Spontaneous Painting

A few days ago Chance and I were looking for something to do. We had been stuck in the house for the last couple days because Chance wasn't feeling well but it was so cold. Just then a local company Chez Clay posted a but one get one free sale on their Facebook page.

We have been there a couple times and it was fun both times so it seemed like the perfect thing to do on this chilly day.

Chance picked out this little car and I painted the little vase. We had a good time painting, it was so nice to do something spontaneous for a change. We will be picking up our fired pieces on the 21st. Chance's birthday!

Birthday sleepover

When I asked Chance what he wanted to do for his birthday this year he said he didn't want a big party with lots of people. He just wanted one friend, Emory to have a sleepover. So that's what we did.

This picture was taken during the only 15 minutes they were sitting still all evening. We stated a movie but I think they really only sat on the couch to drink their juice boxes because soon after they were playing with Legos and hexbugs once again.

They were up EARLY the next morning so after more playing and breakfast we went bowling.  It didn't take the boys long to decide to team up against me and in a kids vs me matchup they won everytime.

 I'm good but I'm not that good. That's rounds 1,2 & 3 in order. Chance broke 100 in round 2, there were bumpers but still.

This last picture is of the boys playing Weeping Angel tag, yes they watched a bit of Doctor Who.

Lafayette the fish

We seem to be able to keep a betta fish alive for 2 months. We are learning though, this time we got a heater to go with our new betta. 

Since we had a blue and a red bettas before we went with purple this time. He is very pretty and with the heater he seems very happy swimming around with his tail and fins on display even on the coldest days.

I took these pictures right when we brought him home before he went in his heated bowl.

Have you met Asher?

I know I have been slacking and I know I keep saying I am going to do better but life is still crazy hectic and so I don't but I do want to take a moment to introduce everyone to a new member of the family. He is 2 months old now, time flies. and he is the second most gorgeous baby boy I have ever met. His name is Asher Warren Wunnenberg. This first picture was taken of him and Chance when we were in Florida in September for his birth. He was only a few days old.

Here is a more recent picture of him sent to me by my Mom.      He just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Chance loves him to pieces and I do too

Definitions

Chance is really good at his vocabulary words and his sight words. He blew right through the list of first, second, and third grade sight words. We are now using fourth grade sight words and even those barely slow him down.

This vocabulary unit focuses on travel words. I asked chance to write the word 'turn' and define it in the context of travel. Here you see the result.

Book report - The Trumpet of the Swan

In this unit chance was given a list of books to choose from, The one he picked was an excellent choice, one of the characters is a little boy loves animals just like Chance.

So, for the past week and a half we have been reading The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White. 

When we finally finished the book it was time to do a book report.

It is hard to see but on each of those little pieces of paper is written a fact about the book.

We brainstormed what to write on the papers together. Then Chance decided which fact should go on which paper and wrote the facts out himself.

This was our hardest literature unit so far the reading was easy but going over everything we had read every day became tedious for both of us. In the end we all decided it was a pretty good book.

LAVCA Pizza in the Park

Last Tuesday we went to our first official LAVCA school social event. All grades from all over the state were invited to Bayou Sauvage State Park for pizza and socializing.

The parents talked while the kids played. Chance had a good time. It was interesting talking to all the other parents and learning why they chose virtual school. 

Before it was over we got all the kids together to take this picture. You can see Chance down front right behind the banner on the left-hand side. The little boy in the front farther left wearing the yellow construction hat is Isaiah, he is in Chance's class.

P.S. publicschooloptions.org Is a group that advocates for alternative public school options. 

Egyptian History

In History class we're now studying the Egyptians. We learned that as the nomads began to settle they settled along rivers, one of the rivers they settled along was The Nile. The people who settled along the Nile became known as Egyptians.

We are learning about their gods and goddesses, This is Osiris and Isis:

We learned that upper and lower Egypt were united by king Narmer. Here he is wearing the double crown red for lower Egypt, white for upper Egypt.

