Arts & Crafts

Our Dollar Tree has a lot of fun craft items. Yesterday I bought 2 bags of styro-foam balls (various sizes), acrylic paint, and colored pipe cleaners.

Unfortunately I do not have pictures (the lense of my camera is broken! Hopefully I will get it fixed soon!), but today the boys all made bees. So cute! Justin actually made his entire bee out of pipe cleaners. Jonathan and Ryan used the balls and pipe cleaners. The balls were the body and the pipe cleaners served as legs and wings. This goes along with our bee unit study (and of course just for fun). We named Ryan's bee "Miss Apis" since Apis is part of the scientific name for bees.

Justin used the remaining balls to paint for his solar system (he is studying it on his own).

Another Vocab Story

Jonathan, who has quite a sense of humor sometimes, penned quite the vocabulary story today. The word is "abandon." He had to write the definition and then a story.

"I wish to abandon my house."
"But you can't", said Sam.
One of his friends said, "Yes, he can; it's his house."
Then Sam learned that it was not his business.

My money-saving news!

I can't help but post about this. I am so excited!

Recently I sold a big bunch of books on Ebay. I made enough money to buy new or almost new curriculum for our school year. The nicest thing was that I had actually made money on some books I had bought at the thrift store (For example, I paid $2 for a set of books and sold them for almost $8.)

I am so thrilled because by selling all those books, I freed up some space and basically paid for almost all of this year's curriculum for the boys that we need!

A couple of treasures that I was able to buy off Ebay:

*Schoolhouse Rock 30 Year Anniversary Set. I believe it's the entire collection. I love Schoolhouse Rock because it sets just about everything educational to music (Math, Science, Grammar, History, Government, etc).

Here's a sample:




*The Complete Book of United States History:

Story Telling style, Maps charts, & timelines.

I wanted something complete that I could teach as a unit. This seems to fit the bill and I can supplement with "living books" and audio books (which I get from HomeSchool Radio Shows, Your Story Hour, and library).
I also got this brilliant idea. I was at Walmart looking at the shipping supplies and lo and behold I looked down and there was a giant roll of craft paper for around $3!
I thought, "That would be PERFECT for our time-lines!".
We can roll it up to store it until next time. I was doing time-lines on the wall, but the sticky tack wasn't coming off very easily and we were running out of space to put the figures. I love doing time-lines so I was disappointed that the wall wasn't working out. I am thrilled about the craft paper and can't wait to try it!

I was also able to get the ABeka books we needed very reasonably. I was especially thrilled to get Justin's entire set of readers brand new for $20. That's a great deal... especially considering the fact that they will be passed down to his brothers! They are true treasures. I loved reading them as a child and am thrilled that my own children have the opportunity to read them as well.

Spelling, Grammar, Dictation, Copywork

I think I mentioned before that I heard a great audio seminar about Language Arts from a veteran home-schooling mother. Both of her children are adults and have published writing, so I was interested in hearing what she had to say. She is a huge advocate of Note-booking for all subjects. I must say, I have to agree with her that note-booking is very beneficial! The first Note-booking project was for our bee unit study. Now that I understand more about the process, we are enjoying note-booking in the area of language arts as well. Notebooks are great ways to keep a nice record of the boys' work. (We are still using ABeka curriculum as core.)

One fun area of note-booking is in story writing. My boys love to write their own stories, so after they have written their vocabulary words with definitions (Justin has to look them up in the dictionary), they write stories about their words.

I wanted to share a couple of the stories here. I must say their stories make me chuckle!

By Justin (who likes short and sweet and to the point):

Once a man thought he was sacred! But people would warn him that he was not sacred. But he would not listen because he thought he was the best. One day he thought that he had the most glory! Then one day he drove right over a cliff! He had died.

By Jonathan

(He narrated the story to me while I wrote. Then he copied my writing - this is to keep him from seeing words misspelled even if they are his own words. Charlotte Mason recommends this):

Once upon a time, there was a dog. He liked briers and brambles. His master's name was John. John named his dog "BrierThorn."
One day BrierThorn ran away. Then BrierThorn saw a cat. He ate the cat for lunch! BrierThorn saw two dogs. He got into a fight with them. BrierThorn and the dogs had a boxing match; BrierThorn won!
Next, he went to a pizza place. He stole some pizza. "Come back here!" said the baker. BrierThorn said, "You can only have the crust."
Then BrierThorn went home.

September Update

I know it is about time for an update! I don't have a lot of time, but there are a few things I want to mention. Hopefully I will find time to update with some pictures soon.

• We have the new & exciting privilege of meeting with Jonathan's old school friend Anna once a week! She is homeschooling as well. This is a lot of fun not only for the boys, but for me as well since I have made a new friend with her mother Stacie.
  
• We are still studying bees. Currently we are reading:

The Bee People

A very delightful classic I must say (1899)! I had downloaded it as a freebie several months ago, and when we decided to do our unit study I remembered I had downloaded it. (What a nice coincidence huh?)

Here is a little synopsis I found on another site:

An attractive introduction to the curious structure, habits, and activities of bees, in which readers learn how the bees' wondrous body parts equip them to gather nectar and pollen, construct the hive, and nurture the young, and how the different kinds of bees interact in the life of the hive. Over one hundred pen drawings [emphasis mine... these are beautiful!] by the author illustrate the features described in the text.

