Space lapbook - spelling

After a more than 2 month hiatus from posting, I've decided to attempt to get some photos up on the blog.
Caleb often did activities from his space lapbook while the older boys completed their work.

Sweet boy!

Here, he's using his letters to spell the names of planets.

Reading Readiness

Caleb is now working through Teaching Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and is making great progress. He has his lesson first thing in the morning while Cooper practices violin and Noah reads an assigned book. This new schedule has been working well!
The rest of his school day is spent doing various activities. Many of these are independent so that he can work while I do lessons with his brothers.

Caleb was proud of his work on his Read, Build, Write mat.

I recently made playdoh mats for each letter of the alphabet. He loves them.

The Read, Build, Write mats and Playdoh mats can be found at Homeschool Creations.

School in the States

Our trip to the States was too long to abandon our normal school routine. Over the seven weeks, we were able to do 15 days of school work as well as some fun field trips.

Our first field trip was to the Aquarium of the Americas in Atlanta. Amazing! We arrived just after 10am and didn't leave until after 4pm. The boys loved every minute. The pictures are sadly of a very poor quality. Nick needed our camera for his work in the museum, so we used a disposable.

Penguins!

Whale Shark! The sharks, manta rays, and dolphins were among our favorites.

We spent a lot of time at this touch pool.

Great day!

Gigi helped Caleb while I worked with the older boys.

The boys joined Aunt Ginger's painting class.

Here's Caleb's masterpiece.

 Our second field trip was to the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport. The tour was intimate with only one other couple joining us.

Touch pool in the Discovery Room.

Horseshoe crab - He was a favorite.

This guy was seriously aggressive.

Sifting through the sand for a shark tooth in the fossil dig.

We each matched our fossil with the appropriate animal.

Up close with the dolphins.

Our final field trip was to Fort Conde.

Running on the grounds.

Imprisoned.

The tunnel below the fort.

Read, Build, Write

I'm trying to have more independent work for Caleb. He loves to join us for group lessons (Latin, science, history, etc.) and often wants to work at the table while Cooper and Noah are working on lessons. I recently used an idea from Homeschool Creations.

Laminated letter tiles

Hard at work

Success! I've printed a number of picture/word cards (visible at the top under "read" and in the container at the bottom right of the photo). Caleb reads the word (often with help), builds with his letter tiles, and then writes it at the bottom.

Line 'em up, Limbourgh brothers, and a little bit of math

Caleb cut out pictures and then ordered them from smallest to biggest.

 We read about the Limbourgh brothers and viewed August (Departure for the Falcon Hunt), a painting from a calendar used by the Duke of Berry. The Reid boys each painted a calendar page.

Noah went outside to sketch as his memory of the house and surroundings was not sufficient.

September, by Noah Reid

Work in progress

 Cooper and Noah do some math skills before beginning their math worksheets each day. Saxon Math provides a 1/4 page size worksheet. I recreated the sheets on card stock and put them in wipe-off envelopes. The boys each have a box to hold a clock, flash cards, coins, etc.

Cooper has been very disciplined with his individual work.

Preschool Practice

Caleb's been working diligently on his handwriting.

Final Day of Thursday School

Sarah took over the last few lessons for the younger group and did a fantastic job.

Play in the garden to end the day.

Caleb

My little man now likes writing his name. He loves to practice writing on these nifty wipe-off sentence strips that we brought back from the States.

Back in the Groove

We jumped right back into school after our month-long trip to the States (arrived in London on a Friday afternoon and started school Monday morning), but blogging has been delayed due to a super-busy mom. Here are a few photos from our first week back:

Caleb has LOVED his new workbooks. My mom and I visited Anders Bookstore in Mobile - an ENTIRE STORE dedicated to school supplies. I don't know of any such stores in the UK. We spent a long time there, and I stocked up on some goodies. As an aside, I don't think workbooks are necessary at Caleb's age, but he wants to do school like big brothers.

For our art project, we read about Giotto and then painted mini-frescos by applying a thin layer of all purpose filler to cardboard.

It's been great to get back to the nature reserve. I think of it as ours because we live so near and know it so well.

Fishy Fun, Body Parts, and Athenian wax tablets

We read Dr. Seuss's One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, and Lucy Collins' Hooray for Fish! Caleb completed a number of fishy projects as well as other "F" work.

We're now studying the human body in science. To get things started, the boys identified and labeled body parts. 

Caleb rolled the die and did some graphing.

Yesterday, we read about the Spartans and today the Athenians. The boys attempted to write on "wax" tablets. We all decided paper and pencil is an easier (and neater) option.

"E", Birdies, and Cimabue

 Preschool practice continues with the letter E:

We read Elmer and did several activities.

Egg starts with E. Caleb and Cooper put together a Humpty Dumpty puzzle.

Caleb attempts to put Humpty together again.

We've been studying birds at our Thursday nature class. We put these felt garden birdies together on a rainy afternoon.

 Cimabue has been the focus of our art lessons the past two weeks. We have no gold leaf, so we made do with yellow construction paper.

Preschool Progress

I'll play catch-up on the blog for a few days (hopefully!). Here's a glimpse at some of Caleb's preschool activities of late. We've been working through the alphabet.

Cutting out pictures that begin with "a' to glue onto his "Aa" sheet.
This activity is repeated with each letter.

We read Good Night Moon and did several related activities.
Here, he's counting stars and attaching the corresponding number. 

His "a" craft activity was a partially eaten apple.
He's adding fingerprint seeds to the apple core.

We read Brown Bear, Brown Bear to go along with our "b" studies.
This was a fun, graphing activity. Caleb graphed each roll of the dice. 

We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and Caleb made his own caterpillar.

Noah worked with Caleb on sequencing events from The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Doesn't that cat have a lovely "c" tail?

Many of the resources I'm using can be found at www.homeschoolcreations.com.