Oceans Week

There's a few things I got for every week (or tried to).
First, I tried to get those bulletin board cutouts for each week (at the Dollar Tree). These are going to be used the first day of the week. Mel will write one capital and one lower case letter on each one. I thought this would make practicing her letters a little more fun, plus it will decorate our school area for the week.
Second, I bought a foam board at the Dollar Tree. This is going to be our sorting board. I also have been collecting old magazines to use for the sorting board.
Third, I am getting books from the library for each theme (not all at once!). We also participate in the summer reading program at our library, so even if it doesn't say it in the schedule, we will be reading these books every day. In the schedule I only included them if they were part on an activity or specific to the day. I did already get some America once because those are more difficult to find around 4th of July.
Fourth, I bought window clings (again at Dollar Tree) for some of the weeks. I also found cute clock and money ones. I love window clings!
Fifth, workbooks at Dollar Tree. It's a lot cheaper and easier than printing out a bunch of pages. There's some really cute Disney ones.
Each week there's a movie that goes with the theme. Most of the movies are Disney (which I already own).

I have signed Melodie up for swimming and dance classes for the summer. Also, one of the neighboring cities has a park program ($20/3hours/3days) with a weekly theme. Some of the themes fit with mine, so I signed her up for those. If we don't have time for everything scheduled, the first thing to go will be the crafts because she will be doing crafts at the parks. The second thing will be the computer time. I included computer time because it's important to learn computer skills and Mel enjoys it. I also want her to realize there's more than just Disney Junior on the computer. Since it's just me and Mel, we have a lot of time together throughout the day to do this stuff. That's why there's so much here. And because of that, Mel and I might do some of this on Saturdays and Sundays too.

Also, each day has it's own thing to include. Mondays will include a gospel lesson, Tuesdays a movie, Wednesdays will include music, Thursdays we will work on sight words, and Friday will be for fun foods. It doesn't mean we won't do these on other days, or that they will always be included, it was just a way for me to organize my thoughts. The same with the little mini themes (sea animals, salt water, etc...). Just a way to focus.

Here's my schedule for the first week of Summer Homeschool (starting June 18th). Our theme is "Oceans". I did spring for a couple of things for this week. I bought this National Geographic book. I first checked it out at the library, but I loved it so much (and wanted it for the week the theme is "world") that I bought it. I also bought an inflatable globe. I've wanted a real one, but I'm not sure where we'd put it, and the inflatable one was cheaper.

If anyone wants to join us for a field trip, let me know. Monday or Saturday works best for us this week. I was thinking of going to the beach or tide pools.

Monday

(The Seven Oceans)

(gospel lesson)
prepare Jonah and the Whale FHE together
craft: paper bag whale (I'm sure there's an example you could find online. I got the idea from this craft book that I love)
Reading and Writing:I found three ABC Ocean books at the library. We will read these and Mel will write her ABC's on cutouts.
Math: worksheets from education.com You can find some for every level. We are using these:
Number Jumble, Addition Color by Number, Sea Life Subtraction Problem Solving
Computer time: Sheppard Software site Learn the names and locations of the oceans
Craft: We were going to do a paper mache globe, but I found a ball at The Dollar Tree that was blue and white. It was perfect for the ocean part of a globe, so I didn't really want to cover the whole thing. Instead we are going to draw the continents on the ball (label later during the world theme) and label the oceans.

Tuesday

(sea animals)

(movie)

Finding Nemo

Writing: Trace the names of the real animals in Finding Nemo

 

I made these worksheets. Melodie can write letters without tracing, but I put them on there so I would know the real names. Plus, she still confuses b and d. This will be good practice.

Reading: Read about the real animals in Finding Nemo as well as read library books

Math: I found the Number Ocean Sort game here. However, I wanted it Nemo themed and I didn't want to pay. If you want to do number recognition only, just leave out the math problems.

You cut them out and play the game. It goes up to the number ten.

