Homeschool-ish [September]

I thought I would finally get around to sharing some of the activities that the girls and I did as part of their mini homeschooling during the month of September. Both Veronica and Adriana currently go to preschool two days a week. Another week day is spent doing more fun type stuff and gymnastics, which leaves two days for us to do our little homeschool activities. Adri still has a while before kindergarten so I do this mostly to reinforce what V is learning at school, as well as to keep up occupied with something other than TV during the day.

Through a Pinterest search, I found Play, Learn, Love, which features a pretty amazing curriculum. Jessica, the momma behind the blog, has an entire school year planned out. Plus, she updates weekly with the lesson plan and activities. Once I had the themes knocked out, it was easy to go back to Pinterest and find fun worksheets and craft ideas to incorporate into the themes. I got lucky with September, because V's class was doing the same themes for three of the four weeks.

Based off of Play, Learn, Love curriculum

For Veronica, I focused on mastering the spelling of her name as well as identifying each of the weekly letters. The original curriculum also included sight words, but we're not about that life just yet. Adri, who usually gets the short end of the stick, did all of the same activities, but I let her do them all wrong. I did however make sure that Adri was at least good with identifying the color red. V (re)learned how to say it in Spanish.

Week 1: I cut out the letters from each of the girls' names on red paper and had them (Veronica) put it in the correct order. She also practiced writing it out. This week, we also did some other "all about me" activities which included drawing a self portrait and writing/illustrating some favorite things and hobbies.

Week 2: At her school, each day corresponded to one of the five sense. I covered what they were doing in the classroom on the days that V wasn't actually in the classroom.

Week 3: I have to give all of the credit to Veronica's amazing teacher for this little craft. On black sheet of paper, trace a hand print with silver Sharpie. Using chalk, lightly color over the hand print. Then, glue Q-Tips down as bones. Genius, right?! For Adri, I used this week to make sure she knew all of the major body parts.

Week 4: I thought about getting really crazy and attempting to learn Hawaiian islands, but that'll be a lesson for a few years from now. Either way, we got lucky with the letter of the week being "H" for home and Hawaii. Both girls made houses out of the letter H. I tried to get V to learn our address, but didn't have much luck.

We've gotten off to a good start for October starting out with farm animals. I'm looking forward to getting closer to Halloween having fun with pumpkins.

Full-time homeschooling would never work for me, but I'm enjoying a few hours a week. Have you ever considered homeschooling?

What I'm Working On

Since the baby was born, it's like I have this extra little burst of enthusiasm to get stuff done around the house. It kinda started with my clean kitchen obsession and has spread to other areas of the house. I even printed out this fantastic planner set to help keep me on track. At the moment, I'm working on a few little projects, to help spruce things up.

In the past, I never really had any interest in keeping up with our yard. We have flowerbeds around  the entire perimeter of the house, but since we live on post and this house isn't really ours, I never took an interest in maintaining them more than I had to. After starting our little vegetable garden, I realized how easy it is to dig up a few weeds and plant something else, which is exactly what we did over the weekend.

The girls planted sunflower seeds in mason jars a while back. We took the spouts from those and planted them along the back wall of our garage. So far, they're thriving. I'd be super happy if they would grow six feet tall with huge bright flowers.

Another little project that I've been working on is my photo wall. Each time my mom has visited, she's helped with it. It's finally getting to the point where it looks close to complete. I got on Shutterfly yesterday and ordered a bunch of free prints (promo code: laborday101 [or click here for 101 free photos from my referral page]). So far, I love how the wall looks. It'll be a work in progress, and I'm sure huge changes will be made each time we move as well as when the girls get older.

This last project isn't really home related, or even a project really.. Actually, I've been attempting to put together a mini homeschool curriculum for the girls for the days that they're not in school. It's taken a lot of Pinterest searching and some creativity on my part, but it's coming along. I've found some great homeschooling resources and have taken little bits and pieces from everywhere. I even fired up the Cricut for some extra fun little projects. Today will be the first day that we'll be following somewhat of a lesson plan instead of just randomness that I print from the internet. Wish us luck.