Play Doh Mountains and Reading

We're just finishing up our Week 15, and I wanted to share a quick and fun project we completed the other day: Play Doh Mountains!

I pulled this idea off of C3:

file name: science-week15-mountains.pdf

user name: TammyOostdyk

I realize pretty much everyone is finished with Week 15, but it's a simple and fun little project (great rainy-day review activity!), so I did want to share. Even though over half of this school year is over (no way!!), I still print off things I like and put it in my Cycle 1 box for next time. 

In other news. . .

I've been inspired lately to 'up our game' in the reading department. We're almost done with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and I want to just do more. Can't get enough reading, right? So, we've added two things to our daily routine. First, I made Mary her very own reading chart, which you can see in the pictures below.

(Yes, above the chart are the weekly objectives from Crecia's lesson plans at CCing it one day at a time. Awesome! Thanks again, Crecia, for giving some order to our home school!)

Each time she reads a 'reader' to me or the hubs, she crosses off a box. When she reads ten, she gets a trip to the treasure chest. When she reads ten more, we go get frozen yogurt at her favorite place, Sweet Frog! She's really excited about her chart, and she's already read 12 books to us since Saturday! Way to go, Mary!

Our other big addition is adding 20 minutes of independent reading to our mornings.

These timers are fantastic for just about everything! No annoying tick, tick, tick; they're just so great! Today was our first day of independent reading, and I set our timer for 20 minutes, anxious to see how this would play out. Mary did really well! She read quietly, and I read quietly. How nice! I'm reading this amazing book that my awesome friend, Tammi, recommended:

Soooo good!

So, we do the independent reading first. Then, she can snuggle up to me and read me her readers. It was so relaxing, y'all. I know everyday won't be this way, but this morning was just so peaceful! Thank you, Lord!

How did this all come about?

Seeing this infographic on Pinterest was the first little nudge to start our independent reading:

This article tells a little more about these statistics.

Wow, right?!

Happy Funday Monday, friends!

Phonics - Where is the Sound?

Today I'm playing catch-up, as you can see above. I'm behind on Mary's Letter of the Week stuff, and I have some other things that need to be laminated. So, this is what my living room looks like when the unexpected happens. This time, the 'unexpected' was a day-care-closing-with-insane-rock-bottom-prices sale (thank you, God!). So now, our once-empty school room (not our dining room, but our real school room downstairs) is full of all sorts of art supplies, bins, bookshelves, and other schooly stuff. Cleaning, arranging, and organizing has kept me busy the last few days (pictures coming soon!), which is how I got behind on Mary's LOTW work. But, things will come up. Life happens. And this has all been a good lesson for me on flexibility and going-with-the-flow (and if you've read this post, then you know this is not my forte). 

After Calendar Time, Mary asked to do a reading game. I saw this game in the amazing book Playful Learning by Mariah Bruehl, and I knew this would be good for my big girl (however, I had not put together the game yet, so I clicked on a movie for the girls to watch while I worked my magic. Yes, a movie on a Tuesday morning. I'm human, okay! ;)  ). It's called Where is the Sound (p68), and it's super-easy to make. All I did was take a piece of cardstock paper and fold it up a bit. I cut out 3x5 pieces of construction paper (orange for consonants and yellow for vowels), laminated them (because almost everything made out of paper gets laminated in this house!), and viola! If you want to make it even simpler, just use index cards. 

Mary (wearing her bling-ring from the dentist, of course) enjoyed making different three-letter-word combinations and sounding them out. We also used this time to discuss vowels vs. consonants. (If you can't tell, Mary recently got a haircut because she wanted her hair to be "as short as Tangled's at the END!" Yikes! But I let her, because it's just hair, it's just hair, it's just hair - that's what I have to tell myself over and over to make it okay. ;)  )

For more three-letter-word fun, check out this amazing review game I saw on Pinterest:

Read then pop! Read then pop! How much fun! (I apologize for not giving credit where it's due for this picture and game. I clicked on the picture on Pinterest, but the site is blocked on my computer. :(  )

In other news, TONIGHT is our CC orientation! I. am. so. EXCITED! I really feel like this is such a big year for our little family. I can't wait to see what God has in store for us!