Today, I am celebrating a major accomplishment. We have completed our first quarter of core curriculum. Now, before I get too excited about it, we haven't started working on Spanish or piano yet and our social studies have really been slow so far. Still, It is exciting to see the progress we've already made this year. We are technically enrolled in a charter school and through the school we are required to submit quarterly work samples and semester progress reports as well as participate in standardized testing. This allows the school to maintain permanent records for us and check up on our progress throughout the school year. Whether you have this as a requirement or not, I highly recommend that you keep a portfolio of student's work on file and maintain some type of records for the school year. I wish my camera were working so I could show you some of the fun work samples we are turning in for this quarter and the fun way I decided to compile everything for our contact teacher. During the huge back-to-school sales in August, I purchased 20+ generic 2-pocket folders for 5cents a piece. I purchased 5 each of several different colors. Then, I used some of our extra colorful cutouts and used the xyron machine to make them adhesive. I attached a cute cutout with each child's name to their folder-full of their work. I will post pictures if I can find a way to take photos before I turn in the work samples.
Okay, On to one of my favorite things for today. I realize this is the wrong season to be studying life-cycles, but we've been studying life cycles during science this past month while studying insects. The life cycle of a butterfly, a ladybug, and an ant. Now, we are transitioning to the life cycle of plants as we study plants in science this month. Still, year after year, one of our favorite activities is raising butterflies. We order caterpillars from insectlore.com and the kids watch the caterpillars grow and change into their chrysalis. Whe the butterflies emerge from their chrysalis, we keep them in the house for a week or two and then release them outside. It is so much fun. These pictures are from several years ago and I've never been able to get very good pictures since then of the butterflies being released. The butterfly pavilion is so wondeful, we get one every year. This past year, I purchased a set from Costco for a great price and they shipped the caterpillars for FREE!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment