The Homeschool Den

American West Unit

2012-01-30T05:57:00.002-05:00

As I mentioned last week, this semester we are studying the American West. We picked up where we left off last semester when we talked about Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. (To the left is Davy Crockett's birthplace cabin in Tennessee which we visited last Thanksgiving.)

We talked about the Ohio Valley settlement and how as settlers made their way west they used the rivers for transportation. We learned a couple of songs about the Ohio River and made our own small raft. We discovered that it was pretty difficult to keep our "supplies" afloat!

We also talked about the importance of forts in the American West. High walls surrounded the cabins which usually formed one wall of the fort. Farmers living in nearby homesteads would come to the forts to grind their corn and buy supplies. Cows and pigs were left outside the fort.

With it being so difficult to transport goods over the mountains and down the rivers, glass was not common. People often used greased paper for windows instead of glass. We spread oil on paper garbage bag to see how the oil let the light in.

First Aid - Snakes, Spiders and Ticks (Day 5)

2012-01-28T05:39:00.002-05:00

A few days ago our first aid topic was on snake, spider and tick bites.

First we went over the venomous snakes in our area and then went over some other venomous snakes they might encounter in America.

Then we went over some of the basic first aid measures you should take if bitten by a venomous snakes. In the picture they are trying to take off my ring. We also talked about the fact you should

remain calm
immobilize the bitten arm/leg/finger and keep as still as possible to keep the poison from spreading
if possible have the limb lower than your heart
apply a splint to keep the limb from moving (loosely to allow blood flow)
remember what the snake looked like
call 9-1-1

ED did a little spider craft while the others were working on their math. Then we talked about how to identify the more common spiders to be worried about black widow and brown recluse spiders.

try to identify the spider that bit you
clean the spider bite site with soap and water
apply a cool compress
elevate the bite
look for signs of chills, fever, nausea and vomiting, abdominal pain

Finally we talked about why it is important to check for ticks. They can carry bacteria that cause Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. We talked about how sick that can make you.

The kids practiced taking a tick off me (a bean that I taped to my arm). They actually loved that! We talked about why it's important to remove the head as well.

We used a lot of our first aid tips from the Mayo Clinic First Aid section.

First Aid and Fire Safety (Day 3-4)

2012-01-27T05:40:00.001-05:00

Fire Safety

We were quite overdue for a review of some basic fire safety rules. Even though we've lived here for a year and a half, we hadn't made a family meeting spot outside in case of emergency. Nor had we gone over in detail how the kids can escape from their room in case of emergency.

We talked about what to do if your clothes or hair catches fire. Stop! Drop! Roll! One source suggests covering your eyes. We also talked about how to help if someone is on fire. Making sure to issue the orders to stop, drop and roll. To get something like a blanket to cover them, roll them, and smother the fire. Once again we all took turns calling 9-1-1 and giving our name, address and describing the emergency situation.

We then talked about being low to the ground if the room were smokey. We practiced crawling quickly across the room. We also talked about checking a door before opening it to see if it were hot to the touch. We talked about how oxygen feeds a fire.

Next we went to each person's room and had them see if they could escape through their window if need be.
This was especially important for ED because her window is tough for her to open because of her height. We had her practice pushing the window down by using a couple of board books.

We wrote out some our fire safety tips and then I had the kids go over all of them with Dad. Dad brought up a good point about what to do in case of a forest fire (since just six months ago a neighbor lost their house to a forest fire). Dad also suggested that we have a fire drill one day soon.

We went around testing our smoke alarms.

ED really liked this simple preschool page about fire safety. There's a screenshot to the left. I wasn't impressed, but she wanted to do it over and over which is what matters, right?!

Finally we talked about what to do in a smoke-filled room. We talked about how difficult it would be to see and how you need to stay very low to the ground. Then the kids did one of their favorite activities... one we do most every time we talk about fire safety. They took turns crawling blindfolded through a maze of objects trying to get to safety. It's a fun activity, but they really do *get it* and remember that they would have to stay low or crawl in case of a fire.

We're Moving Soon!

2012-01-25T05:34:00.002-05:00

Not out of the house, we're here to stay for a while yet... but the Homeschool Den blog will be moving. A couple of months ago one of the editors of Parents contacted me and asked if I would like to come under the Parents umbrella as one of their bloggers. I was honored and thrilled to join such a great team of people. So in just a couple of weeks you'll find us over at the Parents website. We'll have a link from this site to get you to the right place. Stay tuned for more about that transition soon!

I've had this post done for ages... at least mentally! I love to hear what others are up to and thought I'd do another general post about the rhythm of our day.

While each day is different overall, our mornings often start off the same. We all have breakfast and slowly gather in our homeschool room. Most mornings we start off with independent reading (though ED and I have often been up for a while so we may have already done some preschool activities together). LD loves to read so he starts reading the second he hits the kitchen. I generally have to ask DD to find a book she wants to read, then she's happily engrossed. Right now LD is reading the Lightning Thief while DD is reading a chapter or so each day from a Nancy Drew book Grams brought us.

Then we have collection (which is our group time). We often start of singing songs together. Right now we are going over some USA basics about the states and Presidents. We're learning the "50 States That Rhyme" song. We've managed to memorize about half the states so far--and we point to each state as we sing it. It's been a fun challenge, though I doubt we'll ever sing all 50 states in 35 seconds like the young girl on you tube here!! I typed out the lyrics last summer. You can download them here if you're interested. We are also learning a few basic facts about the US Presidents. We've covered the first five and we'll eventually go up through at least Abraham Lincoln. Our main unit in history this semester is on the American West. I'll be posting about some of the things we've been doing with that soon.

Most days we try to work on German. We always start with basic greetings and chit-chat (like "What day is it?" or "Today is cold.") Right now we're using a dictionary book that has great pictures. I'll ask questions like, "Where is something blue?" or "Where's the rug? What color is it?" We're still in the slow process of vocabulary and basic language acquisition so we don't cover grammar at all (except in a natural way as I help guide them in their speaking).

We usually then do our morning projects (first aid, geography, experiments or whatever) together before branching off to the subjects the kids work on on their own (math, spelling/writing, music) as the day progresses.

ED has been doing some basic geography activities (again I'll have more about this soon) for her main preschool work. We also have been doing a test run of a website called Reading Eggs. She is really enjoying that and it looks like we'll probably get a subscription once our 4-week trial period is over. She's been jumping on that while the others are involved in subjects she's not interested in.

Right now LD is reading Real Science 4 Kids' Physics book, while I'm reading those same chapters aloud to DD. That's because we'll be doing some hands-on stuff in a couple of weeks and I want them to have finished the book before we do the experiments and activities. I have both pre-level 1 and Level 1. Pre-level 1 is definitely better for DD (age 6). It's written in very simple terms. I think LD would be fine with either level, but I'm having him read the Pre-level 1 on his own. He is really enjoying it. Then we may add in the next level when we actually do our activities.

DD is really enjoying the piano. She never has to be reminded to practice and stops at the piano to play several times a day. She's learning the Theme from Ice Castles at the moment. Meanwhile, LD still loves the trumpet. I think we found a high school student who will give him lessons once or twice a month. I can teach music generally, but I'm a woodwind player not a brass player!

So there's a bit more of a glimpse at the kinds of things we fit into our homeschool day. I have a couple more postings about our first aid unit and then I will be posting about some of the other things I mentioned.

PS If you are interested in learning more about Real Science 4 Kids's Physics textbook you can check out the Pre-Level I sample here. And here's the link to the sample of Level I. LD just finished reading Pre-Level I this morning and as I said above, he really enjoyed reading it. I plan to use other materials for our activities so don't have any recommendations one way or the other about the teacher's manual or lab workbook.

Game: A to Z, Jr.

2012-01-23T06:24:00.000-05:00

The girls got a new game for Christmas called A to Z, Jr by Discovery Toys. What a great game!

The game itself is the perfect age for DD and LD (ages 6 and 8). It's similar to the game Scattergories. Each person rolls the die and picks up a card. Then he/she has to name as many objects as they can for the category they rolled. Categories might include:

snack foods
purple things
stuff you see in a parade
boring things
stuff that fits in your pocket

The person covers the beginning sound of each object she/he listed. To win the kids have to get five in a row while I have to cover my entire board.

We've been also using it for ED's preschool work. One day we turned over some Memory cards that we have. We took turns drawing a card and covering the first letter sound of the card we turned over.

Another day she went through some of the alphabet words we have (a cut and paste alphabet printout book I had on hand). I don't have the exact link, but here is something similar that you could print out on cardstock.

The Sistine Chapel

2012-01-21T05:52:00.000-05:00

If you are doing art appreciation, you might be interested in going on a virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel. This website was absolutely gorgeous and well worth a look at Michelangelo's magnificent work: http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html
You can scroll in and out and move the cursor around to see different parts of the room... not just the famous portions like The Creation of Adam below (photo from Wikimedia Commons).

If you are wanting to add in some art appreciation, be sure to hop on over to Confessions of a Homeschooler. Erica has a wonderful free art curriculum called "World's Greatest Artists." You'll find it on her right sidebar under as the last entry under "My Curriculum."

First Aid and Fire Safety (Day 2)

2012-01-19T05:48:00.000-05:00

The next topic we covered was on broken bones. We talked about immobilizing the bone. I told them the story of when my sister broke her arm. My parents wrapped a magazine around her arm and secured it before rushing her off to the hospital. We practiced wrapping the arm and they learned how to make a sling.

Spelling: Silent Letters

2012-01-18T05:53:00.005-05:00

Instead of jumping straight back into All About Spelling, I had the kids work on words with silent letters last week. You can find this word sort in the language materials area at Montessori for Everyone.

I made a couple of work sheets for DD and LD to do with these. You can download them here if you are interested. You can see the first two pages below.

Have you heard of Spelling City? I've heard about it for years, but only now am giving it a go with LD and DD. You can type in the words your child is learning. There are lots of activities to choose from (this is a screenshot of the fill in the missing letter game)...

And this was Hangmouse:

LD said it was "good." Can I play one more game and THEN let DD try it? (Of course it was bedtime when he was asking this!) So then they played a round of unscramble and I sent them off to bed:

The other spelling game website we tried out was http://kidsspell.com. It was similar in that you could type in your spelling word list. It had an even larger selection of games. Here are just three we tried out. From what I see, I bet we'll get even more use out of this website.

We also did some contraction review. This cute penguin and snowman themed activity is from Heather's Heart. Thank you, Heather!

Preschool Math: numbers greater than 10

2012-01-17T05:18:00.001-05:00

ED is ready to tackle the teen numbers. She often skips some of the numbers after 13. I am using a homemade version of the Montessori seguin board (download the packet I made here). It's a board with lots of 10s in a row. The child then places a digit over the zero to make 11, 12, 13, etc.
1) First ED counted the number of animals.
2) Then she pulled out the same number of beads. I made a big deal about the group of 10 beads being called her special 'golden beads.' She promptly fell in love with them!
3) Next she chose the proper digit and placed it in the ones column to make it "one ten and one" (for 11), "one ten and two" (for 12) and so forth.

If you're interested in the printout packet I made of the seguin materials you can download them here. You can also buy a proper wooden seguin board (such as this or this teens and tens board), but I never used them enough with my older two to warrant the price.

First Aid and Fire Safety

2012-01-16T05:49:00.001-05:00

One of the things hubby and I wanted to be sure cover again this year was emergency situations. I'm a bit ashamed to say that we hadn't gone over this for close to two years. Most of this information was new to ED.

The first day, I went over first aid for cuts. ED helped me to 'prepare' my arm so she wasn't afraid (she drew on my arm with red marker and helped spread the 'blood'). I called the older two into the room and told them I needed immediate help. LD said immediately, "Oh Ma, that's ketchup." Smart kids, right?! But then they got to the task at hand... putting pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding, wrapping my arm and calling 9-1-1 for help - giving their name, address and explaining what was wrong. We looked at all the various things in our first aid box and we went over where it is kept.

My New Vocabulary Word -- Cholesteatoma

2012-01-14T20:09:00.001-05:00

Unfortunately, I learned a new word yesterday... cholesteatoma. I really didn't like wikipedia's initial definition, "destructive and expanding growth" but overall I'm hoping it's not that bad. Read on to see what I have...

