The first 6 weeks back to school Whoa!

It was such a fun start to the year! Even though it’s been hot and humid, we had a blast making a garden schedule, planting seeds and making garden beds, learning about Ancient India and aboriginal art, and reading books (like one about dog training).

We started off making a garden schedule for the new school year. While we have not stopped planting I wanted to remind the kids that gardening is a year round project and there are many things to consider.

Planting schedules, harvesting, bugs, preparing, canning or other forms of prep, and when to start germination for seeds. Plus we went over beneficial and not beneficial bugs, what to use instead of pesticides and how to take care of the problem before it gets too bad.

There were a few days of rain, and tons of humidity (which we are not used to) but overall this has been an exciting time. I’m looking forward to seeing all the new things we’ll be learning throughout the year!

Photosynthesis was our 5th grade topic and we learned how plants gather their food, water, and energy (light).

We also went over how plants absorb carbon monoxide and release oxygen for clean air.

We talked about why you would want a variety of plants in your garden as well as flowers to keep a small ecosystem of diversity.

6 weeks of math, STEAM, art, science and history

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As always, we are so grateful for our community who supports us with donations, shares our stories with friends and family, and helps us continue to grow.

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Week 6 is Complete

We had a very good week learning new things and reviewing what we have learned so far in Health for K, 1st, and 4th. We are almost done cleaning out our garden beds for the next seeds and plants. Even though we are not on track we will still be fine planting in the greenhouse and outdoors with some shade tarps. We also have a huge crop of eggplant which we are going to salt, skin, and cook down to use in soup bases and curries.

Always eager to learn. Our Kindergartner has been having so much fun doing story time with her older sister in 1st grade and she loves doing the coloring pages after we read the stories.

Letters and a cute quote I found

We have been doing old fables and stories each week and this week we did the story of Prince Darling and Stone Soup. These were such fun stories, I especially loved the stone soup story because it taught a valuable lesson why you should not judge someone with nothing. Then I found this cute funny page where it said “Gardening is a Revolutionary Act”. I liked this because we teach our students the value of a single seed. One see can produce food for many.

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  K is for King

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  Gardening is a Revolutionary Act

The pictures with letters allow the students to learn their alphabet and letters without getting bored with writing letters on a single piece of paper in order. Turns out they are learning without learning.

Lets get ready for Arts & Crafts week!

Week 5 is Complete

Learning is always something we do, this we had new lessons and new concepts we learned. When the students struggle they are letting us know they need a break to regroup and refocus. Just like adults, they get distracted, upset, unmotivated and grumpy. We need to make sure we allow time for them to decompress and then get back to businesses. We have found that coloring pages and the Time In Corner has been a great addition to our schooling.

Click on picture to learn more about Generation Mindful

Gardening & Animals Outdoors

We are getting ready to have the students plant the fall garden. We have 3 of the 7 planter beds cleaned out and ready for seeds. We just have to decide what seeds we want to go where and this time we really need to get some beneficial bacteria and bugs to help our garden not get eaten. This week we harvested one of our watermelons and it was 30 Pounds!!! We put a 5 gallon water jug next to the watermelon so you can imagine how big it is!

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Our Kindergarten and 1st Grader went on an animal track expedition in the back yard. While it was rather amusing to us they were not sure what to look for so we had them draw the different types of animals they saw.

Prodigy (Math Games)

We are finding ways to make math fun and so we created a free Prodigy account for the students. The first day this week they were on it after school! I don’t want them to get over stimulated with it so I will do limits of 30-45 minutes depending on the grade.

It is time for a Microscope

After these last few weeks in science it is time to get a microscope. The students have a small magnifying glass which has been good for them but you can see they are interested in more.

Which one will be based on our search this weekend.

As we closed out the week we learned about the last day of Summer and the first day of Autumn. We have also been collecting different items for art and crafts which we will be doing after week 6.

