Friday, February 07, 2014

Happy 5th Birthday Alia!!!


 Alia woke up this morning with her room filled with 140 balloons. 

 
 When Grandpa and Grandma Davis were here she picked out this bear.  It's as big as she is! 

 Alia and Banana 5 years

 She wanted to make her own lunch.  Notice all of the olives!  She is holding peanut butter on a spoon.  She calls them peanut butter pops and she loves them. 

 We spent the afternoon at Amanda's house playing with the puppies.

We decided to let her pick store cupcakes this year because the rv stove isn't like a normal oven.  The oven doesn't even fit a cupcake pan in it.  She was pretty excited to be able to pick the cupcakes out.

Alia's rules for today:
1.  Get up before her "sun" comes on.
2.  Eat as much candy as she wants.
3.  Watch a movie.
4.  Skip all chores for both she and Avery.
5.  No school today.
6.  Make her own lunch.
7.  Eat at Chick-fil-a.  We were there for 2 hours!
8.  Have a sleepover with her cousins.

 Her yearly questions:
1.  Favorite color:  purple, pink and light blue
2.  Favorite toy:  Big pink bear and wolf puppet
3.  Favorite food:  broccoli and carrots and cooked beans
4.  Favorite book:  Books about hamsters
5.  Favorite animal:  Giraffe and deer
6.  Favorite thing to do outside:  Make soup with water, grass, sticks and bark
7.  Favorite holiday:  Easter because there is real money in the eggs.
8.  When I grow up I want to be a firefighter because I want to go in the truck and spray water.  I also want to be a mom.
9.  Favorite subject: Reading      Least Favorite:  Working
10.  If you could buy anything what would you buy?  A squirt gun
11.  What do you like most about yourself?  That I am a good snuggler.
12.  Biggest accomplishment:  Getting my own lunch.
13.  What do you want to learn?  How to cook in the microwave.
14.  I like to collect:  sticks, rocks and shells
15.  Favorite thing to do:  Play baby and mama
16.  What would you change about this year?  I don't want to do work.
17.  What is your favorite family tradition?  Taking a walk every day.  (But then she followed that statement by "It's my birthday, I can make a rule that we don't have to walk today!")
18.  Favorite memory this year:  Going to the zoo.

Monday, January 13, 2014

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! 

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

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.   



Monday, December 16, 2013

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.