Life in a Nutshell

Man, we have been MIA for a while. It's been a crazy couple of months...
Back in December, we did a lot of lapbooking. So much so, we actually needed a break from it. :) For our Language Arts lapbook we did A Pocket for Corduroy. Both girls did this. You can actually tell who did which lapbook just by the skills on the pasting part. Lily took her time, while Iris was just like 'this goes here, it doesn't need to be perfect.' We then mixed language with history by doing the history of Santa Claus (which I pulled out of my butt, and took 2 hours to make) and The Night Before Christmas. We then did the history of Hannukah and had a blast! I found a project on making a dreidel out of cardstock, which we jumped at. We even did a "lighting" activity where we lit the menorah for the whole holiday. We were going to do Yule and Kawanzaa, but that month was crazy and we were visiting family, so we decided to just take a vacation instead. :)


About a month ago, my husband and I went to Barnes and Noble and Border's and found a wonderful array of homeschool curriculum and workbooks in their education section. We bought three Brain Quest books for the girls to do as supplement to their every day activities. They were out of PreK, so we only brought home K, 1st, and 2nd grade. Lily is almost done with the Kindergarten book, and Iris has done a couple of the activities in it as well. Lily and Iris were also given workbooks as gifts for the holidays/birthday.

I have this old notebook that I've had for ages. I decided to make it into a planner. When I ended up finding a nice leather-bound one on sale at Borders, I ended up taking this planner/notebook that I had made into a lesson planner. It was a notebook from high school that I never used, hence the ridiculous stickers, but I found a nice fabric book-cover and added post-it tabs to make it more professional. I use it for book work, activities, and other mundane things, like doctor appointments and play-dates.

We've kept busy doing bookwork and other activities with open-ended toys. Right now I'm just trying to figure out what to do and how to do. I am the epitome of winging-it.

Tracing and School Projects

When Lily was 2, we started working on writing. Well, Iris turned 2 at the end of October and we are currently working on tracing lines. The main problem that I am having is having her hold the marker or crayon correctly. We had this same problem with her spoon and fork. Thankfully, it's not a very big deal and she's doing quite well if you ask me.

As I've mentioned before, as well as homeschooling, Lily is going to a private preschool here in town. I wanted to post all of her art projects that she does throughout the school year. She goes to a Lutheran school and for September the theme of the month was being "Fishers of Men." I don't remember the whole parable and whatnot that goes with that, but she did have a lot of fun. One thing that I forgot to add to the photo was this little water bottle that she had filled with sand, little plastic fish and blue water. It's super cute and up still as a decoration.

In October they did fall and Halloween themes as well as transportation. They worked on fire safety as well and Lily came home reminding me to stop, drop and roll if my clothes ever caught fire. Last month was Thanksgiving themed and they worked a lot on turkeys. The black feather used to have a little red headband to go with it but the girls fought over it and it fell off.

I have a bunch of other things she has worked on at school as well as the activities she brings for home, such as her Weekly Reader. I'm looking into seeing if I can acquire the WR after she's down with preschool for our homeschool sessions.