After several months waiting to see a specialist, I finally got in to see an ENT. I have a long history of ear infections which started for me around the age of five. I wear hearing aids in both ears as a result of severe ear infections and various problems (bones being eaten away) as a child/youth. In the past couple of years, I've had about four different doctors look into my ears. They all have had much the same reaction... "Oh my!" "Goodness that looks awful." "I see lots of drainage." and then... "but it's not infected." The past six months the drainage, itching, swelling and general discomfort (including random flashes of ear pain that shoot by, but pass quickly.) has been at times horrendous, mostly tolerable. I took it all in as the new norm having moved from a dry climate back to the humid climate of my youth. The specialist yesterday listened carefully to me spout out my long history of infections, surgeries, and my most recent symptoms. Then he looked into my ears and told me they both are indeed infected -- and that my one ear has a growth behind the ear drum (cholesteatoma). He said I need surgery as it is (in his words) "potentially quite dangerous." They'll go in behind my ear, remove the bone that runs parallel to my ear canal and then remove the growth. (If I were to leave it be it can cause facial paralysis, deafness, even brain problems.) So obviously surgery is a happy option, but I'm pretty bummed to have to fit in all the things necessary to get me better (CAT scan, other appointments, surgery, recovery). One outcome of all this is that I could lose some of the hearing in this ear (which is my "good ear"). Today I feel fine with it all, but I sure was teary yesterday (the surgery 30 years ago on my other ear was very painful), but I'm hopeful that it's more routine and pain-free these many years later.

Meanwhile, this past week was a busy one. We started back into our school routine, returned to our regular sports and music activities, started a new one (DD added in Irish dance lessons which she loved, loved, loved!) and did some make-up gymnastics classes from when we were out of town. It was busy, busy! I'll be writing up a couple of school-related posts in the next day or so.

Recipe: Taco Soup

2012-01-12T06:20:00.000-05:00

It's the perfect time of year here for a warm crock-pot meal. My kids love taco soup and I thought I'd share our recipe:

1/2 onion chopped
1 can pinto beans rinsed
1 can kidney beans rinsed
1 small can green chillies, undrained
1 1/2 Tablespoons taco seasoning
2 chicken breasts
1 can tomato sauce
2 cups chicken broth (mine is homemade, just the frozen water/broth leftover from after boiling chicken breasts for other dishes)
1 large can diced tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon paprika

1/2 hour before getting ready to serve I add 1 1/2 cups or so of frozen corn (you can add it in first thing, but I like doing it at the end)

Cook in a crock-pot on high for 5 hours or so. Before serving chop up or shred the chicken breasts. Serve with a teaspoon of sour cream (per bowl) if desired and with crushed tortilla chips on top.

Seahorse Art--Based on Eric Carle's book

2012-01-11T05:36:00.003-05:00

Eric Carle's books are always inspiring for an art project. A couple weeks ago we read Mister Seahorse. I cut out seahorses and the kids had a blast painting. The girls each did three or four paintings each.

Be sure to visit Deep Space Sparkle for other Eric Carle-based lessons and other fantastic art project ideas.

A couple of years ago we did a chameleon craft based loosely on Eric Carle's Mixed Up Chameleon.

Wonderful Holidays and a Happy New Year!

2012-01-09T05:38:00.007-05:00

I stretched out our early December activities and posted them over the past couple of weeks, but in reality we had a prolonged break for the holidays. I notice a number of comments and will try to get back to you soon. In the meantime, I want to rave about our amazing break.

We had Grams and Gramps with us for three wonderful weeks. We did so much together. We saw holiday light displays and of course celebrated the holidays. We ate too much, played lots of games, took the kids ice skating, roller skating, and we just got back from a skiing trip. During the week we were away, we also went to a cave (above). Grams and Gramps spoiled me and hubby rotten -- letting us go on dates, letting us sleep in, doing the dishes and cooking endless meals, helping get things tidy. [Thank you again!! Hugs! I know you're reading!!]

We took the kids skiing for the first time. (It's been about 15 years since hubby and I last skied.) We were stunned to find out that there was a homeschool deal on the day we decided to ski, so it cost us 1/3 the price. If you plan to go skiing this season, it's well worth a phone call to see if there's a homeschool special on particular days. (You may want to bring a homeschool ID with you. You can create one for you and your children at the homeschool buyer's co-op. It is free.)

For the most part we came away unscathed, though at one point I took LD and DD up to the top of the mountain. LD was in the chair ahead of me and lost a ski as he got on, so I brought it up with me. When we got to the top the attendant came towards me to get the ski. I was paying attention to him, not poor DD when I realized she hadn't gotten off the chairlift!! Oh my goodness!! The attendant rushed back and shut down the lift, but not before DD was up about 12 feet in the air. They had her slide onto her belly and dangle down (we still couldn't touch her ski she was that high up). "Is she athletic?" they asked me. "Ummm..." "Okay honey, now drop down and we'll catch you." And poor DD dropped out of the sky into the two attendants' and my arms.

Another event later in the evening, had LD slip off the chair just as they were starting out. Dad hadn't even lowered the safety bar when LD started slipping. Dad managed to grab LD's arm and he dangled down (not too terribly high, but enough for LD to make a good story of it and scare the pants off me!). They stopped the lift and LD safely got down to the ground and rode the next chair up.

Overall, the kids had a blast. Even ED had a fantastic time... skiing for probably about five of the eight hours! That meant endless runs for me (or Dad) up the carpet lift and down the hill bending over and holding ED upright. (She never did really get the "pizza" position properly.)

So now we'll be getting back into the swing of things this week. I did get quite a bit of planning done for the new semester. I'm feeling refreshed and ready for the new term; hopefully the kids are too!

Spelling: Long I words--igh and ie words

2012-01-08T06:00:00.000-05:00

I found a bingo card creator and have made several cards so LD can do some reviewing. This is the "long A" sound words, but you can create any word list you want. Here is the link to the bingo card creator website.

I'm often raving about All About Spelling and just wanted to include a picture of the tiles. Each lesson presents a new rule and before writing on paper, the kids practice pulling tiles down to create the word. We start out our lesson reviewing some old words before going on to the current lesson.

Some homeschoolers have a big board for this. Since we often sit on the floor, this small whiteboard has worked out well for us so far.

This is another word sort for the long I sound-- ight words and ie words. I found this at Oceans of First Grade Fun. Thanks Yolanda!

Phases of the Moon Activity: Homemade Oreo Cookie Recipe (Yum!!)

2012-01-04T06:07:00.000-05:00

We had a lot of fun with this part of our astronomy unit.We talked about the phases of the moon. We started off with a lamp and held an egg in our hand. Then we moved the egg slowly around, watching how the shadow on the egg changed as the egg moved relative to the earth/our eyes. We all took turns slowly watching the shadows on the egg change (photo blend below). Then we pulled out some readings and read about the different names of these shadows... half moon, crescent moon, gibbous moon, etc.

We filled out a worksheet (photo above) and went on to the Phases of the Moon lapbook pages below. I didn't like this lapbook quite as much as the others because it didn't include the gibbous phase (look at the egg collage: middle picture/top row) when there's a lot of light and only a sliver of shadow. I printed out the worksheet from the teacherfile box (all the Evan Moor books available as printables such as history pockets, take it to your seat science centers and more). I got my subscription for 30% off from homeschool buyers coop. You can also make your own Homeschool IDs there.

Next we went on to showing the light and shadows on oreo cookies. I've seen this activity done with "real" oreos (sorry can't remember when or where), but I've had this homemade oreo recipe to try out for two years. This is the first time we actually used it. Oh my goodness, those cookies were awesome!! I'll share the recipe below. First, here are oreo moon phases:

First we followed the sheet exactly, making sure the light and shadows were aligned properly. Then we started with the full moon at the top and I had the kids try to figure out what came next (picture below). They had to concentrate pretty hard to do this.

Homemade Oreos:
And now the recipe:
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa (it called for "Dutch process cocoa, I used Hershey's unsweetened cocoa)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar (I used 1 1/4)
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons room-temperature unsalted butter (1 1/4 sticks)
1 large egg

Place very small spoonfuls of batter on the greased cookie pan. Be sure not to make the blobs too large because they flatten and spread out a lot. Since we made ours into proper looking oreos (cream in the middle) after this activity, the cookies wound up huge (larger then I wanted the kids to be eating in one sitting).

Bake for 9 minutes at 375.

Frosting:
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
2 cups confectioners' sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

The print out has been in my recipe box forever, but there is a tribute: "Adapted from Retro Desserts, Wayne Brachman." Again, sorry I don't have an original link.

Memory Work

2012-01-03T06:14:00.000-05:00

DD is learning a couple of new poems from a very old book we own from 1904 called the Value of Cheerfulness. We both like these poems and I thought I'd share them with you all. And since the poems are inspiring, why not some awe-inspiring art (left). I love, love, love Albert Bierstadt's sweeping landscapes of the American West.

They might not need me--

Yet they might--

I'll let my heart be

Just in sight.

A smile so small

As mine might be

Precisely their

Necessity.
---By Emily Dickinson

It is easy enough to be happy
When Life flows by like a song,
But the man worth while
Is the man with a smile
When everything goes dead wrong.
--- Anon.

Spelling: oi and oy words; ow and ou words

2012-01-02T05:59:00.000-05:00

We are doing lots of spelling review over the holidays just to keep things fresh. Today and tomorrow I'll share some of the spelling things we're doing to keep things fresh.

Every now and then we pull out our spelling word sorts. LD goes over the rules he has learned for spelling. DD is just now becoming familiar with the rules. We use these to supplement the wonderful program we use, All About Spelling. Here are some useful (free) resources I've come across for oi/oy and ou/ow words:

(above left) Toy Chest Word Sort for oi and oy words from Oceans of First Grade Fun
(above right) Chicken Run: ou and ow word sort at Oceans of First Grade Fun
ou and ow words Finally in First cow and house sorting mat
ou and ow word sort from Differentiation Station - cowboy theme

Thank you to these wonderful teachers--Yolanda, Jenn and Heather-- who have shared their hard work with all of us!

Mt. Vernon, George Washington's Home

2011-12-30T05:57:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago we lucky to be able to take a trip to see George Washington's home, Mt. Vernon. It was a full day and the kids were asleep by the time we got home with the hours of walking we did (and the warm, cozy car ride home!) I hadn't ever been there, but we were impressed with all there was to do there. The museum was wonderful. I love that hands-on learning!

Slave Cabin and the interior (below)

Astronomy Unit: The Moon (Day 2)

2011-12-29T06:18:00.000-05:00

On this day we read about the Moon and did the lapbook components to add to our science notebook. What's perfect about these lapbooks for us right now is the writing is not overwhelming and reinforces the main points we've gone over. We used the Moon -- Speedy Lapbook by Homeschool Bits (which was on sale for 25cents).

Moon Craters: Our activity that day was to talk about why the surface of the moon has so many craters.

We made a play dough like surface and covered it with aluminum foil. Then we got some marbles and fired our "meteors" at the "surface of the moon."

We looked at some actual photos of the craters on the moon and read a bit more about it too. The kids liked this activity!

Astronomy Unit: The Moon (Day 1)

2011-12-28T06:05:00.000-05:00

The moon is very far away (225,622 miles to 252,088 miles depending on its position in its elliptical orbit around the Earth). NASA had to be very careful about the calculations they made to send someone to the moon especially since the moon is a moving target. In this activity, the kids are trying to hit the moon (a nut suspended on a string) that is swinging back and forth. They found it very difficult to hit the moving target!

We set up a bright lamp (our sun) and DD is moving the ping-pong ball around the earth (orange). Meanwhile LD is slowly moving the earth/orange around the sun/lamp.

Objects appear larger, the closer they are to you:

In this activity we showed that our hand can block out the entire wall on the other side of the room from top to bottom even though our hand is much smaller than the wall itself. This is what the moon does when it blocks out the sun in an eclipse. The moon is smaller, but closer to Earth.

Now the kids are blocking out the orange with the smaller ping-pong ball.

The umbra and penumbra: We set an orange under our bright light and looked at the shadow. There was a darker shadow (umbra) and a lighter shadow (penumbra). Then we took turns showing where the penumbra starts (the pencil is not actually touching the orange, but in the picture it looks like it is). Then below we took notes for our science notebook (below is mine)...

We drew pictures of the sun and showed how there was a small area where light got through with a bit of light (penumbra) and only a small portion where the sunlight couldn't pass at all (umbra).

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-26T21:46:00.002-05:00

Since we are taking a couple of weeks off, I have some posts scheduled to post automatically. I'll be sharing more pictures of our astronomy unit on Wednesday and then over the course of the next week or so. Today, though I wanted to come on and wish you all

Happy Holidays and a very Happy New Year.

Each evening at dinner, our family takes a few moments in silence to be thankful. Then we go round the table and each talk about what we're most thankful for. The kids often come up with the sweetest things... "I'm thankful for the sun." or "I'm thankful for the picture Abby (a friend) gave me." Well my blogging friends, I am very thankful for the blogging community. I'm very thankful for all the ideas that are shared so freely. I'm looking forward to another wonderful year of learning, exploring, growth and new memories. And to all of you, all the best for a great New Year! ~ Liesl
-----------------------------------
P.S. Hubby got me an Ipod nano this Christmas and I've been downloading lots of podcasts from Itunes. Does anyone have any great recommendations of podcasts... I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the choices!! I like listening to things when I'm in cleaning/clean up mode so I'm pretty excited about my new toy. :)

Oh and on the gift topic... My girls received dolls from Santa. Personally I don't much like Barbies, but Santa scrounged up the beautiful Madame Alexander dolls of my childhood and left one each for them (around $30 on ebay). The best thing is that when I was little my Auntie Barbara made lots and lots of doll clothes for my "Liesl, Sound of Music" doll (the doll with the striped apron in the bottom right picture below). So my girls should have a lot of fun dressing their new dolls up. DD is also keen to learn to sew, so we may give doll-dress-making a go! DD got 'Cinderella' (left) and ED got 'Alice in Wonderland' (blue dress). Alice was what my older sister had when she was little.

Holiday Crafts

2011-12-22T06:02:00.004-05:00

This is by far my favorite craft we did this year! You glue toothpicks onto a star (cut out from cardboard or poster board). Then you spray paint it with gold paint and glue a toilet-paper roll on the back. Easy and quite beautiful!

DD loved the cardinal art lesson from Art Projects for Kids.

Below the kids made a few ornaments for the tree this year: little reindeers, a candy-cane God's eye and various sun catcher ornaments.

Sun-catcher Ornament

Happy Holidays!

Astronomy Unit: Inner and Outer Planets, The Asteroid Belt

2011-12-20T06:09:00.002-05:00

We seem to talk about the planets about once a year, don't we? This time we did a little activity that showed the four inner, rocky planets, the asteroid belt and the four outer planets, the gas giants.

In this picture you can see that the asteroid belt has two layers as well!

We did the inner and out planets speedy lapbook by homeschool bits (25cents) -- and even ED was into the cutting/pasting!

We also did the asteroid speedy lapbook. It was the perfect amount of writing for my two -- and it reinforced some of the basic information we had covered. We added those pages into our science notebook.

We also did a couple activities. One was a TOTAL flop (showing the elliptical orbits and how sometimes Neptune is the farthest planet)... except that I couldn't get it to work 5 of the 6 times we did it! The activity above shows how an object in motion (the suspended nut) moved in the same direction despite being rotated on the lazy susan.

Astronomy Unit: Refraction, Vacuum, Saturn's Rings

2011-12-19T05:48:00.001-05:00

The kids have been begging for some hands-on science experiments. I have a bigger unit planned, but since December and January will be a bit broken up as far as our schooling goes, I decided to delve into a short unit with lots of experiments based on one of Janice VanCleave's books (202 Oozing, Bubbling, Dripping, Bouncing, Experiments) and lots of notebook/lapbook pages from Homeschool Bits. Here's some of what we've been up to so far:

1. Bent Light - Refraction
We placed a penny in two cups and poured water in one cup. Then we put a pencil on the ground when we couldn't see the penny any more. For all three of us we could see the penny that was in water longer than the one with air. We talked about "refraction" and LD made a great connection to Brian in Hatchet who tried and tried to spear a fish unsuccessfully. Finally, he realized the water made the fish appear in a different spot and he was able to spear them.

We measured the distance between the pencils for the three of us. For me it was 6 1/4 inches, for LD it was 5 1/4 inches and for DD it was 4 1/4 inches. We talked about why that was the case (the differences in our heights and the angle of our eyes to the penny).

The kids all wrote down a few key words for each science experiment to put in their science notebook. I thought it was lovely that ED demanded a paper and wanted to write letters on her sheet as well. She was so diligent!

2. Vacuum as a Heat Shield
This experiment also led to some fascinating discussion. We boiled some water and checked the temperature. Then we poured some of the water in a thermos and some in a cup.
Next we talked about the vacuum in space and the fact that it is very cold.
I explained to the kids that the thermos had a partial vacuum. Then I asked the kids to predict which water would cool down more quickly.
LD predicted the thermos would cool quickly because space (the vacuum of space) is so cold. DD predicted the water in the cup would cool more quickly.
We went on to our last experiment and came back 15 minutes later to check the temperature. The water in the thermos was nearly the same as it was originally while the water in the cup had cooled significantly. We talked about the fact that space is a poor conductor and thus acts as a heat shield whereas metal (we felt the end of the thermometer is a good conductor, transferring heat easily).

3. Saturn's Rings
We have gone over the planets numbers of times in our homeschooling adventures here. Today we reviewed the planets, their locations and sizes.

We got a piece of paper with two circles on it (the inner one for the planet, the outer one for the field of debris icy particles and rocks, that encircles Saturn). They sprinkled sand evenly on the paper. Then the kids placed the end of a Popsicle stick down which represented one of Saturn's moon. I turned the tray around and we watched as the sand was pushed away. Scientists believe the moons push the icy particles around into separate bands which make the separate rings of Saturn.

Last year we did a hands-on unit on Earth Science if you want to see some of the activities we did related to that.

Preschool Life

2011-12-16T09:19:00.003-05:00

I feel like I haven't written a long post about ED's preschool work in forever. That's because she's been such an integral part of all our latest activities. She did all the owl crafts in our forest unit, did the dissection of the owl pellet. She takes notes and writes out her letters when the kids are taking notes on their science activities. She gets her own lapbook pages and carefully cuts things out. (I'll be posting about our astronomy unit over the next couple of weeks.) She's right in there doing all our experiments and INSISTS (I say with a smile!) on being a part of everything! She is right there snuggling with Mom to read during independent reading time. We tend to go over letters and letter sounds while snuggling (not as a separate activity at the moment) because we're spending a lot of time "SMASHING" sounds together (with a dramatic clap... "kuh..."--"Aaaa...ttttt"" "CAT!") All that makes for very dry posts I suppose!

So here is ED diligently writing out the answers on this science page. I tell her the letter (sometimes remind her what it looks like) and she writes them down!

Some of the time ED just finds her own things to do. At this moment I was playing Bump-Division with LD. ED took the erasers and carefully separated them all into different categories!

ED also has her own black notebook. She LOVES coloring pages and I keep that topped up (as much as I can!) with new pages. So, when the others grab their spelling, science or math notebooks, ED also runs over to check out what's new in her 3-ring binder! I love the bright colors she uses. Below is a collage of some of her latest creations. In fact, just this morning she was coloring the two new "pokemon" coloring pages in the bottom left of the picture!

Forest Unit (3rd Post): Owl Lapbook

2011-12-14T06:41:00.000-05:00

Often while I'm reading aloud (in this case we're still reading Little House in the Big Woods) I have the kids working on other things. A few days ago I had them cut out the pieces of a quick owl lapbook (All Owls, a 50cent lapbook by homeschool bits). It had great tidbits of information, reinforcing all we had read last week. They put it together and were so excited to share all they knew with Dad when he got home!

I should add that even though there aren't any pictures ED worked just as hard cutting out the lapbook parts and making her own lapbook!

Excuse the misspelling :-)

Christmas Themed Math Downloads

2011-12-13T06:05:00.003-05:00

Find the missing addend activity:
Do you ever get attitude when you do certain subjects with your kids?? For some reason, LD has been reluctant to do math from one of his books. Playing games has turned that attitude around (for the time being) and he's really done some great math work in the past couple of weeks. (We start with games like our beloved Speed! Multiplication Game, the division games I made a couple of weeks ago or these new ones, then continue on to book work). Anyway, this is another activity he did quickly in this form -- yet on paper... oh my, you'd think he was in the dentist's chair! So I hope someone else finds this helpful.

You can download your own copy of the Missing Addend Game here. It's possible I'll add another page of trees and wreaths in a few days. In the mean time I'll make this first page available to those who could use it.

The other math activity I made is mental addition of three two digit numbers.
I hope someone finds them useful.

Double digit addition trees download here.

Music Class: Cute Christmas Activities

2011-12-12T06:20:00.003-05:00

I run two little music classes (for free) for our friends. We try to meet once a week (though illness, holidays, and travels sometimes gets in the way of that!!) For our music class last Friday we played a cute game that was a huge hit. Two parents made a bridge with their hands. The kids stood in a line and went under the bridge, circling back and going under again. We sang the words below to the tune of London Bridge is Falling Down. When we came to the end of the first verse we trapped one of the kids, put a Christmas hat on him/her and moved our arms back and forth giving the child a "ride." Everyone from the two year old up to my eight year old loved it! Here are the words I made up:
Santa Claus is coming to town, coming to town, coming to town.
Santa Claus is coming to town. Do you see him?

Here's his cap let's give him a ride, give him a ride, give him a ride.
Here's his cap let's give him a ride, Merry Christmas!

Another thing we did in music class today (for the 4 year olds, not for the 6-8 yr old class) was to pretend to put on ice skates and skate around the room on paper plates. We did this to the Skater's Waltz by Émile Waldteufel (here's how it sounds), but you could choose any pretty music.

We sang lots of Christmas songs. Kididdles has a huge packet of Christmas lyrics and music for kids if you need it; you have to register to download it but it's free to register. I also loved the simple songs (perfect for preschoolers) from Childcare Land with songs like S-A-N-T-A to the tune of BINGO or Christmas Trees to the tune of the Wheels on the Bus. They were catchy and the kids were able to sing them right off the bat because they were so repetitious. Here's Shelley's Christmas Song Book. Thank you, Shelley!

One thing that has been terrific about our music class (for the older kids) this semester is that at one point during the class, we have a concert. The kids in that class are all learning different instruments (trumpet, piano or glockenspiel). We talk about being respectful listeners, put our instruments in the rest position and each week the kids play a piece for their friends. This week, for example, LD played Jingle Bells on the trumpet while DD played We Three Kings and part of We Wish You a Merry Christmas. Wow, has it been a terrific addition to our music class. My kids are so anxious to practice to get ready. It is so great to see that self-motivation.

Spelling: Plurals Game

2011-12-09T06:28:00.000-05:00

DD just finished up a lesson on plurals in her spelling program (we use All About Spelling which we love, love, love!). I saw this game over at First Grade and Fabulous which has the kids decide whether to add an -s or an -es. We played over and over. It was absolutely perfect timing for us, plus it's really cute! Thank you so much, Deanne!

Forest Unit: Fabulous Science Activity!

2011-12-08T06:04:00.004-05:00

As I mentioned yesterday, we did a lot of reading about owls to lead into the awesome science study on owls! We talked about the forest food chain (who eats whom) and then I asked them what owls ate. Owls eat mice, voles, snakes and other small animals. They swallow their prey whole and about eight hours later spit out the parts they can't digest in a pellet of fur and bones. We talked and read about this in some detail... and then I brought out owl pellets for them to dissect! The kids raved and raved about this. This was one of the highlights of our year so far!

So here are the pics... I was so excited that I took over 40 pictures!

The owl pellet as it was received. By the way, I know I paid a about two dollars per pellet but can't seem to find where I purchased it! Sorry.

Everyone dug right in -- ED was just as engaged and excited as DD and LD!

We were all so excited as various bits of the skeleton emerged. It tied in so perfectly with our earlier studies of (human) bones. I've had these pellets since the beginning of the school year and it's been so hard to wait!! But, I'm so glad I did because they got so much more out of it having done the other studies first.

We looked through our mammal book and concluded these were mouse skulls.

The kids were so engaged and it went on so long, they asked me to start reading more about owls.

If you get the chance, I highly recommend doing this. What awesome, hands-on science!

At first I couldn't remember where I got these. Just wanted to add, I'm pretty sure I got my pellets from nature-watch.com. I got the large ones for $2.95. Here's the link for the large owl pellets.

They have a free bone sorting chart here.

They state at their site: "Owl pellets have been carefully sterilized to ensure safety."

Forest Unit

2011-12-07T06:17:00.001-05:00

We have had so much fun with this forest unit so far. We've done a ton of crafts and coloring.

DD's owl is left and LD's is right/below.

All the kids have been doing the forest animal sorts and we talked once again about vertebrate and invertebrate animals. The kids sorted the vertebrates into amphibians, reptiles, birds and reptiles. (Below)

You'll find the forest animal sort cards here. I didn't include the category cards, but you can just write them on on an index card.

These suncatcher owls from oriental trading have been the biggest hit! I only have pictures of ED's owls, but all the kids and some of their friends have loved making these.

We started reading Little House in the Big Woods together. Having just finished the Sign of the Beaver and the settlement of Tennessee and the Ohio Valley region we're now moving farther West in our studies. This week we payed particular attention to the animals mentioned in the book.
I taught the kids about using an index. I got a couple of huge mammal books from the library. First I asked LD to find a picture of a panther and DD to find a picture of a mink (animals that were mentioned in Little House). I didn't give them any guidance and they thumbed aimlessly through their books. Then I told them that there is a terrific tool at the back of most non-fiction books called an index. I showed them how all the words were in alphabetical order and then had them look up their animals.

