Graduation Day!!!

Wow... I  can't believe how quickly this school year went by! It feels like it was yesterday when we were going outside to take the first day of school traditional picture, and here we are, already enjoying our summer vacation from school.

Little V, officially completed her schooling for first grade last Tuesday, May 24th, and now we will be able to get some rest, have some summer fun. She will be doing her swimming classes again during the summer, which starts today!

Her Certificate of Completion I made myself, using cliparts from Pretty Grafik Designs. The card I also made myself, it's the second year I make the same style of graduation card ( I just love it). It's pretty easy and simple to make and I'll soon share directions on how to make it, so you can make your own cool graduation cap card! I'm just trying to figure out if it will be easier to demonstrate it with a video or pictures.

During this summer, we will also be participating in a nature pal exchange  with some other homeschool families, which I will give more information as soon as we have more done. We already started picking up some nature samples for the nature pal exchange.

Happy Graduation to Little V and to all the other little hard workers out there!

I will still be sharing more stuff we did during the school year, our choices of curriculum for the next school year and what interesting things we will be doing during our summer break!

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki

After the 100th Day of School!

Good morning!!! Today, it will be a quick post to share something fun we started doing last year. From day 1 of school we do a countdown for the 100th day of school, and on the 100th Day we do some fun and cool activities to celebrate this what can be considerate a milestone. I didn't have any of that in my schools back home (Brazil), but when I saw it here I thought it was a neat experience and something the kids can look forward to, and I definitely wanted Little V to experience it.

So we mark down each day from day 1 until the 100th day, but then I decided that Little V could from then on, make her countdown to Graduation Day and that's what we do after celebrating the 100th Day!

The picture above was taken on Monday, May 23rd which was her 175th day, so today she will be all done with First Grade, and soon I will post more about her last day in school!

Thought would be a good idea to share what we do after the 100th day! Hope you enjoyed it and feel free to share ideas of your own on the comments section below, or contact me through the contact form on the right sidebar, we would love to hear from you.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki

Our "Expedition Earth" is Completed!!!

Good morning, as we were approaching the finals days of the first grade, we were finishing our various curricula. Most of them offer a Certification of Completion, which is something fun to give to the student, and helps them to have a feeling of accomplishment and also gives them that great feeling that vacation is right on the corner!!

If you have been following our blog, you know I chose Expedition Earth from Confessions of a Homeschooler for our Geography Curriculum for first grade. What I like about the Curriculum is that it is very hands on, she put together lots of crafts in it, there are recipes so you can try dishes from the countries you are "visiting".

We had lots of fun "visiting" 29 countries and learning about Antarctica and the Arctic Circle. We started by making use of most of the activities but our days in school were getting pretty long and Little V wasn't much excited towards the end of the day, so I decided to leave some of the activities behind and use them for the next time we use this curriculum.

I can't believe first grade is coming to an end!! Time went by so fast, it feels like it was yesterday that we were building a model of the Great Wall of China.

Now, it's time to start searching for the Second Grade Geography Curriculum!

That's it for today! Hope you are having a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki.

A Cool Pine Cone Experiment!

Hello, today I'm sharing a cool experiment that we did in our homeschool when we were leaning about cones. We had these cones since last year, I saved them from one of our trips to the Arboretum, because I knew I would need them for an experiment.

Initially,  we read about cones, and then she wrote some important facts about them in her worksheet that is part of her Science Curriculum. We took a closer look at them to identify the parts, and I wanted something more hands on, so I went online, researched and found some cool worksheets at The Crafty Classroom, then Little V was able to label the parts of the pine cone and we also found another cool experiment.

The pictures below, show that we submerged one pine cone in water, after about 2 hours we could see that the pine cone scales started to close up.

Then, 6 hours later check out how closed up the scales were!!

Cool, right?! I didn't now that and we were pretty excited about it! So we did some extra research and learned that the pine cones scales respond to changes in humidity. When it's warm and dry the scales open up to release the cone's seeds and when it's humid or wet, the scales close up by expanding the scales cells.

Well, that's it for today! Hope you enjoyed our little experiment!

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki

Cursive Handwriting!!

Hello, today I want to tell you about our cursive handwriting practice. When we first started, Little V practiced a letter a day, using the A-Z Cursive HandwritingWorksheets from Confessions of a Homeschooler. You can download them for free at her Printables section. These were colorful worksheets, that I printed and put them in a binder special for Handwriting Practice, which includes also the A-Z Handwriting manuscript version and numbers.

To save paper and ink, I printed only one copy of each letter and placed each copy inside a page protector, and Little V used those thin expo markers to trace the letters.

Then, while searching online for a Cursive Handwriting Curriculum I found more worksheets, also available for download for free at another cool website - K5learning. These new worksheets I can print in black and white and, somehow I just feel that this way she has a better feeling while practicing directly on the paper, a little more costly, but you can print in the front and back of the paper (saves a little paper). These worksheets allow her to practice the capital and lower case letter just like the ones from Confessions of a Homeschooler but she can also have a feeling of how to write words in cursive. There are also worksheets that are all about words, which we haven't use them yet, since I want her to have a good practice and feel confident about doing the letters first.

A short video of what we are doing:

Now. since there is so much debate regarding teaching or not to teach cursive handwriting, and giving that cursive writing is not required by the National Common Core Standards, why did I chose to add this to Little V curriculum? I will then add a few reasons why I personally think it's important.

1) I learned cursive while I was in school before I learned manuscript.

2) I think it's beautiful to write in cursive, therefore I want my daughter to learn it. 

3) How will your child have his or her unique signature later in life, if he or she won't learn cursive? 

I do a lot of online research and  I found many reasons that I think are true to why teaching cursive handwriting is important and below it's one reason I read and totally agree:

3) "There is even a movement afoot among some reading experts to begin teaching cursive before block printing, as they have found that the connections between letters required in cursive writing may reduce letter reversals. - See more at: http://www.washingtonparent.com/articles/1212/cursive-writing.php#sthash.LesbbSmK.dpuf

This alone, is a great reason since it's practically impossible for a kid to mix up "b" and "d" with cursive handwriting. I had this problem with Little V and worked on it, today she's fine and since we started the cursive handwriting I noticed she no longer hesitate before writing "b" or "d". 

Again, just as a reminder, I 'm just sharing what I think and what we do in our homeschooling. Ultimately, the parents are the ones who have to make their own decision based on how they feel and on the researches they do.  

Hope you enjoyed our post. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below or contact me through the contact form. I'll answer as soon as possible. 

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki

All About Spelling Level 2 Successfully Completed!!

Not a secret at all that I do love the All About Spelling Curriculum, this was our second year using it and yes we will use it again for next year - 2nd grade!
It's an easy curriculum to prepare for teaching, they basically help you out with all the explanation. Very important to use the app also, so you can hear the proper pronunciation of the phonograms.

You first learn how to spell words with the phonograms taught in each step, then some steps they have more words to spell. We usually do first spelling with the tiles, the next day we spell the same words on paper, if there are new words she spells them on paper, then phrases and  finally sentences.

If during spelling pracrice, she's writing a word wrong, I wait to see if she will figure out by herself before pointing it out, most of the times she figures out on her own that the word doesn't sound right, so she tries again, and if she's struggling we sound it out and she gets it and feels so proud of herself.

There's always a reviewing section before start a new step/lesson, which is great to keep things fresh in mind.

Last year, as soon as we finished Level 1 we started level 2, but this year we won't do it. We had to review all the steps we had started while still on Kindergarten, so I decided to use these last days of school to review some of the steps and keep practicing what she already learned.

Above, is Little V holding her Certification of Completion of Level 2. I'm so proud of my little student, she's so dedicated and love learning. I couldn't have asked for a better student!

If you would like to check more about the Spelling curriculum we use, please feel free to check their website at All About Leaning Press. There free downloads, the Phonogram app I mentioned above is free to download as well, and there are free lesson samples too. You can also follow their blog which includes many useful tips to make learning a great experience. 

Spelling is such an important skill to be mastered, and we do love All About Spelling because it does takes the struggle out of spelling just as they promise. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to use the contact form or leave a comment below and as soon as I have a chance I will get back to you. 

Hope you have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki

Trying something new!!!

I was thinking of trying something new to keep the blog more active. I'm planing to pick a day or two of the week and try to add as much info as possible.

November of last year I started working PT and my schedule since then has been even more hectic than before. But on the positive side I want to continue sharing my experience and let Moms out there now that it is possible to work and still be able to homeschool.

I feel that Little V by no means lost on the quality of her schooling, I just need to be more organized and time management is a must to work on and develop. We still have lots of fun while schooling and I can't believe she's on her final weeks of first grade, it feels like it was yesterday when we went outside to take our first day of school traditional picture.

For several weeks she was learning about the Human Body, we purchased a microscope. I do like the one we got her, very affordable and I think it will do its job for the years to come.

She got to see how one of her own hair looks in the microscope lens.

We also did for those weeks, while studying about the Human Body, an experiment to observe the patterns of finger prints. She rubbed the sharpened end of a pencil on a sheet of paper (top left picture), then she rubbed each finger tip on the paper (bottom left picture). Next, she applied a piece of clear tape on the dark spot of the finger tip and transferred the tape to the paper and wrote down which finger that piece of tape belonged to.

This helped her to learn that each person has an unique finger print and that these personal signatures form at five months before birth and they never change.

If you are interested, you can find this science experiment and many more that we used at Janice VanCleave's Biology for Every Kid - 101 easy experiments that really work.

For Arts, she was learning about Paul Cezzane and here you can see her working on an inspired still life piece from Cezzane, She used fake fruits and vegetables from her kitchen and used watercolor paint on watercolor paper.

Hope you enjoyed our post and if you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below or contact me through the contact form.

Hope you have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki