Caffeinated Homeschooler

This week we finished learning about the fourth and final layer of the rainforest, the Emergent Layer. This is also our fourth and final week of learning about the rainforest with  Mother Goose Time before venturing into the Arctic next month. We learned about Blue Morpho Butterflies, Kapok Trees, Hummingbirds, Mangos, and Strangler Fig Trees. We have learned so much about each layer and how it all works together to make an ecosystem. I loved the Rainforest Friends game that was included this week. It was supposed to be a matching game but when I saw the cards and the little strip that labeled the four layers I decided to use it a little differently. We used it as a review of all we have learned this month about the different layers of the rainforest and the animals that live there. First I took down the topic poster and we pointed out the four layers and recalled any information that we had learned. My son knew all the bugs lived on the forest floor, and my daughter rememb...

We took this week off as sort of a sick/holiday week. We started off the week with colds and everyone wanting to rest. Then I worked on thanksgiving, my husband had a four day weekend, and then we made a Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. It was very difficult to stay on any routine this week, but we had fun and that is a bonus of homeschooling. We get to just kind of go with what life throws at us and not stress about it. One thing we enjoyed a lot this week was reading lots of books. We love read aloud time, it is such a cozy time! We like to snuggle up on the couch with a blanket and a couple books and read.  Mother Goose Time has been a fun addition to this time of day because they always include a really great picture book with the months supplies. And not only do they send a book, they also send fun extension activities that go beautifully with the book. This Month they sent a  story from the Takuna Tribe of South America. It's titled Chimidyue A Folktale of the Amazon ...

I've mentioned before that as a Mother Goose Time Blog Ambassador I am required to write about a focus topic once a month. For November they asked us to write about family engagement. At first I wasn't sure what to write about. We are a homeschooling family and as far as I am aware my family and especially my husband have been very on board and supportive with this decision. So I started thinking about ways I try to involve my family in our education and how we share what we are doing with them. This blog for example is a great way for my family to keep tabs on us and see what exciting things we are learning. A blog also acts as a journal of our homeschool weeks. Later I know I will enjoy looking back and remembering what we were doing when my kids were just starting out, and I think they will have fun looking back and seeing what we did when they are older. I also share a lot on Instagram, which is another fun way to see what we are up to. Our family doesn't live close to ...

We just finished our first week of learning about the Rainforest. I love that our  Mother Goose Time curriculum lets us get fully immersed in a theme for a whole month. It is so much fun to have an underlying theme built into what we are doing. I try to make sure we get plenty of supporting read a alouds and find movies or documentaries if appropriate. We were really excited to start the rainforest month because the rainforest is so beautiful. This theme is also providing plenty of animal study and science experiments, both of which are favorites around this house. This first week has been all about the floor layer of the rainforest. We have learned about jaguars, roots, lily pads, mushrooms, and leafcutter ants so far. What I like about this week is that 2 different science experiment projects were offered. We had a root experiment and a mold experiment. I liked these projects because not only are they a great hands on way to learn, but they are also long term experiments which...

We finished up our month of learning about the weather and changing season last week and we weren't ready to jump into our new  Mother Goose Time Box just yet. So I decided to take a couple days to celebrate Halloween and we used our Pumpkin Patch Celebration Kit that came with our October curriculum. Every month Mother Goose Time sends a celebration kit to add in to your box as a bonus day. A lot of times they are tied into a season or holiday. This month was about Halloween and pumpkins. I love that this is included because it makes adding in the holidays even easier. This gives me fun themed activities, rhymes, stories, and even snack ideas to add into what we already do for the holidays. The kit comes with invitations and I always use them even though it is just my two kids. I write them up the day before and leave them on their beds for them to find before they go to sleep. They always get so excited to go to bed so they can get up and do the fun activities. I think th...

One of the goals I am working on with my son is being able to count to 20 and recognize the written numbers. I made sure to focus on this goal this month especially when utilizing our More Math workbook from Mother Goose Time I noticed some improvement in these areas this month. I have also noticed his confidence has improved as well. I think that since he has been so well supported with this gentle workbook as well as my guidance he isn't as afraid to try. He really enjoyed the dot to dot page and was able to count all the way to 13 before he had a little trouble with the numbers and I had to help him. I think I might find some more dot to dots for him that have numbers to 20 because he really seemed to have fun with it and what a perfect way to practice counting.  I also noticed that he did a lot better with recognizing quantities and written numbers. When he did this workbook page he was able to do the whole thing by himself.  We have really been enjo...

We had so much fun with this weeks Invitation to Create from Mother Goose Time . We are working through our last week of the Weather and Changing Seasons theme by learning about different kinds of storms. We learned about Thunderstorms, Hail, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, and Floods. All are very scary storms to be involved in, but we read many books and did a lot of activities, as well as learned some safety tips if we ever get caught in one of these types of storms. All of this made it seem a little less scary, but I still think I would rather not be caught in any of them. I will stick to our constant gray and drizzle over major storms. During the Hail lesson we got to paint with bouncy balls as part of the invitation to create! the kids were so excited. We were given a little sheet about the project and we talked about how the bouncy balls were like hail, and we discussed how we could use the balls in our art work.  After the discussion they decided what colors they we...