I also did the long A vowel sound sorts in an owl theme (though I couldn't share this version b/c of the copyright). I remade it with birds and you can download that here. The long A sounds include a-e (silent e), ai, eigh, aigh, ea, a, ay and ey. You can of course just pick out the words you need if you haven't covered all of those spelling combinations.

Tomorrow I'll show you the best part of this unit!

Addition Games for Sums of 16, 17, 18 and 19 - Bump and Snow Flurry Scurry

2011-12-06T06:01:00.000-05:00

Since LD and I have been playing his division games daily, DD wanted her own board as well. I made one up for her last night so she can work on her sums to 16, 17, 18 and 19. (ie. 8+8, 9+10 and so forth).

If you are interested the addition games and cards are found here.

Division Games: Bump and Snow Flurry Scurry

2011-12-05T06:06:00.000-05:00

LD was asking for more math games, so I whipped up two quick division games.

The first game is the same Bump game I've mentioned before, this time using division problems.

You can print out your own Bump Division Game here.

*Each player takes a turn taking a division card and solving the answer.
*The player places a token on the correct number on the gameboard.
*We use pennies and erasers for tokens.
*If another player has a token on that number, he/she can be bumped off.
*When you have two tokens on the number it is yours.
*The player who has the most numbers covered with two tokens wins the game.

Snow Flurry Scurry: The next game I made uses the same division problem cards (pages 3 and 4 in the download) as the bump gameboard. The cards are shuffled and placed face down in a pile. Each player takes a turn taking a card and moving his piece to the next answer on the gameboard. The first player to make it to the final snowflake with a 6 or an 8 wins. Again, the download is here.

Here are the previous math games I made (with a fall theme):

Bump Multiplication for 8x4 through 8x9

and Bump Doubles (4+4 through 9+9)

My Sister's Flood Story

2011-12-04T06:18:00.001-05:00

Now to my family for a moment. Sometimes it's good to know the ending and outcome of sad events.

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might remember that my sister/bro-in-law and their family were victims of the May 2010 flooding in Nashville. They spent 12 hours moving as much as they could from the first floor of their home to the second. As you can see from my photo last summer, the first floor starts about 12 feet off the ground! The flood surpassed the 500 year flood mark, rising up to bed level on the second floor (the top windows of the house). They lost most everything--except things like pots and pans, dishes and the like. My sister's family was fortunate, everyone was safe though they lost a lot of chickens and one of their pet cats. They had flood insurance unlike many in their vicinity.

Well a couple of days ago (December 1st) their house (which was condemned) was demolished. There's a photo at the bottom with half the home destroyed. But in all my sister, brother-in-law and their kids have come out happy. They have a new home -- a farm they bought last summer with a three-acre lake. It's pretty (beautiful, in fact!) and they plan to buy horses and cattle this next spring.

So here are a few pictures. 1) Their destroyed living room (May 2010). 2) The house as it was last summer in June 2011 (condemned). 3) The house half way through the demolition process --Dec. 1, 2011.

And now their new farm:

A picture of their farm from this summer (house is up beyond the trees). And below a picture of their lake from last week.

Below is a picture of the lake and their house (taken last week).

My sister and brother-in-law were inspiring through this whole event. Their resilience was amazing. They were so grateful for anything that survived the flood, for the help they got from their community (and the Red Cross) and the new beginnings it opened for them.

Being a Tourist: Microbe Exhibit, Davy Crockett's Cabin, the Parthenon

2011-12-02T06:06:00.004-05:00

Last week I took the kids on a trip down to Nashville to spend time with my sister, brother-in-law and their three kids. They are homeschoolers as well. They are in 5th, 7th and 10th grades. A little bit more about them in my next post.

We had a fantastic time with the family and also did a number of terrific outings. Here are a few things we did:

Microbe Exhibit (eastern Tennessee off of I-81 and down I-26 about 5 or 10 miles) The other exhibit at Gray's Fossil Museum that I talked about a couple days ago.

This room talked about the Black Plague and the kids are looking at a mask like some people would wear to try to prevent the plague. Since some thought the plague was transferred through the air they wore these masks and had sweet smelling concoctions to try to keep the plague away. This exhibit was great timing because we listened to the first disc of the second volume of the Story of the World on our long drive that talked about the Black Death. That wasn't planned, it was just pure chance and blind luck! I bought all four volumes from someone at homeschoolclassified this summer and just love, love, love having the CDs to listen to in the car!

This interactive castle showed us how our body has defenses just like the castle. Each part of the castle moved and explained how mucus, acids, etc. help keep our body safe from invasion.

Oh no! Microbes in the kitchen!

This room was super-duper neat! It was lit with black lights and these viruses jumped out and were three dimensional. You can see ED trying to grab one in the picture below (I had to lift her up to see the viruses and she wouldn't let me put her back down again!) A group of teenagers came to visit with their class and I heard comments like "Wow," "This is SO cool" and "Check this out!" What an awesome exhibit!

Davy Crockett Birthplace State Park (east Tennessee)

We had just finished up a big unit on the frontiersmen (Daniel Boone, the Wilderness Road, etc.) and had read four or five books about Davy Crockett (plus learned the song!). We enjoyed our brief visit to see Davy Crockett's (reconstructed) cabin.

We spent a long time looking at how the cabin was constructed because of the wonderful book we just finished called Sign of the Beaver. The boy, Brian, was left alone to finish work on the cabin he and his Dad built. His father left to fetch his mother and sister, but then didn't return. Luckily Brian got to know an Indian grandfather and his grandson who taught him how to survive. I highly, highly recommend that book!

Parthenon, reconstruction of the ancient Greek temple (Nashville)

We all loved visiting the Parthenon in Nashville, which is based on the one from ancient Athens. We talked about our studies of ancient Greece (back about two years ago now) and the kids said they're keen to study it again! Oh and that's my sis with the long braid and my niece in the striped shirt. My nieces and nephew have the exact same coloring as my kids -- and they sure are wonderful with their younger cousins!

The Winner of a new game of Speed!

2011-12-01T09:04:00.000-05:00

The winner is #2, Boogiemum. Please get in touch within the next three days (the homeschool den no spaces at yahoo d-t com). Congratulations, it truly is a great game!

Theme Time: Dinosaurs

2011-11-30T06:05:00.003-05:00

Two weeks ago, I read The Magic Tree House: Dinosaurs Before Dark to ED. This inspired a short themed unit on dinosaurs. Here are a few of the things we did, plus other dinosaur books and dinosaur puzzles that I don't have pictured below.

Last week we were lucky enough to top our theme-time unit off with a visit to the Gray Fossil Site in east Tennessee on our trek to visit Auntie C, Uncle T and the cousins for Thanksgiving at their farm.

Upper - Lower Case Letter Matching from Making Learning Fun.

Time for a scavenger hunt!! I hid dinosaur themed letters all throughout the basement. ED found the letters and had to find the matching partner (pictured below). I often go to communication4all, Early Learning tab or sparklebox for letters with a certain theme.

The other kids came running and demanded their own scavenger hunts! DD had to find cards and find the card pairs that added up to 12. LD had division problems and their answers to find and pair up. (Below)

General dinosaur play, of course!!

Triceratops Leaf Counting -- from Making Learning Fun

Sight Word Letter Tile Cards from Making Learning Fun. The tiles are from our spelling program -- All About Spelling. We love, love, love that curriculum for DD (6) and LD (8).

Dinosaur Counting Cards from 2 Teaching Mommies.

Dinosaur Egg Counting Cards from Making Learning Fun.

LD pulled out some of his fossils and did some reading. He found this amazing brachiopod fossil in Grams and Gramps' neighborhood in Missouri.

On our way to Nashville, we happened upon this museum at Gray's Fossil Site. It is about a half-hour off of I-81 (along I-26). When they were building I-26 construction workers noticed some fossils. It turned out to be a fossil bed rich with fossils from about 4 1/2 to 5 million years ago. It is an active fossil site and has a wonderful interactive museum.

They have lots of displays like this saber toothed tiger.

They had so many interactive activities and please-touch areas. Here the kids are trying to figure out what types of bones these are.

Uncover the fossils (with paint brushes and your hands).

Bone-puzzles

The kids spent lots of time at this activity, hunting through a tray of pebbles looking for shark teeth specimen.

The kids were impressed by this triceratops.

Forest Animal Sort Cards

2011-11-29T06:13:00.002-05:00

ED's next habitat study is on the forest. I made a set of cards for the kids to sort through. We'll be sorting them by
vertebrates-invertebrates
and also into the five animal kingdoms:
( fish), amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.

Since we live in the woods I used a lot of the photos I've taken in the past year or so and supplemented them with some from wikimedia commons.

Oh and by the way, I didn't include any fish in this sort--I did include a photo of crayfish that LD found in the creek that runs through the woods behind our house. They are crustaceans (related to the lobster) and would obviously be sorted into the invertebrate group.

If you would like a copy of the Forest Animal Sort Cards that I made, just click here.

P.S. I realized when I sorted these with the kids today that I didn't have the three frog and toad pictures I had intended to include. I added those in this afternoon and there is now a new file link above.

Long A Sound - Word Sort

2011-11-28T06:32:00.000-05:00

LD has gone over a lot of the different long-A sound word groups for spelling. I made this word sort to help cement in some of those families especially the trickier ones such as
eigh -- weigh, eight, neighbor, sleigh
aigh -- straight
ea -- steak, break

You can download a copy here if you are interested.

Math Skip Counting Game: Speed!

2011-11-21T06:09:00.007-05:00

We had the privilege of reviewing a math card game called Speed! Oh boy is it fantastic! I would have to give it 5 stars for sure.

I always try to include as many hands-on activities as possible in our homeschooling. DD still has a lot of math games, but I've been less creative with LD lately as he is working hard on reinforcing his basic multiplication and division skills. Since the first day this game arrived, we've been playing 3-5 rounds of the game each day. It's a great way to learn your multiplication tables and to reinforce skip counting patterns. I highly recommend it!!

Let me describe it for you. You choose a deck to play. LD and I chose 6-speed for this round. First you divide the deck evenly among the players. Then you lay four cards out in front of you. When everyone is ready, you turn one card over in the middle to play from.

Since we were playing 6 speed the cards were all multiples of 6... 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48 54 60.

Let's say there is a 18 in the middle. Players can place a 12 or a 24 on top of the 18 card.

When you have a 6 you can place either a 60 (to work backwards) or a 12. And on a similar vein if there is a 60 in the middle you can place a 6 or a 54 on top.

Each time you use one of your four face-up cards, you can replace it with a card from the stack of cards in your hand. The object is to be the first person to lay down all your cards.

In the picture to the left you can see LD is placing a card in the middle. He'll need to quickly place 2 more cards face up (for a total of 4) to play from in front of him. I also have just 2 cards down in the picture and need to place two more face up since there are always supposed to be four in front of you (until your hand is empty).

If at any time the two cards in the middle are the same, you try to be the first to holler out "Speed!" and the other player has to pick up all the cards, shuffle them and place them back in his/her hand.

This is an exciting, quick game. LD loves it. I mean truly LOVES it! He is competitive, but to be honest I don't give him an inch... I love it too! And the reinforcement he has gotten on the skip-counting patterns is wonderful. I can see improvement on the speed with which he does his multiplication work.

I really like that each deck is its own color. It ensures that clean up is easy if a card is misplaced.

Since DD also wants to be a part of the action we have played a three person version of 2 speed. That worked well too, though the game went on longer since we all kept getting caught by the Speed! trap. We made a rule that you could choose who had to take all the cards if you were the one who hollered out "Speed!" first.

Now if you've gotten to the end of this post--thanks for reading. I think so highly of this game that I'd like to send one person their own set... just me passing on the kindness that Julie (the creator/homeschooling Mom) did for me. Just leave me a comment below (no later than midnight, Nov. 30th eastern standard time, USA) and the age of the kid/s who you'll be playing with. I'll do a drawing (probably out of hat or something, nothing fancy here) on December 1st and will let you know who the lucky winner is (be sure to check back then, you'll have 3 days to be in touch). Oh and if you live overseas, I'll even let you "enter" -- but I will probably need to have it shipped to me and then will send on, so it would take quite some time to arrive. So there's nothing fancy about this giveaway, I just want to be nice and pass along a fantastic game! And if you like the game when it arrives and if you have a blog, it'd be great if you could give it a shout out too. It is absolutely wonderful to make math so fun and to have the kids begging for more.

Disclaimer: I was sent this product to review, but all the opinions expressed here are my own. And no one asked me to give away a set, I just think it's a terrific game.

