Books Read Aloud to All
* Bible every day - In the evenings, we are reading the gospels together . We finished the Gospel of John and began Matthew. I know! We began backwards. We are enjoying the best of conversations and discussions as we learn more about Jesus, the Son of God.
* Amelia and Eleanor Go For a Ride by Pam Munoz Ryan
* Chicken Little
* Electrical Wizard - How Nikola Tesla Lit up the World by Elizabeth Rusch
* Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls
* Pete the Cat - Play Ball! by James Dean
* Pete the Cat - Pete's Big Lunch by James Dean
* Fund Dog, Sun Dog by Deborah Heiligman
* Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology - we cover a lesson a month and then we share our discoveries at our monthly co-op. In October we studied The Human Skeleton.
Audio Books
* Adventures in Odyssey - Sargeant York episode and The Underground Railroad
DS8 independent reading list:
* Speedway Switch by Jake Maddox
* The Knight who took all Day by James Mayhew
* How to Train a Dragon - book 1
* How to Train a Dragon - book 2
* Calvin and Hobbes
* The Wright Brothers
* The Knight who took all Day by James Mayhew
* How to Train a Dragon - book 1
* How to Train a Dragon - book 2
* Calvin and Hobbes
* The Wright Brothers
DD10 independent reading list
* The Story of Dragons and other Monsters by Thomas G. Aylesworth
* Love, Ruby Lavender by Deborah Wiles
** Take one or two or three (i.e. reading these yet again!)
**The Guardians of Ga'Hoole:
- The Burning book 6
- The Hatchling - book 7
- The Outcast - book 8
- The Frist Collier - book 9
- To Be a King - book 11
- The Golden Tree - book 12
- The River of Wind - book 13
- Exile - book 14
**A New Kind of Life for Eddie Eagle by Margaret Ann Smith
** 8 Class Pets + 1 Squirrel / 1 Dog = Chaos by Vivian Vande Velde
** Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke
* The Cave of Time by Edward Packard - Choose Your Own Adventure
* Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
* We can't all be Rattlesnakes by Patrick Jennings
* My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
* How To Draw Baby Animals by Susan Sonkin
* Drawing Cartoons by Michael Ffolkes
* Honey..Honey... LIon! A Story from Africa by Jan Brett
**The Guardians of Ga'Hoole:
- The Burning book 6
- The Hatchling - book 7
- The Outcast - book 8
- The Frist Collier - book 9
- To Be a King - book 11
- The Golden Tree - book 12
- The River of Wind - book 13
- Exile - book 14
**A New Kind of Life for Eddie Eagle by Margaret Ann Smith
** 8 Class Pets + 1 Squirrel / 1 Dog = Chaos by Vivian Vande Velde
** Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke
* The Cave of Time by Edward Packard - Choose Your Own Adventure
* Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
* We can't all be Rattlesnakes by Patrick Jennings
* My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
* How To Draw Baby Animals by Susan Sonkin
* Drawing Cartoons by Michael Ffolkes
Read to her sisters:
* Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert* Honey..Honey... LIon! A Story from Africa by Jan Brett
Activities at Home
* We hired a babysitter one night to watch and play with the kids while I went to a Mom's night out with other homeschooling moms. The kids love to have A14 over. To them, they are not being babysat but having a playdate. Definitely doing it again. :) DD10 said A14 wasn't a babysitter since they are not babies. She is an au pair. :)
* We had some friends' children come over and play one Saturday morning. They stayed for lunch, jumped in the pool for 20 minutes and played on the computers. It was unscheduled and turned out great.
* We finally finished all the trimming of bushes and trees. Got all the bushes fertilized and ready for fall/ winter. We also finished washing and cleaning the outside, drive way, sidewalks and such. October has been
beautiful. Not hot, not cold, not too windy. Not a lot of rain. Just so pleasant. The leaves have barely been falling at all.
* Traditionally we paint pumpkins every fall. We did it again this month. The kids wanted to participate in our church's Fall Festival and do a Trunk or Treat and decorate with their pumpkins. We decided against that. We painted the pumpkins just for fun and went to the Festival and had a good time.
*Lots of dancing and playing to Wee Sing CDs
* Coloring, drawing, tracing and making our own books and animal encyclopedias. I got DD10 some tracing paper and she has been using it to draw dragons, animals and obscure plants. Of course, everyone else wanted to trace some pictures too.
* My DH surprised me with the idea of building our own green house instead of buying one. He used part of the shed that holds our pool pump as part of the frame for it and it worked out so well. I truly have a husband of vision! I have transplanted a couple of bell pepper plants, a jalapeno, my thai pepper and habanero plants, as well as an eggplant. It's so warm. It's amazing the amount of heat that pool pump generates. I am even sprouting papaya seeds.
* We had a playdate with another friend of mine who also homeschools. The kids used to see each other all the time because they did karate together. Unfortunately she had to quit karate and the kids had been missing each other. It was a great time. We got to share recipes and the kids played dragons outside.
* DD6 is using ClickNKids again. She is reading, although resisting it, she is reading!!!! She is also doing really great in math. DD3 is following behind her sister and working on her letters and numbers. She can count to 6 without missing any numbers or exchanging them for 9 or 8 or 7! :)
* We had 2 threats of frost/ freeze so we scrambled around to cover my plants and transplant some. This was my first time doing that and DH said I am definitely a farmer. Our pool is finally winterized.
