NSYP Day (Part 2) & Lesson Updates

I am generally not a spontaneous person by nature, but when one of the moms in my homeschool group sent through the link to GranolaMom4God’s National Sharpen Your Pencil Day, the idea struck me as completely charming. That was one on the very first things I saw when I sat down at my desk to get started on school today, so I thought, ‘why not?’ and printed out the robot pencil toppers and the activity pack.

<—This is supposed to be me, as a robot, colored by PeaGreen. Notice the ‘ponytails’. And I don’t wear purple. Just sayin’. LOL

The pack was a bit young for my kids; I think they were targeting more pre-school/ younger elementary age so we did what all snazzy homeschooling moms do – we adapted the lesson plan. I started off by bundling up some pencils and placing them on top of their worksheets on their desks. I had them gather up and count their pencils – not only the ones on their desks, but also the ones they have in their rooms. Our total pencil count for today was 215  (112 for mom; 58 for PeaGreen, and 45 for LBB). We also kept a tally of how many pencils we each sharpened throughout the day: total 52   (7 for Mom, 25 for PeaGreen & 20 for LBB).

There were four handwriting sheets, and since we still do handwriting, I just had the boys do those pages as-is. If I’d thought about it before hand, I’d have given them a few fun facts about pencils to write on the lines, following the wave patters or slant pattern. However, they did enjoy the idea of doing such a ‘simple’ assignment, so it was fun which is one of the goals, so I am content.

The spelling assignment was a word that the boys have had before, so we did a scavenger hunt instead, finding one item that began with each letter in ‘pencils’. Below is LBB’s treasure:

P= pencil

E= electronics

N= nothing    (Clever or lazy? You decide.)

C= cents (or change – he said both)

I= Insanity (The Joker)

L= list of items

S= shoe

The boys did the pattern cards and created patters, then made designs and pasted them into their packet, and also cut out the pencils ordering puzzle. They also measured the pencils on the ‘longest to shortest’ page, and colored and cut out their robot pencil toppers – a throw back to easier grades, but fun, nonetheless.

In other news, we’ve been busy little bees around here lately, which accounts for the lack of blogging. We’re finishing the last few mini-books in our Black History Month Lapbook up today and tomorrow, and I have a Titanic Lapbook (with 23 minibook templates & links) ready to start in a couple of weeks to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. And hey – an honest to goodness excuse to watch Titanic again? Even yesser.

I also ordered The Number Devil from Amazon and found More of a Mom’s Number Devil Lesson Plans. I printed out her worksheets and lesson plans and we’re planning on starting that next week. We’re still in the midst of multiplication and division, but it’s getting kind of stale, so I thought we’d work on something new and different for a bit. I’m not planning on going through TND all at once; we’ll focus on that next week and just doing a few basic math drills, then go back to our regularly scheduled math curriculum when we come back from our break. I just wanted something to break up the monotony – repetition and patterns and foundations are good, but after a while, I find them so boring. The Number Devil was recommended on something I was reading a while back that was talking about kids with ADHD – the concepts, especially with More of a Mom’s lesson plans – are a little more ‘whole learning’ based instead of dry textbook stuff. There are even notebooking pages incorporated into her lesson plans.

We’ve also been hard at work planning and getting ready for our group’s second annual Science Fair. One of the local state parks that we frequent has agreed to host for us, and we’re doing a ‘Moms vs. Kids’ contest to help everyone get involved. We’re all very excited about it! I am doing a blood spatter experiment, PeaGreen is building a hovercraft model and LBB has been quite secretive about his project – I think he’s planning on getting his dad involved.

On a sad note, LBB’s lizard, Lizzy, died yesterday. She wasn’t a pet in the traditional sense; we frequently get green anole lizards stuck in the house. They’re escaping the heat or cold or damp – I’m not really sure, but they love it here. In any case, LBB found one in his room a few weeks ago and created a ‘habitat’ for it on a shelf (but open, so that the lizard could come and go and be free) and he developed an attachment to it. In any case, he has been quite sad about her loss, so we made some commemorative art today to remember her by. This was my contribution to Lizzy’s memory.

This week is also Texas Independence Day – we reviewed our Texas Lapbooks (TX Independence and Texas Symbols) and went over our plans to visit the San Jacinto Monument in a few weeks. We’re also gearing up for some more home improvement stuff (I finally have a new dishwasher – installed!!) and yard work, including planning our (biggest yet) garden for this spring. I’ve been Pinteresting ideas for a while now; it is going to be so much fun laying them out and seeing everything come to fruition.

Hope your week is going well!
Warmly,

~h