Blogs I Enjoy and Visit, Resources I Find Helpful

2011-11-19T23:07:00.000-05:00

I finished replacing most of the links I lost and have my page up and running again with the Blogs I Enjoy and Visit, Resources I Find Helpful. If you're interested you can now visit that page again. I color coded it as follows:

Homeschool Blogs I Enjoy is the first section in pink.

Next is Useful Homeschool Resources in light blue with the following subsections:

Great resources and printables (mostly free)
Math
Science
Early Learning
Art and Music

The third section in green is teacher's blogs I enjoy (though something funky happened and it changed to a new font with strange spacing.

Pink section is used curriculum and saving money.

The yellow section are my favorite Montessori links.

The last blue section are the websites I find useful for teaching German to very young kids.

Thanksgiving Freebies

2011-11-17T06:06:00.003-05:00

I came across a number of free Thanksgiving activity packs and thought I'd share those for anyone who might be interested in the next week or so:

Thanksgiving Activity Pack from Itsy Bitsy Learners

Thanksgiving Fun Book from The Simple Homeschool

If you like this pack, you might want to pop over to The Simple Homeschool and register for their newsletter. From Dec. 1-12 they will be giving away 12 freebies and prizes.

Thanksgiving Notebooking Pages from Homeschool Notebooking

Thanksgiving Preschool Packs:

Over at 1+1+1 there is a Thanksgiving Preschool Pack to download for free.

Jolanthe over at Homeschool Creations also shares a Thanksgiving printable packs. One is geared towards preschoolers and the other for kindergartners.

And for early elementary math:

Heather at Heather's First Grade Heart shared an adorable graphing activity for Thanksgiving called "Gobble Up a Graph." It is so cute! Thank you for sharing, Heather!

And over at Oceans of First Grade Fun there's a cute coin counting activity called Turkey Bucks--counting out 11 to 19 cents.

I printed out the turkey number matching made by Honey over at Sunflower Schoolhouse for ED. She also has a turkey clothes peg addition up to 6.

Thanksgiving Arts and Crafts:
Finally, for lots and lots of cute arts and crafts projects and ideas pop on over to the Crafty Crow -- a collection of crafts from bloggers all over the internet.We did a cute turkey craft (left) based on one of the ideas I saw there.

The kids used a pencil sharpener to shave the crayons, but to speed up the process, I used a paring knife to make crayon shavings.

Just touch the iron lightly to the paper. Do not over heat it or all the colors run together. I made quick swipes about four times.

Various turkey parts (legs aren't pictured).

Math Game: Stop the Clock

2011-11-16T06:05:00.007-05:00

As I've been trying to find links and repair the "blogs I enjoy" page, I came across a clock game I used to have LD play all the time online. Now DD is learning time to 5 minute intervals and I'm going to have her play Stop the Clock for math time for a while. She has to drag the digital time to the correct analog clock and do all five as quickly as she can. There are five levels, so you can choose the level that best suits your child--from the half hour/hour to the minute.

I can never help myself from playing a round or two as well to try to stop the clock!

Learning Letters: Clothes Peg Activity (preschool)

2011-11-15T06:02:00.000-05:00

Back a couple of years ago Honey over at Sunflower Schoolhouse made a collection of clothes peg activities. I brought out this alphabet matching activity for ED last week. The plain letter matching was a bit too easy for her.

Here's the link to the Clothes Peg Alphabet, volume 1 (lower case letters) that you see in this first picture.

Honey also made other volumes for letter matching:

Here is the link to the upper case to upper case matching clothes peg cards.

And here is the link to the upper case to lower case matching clothes peg cards.

ED was much more engaged by the cards which entailed finding the vowels in the words.

This is volume 5. She had to find the word that had that particular vowel in it.

And this is volume 4 -- find the vowel that is in the word.

Thanks for sharing, Honey!

Just one of those things... sigh

2011-11-14T22:42:00.001-05:00

This evening I wanted to go to one of my links in the "Blogs/Websites I Enjoy" section... I've been saving my favorite sites for my own reference for several years... and 3/4 of my links are gone. Ugh! Even the cached version of the page doesn't have any of the links so it must have happened some time ago. Sigh... I've reconstructed some of it so far, but it'll take time to get it back up and running.

Frontiersmen Unit

2011-11-13T06:02:00.005-05:00

This past week the kids all came down with colds. As a consequence we did a lot of reading aloud and a bit less of the hands-on type stuff. We've been studying Appalachian music and decided to study some of the early frontiersmen in more depth.

We spent a lot of time reading about Daniel Boone (one of the first to cross the Appalachian Mountains and one of the men to create the Wilderness Road) , Johnny Appleseed (who planted apple seeds through out the "West" -- Ohio Valley region) and Davy Crockett (left). We also learned about the Alamo since Davy Crockett died there at almost 50 years of age.

The Alamo Mission, where the pivotal battle took place during the Texas Revolution. Texas proclaimed its independence from Mexico and drove the Mexicans out, but then the Mexican army marched in to re-claim Texas.

The kids really enjoyed watching the 1955 Disney movie about Davy Crockett. While this series is not known for its historical accuracy, it gave the kids a flavor of the times and a springboard for more discussions. LD and DD both said they "LOVED" it!

We made origami raccoons, in honor of Crockett's coonskin hat! You can't tell in the picture, but the heads pop out a bit and can move. DD went on to make an entire family of raccoons!

We're reading a wonderful novel called The Sign of the Beaver. It's about a boy who is left on his own in a frontier cabin (in Maine) while his father goes to fetch the rest of the family. The boy has to live on his own and soon has some encounters with Indians... Going along with this book, the kids are helping me make some moccasins.

Finally we have plans to make a Daniel Boone lapbook offered free from Dynamic Two Moms.

We also hope to see a bit of the Wilderness Road state park (Martin's Station, the last fortified fort for supplies before settlers made their way across the Appalachian mountain) and to make it to Davy Crockett's birthplace cabin in the next couple of weeks. Hooray!

Math: Multiplication Word Problems

2011-11-11T06:19:00.000-05:00

I mentioned this before, but these multiplication word problems are worth another mention. We've been doing three each day at the beginning of math time for LD (age 8).

1. If 1 dress can be madefrom 6 yards of calico, how many yards will it take tomake 2 dresses?

Solution. — For 2 dresses itwill take 2 times 6 yards, which are 12yards.

2. Mary has 3 hens, and eachhen has 6 chickens: how many chickens are there inall ?

3. If there are 6 panes ofglass in one window, how many panes are there in 4windows?

4. If 1 orange is worth 5peaches, how many peaches are 6 oranges worth?

5. John bought 6 quarts ofplums, at 6 cents a quart: how much did they cost?

6. If 1 quart ofstrawberries cost 7 cents, how much will 6 quarts cost?

7. If a man eat 6 ounces ofbread in 1 day, how many ounces will he eat in 8days?

8. What will bo the cost of6 lead-pencils, at 9 cents each?

9. I bought 6 dozen eggs, at10 cents a dozen: how much did they cost?

From Ray's New Primary Arithmetic for Young Learners copyright expired, 1877

He also practices adding and subtracting in the thousands with regrouping with these Montessori math sheets a couple times a week (there are sheets adding/subtracting ones/ones, tens/tens, hundreds/hundreds as well) :
Montessori Addition Worksheets Link
Montessori Subtraction Worksheets Link

The picture left shows one of the sheets. It's been useful because the numbers are so large and are in columns. You can click on the picture to see it closer up.

Creative Writing: Free Writing Prompts Pack

2011-11-09T06:19:00.001-05:00

To go along with the build-a-sentence pack I made, I put together some free writing prompts. I'll share it here in case some of you find it helpful for your emergent writers. It is 18 pages.

Click here for the Free-Writing Prompts Pack

Morning with ED

2011-11-08T09:42:00.001-05:00

ED and I always get up an hour or two before the others. We cuddle up in front of the fire first thing and read books. We often do a craft to go along with it. I loved this picture because Crystal, the kitten, was so hands-on with this activity!!

We've also been playing lots of games together in the morning; Uno is her current favorite (though we usually play a couple of board games as well). It's great for number recognition. She got this mini-Uno card set at a friend's birthday party. Another current favorite is Blink.

The kids all enjoy playing this game, Old McDonald Had a Farm, with ED. They take turns choosing a Mommy animal and choosing a baby which is hidden under the haystack. They try to match the animal noises. They press the Mommy down (and it makes the animal sound) and then press the haystack down to hear the baby animal sound. It's kind of like Memory by sound.

Build-A-Sentence Creative Writing Pack

2011-11-07T06:04:00.010-05:00

Over the weekend, I made a set of build-a-sentence sheets for my first-grader.

Here are my plans for them:

The first couple of pages are filled with ideas. She'll go through and create sentences (silly or not) to write in her journal.
Next we'll work together to brainstorm ideas for some of the other themed sheets. I made about twenty different themed sheets with topics such as friendship, aliens, pioneers, Thanksgiving, the circus, winter, natural disasters, my birthday, my family, sports, out in nature, and so forth. Again she'll go on to write sentences (silly or not) in her writing journal.
Finally, I hope she'll be able to brainstorm on her own on a few of these sheets and use them to write her own sentences.
I plan to encourage her to add adjectives and descriptive words to the nouns/subject words.
I doubt we'll use all of these sheets (who knows?!) but I wanted a lot of choice to pique her interest.

Once again here is the link to our build-a-sentence pack if you're interested.

On Wednesday I'll be sharing the free-writing prompt pack that goes along with this.

Writing: Super Sentences

2011-11-04T06:03:00.005-04:00

In collection (our morning group time) we talked about building super sentences. I used some materials I got from the Teacher Filebox (a subscription site that gives you access to most of the Evan Moor books from writing and reading to science and history). This was a great activity for DD and good review for LD (ages 6 and 8).

First we looked at a simple sentence.
   The frog hopped.
Then we added an adjective.
   The Grey Treefrog hopped.
Then we added a prepositional phrase.
   The Grey Treefrog hopped along the forest floor.

Next we did some sorting with one of the Evan Moor literacy center activities. We sorted strips into

Who (subject)
Did what? (verb/action of the sentence)
When?
Where?

This created some silly sentences and the kids enjoyed this. This activity was actually on the challenging side for DD so we'll definitely repeat this.

Then we pulled out their writing notebooks and off they went to create their own sentences. The kids were happy to write and had lots and lots of ideas.

To the left are a few other pages I've printed out for DD (click on the photo to see an enlargement).
-------
PS: If you are interested in the Evan Moor products and want to get a subscription, be sure to do it through the homeschool buyer's co-op because they give you big discounts (usually 30% off). I think I paid $70. Remember you can thoroughly checkout the Teacher Filebox to see if it would suit you and your family by clicking preview on a specific activity, you just won't be able to print anything. This is the link to the Evan Moor website so you can see the types of books and materials they have created (literacy centers, Take it To Your Seat centers, history pockets, literature pockets and so forth). I have found it to be a great resource because any one individual book is usually $16-$25. For a family like ours that often builds our own curriculum it truly is useful (I've used it for preschool, history, science and now writing), though if you use a set curriculum it might not be worth it. I also noticed their products are at currclick but they seem pricey at $2.39-3.19 for just 2 or 3 pages (and of those, just one that your child would probably use).

Spooky Science, Monster Writing

2011-11-02T06:13:00.001-04:00

We had such a great homeschooling day on Monday. I was skeptical we'd get into the groove since we had just had my niece and nephew with us for four days. I brought in some spooky schooling, though and we had a terrific day!

I went out and bought some dry ice and we did a number of experiments. You can see suggestions from Steve Spangler science and a couple of you-tube videos here and Scientific Tuesdays.

First I dropped dry ice into the spooky skull cup Daddy bought for the kids. Then we did the one with dish soap (left) that created lots of bubbles.

We placed a coin on a block of dry ice and watched it move back and forth as the coin warmed up the ice and made pockets of carbon dioxide move past. Then we left the coin and went on to other things--only to notice later all the ice crystals that had formed on the coin.

We added warm water to a plastic water bottle and then added chips of dry ice. Then we put a big punching balloon on it and watched it inflate. The kids were intrigued by how much carbon dioxide was released. We also had a terrific talk about the different weights of gases, hauled out the periodic table and looked at where hydrogen and helium appear on the table.

We used a bubble solution to create these massive bubbles in a pot. The kids liked that!

From there we went on to some writing activities. I have a reluctant writer, but LD absolutely LOVED this Monster creative writing packet!! So believe it or not, LD and DD spent an our and a half writing and drawing! First they wrote descriptive words about a monster. Then drew its picture. Then they went on to brainstorm some questions (a monster's name, place, etc.) and wrote a poem with alliteration. Finally they did more brainstorming before writing a story.