Craft: Draw sea creatures (I have a book from the library, but there are some online). Clay sea turtle (I bought a kit for less than $1 at JoAnn's).

Sorting Board: sea mammals/fish (two days for this)

Wednesday

(sea animals)

(music)

Listen to Finding Nemo: Ocean Favorites (I got it from the library)

Listen to a humpback whale song Ocean Link

Sing Along Song Monterey Bay Aquarium

Reading and Writing: Write an ocean word (for example: fish) then look for it when reading a book. Different word for each book.

Math: worksheets (again from education.com) Telling Time, Undersea Number Adventure

Computer: Play Wild Kratts Ocean Game

Craft: Dolphin sand craft (I bought a kit at Michael's for less than $1) and jellyfish crafts

There's one from No Time For Flashcards that uses cupcake liners, but I'll be using coffee filters that I have left over from a previous craft. 

There's another one that is on pinterest that doesn't have a link.

To me it looks like string, paper bowls and streamers.

Thursday

(salt water and waves)

Reading and Writing: Sight Words Memory Game. Write sight words twice on cards and we'll play memory with them.

Math and Computer: Estimation computer game Shark Numbers

Craft and Science Experiment: Salt Water Picture from Funology.

Friday

(salt water and waves)

(Fun foods)

Breakfast: crab croissant Pink 'N Punchy lunches uses cold cuts, but I'm going to turn it into a breakfast sandwich with egg, cheese and bacon.

Lunch: fish sticks and jello fish bowl Martha Stewart uses unflavored gelatin in a fish bowl. I'm going to make individual servings in plastic cups and use whatever blue jello there is in a box. If anyone would like to join us for lunch, let me know.

Dinner: Octopus and Seaweed I'm not sure how this will taste, but it looks fun! The Taste of Home recipe uses beef ramen noodles. I think I'll just use spaghetti with a brown butter sauce.

Reading: What is a wave? (book I got at the library)

Writing: Same activity as Wednesday

Math: worksheets From a Disney workbook I bought at Dollar Tree

Craft: Sticker ocean scene. I have a lot of stickers and scrapbooking paper, so we're going to use some of them for this.

Computer: The Monterey Bay Aquarium website has a lot of games and activities. I like the Deep Sea Memory Game.

Science Experiment: Salt Water Egg Experiment. Find it at Experiment-Resources

Lakeshore has a free craft every Saturday. The one on the 23rd fits with our theme, so we'll be going.  

If we have more time to do stuff:

Watch DisneyNature Oceans (DVRd it on TV)

Shark Knowledge computer game

Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium Puzzles on the computer

Funbrain Sea Dive computer game

If you have younger kids, there's some homeschool bloggers that have put together some really cute printables out there. Here's the three I liked the best:

The Oceans from 2 Teaching Mommies

Under the Girly Sea from 1+1+1=1

Deep Blue Sea from Homeschool Share

Peter Pan Magic

 I'm not sure when this started. I like to joke that it was here:

After all, if you hate the villain that much, you must love the hero. That's me, less than 1 year old, with my dad at Disneyland. Obviously I'm not feeling the love for Captain Hook.
 It was actually sometime in jr. high or high school when I read the book by J.M. Barrie. I liked it but at the time it wasn't my favorite.
 When I started high school I met the girl who would be my best friend for the rest of my life, Cindy. At some point we decided Peter Pan was our favorite Disney character. My best friend says, "we related to him." We really liked happy thoughts. And the idea of flying. And not growing up. We bought Peter Pan hats and actually wore them.
 When I moved away, we kept in touch. I shared my love of Peter Pan with my new little siblings.

It definately stuck the most with Megan. A few weekends ago she came down to So Cal to go to Disneyland with a friend. I got a call that she saw Peter Pan in the parade. She cheered so loud that he came over to give them all high fives. I was so proud. First, I taught them at a young age to cheer for characters during a parade because they will acknowledge you. Second, although she doesn't love Peter like I do, she thought of me.  After high school I moved back to So Cal. We worked at Disneyland (she was first, I followed). This meant a lot of our paycheck went straight back to the company because we bought anything with Peter Pan on it. Since we got in Disneyland for free, we watched Fantasmic! a lot. There's an amazing section with Peter on a pirate ship (this scene is not in Fantasmic! at WDW, which seriously leaves it lacking).

