Fall Theme Homeschool edition

Well friends, apparently it is FALL....you wouldn't know it if you got dropped into San Antonio TX and just went by the weather. It was very much in the 90s and muggy all week. I barely went outside, being all giant and pregnant and suffering from my own brand of hot flashes as it is...and knowing that I'm facing yet another flaming day at the Soccer fields tomorrow I pretty much have a bad attitude about this week being the first week of fall.

I tell you all this to say that when I planned for this week's homeschool theme to be "Fall" I really thought I would be able to pull it off in style just through shear will and the use of well-placed fall decor. I think I was wrong.

Sure, we got off to a pretty good start-the kids and I put out our fall decorations and they "scattered" all my fall gourds in...one spot. In a pile. Seriously, we need to work on their decorating eye.

After that we did get started on a few Autumn themed homeschool activities but honestly, my books were a bust this week....and one of my activities I didn't even have the heart to attempt-so I'll start there:

If you happen to live in a part of the country where the change in seasons is ACTUALLY HAPPENING. Then I'd totally do this cool Leaf Science Project, its just three pages mostly about observation and I think it's perfectly suited for the 4-6 year old set, and maaaaaybe in like December when "Fall weather" hits San Antonio we will actually get to do this one. BOO. *Pout*

Now to the activities we DID do:

Activity One: Leaf Sight Words

The idea is we are working on sight words in such a way that it is not "work" or involve flash cards of any kind- This "game" required Ransom to identify sight words that were written on leaves that I had printed out on colored paper ( I used this printable) on red/yellow/orange/brown construction paper), and if he got the word right then he got to attach it to his bare tree.
We did this activity twice this week and it definitely seemed to be a painless way for him to work on his words!

Tabitha also enjoyed putting the leaves on the Tree and Ransom was sweet enough to let her attach some of his leaves. I suppose I could have once again done some letter leaves for her, but I had already written up all my words and I really wanted Ransom to work on all of them....neeeeext tiiiiime.

You'll need:
A large piece of paper ( for your tree)
Brown marker
autumn colors construction paper
printable
scissors
tape ( I used sticky tac for my leaves and it worked waaaay better)


Activity Two: "The" tree picture

I noticed that one of the words Ransom was struggling with last week was "The" so this week we did a little picture story where he got to glue scraps of colored paper onto a tree, I had written a sentence below it with all the "the"s left out and Ransom had to write them in. This ONE little activity totally solidified the word in his mind! Now, if I can just come up with a sentence and a picture for every sight word and we'll be golden! haha!

You'll need:
White paper
glue stick
autumn colored construction paper for ripping
pencil

Activity Three: Acorn Addition
So I found these fake acorns in the Dollar section of Target and I was all excited about using them for Ransom's addition problems this week...but when it came down to him doing his addition problems he chose to use little plastic action figure men ( also from the Dollar section at Target...oh how I love you, "One Spot"!) instead. So, in the end my Fall theme went out the window...but he did his addition no problem. So....win?!

You'll need: 
fake acorns ( that don't get used)
addition worksheet

In the end Tabitha L-O-V-E-D the acorns and played with them all week...so....I suppose it was still worth my $1.

As for my book recommendations...like I said, pretty much ALL my fall books were major fails. All accept the one I already owned and it is truly a gem, I have loved it since my own childhood- GO FIND THIS BOOK:

BONUS: 
So, in other homeschooling news: This week we came up with a new "plan" to deal with a rather bad attitude Ransom was getting when doing his piano practice and I decided to just go ahead and extend it to ALL his schooling. It's rather revolutionary and also quite controversial and its called "Bribery"
Ransom is "earning" a light saber that he saw ( YESS!!!! IT WAS IN THE ONE SPOT AT TARGET!) and was begging for-so now he knows that if he does all his school activities without complaint and with a positive attitude he gets a sticker on his earning chart. We're on day 5 and it's going great. I am not above bribery. Period.