Chance colored the pieces and glued them together to make the double crown.

And last but not least we learned about hieroglyphs. Chance did an excellent job writing his name with hieroglyphs.

The CH is represented by the left facing horseshoe, A by a bird, N by squiggly lines representing water, C by what looks kind of like a cane and E by what is called a reed but looks more like that symbol on the end there.

Molecule Science

In science class we are learning about molecules. So we did an experiment to show how molecules move faster in hot water and slower in cold water.

We put red food coloring in the hot water on the left and blue food coloring in the cold water on the right. Chance is pointing out in this picture that the red food coloring is spreading out through the glass faster than the blue food coloring. Which of course happens because molecules move faster in hot water.

Chance drew a picture of his observation right after we put the food coloring in each glass and again in 10 minutes see what changes had occurred. The color will spread out evenly in both glasses it just takes longer in the warm water.

Chance loves thescience experiments    we do in school. I know I didn't learn about molecules in first grade, It'sgreat that Chance is getting this base knowledge of science so young.

Introducing Hammond the Beta Fish

We got a beta fish! His name is Hammond. He loves swimming and eating. He also likes warm weather but not direct sunlight. Chance likes to check on him and give a report on how Hammond is doing.

Like Father like Son

The other day I just stumbled on them chilling on the couch.

Chance then showed me that New Orleans is featured in his National Geographic Kids magazine this month.

Incorporating shapes into Art

This Art class took what we learned about shapes in Art a step farther.  This time I cut a few shapes out of construction paper to start. Then Chance picked one shape that he wanted to use. He picked a rectangle. Next he decided where he wanted to place it on his page and glued it down. That was when I stepped away and let him come up with the rest all on his own. His assignment was to turn the shape into something within his artwork.

He chose to make his rectangle a building with windows, people, cars and sky to create the world and really show he understood the goal of the lesson.

Best in his class.

A few weeks ago Chance took a reading test. Last week we had Chance's first parent/teacher conference where I learned Chance's score. You can see my notes on that test score above. 113 is the score he needs to be at his age/grade level, 218 is the score Chance received. The highest score in the class!

Chance loves to read, absolutely loves it. He has books in his bed every night. He reads me a story each night for bedtime and I read a few chapters in a longer book to him. 

In Literature class we are reading The  Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White. We read three chapters per lesson. I read two chapters and he reads one chapter. They are long but he sticks with it and does a great job.

Making bricks in History class

In History we are learning about the nomads settling down in the fertile crescent. When they stopped roaming all around they needed to build their homes from stronger more permanent materials. They formed bricks from the mud around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. 

To show how they would have made bricks we made a few of our own. Chance got 2 cups of dirt from the backyard, we mixed that with 1/2 cup of flour and about 1/3 cup water then we formed the mixture into "bricks". We didn't have a mold so our bricks aren't very uniform. Chance had fun until the dirt became mud then it was too icky to touch. After a couple hours in the oven to dry them out we had fun building little towers and walls.

I walked in while the bricks were cooking to find this scene on Chance's desk. It is a shaduf. Here is a photo of it from his lesson:

Monoprints and Shapes

Art class is turning out to be one of Chance's favorite classes. Last week we did something super fun. We did monoprints. A monoprint is a type of printmaking which can only produce one result. We first painted our designs onto a cookie sheet then we transferred them onto construction paper.

Chance drew a monster truck going up a hill. He did a great job using the different kinds of lines we learned in previous lessons. We both have a good time pulling out paints and glue, crayons and markers and having the opportunity to make art. It's great being able to see his mind working, what he chooses to put into his art and why.

Today's art lesson was about shapes. His work of art includes square and triangle rocks on a triangle mountain. The other side of the mountain has been hit by a star meteorite and is on fire.

