ThadenPierce School

September – Heidi
October – first and fourth week (park dates?) depending on baby’s arrival, skipping second and third weeks.
November – J
December – K
January – Heidi
February – J
March – K
April – Heidi
May – J
June – K

We’ll be meeting for about an hour and each week will read a storybook then do a storychart (character, setting, plot, theme) and an activity then a snack (fruits or veggies since we’re doing close to dinner and have various allergy needs) and a few minutes of play time before everyone heads home. I’m really excited!

We have 12 kids (we’re not counting the one that will sleep through co-op once she arrives) including 3 two year olds and the other 9 kids are almost nine years down through almost four years.

September Plans:
And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street – I decided to use the activities from the Cub Scout geography belt loop:

Draw a map of your neighborhood. Show natural and manmade features. Include a key or legend of map symbols.

Learn about the physical geography of your community. Identify the major landforms within 100 miles. Discuss with an adult what you learned.

Use a world globe or map to locate the continents, the oceans, the equator, and the northern and southern hemispheres. Learn how longitude and latitude lines are used to locate a site.

Green Eggs & Ham – discuss our tongue and salty, sweet, bitter, sour. Use various foods to let the kids taste test.

Alice the Fairy – make crowns/tiaras.

Fox in Socks – I’ll make socks out of cardstock or cardboard and hole punch some for the younger kids but have the older kids cut out & hole punch it themselves. We’ll wrap a little piece of tape around the end of yarn and have the kids sew the socks (Who sews Sue’s socks?)

I wanted to do activities that would engage all of the kids but obviously some are aimed more at older some weeks, younger kids other weeks. We’ll see how it goes.

After a fun morning with friends at our “NOT back to school” picnic we talked & are meeting again with our co-op this week to see what we should do for this year. We hadn’t decided if we were going to keep meeting as families had new babies and moved but we’ve invited another family to join and we’re eager to see what we can come up with – this will be our fourth year together! We’ll be meeting on Thursday afternoons so I swapped our literature Friday with our history Thursday (since history is more involved for us.)

We are starting our Story of the World book one again this year with activity guide and when Christopher saw me pull it out he exclaimed, “I love that!” That’s a good sign. But we’re actually starting formally next week and doing things a bit out of order. Christopher’s currently fascinated by all things related to Greek mythology so we’re skipping ahead to those chapters and doing a unit study. I checked out a ton of books from the library (fiction, non-fiction, picture, chapter, craft, etc) and he’s looking up Greece in all of our atlases and kids’ geography books like Circling the Globe. We’ll do some map work and current social studies (and ask my sister for some input since she lived in Greece for 18 months on her mission to Athens) and embrace his passion. (This is all prompted by his racing through the Percy Jackson book series – he’s in book four now. I started reading it to him and got through two chapters, one a night, before he gave up on his poky mother’s pace and walked off to finish the book himself. And then books two and three…)

Though I remember very little from my mythology studies so I’m having to scramble to keep up with him! He’s drawn a family tree of the goddesses and gods and characters from the book and is enthralled. I love it!

But certainly NOT our last day with our friends. We’ve been meeting just over three years now and almost weekly, starting as an art group then transitioning to a history group and finally a book club. We’ll still meet as friends for sure (and are planning our next Moms’ Night Out for next week) but this was our last Tuesday afternoon book club meeting.

We started to meet with a variety of families but this core of four families has remained – between us we had just 10 kids and Emy was a baby when we started and now we have 13 and two more on the way! We love our co-op friends, they were truly an answer to our prayers when we were new to homeschooling.

We are reading The Chocolate Touch for our February book club and Christopher fell in love with it. Mo and C have a birthday party in a couple weeks and we decided that would be a fun present. I was able to put a copy on hold at the local Barnes & Noble (so nice and easy!) and then we brainstormed for other ideas. C wanted to get a gold wrapped chocolate and put it in a candy box alone (how the boy receives the magical chocolate) – Kit picked up a Ferrero Rocher 3 pack and we crumpled up some tissue paper and put it in the bottom of an old candy box we had, put a single chocolate in the center then crumpled up more tissue paper on top. We tied a ribbon around it and wrote a note on top to not open it until after Chapter 2. Christopher also made a foil wrapped cardboard coin (how the boy buys his candy) and wrote the birthday girl’s initials on it and “The Chocolate Touch” around the edge in a Sharpie. Cute extra touch.

But C, ever creative, also said he wanted to find a chocolate pencil! Kit suggested we look for some Pocky sticks – the store only had strawberry ones so we wrote a note on the box explaining they were strawberry “pencils” and wrapped them up with a note to not open until after Chapter 5. C insisted we also needed a real pencil since the teacher replaces the chocolate one with a real pencil and we had a cute glittery pink pencil we tied onto the Pocky with a ribbon.

So, we wrapped up the book and wrote, “Open first!” on it then tucked in the other wrapped presents – the Pocky with a pencil, the coin, and the chocolate box. I think it’s a totally cute (and educational!) and fun present. These could easily be used for a book club activity, too, though the Pocky and Rocher both have gluten so we can’t use them for our club safely. We have other fun activities planned!

Here is our list of books we’re reading. August is James and the Giant Peach and today the kids drew characters as Katie read them descriptions of each. I should have Kit scan the pictures because it was very cute! They also made the green magic stuff… I’m still not sure what it was? But whatever was sprinkled on the tree that made it grow like crazy and we made our version with rice, rubbing alcohol with food coloring, mix it up and let it dry then stir in some glitter.

Then the kids got muffins with fresh peach jam (from peaches picked at a local orchard!) which was DELICIOUS and peach cake balls. How cute are these?? (They are gluten free and egg free!)

Each month we’ll do a story chart/story board to cover the basics and then we’ll do activities and fieldtrips, projects like nature study or science stuff, handicrafts, etc. Some months we’ll also watch the movies. I’m really excited!

August: James & the Giant Peach (K) – peach picking
September: Jungle Book (D) – zoo
October: Voyage of the Basset (R)
November: Dr. Dolittle (D) – family trip zoo
December: A Christmas Carol (H) Gift of the Magi (R)
January: Mr. Popper’s Penguins (K)
February: The Chocolate Touch (H) – candy making
March: Little House on the Prairie (K)
April: Mary Poppins (H) – kite making
May: Beverly Clearly something (D)

Since our history co-op will be disbanding in the fall (as three of the four families will be enrolling in co-ops that will use Story of the World, our history text, so no point in doubling up) we need to shift focus and use our history group time for some new activities. One of the moms proposed we do a book club with the kids once a month and on alternate weeks we do a handicraft, nature study, or field trip that’s somehow related to the book. We’re discussing logistics but I proposed we pick a book for September through May and we each pick two or three titles we would like to host for the book club discussion and related activity.

We were brainstorming titles today and here are some –

Katie
Little House on the Prairie
James & the Giant Peach

Heidi
The Chocolate Touch
poetry unit – Shel Silverstein
A Christmas Carol
Mary Poppins

Other ideas…
Pippi Longstockings
Pollyanna
Treasure Island
Stuart Little
Shakespeare for kids by Lambs

I’m excited because this lets me commit to a novel a month with the kids and we can use them for our Teaching the Classics program as well. We’ll do a story chart with the kids and hands on activities with friends… I think it will help the stories stick for them better, too. Right now after reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory we learned our friends were also reading it and we scheduled a tour of the local candy factory. It’s fun to read these books, it’s more fun to plan great activities around them, and it’s always great to do it with friends – my friends and the kids’ friends.