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!

Socialization Article

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/13/home-schooling-socialization-not-problem/

Let them be Little

Object Lessons

One fun thing I have learned since coming home to teach my own children is that you can use the same things to teach your own children at home as you would in children's church! Wow, isn't that a revelation?! What kills me about all this is that I didn't think much about it before. I had my separate Sunday School/Children's church ideas in their very own box. Why in the world didn't I try that creativity on my own children?!

I love object lessons. My friend Pam gave me a great book with short object lesson devotionals. I have been doing these and the boys love them. The first one I did, I came into the room wearing mismatched socks. The lesson had a Scripture verse and then a devotional about how our lives need to match what we say. Really cute, really fun, and I hope it will be really memorable to them!

Update

With the move to our new house, the holidays (and all the craziness involved), it has been a little more difficult to update my blogs.

But I thought I'd take just a minute to update.

First of all I want to say how much I treasure the opportunity to home educate my children. To me, it is worth every minute of the time it takes. I treasure the time I have with my boys.

Even on the most trying days, I feel that those are opportunities for character development and relationship building.

Michael is doing a daily Character study with the family at lunch-time every day. It has been such a joy to sit back and watch him teach and lead our family!

The boys are still learning Scripture memory from the book of Proverbs.

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Justin is working with double digit divisors and long division, fractions, simple algebra, and converting English measures. In Language Arts, he just moved from learning about comma placement to possesive nouns.

Jonathan is focusing on improving his addition skills by going through Twin Sisters Addition workbook & CD. He is doing well; I just felt that it would help him move through his ABeka math more quickly if he can master addition. There is a CD with the workbook that is great for reviewing at bedtime.
In Language Arts, he is separating syllables and recognizing special phonics sounds.

Ryan is learning to read. We take it slowly and patiently. The patience is paying off because he is really starting to blend the sounds together. I don't want to rush through this. I want him to get it without regretting speeding through it.
He is not "there" yet, but he is getting there. I am so thankful that I have the opportunity to teach Ryan to read. I would not trade these memories we are making together!
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For Science, we are learning everything from insects to Creation Science (Debunking Darwinism).

The boys read history separately to themselves and then we also do unit studies. In our unit study, we just talked about the Indian mounds (burial grounds). One interesting mound that we talked about today was the "Serpent Mound". The picture in the book we are using is much better than this one:
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology/sites/northamerica/serpent.html


I had forgotten, but studying that reminded me of the place in Alabama called Moundville (near Tuscaloosa) that we visited on field trips when I was in school. We may just have to go there for a field trip sometime ourselves. There are surely a lot of Indian themed historical places around here as well. I am looking forward to finding them!

We haven't done many messy Science projects lately because of the holiday stuff. We are still meeting with Stacie and Anna weekly.
Sometimes we play board games. Other times we do easy crafts. Another week I had several children over. They ran around in the fields, got muddy, and then came inside and baked cookies. I plan on having more children over soon to do some Christmas cookies. I am also hoping to get back into regularly visiting the nursing homes. We have several from our church in the same nursing home (as well as Nana), so I am hoping that we can make that a more regular activity again.

Well that's it for now. I hope I can do better updating from now on.

The chief thing

I love this quote:

“To bring the human race, family by family, child by child, out of the savage and inhuman desolation where He is not, into the light and warmth and comfort of the presence of God, is no doubt, the chief thing we have to do in the world.”

From A Charlotte Mason Companion

Supplementary Math Exercises

Jonathan will be using Twin Sisters Addition CD and workbook to supplement his ABeka Math. A Beka Math is awesome, but I thought a music CD & workbook would be an additional benefit (no pun intended).
The CD can be popped in at bedtime and all three boys can enjoy and learn.

I love the fact that we have the freedom to take the time to master this concept. It looks fun!

I only paid $1 plus shipping for this ...thanks to Swagbucks!

The rich man, the poor man, and the thief

Language arts story by Justin


Once upon a time there was a rich man, a poor man, and a thief. The rich man had cider, the poor man had gruel, and the thief had gravy. Well one day the thief stole the cider, and the rich man blamed the poor man!
But after the poor man went to jail, the poor man escaped and lived happily ever after.

I read this out loud and then laughed. Justin was giggling and said, "Well you know he wouldn't want to steal the gruel!".
Definition of gruel: a thin porridge. (Justin dislikes oatmeal)

Justin: Language Arts samples

For Spelling & Vocabulary, Justin gets his list of words from Noah Webster's American Spelling book. He then looks each one of them up in his dictionary (with my help) and writes the definitions. Later, he will make the words into sentences and stories. You can click the pictures to see them more clearly.
For Language, I read him a list of sentences and phrases (from A Beka Language 3). He must determine the difference between them orally. Then he copies the sentences and changes the phrases into sentences.

American History: Study of Early Peoples

We are currently studying a few of the Early Native American People groups. We are using The Complete Book of United States History for our studies.

One of the most interesting things about the early native Americans were the marks they left. Hieroglyphics (little pictures to represent words), Petroglyphs (hieroglyphics in stone), Pueblos (stone apartment type structures), etc.

(Also, Justin is really excited because there is a section about Indian sign language. He, of course, had to browse ahead in the book and find that).

Here are some of the boys' drawings of Hieroglyphics, petroglyphs, and pueblos.

Click the pictures to see the details. Justin drew pueblos with petroglyphs on the walls.

Jonathan's (he explained his)

We watched the clip below to see it in "real life". Very interesting. If we were rich, we'd head on over there for the weekend to see them. But I'm really thankful we have Youtube as an alternative. :-)