All About Mammals

For the past week and a half, Caitie and Charlee have been studying mammals. They learned the basic characteristics of mammals such as they have fur and they give live birth to their young versus eggs. They were each given the chance to select one mammal and prepare a poster about that mammal. Caitie chose cats and Charlee chose giraffes.

It's hard to see the posters in the picture. Each girl found a real picture of their animal online. They also were able to find a blank picture and color it to their liking. For each animal, they researched the animal's physical description, habitat, enemies, protection methods, where it would be located in the world, the name for male, female and baby, other animal relatives, diet and interesting facts. Caitie learned that the domestic cat was the most popular pet in the world and that there were over 500 million of them. Charlee was shocked to learn that the giraffe had 4 stomachs. Charlee was also lucky enough that she could find a map labeling the places giraffes could be found. 

The girls will be using this project idea for each of the animal classes. 

Home School Group Meet and Greet Brunch {Plus a couple of Pinterest Links}

Today we went to the Home School Group Meet and Greet Brunch at our local park. For my brunch contributions, I took:

Sausage Cheese Puffs

Source: plainchicken.com via Crystal on Pinterest

Pumpkin Coffee Cake

Source: sixsistersstuff.com via Crystal on Pinterest

I also took Blueberry Muffins. 

The kids had a blast! We spent 4 hours there with the other families. Tina, Carly, Caitie and Charlee all made friends and were running around with them. Chey and Monkey preferred to stay alone although they did run around other kids and such. CJ was devastated. His Tina was ignoring him to play with other people. He tried all the time getting her attention as she ran by. He would point to himself and shout out "Nina! I right here! I right here!" Then look defeated as she continued on. He also has the "Mine" theory going on. I guess it's because at home, the girls have their toys and he has his and his alone. We need to work on this. I didn't get to snap too many pictures because I was busy chasing CJ around and watching him slide - over and over and over again. I did manage to get these two, one of Monkey and one of CJ as they were drawing with sidewalk chalk. This was before he decided to color his entire body BLUE with the chalk. 

Monkey

 

CJ

The Sweet or Salty Taste Test

Chey and Monkey are learning about The 5 Senses. In honor of the sense of taste, we held a mini taste test party to see if snacks were sweet or salty. I allowed Caitie and Charlee to do this assignment with them even though this is not their current lesson.

For this project, I provided the following snacks:

• Applesauce
• Pretzel Sticks
• Potato Chips
• Fruit Snacks
• Peanuts
• Apple Slices

As the girls tasted each snack, they had to decide if it was sweet or salty. Once decided, they checked the appropriate box on their paper. 

Here is the link to the check off paper if you use the exact snacks from above. This is one project the girls thoroughly enjoyed!

The Start of the 2012-2013 School Year

I never seemed to have time to keep up with this blog. However, I am going to start trying to be better about it. I plan to use this blog as a way to keep family and friends updated on the kids' year.

This year we have:

- Tina -- 8th grade
- Carly -- 5th grade

- Caitie and Charlee -- 1st grade (this is the grade they would be in if they were registered in school; they do a    mix of 1st and 2nd grade work)

- Chey -- Kindergarten

- Monkey -- Pre K (even though she and Chey are twins, Monkey is a little behind. However, she does the same concepts with her sister)

- CJ -- Pre K2 (I invented a grade for him. He's 2 so all we work on is letter recognition, numbers, basic counting, shapes, and colors for now)

Our school year started on September 4th. I am currently working on our week in review post.

Crafts....

The kids were completely devastated that we missed the Build and Grow Workshop at Lowe's one week. Charlee was even in tears! So, in an effort to make amends with them, we bought them some crafts to work on at home. I know they weren't the same as using a hammer to build something, but we tried. Tina and Carly did them as well, but I never got a picture of them. Yet, anyway.

On Day #1 we took foam circles and decorated them with foam shapes.

Caitie:

Charlee:

Cheyenne:

Courtney:

On Day #2, we were supposed to be making animal key chains out of beads. Well, ditsy Mommy here couldn't figure them out. So, we made the animal shapes on foam circles.

Caitie (Kitten):

Charlee (LadyBug):

Cheyenne (Bunny):

Courtney (Monkey):

On Day #3, we made key chains out of beads. Caitie and Charlee made {close to} identical ones. And on Day #4, we made name bracelets.

Caitie:

Charlee:

Cheyenne:

Courtney:

Update on Us

I have not been keeping up with this blog like I should have been.

I have only have 1 post on this blog since I changed over from my other blog. I no longer have access to that blog which is another story altogether.

We changed the name of our home school. We were formerly "The Swarmer Academy". The name has changed to "Bayou Excellence Academy".

We now have 7 "enrollees". Well, still technically only 4 but 3 that will be coming into school soon. They are:


Tina, age 12, grade 6
Carly, age 7 (8 in September), grade 3
Caitie, age 4 (5 in October), grade PreK
Charlee, age 4 (5 in October), grade PreK
Chey, age 2 (3 in October)
Monkey (Courtney), age 2 (3 in October)
CJ (our only son has arrived!), age 5 months


With the newest addition to the family, we have changed our mascot and school colors. We decided that the Unicorn was an appropriate mascot when we were an all girl school. Now that we have a boy around, we took a new vote. The kids decided to honor our new home in Louisiana and selected the ALLIGATOR. Our colors had formerly been pink, baby blue and pale purple. The kids have decided to honor their new favorite holiday of Mardi Gras and selected purple, gold and green. I must say, at least they have made it easy to dress and decorate for anything!

I do have some pictures of where we did some "experiments" at the Gulf shore back in April. I guess I will post them soon.

I am currently planning out the school year for 2010-2011. I know that in reality I will never manage to stick to it, but I want at least a guideline of what needs to get accomplished.

Till then.......

INTRODUCTION

Hello and welcome to the official blog of The Swarmer Academy! We are a private home school that specializes in independant thinking and learning. We have a staff of 2 and an enrollment of 6; almost 7. Our staff consists of Chris, the "princiPAL" and Crystal, the "teacher". The staff also takes turns as bus driver and it has been known for the "principal" to be outside participating in physical education activities with the girls. Our students are Tina (11; 5/6th grade), Carly (7; 2nd grade), Caitie (4; pre-k 4), Charlee (4; pre-k 4), Chey-Chey (2) and Court(2). Baby Boy will be arriving in March.

We don't have a set curriculum. We do alot of "crafts" through learning rather than worksheets. We are beginning to start doing lapbooks. I think these are great visual ways of learning rather than looking at a school book and memorizing its contents.

The girls took a vote (with the youngest 2 using smiles as "yays") and our official mascot is the unicorn and school colors are pink, baby blue and purple. The man of the house thinks it's "girly". I asked him what did he expect from a house of girls?? LOL I think the mascot and colors may be changing soon.

That's us in a nutshell and this is where all our school progress will be posted.