We are also reading another nice little book called The Brownies at Home by Palmer Cox (written in 1893). I absolutely love it! The entire book is written in poetry form, and the little "brownies" are illustrated all throughout the book. The boys enjoy looking at the pictures and choosing which ones they like the best. Evidently, as I have looked into the brownies, they were very famous in their day. Books, toys, dolls, and even a camera were named after them! The copy we have is black and white, but this picture above gives a good idea of what the brownies look like. This particular book is about the months of the year. Justin & Jonathan are working on their very own Spelling & Vocabulary notebooks based on the Noah Webster's American Spelling book (The Original Blue Backed speller). These are not only a great way to keep up with their education, but they are also very fun and entertaining! I give them a new list of words, they are to look each of the words up in their dictionary, write the definitions,write a story about the words, and possibly draw pictures for chosen words. Their stories are very entertaining! Ryan is learning to read! I know I mentioned we checked out Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons from the library. I had to take the book back, so there was a break of time where we didn't get to go over the lessons. Thankfully, I was able to order it from Amazon and we have our very own copy now. - I am also reading story books to him from the library. - Along with these lessons, we are going through Disney Number & Counting & Alphabet learning workbooks.These are cute workbooks I found at the Dollar tree. He traces numbers and letters & counts. He enjoys working through these with me as we snuggle on my big bed. -On his own he does a LOT of drawing and cutting out with his scissors.

My Sentiments Exactly...

http://afullheart.blogspot.com/2009/08/wordless-wednesday-on-my-refrigerator.html

The American Spelling Book

I have been waiting all week for my printer ink to arrive. It came today! (I only paid $11 per cartridge for my ink, and it is great quality!)
I mentioned in a previous post that I was going to use McGuffey Eclectic Spelling book, but after review I prefer Noah Webster's Speller.

Pictures below of our very own The American Spelling Book (better known as Blue Backed Speller) by Noah Webster. I found it on Google books, magnified it to 16o percent, and printed it (168 pgs) on my printer. I put it in a nice three ring binder that I had lying around, and it is ready to go!

Click the pictures for a close-up picture.

I know our American language has changed over the years, but I think this will be a great foundation for my boys.

An update on our Unit Study

Just a few pictures from our bee unit study. We are far from finished, but I thought it would be nice to document some of our activities with some pictures.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Playing a game about bees*
I read to them about how bees send "bee scouts" to find nectar, and then how they dance to communicate to other bees where nectar is found. Then we played the proboscis (bee tongue) game. We initially used party blowouts with velcro attached (to represent the bees' tongue), but the boys DESTROYED them!

Jonathan and Ryan were pretending to be bees. Justin was as well, but he wasn't about to let me take a picture of him with his tongue stuck to a flower! I don't blame him because I wouldn't want to share a picture of how I was showing them how the bees dance.
At least it was fun, and I hope it helps them remember!

Jonathan writing paragraphs about different types of bees... (yes, they doodle on everything!)

Ryan's page. He colored the bee picture, cut it out, and pasted it along with some flower cut-outs I provided. He wrote the word "bee" as I told him how to spell it.
Another one of Ryan's project. It says "Buzzy Bee: Tulips are sweet"
Jonathan's
Jonathan drew this bee free-hand and labeled the parts
Justin's notebook. We use sheet protectors for each page (thus the shine on the pages). They are imperative for creating nice, lasting notebooks.
Justin's page about "carpenter bees" (Jonathan is doing the same paragraphs)
.... and bumble bees
Justin's drawing of a bee with its parts

I still have several pages of things to do and read to them as well as going through their notebooks and helping them to correct mistakes. Hopefully I will have more pictures to post soon!

Update

I haven't posted very much lately because we have been so busy around here. But as a courtesy to our family member readers and because this blog is part of my records, I need to give a little update.

We have continued with year-round schooling because of its convenience and benefits.

We are still using Proverbs for Parenting for Scripture memory, Arthur Maxwell's The Bible Story, and ABeka workbooks.


As a suplement to language arts, earlier today I downloaded our very own copy of the McGuffey Eclectic Spelling book (1879!). I had bought a copy of Spelling Power last year when we started out (at the suggestion of a well-meaning friend), but I just couldn't make myself be happy with it. I have it waiting on the shelf and I intend to list it on Ebay.

Google-books makes many of the old educational material available today free online! I am VERY impressed with the content and quality of the educational material from the late 1800's and early 1900's. I intend to use quite a bit of those books as teaching tools. I especially like the McGuffey readers and hope to get hard back readers eventually. For now though, I am able to print and use what I want from the Google site until I am able to get copies of them. We are continuing to use the ABeka readers as well.

We are still going through our bee unit study, and enjoying all the neat things we have learned so far. I added those pictures in the above post.

I am currently reading The Chimney Sweep's Ransom by Dave & Neta Jackson to the boys. This series, called "Trailblazer Books", introduces young readers to Christian heroes of the past. The Chimney Sweep's Ransom introduces John Wesley. The last one we read introduced George Mueller. The boys and I have enjoyed them, and Justin in particular is never satisfied with just one chapter.

Bee Videos

I wanted the boys to see some bees in action, so we watched some videos on Youtube. My favorite was the one about the melipona bee from "exploration films".