Digging For Clues

Today we've been working on a little history 101 - learning about archaeology and the difference between artifacts and fossils. After reading our little archaeology book ("Archaeologists Dig For Clues"), I set up this little "dig site" with our kinetic sand to find and document both. It's pretty much the hit of the school year so far.

 

It's Christmas Time...

We wrapped up Thanksgiving and joyfully kicked off the Christmas season. Lainey has clearly forgotten all of this from last year. She kept pointing at the tree and asking, "what's THAT?!".

We also gave them their Christmas jammies and they're pretty cute all matching.

We love these little rascals. :)

School Photos

This week with the kiddos I got inspired to take some school photos. Basically the traditional thing but without the laser / faux painted wall background. So we did a little impromptu shoot and the kids were hilarious trying to make each other smile and laugh at the camera. Next time, I think I might just film the behind the scenes instead of the actual thing!

Science, Science, and More Science

So far with Kindergarten we've focused on reading (a ton), math ("Math-U-See Alpha"), phonics ("All About Reading 2"), and handwriting ("Handwriting without Tears" / "Explode the Code") -- with a little bit of science, art, music, and social studies (history, geography, etc) thrown in there as well - but without a formal curriculum.

We've hit a groove with all of that, and I was feeling ready to start adding in more formal curriculum for science in particular. I wanted to find something that was very hands-on with both reading and video lessons. I settled on Sonlight Core A Science. We got our Sonlight box this past week and dove right in. Canaan LOVES it!!!

Because he's ahead in math and phonics (and because homeschooling means we get to be flexible!), I'm letting science take over this week. There's just no reason to tell him "no, you need to stop learning science!" when he's so excited about it. In the last two days we've finished the first 8 days of science. He's done a total of 13 experiments, recording his hypotheses and observations in his science notebook, and learning a ton (me too! Did you know that pure snowflakes all have 6 points??). Ezra has been right along with him watching and helping. 

We are also loving the main book Sonlight uses - "The Usborne Children's Encyclopedia". Each section has a QR code which takes him to a related video. Canaan loves using his "magic" science book. :)

Canaan asked me to record one of his experiments. He was cracking me up doing his video just like the Sonlight videos. "You can do this at home!" lol