Classroom update (Holiday Edition)

Wheeee!  We've had quite a bit of adventures lately.  The holidays are over and boy was it a crazy ride through the Red Snail Classroom.  So many holidays back-to-back I couldn't quite find the time to catch everything up.  Here's a quick little update from our holidays of Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Valentine's Day, and more.  Enjoy!  And I will have an update for classroom things in a few weeks!  Hope your holidays were amazing!

For Halloween:

For Halloween we did a few crafts and worksheets to learn about spooky Halloween facts.  We made a Halloween banner found here, and learned about the history of Halloween events.

Skylar was able to find Halloween creatures, ghosts, and folk tales from all around the world.  He used the globe to locate where the country, or city was, then relate it to the map.

He then made a Halloween fortune teller, found here.

  

We made some hanging spiders, bats, and ghosts to decorate the classroom up a bit for the Halloween holiday.

We made bug and beetle thumb prints.  These area blast to make and so simple.  Take an ink pad, press your thumb into the ink, place on a paper, and create a bug or beetle.  

We made Halloween props, found here.

We made Halloween money, found here.

In our classroom we always make sure to cleanup as we go, straighten up after we're done, and sanitize our hands and desks when needed.  We use The Honest Company Hand Santizer Gel.  It's a great way to kill germs, yet not allow any chemical toxins back in.  You can grab your own bottle at Honest.com.

We made Halloween candy paper bags, found here.

We enjoyed a great time in the classroom for Halloween crafts and learning.

For Thanksgiving:

We wrote down what we were thankful for.

We made Thankful booklets and Indian headbands.

 

We did Thanksgiving crosswords and color sheets.

 

We made Thanksgiving turkeys and other crafts.

We made a Thanksgiving banner.

We made Thanksgiving Day cupcakes with Thanksgiving Turkey and festive flags.

We made a Thanksgiving table to represent the first Thanksgiving.

We made Thanksgiving door hangers.

And place cards for the Thanksgiving table.

For Christmas:

We did some Christmas coordinates worksheets.

We also put together small Christmas goodie bags to give to family and friends with treats inside.

We read "A Christmas Carol" and illustrated some of the stories and pictures.

We made Christmas stockings.....

Reindeer treat bags.....

Gingerbread men.

We did Christmas worksheets and played games from the Holiday Survival Pack here!

Created an ugly sweater.

We even did a Winter Bucket List.  Skylar put down a lot of things he would like to accomplish this year in the classroom, which made me happy to see.

For New Years:

We learned how to say Happy New Year in other languages.

We made New Year's Poppers.

For Valentine's Day:

Get these color sheets here.

We made a Valentine's Day garland of hearts.

We made an X-O banner and some paper stars.

We played a few Valentine's Day games.

Along with Valentine's Day, we learned a lot about Black History Month as well.  Rosa Parks' story was Skylar's favorite.

For Martin Luther King Day:

Skylar placed the "I have a Dream" speech in order and then pretended as if he was in front of Washington giving the speech to millions of people.

For Mardi Gras:

We made Mardi Gras masks.

And did some Mardi Gras worksheets for fun.

President's Day:

Get this color sheet here.

We pretended to be president for the day.

Read Across America Day/Dr. Seuss' Birthday:

For St. Patrick's Day:

We did St. Patrick's Day worksheets that you can pick up here!

For Easter, we made an egg garland to go across the classroom window.

Next week is Spring Break for us in the Red Snail Classroom, so stay tuned for more classroom fun coming soon!

Five Homeschool Sites of Interest:

1.  Factory Tours in your own state.  You can find tours for hundreds of factories within your homeschool area.  Visit Factory Tours USA.

2.  Essay Mapping.  Easy ways to map out an essay and teach current story writing skills.  Visit Essay Map.

3.  Printable classroom games.  Great way to incorporate games time into class time.  Visit Printable Games.

4.  Learn Anatomy in an instant.  Anatomy learning is a fun and interesting subject.  Learn the easy way.  Visit Instant Anatomy.

5.  Add a free library in front of your homeschool location with Little Free Library.  Small box of books for the public to encourage each other to read more.  Learn how you can join this movement.  Visit Little Free Library. 

Visit the Rain Valley Red Snails Little Free Library at 1450 Hiatt Street, Lebanon, Oregon.

A week of spelling

Going with the theme of the Read Across America Day, we decided to take the entire week of March the second through the sixth to work on spelling, reading, and writing.  Here is a recap of our week!

Skylar wrote his spelling words on flash cards and placed them in places around the classroom and dining room (next room from the classroom).  So they became sight words and was easier for him to spell.  It's a strategy we've been using since he was in Kindergarten. 

