Gearing up

This week I started to officially work with Hazel at home more formally. She is super smart and picks up on things without "traditional instruction" but our plans are to begin homeschooling BOTH kids and want to got her use to the idea of "school at home time". We only actually sat down twice this week but after looking at the pictures we really did get a lot accomplished!

We started off the week with Hazel's favorite book "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" by Bill Martin Jr. This gave us an overview of all the letters and we plan on starting a letter a week next week. I found activities and printables at this awesome site. Its where I have gotten most of my letter activities and crafts.


Here she is coloring her cover page to her alphabet book.

I found this cute Tot Book and printed it out. Since Hazel knows most of her capital letters I wanted to use this week to expose her to lowercase letters. I thought a matching game of upper to lowercase would be fun....


She had other ideas. And it really was more fun!

Here she is coloring her trees for her Tot Book...


I have been dabbling with a little Montessori style of learning for her and I really like it. I do not personally prescribe to any one method of learning, but love to pull bits and pieces from a few to fit my little learner's taste. I got the ideas for using trays here. Thanks to my Grandma for giving us some nifty patterns we were able to put these activities together with what we had at the house.

Beading with Pony Beads and Pipe Cleaners....


A matching game made out of Calendars and their corresponding thumbnails. I can't remember exactly where I found this activity, but I'm pretty sure it's somewhere on this site .


Of course the "school" would not be complete without some form of physical activity so this week she learned to tumble in the living room. Fun stuff huh?

So that was our week. Well the highlights anyways. What do you think?

New Beginnings

Alright why do I need another blog? I have two already! Well I want a way to organize and document the things we do with homeschooling, budgeting, just living life as a Coastie family. Since two heads are better than one and in the realm of blogland a million heads are better than two I wanted a way to connect with others who have the same interest as myself so that we can exchange ideas and learn from one another. So here's to The Good, The Bad, the Ugly... "Confessions of a Coastie Wife!" Cheers!