Daily Report: Graduation Day

Today was Michelle's last day of eighth grade, and graduation ceremony.

 Excuse the photo quality. My camera is not very tech savvy.

 This day also marks the beginning of a new chapter in her life.

 It is official, she is a homeschooler and proud to share it whenever anyone asked her what school she is going to for high school.  I am sure she will miss seeing her friends on a daily basis. On the other hand we are excited to not have to beat the 7:30 a.m school bell. This girl is already talking about school projects and research ideas. I am truly blessed!!                                                                  

Daily Report: Iron-Ons and Face Painting

After reading our read alouds we decided to take their work outside. The night before they checked out the weather report that indicated rain in the forecast in the afternoon.

 The clouds came and it became extremely windy. After being outside for two hours it was time to go back inside. They ate lunch and warmed up and then started another work session

 During this work period DJ perfected another trick and designed a flyer to pass out to invite everyone to his first Magic show.

 Today for the first time he was shown how to use an iron. He really enjoyed ironing his iron-on to what will be his magician cape.

 Ken is preparing to do a storytelling of The Hungry Caterpillar. She also plans to offer some face painting for entertainment. Ken has been practicing her skills using a webcam, so much fun!!

Ken also worked with the Adverb Box.

The rain never came, but I really enjoyed how the scheduling of the day turned out.
                                                                                    

Daily Report: The Basics

Today we used the weather for every reason why there shouldn't be school today. After a few lazy days it was hard to kick into gear.

 For math today DJ worked on patterning figures and numbers. Ken worked on finding the perimeter of polygons.

 They both requested new spelling words this week. Ken will work on spellings for long and short o,i, and u. DJ will be working on words with double consonants and long u.

DJ and I have been reading the book Harry Houdini for Kids. Did you know that Houdini's real name was Ehrich Weiss? Did you know that Houdini worked as an apprentice to a locksmith and learned from there how to get out of locks? Fun facts that are keeping DJ interested in reading this book. He has been practicing "The Great Escape" for his first performance this Friday.

  Ken stayed busy creating some new hairstyles and practicing live on stage. LOL!! They also spent a great deal of time experimenting with a webcam.  The truth is we were slow going today after a four day weekend:) It still was worth it!!!  
                                                                               

Testing Webcam Equipment

                                                                     

Monday's Project: Paint A Stage

The kids are already preparing their summer to be full of self directed, interest led performances for all who will come and see them perform. DJ is creating skits to perform magic shows. Michelle is writing poems for poetry readings. Ken is designing clothes for fashion shows, making props for photo shoots, and practicing her guitar for background effects or recitals. Also I have a few preschoolers that are interested in performing puppet shows and How To's. They are becoming students of the arts. The first thing they wanted was a stage. The cost to buy a nice one is not in the budget. So want do you do? Go to Pinterst!! From there we struck gold, and our adventure is still underway.

                                                                             

Inspired by this beautiful deck. We searched for some pallets, and we were lucky!! On our way to our local nature center we found some for FREE. We already had the paint from redecorating their office walls.
                                                                         

Here is how our stage turned out.      

I'll hang a clothes line so that they could use various items for a backdrop. Later maybe use some pcv pipes for something fancier. I am thinking some flowers in planters would add some pleasing eye candy to their performance stage. Not bad for FREE!!                     

Daily Report:The Outside Enviroment

Last night we went to bed way too late!! I had a child that was staying until 11:00p.m. Not a biggie, because that is what I do. It has just been awhile since I had late nights so the adjustment was just the problem.

DJ worked on putting this together last night.

At around 7:00 Ken comes to share with me how she wants her Butterfly Garden to look while reading through this book.

Butterfly pots.

I think this was a grand idea and I am so excited that she has found a very doable garden plan. DJ and Michelle joined in on the excitement and we went out looking for flowers and butterfly bushes with our preschool friend. This trip really turned out to be a two hour trip and no butterfly bushes and no flowers that attract butterflies. We still had a lot of fun though and spent five bucks on other plants to start other projects in the book as well.

It didn't surprise me this morning that they were moving slow and just wasn't in their rather upbeat mode. We did reading and that was still exciting to them. They were choosing to do Life of Fred for math . DJ worked more on the lego set and Ken was pretending to do more reading. With a gorgoeous day outside our window it was time to take advantage of learning outside.

Ken put together her Greenhouse .

They worked liked they had a great night sleep the night before. All of a sudden they had tons of energy.

They enjoyed discovering the different roots and bugs that lived under the dirt as they dugged.

Becoming very proud that finally her dream garden will be a reality!!

Michelle is trying to grow a pond we also brought six goldfish.

DJ has plans to make this hide out.

DJ is more interested in growing food that he can eat. We also finally got to our upside down tomatoe planter.

I very happy about how the day turned out! What could of been a lazy day turned into a very productive day.

See ya'll back here tomorrow!!!

Linking to The Flower,Plant,Garden Blog Hop

Weekly Learning Report: 5/21-5/25/2012

This week has really gone by fast. We have had awesome weather and have officially moved into a summer schedule. We home school year round. In the summer school is over at lunch time:) Also no school on Fridays. What they do with their spare time is totally up to them. So far no real plans, were going to take it one day at a time.

  The Office has been the hot spot lately. They really have enjoyed this area of learning designed by them

This week they also took on the job of doing some record keeping of their school work.

DJ has made sure that the office gets a good sweeping before ending his work period.                 

Lots of math has been accomplished through worksheets, and hands on using their Montessori materials.

  I think the only area that they didn't cover this week in math was money, time, and geometry.

Lots of work that would fall under the category of Language was done too.                                                                          
           

DJ finished the book The Houdini Box. As a result he has learned a few magic tricks and wants to perform a show.              

 The Giver by Lois Lowry has been a winning read for Ken and she has been developing new photography skills.                                                                      

Both of them at their request took a spelling test and Aced it. As you can see their isn't any grades. It all about learning new words, manipulating them, and then seeing if it is something that is at least in the short term memory. Next they will learn to transfer these words to the Long term memory.

      More work with adverbs, DJ recorded some of this work in his journal.

                                                                      
Cultural works always are done with these two kiddos.

Ken labeled all the countries in Africa without a control chart!  DJ worked a lot with the Europe puzzle.

                                                                                 

  All things bugs inspired them to make an impromptu pining board.                                                                                

Ken learned that the color of a caterpillar does not determine the color of the butterfly.

DJ ended his study of the desert with an activity that helped him understand how desert plants retain water.

They loved making paintings using a canvas.

Still working on building a robot.

       We went out to eat for lunch at their favorite restaurant Panera Bread.

Today begin our weekend holiday fun. To jump start we went to Zap Zone. Only us and seven other homeschoolers were there. This was a big surprise to me, because we haven't been able to find any homeschoolers in our area at all. The mom and I hit it off really well and exchanged phone numbers.

  It just so happened that they needed three more people to play Laser Tag and the mom asked if we would like to join them.  All I can say is I got a major workout in thirteen minutes. DJ was too serious to even think of taking a picture for me in action.

Linking up to  Weekly Wrap Ups hosted by Weird, unsocialized homeschoolers and Montessori Monday hosted by Living Montessori Now