* Coloring, drawing, tracing and making our own books and animal encyclopedias. I got DD10 some tracing paper and she has been using it to draw dragons, animals and obscure plants. Of course, everyone else wanted to trace some pictures too.
* My DH surprised me with the idea of building our own green house instead of buying one. He used part of the shed that holds our pool pump as part of the frame for it and it worked out so well. I truly have a husband of vision! I have transplanted a couple of bell pepper plants, a jalapeno, my thai pepper and habanero plants, as well as an eggplant. It's so warm. It's amazing the amount of heat that pool pump generates. I am even sprouting papaya seeds.
* DD6 is using ClickNKids again. She is reading, although resisting it, she is reading!!!! She is also doing really great in math. DD3 is following behind her sister and working on her letters and numbers. She can count to 6 without missing any numbers or exchanging them for 9 or 8 or 7! :)
* We had 2 threats of frost/ freeze so we scrambled around to cover my plants and transplant some. This was my first time doing that and DH said I am definitely a farmer. Our pool is finally winterized.
Field Trips/ Activities Outside Home
* Our monthly Co-op - these month we covered the Skeleton System and the young kids got to participate and create their own noodle skeletons. I found great links on the net for human size puzzles. Check out the website links section.
* Karate
* 4H class for homeschoolers hosted at our Public LIbrary.
* Fall Festival at our church.
Websites/ Links we found and used/ Apps
* Easy Peasy for school for DD10 and DS8. Some websites we found on this site are just fantastic like:
* History - The Causes of WWI - this site is very thorough. I am learning so many things about World War I that I didn't even hear about when I was in school. Check this site out if your kid is studying WWI. It does not contain huge texts to read but it's broken down into smaller pieces with questions to test the student and help memorize and remember the facts. Loved it!
* Future Flight Design - learn all about flight.
* Power Proofreading - Proofreading to practice the use of correct grammar. It's a website with many different activities from verbs and their tenses, to nouns and pronouns, subject and predicate and more.
*McGuffey's readers are so awesome. DD10 is using the New McGuffey Fourth Reader for some of her reading in Easy Peasy and I am really happy with the depth of content in the stories.
* History - The Causes of WWI - this site is very thorough. I am learning so many things about World War I that I didn't even hear about when I was in school. Check this site out if your kid is studying WWI. It does not contain huge texts to read but it's broken down into smaller pieces with questions to test the student and help memorize and remember the facts. Loved it!
* Future Flight Design - learn all about flight.
* Power Proofreading - Proofreading to practice the use of correct grammar. It's a website with many different activities from verbs and their tenses, to nouns and pronouns, subject and predicate and more.
*McGuffey's readers are so awesome. DD10 is using the New McGuffey Fourth Reader for some of her reading in Easy Peasy and I am really happy with the depth of content in the stories.
* ClickNKids - DD6 is using it again. At the beginning of the month, it was off and on. I think I got a little girl that learns best when she has to write things down. She is doing ClickNKids every day now. We are also using lots of workbooks to practice sight words, our math and spelling.
* We used BrainPopJr a couple of times to learn about Classification of Animals. DD6 got to fill out some trading cards and we even created our own classification games with some animal memory cards we had on hand. BrainPop and BrainPopJr offer a FREE featured movie with activities included daily and weekly. This is a great way for you to get know the site before you decide to subscribe. We are not subscribers. We just use it on and off.
* We used BrainPopJr a couple of times to learn about Classification of Animals. DD6 got to fill out some trading cards and we even created our own classification games with some animal memory cards we had on hand. BrainPop and BrainPopJr offer a FREE featured movie with activities included daily and weekly. This is a great way for you to get know the site before you decide to subscribe. We are not subscribers. We just use it on and off.
* School of Dragons - this site is very interactive but I don't allow my kids to chat.
* Dragon Wild Skies - on CN website. The kids are more excited about this dragon game. You can do so much without having to chat. :) Woohoo! Victory!! (Please watch out for the other cartoons advertised and ads. I do not like many of the cartoons on CN and the kids just keep away.)
* FunBrain - the kids re-discovered PopTropica - another interactive game.
* Dragon Wild Skies - on CN website. The kids are more excited about this dragon game. You can do so much without having to chat. :) Woohoo! Victory!! (Please watch out for the other cartoons advertised and ads. I do not like many of the cartoons on CN and the kids just keep away.)
* FunBrain - the kids re-discovered PopTropica - another interactive game.
* PBSkids.org - DD6 and DD3 found some new shows like Daniel Tiger's neighborhood and Peg + Cat.
TV shows/ Videos/ Movies/ YouTube
* I bought DD10 some tracing paper and we watched a few videos on how to use it and how it's not cheating at all. :)
* The Lost Medallion - great family movie with a hidden Christian message in it.
* I have a playlist on YouTube with videos that teach the numbers, alphabet and some phonics. DD3 and DD6 watch these together when on break from school or when I am working with the bigger ones.
* I have a playlist on YouTube with videos that teach the numbers, alphabet and some phonics. DD3 and DD6 watch these together when on break from school or when I am working with the bigger ones.
Mom's Eclectic Reading List
* The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven by Kevin and Alex Malarkey - the true story of a boy who suffered a car accident, died and came back to life. An amazing true story!
Blessings,
Tereza
