stripes (because I was out of raisins).  My boys LOVED them!

Here is one of our math projects.  I gave both boys a pair of scissors and paper.  I had Ben cutting randomly for practice and Cruz cut rectangles that went with our math lesson of the week.  After he cut them I had him glue them onto paper.  He then had to number them and tell me how many he had.  It was simple but fun and had him doing a variety of different things.

Cruz doing a sheet from his Sing Spell Read and Write workbook.

Our science activity for Thursday was an outdoor Touch Tour.  We walked around touching different objects in our neighborhood and talked about how they felt.  We took paper and colors and rubbed over the objects for texture.  We then cut and pasted a few of them into our science notebook. 

Our story books on Thursday were "Crazy Creatures" and "Little Red Car".  My boys LOVE "Little Red Car" and would want me to read it every day if I would.  After reading "Crazy Creatures" I had the boys draw their own crazy creatures.  Here is their art work.  Cruz wrote their names and age. That is how he always wants to write his name.  In our evening chapter book reading time we finished "Mr.  Popper's Penguins" and started "Pee Wee's Tale".  It is a cute story about a guinea pig and a squirrel who meet in Central Park.

Our Bible verse for the week was Romans 3:23.   Here is Cruz saying it along with two other verses he has learned.  They represent the letters A, E, and I.   Our stories were Cain & Abel and Enoch.

part of Friday's math lesson

and who could resist a little end of the week clowning around?   My boys love clowns so I had to include that theme in our letter C week.

 We finished our letter C week by studying clouds.  We read Eric Carle's book "Little Cloud", watched a cloud video, and glued cotton onto our cloud worksheet.

We then did our last project of the day which was nature painting in our Science workbook.  The boys picked up a few things from the yard to use as paintbrushes.  That was fun!

Can I get a loud "AMEN" that it's Friday???  ha  Bring on the weekend and hopefully a little rest.  My brain (and body) is tired.  I hope you all have a great holiday weekend!