Spelling and Vocabulary

I've been working on some fun ways to motivate my children to increase their vocabulary and improve their spelling.  I've come up with a smosh of ideas from pinterest ideas and this is what we've been doing the last few weeks.  It really works well for us.  I do this with my boys who are 11 and 12 as well as my girls who are 6 and 7.  It give me an opportunity to play games with each set of kids on a daily basis.  So here's our weekly layout

Monday - I give each set of children a list of 10 spelling/vocabulary words(more spelling for the girls and vocabulary for the boys).  Child #1 writes each word on ten different 3x5 cards.  Then Child #2 writes every word other that the word on the card in domino fashion.  You have to think of how the game dominos would work with words.  So each child ends up writing each word 10 times.

Tuesday - I play a game of word domino with each set of my children.  My girls love to see what shape the cards will create and the end of the game.  I have a rule that the child placing the card down must say both words on the card.  The boys say the definition.

Wednesday - I cut the dominos cards in half and create sets of four of each card so that they can be used for go fish, old maid, or spoons.

Thursday - We use the same cards from Wednesday to play either word match (like picture match).  So with my younger kids I just use the word cards.  With my older kids I have them write the definition on a separate care and we match the definition with the word).  We can also play word race where we spread out dissected dominos card on the lawn or around the house and I give each player a word and they have to find all the cards with that word on it.


Friday - We do a short quiz to make sure it all sticks


Their is really no limit to the things you could do with the cards as soon as they're made.  Be creative and most of all make it fun.

catalyst learning

We are trying out a method of inspiring our young learners that we are calling CATALYST LEARNING.  I really like this idea.  The idea is to prompt curiosity and creativity (my favs).  So to introduce our catalysts for this week

Monday

We will be doing initial collections of bacteria.  We will be writing hypothesis, taking notes and doing observations throughout the week.

We are following this link


Here are our initial samples.  The kids really got into this experiment.

Tuesday

Today we are watching unlocking the genius.  I love to expose our children to ideas that people are coming up with today. This also goes along with our studies of Da Vinci's era.

Unlocking Genius





Wednesday

We are starting to follow the Nasa launches.  We will be watching the scheduled launch of Antares.

Antares Launch



Thursday

Today we will be working on catapult design and experiment.  We got our information from this link

catapult statistics



Friday

We are going to get updated on nasa news today

nasa news

Spanish

My two daughters are both learning spanish.  Because they are 7 and 6 we are going to start out with very elementary words and concepts.  Below are some links I have found

Soft Schools

Music

Music is such an important part of our childrens education.  The study of music through playing instruments has been proven to  improve cognition and visualization.  Music also enriches our lives on so many levels.



Piano helps

Susan Paradise
I love this site.  There are so many games and enrichment activities as well as printable music.

Columbus and early explorers (1492 - 1501)

This week we will be studying early explorers from 1492 to 1500.  It is important to teach our children about histories and movement of civilizations.  We understand our culture today when we learn about our past and where we come from.  We will also be working on our art projects and learning art and music history along with this unit because I believe when you learn about advances in exploration and technology you should be learning about art and music to put it in context of everything thats going on at the time period.


Monday

Explorers

Columbus voyages


John Cabot



Pedro Alvares cabral



Art

spainish artist

Smart History renaissance

Da Vinci

Michelangelo


 Music

Musicians of 1400-1500




       


Wednesday

Amerigo Vespucci




Art

History of Renisance artist

Khan academy

Da Vinci documentary



Friday











Teacheroz.com

Digestive system

 This week we will be working on the digestive system.  I believe I will combine my younger children with my older children in these lessons because I think the concepts are relatively easy to understand.  I'm really excited about the hands on lesson on Wednesday from teachinginroom6 blog.  And I'm a little worried about the Corn experiment on Tuesday.  But I have a 11 year old that was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and I think it will be very good for him to see how his body digests or not digest certain food


 Monday - 

Khan academy Digestive system



Tuesday

National Geographic - Feed the System

Corn experiment 



Wednesday

Teaching in room 6




 Thursday

Kids Health



Friday

 

Plants

Knowledge about plants is a fundamental part of understanding the world around us.  It is so important to allow small children to have interactions with the out of doors.  This allows them to foster an appreciation for natural resources, earth science, and dare I say most important of all CURIOSITY (one of my two favorite words).  This is such an easy thing to do.  Go outside.  Allow your kids to be outside.  Sometimes you may have to  MAKE your kids go outside.  It is so healthy for them to be outside.  To hear, touch, smell the natural things around them.  Allow them to run in the grass with their shoes off.  Talk about how grass feel on their feet and how it may turn their feet green (conversation on chloroplast).  Find a flower and compare it to a tree.  Find the parts that are similar and ones that are different.  Compare, Analyze, Talk, and most importantly - Do.  For pete sakes - We're homeschoolers - lets go outside.

I don't know how many times I've thought about the irony of looking at pictures in a book and reading words on a page on a subject that was less than two feet away out a window that could be experienced.

Having said all this.  I've added links that I thought were fun. Hee-Hee.

Making a plant grow

Plant Growthh



Parts of a Plant


Plant Life cycle Game

Below are pictures of an activity we've been working on.  We took seeds we had around the house(I really had no idea if they would actually grow or not).  We had Chia seeds and two sizes of white beans.  We put them in a plastic ziplock baggie with a wet paper towel.  Then we taped those to our sliding glass door that doubles as our learning board and Viola.  The Chia seeds were fun because they started sprouting roots in about 24 hrs.  Amazing.  Then the small bean sprouts started about a week.  And our last runner up were the large white beans.  These took about two weeks to start to sprout.  It was fun to see the difference in all three and the time it took for each one to start to sprout.

This leads to an excellent conversation about each and every thing has a time and a season.  Some seeds start to sprout very fast and some take more time.  Each one has a unique root system.  Each seed has a different way of sprouting.  It's been really fun for the kids and for me.

About two weeks after we started watering our seeds we were able to transplant them to a pot.  We will continue to grow them to watch the full life cycle of the plant.