Morning Walk, Tomatoes, and Eggplants – Week 4

We began a new morning routine at 7:30am we walk around the block for 30 minutes, picking up seeds, flowers, leaves, or naming trees and plants along the way.

Mother Holle (Story)

We read Mother Holle this week for Kindergarten and 1st grade. It was a good story about hard work, kindness and being rewarded even when it is not expected. We had the students draw pictures about what happened in the story and they did an amazing job.

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Abundance from our Garden!

We are so excited about our eggplants and tomatoes. When we get a few more eggplants we are going to make Eggplant Parmesan. We also had a surprise in the garden when we saw some golden raspberries on our bush. Also, our bell peppers are in full bloom as well and we are getting some beautiful red bell peppers.

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Lots of Seeds

This week we gathered lots of seeds and learned the cycle of a seed. When the tree is ready to prduce its fruit it creates a bud, next a flower, then a seed, last a fruit, nut, or vegetable.

Life of a seed

1st: seed

2nd: sprout

3rd: Tree

Here are seeds we collected and discovered about this week.

Week 2 is Complete

We have gotten a good schedule going and we will be starting Music in Week 3. We had a little bit of acclimating to do and to allow the students to get back to their studies daily.

• Language Arts 3 days a week
• Social Studies 3 days a week
• Mathematics 3 days a week
• Science 2 days a week
• History 1-2 days a week
• Music (Recorder (K-4) & Ukulele (8th)) 1-2 days a week
• Health/P.E 5 days a week
• Art 3 days a week

Online programs

• Khan Academy – 1 day
• Typing.com – 1 day
• The Spanish Experiment – 1 day
• Rosetta Stone – 2 days

We decided this would give the students more freedom in their studies to decide how they want to plan their day. The 4th and 8th grader can choose what subject they would like to work on and use the schedule to plan accordingly. We utilized this schedule last year but instead of doing English and Math everyday we decided 3 days a week would be more adequate.

P.E. is scheduled monthly

Last year we did running once a week on Fridays and during the week we had them chose between riding their bikes, jumping on the trampoline or we would go to the park. On days it was raining or too cold we did You Tube Videos for stretching and exercises. This year we have monthly goals for students and have running a few times a week.

Smart Games are a Success

The Smart games are fun and challenging for all ages and we picked up a couple more games at our local Toy Store. We have Cube Puzzler GO, Diamond Quest, and

We have been busy making Pickles!!

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Week 1 is complete

The students are back to their lessons and refocusing their minds to stay on track and enjoy the new school year. This first week was a success for all of them. They love their new classroom set-up and the schedule for the week (which I am sure will be modified at least once this year).

• Language Arts 3 days a week
• Social Studies 3 days a week
• Mathematics 3 days a week
• Science 2 days a week
• History 1-2 days a week
• Music (Recorder (K-4) & Ukulele (8th)) 1-2 days a week
• Health/P.E 5 days a week
• Art 3 days a week

Online programs

• Khan Academy – 1 day
• Typing.com – 1 day
• The Spanish Experiment – 1 day
• Rosetta Stone – 2 days

We decided this would give the students more freedom in their studies to decide how they want to plan their day. The 4th and 8th grader can choose what subject they would like to work on and use the schedule to plan accordingly. We utilized this schedule last year but instead of doing English and Math everyday we decided 3 days a week would be more adequate.

Obsessed Reader Challenge

We also have an Obsessed Reader in place for our 4th and 8th Grader. For the obsessed reader challenge they have a list of subjects to choose from such as; history, nature, just for fun, culture and to name a few. We will do a library excursion once a week and they can choose books to read for the week. Our 4th grader has a list of over 4,500 books to choose from and our 8th grader has a list of over 1,400 books to choose from. If they complete their challenge they will get $100.

