Giving Thanks....

We had our home school Thanksgiving last week.

The kids did a great job cooking all the food.

Take a look at Dylan's bread .......

We read stories about the Pilgrims and watched a cartoon about William Bradford and the first Thanksgiving. Fun day!!

This turned out to be a great unit study.

I missed a couple weeks.
Instead of catching up, let's just start new. :)

We are getting ready for Thanksgiving.....Home School Style.


For the past few weeks we have been learning about the Colonies and the Mayflower. We will wrap it up next Tues. when we will have our own celebration and feast. This is my favorite part of Home Schooling the kids, we (they) will be cooking homemade bread from fresh milled wheat, applesauce from apples picked from the tree's of Pennsylvania (given to us from a friend that just visited there), Pumpkin pie and some more goodies. We have been keeping a Thankful Jar and writing what we are thankful for, we will read these at the table.
Lot's of fun!

week 10

This week finished off our first quarter of school. It was full of parties and fun!

At the beginning of the week we went to a little park to feed the ducks.

Caitlin named every one of them. This one's name is June. She only had one foot and we gave her special attention. :)

Mid week was a stop at the Pumpkin Patch....

By Friday I planned a little class party.

And to top it all off we had our annual Trunk er Treat at church. Our theme was Charlotte's Web.

Here's to another 10 great weeks of school!!!

Week 8 and 9

I thought it would be easy to keep up with this blog.....nothing is easy, right?

We have been reading about our countries around the world. Right now we are studying the Continent of Africa.
We have gone through some of our A beka history book reading on Christopher Columbus, John Smith, Pocahontas, The settlement of Jamestown, Myles Standish and Squanto. I read to all the kids together, even Caitlin is involved at 4 years old. When we recap a story she is the one who usually answers the questions......and gets it right LOL!
I've also been reading a library book on Myles Standish. It's pretty much over their head, talking about all the kings and queens of the Elizabethan era, but if I break it down and explain to them what's happening it opens doors for conversation. Dawson has the best question's sometimes. I love to sit and have talks with him. He is still so innocent at 12 years old.
We did paper mache' last week. There are no pictures because you can't pick up a camera with glue all up in your elbows! What a mess! We will paint them up as pumpkins this week and show them off. They will be decorations for our class Halloween Party next week! :)
I'm thinking of doing a math workshop with the kids. Just take a couple of weeks playing math games and such. Focus on making it more fun to do. We all kinda hate math :)
Typing, reading, spelling words....all doing great! They don't mind those subjects at all! :)
My husband found some old Hardy Boys book's at the thrift store. They turned out to be great books for them to read.
We're doing good! Hope you are too! ")

week 7

I almost forgot to write a post about our week!
They are really getting into creative writing. I don't know what it is about typing, other than they just HATED writing that much, but they will sit and type out a 3 page story on the computer first thing in the mornings. ( not complaining)
I'm reading to them about the Pony Express.
We learned this week about John Smith and Pocahontas.
I bought each one of them a calculator, they take it with them when we go grocery shopping. They like to total up the prices and figure out the price at a certain percent off.
O.k ....short and sweet post. better get ready for next week :)

Week 6

We went from the Tropical Zone to the Frigid Zone this week. Reading about Alaska and their long dark winters and ice fishing. I was thinking of getting out all of our hats and gloves and wearing them as I read about the zone so they could have a visual.

Some great library books came to our door this week on Abe Lincoln, and George Washington and The Pony Expess but we didn't get to them. We were distracted by a great science craft book that we picked up, it's called Science Crafts for Kids by Gwen Diehn and Terry Krautwurst. It's great for boys who like to do "crafts" but not "girlie" crafts. :) They made a hypsometer out of a paper towel roll, string, and a dowel. It uses triangles to measure the height of tall things. We took it outside to measure the trees. They want to make a solar oven next.

Typing has been a fun subject this year. we found some free sites online that have some games they like to play. Dylan (8) has loved it so much he has been writing "books" and printing them off for all of us to read. He has never been so excited about creative writing until we started typing. Who knew.....

Caitlin has been busy with painting this week. The girl LOVES to paint! We glued beans on cardboard....and painted them, lunch bags.....painted, her face....yep, painted! :)

I guess if you add in their workbooks we had a good week of school.

Week 5

I started my kids on some independent work this week. They now have 2 hrs and 4 subjects they do on their own. I looked up some daily planning sheets online and came up with a plan. They do typing, spelling words, reading and scripture on their own. They write down the time they started and finished and write down what they did, as in pages read or which spelling words they memorized. It seems to be working because they get to pick the subjects and how they want to do them. I love it because it gives me a little time to plan a science project or art or just some quality time with my 4 year old. I don't hear, "What's next mom" all morning long! When they are done with their independent work we get together for math and history and read aloud time.





This week we started going over how to read maps and had a Christopher Columbus lesson. We finished reading about Brazil and the climate zones.....


but on Friday we celebrated my oldest son's 12th birthday :) NO SCHOOL!!!

He's the best kid!!

Week 4

I pulled out some old school books that somebody gave me years ago and thought it would be a good read aloud for them, turned out to be a huge lesson on climate, weather, the 5 zones ( Tropical, north and south Temperate, north and south Frigid) The Arctic Circle, Antarctic Circle, the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn and the Equator. Whew!

We read about Brazil and growing coffee beans and the Rain Forrest, this was all in chapter 1!

My kids love read aloud time because I let them build with their Lego's while I read. I guess they think they are getting away with something, but I've learned little boys need to keep their little hands occupied ALL the time!



