Thursday, August 15, 2013

Room Remodel


Recently, we finally committed to undertaking the remodeling of the girl's rooms.  I wanted to do something a little more exciting then just plain painted walls, so I enlisted the help of a professional painter who used her skills to transform the girl's walls. 

Julia's room had been painted light yellow since before Johanna was born, 7-8 years ago.  She wanted her room to be pink. It started out that way as the base color went over all the walls. 

 



Next, came the fun part!  We decided to go with an ombre effect. 


 

To top it off, our painter extraordinaire finished with a sparkly stencil complete with Swarovski crystals.


Here is the finished room:




Johanna's room started out a pale, sort-off olive green color that used to match the bedding when it was a guest room.  She wanted her room to be blue.  Once again, it started out a solid blue color.






Next, the painter layered on another 3 colors of blue which were more of a "gel" consistency which gave the walls a little bit of texture.


Over the top of that she added fine glitter, along with pieces of larger mica flakes to make Johanna's wall sparkle!


We also added this bed crown to the wall which the painter finished using foils and glass beads.



Below is the finished product, along with Johanna's new "Princess and the Pea" quilt.


The rooms turned out beautiful, and the girls were very happy!

Monday, August 12, 2013

17. Playground Crawl

In the beginning of June, we had some summer fun with a playground crawl.  I chose three playgrounds that were relatively close to each other, and we set out with water and snacks for our afternoon adventure.  

The first park was a little lame-o compared to the other two, but it was close to them.









Playground #2 was awesome!


 





 (Wobbly chair)









Playground #3 was also a lot of fun!




I don't think Johanna knew whether she liked this one or not (another wobbly chair).


There was a stage in this playground with little seats for the audience.  The girls took advantage of this to put on a show for me.



 Look out below!

 ..and again!

Lots of fun!

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Last Month of First Grade

I wanted to do a re-cap of the last month of homeschooling with Johanna from the Spring.  We covered a lot in that month!

I introduced her to the math gnomes and taught her the four processes. 



We talked about addition first.


 Plus Drawing by Mom

Plus Drawing by Johanna



Here we talked about all the different ways to get 12 by adding.
 


The following is Julia's picture.  All the numbers are upside down and backward since she is looking across the table at mine and Johanna's page, so that's always how she saw everything. I don't have a picture of Johanna's drawing, and I'm not sure why. That was a long time ago....

 


We took some time to do a spring craft.  I cut out a blue bird garland and the girls painted them, and added glitter, too. You can never have too much glitter!
 




Johanna also made a Tinkerbell paper doll.


Next, we talked about subtraction.

Johanna's Drawing 


Julia's Drawing (she asked me to write the numbers out for her this time).



 

 Then we talked about multiplication.

Mom's Drawing

Johanna's Drawing

 Julia's Drawing



 Practice problems for Johanna.


Finally, we talked about division.

Mom's Drawing

Johanna's Drawing


 We talked about some different ways to get the number 15.

Mom's Drawing

Johanna's Drawing


Next, we took some time to cover a story called, The New Land, about a family that came to a new land and had to build a house. We incorporated math into the story.
 


Mom's Drawing

Johanna's Drawing

Julia's Drawing

Copy Work


We continued to add more to the story, and work on more math problems over the next couple weeks. 
 


We also played the game, Sum Swamp, and few times.


We made pretty "stained glass" panels for the school room window with leaves and flowers the girls and I collected.
 





Finally, we covered the four seasons.


Spring

Mom's Drawing

Johanna's Drawing (I can't remember why she didn't do the copy work on this page.  We may have run out of time.)

Julia's Drawing


Summer

Mom's Drawing

Johanna's Drawing


Autumn

Mom's Drawing

Johanna's Drawing


Winter

Mom's Drawing

Johanna's Drawing

Julia's Drawing


I'm not sure what happened to Julia's drawing for Summer and Autumn either.  She was there with us, so they must have gotten lost in a pile of other drawings.

Throughout all of this we continued to practice reading and review math. Now a new school year is getting ready to begin.  Lots of changes ahead!