Stevens Family

do molecules move faster in cold or hot water?  green cup hot water, cold cup red.

Today was free museum day so I twisted my husbands arm and took the kids to a hole in the wall dinosaur museum. The best part was really all the outdoor activities they had. The actually indoor museum part was not all that great. My youngest daughter on the little kids zip line. The big zipline! Look how high we were can you see by husband standing on the ground watching? My oldest did not really want to go but she decided to give it a try. Merry Go Round! This bridge was actually pretty scary, if you fell off of it sure the net would catch you but you would also be in the water! My little man clapping!

We sat in the bathroom with the shower on hot and look what happened, we made liquid into gas!

which solid melts faster butter or Popsicle?

I get lots of questions about what we are working on, so here is what we are doing in each subject this week: Science - Gas, Solid, Liquid........what are these?  Experiments teaching us all about these 3 states of matter! History - The Rise of Ancient Empires (I do not have too many details on this because we do science one week and then do history one week and this week is our science week) Vocabulary - We are doing compound words and animals the first half of the week then for the second half combining the two and doing compound animal words. Vocabulary is all online and I do not have to do anything for it! Spelling - This week we are doing words that end in sk, st, nt, nch, and then chapter test. Literature - We are reading our first chapter book, Mrs. Piggly Wiggly and writing in our journal about it.  When we are done we will do our first book report. Writing - We started this week book 2 for the second semester, I know we are way ahead in th...

While learning about Ancient Egypt we learned all about mummies and King TUT!  Did you know when they made you into a mummy they took all your insides out except your heart?  GROSS!!!  They even made animals into mummies!  Here are my Mummies:

We are learning about ancient Egypt and the first paper they made called papyrus so we made some today!

I like to tie art into what we are reading, so we are reading about weather this week, and today about rainbows so I had the kids paint rainbows.  Emmie does not like to paint because she likes everything perfect so if she messes up she crys......this was her first painting without tears!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Homeschooling is going GREAT!  I really do love it.  I do not like Art and Music but love everything else.  Emmie had her first one on one assesment test today (see previous post on what was on the test) she was ABOVE average on everything, she should be done with 1st grade math by Christmas then she will go into second grade math.  I still feel good about my choice to home school but it has been super time consuming.

We went from Nomads to early Egypt and we started off talking about Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt and the Nile River.....so here we are with the Meditrain Sea going into the Nile.  The girls loved it!

We have been learning about Nomads and the first city, Jericho and we even got to read about it in the Bible which was super exciting to tie school to the bible and decided to make houses like they did out of mud bricks......excpet our mud bricks look like poop!

Experiment 1......what will happen when I drop dads allergy pills in the toilet? experiment 2......which popsicle will melt faster the one in the shade or the one in the sun? 

The hardest thing about homeschooling is that the curriculum is so intense that I have to stay up top of  it everyday which leaves me no time for adult socialization with my friends, I had to turn down 2 play dates this week.  This makes me super sad!

This week has been easier then the first week.  The one thing that I found out this week that was surprising was that the K12 curriculum is more advanced then our local public school.  Even though my daughter is advanced I thought she would be ready for second grade work but K12 first grade work is equivalent to public second grade.  which is fine, I just can't believe there is such a difference.....for example in math we are going to be doing 1 + (5+2) our local public school is doing counting to 100 by 2's.  A huge difference!

 For science this week at the homeschooling co-op we are part of the kids learned all about bubbles!  Emmie had a great time and LOVED it!

The biggest myth about home schooling is that kids do not get socialization....that is not true! I think Emmie gets a ton of socialization. Here she is at a K12 sponsored picnic at the park with other kids her age having a BLAST! This picture is through our church, partnering with the local food bank and the Govenor to collect canned food, we went door to door in our neighborhood passing out flyers, we passed out 50 and ran out of flyers or we would have passed out more.  It was a great oppurnutiy for my girls to serve and talk with others.

How many grams does a baby spoon weigh?

So Literature is not my favorite core subject to teach, I don't know why....we just got done reading this book as part of our curriculum so I decided to make it more fun to have them paint a picture of the story.  This was good for Emmie because she does not like painting because it is never PERFCT and she loves everything being perfect.  My older daughter on the other hand loves to paint!

When you do an online course.......lets take Math for example it gives you your projected end date so that you know you are keeping on track and on schedule.  Your end date should be the begining of June.  Emmie and I do math really well and her end date after one week of school is the end of April.  You can see we have been doing a lot of math.  I love that she can work as fast as she wants, in a public school she would not have this ability, same goes with a child who needs a slower pace. I am afraid we will be done with first grade math by Thanksgiving!

This is what Emmie has to know for her Fall test, all of this will be a walk in the park for her. Fall Benchmark Reading – Students will be assessed in four areas on the fall benchmark and have one minute to complete each benchmark. The first area is Letter Naming Fluency (LNF) . Students will be asked to identify as many uppercase and lowercase letters as possible. The letters are in random order. The target for LNF in the fall is 40 correctly identified letters. The students will be assessed on Letter Sound Fluency (LSF) . They will be asked to give the sounds of the vowels and consonants. The letters will be in random order. The target for LSF in the fall is 25 correct sounds. The third assessment is Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF) . Students will be asked to finger stretch the sounds they hear in a word they are orally given by their teacher. For example; the word "cat" would be finger stretched and said |c – a – t|. The target for PSF in the fal...

Well I am preparing for week 2 it is a short week with labor day off. I feel better this week but still nervous.  I am really good at teaching math, spelling, vocab, and writing. I am NOT good at teaching literature....I dont like it all actually. I have yet to figure out Art and Music because I personally think it is a waste of time.....I am not into that stuff.  I signed Emmie up for a art class every other tuesday for an hour, isnt that good enough?  How does art help me in my life today?  I would rather just do arts and crafts.....how much art do you get in a public school?  And then music, can't we listen to it on the radio in the car and consider it good?  How was music in 1st grade helped me be a better person today?  Please someone if you feel different tell me!!!!! Then there is history and science.  I want this to be FUN!  History is Ancient Egypt, and Science is on measuring right now....and the lessons are borin...