4th grader – 136 book challenge

8th grader – 72 book challenge

Photo by Janko Ferlic on Pexels.com

We also started some new seeds for our fall garden this week and we are looking forward to learning about how plants grow with our Kindergarten and 1st grader and have them draw pictures of the plants growth process for science class. Plus our watermelon is huge! I think it is over 20 pounds now.

We also went over what books the students will be using and how many pages, lessons or stories they will have each week which gives them an idea on what to expect. They also have activities they can do throughout the week to decompress and have a 10-20 minute break. We have the Calming Corner to help with feelings and moods, thinking putty, mosaic coloring pages, and at any time they can stop to read one of their books.

We finished our School Year!

We finished our first year of school and it is safe to say we all SURVIVED!

We had many changes to schedules and work throughout the year but we made it through and we found a way to incorporate Pre-K, K/1st combo, 2nd/3rd Combo and 6th/7th Combo.

We learned a lot of different things throughout the year from math to gardening. We were able to work through grammar, spelling and increasing our reading comprehension. We will be doing a 6 week summer school program for all the students for a refresher/bump up to next year guide.

We will be doing some of the same curriculum next year and a new one for our 1st/2nd grader.

Kindergarten Our Pre-K student will be moving up to Kindergarten. She is doing her alphabet and counting to 20. We are also working on number recognition and Upper and Lower case Alphabet.

2nd Grade (Going to do 1st Grade again with a different curriculum) Our K/1st grader will be moving to a full 1st grade course with 2nd grade math. She will be doing English, Science, and History in 1st grade and Math is a 2nd grade course. She has done All About Reading Level 1 and she is reading the My First Reading Books. We are very proud of her progress since she was not even recognizing her letter sounds after she finished Kindergarten at her other school. Now we will move on to reading comprehension, letter teams, rhyming, and more spelling.

3rd Grade (Going to do a 4th Grade Curriculum) Our 2nd Grader will be moving on to a 4th/5th grade combo. She reads at an 8th grade level but her writing needs improvement. While she was able to do the 6th Grade English this last semester she struggled with paragraphs and plotting a story. We will be working on that more in depth this next year. She will also be doing a 5th grade History program and 4th, 5th, and 6th grade Math. By the end of the year she should be in Pre-Algebra.

8th Grade (Going to do a combo of 7th & 8th Grade Curriculum) Our 7th grader will be doing a 7th/8th grade combo. English in 7th grade, Grammar in 8th Grade, Math in 8th Grade, and Science in 7th Grade. She has made great progress this year. Moving from a 3rd/4th grade reading level to a 6th grade reading level. She still has more work ahead of her before High School but we know she would not have succeeded as well as she did with our school.

Over all we have seen a lot of improvement from all our students and we are very excited for the next year. The learning process for all of us has been fun and hopefully we will be able to do more field trips next year if things are open. If not then we will rent a trailer and do more camping!

Classroom is finally setup! STEM and Garden

After many edit to our schooling we have decided to continue next year. In deciding so, we have put our classroom together and the students are very excited about the transition. The girls have been looking at the new Timberdoodle Catalog for 2021-2022 School Year and have been picking out items they want in their kits. We are waiting on the test scores for our 2nd and 7th Grader before we purchase their kits so we know what English, Science and Math to get for them. We still have some more items that need to be moved and organized, but the students were excited to be in their new classroom.

This 3rd-Trimester has been exciting for the students with the addition of more art and agriculture. We just finished the planter boxes and went to the nursery to pick out more vegetables for the garden. Here is a picture of the new garden boxes we made from old pallets. We placed chicken wire on the bottom of the beds and then did a layer of pine needles from our pine tree.

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The kids had a wonderful day gardening and harvesting some spinach, beets, and lettuce.

This week we worked on STEM and making circuit connections. Our 2nd grader had a blast! She made a circuit and a floating ball. Then our Principle showed her how to connect the two together.