Vocabulary Class

Each vocabulary unit gives us a new list of words to learn. The lessons are supposed to be completed entirely online through interactive stories and games. I decided to add in an offline aspect too. So, before Chance does the online part we each take a little whiteboard then I say the word out loud "dance", then we both write the word on our boards without letting the other one see. After we are both finished writing I ask Chance what the word means. So far he has known what ever word has meant. After discussing the meaning of the word we flip our boards around to see if we spelled them correctly. He likes getting to write and erase on the whiteboards.

Here is one of our unit word list:

Home made yogurt pops.

We started with this: 

We had fun spooning in layers of yogurt then put the mold in the freezer. After a few hours we had this:

These were layered peach and strawberry. They were super tasty:

Now we all want to go get more yogurt flavors to make more tasty combinations. 

His first poem

We studied poems as one of his units in Literature. As one of the activities he was to write his own poem. They set it all up for him but he picked the words to fill in the blanks himself. 

The best part is when I congratulated him on writing his first poem he said "it's just the first one I wrote down, I write them in my head all the time"

Music class

Welcome to music class! It doesn't look a lot like music from these pictures but there is music playing and they are walking to the beat. Well, Scott is walking to the beat and Chance is trying. When he is paying attention he is right on the best perfectly but if anything distracts him it throws him way off but then he finds it again. They followed each other all through the house.

Chance's first youtube video

Chance discovered the joys of YouTube recently and so wanted to make his own youtube video. So we made a marble run and a video and here is the result:

Art

Chance is really liking his art class. It's built into the schedule twice per week but we've already done 2 extra classes at his request.

We learned about all the different types of lines used in art. Here Chance drew three different types of lines with varying thicknesses to show how the mood of a line changes depending on how thick or thin it is.

Here he wrote his name three times keeping a different kind of line in mind each time. First vertical, next wavy (see how all the letters are connected) and last curvy.

I was impressed with his choices and particularly like the last one, he made his name into a marble run.

 

First full day of school

We had been doing half days of school work since before school officially started on August 7th just to get used to the system and to bank extra hours of attendance. Wednesday was our first full day of schoolwork. 

The day was grey and rainy, we had the lights on inside all day long, still we got all our work completed. We did Math, Literature, Handwriting, Vocabulary, Phonics, History and Art. He got a little antsy at the end but overall he was very good. It took us a little longer than I was hoping but I think it will get faster as we get into a groove.

More School on the Road

Last Thursday we had another class connect session to attend. This time we set up shop on the bed in our hotel room.  We didn't need our headsets this time since we weren't out in public so we just sat back and relaxed.

This class was an overview of what to expect for our future class connect sessions and what is expected of us in regards to Language Arts and Math specifically.

Starting the week of August 26th there will be a Homeroom every Monday at 9am. Then every Monday and Wednesday morning there will be a math class and in the afternoon will be Language Arts. The classes are the same so we only need to attend one day. Tuesday and Thursday are left open for small groups. She will send invitations to students who need a little extra help either because they are ahead or behind. These are groups of 1 to 4 students. The all class sessions are optional but the small groups are mandatory. I think we will attend a couple classes per week though because they count for attendance and Chance gets to interact with his class which is always a plus.

First day of 1st grade!

August 7th was Chance's first official day of school. He attended the first day of first grade in a Starbucks in Alabama. 

We received all his school materials a few weeks ago and his courses released a couple weeks ago now in the On Line School system so we started doing lessons over a week ago. When we started out on our trip to the family reunion Chance had already banked 22 hours of attendance.

So Chance's first official day of 1st grade he only had two things we had to do, that was attend the K - 7 assembly and the 1st grade introduction. For that we needed Internet from 9-10am so we set up in the coffee shop. Chance and I both listened in as the Principal Mrs Marble introduced the teachers and gave us an overview of what to expect in the next week. After the assembly was over we switched to another session for a welcome to first grade from Chance's teacher Mrs. Titus as well as a bunch of dates get ready for in the coming weeks.