Sep 2, 20205 min read

Peterson Academy-Day 3!

Here we go....day 3 of homeschooling is under our belts. Let me tell you, it was a roller coaster of a day...plenty of highs AND lows!

So one thing that I love about homeschooling (which I know I've mentioned before) is the flexibility. We are still trying to navigate how to manage our time doing school work as well as other things. Below I will show you our day so you can see how we fit in homeschooling. This is what is working for us, so far.

OUR DAY AT A GLANCE

-We all wake up! Kids watch a little tv, I have some coffee, and get some housework done.

-Breakfast!

-Around 9:00 we worked on letters

-After that Ellie and I did some reading and an experiment

-My husband was home in the morning so got some errands done. Kids played!

-Lunch!

-Ellie got some iPad time while I cleaned up from lunch.

-Layla got iPad time while Ellie and I worked on Math (that was a struggle)

-Ellie tantrum over school work

- Ellie and I worked on phonics (rhyming)

-More house work

-I attempted to do a Camp Gladiator workout in the garage while the kids played outside (that was a disaster and had to stop)

-Went over to my parents for dinner!

So, as you can see, I didn't include times. I don't really pay attention to when we do things, as long as things get done before dinner. I feel like if I focus on times and when we are doing things I get stressed, especially if things don't go as planned. I just prefer to leave it open.

Read below to see what the girls and I worked on today! I will include links to the resources I used too!

WRITING/LETTERS

We started our school day out with working on matching capital and lowercase letters. This engaging activity was great because it was something both girls could do. I found this awesome activity online and they had a blast! I went to Dollar Tree (I LOVE LOVE LOVE Dollar Tree) and bought plain white spoons and clear pink spoons. I wrote a letter of the alphabet in uppercase on the top of the white spoon and the corresponding letter in lowercase on the bottom of the clear pink spoon. Then the girls had to match the uppercase and lowercase letters! It was interesting to see which ones they confused, but it gave me insight as to which ones to work on. They loved it so much they did it twice!

Ellie was so excited by this activity, a spontaneous lesson happened. She was trying to put spoons together to spell words. So I told her three letters to pick. For example, I told her to find "h", "a", and "t". Then I told her to spell "hat". We did this a few times to build more CVC (consonant vowel consonant) words. These are great words to start with!

We loved this activity so much! We will definitely be using it multiple times throughout our homeschool year.

Lastly, we used this activity to transition to Ellie's writing notebook. She simply took a few minutes to practice writing uppercase and lowercase letters correctly in her journal.

READING

This was a fun lesson! I am following the curriculum I bought (Blossom & Root) for Reading. This week we are reading stories from Aesop's Fables. We read the story "The Crow and the Pitcher" and then completed the corresponding activity. The story was about a crow who could not get the water out of the narrow necked pitcher, so he decided to drop stones in the picture to make the water rise to where he could drink it. For the corresponding activity Ellie did the same thing as the crow. I had her gather rocks from our backyard and she dropped them in the container of water. We marked where the water was after each stone. She had a blast.

I followed up with some questions.

-What happened to the water when you dropped a small stone in?

-What happened to the water when you dropped a large stone in?

-The water kept rising. Does that mean there was more water?

Lastly, we completed the journal entry for the activity. Ellie drew what she did for the activity and then she dictated what she did while I wrote it down. Super fun and simple lesson!

MATH

Ok, so math did NOT go well today. I don't think it was the lesson. Ellie was really not in the mood to do any school stuff at that time. I am trying to find the right balance between them being in the mood to work and me saying "this is work time" because it can't be on their terms the whole day. We got through the activity, but it wasn't pretty.

Anyways, since Ellie got her hands on some coins the other day, I decided to work on coins the rest of the week. Today I had her categorize the coins on a work mat. Her goal was to be able to identify and name what each coin was. This can be difficult for little ones. Then Ellie completed a coin sort in her math journal. That was like pulling teeth....lots of fussing and whining, but we got through it!

Click below to download the coin sorting worksheet.

Click below to download the coins to sort on the worksheet.

After the meltdown was over (which was about wanting to more school stuff after I told her we'll take a break), we completed another coin sort and created and analyzed a graph. She chose a coin, identified it, and recorded it in her chart. I found that it was helpful for her to use the sorting mat as a reference. Afterwards, we analyzed our data.

PHONEMIC AWARENESS

Aside from the letter spoon activity, this activity was a favorite with Ellie. We have been working on rhyming this week. To start off, we listened to "Down by the Bay" which is great for rhyming and Ellie thinks it's hilarious. I have her tell me the words that rhyme as she hears them.

We like this version.....

After the song Ellie completed the following rhyming activity.

I printed out the picture cards and laminated them with the little Scotch laminating pouches. I mentioned these in my first homeschool post. I simply slip the cards into the pocket and use my iron to fuse the lamination. I then taped the cards to large Lego blocks (Duplo blocks). Ellie's task was to find the matching rhyming card and attach the blocks. Oh man, did she love this activity. She did it twice! To make it a little less overwhelming for her, I color coded them so she knew the reds go togethser and then greens went together. Obviously when there were only two greens left she knew they went together, but I had her say the rhyme to confirm. Eventually I will mix all the colors and cards so that she has to really each for them. I highly recommend this activity!

Download the rhyming cards here.