Beach Week Begins!

We kicked off our beach theme today. Mary Helen did lots of work today! I moved her from 6 boxes to 9 boxes today. She was a real trooper through it all ~ she even had a couple of extra chores today that she did without complaining! She is really maturing!


Here are some pictures from our day!

Here are our workboxes for today:

1. Math Sheet (we are using Horizons)

2. Bob books (we read book 3 today. it is challenging for her, but she is doing great!)

3. Shells and palm trees ~ she had to make two patterns for me.

4. Draw Write Now - Our book has a whole section of ocean habitats! We spread one lesson over three days. She writes two lines on each of the first two days then does the picture on the last day.

5. sign language cards ~ we are starting with the alphabet. I am adding in 5 a day until we finish, then I will introduce word cards more slowly.

6. Fishy swizzle sticks - used as pointers for our ocean words in the "beach" area.

7. Book about animals that live in the water, fun foam ocean glasses, and Nemo gummies.

8. Two worksheets: one about fish with several fish to color, and one to count different things under the ocean (www.kidssoup.com)

9. Leap Frog phonics puzzle game.

Here she is with her shell/palm tree patterns.

and doing her Draw Write Now book.
ocean words (words printed from kidssoup, pocket charts from dollar spot at Target!)

Reading at the beach!

Anna also enjoyed the Nemo gummies!

When Mary Helen finished the shell patterning, I put the shells and palm trees in the pool for Anna and my day care child to play with. They had a ball too!

We have lots more fun stuff planned for the next couple of weeks!

We're Going to the Beach!

We are taking two beach trips back to back beginning in a couple of weeks, so we are going to have a beach/ocean theme for the next two weeks. I have some fun things planned, and I will let you all in on the fun. Here is our beach area.


It is set up in part of our playroom, behind our couch. I will use the kiddie pool to corral sand activities that are on the agenda. The girls have had a blast already! They played in there for a couple of hours tonight. They had all of their kiddie chairs lined up with all of their stuffed animals sitting around the pool.
ever see a kangaroo at the beach before?

Busy Week!

I wrote and scheduled several posts for this week which is good, because I have not been motivated to update! I have had quite a week trying to get all my stuff organized. Since we are going to school year round, and our breaks will be times that we are super busy or out of town, I don't want to take off to regroup. So, we've been doing school, and I've been reorganizing all of my homeschool stuff and life in general. I don't know about anyone else, but it seems when I work on one thing, a thousand others fall apart!

Thankfully, I have a wonderful husband. He took us all out to eat and to Lowes for a few hours last night to get me out of the house and to stop focusing on everything that needs to be done around here. Then when we got home, he did a couple loads of laundry. Bless him!

So, here are some highlights from our week.

I got this critter carnival at the convention last week and we found some roly polies (pill bugs) in our backyard to play in it. While they watched them play, I looked up information on them and read it to the girls. Mary Helen thought it was very interesting that they molt then eat their skin!
She was so taken by the roly polies, we decided to keep them. I read about what they needed and we fixed up a little home for them. It's hard to see, but there is one crawling on that stick.

Since then, she has added several worms and a snail to the collection. I couldn't find the snail to get it's picture, but here's the worm :) The snail is my favorite! I love to watch him come out of his shell and stick his antennas out. We will have to do some reading up on them for sure.

Here's Mary Helen with her first two Bob books. She can read them both! She is very proud of herself, and mommy is rather proud too!

Here is the closet I've been working on. I have all of our activities and books listed on index cards in a recipe box. Now when I plan our week, I pull out the index cards and when I get ready to fill our workboxes, I take my index cards to the closet and pull out what I need. Hopefully this will save me from looking through everything we have everyday.

Here is the closet that needs my attention. I am hoping to get shelves put in it like the other closet soon.

I have another busy weekend, but I hope to get some good stuff set up for our beach theme next week! We are going on two different beach trips in two weeks, so I figure we'll learn something about them before we go!

Discovery Toys Overload

By far, the Discovery Toys was my most expensive investment from the weekend. Here's what I got:

This Build a book has pages of pockets (like baseball card albums) and you use the cards to sort each page by a certain criteria. I think I will start it off with Mary Helen in workboxes.


Playful patterns ~ I love that these are slightly textured pattern shapes. I will use these for Mary Helen's workboxes as well. These are great skills, and just the type of thing she enjoys!

These fancy puzzle trains will be given to Anna for her birthday in July.

It's a Match! I don't know how to describe what this does, but it is awesome! It's one of those things that I looked at online and passed it over, but when I looked at it and played with it, I loved it! It has four books and covers many, many skills. Another one for the Workboxes.

*That's one of the best things about the convention ~ you can touch, play, flip, etc each item before you buy it.

Books! Books! Books!

At our house, we love workbooks and activity books. It is not unusual for Mary Helen to sit down with a dollar store alphabet workbook and do the whole thing while she watches tv.

These are sticker books and a few activity books. The stickers are all reusable, so these will last as long as we keep up with all our stuff! These are going in my bag for when I need quick, quiet, small entertainment (church, doctor's office, etc.)

The Draw Write Now books caught my eye, I love the way they are set up to let them draw, write, and learn all at once! I actually got this book in my free gift for subscribing to The Old Schoolhouse magazine. I picked up the workbook at another vendor during the convention. I plan to do one of these a week in workboxes.

These are coloring and activity books to fit themes I plan for us to do in the coming year. The two blue books have information on lots of animals included.

Here are some of Anna's goodies that will go in her quiet time bags.

Drawing books that Mary Helen enjoys. The Dora one will go in her vacation travel box. The others will be in quiet time bags.

Paint with water! I never see these books around here. These will go one page at a time in workboxes.

These books will be split up between summer travel, quiet boxes, and workboxes.

Phonics Reading Rods Activity Pack

I just think this is the neatest thing. Mary Helen loves rhyming, so I think she'll do well with word family type lessons. I plan to use this in our workboxes and have her complete one card each time it's in a box.

Homeschool Convention Time!

Boy, am I tired! I spent the last two days with great friends doing something we LOVE ~ shopping and planning for our homeschooling year!

Last year was my first convention, and I just loved it! I got so much encouragement and there are so many vendors with so many great things for our school. This year, we went to a different, and the workshops weren't very appealing to me, so I didn't pay the extra to hear them. I just went to shop. And shop I did! I am all set for the coming year. One thing I love about the convention shopping is that there are things that are good for things other than homeschool. I got several things to extend our curriculum, but I also got things for our quiet time bags, workboxes, and for out and about (restaraunts, car trips, doctors offices).

I think next year I will go to the other convention because I loved all of the workshops so much and the vendors were basically the same at both.

I will show you most of my stuff throughout the week and tell you how I plan to use it. One small piece of advice if you are planning your first convention...take one of these:

I filled mine up on Friday and Saturday. I made the little liner so my small things wouldn't fall through and so I'd have a pocket for small snacks and a bottle of water.

I'll start my posts of everything I got tomorrow!