We would cheer like crazy during this section.
 After we both left Disneyland, we still sought out Peter Pan related things. My favorite Peter Pan movies came out in 2003. It starred Jeremy Sumpter. If you haven't seen this version, you need to.

 In 2007 we went to the El Capitan in Hollywood to see Disney's Peter Pan.

We went the first night, so there was a panel discussion that included animators and the character voices.

It was thrilling to meet Kathryn Beaumont, the voice of Wendy.

 I waited until my daughter was 1 for her first visit to Disneyland. Our first ride was Peter Pan's Flight.

 In 2010 an amazing show came to So Cal. Peter Pan 360 was one of the best shows I have ever seen.

  

We even bought tickets to a behind the scenes tour.

 So why am I thinking of all of this now. Last night Cindy and I took Melodie to her first real musical she'd been to other made-for-kids-so-they-were-short plays). We were thrilled that Peter Pan with Cathy Rigby was in our area. We were excited. I debated for a while on whether or not to take Mel, but I thought it would be perfect if Melodie's first musical was Peter Pan. We dressed up for a night at the theater.

We arrived early knowing we needed a booster seat for Mel and that we'd want to buy some merchandise. I ended up buying a program, a Peter Pan glow stick, a magnet and a Tinker Bell necklace for Melodie.

We had seats in the orchestra level (which Cindy and I don't normally spring for).

There's nothing like the moment when Peter Pan flies onto the stage. Cathy Rigby (and the rest of the cast) did an amazing job. It was fun to watch Melodie (who does know some of the music since I listen to it quite often). She did NOT like the pirates (actually found them quite scary). But that was fun too. Her reactions were amusing to watch.

Her favorite part was the very end when Peter Pan flew over the audience and the croc chased after Captain Hook. It was a very magical night.

Summer Homeschool Adventure

 I might go into this in more detail later, but here's a brief description of why I made the choice I did for my daughter's education (my husband was willing to support any choice, but left the research and the ulitmate choice up to me). We chose public school. I actually never really considered homeschool until I met Sherry Jones. She was the first person I met who did it in a way that made sense to me. And I adore her kids. When the time came to make a choice for my daughter's education, I found out two of my good friends (with kids my daughter's age) were going to homeschool their children (they have since moved, so good thing I didn't base my decision on that!). So I really started looking into it. Let me just say that there are pros and cons to both public school and homeschool (private school was not an option for us unless I didn't want to be a stay at home mom anymore, which wasn't going to happen). When I found out the school I was suppose to send my daughter to school to was terrible, I put in for a transfer to a different school in the same district. I knew that if the transfer wasn't approved I would homeschool. But if it was, then a choice would need to be made. It was and I made a choice after a lot of research.
 Basically, the pros of public school were better than the pros of homeschool. Here's what I love about my daughter going to public school:
*My daughter is an only child. Socialization was important. I know people say this can happen in other ways, and believe me we've tried other ways that for various reasons weren't very successful. School has been great for this.
*We live in Southern California and diversity is the name of the game. I want her to meet other people who don't look the way she does, believe the same things she does, or live the way she does.
*She could be "a light unto the world" at school.
*Money. With all the research I did online, people claimed it didn't cost THAT much when they children were little, but just ink and paper alone would be a crazy amount of money (ink is expensive, and I noticed most people didn't include that in their "cost").
*Melodie wanted to go to school.
 The one homeschool benefit that almost won me over is the flexibility. But, I'm not really that big on daily flexibility anyway. My daughter has been on a schedule her whole life. It wouldn't stop with homeschool. The thought of going on vacation whenever we wanted was a little appealing, but public school didn't stop us from our road trip!
 I would just like to mention that after all my research there's a couple of things a lot of the online homeschool community would post that really bothered me (I might expand on my thoughts on these later). I saw these comments so often on different sites that I had to remind myself that not all parents that homeschool feel this way.
1) If you don't homeschool then you don't care about your child's education, or at least not as much as those that homeschool do.
2) Your child will see, hear and be exposed to the most terrible of things in public school.
3) Children are too young "to be a light unto the world", so even though we are told to do that in the Bible, it doesn't apply to them.
4) All public schools are terrible, after all, the public education system is terrible.
5) You're not in control of what your child is taught.
6) If the school schedule says "Math 30 min., Reading, 30 min., Writing 30 min." then children are sitting at a desk that whole time.
  So public school is the choice we've made for now, and we loved this year!  I am VERY involved at school and with Melodie's education. I love her teachers, the education she's receiving and how she's receiving it.
 Since I am not opposed to homeschool, but public school is out for the summer, I came up with an idea to do summer homeschool for Melodie. Each week Melodie and I are going to do math, reading, writing, science, art and activities centered around a mini theme. Her teachers have been so helpful (just like they were when I was planning educational stuff for our road trip). I'm super excited about this summer.
 The point of this whole post is to invite anyone who wants to to join my for my Summer Homeschool Adventure. Here are the themes I'm doing:

