Cupcakes and Sassy Pants: A day in our homeschool life, how it all started?, and an experiment!

Hey there, so for this post I thought I would share what a typical homeschool day is Like for us and how we started this journey. First let me show you our homeschool room. I scoured pinterest for inspiration and put together our very own homeschool room. There are so many elaborate, awesome, rooms out there. We have a simple school room but it works for us.

reading corner

Organization shelves. Each cube is a different subject. We use colored folders and dividers to organize the work for each subject.

Her work area. The ball helps with her concentration and posture.

A little background on what led us into our homeschool journey....

I started homeschooling Little Miss Sass after kindergarten. She went to a small, private school for K. They were great to her but she didn't thrive there. She has some sensory issue and had a tough time in a school setting. She did not interact well with the other kids and was sad everyday. She struggled with certain tasks and assignments. She was just miserable and grouchy and having a tough time. I started looking into homeschooling her and we made the decision to give it a try for 1st grade. Homeschooling works for us and she is now in 3rd grade. She still has a tougher time making friends but homeschooling has really pulled her out of her shell. We are able to cater to her needs more and adapt things to make it work better for her. We engage her by incorporating her interests into our daily lessons.

This is homeschooling. Trip to the beach learning about tides and creatures of the sea.

We usually start our school day with the time, date, and month. Then we go to numbers and math. Next is snack and break. Followed by spelling and writing. Her writing is phenomenal! After that is language and 20 mins of quiet reading. We then have lunch and outdoor time. We finish our day with science, history, and geography. Most of the time we do school in our pj's lol. Perks!! My name should really be cupcakes and pajama pants!!!

This particular day Little Miss Sass showed interest in spiders. We have a Nat Geo spider book we read, used plastic spiders for multiplication, ( 1 spider has 4 legs, how many legs do 4 spiders have?) and I came up with a few fun activities like crawling like a spider and playdoh spiders. She asked "Why don't they stick to their web?" and "How do they eat?" well that meant experiment time! I came up with 2 experiments to answer her questions. If you want to try these with your own littles you will need.....

A paper plate
Tape
A small cup of oil ( about a TBS)
Sugar cube
A dropper
A small cup of water

For the first experiment "why don't they stick to their web?"

     I put some tape sticky side up on the plate.To keep it in place I rolled a small piece of tape to make it double sided and put it underneath the bigger, sticky side up piece. I did this 2 times so we had 2 sticky side up pieces.
      I had her walk her fingers over the tape. She noticed she was sticking. I told her that is how they trap their food. The bugs crawl or fly into the web and get stuck.
     Next I gave her the small amount of oil. I had her dip her finger tips in the oil and then walk her fingers along the tape. What happened? Her fingers did not stick. I explained that spiders do not stick to their web because they have an oil on their bodies that prevents them from sticking, just like her fingers dipped in oil.


She was so happy to know why they don't stick

For the experiment "How do they eat?"

     I gave her a dropper, a small cup of water, and a sugar cube.
   I told her the sugar cube is the bug that got stuck. The dropper with water in it is the spider injecting his venom into the bug.
   Next I had her drop water on the sugar cube and watch what happened. The water dissolved the sugar cube the same way the spider venom liquefies its preys insides so it can drink it up.