Our General Homeschooling

2011-10-31T06:04:00.001-04:00

I've been itching to do a posting about our general homeschool schedule/day. What things we cover aside from the units I so often post about.

Reading:
Both DD and LD are good readers now. DD is reading easier chapter books while LD is on longer chapter books now.

They both get up in the morning and read while eating breakfast. I always sprinkle our dining room room table with books (Caldecott books, non-fiction books, books for ED). Lots of reading happens from having enticing books placed in key positions. This probably adds to the clutter, but they sure do pick up a lot of books.

I've been trying to find books that really draw DD in. Someone mentioned the Animal Ark series and boy did the kids go nuts when this lot arrived:

I paid $19.95 for 30+ books (left) on ebay. DD started reading the first one, Kittens in the Kitchen right away. I generally make sure she has read two chapters each day from her chapter book. She reads lots of other stuff throughout the day as well.

The kids still read the Horrible History and Horrible Science magazines a lot.

And we usually have about 50 books out from the library at a time!

At the time I took this picture this is what we were reading. LD and I were reading Hatchet. DD (and LD) and I were reading Misty of Chincoteague. DD was reading the Secrets of Droon on her own and LD was reading Warriors Into the Wild on his own.

ED is not reading and so we read lots of books together. In fact, the first things that happen in the morning are starting the fire in the woodstove, coffee and read aloud books with ED while she eats breakfast and then in front of the fire. The older kids get up later than ED does. ED is not especially engaged by letters and reading in the same way the others were at this age, but she's comfortable with her letters and letter sounds. I usually review a couple letters/sounds while we read, pointing out how one or two words are formed. These past few weeks we've left it at that.

Math:

DD is doing really well with Saxon 2, though I find it progresses rather slowly. Rather than skipping ahead in the lessons, I supplement that with other addition work from other sources and with games. I'll have to reassess that in the next month or so, but for the moment I love the fact that DD went from saying she didn't like math to now saying that math is her favorite subject. She always chooses to do math first.

LD is using Saxon Math (4/5) as well. It's challenging for him (but a good fit, I think). We switch between Saxon one day and other stuff (Spectrum Math, multiplication, division, addition and/or subtraction work) on the next. I also add in two word problems a day. Here is the link to the
Multiplication and Division Word Problems. It's from 1877 and no long in copyright. I copied and pasted problems into a document and then printed them out. We just check off a couple each day. Here are a couple examples:

George owed me 19 cents: he gave me 2 oranges, worth 5 cents each, and the remainder in money: how much money did I get?
There are 7 days in a week: how many days are there in 4 weeks?
How many kites, at 9 cents each, can you buy for 18 cents?

ED does lots of spontaneous counting and she always wants to "do math" (activities from her workboxes like counting with manipulatives, etc.) while I'm working with the other kids.

Writing and Spelling:

We use All About Spelling daily.
We use Handwriting Without Tears twice a week or so.
We use First Language Lessons about twice a week.
We do free writing about once a week.
We use Writing Source one to three times a week.

Again, ED has activities she can choose from her workboxes. She often does her "spelling" (Melissa and Doug) while I work with the other kids.

Music:

We started back up with music classes a couple of weeks ago after a very long break. We do a kindermusik-type class for ED and her friends (mostly age 4) with dancing, instruments, circle dances, listening, etc.

We also started up the "older class" and this term we're doing Appalachian music and square dancing. Believe it or not, I found this Barney video to be just perfect for them! (I didn't show them the video, we just are learning to do-si-do and so forth.)

DD is learning the piano and LD has begged and begged and begged to learn trumpet. We got him a new mouthpiece for Daddy's old trumpet and he's really taken off with it. I have never played a brass instrument, but for now have figured out enough to teach him the basics. For now he's also continuing with the piano.
German: We continue to add various themes to our German lessons. We seem to do German about three times a week. We've done greetings, colors, things around the room (table, window, pencil, chair), clothes and animals.

Unit Studies:

This is America: Symbols and Landmarks: We have more or less finished this unit for now. We ended with a study of the regions of the US... and spent time learning what states were in the Northeast, South, Mid West and so forth.

Human Body: The kids finished their copywork for the topics we covered so far this year: the skeleton, heart, brain, joints. I think we're about ready to set this aside for a while and delve into something new.

Habitats/Biomes: This semester we've done oceans and deserts. These units were originally intended more for ED, but the other kids always jump right in too. The kids want to learn about the rainforest next (though we've studied this before, they're insisting we study this one next).

Upcoming Units:

Owls: We'll probably start a quick unit on owls.

Gadgets and Simple Machines I can't wait to start this; I think LD in particular will be over the moon! We might just start with some science experiments first while I spend time reading over things, preparing for and planning out this unit.

Native Americans Last spring we studied the Mayans. We may briefly cover the Aztecs and Incas and then will move up to the Native American tribes of the USA.

Rainforests is our next preschool unit.

Outside Activities:

Gymnastics: All three kids really, really enjoy their gymnastics classes. LD still goes twice a week for two hours each.

Soccer: LD enjoys playing soccer. He has practices twice a week and has a game (if it ever stops raining!)

Choir: LD sings in a children's choir.

Roller Skating: We've fallen in love with roller skating and try to go once a fortnight to a local roller skating rink.

Crafts:

The kids are CONSTANTLY doing crafts and creations. DD loves to draw freehand. She and LD are always making various crafts from what's on hand.

ED still loves to color and especially likes coloring sheets. She fell in love with these Cuties (left) from the artist, Heather Chavez's website. She's colored most every page Heather has offered! Examples: sea horse, owl, bat, here

ED's Preschool Activities: I still rotate in lots of preschool activities and general change things up two or three times a week. I haven't taken very many pictures lately except for this magnet kit which the kids all really enjoyed one day last week. I got the kit ages ago on clearance for $5.00 in Australia and they've had so much fun with it through the years.

Anyway, I usually try to bring out a new puzzle two or three times a week, and change out the activities (Perler beads, hammering, pattern block pages, bug sorting, card games (Uno, Blink, Rat-a-Tat Cat, etc.), and lots and lots of board games like Perfection (great for small motor skills), Cariboo, Snail's Pace Race (good for colors, counting, taking turns), Memory, HiHo Cherry-O, Chutes-and-Ladders, Sorry, Adventures in Neopia (this is probably the kids' favorite), Dino Math Tracks, Candyland, etc.) every other day or so. I feel like playing games is quite a large part of our preschool day! I also set out her Montessori cards/activities (counting, animals, etc.) but have only done that once a week recently. I also change up the books in her area daily.
At some point soon I feel like I need to spend time teaching LD and DD chess. It's such a good, strategic game that gets people thinking.

Snail's Pace Race

How much time do we spend on school stuff? Well, it depends on the day. I would say some days we do 3-4 hours, some days less a occasionally we do more. In general doing just the basics (reading, spelling/writing, math) takes us about an hour and a half. The kids do these subjects separately and I bounce from child to child to child. Then our other subjects, the things we do together in collection (unit studies, German) takes another hour to hour and a half depending on what I have planned. They each practice their music on their own and that just happens at some point during the day (but I need to sit down with them generally to do that). Oh--but all this doesn't include games we play and so forth. I'm purely talking about the more 'academic' stuff I do with the older kids.

Do we let the kids watch TV? This is always such a contentious, debated topic out there in the blogging world. In our family, we have a pretty firm rule that there's no TV or video games until after 3pm as long as all schoolwork is done. We're usually out the door by 4:15pm for afternoon/evening activities so that pretty much sets the limit on electronic time. Occasionally I'll let the kids watch a school movie (this summer we watched Liberty's Kids, every now and then we watch a National Geographics program, but to be honest educational TV doesn't come to my mind very often). We don't have cartoon network and don't generally watch TV shows, but rather watch DVDs or TV shows/movies off of Netflix. I like that the kids' exposure to TV ads is very limited. We decided not to have a TV in our living room or homeschool room, so the TV isn't a focus of our family life (the TV and Wii are down in the basement), but we all enjoy our various shows (I've been watching Battlestar Galactica when I run on the treadmill--so I admit even I enjoy my TV time!)

Outdoor Time: I feel this is really important for kids and we usually spend time outdoors (half hour to hour) most days. I work outside a lot (last week I planted a peach and cherry tree and chopped lots of wood) and the kids play. We have a very (very, very) steep hill and the kids can go sledding any time of year. This is currently the kids' favorite outdoor activity. They went sledding pretty much every day this week! Yesterday my nephew (13) and LD went out into the woods to build a new shelter. LD has been very inspired by the survival story we've been reading, Hatchet, about a boy who has had to survive on his own in the Canadian wilderness with just a hatchet as a tool. I think I'll need to find a book of similar vein after we finish the next few chapters.

Well, that was a bit longer than I had thought it would be!

Halloween Festivities

2011-10-29T12:40:00.000-04:00

I organized the Halloween Party this year. We had quite a lot of games and I think everyone had a great time. The youth organized a haunted room and another adult set up a spooky cake walk with black lights and so forth which was a huge, huge hit!

The kids also loved the skeleton scavenger hunt where teams competed to find the various parts of the skeleton (we took apart one of those skeletons held together with brads and hid the various parts).

These are some of the signs for the games we played. If you click on the picture you'll probably be able to read the directions better.

The races were among the most popular activity, though the balloon pop was a big (loud) hit too. Someone had prizes inside balloons and the kids had to sit on the balloon and pop it.

The kids helped me make Halloween decorations. We made bats and spiders to hang and painted lots of boxes (jack-o-lanterns, tombstones and so forth).

The youth put together a haunted room which included intestines (spaghetti), a brain, eyeballs and other spooky stuff.

We had about 50 people, but once the party really started I didn't take many pictures.

Donut on a string. You can't use your hands.

Pumpkin roll race

cake walk

Zombie-daylight, darkness (like red light green light)

Desert Unit (USA)

2011-10-26T06:23:00.000-04:00

This was a unit I thought would mostly be fore ED, but all the kids jumped excitedly into it!. My kids know very little about the American deserts of the southwest, though they could tell you heaps about the Australian desert (they were born in the Outback and we moved back to the US about a year and a half ago). So we focused on features and animals of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. The kids were amazed to learn that when I was DD's age, I lived in the Mojave desert. In fact my family took in an Antelope Valley Ground squirrel that we kept for a number of years. It's a long story on how we wound up with the squirrel, but the nest was found by teenagers and we wound up adopting... ready for the name? I named her myself... and was just learning to read... Sally (one of the characters of the Dick and Jane books)!

Back to our unit! Here are a few of the things we covered:

We learned about coyotes and ED made a coyote mask. We read several books with the coyote as one of the main characters: The Three Little Javelinas, The Tale of Rabbit and Coyote, and Coyote Raid in Cactus Canyon.

DD didn't want to make a coyote mask, she made this howling coyote instead.

We learned about some of the cacti such as the prickly pear and the saguaro. The kids did sand paintings of cacti (and other desert features -- dust storms, tumble weeds, etc. We also learned about snakes and continued our sand painting projects to create coral snakes.

Here ED helped make a rattle snake (with jingle bells in the tail to make it rattle!). ED just loves sewing at the moment so this was a great project for her!

Obviously I helped ED with glue portion of her sand painting. DD and LD did sand paintings as well.

DD and LD wanted more information about what the cacti looked like and what exact colors they were. They went off and read quite a bit on their own. I love hearing, "did you know..."

DD's lower picture has a bird nesting in the cactus because of the reading we were doing as she made her picture.

We learned "red on yellow kills a fellow!"

If you are going to do a desert unit, I highly recommend you try to get a hold of Jim Arnosky's books. His desert illustrations are simply superb and my kids learned SO much from his books!

One quarter of all desert areas are covered in sand. We talked about the patterns that sand made when it blows the sand in the desert. Then ED made her own sand dunes.

Human Body Eggsperiment: Protect That Brain!

2011-10-24T06:07:00.000-04:00

Our last brain-related activity was to design a helmet that would protect our egg pilot in a fall. The shell, I told them, was his skull; the egg white and yolk was his brain. Then I left the kids to it!

LD designed a balloon-encased egg protector.

DD designed a construction paper protective cloak:

Mom designed a cotton ball-play dough helmet:


I took the photo before covering it entirely.

Then it was time for the big drop:

We checked to see which egg pilots survived.

DD's made it through unscathed:

Mom's design was a bust:

LD's egg pilot survived and lived to see another fall (and another and another!)

Human Body Unit: The Brain

2011-10-19T20:57:00.001-04:00

We have been studying the brain in fits and spurts the last couple of weeks. For some reason, we're only getting to it about twice a week. But here's what we've done.