June 18-22 Oceans

June 25-29 Birds

July 2-6 America

July 9-13 Safari

July 16-20 Food Groups

July 23-27 Solar System

July 30-Aug 3 Continents and Olympics

Aug 6-Aug 10 Royalty

Aug 13-17 Dance and Music

Aug 20-24 Back 2 School

Join us for as much or as little as you'd like. I'll try to post links, worksheets and crafts on here at the beginning of the week, but if you'd like advance notice on any of these things, or to know about any "field trips", send me your email!

CANMT Trip: The Drive Home

 Melodie had a difficult time sleeping that night. She knew it was snowing outside, and that was just too exciting. She woke up several times asking if it was still snowing and when she could play. At a semi-decent hour in the morning, we finally bundled her up and let her out.

She loved helping Rocky scrape the car and she also tried to build a snowman.

A lack of toys didn't stop her. She found that the scrapper was fun to play with in the snow.

When it was time to eat breakfast and get dressed she was afraid to miss out on anything. She asked daddy not to finish the car so she could still help. She was also disappointed that the motel didn't have a breakfast. We had breakfast food since we had actually planned to camp that night.

 We had a long drive home ahead of us, so we left pretty early. We didn't have anything planned for the drive home, but we ended up stopping in Kingman, AZ. We actually had more time to stop than we originally thought we would because 1) Melodie woke up so early and 2) we were an hour closer to home because we didn't actually stay at the Grand Canyon. We ended up liking Kingman. First we stopped at the Locomotive Park where we played on a train.

After that we went to the Route 66 Museum.

It was almost impossible to pull Melodie away from these lights

Melodie bought her last souvenir in the gift shop. She spent the rest of her money on a blinged out Route 66 shirt. It was a great souvenir. She loves wearing it.

Wearing her shirt at home

 And we continued our long drive home. California here we come!

It was a welcome sight. I wonder why California doesn't have pretty welcome signs like other states? We were glad to be in our home state with our actual home not too far away. Rocky and Mel stopped at a McDonald's for lunch (I went somewhere else). This McDonald's had some fun things inside.

While I wasn't thrilled with the video games, at least you had to stand to use them. And they were free. We made it home shortly before 5pm.
 This was such a great road trip. We saw great friends and some amazing things in nature. We are so glad we had the opportunity to travel to all the places we did.

CANMT Trip: Snow Fun

 Our motel that night was not great. But it was just a last minute place to sleep, so it was fine. With all the snow outside, Melodie just wanted to play in it.

There was a pretty big patch of snow in front of our room in the parking lot, so we bundled her up and let her play. She was in heaven.

