Come to the dark side...

... of homeschooling.  My biggest struggle when I homeschool, is resisting the urge to tell my child to "sit down, shut up and pay attention!"  Jake is very busy and full of energy (what 5-year-old boy isn't?).  He can be moving, humming and looking everywhere else besides me.  But guess what... he's still learning and soaking it all in.  So, I'm getting better at ignoring all the distracting activity while I teach.  Here's what homeschooling looked like for us this morning:

Jake scored that costume and a light saber for only $0.50 yesterday at a yard sale!

Here's what I got:

Got all these books (mostly hardcover, see?) for $0.25 a piece!  Woo-hoo!!!  Have a great weekend, everyone!

We Love Bob!

Got some Bob Books from a yard sale last week.  LOVE THEM!  They are really cute and really simple.  There are just enough words and just enough pages so that my child doesn't get frustrated.  And just as Bob Books promises, Jake was so excited that he read the whole thing.  And he didn't stop at just one... he wanted to keep on reading, so he read 4 of them!

We've read some other phonics readers, but they're just not this good imho.

Also... got to check out a children's consignment pre-sale at a local church.  I had never been to one of those!  I thought it would be too expensive for my uber-cheapness, but a lot of it was very reasonable and I came home with a stroller full of stuff.  Got a Lincoln Log set, 2 books, a shirt for Jake, a bunch of clothes for Sam, a Lego helicopter and this adorable little froggie magnet board!

Oh, and yes... we're still doing Disney stuff, but I believe in child-led learning and if Jake wants to spend more time reading, that's great with me!

Liberty Square

Today we learned about Liberty Square in the Magic Kingdom.  First, we found it on our map.

We talked about the different attractions and the theme of the area.  We read a book about George Washington (got it at the Expo) and since he's on the one dollar bill, we did our introduction to money.

Here's Jake wishing that were a real dollar bill ;-)

WDW Trivia:  How many lanterns are hanging from the tree in Liberty Square?  The answer is 13.  They represent the 13 original colonies.  So we discussed colonial times.

We also read 'How Ben Franklin Stole the Lightning' (yard sale) and 'Samuel Eaton's Day:  A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Boy' (Goodwill).  Jake thought Samuel's clothes were just hysterical ;-)

Then... we discussed Jake's favorite attraction:  The Haunted Mansion.  My cadaverous palour betrayed an aura of foreboding, but we decided to do a crayon resist and made a ghost gallery. ("Is this haunted room actually stretching?!?")

Yesterday we worked on phonics, Mickey Math (addition) and flipped through a book about all of our presidents up to George W.  Got it at Goodwill this week for $0.38.  It was such a crazy day though, so no photos, sorry.

Cinderella Time!

We're getting back on track this week, finally!  Today we read Cinderella and used it to springboard into an introduction to telling time (ya know, the whole "when the clock strikes twelve" thing). 

Here's Jake pointing out Cinderella's Castle on our custom Magic Kingdom map.

Here he is, learning to tell time.  Got this Thomas the Train book yesterday at Goodwill for $0.63.

Here's Jake sorting supplies for our Cinderella mice craft.

He's so proud of his little Jaq and Gus-Gus.

A little rough around the edges, but way cute!

Check out my loot!

Sooo... went on a shopping spree yesterday and today.  Hit only a handful of yard sales but look what I came home with!

A U.S. puzzle, number/color stacking blocks, body and brain puzzles, Eric Carle block puzzle and board book, lacing button activity, a working toy cash register (finally found one!), Bob Books (saw these at the Homeschool Expo, heard they're great) and a pile various other books.  Okay, so 2 of the books are duplicates of what I already have, but I can't turn down great kids' books for a great price.  Remember the whole addiction thing?  Yup....  This all cost me about $12.

And... I met a wonderful fellow homeschooler named Julie.  We totally hit it off.  We have very similar backgrounds and our husbands are eerily similar.  She sold me this great stuff!

3 sets of pencil control tracing cards, 1 set of pattern repetition sheets, 1 set of froggie short vowel discs and 5 different sets of hand-made, laminated short and long vowel activities.  You can't buy that in a store!  I got some of the above stuff from her too.

I found some other great items too.  I finally found a sleeping bag (Spider Man) for our reading corner, woo-hoo!  Jake got a knight body armor, sword and shield costume, a lego knight book and a storm trooper.  Sam got a booster seat and I got an awesome gourmet piggy chef with a chalk board for the kitchen.  Just couldn't pass this little guy up!

The weekend is off to a great start!  We're hitting an awesome consignment store this afternoon.  The largest, most reasonable one I've ever been to.  And we're finally going to try Five Guys for the very first time. We're big Cheeseburger Bobby fans, but I've heard Five Guys is like crack!  Can't wait to check it out.  There's a Rita's there too.  Haven't been to a Rita's in YEARS!  We'll be stopping there as well.  YUM!

Another Crazy Week

So my parents left Monday and Sam woke with a fever that morning and it went on for the first half of the week.  Needless to say, once again... not a lot of homeschooling has been accomplished this week.  We finally did get to start our Disney unit.  We're way behind now, but we'll catch up (hopefully).

First, we took a look at the U.S. map and found our way from Georgia to Florida.

That's the face of excitement, lol.  Too bad Jake's concept of time is not very accurate.

Then we pulled out our FREE custom maps of Walt Disney World.  We went online a few weeks ago to select what type of maps we wanted and what attractions, restaurants, etc. that we wanted highlighted.  They came in the mail and I hid them until this week. The pics of Jake with those maps came out awful.  Just got a new camera and am still learning.  I'm not used to having a fancy camera with a separate flash ;-)  So forgive these barely acceptable photos I'm posting ;-)

We're working on the Magic Kingdom part of our Disney unit.  We focused on the "It's a Small World" attraction first.  I actually found an old-school Disney book with that very title at Goodwill, so we read that and some other resources on countries and people.  The second verse of the beloved song goes, "there is just one moon and one golden sun and a smile means friendship to everyone."  We talked about how God created all of us and we share the same sun.  So, we made a sun out of Jake's hand prints.  I was so proud that he was able to cut a few of them out on his own!

Here's Jake's beautiful sun!

Then we did some "Mickey Math" using our fingers...

...and animal manipulatives...

My Cricut and Xyron machines have come in very handy for homeschooling.  Love that I still get to be crafty!

Homeschool Expo

Almost forgot... Went to the Southeast Homeschool Expo this past weekend.  LOVED it!  Had such a great time with my friend, Melissa and no kids! My favorite presentation was by a gentleman by the name of Israel Wayne, called "What about Socialization?"  Well, it wasn't about playgroups and field trips like you would expect.  It was about the history and socialization of our public school system, dating back to Plato.  Soooo fascinating!  I bought his book 'Homeschooling from a Biblical World View', and had it autographed.  Looking forward to reading it!

Here's a pic of Melissa at the Expo, holding a real human brain!  (Sorry, Meliss.  It's a terrible photo and doesn't look anything like you!)