We talked quite a bit about the functions of the brain (not the senses as we'll do this later), but things like memory, thinking, sleep and thing like that.

MEMORY:

First we talked about the difference between long term and short term memories. We spent quite a bit of time reminiscing about living in Australia.

To the left, we are playing a memory game. They are looking at the tray of objects. Then I took two objects away and they tried to determine what was missing.

We also looked at a list with five words:
CAT RED SIT PEN HOT
and a list with ten words:
DOG HOP SIP RUN CAN LIP MAT NIP FUN TAP
and tried to recall all the words.

We learned strategies for improving your memory as well ... like placing items you need to remember in funny places around your house. For example, if you need to remember to buy toothpaste, you imagine placing the tube inside the microwave or something.

THINKING:

We spent time learning about the parts of the brain and the different functions of the various regions of the brain. We did copywork related to our readings. (We read a number of children's books about the brain that we borrowed from the library.)

We made a brain out of cornstarch clay and used that as we talked about the various parts and functions of the brain.

We opened one of the kits we got this summer and put together the various bits (the eyes and teeth pop in, you connect the jaw bone, add the brain and the top of the skull).

I picked this cheap foam puzzle of the brain up a while ago -- we reviewed some of the parts and functions of the brain while they took turns putting it back together.

And we also talked about our dreams and read about dreams function for the brain. It's always fun talking about dreams you've had!

We also talked about protecting the brain, but that's a post for another day.

We got a lot of great ideas from this book: It's All in Your Head: A Guide to Your Brilliant Brain by Sylvia Funston and Jag Ingram for engaging activities related to memory and dreams.

I thought My Brain by Kathy Furgang was terrific for teaching the kids about the functions of various parts of the brain.

Just for fun, I ordered this free jello mold (I paid $2.95 in shipping/handling so it wasn't truly free.) It came quickly and we're excited to give it a try. We'll be doing this for Halloween.

Math Games (DD, First Grade)

2011-10-18T06:18:00.001-04:00

Sometimes DD and I just play games and don't work in her textbooks. I thought I'd share what she's doing for the next few days or so for addition. She's working on sums of 11 and 12.

I printed out gameboards and partner worksheets from The School Bell, Kathy Gursky's website.

Before we started playing the game, though we went over the T-bar sums (0+11, 1+10, 2+9, etc.) We used the girls' Littlest Pet Shop collection to help her see the sums as she worked them out.

Then we went over some simple flashcards (4 on one side, 7 on the other and so forth).

We again went over the partners as we made cards for the gameboard.

For the game, we put all the cards into a bucket. On DD's turn she pulled out a card. She placed her marker on the number partner. So, in this case, DD pulled out an 8, so she put her marker on the next 3-spot.

DD Turned Six

2011-10-17T13:24:00.000-04:00

This past weekend was DD's birthday party. DD did the majority of the decorating herself! I thought she did a great job on these froggie cupcakes.

Pumpkin Craft

2011-10-17T08:56:00.000-04:00

The other day ED wanted to sit down and do another sewing craft. Here's the little jack-o-lantern she made. She did much of it on her own this time.

Pumpkin Muffins

2011-10-14T05:23:00.000-04:00

We love these muffins so much that by the time I got around to taking a picture, there were only two muffins left! These are pretty easy to make and my kids love them. It's the season for pumpkins, so it's the perfect time to share this recipe.

You need a very, very large mixing bowl. This recipe makes 24-30 muffins.
4 eggs
3 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1/2-3/4 teaspoons cinnamon
2/3 cup water
1/2 cup apple sauce (I use applesauce in lieu of some of the oil. The original recipe from my friend, Michelle, called for 1 cup oil, without any applesauce.)
1/2 cup oil
1 can pumpkin (15 oz can)
*stir the flour in last, just until the lumps are gone:
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup wheat flour (or 3 cups all purpose flour total, or yesterday I made them with 2 cups all purpose flour, 1/2 cup white wheat flour and 1/2 cup whole wheat flour)

Place in muffin tins (sometimes I use paper cupcake things, sometimes I don't, but be sure to grease the muffin tins if you don't use the paper cupcake holder things)

Bake for 20-25 minutes at 350F (170C)
The muffins freeze well.

Collection -- Our Morning Circle Time

2011-10-12T06:40:00.000-04:00

Our mornings have been really lovely this semester. I tried to change things up a bit and I'm really enjoying the flow of the day. Usually ED and I are the first ones up. Since the weather has cooled down and we still haven't turned on the furnace, I have been lighting a fire in our wood stove in the homeschool room. ED and I snuggle up and read while I have my morning coffee.

Once the other kids have gotten up and eaten breakfast, we gather together and have collection together. This has been a wonderful addition to our school day. When I call out "collection!" I often hear, "Oh good, I like collection!"

So what is this? In general we

The kids go check the temperature on the thermometer outside and write down the temperature in their student calendars.
We sing songs (right now we're learning some American patriotic tunes).
I give a presentation (history or science) or we read a book together
We do an activity together (like Harold and his circulatory system). This week, for example, we've been doing various activities to learn about the brain.
We do German together.

German: We started out with basic greetings such as: Good morning. How are you? What's your name? We've learned the numbers and are now working on 20-100. We've learned the colors. We've learned lots of animals. We are now learning objects around the room. The kids really enjoy this as they are often up moving, touching, and things like that. I don't use a curriculum, though I have the advantage of having taught German to high school students for a couple of years and having taught English as a Foreign Language in Hungary when I was in the Peace Corps. I try to speak only in German and try to mime a lot. The kids surprised their grandparents with how much they had learned (I forgot to mention that we added that in this year!) Here is a post I did a while ago about some of the German resources and websites I use.

After collection is over the kids get started on their own work for the day math, spelling, handwriting, piano, and reading. Sometimes they go back and work things related to what we covered in collection that morning.

Our Monthly Family Meeting

2011-10-10T07:02:00.000-04:00

We started something new in our family this year. We decided the kids were old enough for a monthly family meeting. Here are some of the things we do in our family meeting:

We gathered and went around the circle and said one nice thing about somebody else at the table.
We brainstormed on something fun to do together as a family after the family meeting. We wrote down our ideas and put them all in a bowl. Our list included things like play a board game, go roller skating, go bowling, do a family craft, go hiking together, do beadings together, go to a museum, etc.
We then talked about ideas to make our life better as a family and to make our family happier. We came up with things like find a special spot for our cups during the day so we only use the one--rinse it and put it in your spot, put our shoes away when we walk in the door, sort out old toys to donate, when you see someone in the morning, the first thing you say is "Good Morning!" We also decided that we wanted to go to a fall pumpkin festival as a family this month.
We talked about upcoming activities for the month.
We talked about the menu and our favorite meals.

Some good things have come our of our family meeting.

We instituted the hidden smiley face. A couple of times a week, Mom hides a smiley face under one of the plates. After the meal has started we all check under our plates. Everyone takes turns saying something nice about the person who has the smiley face that day. This evening, ED was very cute. We all said something nice about her and after we were done she told us we all had to say something else nice because it made her feel so happy!

We now have a special day of the week. (I think I may have written about that?) On that day, the person has a few extra chores, but also gets to enter and exit the car first, gets to bake something, helps Mom in the kitchen and everyone is especially considerate of that person on 'their' day.

The kids have been much, much better at keeping track of their cups during the day (resulting in fewer dishes, a small victory!)

After our family meeting the first month we played board games. This month we chose two activities from the jar. We chose to do beadings together and we also did the mummy wrap.

Cinnamon Rolls

2011-10-09T07:14:00.000-04:00

These are wonderful!

We make these at Christmas and Easter, but I made them a couple weekends ago after running my first half-marathon in many years. (I kept forgetting to post this, it's been in my drafts for ages.)

Ingredients:

1/4 cup water
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 package instant vanilla pudding mix (1/4 cup)
1 cup warm milk
1 egg, room temperature
1 tablespoon white sugar
1/2 tsp salt
4 cups flour (I used 3 cups all-purpose flour and 1 cup white whole wheat flour which is lighter than normal whole wheat flour.)
1 package active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons yeast)

**Combine all ingredients, knead till a dough ball
**Let rise for 45 minutes, knead and let rise again for 20 mins or so. (These days, I tend to let it rise the first time, then I knead it, roll it out, put on the butter and pecan topping, roll/slice etc. and let it rise for twenty minutes in the pan (but before baking).
**Or you can add all the above ingredients and place in a bread machine if you have one and set to "dough cycle" -- I've never done this
---------
**Prepare pecan mixture (I always have lots left over so you can probably cut this in half):
1 cup brown sugar
4 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 cup chopped pecans

**take 1/2 the dough and roll out on a floured surface into a rectangle about 6 inches by 10 inches (1/2 inch thick or so). Spread some softened butter and then sprinkle on some pecan mixture. (See the picture below.) Roll the dough from the long side and slice into 3/4 inch slices. Place in buttered
a 9X13 pan.
--------
**Preheat oven to 350 (170 Celsius)

**Bake for 15-20 minutes
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Frosting:

1/2 package cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup cup butter, softened
1 cup powdered (confectioners') sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoon milk

**Mix together and spread on top of cinnamon rolls.
Here are some pictures:

Rolled out, butter and pecan topping.

Roll into a tube and cut into 1 1/2 inch slices. Place in pan as shown. Then I let it rise the second time for 20-30 minutes before baking.

Cream cheese frosting on top.

Math Update (LD, 3rd grade and DD 1st grade)

2011-10-07T14:42:00.004-04:00

Life's been rolling along, but it's been hard to find time to post. Partly because odd jobs have taken up my spare time -- painting a hallway, cutting wood for the wood stove in our homeschool room, creating a new garden for some more blueberry plants, mountains of laundry and trying to clean and catch up with the house. It's left little time for the computer.

One thing I haven't written about is our math changes this year. We started out with Right Start Math back a couple of years ago. While I loved it, I couldn't be consistent with it during our international move. Then we made such good forward progress with games and Spectrum math workbooks that we stalled out (with Right Start) this past year.

This year we decided to give Saxon math a try. It is a wonderful curriculum and covers some new concepts in new ways. Still, it doesn't go over the math facts the kids have been working on as much as I'd like, so we alternate days between Saxon and Spectrum math (and other work/games/clock cards, etc.).

LD for example, is working on Saxon 4/5. It introduces things like 2+5+3+2+3+1+N=30 or find the next three numbers in the sequence 21, 28, 35, ___, ___, ___ . How many days are in the 10th month of the year? That's all great stuff, but LD still needs to work on straight facts like 6x8. So he does a daily multiplication page (I made a large collection of multiplication sheets using this website. Each of his worksheets has just 12 problems, but he needs consistent, daily practice.) And he does subtraction/addition problems in Spectrum (3) like
571
-489

that involve borrowing (or for addition carrying). He's also working on simple division (fact families) which his curriculum hadn't covered in much depth yet.

DD just started Saxon 2 and seems to really enjoy it. I'm not sure how well LD would have done with it since it requires a bit of writing (write in the missing day of the week, for example), but she's happy with math time now (yay) and we're just starting Spectrum 2 to supplement it this week. (So far so good.) We still do a LOT of games, work with clock cards (and games) and work with the place value cards and other activities from Right Start.

So that's a quick glance at our daily math time.

By the way, I bought much of our Saxon math curriculum used from http://www.homeschoolclassifieds.com/ and had great experiences with all the people I bought from. Except for the worksheet packs for Saxon 2 which I bough for $16.29 from here. Right now I'm primarily using the worksheets and am not using the teacher's instruction manual very often (for Saxon 2). I just glance at it from time to time (but not daily). Saxon 4/5 is a hardback student text book that LD works out of directly. We read the new concepts of each lesson from his text together and then he goes on to do the problem sets on his own, writing his answers on a separate sheet of paper.

Long A Words -- Worksheet

2011-10-05T11:45:00.000-04:00

Long a Words -- Spelling Practice Sentences

We have gone over the long a words such as a (able, acorn) ai (sail, maid) a--e (cake, mate) ay (day) eigh (weigh, neighbor)ea (steak, break) ey (they) aigh (straight). This sheet uses these long a words in a sentence. They should be able to figure out the word by context, but if not you can tell them the word to write.

Click here for the Long 'a' Word sheet.

Empty Skies Memorial

2011-10-03T05:58:00.000-04:00

Adjacent to the landing where we caught the ferry to Liberty Island we came upon the Empty Skies Memorial. This was beautiful site and an emotional place to visit.

We walked silently down the corridor with the kids. When we came to the end I explained to DD why there were so many names on the walls we had just walked through. She reached out and buried her head on my shoulder and hugged me. "Mommy," she whispered, "that's just so sad." Still makes tears well up thinking about her touching response.

American Landmarks and Symbols -- The Real Thing!

