Birthday Girl!

Celeste celebrated her 7th birthday today! She had the whole day planned out including the food for each meal. We have a little tradition that whenever it is someone's birthday in our family, we all take the day off, from school and for Daddy, from work. Today was a perfect day, she told me she loved it!

What works for Celeste...

In this third part of my "what works" series, I will be sharing what works and what doesn't for my youngest, Celeste. She is six years old.

We cover Language Arts and Math together while Adrienne and Andre do their independent work in the morning. This seems to work for us so far. Celeste "hangs around" in the afternoon while we do the rest of our subjects, History, Science, Geography, etc... She is picking up things but I don't require her to do any of the work.

What works for us is basically what we are doing.

I am using Explode the Code for phonics, spelling and handwriting. She enjoys working through these workbooks and I can see that she is learning as we go along.

To practice reading, we are using the Elson Readers Primer. We are past the halfway point in this and I can honestly say that we are both enjoying it. I use the teacher's guide to introduce the story to her and the new words, which I write down for her in the notebook. The stories in the teacher's guide match the ones in her reader, but are usually longer and give more details so she is familiar with the main idea when it's her turn to read aloud. We rarely use the worksheets.

For Math, we are using Miquon Math. Celeste really likes doing Math with these workbooks. She uses the manipulatives when she needs them. I haven't brought out flashcards, choosing the discovery approach instead of drilling. I personally don't like the teacher's guide that goes along these workbooks. I don't need it at this point but we will need to switch to a different math curriculum when she gets to higher levels, probably Teaching Textbooks.

I sometimes feel like I am not doing enough with Celeste, but at the same time I can see the benefits of not pushing her. She is enthousiastic about learning new things and gives herself copywork or other school-ish stuff to do, all on her own. 

Even though this isn't curriculum, it works so I wanted to share! She has a basket where she keeps a lot of the books and things that she can go to if we're busy. In this basket, she has sticker books, her game boy and games, some of her favourite books and easy readers, pens and paper, an erasable board...

She also likes to pull out games that she can play by herself. I took a picture of some of her favourites. Rush Hour is a family favourite and she really likes working through this puzzle. FunThinkers is a fun and educational game (with the number tiles on the photo). The other is something to practice math facts with. It's called Sum Time by Jumbo. We also have a spelling one. We were given these, so I am not sure if they are still available.

The next post in this series will cover the subjects we do together.

More Paper Decorations and Felt Food Too!

These stars are easy and fun to make. I made the first one with some leftover catalogue pages and the next two are made with scrapbook paper that I have had for years!
Here is the link I used to learn how to make these: Make Hanging Christmas Stars. You can make these any size. Next we'll try smaller ones.

I also wanted to show you some of the felt food I have made. These are for Celeste's Christmas present. She asked me to make her some breakfast felt foods for her play kitchen. If you would like the links for the tutorials, please visit this post at my corner.

Wordless Wednesday ~ Her Style!

{this moment: corn snake and Celeste}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

hosted by Soule Mama.

An Early Start for Celeste

Celeste has been asking to work on her math (Miquon) for the last two mornings, first thing in the morning when she wakes up, so we have, with a little help from Clara and Orion!

It's Learn Nothing Day today, July 24! We obviously failed, but I wanted to pass the word around!

Future Librarian?

Celeste (5) loves to play librarian. She has for about the last 2 years now. Usually she uses her cash register to scan the bar codes on the books and puts them in bags. The other day, she discovered the elastics in a drawer and the discarded library receipts in our library basket. Now we have "books on hold" right at our house :)

Book Sharing Monday :: Fancy Nancy

Celeste has loved all the Fancy Nancy books we have found at our library. I didn't think I would like them at first, but once I started reading them aloud to her, she grew on me!

These two titles are the last ones we found and our favourites so far.

Fancy Nancy Explorer Extraordinaire! and Fancy Nancy's Favourite Fancy Words from Accessories to Zany are written by Jane O'Connor and illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser.

In Explorer Extraordinaire, Fancy Nancy shares her love of the outdoors while she is exploring her backyard, discovering butterflies, wildflowers, birds, and more. The book has recipes and lots of interesting facts about nature. It's my favourite of the series so far.

Fancy Nancy's Favourite Fancy Words from Accessories to Zany is a guide of fancywords with explanations and great illustrations. Great for learning new vocabulary!

Fancy Nancy has her own website, filled with ideas, games, and more information about the books: Fancy Nancy .

Book Sharing Monday :: The Cobble Street Cousins

Celeste has discovered a series of chapter books that she loves! I have been trying for the last few months to get her interested in short chapter books. She can't read them on her own, but I enjoy reading to her, and thought it was time to add this type of book.

