The Connett Connection

So the last two weeks have been very unconventional in our home school journey.  For week 14, we were out of town at my grandmother's house.  I told my daughter I would only take a few days of school since we were already 8 days behind, but that I would not make her have school lessons everyday since we were technically on vacation. I love the way my daughter will sometimes do her writing in artistic ways.  She loves to be cutesy and loves art, so I do not correct her when she does things like the above writing.  She did what I asked in a way that was fun for her.  The fact that she thought to make her letters this way was impressive to me as I've never modeled letters looking like this nor have I ever seen her make them this way before.  Everyday we do school work, I have her write the date as the first thing we do.  We talk about the days of the week, month of the year and the number of the day during this time as well! We did another guid...

Another week done and another one to begin!  We had, overall, a good week.  We actually had school time all five days this week and finished all the word we had planned to do!  We started our new phonics book, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  So far, my daughter knows and is able to do the lessons, so that is a nice change.  I am seeing she knows a little more than she was letting on! We finished up our Halloween activities early this week.  We carved our pumpkin on Monday.  My son chose the design and my daughter wanted to help make the pumpkin.  She loved sorting the seeds, but did not like touching the "slimy stuff." Our very last Halloween craft this year were these mummies!  One was made with masking tape as the wrapping and the other was made by cutting paper strips and gluing them to the mummy! We had some great weather this week, so we spent a lot of time outside! We finished a series of lessons on e...

It's fall and the day before Halloween!  Are you looking for some fun last minute ideas for your pumpkin other than just carving it?  Here is what we have done with our pumpkins! I first bought three pumpkins, one for each of my children.  I let them sit outside and paint them any way they desired!  They turned out wonderful!  I use them as decoration on my counter! I also bought a small pumpkin pie pumpkin to do come activities with.  I cut the top from the pumpkin and dug out the insides.  I let my daughter feel the inside and had her pick out the seeds. After washing and drying the seeds, we counted how many we had with a pumpkin seed counting mat .  I first, before even cutting the pumpkin, had her predict how many she thought would be in there.  She guessed 50.  We had 77 seeds total!  Apparently smooth pumpkin have less seeds.  I learned this after picking out this pumpkin.  Some people had pumpkins o...

Week eleven is done!  And I am a little late posting as week 12 has already begun!  We had a busy weekend with fall festivals and family visits!  We continued learning about community helpers.  We made this doctors kit when we learned about doctors.  I had cotton balls, q-tips and band aids at home and we looked through magazines to find examples of other things a doctor would use! One of my daughter's favorite thing from the week was this skeleton puzzle.  I gave her the bones to see if she could figure it out.  The picture on the left shows what she did. The one on the right was where we learned about where each bone actually goes and felt some of those bones under our own skin! Since it was the week before Halloween, we had a lot of fun with pumpkins this week!  We carved a small pumpkin pie pumpkin and dug out the insides.  I washed and cleaned the seeds and we used this counting mat to figure out how many seeds we had!...

Halloween time offers such fun opportunities for unique crafts and activities!  I have highlighted the activities and crafts that my kids have really enjoyed! My daughter loved painting her own paper plate pumpkin!  Super simple craft for even the youngest of kids, just pain or color your paper plate orange and add a stem! I created this Hundreds Chart puzzle for my daughter with a pumpkin patch theme!  She has enjoyed putting it together over and over! We have a Halloween tradition where each kid gets to paint their own pumpkin.  My five year old did the purple one on the left, the 2 year old made the one on the right and I painted the one in the middle for the baby.  They will remain on our bar until Halloween when we place them outside for the trick-or-treaters.  Then they will go back on our counter until they are no longer good. Another pumpkin activity we did was this pumpkin mosaic.  My daughter insisted on making a pattern...

I am so glad we are all feeling better!  While the boys have horrible congestion and cough, neither have fevers! It is so nice to not have to be tending to sick little ones for a change.  I want to get back to our normal. This week we continued our fall theme by doing this fun painting pumpkin craft.  My daughter insisted on doing it on her own.  I think she did well! We also did this hundreds chart puzzle of a pumpkin patch !  I simply printed the answer key for the puzzle and cut it apart in various shapes for my little girl to put together. We made some pumpkin decorations this week to display,  My five year old made the pumpkin on the left, my 2 year old did the one on the right and I made the one in the middle for the baby!  My daughter thought this was the best art project ever and was so excited to pick out her own pumpkin at the store! We are still learning how to spell our last name!  I made this letter cards for her ...