He had random spelling words and vocabulary words to remember and spell.  He did great with even the bigger ones.  

  

If you'd like to see what we are reading in the classroom, check out our Red Snail Reading List at the top of the page.

Classroom Update WELCOME BACK! (First 2 1/2 weeks)

WELCOME BACK!  It's another school year in the Red Snail Classroom and boy did we have a crazy first two and a half weeks when we came back!  From a trip, to a new grade level, we had a lot to get ready for.  We were bummed to see summer go though. ☻

This year are also trying a different approach to staying organized throughout the entire year.  I've gone with the teacher planner version for almost everything we do.  I like to refer to it as the "Simple Theory of Minimalization."  (more on this later) It is definitely working so far!

But we are ready for a new school year, for sure!  Here is a recap of our days back to school for the Rain Valley-Red Snails.

Take note of our new class times and schedule:  

• Mondays:  Are always a no school day. (Catch-Up Day)  

• Tuesdays:  Spelling and Vocabulary, Reading and Writing, and P.E.

• Wednesdays:  Science and History.  Wednesdays are also library days (if it's a day to pick a new book selection for the classroom). 

• Thursdays:  Social Studies/Geography, and Math.  P.E. also falls on this day. 

• Fridays:  Test days for each week.  Most subjects carry over for two weeks at a time, but a mini test will be given at the end of the first week to see where we are.  

Fridays are also Art, Cooking, and Gardening days.  Music will fall under Art days when there is time.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are P.E. days and days we come up with new activities to get motivated.

September 8, 2014 

Monday: 

Normally we wouldn't have school on Mondays, but since we were leaving for a trip on Thursday, we decided to have class on Monday this week to be able to cover what we needed to cover.

 For Spelling and Vocabulary, we got a list of 25 new words and three vocabulary words for the two weeks.  The words we had for the first two weeks are:

1. terrarium
2. natural
3. resource
4. border
5. mountain
6. larger
7. depend
8. listen
9. space
10. covered
11. several
12. himself
13. toward
14. fragile
15. hostile
16. wind
17. rock
18. fast
19. hold
20. mobile
21. tonsil
22. evil
23. attractive
24. awkward
25. baggage

The last three words on the list are the new vocabulary words for the first two weeks.

We also covered "ie" and "ei" words, along with K sound in words and identifying what we are really hearing with the sounds.

For Reading and Writing we read the first chapter in the new book, "A Series of Unfortunate Events-Book three."  We also covered how to write the perfect paragraph by studying it in a paragraph sandwich.

• Opening sentence
• Details (Story)
• Closing Sentence

September 9, 2014

Tuesday:  

For Reading and Writing, we learned how to address an envelope and postcard.  Skylar got to write a quick postcard note to anyone he wanted, he chose his grandparents that live in Arkansas.  It was a nice treat for them to get a quick hello from him, it really brightened their day!

We covered Probability and Data

September 10, 2014

Wednesday:

No School

September 11, 2014

Thursday:

No School

September 12, 2014

Friday:

No School

September 13-14, 2014

Saturday and Sunday: How we spent our weekend.

We took a trip to southern Oregon and spent Wednesday through Sunday off from regular school activities.  You can see photos of this trip HERE!

September 15, 2014

Monday:

No School

September 16, 2014

Tuesday:

We covered more on our vocabulary words for the week.

We also read chapter 2 in the Series of Unfortunate Events-Book three.  You can find it under the reading list tab at the top of the page. After the chapter was read, Skylar had to give me five important facts about the chapter.

For Writing we also learned more about addressing envelopes and postcards.  Skylar chose his Arkansas grandparents to send a postcard to, last week.  

September 17, 2014

Wednesday:

For Math we covered a few items from the end of last year.

We talked about percentages.  From the work on the board you can see that we did a lot of explaining.  But after the explanations, we were good to go.

September 18, 2014

Thursday:

For Science we covered a few items from the end of last year.

September 19, 2014

Friday:

September 22, 2014

Monday:

No School

September 23, 2014

Tuesday:

Spelling test and Vocabulary test from the following two weeks.

September 24, 2014

Wednesday:

We did some gardening on this day. We decided to try to grow some lettuce and some tomatoes in the classroom throughout the winter months. We'll let you know how that goes.

September 26, 2014

Friday:

We worked up a menu plan for our daily school meals. We used this printout (Found on Pinterest) to write down our favorites.

September 27-28, 2014

Saturday and Sunday:  How we spent our weekend.

We fixed up the new school bell with a pull rope and worked on the area around the post.  Skylar likes to ring it every morning, so it brings character to our yard.  We love it!

Follow more about our classroom every two weeks!