She still loves picture books, and we will continue to read those for many years. Adrienne and Andre still love good picture books and they are 12 and 11. I really believe there is no "age limit" with picture books.

Anyway, here is a series that Adrienne read herself a few years ago. I noticed one of the titles at our library and brought it home to try it with Celeste. She loved it and we requested all the other titles in the series.

The Cobble Street Cousins series is written by Cynthia Rylant (who has many wonderful books besides that series). There are six books in this series. All the stories include three nine year old girls, Tess, Lily, and Rosie. They are living with their Aunt Lucy for the year while their parents travel for work with the ballet. Lily and Rosie are sisters, and Tess is their cousin. 

Here are the titles of each book:

In Aunt Lucy's Kitchen

Special Gifts

Some Good News

Summer Party

Wedding Flowers

These stories are sweet, friendship stories. The girls enjoy spending time together, and with their Aunt. Each girl has a talent that shines through in each story.

Ponyo

We're all in love once more with the work of Hayao Miyazaki from Studio Ghibli. Celeste has always loved the movies from Studio Ghibli, her favourite (before Ponyo) was My Neighbour Totoro. The newest release is Ponyo, the story being inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid.
She told me this morning, after begging me to let her watch it again with her breakfast, that she loves this movie. In her words "I love the animation, Mom, the story, and they even put opera music in it!". She might only be 5, but she loves opera, and The Phantom of the Opera is another one of her favourites.

I just realized I used the word love way too many times in this short post, but there are no better words!

If you haven't see this beautiful movie yet, I would encourage you to rent it. You can read about it here and here. Here is a little preview:

Celeste's Animal Study ~ Beavers and Deer

Celeste and I have been studying animals. I had decided a few weeks back to create a science unit study on animals just for her. She is only five years old, and everything that I was looking at online, curriculum wise, seemed a bit too much. She is concentrating on learning how to read for now, so this science unit study is just for fun.

I thought I would share with you what we are doing, and in particular the links that I have found useful, and of course the books we have enjoyed. A note about the books, you might not be able to find the exact same books at your library, but I am sure other titles on the same subject would be available.

The overall plan is to cover Animals from October to December. Loosely based on the Well Trained Mind grade 1 science schedule, we will continue on with the human body from January to March, then do plants from April to June.

I divided the animals into five sections: mammals, birds, reptiles, bugs, and water life. I then picked about four animals per category to study. I tried to choose Canadian animals whenever I could, but will include some of Celeste's favourite animals along.

The first animal we studied was the beaver. We enjoyed a few picture story books:
Get Busy, Beaver by C. Crimi, Old Beaver by Udo Weigelt, and Beaver by Glen Rounds. I also had borrowed a couple of non-fiction books from the library:
Beaver by Jolyon Goddard and The Life Cycle of a Beaver by Bobbie Kalman. These last two books we mostly skimmed over the text and enjoyed the photographs.

Celeste enjoyed playing the Benjamin Beaver game from the YTV web site, and we watched the "Beaver Family" video on the National Geographic site.

I had printed a Spot the Beaver activity page and a beaver colouring page with handwriting practice too.


Our next animal was the deer.
The two picture books we read were perfect. "Two Days in May" by Harriet Peck Taylor is based on a true story, where people helped protect a small herd of deer that found themselves lost in a city. Our second picture book was Bambi, adapted by Janet Schulman from the original story by Felix Salten. "Deer at the Brook" by Jim Arnosky was another favourite.
We used another book for looking at photos of deer (Deer by Wil Mara) and learning a little bit about them.
We also watched Disney's Bambi.
I printed a deer colouring page (with printing practice) and a Bambi colouring page.

We are collecting all the activity and colouring pages into a small notebook, where I am also writing a couple of sentences for Celeste on each animal studied.

If you enjoy reading about Celeste's Animal Study, and find it useful in any way, please let me know by leaving a comment to this post, and I will continue posting about our study.

so proud of her..

Celeste has been working really hard these last few weeks, learning how to read. We are using the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading and so far, it's working!
I make her these simple little books with the sentences of the lessons, so she can practice them. She is now on her 4th book (lesson 33). The one that she is reading in the video is the first one, the easiest one for her. She only wanted me to record her with that one, until she saw herself, then she said "you can record me reading the other books too now!..

Our turtles

Celeste and I did some turtle line drawings, based on this lesson from Deep Space Sparkle. We had a lot of fun, even though she was finished a lot earlier than me! I will be trying a few more lessons from the Deep Space Sparkle site over this coming school year.