Better late than never....

 It's been 18 months... 18 loooong months since I last updated you all on our life's adventures the wright way. Life has thrown us a few curveballs and we are getting ready for a big move in 7 short weeks. I really want to get back to blogging though, I love sharing our homeschool journey with  you!

  For a quick update:
  Chickadee is now in 2nd grade (almost finished actually) and I can't believe how quickly the time has gone. We are loving homeschooling more and more each day and the freedom it gives us as a family and the joy we have in learning!

 This past week this is what our school looked like:

Rock climbing at Zoo Atlanta! Chickadee has begged to do a rock climbing type experience for several months. We finally were able to find one that she could try! She loved it :) 

Brushing a goat at Zoo Atlanta Children's Zoo. 

Giraffe fun at Zoo Atlanta. This is one of her favorite animals!

Chickadee and I 

Critter show, this is an armadillo.. we really were this close!

Baby American Alligator... pretty cool!

PANDAS!!!! Chickadee's first time to ever see a real panda. She was captivated!

Great Smokey Mountains National Park

Chickadee trying her hand at farming the "old fashioned way"

Chickadee and her Papa exploring the river.

We watched 30 elk for about a half hour... they were just across a small part of the river. It was a pretty neat experience!

Pioneer Farm Museum in the Great Smokey Mountains National park

Photo Fun :)

Relaxing... 

We had a great trip with my parents visiting my sister and exploring the a few places down south. I love how flexible we can be with our homeschool schedule and that we can have days to do some hands-on learning and exploring!! 

Hoping to update more frequently!! Thanks for joining us on another adventure the Wright way!

~B

Adventures in First Grade....

  So it begins, I now have a FIRST grader!! I can't believe that Chickadee is ready for first grade work!! She has been working all summer on improving her reading and every time she picks up a new book, I am blown away by how well she is reading it! (My favorite though, is when she really does come to a big word she doesn't know and she just turns it into one she does... it makes for some funny sentences!)

   We have been working back into our routine slowly and have pretty much gotten it set as we just finished up our 4th week of school. Here are some pictures of our first day!

    On her first day of school, we buy her a cheap "I'm proud of you" type card and each of us writes a short message to her. Seeing as how one of her love languages is gifts (which is the LEAST of my love languages so I really have to work at this) she adores these cards and keeps them sitting on her desk ALL year! She still has last years card on her desk as well! Its a "cheap" but invaluable way for us to express how proud we are of her and show her how much we love her in a way that really speaks that to her!

A few activities from our first day: 

Calendar time

Writing sight words in shaving cream!

All About Me poster!! I love that we can fill this out each year, take a picture of it and compare it to previous years! (We NEED to get a current picture of her printed to hang up with it!) 

  

We are well on our way to learning and loving first grade! We have already done many exciting things and several more are coming up! Stay tuned for more great adventures, the Wright way!

~B

Pirate Adventures!

Ahoy there, Ye Mateys!   

   This month's theme for the "Poppins Book Nook" hosted by Enchanted homeschooling Mom was PIRATES! Chickadee loves this theme anyways as she likes Jake and the Neverland Pirates from Disney Jr. and also loves to visit the pirate exhibit at our local museum! She also loved the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride last year when we took our first trip to Disney. We had to ride it several times and each time she pointed out new things! We had fun this month reading different pirate books and creating an activity to go with our theme!

  First, we read "How I Became a Pirate" and its sequel "Pirates Don't Change Diapers" both by Melinda Long and illustrated by David Shannon. Chickadee and her Dad loved cuddling up and reading these books! We read a few other books too like "Exploring We Will Go" (a Backyardigans book), Little Einstein's "Pirate Treasure," and "Pirates: Adventures in Treasure Island" (a dollar store book). Chickadee loved reading different pirate themed books and using some of our old pirate theme packs from preschool.

 After reading the book we completed our lapbook component pieces for this months theme. The above is a picture of her completed ones from this month. You can find the FREE printables here.

  The activity we chose to do was to go on an actual, real life, pirate adventure!! We just happened to find one right in our own backyard (wink, wink). My husband helped me out by drawing a pretty accurate map of our backyard then I crinkled it all up and tore the edges (to make it look old) and then added a "path" with a great big X! 

  We told Chickadee that she had to follow the map exactly in order to find various tools to help her on her treasure hunt. I had also added small "X's" throughout the map at different locations where she would find these tools. (Really, I didn't want her to just open the door and go straight to the location of the biggest X). Along her journey she found a pirates hat, some swords, a bucket, and a shovel- all important treasure hunting tools! 