2011-10-01T14:20:00.001-04:00

Last weekend we took an extended trip to see some famous sites to go along with our studies of US symbols and landmarks. We stayed with Grandma and Grandpa in New Jersey and used them as a base to go into Philadelphia to see Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell and to travel up to New York to take the ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. And, being so close to the ocean we had to spend time at the 'Jersey Shore' as well! What a fabulous (extended) weekend and a lovely time with Grandma and Grandpa. It is SO amazing to live near family!

The kids were fascinated by the old cobblestone streets.

Independence Hall beyond the green and the Liberty Bell is housed in the building to the right.

Time at the beach with Grandpa and Grandma:

Ellis Island is where many immigrants to the USA were processed (1892-1954). It is very close to Liberty Island.

Ellis Island

The Great Hall where immigrants were processed.

The Statue of Liberty:

Statue of Liberty as seen from Ellis Island. With the haze we wondered what it would look like up close. Then the weather cleared up and we had a fabulous day with fine, cool weather.

It is so pretty seeing it in person. Pictures just don't do it justice!

We learned that the Statue of Liberty has seven points on her crown symbolizing the seven continents.

Heart Field Trip

2011-09-29T09:36:00.002-04:00

We don't have a Magic School Bus, but we did make a pretty wonderful field trip this past (extended) weekend. One of our first stops was the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Part of the reason we studied the heart/circulatory system last week instead of going on to muscles and joints was to take advantage of the spectacular interactive science display at the Franklin Institute.

You enter this huge heart on the right, go through the chambers of the heart, pick up oxygen in the lungs and continue on. All the while you hear the 'thump thump' of the heart. Everyone did this multiple times!

You could crawl through the arteries.

And check to see what color blood various creatures have. Who knew that the octopus has blue blood? I didn't until this past weekend!

We had a pretty spectacular afternoon at the Franklin Institute -- and we didn't even set foot in the Mummies exhibit (a special display only until October). There were lots of other interactive displays (space, geography, etc.) as well. I highly recommend a trip for anyone on the east coast of the US.

Oh -- and by the way, thanks for the wonderful comments left on the post below. I can't tell you how much I love hearing from people who have stopped by. Thank you for taking the time to write -- it warms my heart. :-)

Human Body Unit: Heart and Circulatory System Activities

2011-09-26T06:02:00.000-04:00

Our study of the heart and circulatory system started with a listen to our own heartbeats. We measured our heart rates when resting and after walking, running and skipping. Then using a graph put out by Texas heart institute (4th grade curriculum, p. 25), we graphed our results.

Heart as a Pump:

We did this experiment: When your heart beats it acts like a tennis ball filled with water. The heart muscle squeezes blood out of its way. Between beats it goes back to its original shape. The human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 30 feet. The kids had a tough time actually squeezing the tennis ball, but they got the idea.

Our bodies have 5.6 liters of blood. We measured that out in a big pot:

Circulatory System Activity:
This is how Harold looked before we started. I named him to pique the kids' interest!

We sat down together and I explained how blood that has no oxygen heads to the heart and into the lungs. There is picks up oxygen (I said it more along the lines of "OH MY GET ME SOME OXYGEN QUIIIiiiiiCK!"). Then I drew the lines in red showing how the oxygenated blood heads back to the heart and then gets squeezed out to the body. I showed how some blood travels to the brain, some to the arms, fingers, legs, toes, etc. etc.) The blood drops off oxygen and then returns in veins (blue lines) back to the heart where it is sent off to the lungs to pick up more oxygen.

After we drew the lines -- arteries and veins -- together, I got two tiles. I put the blue tile on top and the red tile on the bottom. I traveled from the heart as a blue tile (with red underneath) to the lungs where I flipped over and became the red sided tile. Then I 'drove' my red tile back through the heart and out into the body. I decided to go to the brain to drop of oxygen where I flipped my red tile back to blue. The blue tile traveled along the blue veins back to the heart and then to the lungs.

After we all took a number of turns doing that, we piled blue/red or red/blue tiles all over Harold's body to show the path of blood.

I searched everywhere for a heart-circulatory activity and never found one... but this activity that somehow jumped into my head turned out to be a HUGE hit in our house!! The kids even spent a long time "teaching" Dad what they had learned!

One last picture of this activity:

Heart and Circulatory Activity

Blood Activity:

Another day we learned a bit more about blood. We cut open a chicken leg bone (before baking it for lunch) and examined the bone marrow. We had read in one of our books that bone marrow is where blood cells are formed. We took a close look at the bone marrow, poked and prodded.

Then we "made" our own blood. The types of cells made in bone marrow include red cells, white cells and platelets. We talked again about the basic function of these cells.

the fluid is called plasma (corn syrup)
red cells carry the oxygen (red jelly beans)
white cells fight infection (white jelly beans)
platelets help to clot and form scabs (rice)

-----------------------------------------------------------

The Wrinkled Heart Activity: And now on a related, but different note... today I decided to address the heart in the emotional sense too. I found this wonderful idea at ProTeacher. It is an activity about the things people say that can be hurtful and the things people say that can be kind. Before I read Chrysanthemum to the kids (since that's the book I had on hand), I cut out a heart. Then after we read the book we talked about the things the mice said that were hurtful (and I made folds in the heart) and things we've said to each other that have been hurtful (more folds) and things that they've heard others say that might be hurtful (more folds). Then we talked about things we say that are kind (unfold). We said as many kind things as we could until the heart was unfolded. Then we talked about how the heart was still wrinkled and how the hurtful things we hear can linger for a while in our heart. We hung our wrinkled heart in the homeschool room as a reminder to be kind to one another. What a lovely idea, don't you think?

This is the United States--Unit Study of Landmarks and Symbols

2011-09-22T06:32:00.004-04:00

We have been working steadily on our USA landmarks and symbols unit study. This is a unit that doesn't lend itself as well to pictures since I have pulled it together using history resources I have on hand. The kids each have a notebook and we've been adding to it steadily. Funny enough, LD has said he LOVES history and has been really into this unit. That amazes me a bit because it has been less project-oriented than many of our units have tended to be (and involves a lot more writing on his part).

We've read and done sheets about the USA, the American flag, George Washington, the Thirteen Colonies, and the Liberty Bell. We also read about some landmarks out west such as the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde and Arches.

We used a couple lessons from Art Projects for Kids - Desert Landscape and How to Draw a Cactus.

I read a review on Wright on Time at Almost Homeschoolers and decided this might fit in well with our unit study.

The kids like the fact that the kids in this book were homeschoolers. This first book mostly focused on the two kids as they explored a cave out in Arizona. We were lucky to be traveling when we read this and had the opportunity to visit our own cave!

They had colored lights, but the scene was still pretty, if not entirely natural

Okay--so back to our unit--we did more reading and worksheets, sang lots of US songs (Yankee Doodle, My Country Tis of Thee and the like).

We've done quite a bit with US geography.

We've been playing lots of rounds of Mad Dash. This is a geography game I've had for years. We play it as a one-team game competing against our previous scores. We get 25 cards and then start the timer. The object is to place the state cards in a row (states have to touch their neighbors) trying to make it across the country as far as possible. The cards have a certain number of points and after the time runs out you add up your points. The more neighbors a state has, the fewer points it's worth.

We've been using the landmark and symbols cards I made last summer regularly and lay them out on a big map we have.

We talked about the Statue of Liberty and did a couple crafts:

And drew our own fireworks based on this project from Art Projects for Kids.

That's it for now!

Human Body Unit: The Hand

2011-09-19T06:44:00.014-04:00

Our Study of the Human Hand

Why do we have so many bones in our hand?

We talked about the fact that there are 27 bones in the hand. First, to demonstrate why this is important I did an activity we had done a couple years ago. We pretended that we just had one bone per finger by taping popcycle sticks to their fingers. Then they had to pick up beads. They found they could do it if they scooped up the beads

The Bones of the Hand:
Next, we did the wonderful idea I picked up from Almost Homeschoolers. They actually used bits of colored dough and baked their hands together. We used icing instead.

We used the bones of the hand packet from Homeschool Bits which I got on sale back in August for 25 cents. That is the colored hand you see in this picture and the first picture posted above. I think the hand study-pack is now 50 cents.

X-Ray of the Hand and other Activities

We worked on a couple of the experiments we have from The Young Scientist Club. I got the ready-made experiments from NOEO science. (I did not buy their entire curriculum, I just bought the set of five experiment kits as this was one of the best prices I found on the Internet.) I'm adding in those experiments as we get to them throughout the year. The experiment below (also from the kit) shows the ball and socket bones.

Why do we need a thumb?

We got this hand-claw kit earlier this summer from another family. We talked about why it's so important to have a thumb. Before we attached the thumb, we tried to pick things up with just the fingers.

It was pretty hard, though the kids realized they could squeeze their fingers together (making a scissoring motion) to pick smaller things up.

But when the thumb was added, how easy it was!

And that was pretty much it for this part of our human body unit.

Human Body Unit: Starting Off Again with the Skeleton

2011-09-15T06:39:00.000-04:00

Last spring we started learning a bit about the human body, but then we stopped as summer activities took over. We have re-started our human body unit.

Before I knew I was going to luck into a zillion human body kits (see my post about being lucky!), I bought the Squishy Human Body by Smart Lab. The kids just loved this! We talked about how the skeleton protects all of our organs and then lifted off the rib cage and started taking out the squishy organs. What a great learning kit!

It even looks real, doesn't it?!

We are using the Human Body Copywork by Homeschool Bits as our core for this unit. At $1.50 for 200+ pages this was a bargain! Here's a sample if you're interested.

I brought out our human body puzzle and ED and DD have done this a number of times.

The kids spent one day cutting out all the parts to the skeleton. While they worked, they listed to our CD of Story of the World-volume 2. (We listened to the first book this summer in the car on our various trips.)

We'll be using this book quite a bit this semester. It has neat project ideas: The Body Book: Hands on Models That Teach.

The book had a number of discussion questions, so we went over those as we put the body together. Did you know the skull has 29 bodies? Do you know what the backbone protects? the spinal chord... things like that.

Ocean Unit:: Cephalopods from Science Friday

2011-09-14T05:34:00.001-04:00

My friend shared this really terrific video that talks a bit about how octopus and squid camouflage themselves by changing their skin color AND texture. It is astounding how much the octopus in the video blended into the bush. What an amazing world we live in!

Practical Life: Manners

2011-09-12T06:44:00.002-04:00

We have had a day of the week for each child for several years now. We call it L-day or D-day or E-day. On that day that child gets to go into the car first and a couple other things, but also they have some extra responsibilities on that day like emptying the dishwasher and doing a bathroom swish-and-swipe (which they love, believe it or not!)

Well, I decided L-day (or whomever) would dovetail well with some Montessori lessons called "Practical Life."

In collection we've been going over some basic everyday hygiene practices and life skills:
how to properly cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze, how to blow your nose and throw that tissue away, how to ask to be excused, how to ask for something to be passed politely (and how to respond). We also practiced how to greet someone you've never met, how to shake hands, how to introduce someone, and how to pass by someone. The kids really got into re-enacting these situations.

Monday was D's day and I added in a new responsibility -- that of snack host/hostess. We went over proper etiquette in setting the table, serving others and so forth.

In the morning before our school session began, DD mixed together some cookie dough. Partway through our work session she prepared our snack while LD was reading and DD was working on a beading.

She baked a tray of cookies (we froze the rest on a cookie tray for another day). She also cut up the fruit and put it on a plate.

She set the table properly.

Then she invited everyone to wash hands and come have a snack.

DD acted as hostess, "Would you like some fruit?" "Would you like a cookie?"

The kids did well saying 'thank you' and 'you're welcome.'

Anyway, this is probably all stuff you do in your home on a daily basis, but I'm writing about it because I made a deliberate effort to discuss proper etiquette and manners to draw their attention to it.

We'll be covering some other topics like phone manners and things like that in the next few days.


ED also chose to bake cookies this week on her special day. LD wanted to make candy... which we did. It turned out, um, rather different than the original recipe since we didn't have enough corn syrup. Instead he made a very hard candy! While they served their dessert with fruit and sliced vegies, we'll aim for a bit more of a healthy snack next week! :)

P.S. I'm happy that I incorporated these lessons in this week. It's amazing how many times you need to use common courtesy. I was so happy when DD (my shy one) said, "Excuse me, I'd like to pass by" to a gentleman at the library just as we had practiced at home!

After Three Months of Training...

2011-09-10T15:59:00.000-04:00

I ran and finished a half-marathon this morning. It was a trail run with intense hills, but I did it and finished strong. Hooray! It's been nearly 10 years since I ran my last race, so I feel pretty proud of myself this afternoon (if not a bit tired and sore!).