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!!