Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Static Electricity

We have been having fun rubbing our socks on the carpet, shocking one another, and finding out why the shock happens.
We don't watch the ones that have Bill Nye's ungodly evolution . My boys know that stuff is not true. But some of his videos are great...

Friday, January 15, 2010

Flyers for trips to the New World

One of Justin and Jonathan's assignments for history today was to pretend that they were making flyers/brochures to entice people to take trips to the New World.

I thought what they came up with was cute:

Justin's said:
"We've got great ships. Free Food! Contact John Smith at the ship yard."

Jonathan's said:
"Come to the New World and be rewarded with gold and treasure! Trade with the Indians.
Contact London Company
"

Thursday, January 14, 2010

The Character Journal

We are using "The Character Journal" to study character qualities. Currently we are going through the study about obedience. There are also studies about humility, responsibility, self control, punctuality (which I desperately need myself), etc...

This is a free service offered by "Home Life Ministries". I print each study and put it in a binder and Michael and I both go over it with them at different times.
characterjournal.com

I put the link on my sidebar as well.

Learning the Books of the Bible

The boys are learning the books of the Old Testament in song format. I am not for sure what the original tune would be called, but it is very familiar. I remember learning them this same way, and it is very effective.

We are also doing sword drills. Since sword drills aren't extremely familiar to them yet, I am starting out by just calling out the name of the book of the Bible. Once they get used to finding the books, we will go to chapter and verse. They really enjoyed this, and asked to keep doing it.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Poetry Memory

Papa and Grammy gave the boysa poetry coloring book for Christmas. It has some great poetry, so I decided to use it for memory work.



We just finished learning "Who Has Seen the Wind" by Christina Rossetti.







We are currently working on "The Caterpillar", also by Christina Rossetti. They seem to enjoy this one quite a bit since they spent a lot of time this past fall picking up caterpillars. :-)


Routine - Update

Yes, we are back to day shift around here. Yippee! I am happy to have an early morning routine instead of later.


Here is an update on some of the things we are studying:

Have I mentioned how thankful I am to have this blog? It is so nice to be able to document our home education activities with pictures... and with this type of ease! This looks so much nicer than my mundane handwritten journals!

  • Science: We are still reading the huge book The Bee People (which I started for our bee unit study). Yesterday, we did an experiment about matter and watched videos that teach the concept.


Everything is made of matter. When you add energy to it, it changes forms. So, of course to begin with, we did the old frying of ice experiment.


Ice - solid

Add energy/ heat

Ice/ solid turns to water/ liquid

Continue the energy/heat and it changes into a gas






  • History - we are studying about the early explorers who came to America. Columbus, Hudson, Estevanico, etc...





We are re-creating our time-line:

Last year, we tried posting it on cardstock onto the walls. Sticky tack doesn't always work well on walls, and I discovered a new way of doing it using brown craft paper. The boys love to draw, so I am letting them do the artwork. They drew the explorer's ships :-). The nice thing about the craft paper is that you can roll it up and put it in the corner!





The history book we use has a lot of fun activities. In the last lesson, it explained that the explorers likely used certain types of kn0t-tying techniques for survival (as most sailors do). Justin demonstrates the square knot:



  • Language Arts: (Phonics, Writing, Language, Reading, & Spelling) is coming along well. The boys enjoy typing out their spelling words on the computer, and I think by using the computer they are learning 2 things at once (how to type and how to spell!). I have enough Swagbucks to get Justin's new Writing book free! Woo hoo!
The boys are also reading library books about their favorite subjects these days in their leisure time. Justin got a few Garfield comics and a book about vikings. Jonathan is interested in knights and enjoys reading to Ryan.


I am still plodding through Ryan's reading lessons. He is coming along very well. Maybe one of these days I can sneak a video of him reading without him knowing it.

  • Math is mostly workbook style. We use supplemental workbooks and we try to do the supplemental lessons that they have in the back of their books.

Jonathan is working through Twin Sisters Addition at this point and Justin is also going through some supplemental exercises in the back of his math.

Math is a good subject for both of them. They do not seem to have any trouble understanding concepts.

  • As far as social activities, we still meet with friend/s on Mondays. We either meet in our home, our friend's home or the library (and the park on warm days). One week there were nine kids running through my house. Lots of fun!