I had some balloons left over from my son's birthday party so we used a marker and labeled all the zones on them. We used it for review during the week.



Typing has been fun for both boys. Dylan is up to 7 words a minute and Dawson liked to show me how he can type in his google search word without looking at the keyboard. :)



We went to the library and checked out books about States, and Abe Lincoln. We were able to have a picnic on our back porch and read our books in the breeze. I love this fall weather!



Our science project this week was fun. We separated ink colors with salt water. Black ink has blue and green colors in it. If you write on a paper towel with a felt tip pen, let it dry, then put some drops of salt water on it, you can watch the other colors separate from the black color.



Other than that it's just been math review and spelling words and such. Pretty good week!



I will link this post to Weird, Unsocialized homeschoolers site, go see other weekly wrap ups there!


http://www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com/2010/09/weekly-wrap-up-one-with-birthday.html

week 3

We had a simple week. I was going to do school on Mon. but at the last minute decided to take it off. We stayed home and hung out together. I did some creative thinking on our day off and came up with a couple clever ideas.

#1. my 3rd grader is converting measurements and he isn't very thrilled with doing it. He is, however, thrilled at playing games. So I took some 3x5 cards and wrote converted measures on them and then played a game of concentration. (example) if he turned over 3 feet, his match would have to be 1 yard. He wanted to play this game all week! It helped him so much.

#2 When my son reads out loud to me, I have started reading out loud with him. We read together the first time and then he reads it out loud alone. I heard dyslexic children read with a book and cd together, so they can hear and see it at the same time. My son is not dyslexic, but does tend to rush when reading and then ends up "making up" words, instead of taking his time to sound it out. This has been SO helpful to him, he's doing so good now at watching his punctuations.

#3 I thought out of the box this week and did some things that I hoped would spark some excitement in my boys. We built a zip-line out of paperclips and string like at http://madebyjoel.blogspot.com/2010/07/zip-line-toy.html,
a marble run out of a cereal box like this one http://madebyjoel.blogspot.com/2010/06/cereal-box-marble-run.html
We made sculptures out of floral wire, and, put on a puppet show with some of our old family pictures, cut out with sticks taped to the back.

I read this somewhere....
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the sea.

This week was an awesome week of learning how to "want to learn". I give them an A+!


I am linking this post on http://www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com/2010/09/weekly-wrap-up-one-with-ducksor-geese.html

week 2

We are getting down a pretty good routine around here, our second week went really well.




We started science this week. I bought them all a magnifying glass, and it didn't take very long for my boys to figure out how to burn leaves with them. :) this was NOT our lesson! We actually separated light rays into a rainbow. It was really cool. ( but apparently not as cool as making fire.) :)


We are still on our unit about the United States. I bought a neat game called Jingo. It's like Bingo with the cards having states instead of numbers, and you have to answer trivia questions about a state. It's fun to play.

We took school pics this week, a couple turned out to be keepers.

I bought little dry erase boards for everyone this week. We used them in the car on days I had to run errands. They would write out sentences and do math problems. Much easier than bringing paper and leaving a mess behind to clean up.

My daughter used hers for art. :)

Another fun thing we did this week was buy an alphabet sign language chart. We used it during our spelling lessons. I use Abeka spelling and poetry, they use a spell -say- spell technique. I thought it would add a little spice to our time. They started using it for everything.....I'm glad I got it.

I'm posting this on Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers website. I love to see everyone's week, it gives me such motivation. Go check out other homeschoolers....

http://www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com/2010/09/weekly-wrap-up-one-with-all-blood.html

Mid week....

We are off to a great start this year! I am enjoying school and the kids haven't complained yet! LOL!

We took some school pictures today. I got a couple of good ones, but I leave you with the outtakes.

Week 1

( I'm linking this post to the "Weekly Wrap Up" party on Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers blog.)

First week back to school had some ups and downs, mostly ups :) It's always hard to start the schedule again, even though it was needed terribly, I tend to take the path of least resistance.

I started the school year off right with homemade donuts for breakfast. It pretty much did the trick of getting them out of bed, dressed, and at the table by 7:00.





We worked on measurements this week, converting, decimals, fractions. I had them trace toys and measure with a ruler. I also made a list of things around the house for them to measure with a measuring tape, and they made some pumpkin bread by following the recipe. Funny they couldn't find the 1 cup, had to count it out using the 1/4 cup. (sneaky mom!) I would have taken a picture of the bread but we ate it right out of the oven. It turned out really good!

(measuring toys)



(using Lego's)






We are learning the states, capitals and abbreviations. We are using puzzles and 3x5 cards as flash cards, and I'm letting them use their artistic skills and paint them. Again, I would have posted pictures, but I'm going to have to tell my daughter that when I say," go get dressed" I mean more than just her underwear. :)

(my oldest being a stinker!)


(That's better!)



We do work out of some workbooks. But that gets boring sometimes. So we get out the Nerf guns and shoot darts at the T.V..

I stick Skip Bo cards to the screen and they shoot at the numbers. Whichever one they hit, they have to answer that many questions. For example, if they hit the number 4, they might have to spell 4 of their spelling words. Maybe they would have to give me 5 interrogative sentences, or say as many adjectives you can in 1 min.. They liked this game :)


Like I said, more ups than downs.

After this week....I'm ready for a "Pep Rally" !!

Go see other weekly wrap ups....
http://www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com/2010/08/weekly-wrap-up-one-where-i-quickly-saw.html