The Gaiam balls we purchased for the students desks have been a life saver. Our 2nd Grader does not sit still and the ball has helped her stay in her seat. It is a bit too tall for our Pre-K student so we have to hold the ball in place when she sits down and adjust her every 15 minutes or so because she begins to push the ball back. I think I will deflate it a bit more but not too much so the desk is too tall for her.

Our mindful class has been coming along as well. We are teaching the students that negative behavior is not a way to act or to punish. Creating a positive environment in the classroom and in the home is a balancing act and should be something that allows each child and adult to grow. Communication is the balance of life and should be provided as a tool to excel. There is no reason to use negative punishments when you can communicate through the situation. Talk about what each person thought and understand what happened. Usually it is a matter of miscommunication and it turns out nothing was wrong to begin with.

Almost done with Lessons and Sprouting

We are nearing the end of the school year and our students have almost completed their books. Our Pre-school student has completed 4 of 6 of her book and is almost done with the Pre-Reading activities. Our first grader already completed the Math you see Alpha and we have been giving her assignments in the Math you See Beta. She has 4 more lessons in All About Reading Level 1 and has come a very long way in her reading. She was reading at a 0.2 Level and now she is reading My First Reading books. Our Second grader is finished with Math you see Beta and we have been doing Math you See Gamma Lessons A & F daily, she is on lesson 13 already. She has been enjoying the Mystery of History Volume 1 book along with the activities. Our Seventh Grader has 5 more lessons in the Math you See Pre-Algebra and she is has 5 weeks of stories left in the Mosdos Pearl English book. She has made great strides in her writing, grammar and spelling with the Grammar Book and the Spelling you See.

We are very happy with the way the year evolved for all of the students and teachers. This 3rd-Trimester has been exciting for the students with the addition of more art and agriculture.

We found a humming bird nest on the light plug outside the house. It is so tiny and the humming bird kept coming back and forth but I was not able to get a picture of it.

Beautiful salad with homemade sprouts, lettuce from our garden and Veggies from the Co-op we are part of.

We have been learning to sprout. So far we have sprouted Lentils (pictured above), clover seeds, mung beans, and wheat berries.

Our mindful class has been coming along as well. We are teaching the students that negative behavior is not a way to act or to punish. Creating a positive environment in the classroom and in the home is a balancing act and should be something that allows each child and adult to grow. Communication is the balance of life and should be provided as a tool to excel. There is no reason to use negative punishments when you can communicate through the situation. Talk about what each person thought and understand what happened. Usually it is a matter of miscommunication and it turns out nothing was wrong to begin with.

SAT 10 Testing, Strawberries & Games

We began the SAT10 testing on Monday this week and it went really well and we will be sending the booklets and scoring sheet back to the company we ordered from. We are excited to see what the scores will be for our 2nd and 7th grader because it will give us the information for what books to get for next year. We are not going to focus on the actual grade as we are the level they are testing in. This way the students will not struggle with the curriculum and we can help them progress in their schooling.

Playing King of Tokyo and getting our art on with pastel colors.

Our strawberry patch is doing really well and we have been getting around 2-3 strawberries a day. Here are some pictures of our strawberries, potatoes, beets and spinach. The students have been enjoying their agriculture class and we will be learning about solar greenhouses beginning next week.

We are still enjoying the Qigong routine at 8am we have been doing different videos about 10-15 minutes long on You Tube.

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Garden Project

The spring garden has been planted and the students helped plant, water, and weed the yard and garden. Here are some pictures of the plants we planted this week together. We have lettuce, onions, strawberries, snap beans, tomatoes and cabbage.

Our mindful class has been coming along as well. We are teaching the students that negative behavior is not a way to act or to punish. Creating a positive environment in the classroom and in the home is a balancing act and should be something that allows each child and adult to grow. Communication is the balance of life and should be provided as a tool to excel. There is no reason to use negative punishments when you can communicate through the situation. Talk about what each person thought and understand what happened. Usually it is a matter of miscommunication and it turns out nothing was wrong to begin with.