Homeschool Days at Avalanche Elementary

A glimpse of our days at Avalanche Elementary!  I can't believe we have already been homeschooling for 2 1/2 months, it seems like we just started.
 Here is a look at our weekly schedules.  This shows what we do with each of the subjects.  Scott teaches both kids math and I do the rest of the subjects.    

Avery:

Reading

1. Workbook pages from Sing, Spell, Read and Write
2. Independent reading from books he chooses at the library
3. Journal Writing
4. Dictation- I read him a story and he has to dictate the story back to me.  This is great for focus!
5. Listening to a story- usually some science book or a chapter book
6. Spelling
7. Sight words
8. Bible Story

Math

1. Workbook pages from Progress in Math
2. Problem of the day
3. Flashcards
4. Timed math facts

Handwriting

1.  A Reason for Handwriting workpages
2. Memory Verse of the week

Computer- various educational games

Music- piano practice

Art- I pick a different artist or topic to learn about each week and then we recreate simple art. 

Exercise- All things outdoors, biking, hiking, taking walks, playing at the park, swimming

Library- library day is his favorite.  He loves to pick science, architecture and weird books out to read with Scott.

Enrichment- Every week we pick a different topic to study in depth on Fridays.  It is usually in science, history, and geography.  This week we are studying life cycles of animals.  We bought mealworms to watch their metamorphosis.    

Alia:

Reading

1. Letter stories- I start the story highlighting a letter and she finishes the story and draws the picture.  The story for the letter K was Kangaroos like to kick when they.......Alia finished by saying "are mad.  They get mad when people pull their tails."  The stories come from the website called Enchanted Learning.
2. Letter picture book- I made a book with one letter on each page.  She comes up with a word or two that can begins with the letter.  Today was "d" and she drew a dog and wrote the word dog.  
3. Blending letter sounds- I do various activities here.
4. Writing letters and saying their sound names.
5. Bible story

Math

1. Problem of the day
2. Number picture book- She has a book with numbers and she has to write the number and add stickers or stamps on the page to match that number.
3. Counting and recognizing numbers using flashcards
4. Shapes
5. Problem solving strategies- creating math problems for her to solve.

Free play- this usually involves playing her favorite game, Baby and Mama or going outside to make soup with various sticks and rocks she finds around the campground.

Library- She gets to go to the library twice a week.  She goes once a week with Scott to a program called Jumping Beans.  It's a story time and music and dance time.  I'm so happy Scott is getting to take her to this program.  He always felt left out that I got to do all those fun things with the kids.  She also goes with the family when we pick out books.  It's fun to watch her try to lug the massive book basket around, picking books.

Exercise- same as Avery 

Music and Art- She usually joins Avery and I on our various art projects and I try to work on piano with her but she seems to have her own idea of how the piano should sound.

Enrichment- She joins Avery on enrichment day.

Themed Activity- on Wednesdays she does special projects.  I have a theme for each month.  This month it is all things winter.  Last Wednesday she learned about polar bears and penguins and we had her cover one hand in lard.  She put both hands in ice water and we talked about how the lard hand felt.  This helped her to see that the blubber that polar bears have keeps them warm. 

 She made this horse on her library day. 

We learned about Thomas Edison and his inventions.  Avery made a homemade compass.

 
 Playing at the park.

 Playing tag.

 Here they were learning about the laws of motion and Newton.  They made an inertia zoom ball to demonstrate the first law of motion.

 Art activity- We read about Eric Carle's life and made our own pictures using the same techniques he used. 

 Painting with snow- a shaving cream and glue mixture.

 She wanted to play in the snow.

 We made paper-mache globes on the Friday we learned about the 7 continents. 

 This was a messy project in the rv!  We did part of it outside in the pouring rain, under the little awning. 

 Instead of baby and mama she wanted me to be her horse.  It's a good thing the rv is so small and I only had to trot a couple of feet at a time.  Those things in my eyes are sticky eyeballs that you throw at the wall.

We enjoyed a 6 mile hike this weekend at the Tamoka State Park.  The kids were amazing and no one complained that they had to walk that far! 

Merry Christmas from Team Davis!

 Christmas this year was a little different for us.  We had to make a few new traditions and let go of a few we have always done.  No one seemed to mind the changes and since Christmas is really about celebrating Jesus' birthday we celebrated in style in the rv!  Instead of cutting down our tree I was able to use the mini tree that always sat on my porch.  It fit perfect in the space.  We did our Jesse Tree Advent again this year and just used the ornaments from that.  The newest tradition this year started when our church encouraged the kids to do random acts of kindness during the Christmas season.  We really enjoyed doing special things for strangers.  I think we will continue to do this each year.  I even found an advent calendar to go along with the season.  Christmas in Ormond Beach was fantastic because there were so many free activities around the city.  The organizations that put them on put a lot of time into them and we appreciated it.  The AARP just recently named Daytona Beach and Ormond Beach one of the cheapest places to retire.  It really is an affordable area! 
     

 For Christmas Eve we did a candle light service at Oasis Church and the kids enjoyed a winter wonderland.

 They had "snow" falling when we came in.  It was a bubble machine that had very fragrant bubbles.  They had to turn the machine off after a few minutes because the fragrance was making everyone cough.  It was pretty though!

 Polar Express train ride!

 They had fun playing in the snow.  I think it was the same stuff that is in baby diapers, some sort of silica.

 For Christmas we put together a Minute to Win-It game.  We wrapped all of the pieces and had the boys open them up.  Austin was the lucky one that got to open toilet paper!  

 How many cups can you stack in a minute using one hand?  Austin did a great job and won this one!

 How many ornaments can you hang in a minute?

 This one was fun to watch.  They had a string in their mouths with a pom on the end and they had to get it to stick to their vaseline covered noses.  Scott won this one.