  
  When she finally reached the treasure, Chickadee had to dig it up from a large dirt pile in the corner of our yard! She had a blast and the laughs and giggles were well worth the work! 

 

  After she was finished, Chickadee INSISTED that Daddy to the treasure hunt and made him go inside so she could put everything back. It was a fun morning with lots of family laughs! :) (Although, I'm not sure who enjoyed the treasure hunt more... Chickadee or Dad!)

After we went inside, we took out the puppets that were included in the treasure "chest" and put on puppet shows for each other making up great pirate adventure tales of sailing the high seas and finding buried treasures! I loved hearing Chickadee use her imagination as she made up these great tales of adventure and giggle at the stories her Dad and I told. What a fun day and theme! "Yo ho, Yo ho, A pirates Life for me!" 

Until Life's Next Adventure,

~Bethany

Adventures in The Great Outdoors with Poppins Book Nook

 This month's theme for the Poppins Book Nook (more info here) was "The Great Outdoors"

Chickadee and I had a wonderful time reading books about the great great outdoors and doing our activity together! Some of the books we chose to read this time included the following:

Curious George goes Camping 
A Camping Spree with Mr. Magee
Birds (a nature book all about Birds)
Down to the Sea with Mr. Magee
 .... and several others!
   
    After we had read several books, we chose one book to focus on for our lapbook components that go along with each month's theme. Chickadee and I chose "Curious George Goes Camping" for this aspect. Chickadee filled in the answers to each booklet or colored pictures as it suggested. She is really liking making this large lapbook so far and we like to look back at each month's themes each time we pull it out! It will be a great keepsake for our school year!

After we had finished that, I gave her the activity I had created. I made up a "Nature Scavenger Hunt"  and she was so excited!  This is the scavenger hunt I created:

   We read over the list together first so that she knew what she was looking for, then Chickadee and I headed outdoors! As soon as we opened our front door she exclaimed: "I hear birds chirping!" and checked that off her list. We walked around our neighborhood for a bit and found the things we could there. The next day we headed to our local nature park to find a few of the harder things. 

Here you can see her "Smelling something Beautiful; finding a cool stick; wildflowers; 2 different types of leaves;  feeling something smooth (a rock); and something rough (tree bark)"
We had a wonderful time enjoying the great outdoors and spending time together as a family! We also headed to a local campground with some friends for the day during this month and enjoyed a hike on one of the trails and just being in "The Great Outdoors" for awhile! We had a wonderful adventure this month exploring this topic and are excitedly looking forward to next months Pirate theme! 

Until our next adventure,

Adventures in Summer Learning!

   This summer I created a "Summer Learning Basket" for Chickadee. I wanted to give her things to keep her mind active, but also let her dictate what and when she did these activities. I wanted it to be pretty laid back and fun for her (and not too stressful for me as it is my summer break too!) :)  

  I really enjoy doing thematic unit studies throughout the year so I decided to stick with that to create her summer basket. The first week of summer I kept it really light and just put in some books about summer, a few art projects, look and find books, a puzzle, etc., and her Summer Bridges K-1 Activity Book.  I told her I would like for her to do a page a day in this workbook (very easy, but keeps her mind active).

  Starting with the second week of our summer break, I included 3 Dinosaurs' Jump In To Summer Learning  activity sheets and she completes one set of these a day for the week. The first week was space themed worksheets so I included books about space, art/science projects about space, space themed games, toys, a leapfrog math DVD, and a sensory play box. 

I gather all the materials I need for the week on Sunday night then place them all in a big blue crate I found at wal-mart last summer. The crate sits in our living/family room so its close enough to find an activity and do and theres no need to go find supplies or other things. Chickadee loves this set up and likes looking through the crate each day to pick out something new she didn't see before! My favorite activities from space week were the games (from Mailbox) and the 2 projects. 

We made our own paper mache' moon lantern from a trial Babba Co. (no longer available) box I had gotten 2 summers ago and just saved the projects until Chickadee could truly participate and enjoy them. 

(I love her face in the first picture!)

We also made rockets from a trial Kiwi Crate that we got in the mail just a week before! The timing couldn't have been more perfect! 

This is just a peek into what our summer learning adventures look like. Other weekly themes will include Ocean/Beach, Dinosaurs, Pond, Robots, etc. We look forward to sharing those summer adventures with you as well! 

Until Life's Next Adventure...
~B