Tag Archives: handwriting without tears

30 Day Project ~Day 2 “School”

lookHere is my pic I used for my 30 Day project of my kids.

My youngest doing his handwriting.

handwritingWe use Handwriting Without Tears.

The boys seem to like the workbooks.

They were both getting bored with the printing books so I bought the KickStart to Cursive workbook.

withouttearsThey flew through it in two weeks.

They would have finished it in one day but I made them do other school work.

I am mean like that.

schoolI did not have the next cursive workbook for them both and needed them to slow down!

happy laughThey have really enjoyed it so I am going to continue to the 3rd grade cursive book.

They were pretty much done with their 2nd grade print workbooks anyway and get plenty of practice printing with their copywork and spelling.

writing2It is nice to see them both enjoy writing again.

Cursive is such a fun way to write!

1st Day of School ~2012

I decided on Sunday that I wanted to have our school things in the library(that is what we call this room, I have always wanted one so that is what I call it!).

I am really good at last minute decision making.

My husband loves it when I say I want to go somewhere as we are passing the turn…

I sanded and painted the table Sunday afternoon!

On the left is most of the things we need for the school year.

On the right is the human body poster from the Magic School Bus anatomy kit.

We started the school day at 8:30am with a Memory Verse, the Days of the week, and the Months of the year(I found a song on youtube from this blog).

We then read from Great Illustrated Classics Sherlock Holmes.

I really like the classical education approach so I would have liked to read Greek Mythology but I did not want to introduce the boys to that yet.

My mom always started every school day with a classic.

I love how it helps everybody wake up slowly.

I wanted to wait until the end of the day to do science but I knew the boys would not concentrate until we had opened up the kit.

We put the poster up and the brain sticker.

We are learning about human anatomy this month.

Next came Reading, Writing, and Grammar.

I bought Handwriting Without Tears for writing this year.

I am already loving the way it uses little tricks to help you remember how to write letters.

It tells you to frog jump back to the top for F so you do not draw the line on the side twice.

We are using A Handbook for Reading by a beka for our reading.

One of my older sister’s names is written on this book from when she used it.

That might be part of why I love it so much.

It is such a great book to help teach reading phonetically.

I had my youngest play in his room for a little bit while his older brother read to me(he needed a break anyway).

I then got my oldest set up on the computer for his grammar lesson while I did reading with my youngest.

The online grammar is free and he really liked it!

At 10am we had snack time.

I have found breaks are needed with little guys.

We plunged into math right after snack.

This week we are doing a review of the math we learned last year(as well as catching my youngest up on anything he did not learn) and some math games.

Next week we will start back into the RightStart math workbook.

Then came History.

I have saved it for near the end of the day because it is my passion and I can teach it even when I am tired!

I use the timeline from History Through the Ages.

It helps the boys see when things happened instead of me just trying to explain that it was a long time ago.

This week is Aristotle to go along with Anatomy.

I could not find any interesting children’s books about him so I made one up instead.

I dressed the boys up in sheets and we walked around the house(Aristotle was known for walking around the city as he taught) while telling them about Aristotle through the eyes of a little dog named Bartamuss.

We are learning about Greece for Geography.

For the first day all we did was find it on the globe, I have books we will be reading about it also though.

I then let the boys finish the day with one episode from The Magic School Bus: Human Body dvd.

These are the main books we will be using.

Here are some of the library books we will be using as well.

This is a pretty standard amount for me to get for 1-2weeks of school.

I also have several education shows on Netflix that go along with what we are learning that I might use.

We ended before 12pm and I am really happy with how our first day of 1st grade and Kindergarten went!

Check out last years 1st day of school, here!