Melodie has wanted to make snow angels for a long time. That's why at White Sands earlier in the trip she made sand angels. When she first saw the snow she asked if she could make a snow angel, but she either wasn't dressed for it, or there wasn't an area where she could. When I told her she could make one now, she didn't hesitate.

 

I thought it was especially funny when she couldn't get up.

Then she started throwing snowballs again.

She threw a couple at the car, and then turned on Rocky.

Rocky played with her for a little while, but not having gloves hindered his offense. Soon I was out there throwing snowballs with Mel instead.

I couldn't help it though; I had to get Rocky a few times.

I ended up covered in my fair share of snow.

After a while we put Melodie in a warm bath, which she loved after playing in the snow.

CANMT Trip: The Grand Canyon

 It was lunch time and there wasn't any fast food or restaurants along the road. We ended up getting food at a gas station. In a little over an hour we were at the east entrance to the Grand Canyon National Park. As we entered we were told there was good weather here, but as we got closer to the main Visitors Center by Mather Point, the worse the road conditions would get.
 First we went to Desert View. We stopped at the Visitors Center there, where we picked up Melodie's Jr. Ranger Packet. The ranger told us that one of the requirements was to go to a ranger program. Since we were so late in the day, there weren't very many left. We chose Geo-Glimpse, which was the closest one without having to wait at Desert View for hours (which we probably should have done). But we didn't know just how bad the weather was further west. We knew we would be cutting it close as far as time. We walked to the Grand Canyon passing by the watchtower on the way.

The Grand Canyon was beautiful.

Rocky and Melodie wanted to go up the watchtower. I was still traumatized from Walnut Canyon and wasn't about to do anything that had to do with heights. Some of the fences by the Grand Canyon were bad enough.

I went part of they way up, and this was the view.

 We drove to Yavapai Point and Geology Museum, stopping at a couple of the points/views along the way. If one looked close to the road, we would get out and quickly take a look and take a few pictures.

We didn't get any pictures of me because we were in a hurry, it was so cold it was easier to just keep the camera, and we thought we'd have a lot more time after the ranger program.

 As we were driving, the snow got worse. By the time we got to Yavapai Point we couldn't even see the Grand Canyon. We watched the ranger program, which was very interesting at was even great for Melodie. We learned about DUDE (how the Grand Canyon was formed).

See that big window behind the ranger? That's suppose to be a view of the Grand Canyon. You couldn't see a thing. We kept going outside to check, but it didn't change. We talked with one of the rangers. He asked if we were going to be there tomorrow because tomorrow it wouldn't be snowing. It hadn't been snowing yesterday either. Just the day we were there.
 This is when we were very thankful that we went off-plan and entered the Grand Canyon National Park on the east side. If we hadn't, we wouldn't have seen the Grand Canyon at all. I was a little sad that I didn't get a picture of me in front of the Grand Canyon, but we actually decided that we'll just have to go back. There was so much more to do there than we thought and we have the America the Beautiful annual pass. We're going to try our best to make it back before it expires.
 We still wanted to go to the Mather Point Visitors Center. The weather was terrible by the time we got there. The bathrooms weren't actually in the VC, you had to walk to another building (same to get to the gift shop) and we didn't want to even go outside to walk those short distances (we did though). The wind was so hard that with the snow it was actually hard to keep your eyes open. We loved the new Visitors Center.

I almost had a heart attack watching the movie there. What are those people thinking standing on the edge like that? They must be crazy. (There's a short version of the movie here so you can see what I mean). We also watched Science On a Sphere and Melodie got her ranger badge.

It was dinner time, so we got ready to leave. It took some time to get to the car. First, I wanted a picture of me and anything just to show I had been there.

Then Melodie discovered icicles.

They were just at her level and she loved them. And we still couldn't get her to walk where there wasn't snow.

After finally making it to the car, we drove out of the national park and picked up dinner which we ate on the way to our motel.