Today for Hailey her math lesson was on when to subtract and counting up to subtract. While Hailey was working on her worksheets for that Emma did 3 - 5 number recognition and writing her numbers. While Hailey finished her math Emma also worked on writing her first and last name, which she is getting really good at. For practicing writing her name I usually just flip over one of the worksheets she had been working on and write her name then have her trace it and then try writing it on her own. It has worked really well for her. Hailey had a spelling test with words ending in -sp and -mp as well as dictating sentences. Then we did a worksheet on ending consonant blend -sk. Emma worked on writing her lower and upper case A and works that start with the letter A. For history we just talked about getting around the globe. Both of the girls colored pictures of animals from around the world and then we took a globe and talked about how many continents there are (there are 7, in case you didn't know), and then the girls had to figure out which continent the animals belonged on. For this we had a provided worksheet, but you could easily use pictures from magazines or the internet. We also went to the library and all of the kids had a ton of reading time. If you are trying to fill school time, the library is a sure fire way to get your kids motivated to read and they get tons of practice with those newly learned reading skills. Here are a couple of links to worksheets we used today. I can't give all of them because a lot of them are from WAVA, but here are some extras I used for Emma.
So here we go with another year of home school. At first I was super excited to get started with school, but having just gone through a miscarriage I must admit I was no longer that enthusiastic. Hey! I am just being completely honest. But after lessons today I was again very grateful for our decision to home school. It has, and I think will continue to be a wonderful distraction. But if I am going to be truly honest I must also say that the first day of lessons wasn't without it's ups and downs. At the end of last year I told myself that I would still do some school throughout the summer so that Hailey wouldn't lose her drive or sense of focus. But after getting pregnant and feeling very sick, that idea went out the window. So today was a day filled with relearning how to focus. This was mainly with math. Once we got done with that the rest of the days lessons went rather smoothly. 
We had an awesome field trip to the dentist today! The kids learned how to properly clean their teeth. I learned things about bacteria today that made me sick to my stomach.:) The kids got to sit in the dentist chair and then got a little goodie bag complete with a Cars toothbrush. I highly recommend doing something like this before making an actual appointment so that your kids can get used to the dentist office beforehand. We also learned about plural words and adding the letter s and we learned about cubes, rectangular prisms, and pyramids.
Today we started with phonics. My youngest worked on writing her letter A's. My oldest worked on reading and punctuation's. I love how over emphasized my oldest gets when she gets to a question mark or exclamation. So cute! Then we did math and covered more geometry and did the unit assessment. For science we talked about recycling. We don't have a recycling program here in our area so you have to separate it and take it to a center. So we made up these bins to put in the garage. We will keep a main container that we will throw all the recycle stuff into in the house and then when it gets full the girls can take it out to the garage and separate it. Then when the separated bins get full we can just throw them in the car and take them to the center. Hopefully it works. We'll see!
So today we started with math! We have just been flying through these lessons. They are so simple, like shapes and such, that my oldest is just cruisin'. So we did about three math lessons and then worked on phonics. We talked about punctuation's and she had to identify the correct punctuation that went at the end of the sentence. My middle child worked on writing her letter A followed by writing her name and then to complete the phonics lessons my oldest read some of her phonics sheets to her younger sister. My oldest also read the first half of The Cat in the Hat all on her own for reading time. Then we read a kind of weird story called Ferraj and the Magic Lute. The best part of the day though was when we talked about the moon. The girls a couple of days ago asked why the moon follows them and then asked if we could have a lesson on it for school. I was not about to say no! So today we had an awesome lesson if I do say so myself and the girls made cards representing the different phases of the moon. And yes I know that the crescent moons are supposed to be labeled waning and waxing, but we did discuss the differences I just forgot to type them on the labels.
Today was a fun day! We started with phonics and made it through 3 lessons and did a weekly assessment. We also did a math unit review and assessment and she did great! But the best part was when we read Tiki Tiki Tembo. The girls loved the story and we talked about China and how they just celebrated their new year and then we made Chinese lanterns and the girls were acting like it was magic how they came together. So cute!