 Can you move the oreo from your forehead to your mouth?  Amanda did well on this one!  Gaven decided to flip his cookie from is forhead and caught it midair so he won unconventionally.

 One of the games was pulling kleenex out of a box with one hand.  They had more fun throwing it around and playing in it.


Her snow pile!

 Can you knock the bottles over with a pantyhose on your head with a baseball in it?  I was the winner with this game.

 This boys had fun playing with the cups after the game.

 Christmas morning.  Avery woke up first and started stacking the presents into piles while the rest of us slept. 

 Christmas morning expressions!

He was excited!


Santa even made it to our rv!  This rv park does a lot for the residents.  There is always something going on.  On this day they had a golf cart parade with Mr and Mrs Claus leading the parade.  Santa even stopped at our house and gave us all a candy cane.  This was one of the most interesting parades I've seen, there were quite a few power chairs that were all decorated for the parade.   

Arctic Blast and Christmas Village

This weekend we went to a local church to enjoy the Christmas story and Florida's version of snow.  The church had a small Christmas Village with games and food and a drama complete with snow. 

One of the scenes in the play took place in a winter wonderland.  They had 5 snow machines and bubble machines blowing to mimic snow.  It was a neat scene.

Alia is enjoying a moment in the snow and bubbles.

The church spent 5 months building this village.  There was so much attention to detail that you really thought you were in a Christmas village. 

 Alia and Jaycent were a part of a live nativity scene.  Jaycent is the shepherd in the yellow and Alia is one of the angels in the background.

 

 My little angel.  She was so proud to be a part of the nativity scene.  

 There were a lot of games to play.  This fishing game was a favorite because they caught a bucket full of candy and tickets each time. 

 Decorating gingerbread men.

 Looking for treasure in the ice.

I love how big the hot dog was and how little she is!

Merry Christmas everyone!

 This is my favorite version of the picture- the real personalities start to come out.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 We enjoyed the day at Joel and Amanda's house today.  We spent the day making many homemade dishes as well as these cute oreo turkeys.

Happy Thanksgiving from Florida!

We made thankful turkeys at home.  Each feather has a picture of what they are thankful for.
Alia's list:  Venus and Maia, playing with Mommy, golfing, bananas, zebras, squirrels, playing with Daddy, and Avery.

Avery's list:  Alia, rain, grapes, Dad, Mom, zebras, water, and Venus and Maia and Fluffy.

 We finally have a thankful board up.  Our original board did not fit in the rv and we were not going to replace it but we found that we all really missed keeping track of the things we were thankful for so we made an rv version!  We are very thankful for the board.

Our New Adventure!

We have begun a new adventure!  Last week we signed papers, sold our home and headed to Ormond Beach Florida.  We are going to live in an RV and build the business we started 2 years ago.   

 

All loaded up!  Thanks to some amazing friends, we were able to get packed up quickly.  The day we spent packing was one of my favorite times in Peachtree City because I got to spend the day with some of my favorite ladies and their husbands.  We were blessed with a lot of help, an amazing meal and the kids had a blast running around with all of their friends.  There were 13 kids running around at one point.  When the night was over Alia threw up her hands and said, "This was the best day ever!!!"   

 
 We have our packaging set!  This is the original package, we have changed it slightly to say "Helping Children Learn to Tie."  I sold quite a few at the garage sale we had before we moved and had a lot of helpful feedback on the packaging. 

 Check out our laces easytieshoelaces.com

 This is our POS box or point of sale box.  This is the box that will sit in stores with our shoelaces  in it.   

 
 We decided to move to Ormond Beach for several reasons.
1.  My sister lives here.
2.  We felt led to move here for a season.
3.  Goverment Health care is more affordable here.
4.  There are no income taxes here.
5.  It is close to Georgia.  A move anywhere else would have cost a lot more.
6.  Cost of living was really low, much lower than PTC.
7.  It's warm, no heating costs!

We bought an RV instead of renting because money renting is lost and we can resell the RV when we are done and recoop some of our money.  It's also fun to live in an RV!

 

We bought a 5th Wheel because they stair step depreciate and the ones you drive depreciate based on your mileage.  We ended up buying a Keystone Avalanche after looking at several different RV's.  This one has 3 separate rooms, the master, the living/dining room, and the back bedroom.  It also had 2 bathrooms.  We were surprised when we saw this one!  We are fully moved in and we are loving it!        

This is the kids bedroom.  It has a table area and two bunk beds.  It was also big enough to fit the toy shelf in.  We are still able to rotate toys, we just have to visit the storage unit.  This picture shows Alia's side. 

This picture shows Avery's side.

This is my room.  Don't let the banana fool you, I love sleeping with him!

Amanda bought us a fire pit as a house warming gift and we were able to have smores tonight!  We are really loving having family in the same town.  Amanda and Joel have been amazing helping to entertain the kids while we moved in.  

Homeschooling has begun!  We started last week and we are all really enjoying it.  I love that I can really customize the lessons each day to help Avery really grasp a concept and if he's really interested in something we can take the time to study it even more.  Today he really wanted to learn about Kefir and we had the chance to go on a tangent and teach him about it.  We are also doing homeschool for Alia.  So far she has enjoyed the extra one on one time.    

On Friday we did an Enrichment day just like he would do at Crossroads.  We learned about Native Americans and more specifically The Timucuan Indians which lived in Florida.  We decided to make our own hut using the traditional building materials they would use.  

 This last week we were able to snorkel at Blue Springs State Park.  There was an awesome underwater cave.  The water was crystal clear and we swam right by a gar that was 4 feet long!  This same spot is where the manatees come for the winter. 

This is the start of our adventure and we are very excited for the many places it will lead us.  Keep us in your prayers and stay tuned!

Team Davis